Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 103 — Monday, September 26, 2016 (HTML)

Present: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Robin Austin, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Jackie Tegart, MLA; John Yap, MLA

2. Due to the initial absence of the Chair, opening remarks by Carole James, MLA, Deputy Chair.

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	2477
B. Vandersteen
T. O’Neill
K. James
L. Scott
B. Stewart
B. McLardy
P. Tees
B. Cardinal
M. Pleasance
M. Steele
J. Campardo
H. Overnes
M. Oger
D. Stout
M. Glover
C. Lewis
R. Wiefelspuett
G. Leekha
B. Yan
G. Harvie
N. Dubord
T. Porteous

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Carole James. I’m the Deputy Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services and the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill.

We’re an all-party committee of the Legislature with a mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper released by the Minister of Finance. Our committee must issue a report by November 15 with the recommendations for the 2017 provincial budget.

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in communities across the province, and British Columbians can take part through teleconferencing, video conferencing or Skype. There are numerous ways, also, to submit your ideas to the committee. British Columbians can complete an on-line survey or send in written, audio or video submissions through our website at www.leg.bc.ca.

We’re inviting all British Columbians to contribute to this important process. For those of you who are taking part on the phone or through video conferencing, we thank you for taking the time to participate today. All public input is going to be carefully considered by the committee as we prepare our final report to the Legislative Assembly. A reminder that the deadline for submissions is midnight on Friday, October 14.

Today’s meeting — just to remind everyone of the format — will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter is going to have ten minutes to speak followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. If time permits, we’ll also have an open mike at this meeting for those who attend and who aren’t on the phone, and we’ll give five minutes for each of those presenters.

For those of you who are going to be on teleconference or otherwise, I’m just going to ask you to make sure you introduce yourself as you speak. I’ll do that as we go along just so Hansard can make sure that they are getting the right person in the right order of who’s speaking. Hansard will be recording. There’ll be a complete transcript of the proceedings posted to the committee’s website. All meetings are also broadcast live — audio — through our website.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Also assisting our committee today are Susan Sourial, and Lisa Hill and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Alexa Hursey and Steve Weisgerber from Hansard are also here to help us with the proceedings.

We’re going to start off — hopefully, our technology will work — with the Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce via video conferencing from Fort Nelson.

We were having technical difficulties with Fort Nelson earlier, so we’ll just give it a minute.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We can hear you now, so we’ll start our presentation. As you probably heard, ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions. We’ll turn it over to you, and welcome.

B. Vandersteen: As requested, my name is Bev Vandersteen. I’m the executive director for the Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce. I’m starting to feel like I actually know some of you. I’ve been doing this for enough years now.

A lot of what I’m going to talk about really does involve the whole province, particularly rural and remote parts of the province. The first thing I’m going to talk about is the need for accessible health care. I don’t think this is different in other parts of the province when you get into the rural and remote areas.

Currently in Fort Nelson, we don’t even have basic medical services. This has been a topic for a number of years. We can’t even have a baby here, so young families are required to leave the community a minimum of two weeks prior to their due date. They have to go live somewhere else. Those that don’t have extended family somewhere else are required to foot that bill for themselves, which can be upwards of $12,000 to $15,000, depending on the length of time they have to leave the community for.

This, as you can imagine, is extremely stressful for young families and, really, in a place like Canada and
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a place like British Columbia, we should be able to have babies at home. When I was having mine 20 years ago, I could have my children in Fort Nelson. You no longer can.

Services such as travelling pediatrician clinics and that kind of thing…. When my children were little, they came here regularly. You could do basic surgeries like tonsillectomies, that kind of thing, here. You can no longer do that here. Cancer patients can receive no treatment here, so they have to travel out.

I think that basic medical services have to become part of the budget priorities, and health authorities have to be mandated to provide those services to rural communities such as Fort Nelson.

That then goes on to medevac and air ambulance services as well. Our providers are wonderful. They do the best they can with the situation they’re in. However, we service a vast majority of the province. Ten percent of B.C.’s land mass you essentially drive through, when you come up northeastern B.C.

Fort Nelson has ambulance services. However, the next services to the south are in Fort St. John, almost 400 kilometres away, and then, in the north — it’s in the Yukon — not until you hit Watson Lake, which is roughly 515 kilometres away.

So when something happens — and something did happen not that long ago — you’re talking anywhere from two to six hours to get an ambulance to you, because they travel by ground. [Audio interrupted.] When we have an issue and we get people to the hospital here, now we’re waiting for an air medevac to get them to Vancouver or to Prince George or to the next services. This is just so stressful on families, and some priority needs to be made in the budget for this issue.

Very quickly, I’m going to go over to some of the things you’ve heard from me in past years.

Carbon tax. I know we’re not ever getting rid of the carbon tax, so I get that. But I do think that for rural communities and northern communities such as ours…. We don’t have public transport. We are some of the harshest winters in the province. We are some of the highest gas prices in the province. Our tourism operators are off the grid. They don’t have the option of being on B.C. Hydro or getting Fortis gas or any other gas provider, so they have to generate all their own power.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just waiting for our technical difficulties to be resolved. Sometimes technology is terrific, and other times it fails us. I think we’ve lost Bev from Fort Nelson. Just give it a minute. I can see our technical people working hard.

Do we know if we’ve got our other presenter from Smithers on the line? We’ll just check and see if we have our Smithers person. We’ll just go to them and come back to Fort Nelson if we need to.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Wonderful. Terri is from the Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association and is coming to us from Smithers.

Terri, the presentation, as you probably know, is ten minutes and five minutes for questions. I’ll just let you know when you’re getting near your ten minutes. We will turn it over to you. Thank you for presenting.

I’m from the Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association. We represent hunters and anglers in the various communities up in the Skeena region. This is in northwestern B.C.

In 2015, there were close to 112,000 licensed resident hunters in the province generating over $11 million to the B.C. government. Anglers in both freshwater and saltwater areas of B.C. number in the many hundreds of thousands, generating even more funds for the provincial and federal governments.

The Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association believes that people are being poorly served by the provincial public service when it comes to fish and wildlife management. The bureaucracy is largely viewed by us as anti-harvest in nature, like an anti-use group — that they’re being funded by the province of B.C., which is negatively impacting our members who are hunters and gatherers as a lifestyle. That is who we’re representing, and we just don’t think that we’re getting the proper representation by the bureaucrats that are in this process as it is.

The most obvious example of this problem is the total lack of support for the sustainable harvest of fish species like wild steelhead and char. Our whole region is managed strictly on a targeted catch-and-release basis, despite extremely high abundances of both of these species. Instead of managing biologically, we are seeing the public service imposing their personal philosophies. That’s why we’re only having catch and release for the fish, right?

It’s impacting us. We have to pay our way. We have to have our licences, but we’re still not allowed to harvest these fish. The Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association participates in the federal process, which is referred to as a sport fishing advisory board. That process is over 50 years old.

The federal fisheries public servants strongly support resident harvest of all the species of salmon — all five — in both freshwater and saltwater areas. This management is biologically based, and in times of low abundance, fish-
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ing is closed. It’s closed. They don’t play games with numbers. You don’t harvest and no targeted catch and release. We strongly support this process.

Just as an example, three years ago our sockeye numbers were very, very low on the Skeena system. There was no targeted fishing. All sectors were shut down. We could fish other species, but we were not allowed to go out and specifically target the sockeye. That’s not the program with the problem.

The Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association strongly recommends that all fisheries management is directly under the jurisdiction of the federal government, of Fisheries and Oceans. Taking the jurisdiction from the province and giving it to the feds makes biological sense. Fish will be managed biologically, and they’ll all be managed under the same umbrella. We don’t need the duplication. The service is in the province, and that would save the taxpayers so much money, just by taking that responsibility away from the province. So put management of steelhead, specifically, back to the federal government.

We also have concerns about resident hunters and guides and anglers being the only sectors paying the way for all of the user groups who benefit from well-managed fish and wildlife resources. A good portion of the funds that are generated and are already being collected, we feel, should stay in the region and be managed by regional boards, not a provincial board but a regional board made up of resource users. We don’t support taxing hunters and anglers any more. We’re already taxed.

What we do support is starting to tax the hikers and ecotourism, the back-country skiers. They’re using the back country just as much as we are, but they don’t pay anything for it. Yes, they go out and they buy hiking boots, but we buy hiking boots. There has to be another mechanism to start targeting these other user groups.

Just to be clear, we’re not supportive of any more bureaucracy and associated administration costs swallowing up any new revenues, and we encourage the government to provide more oversight on existing funding models in place at the time. Right now we have the Freshwater Fisheries Society. A lot of our fishing licence fees go to this committee. But if you look at the makeup of that committee, it’s being overtaken by retired bureaucrats. If you take a look at the money that is used just for them to be part of the committee, it’s atrocious how much money is being swallowed up. I think this needs to be looked at. A cap needs to be put on stuff like this — these committees.

Just as an example, we have a fellow here out of Smithers, just recently retired from the Ministry of Environment. Then, all of a sudden, he’s on the Freshwater Fisheries Society. His office is still in his building. He still has the same office, yet he’s being…. He’s getting his retirement. He’s also on the Freshwater Fisheries Society collecting a wage there, and they fly him to Vancouver once a month. There’s a lot of money being wasted, and I think we need to take a look at what’s happening in those….

Then the other example is the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund. It’s become, basically, a slush fund for the Ministry of Environment. We feel that the projects that are being supported by the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund should be supported by the people who are putting the money into it. If you look at the makeup of that committee too, there are an awful lot of retired bureaucrats on there. They’re out there, floating around the province and using up a lot of that money.

Our organization, about three or four years ago, applied to do a steelhead abundance study. The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation supported it, but we couldn’t get the support of the ministry. Yet the ministry doesn’t come to us and find out if we support the projects they want to do. A lot of those funds, too, are being applied for by anti-hunters and anti-fishermen, and we’re doing projects that don’t benefit hunters and anglers.

Anyway, I’d like to thank you for taking your time to listen to me. It kind of caught me off guard a little [audio interrupted]. I didn’t have my warning shot here. Anyway, are there any questions?

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate you taking the time.

Personally, I’m a little curious about your commentary with respect to the licence fees. Maybe they’re not being spent…. We know they’re being appropriated, but we’re not sure if they’re being spent according to their intended purpose. Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit. I’m not quite sure what you were meaning by that.

T. O’Neill: Well, I’m more concerned about how much money is used up for administration — the cost just to have that committee itself. If you look at the breakup of…. I’ve heard in excess of [audio interrupted] percent of the annual funds are used up to pay the way for these people to administer the rest of the money.

I gave the example of one guy. He’s just recently retired. He’s still using his same office in the same building, and he’s now being paid by Freshwater Fisheries Society. I just don’t like seeing our money wasted, and I think there’s some money being wasted there.
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Seeing none, thank you very much, Ms. O’Neill, for taking the time to present to the committee. It’s a bit of a different presentation than what we’ve been hearing in the last week, so I’m glad you took the time to present. Have a good day.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. I’ll call the committee back to order and welcome the Selkirk College Students Union via teleconference from Castlegar. I understand we have four people on the line, so I will let the four of you introduce yourselves, and then we’ll get going.

Z. Bunting: Hi there. My name is Zachary Bunting. I’m the finance director with the Selkirk College Students Union.

Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for your presentation. After that, I’ll try to get your attention. I’ll rudely interrupt here with a couple of minutes left to go so that you know to conclude your thoughts. Then we’ll go to the committee for five minutes worth of questions.

K. James: Good afternoon, standing committee members. My name is Kavy James, and I’m the chairperson of Selkirk College Students Union. I’m joined by Gabrielle Faludi, a staff member resource person for our organization.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that the Castlegar campus of Selkirk College takes place on the traditional and unceded territory of Sinixt people. The Selkirk College Students Union represents all students at Selkirk College. We have an over 2,000-student membership on eight campuses in six communities, servicing an area the geographical equivalent of the area from Richmond to Hope and White Rock to Sechelt.

Our organization is Local 2 of British Columbia Federation of Students. The students union exists to provide member services to students in the West Kootenays and advocate for a high-quality system of publicly funded and administered post-secondary education. To this end, we are happy to be able to speak to you today about our college. We want to ensure that you hear from Selkirk College students’ perspective on a number of topics that would be too exhaustive to cover in our brief time today, so we will provide the committee a more fulsome written submission at a later time.

Today we hope to highlight a particularly important part of education at Selkirk College — adult basic education. It is our recommendation that government restore funding to adult basic education and return to a tuition-fee-free status for these programs. As you have likely already heard from other presenters around the province, adult basic education courses provide instruction in high school–level skills and content. Across the post-secondary system, adult basic education is crucial laddering for in-need people of all ages through their learning. Through these programs, students complete a Dogwood certificate, the equivalent of high school graduation, and prepare to continue on with college and university-level programs.

The environment created in institutions like Selkirk College is one that allows adult learners to thrive and study away from a high school setting and provides a clear and an easy path into higher education, which links to the rest of British Columbia’s colleges and universities.

Adult basic education students earn credits that directly meet course requirements for first-year college courses. These programs change lives for those unable to finish high school or need to return to school after years in the workforce.

Twenty percent of adult basic education students are parents, and 18 percent are aboriginal peoples. This contrasts the number of university graduates, of whom only 3 percent are aboriginal peoples.

Adult basic education tuition fees were eliminated in 1998, reintroduced in the 2000s and then again eliminated in 2007. In 2014, tuition fees were re-implemented along with a $6.9 million cut to college- and university-level adult basic education.

This year is the first year that Selkirk College will charge tuition fees on adult basic education, and students
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fear the impact that this policy will have on access and enrolment. These well-founded fears are based on the experience of other institutions in the previous year. In the 2015-16 academic year, adult basic education saw an enrolment drop from 33 percent at Northwest Community College to 63 percent at the Powell River campus of Vancouver Island University. To avoid enrolment drops, the adult upgrading grant was put in place to cover tuition fees for low-income students. However, the grant has clearly been a failure at ensuring students continue to access to adult basic education at other institutions.

At this time, Selkirk College has created a supplementary adult upgrading bursary to cover students not covered by the government’s adult upgrading grant. This funding model is not ideal for several reasons. Multiple levels of bureaucracy in applying for funding are a barrier for many people trying to access a basic level of adult education.

Grants, subsidies and other forms of financial aid are costly to administer for government, as is common with unnecessary administrative bloat. And most importantly, the adult upgrading grant and supplementary adult upgrading bursary are poor replacements for tuition-fee-free programs, as the programs don’t cover everyone, don’t cover several costs and are taxed by government as income. Across the province, the elimination of tuition-fee-free adult basic education would cost a small portion.

I will finish my statement by saying again that our organization appreciates the opportunity to present to the committee today. The 2017 budget is an opportunity for government to show that it hears the concerns of all students and will work to ensure that anyone who needs a high school education will be able to have it provided and get it. Post-secondary education is a complex and expensive government service, but its success is critical for our province’s future and for government’s economic plans.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for that. I appreciate your taking the time. I’ll go to the committee for questions. I’ll start with Robin, please.

R. Austin: Thanks, Kavy, for your presentation. As you alluded to, we’ve heard a lot of the similar things that you’ve been speaking about as we’ve been doing our consultations around the province.

I think one of the interesting differences between a community college and a university, whether it be a full-service research university or one of the newer universities, is that the role the community colleges play is very often as a place where people can go to upgrade their learning in order to get into community college courses and into university courses.

I think that your point about us looking at and having deliberations around access to upgrading is absolutely critical. I totally agree with you. As I say, we’ve heard a lot about this, and I hope that when we go into our deliberations, we make this a very, very important point. Thanks again for your presentation.

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present today. It was very much appreciated. You’re busy, and so is everyone, I’m sure, at your school. We do appreciate your time.

We have the Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society, via video conference from Penticton — Zoe Kirk and Lisa Scott. And with the Boundary Invasive Species Society, via video conference from Penticton, we have Barb Stewart.

Good afternoon. Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. We have ten minutes for the presentation, and then I can go to the committee for five minutes’ worth of questions. I’ll just interrupt you with a couple of minutes left so you can conclude your thoughts. If you’re ready for the presentation, the floor is yours.

L. Scott: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Lisa Scott. I’m the program manager of the Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society, also known as OASISS.

B. Stewart: I’m Barb Stewart, the manager with the Boundary Invasive Species Society, based out of the Boundary area.

Z. Kirk: I’m Zoe Kirk, and I’m with the regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen.

L. Scott: We don’t have a handout for you today, but we will be providing you with a one-page written summary prior to the deadline.

We are two of 13 regional committees or societies found across British Columbia. In fact, we’re two of the longest-running societies. This year marks the 20th anniversary of OASISS, and Boundary Invasive Species Society is 17 years.

We are a part of the collective approach in this province when it comes to effective management of invasive species. We represent a diverse cross-section of stakeholders, and we work in partnership with the province, other levels of government and many other organizations, including Washington state.

We’d like to start by acknowledging the funding that the province already provides, and it’s our intention to illustrate how we are effectively utilizing these funds.

You’ve heard from some invasive species groups already during this public consultation process, and there are more to come. Why is this? This is because invasive species affect each and every person — in your room, where you’re sitting, and throughout the prov-
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ince. Invasive species impact B.C. economically, environmentally and socially. They threaten the health of our resources, as well as the viability of the industries they support.

You all unquestionably understand the invasive species issue. Some of you likely battle invasive species on your own properties, whether it be knapweed, English ivy or thistle. You drive highways where you see the signs for knotweed control. Some of you likely swim, boat or fish in our B.C. waters. You’ve experienced Eurasian milfoil, or perhaps you’ve even been stopped at a highway inspection station and learned about the threat of zebra or quagga mussels. We need your continued and increased support for this provincial issue.

To be a little different from other organizations that have presented to you, prior, on invasive species, we’re going to highlight the progress we’ve made with the funds the province has provided. We’re going to share some success stories at a regional level. I’ll start talking about aquatics — zebra and quagga mussels.

There have been significant strides forward to prevent the establishment of zebra and quagga mussels in B.C. The province, power corporations and trust funds have stepped up to the plate with financing to support roadside inspection stations, monitoring, increased education and outreach. At a local level, OASISS has worked closely with the Okanagan Basin Water Board and local governments to run a valley-wide mussel prevention program.

To be clear, though, we do not receive any support from the province. Despite the regional program being bare-bones, we run an extremely effective program. This past summer, our staff connected with over 3,500 people. These are one-on-one conversations. They spoke to recreational boaters and other water users about “Clean, drain, dry” and Don’t Move a Mussel.

We are working to change behaviour. We know the collective messaging is working because our data shows we’ve moved from slightly less than 50 percent of boaters being aware of “Clean, drain, dry” in 2015 to, this year, over 75 percent of those spoken to who say that they are aware and understand what “Clean, drain, dry” means. Barb tells me that the Christina Lake Stewardship Society has a similar level of increased awareness.

But we have identified gaps. Our data, as you can see on the pie chart here, revealed that 35 percent of boaters from out of province have not encountered mussel inspection stations. And in the second pie chart, of those that did, 14 percent of those encounters were outside of British Columbia.

If invasive mussels were to arrive in B.C., they could cost our province upwards of $42 million annually in maintenance costs. There is currently no known cure. Everything would change if mussels arrive. I can show you with this intake pipe here. This is just one example of how the mussels would clog a pipe. This could be a pipe similar to an intake pipe of a municipal water system.

What do we need? We need to ensure that the funding for inspection stations remains in place each and every year, but we need to be more particular with the funding. Regional groups such as OASISS can be mobile and respond quickly at peak times of the year. We could be the boots on the ground and connect directly with the boating public at the launches. An amount as modest as $30,000 annually would give us the opportunity to continue with and expand this valley-wide prevention program.

B. Stewart: I’m just going to touch on some of the terrestrial invasive plants — to move away from the aquatics.

We all know that invasive plants do impact landowners, natural habitats, agriculture and range areas. Education has been a focus for many years. We’ve been involved in this business for a lot of years. Many, many landowners are aware of invasive plants, and they’re actively managing them on their property. Progress has been made, also, on regionwide priority species. We’ve stopped many species from spreading within our regions with the funds that are available.

With the limited resources, the focus over the past few years has been on active prevention. We physically cleaned up the active gravel pits so we’re not spreading invasive plants during winter sanding or shouldering activities on our highways.

Where treatment has been done on highways and secondary roads, it’s helping. The Anarchist Mountain landowners association believe that their invasive plant problems have declined 25 percent as a result of the work being done on the roadsides adjacent.

Controlling all the invasives on roadsides is a significant investment over many years. As landowners, you know that it takes many years of diligent effort to actually control invasives.

The province has a statutory responsibility as the occupier of Crown land and provincial highways to control designated noxious weeds, the same as any landowner.

The province actually has control over 85 percent of the land base in the Boundary and the Okanagan. All of this land is being harvested. It’s being mined. It’s being used for recreation. It’s being promoted for tourism. All these activities are ground-disturbing activities and have the potential to increase our invasive plant problems and bring in new species.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Sorry to interrupt. We have about two minutes left. Thanks.

B. Stewart: The area infested is increasing each year, and we’ve experienced declining resources for Crown land management in our regions. We’re getting less money, and we have more weeds.

We’re receiving approximately half of what is required to control our invasives. This is to protect our at-risk habitat, ungulate winter range, endangered species, grazing land. We need more resources, so I’m going to pass it back to Lisa.

L. Scott: All right. Unfortunately, we don’t want to go over time. I just wanted to make brief mention of the European fire ants, which all the models did not predict would ever occur in the Okanagan. They’re a coastal species. Those nasty ants that swarm in the thousands are, in fact, in the Okanagan in the small community of Naramata.

We’re doing what we can. But at this time, we receive no support from the province. We don’t have any clear direction or action, no financial support to provide outreach and education to local citizens, and there still is no legislation to prevent their continued movement in infested soils.

To wrap up, invasive species do not recognize boundaries, so it’s imperative that partnerships are augmented and strengthened. We can reassure you we are working collectively, and partnerships are in place. We have many stories of success, but we could do so much more with additional funding. We are your allies when it comes to invasive species, and we are a significant part of the solution.

At a previous meeting of this session, Jackie Tegart asked the question: “Is it a question of not enough dollars, or is it a question of where the dollars go?”

Our answer is: “It’s both.” Public education is necessary for people to buy into the issue, to be engaged, to change their behaviour. Regional groups are integrally linked with their communities. They are connected with local associations, schools, municipalities, and so on.

If we want to protect B.C.’s natural resources, we need to invest in three key areas: supporting prevention programs, increased treatment, and education and coordination programs. We need stable, long-term funding, which includes the establishment of a trust fund.

To truly protect the values of the land base, we need to start by doubling the existing investment on Crown land. Progress is being made, so don’t lose the investment.

G. Heyman: I just have a couple of questions in terms of your submission on “as little as $30,000 of funding could help local groups up inspection activities,” etc.

I’m wondering what conversations you’ve had with Ministry of Environment officials and if you have any support from local MLAs for your proposal. What sort of additional training or reporting do you think you would have to put in place to make this effective and consistent with provincial regulation?

L. Scott: Just to be clear, this is strictly aquatics. It would be strictly at a regional level. We have had this conversation with our local MLA, Dan Ashton. But to be clear, it’s not for inspection stations. It would augment or complement the existing inspection stations.

Our data shows that there are gaps. Because the inspection stations are only open for up to ten hours a day and they’re not open for 12 months of the year, this would be complementary to that at peak times — summer months. This would be working one-on-one, communicating with boaters at the boat launches or at events that are directly relating to the boating public.

G. Heyman: Just to clarify, I didn’t think you meant inspection stations, but I did hear the word “inspection.” Now I’m just trying to clarify. Are you talking about inspecting, or educating and talking to people, or both?

L. Scott: We’re talking about educating. We do ask them if they have been to an inspection station so that if they haven’t, we could steer them in that direction. And to let you know, we regularly dialogue with staff at the Ministry of Environment about the work that we do. We provide them with all the data that we collect, although as I say, at this time, none of the funding that we receive for our programs has come from the provincial government.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your efforts to protect our waterways from that threat.

Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. We’ve heard a lot from the invasive species groups as we’ve travelled the province. I’m sure we’re going to continue to hear from you. It’s a very important message, and I appreciate you taking the time to communicate it with us. Enjoy your day.

Now, do we have our friends from the Vernon Women’s Transition House Society on video conference?

S. Hamilton (Chair): We’re going to back up on our agenda to our first presenter, who still had five minutes remaining. We have to apologize for our little technical difficulty here.

You still had five minutes remaining to your presentation, and then we go to committee for another five minutes’ worth of questions.

Bev Vandersteen, Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce. Good afternoon. Sorry about all the con-
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fusion there. We want to turn it back over to you to let you finish your presentation.

B. Vandersteen: I appreciate that. Actually, I have to apologize, because I think the original issue was on my end. We actually lost power here in Fort Nelson.

B. Vandersteen: One of the dangers of living in the north. Hopefully, fingers crossed now, we can get through ten minutes.

I’m just going to pick up where I left off with the carbon tax and looking at an offset similar to what happens in the agricultural industry for remote communities that don’t have access to other options such as public transport. I don’t think it’s going to matter whether we look at the northwest coast, the northeast corner where we are or up the middle on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway.

Particularly, our tourism operators do not have access to on-the-grid services [audio interrupted] and diesel to be able to power their facilities. I think some of the offsets have to happen there.

Level the playing field for PST. I believe you’re going to hear from them later on in the week — the Northeast B.C. Resource Coalition. We’ve been working quite closely with the Ministry of Finance on levelling the playing field for PST for businesses in British Columbia.

For instance, just a quick example of some of the things that happen is that an Alberta business coming to work in B.C. is required to self-assess the PST. But if they purchase new equipment or a truck, for instance, they pay one-third of the PST over three years, where a B.C. business is required to pay 100 percent of the PST immediately. You can see this is a little bit of an unfair advantage to an Alberta company.

We’re looking for the province to put funds towards making the necessary changes to bring us closer to a similar model of Saskatchewan taxation with provincial taxes.

Industry versus community. One of the things…. Fort Nelson is struggling economically right now. [Audio interrupted] industry collapsed here. We had the oil and gas industry to fall back on. That’s no longer the case, although tourism is big for us and hopefully has the potential to continue to grow.

One of the things that we’ve realized is that with the changes to the Forestry act, which I believe happened back in 2003, and the removal of appurtenancy, industries have no need to be connected to communities.

We’re seeing in inland British Columbia, and on the coast as well, that this has happened. We have a lot of big supermills that have formed. Resources are being extracted from communities without those companies being tied to those communities. We think that regardless of what type of industry it is, if they’re pulling resources from a region, they really should be connected to that region economically and to the people that work there.

Moving on to LNG, we need decisions made. I don’t know if this is so much a budget priority. But we need to put in place — and if that takes some money, it needs to be there — the ability to get decisions made, whether they’re nay or yea, I guess, because right now we’re having companies hanging in limbo, and they’re going to take their business elsewhere.

This can’t be, obviously, at the expense of the environment or at the expense of cultural concerns. We need to have those legislations in place. I believe that Canada and British Columbia have some of the best regulations in the world. But we need to get decisions made so that companies can move on and we can actually progress. We can’t hold them up forever. They’re just going to go somewhere else.

I will turn it back to you for questions. I think everything else is in my notes.

Again, we apologize for the disruption there. Nevertheless, we are back on track. I will go to the committee for questions.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, we hear a lot from the chambers of commerce. There are some fairly common themes. So don’t take it as indifference at all.

How significant do you think the PST problem is? Probably less so in the Fort Nelson area and more so closer to the border cities — Dawson Creek, Fort St. John.

B. Vandersteen: I think we’re seeing a little bit more research come out. It’s fairly significant.

I think a lot of Alberta companies do assess correctly, and they follow their legislation. But when you look at legislation like a B.C. company paying 100 percent and an Alberta company paying a third…. And that’s on all equipment. So even if they’re self-assessing correctly, they have a significant advantage in Alberta.

It is an issue in Fort Nelson. Right now, of course, the gas industry is quite depressed up here. But when that’s up and running, we see probably two or three Alberta trucks for every B.C. truck up there. Some of that is because they have an advantage bidding on jobs. Now, we’re working with companies, of course, to work on local content programs and that type of thing. But it is absolutely an issue.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Can you explain a little bit — and excuse my ignorance — the Saskatchewan model
[ Page 2485 ]
that you refer to with respect to the changes necessary to the tax code?

B. Vandersteen: I’m not the expert on this one, but my understanding is the Saskatchewan model has companies actually register. They have to pay up front. They can also hold…. If it’s a welding service hired by a major corporation — say, like a Chevron or something like that — they actually hold the company hiring the service accountable for the PST going into the province. So if that smaller player, that person that’s been contracted to them, does not pay, the industry provider is responsible for it. They actually, similar to WCB, have premiums and expect that up front.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I see. Well, you have far more expertise than I do. That’s for certain. Nevertheless, I appreciate you clarifying that for me.

I just wanted to make more of a comment than a question in regards to the decisions on LNG. I represent Kitimat, which, as you know, is the other end of the pipe for the gas that will come from your area.

The challenge, as I see it now, isn’t so much whether it’s the federal government or the provincial government. The challenge now, certainly on the LNG front, I think, is more the market and what’s happened in the last, well, 18 months. There’s been a dramatic price change, as you know, around the world. Both Shell and Chevron have essentially put their projects on hold.

Just to give you some idea, Chevron probably spent $1 billion, believe it or not, in the Kitimat area, essentially moving a mountain to create the site location for their plant. They’ve certainly put a lot of money into this, and they’ve got a lot of skin in the game.

I would suggest to you now it’s not so much about what either the federal government or the provincial government does. Now we have to wait to see what happens with prices before any of these projects move forward. Those would be my thoughts at this time.

B. Vandersteen: I don’t disagree. I guess my concern is [audio interrupted]…. If we don’t have the processes in place to get the approvals quickly when things can move forward, then we’re still sitting.

Bev, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Appreciate you taking the time to present. Take care.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We now have with us Brooke McLardy, from the Vernon Women’s Transition House Society, via video conference all the way from Vernon.

Ms. McLardy, welcome. Good afternoon. Ten minutes to present. I’ll interrupt you in a little bit with a couple of minutes left just to remind you to conclude your thoughts. Then we’ll go to the committee for about five minutes’ worth of questions after that. Whenever you’re ready.

B. McLardy: Thank you very much, Chair and committee, for allowing me to speak today. I am representing a partnership of six agencies. These are the RCMP North Okanagan–Vernon detachment, the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s Vernon offices, the RCMP victim assistance program and three non-profit agencies — the North Okanagan Youth and Family Services Society, the North Okanagan Family Resource Centre Society and the Vernon Women’s Transition House Society, which is the administrative agency for this project.

I’m here to ask for your assistance on how to proceed with a new service that our partnership has developed, as we are coming to the end of the federal funding that has been made available to us. The service we’ve developed is the Oak child and youth advocacy centre, which is in its second year of pilot funding from Justice Canada.

Child and youth advocacy centres are a relatively new model in B.C. and gaining in popularity due to the high benefit to families and community and the efficiencies that the involved systems see. They are well established in the U.S. and in provinces such as Ontario and Alberta. Child and youth advocacy centres such as Oak Centre respond to cases of child and youth sexual abuse and physical abuse.

The model we have adopted has police and social workers conducting team interviews of children right in the centre. We employ a child and youth advocate, which is a new position in our community, and she helps children, youth and their families navigate through the criminal justice and child protection systems.

The brief history of this project is that the partners and stakeholders came together in 2011 and applied for a provincial civil forfeiture office grant to create a local response model to child abuse and sexual assault. The province’s investment in this project led to federal development funds in 2013 and 2014 from the Justice Canada victims fund and then piloting funds for April 2015 until March 2017.
[ Page 2486 ]

The feasibility study we completed showed fragmentation of the systems in place to respond to child abuse. Children and youth reporting sexual assaults or physical abuse were not interviewed in a way that promoted chances for gaining a disclosure which would lead to a productive criminal investigation. An interview by police was done separately from child protection services, forcing a child to retell their story, usually in an uncomfortable environment such as a police detachment.

This led to the lack of disclosures or inconsistent accounts, which did not give investigators what they needed to pursue criminal charges or for social workers to adequately assist with the protection of the child. Cases rarely made it to court. Families were left bereft of support to keep their children safe.

Our model was developed with a conscious effort to mitigate the deficiencies in that previous system. We have created a new response system for children and youth of abuse and sexual assault that acknowledges what the research tells us and is set up in such a way that these victims are given the best opportunity to tell their stories in a way that will lead to positive criminal justice and child protective outcomes.

The doors opened in late 2015, and the difference in how this response service works is a game changer for the systems working with these victims. We are providing, with the support of a civil forfeiture office grant, enhanced forensic interviewing skills training to both police and social workers in our region in order to provide interviewers with the skills to get the best possible disclosure from child victims. Police and social workers understand each other’s roles better and are able to collaborate on investigations, which increases the efficiencies in those systems.

Our model includes a case management component led by a child and youth advocate who promotes collaborative practice and legal sharing of information between partners to ensure that investigations are going smoothly, roadblocks are dealt with, agencies live up to their commitments and families receive the support they need to move from crisis to long-term positive outcomes.

This is not a small thing. It takes one dedicated person and agency to hold the information about the case and to ensure that all partners have the information they need to proceed. There is no position in the partners’ agencies that could accomplish this within their current resources.

The only way a service like this works is by engaging private and public partners. No one agency can effectively respond to child abuse or child sexual assault. It takes a dedicated multidisciplinary team to meet all the needs of an investigation and to effectively and proactively respond to the victim’s needs.

Our local RCMP and the Ministry of Children and Family Development are fully on board and using the centre on a daily basis. The leadership in those agencies has allowed us to provide a superior service to children and families and to intervene in a way that ensures safety for children and positive criminal justice and child protection responses, while maximizing the internal resources of each agency.

What we know about child and youth advocacy centres from our own work and from other centres is that better disclosures lead to better evidence, better investigations and improved court outcomes for kids. At court, we see more charges, more guilty pleas and more offenders being held accountable for their crimes. Over time, we would expect to see less repeat offenders and thus less victims and less investigations.

Collaborative service means time savings for police and child protection workers. Oak Centre acts as a hub of information on each case, and communication flows smoothly between partners and service providers to the family. The family works directly with the centre, freeing up police and social worker time, which is a direct saving for those entities.

There are much higher positive, long-term outcomes for kids who have been abused and who are responded to by an advocacy centre model. Instead of outcomes such as addiction, mental ill-health, physical health issues and social issues that put a strain on community and provincial resources, we see child victims who grow into healthy adults who are positive, contributing members of community and society.

Since opening the doors in late 2015, we have seen 155 children and youth from the ages of two to 18, the majority being between five and 13 years old; 60 percent have been female, and 40 percent are male. The majority, around 80 percent, have come with allegations of sexual abuse about a perpetrator known to them. We expect, as the service develops, to see 250 or more children and youth per year from the North Okanagan alone.

We are seeing positive outcomes for children and youth who are being connected to essential services in a faster and more proactive way. The families are directed to and accessing service that enhances their overall functioning. Although we do not have data for this yet, we expect to see that child protection files are dealt with faster and closed quicker than without this collaborative response service.

The investment by the federal government has allowed us to develop the model and open the doors to serve children and youth on a pilot basis. We are seeing remarkable collaborative service to families — improved disclosures, improved investigations — and starting to see good court outcomes, including guilty pleas. Through responsible spending, we have managed to take the second year of pilot project investment from the Department of Justice and extend it into a third fiscal year. This funding will run out by July 2017.

It is our understanding that the federal government is transferring funding responsibility for child and
[ Page 2487 ]
youth advocacy centres to the provinces after the pilot phases are over. Discussion with provincial funders has yielded that there is no funding set aside for this service at this time.

Without an investment by the provincial government, we have no means to sustain this program and are at high risk of losing this service and closing our doors. As a small community, new fundraising initiatives are extremely limited, and we are without the capacity to fundraise enough to continue this service.

In order to continue to be successful and focus the work on the children and youth, we require base funding to ensure that the service remains intact. This funding is to cover the child and youth advocate position, a support person’s wages and other operational and facility costs. Small fundraising amounts and grants would cover additional expenses. We are asking the committee for some direction and thought as to how the province can assist us to keep the doors open and sustain this collaborative service over the long term.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s appreciated. I do have questions from the committee.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. You do important work. I have three quick questions.

On the material that you have circulated — I have it in front of me — you say here that one out of three girls is subject to this unwanted act, and one out of six boys.

Then, over here on the other side, you say that 60 percent of folks you deal with are female and 40 percent are male. Why so many more males than females as a percentage of those who are experiencing these acts? I didn’t understand that.

B. McLardy: Those stats are a Canada-wide survey, versus what we’re seeing in the centre. I think it likely has to do with whether the child has told or not. Once they have told someone, they can come into the centre and do a full disclosure, but if they’re not telling, then we won’t see them.

S. Gibson: Okay. My second quick question is: how do these folks come to your attention? Is it strictly through the police system, or is there some other means? In other words, how do you discern them? How do they come to the attention of your agency?

B. McLardy: Good question. They come in through any of the partner agencies or by self-referral. We’ve had a number of people self-refer. They are not sure that they are going to make a disclosure, so they come in, they talk to our advocate and, after that, proceed with disclosure. We’ve had some really good success with self-referrals.

S. Gibson: This is horrendous. This is destroying youth. I think we all know that. It’s a tragedy not just in your community but probably internationally.

My last question is: how many of these perpetrators, these people that are found guilty or come to the attention of police, are charged and go to court? Out of the 180 that come to your attention, how many of those go through the legal process and are actually charged for these crimes?

B. McLardy: Our experience with the children that have made a disclosure about a criminal act…. We are seeing, I’d say, 90 percent, off the top of my head, that are proceeding with charges. We’re getting very good disclosures in-house.

S. Gibson: Good. So you’re satisfied that they are being treated appropriately by the legal system?

E. Foster: How are you doing? Listen, I want to comment on the success of the program that’s been developed so people will blow a horn for the folks in Vernon. This whole program was developed in collaboration, a collaborative effort, with the transition house and the RCMP and several other family agencies in Vernon. It has been spread all over western Canada. Congratulations on that.

B. McLardy: Well, the story had changed. When we received our funding, it was right before the federal election. You might remember that Peter MacKay came out to give us our award, and at that time he mentioned that there would be ongoing funding. So at that point, we were pretty confident that this was going to be an ongoing thing.

Since the federal election, that message has changed. The message has been that: “No, everything is shifting back to the provinces.” I know that the victims fund folks are working with the province, particularly with PSSG, but that’s as far as I know. It hasn’t changed at all.
[ Page 2488 ]

E. Foster: Okay, if you could speak to the folks who are doing the investigation with the provinces. Could you send us who they’ve been talking to, which ministries they’re dealing with so we’d have a better idea when we do our deliberations?

B. McLardy: Yeah, absolutely. We have a meeting tomorrow in Vancouver, so I can send you that information after that.

J. Tegart: Good afternoon. It sounds like a great program. So often we hear about the barriers and the lack of collaboration. You guys are doing great work. What I look at is…. In the partnerships, there must be a partnership with the school district also, and the schools, I would assume, if we’re dealing with youth.

Also, I’m very interested in knowing how the group works around privacy issues. I know that quite often services are siloed, and there are privacy issues in regards to sharing information. That is so often a barrier when we’re talking about children. If you have some wisdom to share….

B. McLardy: Sure. The first part, about the school district. They are absolutely a stakeholder in this process. We’ve had lots of meetings, lots of information sessions with them. They’re very appreciative of the service because, obviously, it takes a load off the work that they’re doing. So that’s gone well.

In terms of the privacy issues, we in Vernon have a lot of interagency committees and have done a lot of research on privacy legislation. We also have very good contacts provincially about that.

We have covered off that piece within the partnership by having a consent form for families. There are certain levels of information-sharing that can already happen between police and child protection, for example. As soon as a client gives us permission, then all the other agencies are a part of that as well.

R. Austin: I just want to follow up on Eric and Jackie and commend you. This sounds like an absolutely brilliant program. I was a foster parent for ten years, and I have a bachelor of social work. All I can say is that I really hope we’re able, through whatever means, to ensure that you’re able to not just continue with this program, but I hope it can spread.

Quite frankly, where I live in the northwest we have the same problems that you’ve outlined here. If we could have this program of yours replicated around the province, I think, at the end of the day, not only would we see much better satisfaction for the victims, but our court system would save a whole bunch of money and we’d put these people away.

I really hope the program succeeds, and when we have deliberations, I look forward to seeing whatever way we can to assist you. Thanks very much.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Brooke, thank you very much for taking the time to present. Always an important subject, and we really appreciate hearing from you. Have a good day.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Next we have Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, also via teleconference, from Castlegar — Alana Murdoch and Penny Tees.

Good afternoon. Welcome. The committee’s all ready to hear from you, so I’ll let you know you have ten minutes to present. I’ll rudely interrupt you with about two minutes left just to let you know it’s time to conclude your thoughts, and then we can go to the committee for questions after that. So if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

P. Tees: Great. Well, good afternoon and thank you, on behalf of our fellow Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy outreach coordinators in the West Kootenay–Boundary, for speaking with us today. I’m Penny Tees, literacy outreach coordinator for the Slocan Valley, and with me is Alana Murdoch, literacy outreach coordinator for Castlegar.

CBAL is the Columbia Basin and Boundary region’s not-for-profit literacy organization. CBAL employs 16 literacy outreach coordinators, nine of which are based here in the West Kootenay–Boundary.

We’d like, first of all, to thank you, the committee, for your recommendation last year for annual funding of $2.5 million. And we thank the province of British Columbia, particularly the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Advanced Education, for the funding that has been provided to the literacy field, including Decoda Literacy Solutions, to carry out literacy programming in our community.

This funding reflects an understanding of the importance of literacy and the key role it plays in helping people to carve a path of success in the home, school, work and in life.

We present today with considerable optimism for the future of all British Columbians — our communities and the province. In the course of our work, we witness the impact the literacy field is making to individual lives. Our programs help British Columbians to strengthen their literacy skills, the skills needed to help them communicate
[ Page 2489 ]
effectively, acquire essential workplace or financial skills, adapt to changing technology or to give their children a strong literacy foundation early in life and support their literacy skill development throughout their schooling.

Is there still work to be done? Well, absolutely. According to the programme for the international assessment of adult competencies, more than 500,000 adults aged 16 to 64 have significant challenges with literacy, 16 percent of the population. This tells us that our work must continue. We need more time, more resources and ongoing support to ensure that positive change happens. Literacy is not a finite concept. It is lifelong, and it is shaped by life experiences and evolves within a community.

We know that literacy skills are linked to strong and resilient communities. They’re positively linked to health, well-being and people’s ability to fully participate in society.

One program that’s offered in three of our communities is the together to learn program. In Castlegar, this program is a partnership between Selkirk College, CBAL and Kootenay Family Place. Parents are given an opportunity to take upgrading courses with free on-site childminding provided. Adults are supported in their learning by an instructor from the college, and healthy snacks are offered for the children and adults. We focus on learner well-being and welcome guest speakers to strengthen the community connection with programs and services.

When asked about favourite memories from the program, one learner reflected: “There are too many to list. This program has been the most empowering, amazing experience that I’ve ever had. It has helped me succeed.”

The literacy program provided the venue for people to learn, to challenge themselves and to make an important connection with others. Being an adult who struggles with numeracy or the ability to read or write is not an easy barrier to overcome. A person first acknowledges, then seeks help, and programs must be there to support them.

Literacy programs provide an ideal backdrop for change to happen. In 2015-2016, some 7,360 people attended adult and family literacy programs in the Kootenay-Boundary alone. Hundreds more volunteered to support them. Local organizations, businesses, schools, credit unions and more partnered to support our programs and events. So we know our connections within our community are solid, and that gives us great optimism as we continue our work.

We’re encouraged for the future, as we see commitment and interest in literacy gaining traction. Government, Decoda Literacy Solutions, business and other key stakeholders are talking about literacy. This September we’ve seen communities embrace the literacy is life campaign, and municipalities have declared September as literacy month. In October, our Reach a Reader campaign will keep the topic front and centre in our [audio interrupted].

Finally, while we feel optimistic, there’s always a fear that core funding for literacy and the literacy outreach coordinators will disappear. We want to be clear about the critical importance of the provincial funding we receive. A strong commitment from government significantly impacts our ability to leverage other federal, provincial, regional and local funding that we rely on to deliver the broad array of programs in our community.

Within CBAL, over half of our annual budget comes from these additional sources that contribute generously, knowing that the province has made a significant commitment. So along with our optimism comes a hope and a request that your report will once again recognize the importance of strong literacy skills and recommend ongoing funding for literacy in B.C.

J. Tegart: Good afternoon, Penny. I just want to say thank you for the work that you do. We know, in many of our small communities and our big communities, how important literacy is, and education. It’s so good that we can provide these services for people in community who are often hesitant to go into our schools. So thank you very much for the work. You know that Carole and I both are committed to literacy, and I hope the committee will give strong recommendations around continued support.

G. Heyman: Thank you for both your presentation and your work. As you know, the committee has been very supportive of funding in each of the past two years — and likely earlier than that, before I was on the committee. We will have our discussions this year, but I’m wondering if you can comment on what might change for your ability to deliver programs and a service if you had greater assurance of funding stability over a longer term.

P. Tees: I think if we saw a greater pocket of money, we would run more programs. We would have more stability within the whole literacy field. We’d have a stronger ability for outreach, to reach the people that are the hardest to get.

P. Tees: Yeah, professional development to ensure that we have best practice in every school program. Some of our programs are central in [audio interrupted] communities, and others are in more remote areas. So just
[ Page 2490 ]
having a greater number of programs, more frequently would give greater access [audio interrupted].

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much Alana and Penny for taking the time to present to the committee. It’s much appreciated and a very important topic. Thank you again for presenting to us. Have a good day.

Next we have Ben Cardinal via video conference from Fort St. John. Good afternoon.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Make yourself comfortable. I’ll let you know you have ten minutes to present to the committee. Once that’s over, we go to the committee for questions that they might have. So if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

B. Cardinal: Thank you. I’m going to read out my report. I hope you have a copy in front of you.

B. Cardinal: I retired as a native court worker for the Fort St. John–Fort Nelson region on August 31, 2015, after 38 years of service with the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of B.C. I also served on the board of directors for a brief period during a layoff. I decided to take a break for a year before getting involved as a volunteer on justice issues in my region.

One of my primary areas of interest, at the moment, is getting a second courtroom for Fort St. John. Our two local judges share one designated provincial courtroom and obviously can’t sit at the same time. When our second judge was appointed for Fort St. John, we were to get a second courtroom and additional staff to go along with it. We are still waiting, ten years later. The local judicial case manager is now setting trial dates in provincial court for October 2017, and the wait could get much longer as the months go on.

Over the years, I covered the circuit court in the communities of Atlin, Good Hope Lake, Lower Post and Fort Nelson. They also faced the same delays. There was a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling in July 2016 called Regina v. Jordan that dealt with the issue of delays. The Supreme Court of Canada suggested that provincial court trials should conclude in 18 months, and Supreme Court trials should conclude in 30 months.

There is a genuine concern about Charter of Rights arguments on unreasonable delay, and should that succeed, there will be a huge public backlash, especially when there are high-profile cases involved, such as murders, drug offences, etc. The trust in the justice system would be compromised and undermined. It would also undermine the work that our police forces undertake to solve various types of crime.

Sometimes the undercover work can take years. The province needs to ensure that any vacancies of judges must be immediately filled. Any new positions created or filled must have their own stand-alone funding — not to be taken from the existing funding.

I have been through the boom-and-bust economy of Fort St. John in the late ’80s and ’90s. We were extremely busy back then, and I would not like to see our registry go through that again.

Now I would like to address specifics that affect our region and, I’m sure, other regions as well.

Legal aid. On the topic of legal aid, the tariff fee should already cover the costs of the file, from opening to closing of the file and for every court appearance, plus travel costs if they need to do prep work ahead of court, especially on circuit court. There are lawyers that will not do legal aid, and if the tariff was increased to cover their total costs of a file, I’m sure we would get more lawyers doing legal aid. It should help with any backlog.

There was a report done by Len Doust [audio interrupted] in the past several years, referring to legal aid [audio interrupted] increase funding for them.

Under Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of B.C. — my former employer — and the B.C. Aboriginal Justice Council. There should be funding available to the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association so that they can hire Gladue report writers across the province. They also need to fund family court workers that can do family court and work on issues such as domestic violence. The B.C. Aboriginal Justice Council should get funds to do their work as well.

On restorative justice. We have a restorative justice program in Fort St. John that is widely supported by the aboriginal community. The program dealt with 84 files over the last fiscal year, with a cost savings to the province of $402,000. Our cost averages 1/6 of the cost of going through the court process. Restorative justice programs should be in place in every jurisdiction in the province. Such a program humanizes the justice system, and it allows the accused to be equal partners. Training has been made available to the aboriginal and non-aboriginal in Fort Nelson and North and South Peace regions. The office is located in Fort St. John.

One of the ways of funding such programs is looking at keeping fines and penalties collected, locally and regionally — to allow those funds to remain at the local and regional level. That process already exists, where [audio interrupted] can elaborate with. That process already exists with fines and penalties, issued in wildlife and conservation offences, or distributed to local wildlife management programs and conservation and environmental programs as well. So that already exists, and they just need to extend that model to refer to including restorative justice.

On family law. The Family Justice Centre that closed due to the funding cuts of the ’90s should be reopened in Fort St. John. They moved the office to Prince George, and the people from the region were told they’d have to drive to Prince George to access the service or phone in. The office would serve Fort Nelson, Fort St. John and Dawson Creek once again.

We need to look at full-time mediators for the region that can work in the Family Justice Centre, as there is a definite need for them. Over the years, I’ve seen matters that come through the justice system that should have been dealt with by mediation. I have seen and talked to people that have gone through the process and were very happy with the outcome — a win-win for everybody involved.

On to the partnerships. We need to look at developing partnerships with the private sector and industry to fund justice and social programs. The city of Fort St. John was able to secure funding for an additional RCMP member for Fort St. John from B.C. Hydro. Perhaps the province may want to look at the model.

As the resource industry — for example, LNG and Site C — gains momentum in B.C, those communities should start preparing for additional justice and social services now. You could learn from our region.

On children and youth. Over the 38 years in the justice system, I have come to the conclusion that in order to prevent criminal activity now and in the future, we must concentrate on developing services and programs geared towards the children and youth. Instead of incarceration or other holding facilities, we need to look at developing outdoor programs such as ranches, etc.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Cardinal. Just a little under a couple of minutes left. Please continue.

B. Cardinal: When I was appointed to the provincial youth justice committee of the Barrett government, we got to visit all of the youth-funded programs in the province over two years. The best program I saw was the one at Logan Lake, now closed. It was a ranch-type setup where the youth were assigned to care for domestic animals during the time they were there. At the end of their program, some of the youth went on to further training and came back to work for the program. During the program, no one left or walked away.

We also need to look at funding programs for children and youth based on the concept of the medicine wheel: the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs of the children and youth. As aboriginal people are visual learners, we must develop programs that are practical.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Cardinal. I appreciate you taking the time.

As we’ve gone around the province, we’ve heard a lot of people talk about legal aid. So that is something…. You’re continuing a theme here, where we know that legal aid is not funded to the levels that we all know it needs to be. We’ve heard from lawyers. We’ve heard from other advocates like yourself around the province.

I like your focus, Ben, on looking at it from an aboriginal perspective, around restorative justice. I did training on restorative justice before being elected as an MLA. I think it’s very important that you’ve brought this to the table.

I have one question for you, and that is around partnerships. As you know, one of the most important things in our justice system is to have it be completely independent — independent of politics and politicians, independent of influence from any special group.

I just have a question. If we were to look at building partnerships with our justice system and the private sector or companies or anybody, would that not take away the independence of the justice system if they could now be beholden to some group or some company that was actually investing money in our justice system? What do you have to say about that?

B. Cardinal: My response to that is that over the 38 years, I haven’t seen that problem at all. There are social agencies that work together on various issues and topics, and they’ve been able to maintain their independence.

They’re obviously aware of the confidentiality and privacy and freedom-of-information issues. No, I haven’t seen that at all.

Also, it would tie in with the report that was released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In that report, they stressed that partnerships have to be developed with non-profits, government, industry or other agencies. I concur with the recommendations that they made in there. We must address the issue of social justice.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further questions? Seeing none, thank you very much, Mr. Cardinal, for taking the time to present to the committee. That’s a unique presentation. We haven’t heard one quite like this before, but we are always interested in all kinds of new thoughts. Thank you again for coming forward.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We have a copy of everything you’ve read out here, and it will form the public record.
[ Page 2492 ]

Okay. Next we have the Support Summerland Schools via video conference from Penticton and Meghann Pleasance.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome to our friends from Support Summerland Schools. I only have one name down here, and that’s Meghann Pleasance.

M. Pleasance: Absolutely. Thanks very much for having us. I’m Meghann Pleasance. This is Meghan Steele. We’re the team of Meghans. And this is Jane Campardo.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Ladies, thank you for being here. You’ve got ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll rudely interrupt you with maybe two minutes to go. Then we can go to the committee for questions for the remaining five. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

I wanted to start with a bit of information on why we’re here. Last year, we were faced with the very real possibility of losing our local elementary school and the reconfiguration of all Summerland schools, which would impact all of Summerland’s 1,300 students.

Trout Creek Elementary School is truly the heart of our community. Losing it would have meant losing the only public building in our community. It would have also changed the entire schooling model in Summerland to a single over-capacity primary school made up of nearly 400 four- to eight-year-old children in grades K to 3. And we would have lost our middle school model.

As a result, the community greatly opposed this, and many great ideas were presented to the school board as alternatives to assist in either increasing enrolment or generating funding for the school district. These ideas are the ones we would like to share with you today.

(1) We looked at how we could increase enrolment and attract students into the public school system. We talked about creating programs of choice within the public school system to attract out-of-catchment students to the area and, also, to attract families who are currently choosing home schooling or private schooling, for example, incorporating programs of choice — such as Montessori, early French immersion, International Baccalaureate, sports academies and art programs — into the public school system.

We actually submitted a thorough proposal for a publicly funded Montessori program of choice to the school district. With this proposal, it would have brought 40 students into the school system. We also surveyed the community, and it would have potentially brought another 40 students who are currently home-schooling or from out of catchment. So there is a strong interest for that in our district.

(2) The issue was raised: what about eliminating school board offices and incorporating offices into undercapacity schools? For example, in Penticton, they have a separate school board office and a building for large meetings. Very easily, the school board office could have been moved into an undercapacity school and used the school auditorium for large meetings. This would have closed two buildings, creating a significant cost savings without closing schools and impacting students.

Additionally, in Kelowna, they are planning on spending $13 million to build a new school board office building. That money would go a long way in the classrooms, supporting children with special needs, reducing class sizes and/or keeping schools open.

(3) We looked at reducing administration costs. We found it frustrating that so much funding goes into administration instead of to classrooms. By reducing administrative costs, possibly more funding would make it to the classrooms. As noted in the B.C. Ministry of Education and School Districts Service Delivery Transformation: Final Report dated August 24, 2012, school districts could improve efficiency in service delivery by sharing services with other ministries and/or municipalities.

For example, instead of school districts having their own IT, maintenance, payroll and transportation departments, why not share these same services that are currently in place in municipalities or centralize with the government? We are also encouraged by Summerland’s recent proposal to establish a Summerland school board that would integrate its administrative functions with the municipality’s to reduce costs.

(4) We looked at using schools as neighbourhood learning centres. We really like the concept of using schools as neighbourhood learning centres to generate income for the school system by renting out space outside of school hours for programs that benefit the community. This has been successfully done in West Kelowna. This model takes advantage of existing school facilities and resources to provide a variety of community programs. It would also allow for more optimal space for current rec programs and would also provide opportunities to expand programs that could be offered to the community.

For example, using school gyms for rec programs or fitness classes outside of school hours; using gyms for week-
[ Page 2493 ]
end drop-in, parent-participation play groups for young children; using computer labs and high school elective classrooms — such as wood shop, metal work, art rooms — for community programs outside of school hours.

(5) Partnering with ministries and/or private organizations to offer mutually beneficial programming and share costs. Would it be feasible to pool resources with other ministries and/or private organizations to offer programs in partnership with the Ministry of Education? For example, partnering with MCFD to offer early childhood care or preschool within schools, or the Down Syndrome Research Foundation to offer a one-to-one reading program and small group program.

Would it be beneficial to partner with Interior Health to integrate adult day programs into schools? The benefit of these programs would be that they would generate revenue for the school system but also benefit students.

My final point, (6), is looking at the school board structure. We experienced quite a bit of frustration when we discovered that since 2002, school boards have had full autonomy. In our case, this unfortunately resulted in a lack of accountability. Perhaps the current structure of the school board could be reassessed. Is the current school board model the best way forward? Is there an alternative model that might promote efficiency and accountability?

I’m going to give it to Meghan, and she’s going to talk a little bit more about some of these ideas.

M. Steele: I just wanted to address the additional use in schools to foster social capital and economic growth in rural B.C.

The rural enhancement education funding has been able to address the immediate needs of many communities in rural B.C. and the challenges these communities have faced — lower enrolments in schools that were built in an era of significantly higher student numbers. However, these schools remain the heart of the communities in which they are situated and are necessary for the school bonding they provide and the future growth and sustainability of the rural economies that surround them.

There are many case studies that clearly demonstrate school closures can be instrumental in the downward spiral of social and economic growth. An objective of our B.C. government is to promote growth and economic prosperity in rural regions. Certainly, there is no shortage of reasons that our beautiful province shouldn’t attract new businesses and citizens at a rapid pace.

However, a commitment to the needs of the people living outside urban areas is necessary. Schools, recreation and municipal services must keep pace and be able to secure enough funding to offer diverse programs of excellent quality with economy-of-scale factors. Given that the tax base and per-pupil funding could not provide that, it becomes necessary to explore these other options and brainstorm with some out-of-the-box solutions. Community initiatives are an excellent source for innovation.

Social decapitalization can occur rapidly in an underfunded education system. One of the ways to build social capital and prevent loss through school closures is programs of choice. As mentioned, we provided a strong proposal for a Montessori program of choice with demonstrated demand. There is demonstrated demand for programs such as Montessori, early French immersion and sports academies. In addition to common schooling, this provides diversity, encourages efficiencies and stimulates innovation.

Choice of education is associated with increased capital and performance gains across the socioeconomic spectrum, and rather than harming disadvantaged students, accountability, autonomy and choice appear to be the tides that lift all boats.

British Columbia’s new curriculum design enables a personalized, flexible and innovative approach at all levels in the education system. An intersectoral action will partner and keep pace with the private sector as important for the future.

The structure of learning is likely on the brink of rapid change. An excellent way for B.C. to create growth and sustainability in the rural sector is to invest in education and use innovative ideas for intersectoral collaboration and cooperation, allowing parents, students and the community to participate.

J. Campardo: Hi. I spoke to the executive director of the Down Syndrome Research Foundation — this was back in April — and I was brainstorming with them to see if they would have a use for the school space, and they do. In fact, they are rolling out their strategic plan, and they wanted to expand their one-on-one reading program to other communities. Right now, the Down Syndrome Research Foundation has a piloted project in Ontario, and they will do some assessment and analyze the program this fall. [Inaudible recording] have the desire to use our school, Trout Creek Elementary, to expand such a program as well as others as the program grows.

The benefits of this are that it has the potential of revenue generation to offset some of the basic operating costs, kids that have special needs are being supported, there’s access to reading expertise for students with Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities, and there’s potential for additional programs and services as demands and needs of local families grow.

They charge their families $40 per instruction hour plus $20 a week for material preparation and $50 for the end-of-block period, which is about 13 weeks. They provide one-on-one reading instruction to children of all ages in one-hour sessions once per week for a set of a number of weeks, and that’s just at the beginning, early
[ Page 2494 ]
phases, which they’re piloting in Ontario right now. But the Down Syndrome Research Foundation has the desire to do two or three days per week, five students per day, from 8:30 to 5:00, or whatever time suits the teachers and families. A session runs in blocks with four blocks per year, starting in September-December and onwards at the various three- or four-month blocks. It runs for up to 13 weeks.

Once the teacher has a good grasp of the methodology, which they would train the teachers in, then they would establish if there’s further interest and expand the program to a maximum of nine students for young adults or younger teenage children at the post-secondary level and at the high school level.

The addition of a teaching assistant would be needed as the program grows, and the program would run two days per week from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., during regular school hours. No more than one classroom would be needed to start, but there is the possibility for rapid expansion, which would mean more classrooms in the future that would be filled with students with special needs outside the catchment area.

This is a renowned, award-winning research foundation institution. This is only one example that I found, and I’m sure there are lots of other not-for-profit, educational-related organizations that would utilize space in a classroom setting.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. We ran a little bit over time. I didn’t care, because I love it when people come with ideas, lots of great ideas.

I’m going to go to the committee right away for questions, and I’m going to start with your MLA, Dan Ashton, first, please.

To the committee, these individuals were very instrumental in ensuring that the attention was driven not only to Trout Creek School but to another school, West Bench School, and doing everything possible to ensure that all ideas were considered before closure took place.

As you can see, they’ve had some very proactive ideas not only that would be applicable to the two schools that I’ve just mentioned but to other schools. These are community assets. We face a problem in rural British Columbia where we don’t have the demands on the schools that are taking place in larger urban centres.

Consequently, our school populace is declining. Unfortunately, as the girls have mentioned, these community schools are an integral part of our community, and to keep them open makes all the difference in the world for the community. But being proactive, unfortunately there was no opportunity to be considered at the school board level to ensure that some other ideas could at least be given what I would say was due consideration.

I think what we’re hearing today is that there are opportunities out there for smaller communities that are facing a lack of students. Some of the ideas — and there are lots of them around — are that maybe we should be listening and school boards should be listening to other proactive ideas to keep these schools open as a community asset.

I’m just wondering. I do have a question, and that’s: how far have you advanced these discussions and these ideas — which are great, by way; I really appreciate you putting them forward — with your local school districts and trustees and people that will listen?

M. Pleasance: Well, we put forward these ideas throughout the springtime. Several of them were very complete proposals, with financial information. We had letters of intent from the Montessori school wanting to drop their current program right into the public school system. The Down Syndrome Research Foundation had letters of intent as well.

All of these ideas have been presented to the school district. We have asked them to look at these ideas as an alternative to closing our school. None of them were pursued.

I was particularly intrigued with your talk about service integration. That’s actually a discussion that’s been going on for years and years. Every time someone brings it up, it has a tendency to wither on the vine. So I’d encourage you to keep the pressure up there. I mean, there are complexities associated with it.

I guess nothing infuriates me more, even the time I saw a lawn mower being dropped off the back of a municipal truck to cut a park and a lawn mower being dropped off the back of a school district truck to cut the school grounds. You’d think there might be some opportunities to leverage the economies of scale with respect to how they can actually exploit the opportunity that somebody’s already there with that lawn mower.

That’s only a little tiny thing, and I get that. But in the broader scope, the way you’re thinking — I’m looking forward to maybe some great things coming out of your school district.

M. Pleasance: Thank you. If you’d like any additional information on any of the ideas we brought forward, we’d be happy to provide it as well. We just didn’t want to overwhelm you with it.
[ Page 2495 ]

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’d encourage you to see your local MLA on a regular basis.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much again for coming forward. I appreciate the time that you took and your advocacy. It goes a long way to help your community.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome to Helen Overnes, from the Oliver Women’s Institute, via teleconference from Penticton.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay, we’ll try this again. Oliver Women’s Institute, via video conference from Penticton, and we have Helen Overnes.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for being here. Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll interrupt you with maybe just a couple of minutes left so that you can conclude your thoughts. That will give us time to go to the committee for any questions they might have.

H. Overnes: I’m Helen Overnes, from 720 Columbia Place, Oliver, and I’m representing Oliver ladies of the Women’s Institute to advocate for the 160,000 people who are receiving social services. We have been here in British Columbia working since 1909, when we came under the Department of Agriculture under an act of parliament for farmers institutes and women’s institutes, 1915.

I’m also a member of the Associated Country Women of the World, and they have signed on to CEDAW. I have this here, CEDAW. It’s coming from the status of women, United Nations, and we signed on to [audio interrupted] we have no poverty and zero hunger by the year 2030.

We work for the education of women and families. The food bank started in Oliver in 1985. In 1984, the federal government stopped money for affordable housing to the tune of 1,000 units — 800 for Vancouver and 200 for the rest of British Columbia. We’ve had 31 years without affordable housing being built, so we’ve lost the ability to have 31,000 housing units at 30 percent of your income.

In Oliver in 2004, we lost 100 affordable rentals. We have 29 rental units at 30 percent of income, but we’re in need of 100 more. We asked the government to transfer the tax on properties back to the community, all the communities around British Columbia, for them to put into an affordable housing account.

British Columbia receives finance from the federal government for education, medical care and social services, but we never find out how it’s allocated. We would like to know that. We have found that there have been 12 coalitions or associations trying to advocate to increase the amount social assistance gets. They’ve had nothing for nine years.

Jane Dyson, working for the Disability Alliance, has actually made a few gains and has been successful in getting an increase for disability pensioners to earn $800 more. It can be evened out over the whole year for income tax purposes.

BCWI sent in a resolution to raise the rates. The B.C. government has said that all they’re going to send is $170 million. Each person would get $25 more a month. Bus passes are essential.

The Minister of Finance has now told us that they have a surplus of $1.9 billion. It comes from the transfer tax on real estate. Market rates have not increased for nine years.

These people hoped for a new government about four years ago, which didn’t happen. We’ve got a majority government that has continued to not raise these rates. All they talk about is they create jobs.

Citizens only have one way to help them — by providing food banks. The need has increased for this for a lot of low-income workers, as well as people on disability pensions, etc. They’ve hidden behind this. We’re just keeping people alive but not necessarily on a nourishing diet.

Now let’s pause. Forget who you are, and become a person on social services. How do you manage your income? Where can you find affordable housing at 30 percent of your income? You have to have this to raise children. Otherwise, your children will be taken away from you.

Your statistics show there’s been a 12 percent increase in rents and a 23 percent increase in foods. In Oliver, rent has increased by 50 to 60 percent, and food has doubled.

After eight or nine years, you are worn out and struggling, forced to go to food banks because you have no money. You have to go to free meals or soup kitchens and go hungry to feed the family. You get depressed. You have headaches. You have poor health. Children do not learn as well because they are not well nourished. They use the health care system much more than ordinary people with money, and they often can’t afford prescriptions given out by the doctors.
[ Page 2496 ]

You’d have no haircuts. You might have to grow a beard. It’s cheaper to get clean to go to thrift shops for clothing because you can’t afford to wash them.

You get stressed, you feel hopeless, and it rubs off on the children. Your shoes may be worn out, and you have to put cardboard in to save yourself from the pavement.

They cannot advocate for themselves for fear of money being taken away — abuse of Canadian human rights to life, freedom and security. The security part of this…. They have little or no security for housing or food, and they’re on the open market. Yearly, the increase…. Rents only go up 2 percent, but they don’t have anything extra for that. Their self-esteem is taken away. In order to provide for themselves, they’re forced to depend on food banks. How do you feel?

In conclusion, the whole of the B.C. legislative body must work together, regardless of political views, for the increase of 35 to 50 percent of the welfare rates and the disability pensions. Then active legislation must be made in parliament that welfare and disability pensions are raised yearly, based on the increasing cost of living, so that nobody else has to go through this very serious injustice and to stop poverty and hunger. People will manage if they get enough.

You must provide clean water in many communities up in the north of British Columbia, even if it’s in First Nations and other communities.

Party politics should not have any part to play in righting the wrongs. The social injustice for these citizens for nine years…. All the Members of Parliament have been elected by citizens in each area, and every area has some. The need is right now. Whilst a $1.9 billion surplus…. It should be right now, definitely in the next budget.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’m sorry. Thank you very much for the presentation. I am now going to go to committee members for any questions.

G. Heyman: I’m the MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, Ms. Overnes. I just wanted to thank you for listing a number of areas where assistance is needed in the context of the large surplus that has recently been announced. I think what you’ve presented dovetails quite well with a series of presentations that we’ve received to date in different parts of the province — and will likely receive in other places, as well — that offer considerable detail in a number of areas of need. Thank you.

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present today. We appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to appear before the committee.

S. Hamilton (Chair): You’re very welcome to submit that to our committees office, and we will make sure that that list forms part of the public record, as part of these hearings, if you wish.

Now we have our first Skype participant, from the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council — Morgane Oger.

Just to let you know, you have ten minutes to present. I’ll probably interrupt you just briefly with about two minutes to go so you can conclude your thoughts, and we will then go to questions of the committee.

Dear members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services: thank you for agreeing for me to speak with you today. As mentioned, my name is Morgane Oger. I’m the chair of the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council, also known as DPAC. We represent the parents of 50,000 children enrolled in the Vancouver Board of Education school system.

DPAC acknowledges that the act of governing involves the weighing of relative merits of a number of competing programs and needs, and that advocates who come to you are focused on specific issues which are of interest to them and sometimes do not have access to the bigger picture of competing needs.

DPAC recognizes that we are such an advocacy group and that we are focused on one specific interest. We are interested in ensuring that Vancouver children enrolled in public education continue to receive the best possible public education. The economic and social benefits of public education are recognized in the preamble of the School Act. It says that public education, as the great equalizer, enables all learners to become contributing members of society.

Research shows that investing in public education and, thereby, increasing graduation rates creates economic benefits to the province, higher government revenues and reduced government spending. Conversely, lower graduation rates have long-term negative social and economic consequences such as a decreased tax base, an increased reliance on welfare and an increased level of criminal activity and incarceration.

Today I’m going to focus on two issues which caused DPAC and the parents we represent quite a bit of concern:
[ Page 2497 ]
the provincially mandated seismic remediation strategy to use the lowest-cost option for upgrading schools and the ongoing erosion of the number of non-teacher support staff in Vancouver schools. They are a result of insufficient operating cost funding.

There are other issues, but at this time, these are the pressing issues. They present a significant risk of harm to Vancouver children enrolled in public education and, actually, to children throughout the province. But as I am speaking for DPAC, I’m going to put this into the context of Vancouver.

The seismic upgrade strategy. This is about capital costs. The Vancouver Board of Education has on numerous occasions reported to parents that the Ministry of Education is requiring that seismic remediation construction plans be based on the principle of moving students to dedicated swing sites rather than the principle of keeping students as close to their school as possible. This is because moving students is the lowest-cost alternative.

This constraint ignores the myriad social costs that this will cause, from forcing elderly grandparents to walk significantly longer distances with young primary school students to the destruction of world-renown programs, such as the Gladstone Secondary robotic program, which is winning awards worldwide and is unable to be accommodated in a single site where it lands if Gladstone Secondary, which is on the list of proposed schools, closes.

DPAC believes that smart-sizing of schools in order to minimize school closures is the best-value solution to the seismic remediation problem. Wherever possible, students should be accommodated on site, and the seismic remediation should result in a school of the size that meets the needs of the neighbourhood based on both up-to-date census data and city plan projections. Such decisions must be made, however, using trustworthy data that is up to date.

We also believe that if census data does not match enrolment data, then the only possible logic is that schools in a neighbourhood are below the quality that they should be and remind legislators that it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and, therefore, of government to ensure that school boards offer an equal quality education to all students in their own neighbourhood throughout the province. Vancouver DPAC urges government to rely on up-to-date population and planning data to size schools, to ensure that all neighbourhoods have equal quality schools and to make sure that students are not overly disturbed by the need to do seismic remediation.

Now I’m going to go further into the continued degradation of support services in schools, which is another major concern of Vancouver parents. British Columbia now spends approximately $1,000 less in operating costs per capita per year than Canada’s public education average, and we’re the second-lowest funder by province of public education in Canada.

In the Vancouver school district, this operating shortfall is reflected in large class sizes, loss of programs such as music instruction and staffing cuts directly supporting vulnerable students. It also affects maintenance and the deferred cost of maintenance, which has long-term issues.

In Vancouver, 38.9 percent of all children entering primary school speak little or no English, yet over 50 percent of our English language learner teachers have been cut, while primary class size has increased. A quarter of all library staffing has been reduced. A third of our special education teachers have been cut, even though the number of identified special needs children has significantly increased. This is, of course, putting more children at risk.

So 1,882 grades 4-to-12 classrooms had four or more children with an IEP rating, and 757 classrooms contained seven or more children with designated special needs. More than 5,199 students identified as special needs in the district did not receive additional funding to support their needs. This degradation of support services creates an environment where students who would otherwise be on the borderline of success are increasingly at risk of falling below the support levels at which they learn effectively.

DPAC is extremely concerned that due to the fact that it takes years for this degradation to appear in high-grade results, we have yet to see the consequence of this erosion in services over time, but that is going to come. Then, in the next five or ten years, our actions today are going to have a strongly detrimental impact on the graduates that are coming out of our program.

In conclusion, school boards require stable, predictable and adequate funding to enable them to provide quality education and make plans without having to hope for chunks of funding to arrive at unknown times and in unknown quantities — such as, for example, just before an election. Routine items should be funded routinely and predictably so that the districts can properly maintain their capital assets without having to scramble to apply for funding.

Families need stable, predictable schools that continue to act as the great equalizer and that do not favour regions or neighbourhoods over others. Families need to know that where we live will not negatively harm our children. Families also need to know that the facilities where we send our children are structurally and socially safe spaces. If changes in demographics require changes to facilities, a delicate approach is required which does not further destabilize at-risk students and does not further benefit privileged ones.

The Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council asks that the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services recommend sufficient operational funding by the Ministry of Education and instructs them to ensure that capital funding for planned seismic remediation projects be such that it can be executed on
[ Page 2498 ]
a best-value basis and not on the lowest-cost basis and that closures of any school which will cause significant disruptions to vulnerable children be treated as a major negative impact to be avoided.

We further request that the socioeconomic consequences of inadequate support of at-risk children be taken into account in the cost-benefit analysis when allocating funds to education and remind government that the erosion of student-facing support and enrichment services needs to be stopped now through an increase in per-student operating funding from the Ministry of Education to school boards to exceed the national average. Who knows? Maybe we could even be the best funded.

We, finally, request that the Ministry of Education funding model better compensate for unequal opportunities to learn due to both economic and social inequalities and the impact of unequal capacity to raise funds through charities, student fees or parental fundraising. In order for education to be the great equalizer that it is intended by our province to be, any one family’s financial ability to pay must not place another family’s children at a disadvantage within the education system through the unequal delivery of education at the schools.

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

You mentioned early in your presentation, right after you talked about the role of education as the great equalizer, that there are studies that demonstrate that investment in public education yields economic benefits, including tax returns to government — as well as lower costs associated with lack of proper education for some individuals. If you’re able to forward some or any or all studies to the Clerk’s office, they can form part of the attachments to the report and the record of this hearing.

M. Oger: Okay. I’ll make sure we get this information to the Clerk’s office.

Seeing none, thank you very much for taking the time to present. We do appreciate your busy schedule. All the information we hear, especially about subject like this, is always important. Again, we appreciate you taking the time. Take care. Have a good day.

Now, our friends from Camosun College Student Society have not arrived yet. Fortunately, we have Mr. Doug Stout from FortisBC, who has been able to join us.

Mr. Stout, if you’d come forward and provide us your presentation, we’d appreciate it. Welcome.

Ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to give you a wave when there are a couple of minutes left and time’s winding down. You can conclude your thoughts, and we can go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

D. Stout: I will do my best to beat the ten minutes so you don’t have to wave at me.

Just to lead off, the Fortis group of companies delivers approximately 21 percent of the total energy consumed in British Columbia, providing natural gas, electricity, propane and thermal energy services to more than 1.1 million homes and businesses in 135 communities. We own and operate two liquefied natural gas storage facilities and four hydroelectric generating plants. We’re proud to employ more than 2,200 British Columbians.

When developing the 2017 budget, FortisBC advocates for the government to consider the following items.

Continue to foster a thriving business environment by focusing on red-tape reduction and promoting capital investment.

Maintain B.C.’s affordability when promoting GHG-reducing behaviour changes by using incentives rather than taxes and not restricting natural gas access or limiting consumers’ choices.

Focus on desired GHG reduction outcomes, looking to industry to foster innovation to meet these goals, ensuring tax competitiveness for British Columbia’s trade-exposed industries.

FortisBC commends the government on their efforts to reduce red tape and promote business investment in B.C. As a result, B.C.’s economy is thriving, sitting at No. 1 in Canada. FortisBC is committed to helping B.C. continue this growth trend.

In fact, over the past four years, we’ve invested $1.8 billion into British Columbia. In 2015 alone, FortisBC’s capital spending was $104 million for electric operations and $460 million in our gas business. Over the next four years, we expect an additional investment of approximately $1.7 billion.

Part of this investment has gone towards expanding our Tilbury LNG facility. As a result of this development, $60 million has been committed in local-contractor spending, providing work to more than 140 Lower Mainland companies, with about 870 tradespeople registered to work on the project.

We will be continuing to invest in B.C. in the coming months and years, with construction starting on our Lower Mainland system upgrades in 2017. This pipeline upgrade is needed to help maintain reliable service to more than 700,000 customers from Surrey to Coquitlam to Burnaby and Vancouver. To date, this project has injected about $12 million into the local economy.

To ensure ongoing economic success, FortisBC advocates for continual dialogue between government and industry, to ensure that major investment in B.C.’s econ-
[ Page 2499 ]
omy and infrastructure continues to progress in a safe and timely manner.

British Columbia is fortunate to be abundant in energy resources, and FortisBC believes it’s important to strike a balance between all those available to us. Natural gas is an affordable, clean, locally produced fuel. A family of four living in a mid-size B.C. home saves about $1,400 per year heating with natural gas rather than electricity.

Considering these cost savings, FortisBC cautions against focusing on electrification and restricting natural gas access as a means to reduce provincial GHG emissions. Mass electrification requires extensive, expensive upgrades, where improving the efficiency of appliances and building envelopes can achieve similar results. Further, this tack restricts consumer choice.

The recent climate leadership plan, announced by the provincial government in August, will enable FortisBC to offer more utility-driven incentive programs to our customers. Further FortisBC will continue to innovate and reduce carbon emissions in B.C. by offering programs such as renewable natural gas, a carbon-neutral form of natural gas derived from agriculture and landfill waste.

In addition, FortisBC believes that energy policy should be addressed at a provincial level to ensure an economic and efficient structure. A municipality independently determining energy policy does not work effectively with the integrated nature of energy infrastructure, both from a physical operating perspective and the perspective of common rates, which span across numerous jurisdictions in B.C.

The province of B.C. is on the leading edge of environmental policy in Canada and the world. However, the strict environmental measures in B.C. are not enforced in other competing jurisdictions.

Therefore, FortisBC encourages the government to work with industry to ensure that British Columbia companies are able to continue to adopt GHG-reducing practices without incurring costs that price them out of the global market. Particular focus should be given to reducing industry taxes and seeking opportunities to apply incentives that encourage industry to maximize their competitiveness.

FortisBC believes that affordability, ongoing investment and fostering innovation continue to be of upmost importance to British Columbia and advises government to consider the recommendations above to ensure the province continues to lead Canada in economic development.

A couple of points. The Tilbury project — what’s the status of that project?

D. Stout: It is targeted to be on stream in the spring of next year, so late in the first quarter, early second quarter at this time.

D. Stout: Yeah, on track to be on line and able to fuel B.C. Ferries when their new ferries arrive. It’s an important part of that.

Second, you covered it in your comments, and I assume…. Under affordability, in your last paragraph. Perhaps you had in mind the recent buzz about the city of Vancouver looking to eventually phase out natural gas. Could you expand on that? I think that seemed to catch people by surprise.

D. Stout: Yes, you’re right on that front, on both counts. That’s one that we’re very focused on. There is an affordability issue, both from an energy consumption side of things and, as the move to new building codes and standards, a cost to the building envelope itself.

We’re not saying we shouldn’t be taking measures to reduce GHGs and move where the world needs to go. That’s not at issue overall. It’s about how we get there and how we get people consulted with and engaged in that conversation.

As well, what we see on those policies is a drive to pick technologies today or solutions today as the winners rather than say: “Okay, here’s an outcome we need. Here’s where we need to get to. Now let’s challenge industry, whether it’s builders, whether it’s developers, whether it’s energy providers, technology providers.” Find some solutions over the next 35 years — because I’m sure those solutions are going to change — that can play into the mix and not forgo the opportunity to use resources we have in B.C. in abundance.

If you look around the rest of the world, we’re looking at a world that is still relying on natural gas, for example, that we have an abundance of to help reduce GHGs. The U.S. has gone a long way that way. We can still have economic development in British Columbia and meet our target climate goals.

J. Yap: Thanks, Doug. I appreciate you presenting. Fortis is, as you mentioned, a major energy supplier to the province. We appreciate all that you do.

G. Heyman: Thanks for the presentation. You were concise, so you’ve left room for a few questions. First of all, I wonder if you can expand on some ideas that you have for…. You mentioned incentives, not taxes. I’m interested in your thoughts on that.

Secondly, I certainly understand the affordability issue. But you seem to imply that gas can compete with electri-
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city on greenhouse gas reduction. I mean, I know some ways that you can lower the GHG content of gas, but I’m wondering if you can expand on that.

Thirdly, I’d just like to compliment Fortis on your subsidiary’s activity in terms of geo-exchange heating and cooling systems in Vancouver, the ones I’m familiar with. I’m sure that you have the opportunity to do others in other places. I think that most people think of Fortis in connection with mostly gas, and you are doing a lot of other things.

You mentioned the expansion of biogas as a way of cleaning gas, and renewable. I had a chance to visit a plant from which you’re purchasing biogas in Abbotsford. I won’t use the term kills two birds with one stone. But it also potentially offers a tremendous solution to over-application of nitrogen to fields, which can threaten water. It could be actually quite integral to nutrient management programs.

I’m wondering if you can expand on plans that Fortis may have to expand these throughout the province.

D. Stout: You’re going to have to take me back to the first question. I’ve….

D. Stout: On the incentives side, a good example. We offer energy-efficiency incentives to people — top up the cost for a water heater, furnace, insulation, those types of things — to improve efficiency, reduce energy costs, reduce GHGs.

We’ve had an incentive program that the province has facilitated in the transportation sector to offer the ability for people to move forward. As you go through, the carrot seems to work better than just the stick, and we’ve seen that on both fronts.

Maybe an example on the transportation side. The low-carbon fuel standard sets a set of targets on moving things forward, leaving the industry to work on that. Then having the types of incentives around natural gas, biofuels, electric vehicles and those things helps move the dial. So it’s not just about putting a tax in place. The tax is there. But it’s coupled with other tools that act, I think, in a positive fashion to stimulate the industry. It’s around that type of thing.

On the ability of natural gas to get down to zero emissions — nope, burning methane won’t get you zero emissions. There’s no doubt about that. But we do see, as we look at these transitions over time — and we’ve seen technologies evolve — that we don’t want to foreclose opportunity. We can do the efficiency side of things. You can do the building envelope, appliances. We can work on renewable natural gas, and I’ll get to your comment on the question on that one. But we’re looking at things too.

Take back to Ballard Power and their long…. It’s a journey on the hydrogen side of things. But we’re seeing companies in Korea, in Japan, that are using hydrogen fuel cells, fuelled with natural gas, within buildings to create hot water, heat, electricity, with zero emissions at the building level. So we look at it and say: “Don’t foreclose those.”

I don’t know how those technologies will evolve. I wish I did, because I’d be a wealthier man than I am today, I think. But it’s looking at those types of things. When we’re setting a framework out, let’s leave the runway open for innovation and opportunity, and then it’s up to industry to find ways to make things that work and are cost-effective. That’s really about leaving that balance there.

On renewable natural gas, I guess we have four projects in B.C. right now — two agriculture, one of which you visited, and two landfills. Those started, the genesis, a half-dozen years ago with the first climate plan and the need to capture landfill gas. It is a very beneficial program. It takes some investment on the part of the farmer, obviously, to do digesters and those things.

Seabreeze Farm, in Delta, is probably the prime example of that. It’s a good…. I was out there this summer with a senator from Hawaii who was interested in touring things.

The bioproducts digest, obviously. We capture the gas, put it into our system. We pay the farmer for the gas. They take the solids, which would be the nutrients. Two types of solids. Nutrients would have been what was spread as fertilizer before. I live across the river, in Surrey, from a dairy farm, so I can attest that when you spread the undigested product on the ground, it’s a little more aromatic than the digested product.

Then they still have the nutrient that’s a solid fertilizer. Interestingly, the farmer said he’s more able to lease land from other local landowners because he’s not spreading liquid manure on the fields and he’s not getting the runoff — these types of things. Then they capture what was straw and such to re-use as bedding in their farm, so they’re creating some value streams.

It is a way to address some of these other environmental issues, whether that’s water pollution or odour pollution, if you want to call it that — these types of things. I think it creates some good windows here. It is something that needs some more work to get it moving. We’ve got, as I say, programs in place, and we need to develop more.

We’re also looking at injecting hydrogen into our pipeline systems — so creating hydrogen from excess electricity. Basically, putting it in creates a renewable gas. We’re working on a pilot project with other utilities in Ontario, and we’re investing in a pilot project to look at converting wood waste to gas. That’s happening, again, in concert with some other utilities.

So we think there are a lot of opportunities coming. Don’t know the time frame those will spin out on. But the farm waste and landfill technology is here. We can do those things — waste treatment plants, that type of thing. Then there’s more to come on some other opportunities.
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S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll echo that. Jerry Keulen at Seabreeze Farm said that is a fascinating process to watch. It’s not the most pleasant if you’re not used to the dairy farms and some of the environment that it creates. But it truly is a wonder to see — everything from beginning to end and the way that process works.

It’s a good segue. You were talking about all different types of energy options that you invest in. It’s very important, I think, to reiterate what George was saying and to acknowledge FortisBC as being, first, an energy company, as opposed to…. Everybody thinks Fortis is just all about gas, LNG.

My question has to do with Tilbury, as John was mentioning earlier — the impact on expansion. Unfortunately, we have had a bit of a setback, Fortis had a bit of a setback, with respect to Hawaiian Electric. Now, the expansion plans in Tilbury. You’re working on the deals with WesPac for the exportation of natural gas up and down the coast. What sort of effect is that going to have on phase 2? Is it still on line?

D. Stout: We’re still working hard on the export market — something to replace the Hawaii market, which would have driven, probably, a $1 billion investment. And the other area that we’re spending a lot of time on is the marine bunkering business. You talk about ferries and Seaspan and those kinds of things. But on the short sea, I call it — up in the coastal freighters, that sort of thing — plus the long-sea shipping, marine industry counts for about 1½ to 2 percent of worldwide GHG emissions, about the same as Canada’s emissions. We’re looking at ways to get Vancouver established as a marine bunkering port.

We’re seeing movement in Europe, in Asia, with shipping companies converting over to liquefied natural gas for marine fuels. There are environmental standards not just around GHGs but around emissions and particulate and things on marine vessels, which put out a lot more pollution than just GHGs.

We think there’s an opportunity there to further establish Vancouver as one of those hubs — we’re one of the major ports in North America, in the traffic in and out of here — and an opportunity to get our resources to market, reduce costs for people and have a positive global impact on emissions overall. That’s the target in, as I call it, the two segments we’re focused on.

All right, seeing no further questions, thank you again, Mr. Stout, for coming. A pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.

Now we’re just going to go backwards for a second and revisit our list here. We have the Camosun College Student Society — Mr. Michael Glover.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome. Just to let you know, you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll give you a wave with a couple of minutes left. You can conclude your thoughts then, and we can go to the committee for any questions they might have.

M. Glover: Awesome. Thank you. I don’t think my presentation will take that long.

M. Glover: Well, thank you all for having us here today. Normally we prefer to have one of our elected officials and students speak to you. She has food poisoning, so I’ve been asked to speak in her stead. Rachael’s having a bad day, and now so am I, so there you go. No, you’re fine. You’re not scaring me.

My name is Michael Glover, as you can see from this card that comes with this presentation. That’s fantastic. I’m the student services coordinator for the Camosun College Student Society. We represent over 9,000 students at two equal campuses here in the greater Victoria area.

I’m here to talk to you about three things today, the first being that our students, both old and young, are struggling with higher and higher tuition, spiralling housing costs and a significant spike in food costs. We understand that the government has not a huge appetite to reduce tuition fees, but we are concerned that mounting barriers are keeping the best-suited from filling professional gaps in our society.

At this time, many employers are dealing with skill shortages by hiring back retirees, sometimes at a premium, at a higher cost, to fill their organization’s knowledge gap. But we will come shortly to a time where that will no longer be effective. We need to be training young people to take those spots — and if not young people, then, people who have been in the workforce who need to retrain. If we do not act quickly to level the playing field for those that show aptitude and, consequently, merit, we will have shortages that will make our economy inefficient and unmanoeuvrable.

We think that the province should follow the examples of others, as it has in the past, and bring back needs-based grants to level the playing field. This is critical for us to ensure that those with aptitude and desire are doing the jobs that they want to or are in the professions that they’re suited to.

None of us wants a doctor or a nurse who got there because they had the time and the money. We need to support those that show the capability so that we have the best in the field not just the rest in the field. So we would like to see a restoration of needs-based grants.
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Housing. I’m sure it’s not a surprise to any of you that I’m sitting here and talking about housing today. We have a housing crisis in this province, but not just in Vancouver. Victoria and the surrounding municipalities…. Particularly here for us in the capital regional district, we have — just between Camosun, Royal Roads and UVic — about 30,000 students, if not more, depending on how you count them and how many….

I mean, some people take one course; some people take five courses. But we count the number of people that are taking five courses as being one student — full-time-equivalents — so we may have more. We don’t have an accurate depiction sometimes of how many students are here. We know we have about 9,000.

We can’t really speak for the other institutions. But if we guess, we’re looking at about 35,000 to 40,000 students, especially if you factor in all the private institutions. There are a number of English language colleges. Victoria is a very attractive place for these students to come. And at this time, the housing capacity is stretched.

If you look at the last two census reports on the growth of the capital regional district, you’re looking at 5 percent growth every report. With that, and a seasonal group of people coming in — 35,000 to 40,000 people, for eight months of the year — the pressures on our system are huge. We have students who are living on couches. I’ve been to student apartments where two people live in the living room. People are doing things not only because they can’t afford to do it, but because there just isn’t enough housing in Victoria.

We are hoping a recommendation could come from this committee to allow institutions to take on the debt necessary to build student residences. Student residences are a good investment, much like when we sit down and go: “You know what? I’m going to buy a house” or “I’m going to buy an apartment.” That’s good debt, right? Institutions are in a position where, particularly here in Victoria, there is no doubt that we would fill all of the rooms and dorm rooms or accommodations that we could build.

We are asking that you take away the moratorium on institutions, at least in this one particular case, so that we can build student housing or, more appropriately, the college can build student housing and take some of this pressure…. We have a very interesting opportunity to make affordable housing in that the land is owned by the college, and thereby the province. The land cost will not drive that cost of housing up, so you have an opportunity to make housing that is far more affordable than most developers will be able to do.

This will also take pressure off the main community — because people are stacked up — without taking away other opportunities for people to build suites and all of that stuff. All of those developments will not be affected. This will just meet the need that’s already there, where people are living in their cars and living on couches.

The impacted cost, I think, to the province that maybe isn’t plainly evident is that when students aren’t getting the proper rest or the proper home that they need, they’re wasting tax dollars, because they’re not doing as well at school as they should be. These institutions are funded. Tax dollars are going into them. So value for dollar. We hope that you will look at that and go: “This is a good debt. This is an investment that should be made.”

Finally, we are still…. We come and we talk to you about this every year. Adult basic education should be funded. This is a basic access piece. It’s the bottom rung for a number of different groups, including people who don’t have as much money but also First Nations people who may have had access issues in their high school institutions.

A lot of the response we get sometimes is: “Well, they can get their GED.” The GED is not always compatible with the needs that they have at Camosun to get into the next level. It’s a feeder program. These are the people that will go on to be care aides, mental health workers, nurses and LPNs. But if we don’t get that first step, then we are in a position where those students will never make it.

Again, the best and brightest are not necessarily getting there, but the ones who have the time and the money are getting there. That doesn’t make for the best health care professional or the best tradesperson, and these are the things that fire our economy in this province.

We’re hopeful that you will look at this program again and think about new Canadians who are coming and acclimatizing to the system and learning the system. These courses are a great way for them to learn how to interact in our society.

The previous incarnation of the Liberal government made this a very big point, made this a priority, to restore this funding, and we’re still sort of perplexed as to why it ever went away again. It just doesn’t make any sense to us. It’s very important, and it’s exceedingly cheap, so we implore you to restore that program before the infrastructure dries up and it becomes twice as expensive to restore it.

Those are our three big issues this year. We’d like to see an increase in grants. We’d like you to see that that’s important — levelling the playing field and getting better the people in, the more experienced, the people who fight harder, the ones that got those grades in high school or have come back into ABE and fought to get those restored. They’ve got focus. They’ve come back to school, and they know what they need to do, right? They’ve had their years wandering the desert, and they’ve come back.

Also housing. A lot of the institutions, and particularly Camosun, are poised to do something in housing. But our only option thus far has been really bad deals with really bad corporations that just want the college to take all the risk and themselves to take all the profit, and the college has never said yes to that. But the college could
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do it. The money is there. It is possible to do it. We think it is perfectly reasonable. And as I said before, good debt rather than bad.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you to you and thank you to Camosun for the good work that you do in the community.

One of the interesting pieces, I think…. I appreciate the issues you’ve raised. We’ve heard them consistently, and I expect we will hear them consistently over the next week or so. On the ABE, in particular, I think it’s important — and you emphasized it — to note that for many, many careers, certain courses weren’t needed for graduation but are needed for moving into the trades or moving into some areas of science or math. In many of these cases, it wasn’t that the person didn’t take the courses needed to graduate. In fact, they had. But they need some upgrading of coursework to be able to get into other courses.

One of the other pieces that I just wanted to ask about was the issue of the number of students — and I’m hearing it more and more — who have gone to university and are going back to college. Most people think of the transition the other way around. Most people think of going to college first, for your first couple of years, and finishing off your degree at university. But I’m hearing more and more examples of people who, in fact, are doing the opposite. I just wonder if you could make mention of that.

M. Glover: Yeah, I know a great number of people who have done their initial degree in a field. They graduated from high school. They followed their bliss and then realized that their bliss did not come with gainful employment. Or they found themselves in the wrong direction, or they worked in a field and found that it just doesn’t fit. It comes back to that question of aptitude. What is somebody apt to do? We don’t always discover that right away.

It would be great if we streamed people in tighter within the high school system to sort of give them more opportunities there. Camosun does some of that work with the South Island Partnership program. But for the most part, our high school system isn’t as finely tuned as, say, somewhere like Quebec with the CEGEP program, which is a great one for that. People take longer to find where their feet land.

I know for me, coming from Chilliwack, I didn’t have the same opportunities in high school that someone in Victoria would have in high school, so I might not find my feet as fast. So yeah, I think people do. They go on, and they have careers.

We also have to remember that now we have to have a workforce that’s very flexible. Their career is going to change several times, and the experience that I have of working somewhere for a number of years isn’t what most people have. Sometimes people have to make major career changes. And absolutely, Camosun is probably just riddled with a number of different students that are in that experience. A lot of people will go off and do a science degrees and then realize, “Well, I don’t want to do my master’s, but maybe I’m interested in nursing,” and they go on to do nursing. That is a common story at Camosun.

S. Gibson: Kind of the reverse question. I’m a UVic grad, so I’ve known Camosun a little bit over the years. What percentage of the academic courses that are offered at Camosun are transferable to UVic? That’s my first question.

M. Glover: A majority of them are. We have a very close relationship, and most, if not all, courses transfer. Some of the very specific stuff doesn’t. But we do have an engineering bridge, for example. That will go to some UVic programs. The nursing all bridges to UVic. UVic and Camosun have a very good relationship. In some ways, if you are not…. It’s a good way to feed into UVic and create a stable UVic student. I, myself, went to Camosun and graduated from UVic.

S. Gibson: My second question is about housing. My sense is that Camosun is older students, more mature students, more part-time students, more mid-career students than, say, a university like Victoria. So would there be less requirement for housing at Camosun than at UVic? That’s my question.

M. Glover: I think we actually have more. We have more, and a more specific need. I think we get a lot…. We have a higher percentage of older students and returning students, but we still get a lot of young people.

We’re also now at 13 percent of our student body being international students, coming from the outside. International students have a huge problem trying to get housing because they can’t come here early. For most people, I will advise: “Come here August 1. Get your place August 1, and pay an extra month of rent.” That is what I would advise people to do, but they cannot do that. Some of these people are trying to make arrangements over Facebook to get an apartment a month before they arrive, which is extremely difficult and which puts them
[ Page 2504 ]
in a very vulnerable position, because landlords have more power over these people. Sometimes it’s significant.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. I’ll just conclude with a comment. I’d direct you to this committee’s recommendation from last year. I would like to be able to do something with housing — as you mentioned, good debt. It’s something that’s going to benefit both the students and the university. Hopefully, we can, maybe, agree on that again going forward this year and see where we can land.

M. Glover: Well, best of luck to you. Thank you very much for the time, everyone.

Next we have a Skype presentation from the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union — Mr. Conrad Lewis.

Mr. Lewis, good afternoon. It’s good to see you. Thank you joining us. Just to let your know, you have ten minutes for a presentation. I’ll get your attention with a couple of minutes left so that you can conclude your thoughts, and then we’ll go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

[Due to technical difficulties with the audio transmission, text from the witness’s written presentation has been inserted.]

C. Lewis: Sm gii gyet. Skd dm nan nuxk. Legii gyet. Guba waal suk. Dii Wy uu, naa waaps Wii Tah Lii, Gisbudwada, Gitxaala. My name is Conrad B. Lewis, belonging to House of Wii Tah Lii, Killer Whale/Black Fish clan, from the village of Kitkatla.

Members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, I thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I come before you today as one of the general executive board members of the UFAWU-Unifor Local 31, representing all our plant workers. At this time, however, I would like to focus on Prince Rupert cannery workers.

Last November Jim Pattison Ltd. closed the only production cannery left in B.C. — which was located in my hometown, Prince Rupert. In a normal year, this cannery employed 750 people — 80 percent First Nations and 55 percent women.

This summer they employed 125 people on average, with a one-week peak of 315. Pattison operated the plant as an unloading and gutting facility only. This meant that the company unloaded the fish and gutted the fish — just like they had in other years — then trucked it out instead of canning it.

Not only were fewer people employed; because the gutting operation was so efficient, the number of hours of employment per worker was also reduced. Even the senior workers with 35 years and more seniority will not have enough hours to collect EI.

But I am speaking for all Prince Rupert cannery workers — both those who are employed as fish plant workers and those who find themselves currently not employed by CFC.

I am also First Nations, and I am one of many members/representatives of the Git Lauxk Moawn — People of the Salt Water — commonly known as Coastal First Nations.

Since time immemorial, one of the main invaluable treasures, one of the main invaluable sources of sustenance for the Git Lauxk Moawn has been and always will be our haun — our salmon. The definition of “invaluable,” as we all know it, is “beyond calculable or appraisable value; of inestimable worth; priceless.” That’s why the Git Lauxk Moawn and First Nations treasured this when harvesting this invaluable source of sustenance, along with other countless invaluable resources — at our own front door, at our own waterfront, in our territories.

Our ooo ulsh and gee ish mai — great-grandfather and great-grandmother; our ya ah and ge eh — grandfather and grandmother; our ba ah and ma ah — father and mother; along with all of us and our kids and grandkids, lived and continue to live off of this immeasurable wealth — wealth for all our people.

However, over the years, centuries — especially in this new millennium — changes rose, and challenges were created and were overcome. The encroachment of industry in our territories, amongst all our people, was subtle and spanned decades. Industry came to our territories. They learned, they developed, and they commercialized our invaluable source of sustenance.

Commercialization of our haun and other valuable resources in the Prince Rupert region saw the majority of the workforce being the Git Lauxk Moawn and First Nations inland, along with other ethnicities, at first as transients traveling to where the summer work was. But then, as years went by, we became hardworking members of the communities where industry — fishing companies — set up. Unions were also set up, and this is how I am fortunate enough to represent both bodies of solid hard workers to this very day.

One of the main challenges in amongst this, which is what brings me here to you today, is consolidation and monopolization of the fishing industry. The Finance Committee of the past must have indeed seen, in finance reports, an industry that was good to our country, our province, our regions, and good to its hard-working people within those communities.

However, with consolidation and closure of fish processing plants in coastal B.C. and the closure of the last production cannery in Prince Rupert, the province will see a reduction in income and an increase in social wel-
[ Page 2505 ]
fare payments to those who used to have employment processing B.C. salmon.

We live in a region that has invaluable resources, but monopolization has somehow been condoned, and consolidation was presented as a way of continuing to stay economically viable in a community. Yet we are now exporting rather than processing.

CFC has now officially moved canning operations to Alaska. As we speak, Pattison is removing canning machinery — paid through profits made at our cannery — from Prince Rupert and shipping this machinery to Alaska. All Pattison canned salmon will now be processed in Alaska.

So far, B.C. fish is not being exported to Alaska to be canned. Instead, we are exporting millions of pounds of pink salmon that used to be canned in B.C. to China for processing. This B.C. salmon processed in China is exported across the world — and back into B.C. on our grocery store shelves.

Our Premier stated she wants to rebuild relations with First Nations. Our Premier says she wants to create jobs and engage First Nations people in the economy of B.C.

Finance Committee MLAs, the bulk of the jobs that went north to Alaska or across the Pacific to China were First Nation jobs. Our haun is being exported to China and other places and being imported back as marketable product. This is blatantly moving our people from hard-working income earners to welfare recipients.

Our processing jobs are viable jobs, based on our renewable resource, haun, whose habitat B.C. has protected through costly environmental regulations — viable jobs that we have all lived off of and benefited from for decades upon decades.

Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, we need to have our people working. We cannot continue to export product out of Canada and import it back processed by other countries. Canadian resources must be processed by Canadian workers.

Wealth for all from invaluable resources, rather than welfare, builds sound communities and regions.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Lewis. I appreciate that. I do have questions from the committee.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis, for your presentation. My name is George Heyman. I’m the MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, but I spent much of my 20s and 30s living and working in Terrace, Kitimat and Prince Rupert. I know there’s a tremendous history of First Nations and others working in the fishing and canning industry in that area.

I think it should be important to all of us that we get the most jobs possible from our resources, whether they are logs, fish or anything else. We just heard a presentation about the importance of resources to the British Columbia economy, so thank you for bringing this to our attention and putting it on the record.

I don’t really have a question, because you’ve laid it out pretty clearly. I will certainly look forward to the discussion at the committee about how we can deal with this issue in the context of the current economy and trade agreements. The bottom line is that when we have a history of processing resources in British Columbia and providing important jobs today in communities like Prince Rupert, I think we have a responsibility to look at how to maintain those.

A very important subject. I appreciate you bringing it forward and providing us your thoughts. It’s the first presentation of its kind since we started travelling last week. I hope we hear more like it, so I do appreciate you taking the time to present.

Okay, moving right along. we have, from the Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping, Dr. Richard Wiefelspuett. Thank you for coming forward.

We’ve got ten minutes for the presentation. If you want to get started, the floor is yours, and then we can, hopefully, have time for a couple of questions.

R. Wiefelspuett: Thank you. It’s great to be here, and good afternoon. I would like to begin by thanking the members’ of this committee for undertaking this important consultation with British Columbians.

It’s an honour for me to be here today in my capacity as executive director of Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping. My name is Richard Wiefelspuett. I find myself at Clear Seas after more than 30 years in the international marine sector, most recently as associate dean of BCIT’s marine campus. I’m a naval architect, and I hold a PhD in mechanical engineering and a master of science and shipbuilding and offshore engineering.

For those of you unfamiliar with our organization, Clear Seas is a relatively young organization, registered in 2014 and only officially launched in June 2015. We were founded largely in response to the federal government’s first tanker safety expert panel report and the opportunity it envisioned to balance the need to grow the economy while maintaining marine safety. With that in mind, our organization was formed with a national mandate out of concern for marine shipping in general, including the marine transportation of oil and gas.
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Today, with arm’s-length funding from Transport Canada, the government of Alberta and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, we strive to be the leading provider of independent and unbiased research on the subject of safe and sustainable marine shipping practices. While these funding partners provided the resources we needed to found the organization, we are completely independent of these funding sources. Our research is not directed by them. Our funding agreements are not tied to any obligations in that regard. We take our responsibility to provide independent research very seriously.

Clear Seas, our board of directors and our funders recognize the value that independent and best-in-class research could bring to the table. We all recognize that our independence is our most valuable asset. As we shine a light on the best practices in marine shipping, we will uphold the highest standards from a research perspective. Our research is transparent and our results, methodologies and assumptions are all made available publicly.

As a nation dependent on marine transportation, it is our duty to improve the knowledge of marine shipping by providing governments and the general public with the best research and information they need to make complex decisions in this policy environment. Building public confidence in the marine sector necessitates it. How can someone possibly be confident in something they do not understand? Canadians do not know who to trust on these issues of great importance. I modestly believe that Clear Seas, as a unique and independent organization, can, in the domain of marine shipping, provide both the public and governments with the resources needed to make informed decisions.

With the positive economic forecast that the province is projecting, there are, no doubt, a multitude of funding priorities that confront you. Central to any evaluation you make of the proposals before you will be whether they enhance social and economic growth, job creation and productivity.

Today it is my intent to make a case for strengthening, through funding, the provincial marine spill prevention, preparedness and response regime. A well-resourced marine spill prevention, preparedness and response regime will pay dividends for the province and will contribute to the public confidence required to grow the economy whilst protecting the environment.

The Premier has made it plainly clear that the province of B.C. will not tolerate any project that is contrary to the five conditions. You may recall that when those five conditions were introduced, the goal was to develop world-leading environmental protection regimes, recognizing that the current systems were inadequate.

British Columbia has made great strides on this front, passing amendments to the Environmental Management Act and conducting its extensive stakeholder engagements on the proposed regulatory changes. The consultations that the Ministry of Environment has undertaken have been, from what we have observed, robust and very thorough. However, there remains work to accomplish on this front, particularly in the coming months.

Most critically, the government can fulfil the promise of this undertaking by ensuring that the new regime is properly resourced, especially from a financial standpoint. As the province confronts the challenge with the federal government and its provincial counterparts, it is imperative that it is done in the context of evidence-based decision-making. As an organization, Clear Seas wants to see B.C. further embrace its commitment to protecting its coastal waters.

In 2015, the province put forward seven design principles for the new regime. Among those was a commendable commitment to continuous improvement, meaning that the government is committed to continuous improvement and ensuring a sustainable, world-leading system by applying lessons learned from exercises, incidents and other jurisdictions.

This is where we believe that Clear Seas can contribute to the ongoing evolution of this regime. As an independent organization that promotes best practices in marine shipping, we believe that we can provide the province of British Columbia with the evidence needed to address any gaps in knowledge and data. Our work today already shows a significant alignment with the objectives the province set out for the prevention, preparedness and response regime.

Focusing for a brief moment just on the prevention elements, we can already identify three specific topics that Clear Seas addresses in its current research portfolio. Regarding vessel operations, Clear Seas is working on ensuring compliance with leading international safety standards and safety cultures. On vessel traffic control, Clear Seas’ workshop on active vessel traffic monitoring and management established a new platform for a constructive dialogue between international experts. On response and salvage capacities, talk of opportunity concepts versus dedicated emergency towing vessels, our multidisciplinary project will quantify vessel traffic analysis, drift speeds, response capacities and needed improvements. Our work will provide independent, evidence-based information on data and consensus to quantify all related requirements.

At Clear Seas, we believe that collaboratively, with the province, we can advance the world-class system that the province envisioned when it set about this commendable goal. From the perspective of gaining or even maintaining public confidence, the bar, as you each know, has been set high in this province.

We believe that by providing fact-based information, by supporting evidence-based decision-making and by promoting a strengths and prevention and response regime, we will play an essential role in moving forward towards a vibrant marine shipping sector, one that operates at the highest level of safety and that Canadians feel part of and trust, one that fosters public confidence.

With the province’s positive economic forecast, the time is now to fund the policy and the commitments. The Ministry of Environment has done a lot of work to advance the new regime. Now is the time for the province to ensure that it is properly resourced.

In closing, I would like to commend the standing committee on their work on this very important issue and would be pleased to answer any questions.

I understand you’re a relatively new organization, so a lot of work going into raising your profile and establishing yourselves out in the community. What plans do you have to do that, to raise your profile and to come to mind for British Columbians who may be interested in this issue, as they hear from the other side, from the environmental side and those that are against more marine shipping of products? They have high profiles. You’re new to this. What are some of your plans?

R. Wiefelspuett: We have, actually, three pillars that are supporting our work. One is an engagement plan, where we actually go out into the field and talk to a diverse number of people. We have been very lucky. Initially, when Clear Seas was founded, we had a lot of speaking requests from all corners, from all walks of life — from the environmental groups, from NGOs, from municipalities and also from industry.

That was the beginning of our long engagement process, which has by now been formalized. We call it an issues-based engagement process. We look out for issues that might occur in the marine domain. Then we identify the stakeholders that are concerned with that particular issue. Then we go out to meet with every single one of them, listen to them, listen to their concerns, their perceived risks and their fears.

We gather all that information to create a joint workshop with these stakeholders, all together now, where we facilitate the dialogue, helping others to understand others’ positions. The ultimate outcome of that workshop is, actually, not a solution but an agreement on the problem. Once they have agreed, in a group of stakeholders, on the problem, we can actually move forward. This is how we work, and we have had a lot of success, as young as we are.

Two things I mentioned in here. One is the marine workshop we had early on in April. We were 100 people strong at that workshop — from government, from industry, from different community groups and environmentalists as well. The conversation on the topic never stopped. We found ourselves valuable as being a conveyer of communication across the encrusted boundaries that exist in those committees.

The other one is we are right now launching research on…. It’s a long title. It’s called Investigation of Loss-of-Control Events on Board Ships and an Analysis of the Required Response Capacity. Ultimately, it’s a drift study. It’s been motivated by the Simushir drifting off Haida Gwaii a couple of years ago.

In this study, we use the same process. We have engaged with many stakeholders. We have 25 participants in the study, including First Nations — Haida Gwaii is on board and another First Nations group as well — industry, government again.

We will together find answers to the questions of how many ships are moving on our coasts, which ship types have the higher risk of losing control, what is the drift speed and what kind of response capacity we need. By doing it together, we will be able to provide information and answers that actually will be quantified, fact-based and accepted by everybody.

As you know, the movement of oil products on the north and central coast of British Columbia has long been a very controversial thing.

The moratorium on tanker traffic was never formalized into law in the federal government. But the new government — when I say new government, the new federal government — came in with the mandate to pursue bringing that into law. Can you, perhaps, tell the committee what your discussions have been with that and how it goes with their mandate, to try and actually formalize a moratorium on tankers on the north and central coast?

R. Wiefelspuett: We have, of course, no role to play in regards to calling the moratorium. That’s done by the government. But we have positioned ourselves as a source of information. If a moratorium is time-based — and I expect it will be; that’s my personal opinion, five-to ten-years — we should have the questions ready that we want to have answered after those five to ten years are over.

For us, the concern is: how can we move oil, gas, hazardous cargos of any kind safely and sustainably? There are ways of doing that.

We have, already, some good practices here in Vancouver and in the Lower Mainland, Burrard Inlet. We have to just look at these situations, and we can find technical solutions. They are actually resolvable.

Maybe yes is not always a possible answer. Sometimes no might be the answer. Ultimately, I believe we, as Clear Seas, can provide fact-based information, researched information referencing world best practices to ensure that if we move oil, if we move gas, we can do it in a safe and stable manner.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Simon, did you have a question? Very short please. Way behind time.

Can you tell me how you’re funded? And how do you measure success? At the end of each year, when you look back, how do you know you’ve been successful as an organization? Those are my two quick…. Just super brief responses.

R. Wiefelspuett: We’ve been funded by Transport Canada, the province of Alberta and by CAPP — the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Each of these entities have committed $3.7 million to us for a period of four years, roughly. We report to them. That’s our responsibility to them. They continue to be informed by us about what we’re doing.

We measure success, basically, through the ability of engaging with people. We’re measuring, actually, how many meetings, how many folks come on board and how many people know us. We measure success in the finalization of our research projects. We launch research. We conduct it, with third parties, often. And then we deliver. Ultimately, we would be measuring our success if our suggestions will have helped to change marine policies so it becomes a more safe and sustainable safety system.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time to present. We appreciate it.

Thank you very much for being here. Just so you know, we have ten minutes for the presentation. If you can conclude your thoughts with enough time to have some questions, then we’d appreciate it. The floor is yours.

G. Leekha: Thanks for having me today. My name is Gurpreet Leekha. I’m the president of the B.C. Doctors of Optometry — the advocacy group for optometry in B.C. I recognize some faces here, so I have a feeling that you may have heard this message, but this is going to be the more pointed message, towards the finance side of the equation.

I’ve been practising optometry for 15 years, six of those in beautiful Victoria. I’ve done some volunteer missions around the world in South America and Mexico. I’ve volunteered locally as well, and my current volunteer role is being this advocate for my colleagues and also for B.C. patients in eye care.

Optometrists are tasked with taking care of what many people think of as their most important sense: their precious gift of sight. The desire to improve our patients’ vision and eye health is why we go to work every day. We’re located across B.C. in rural and urban communities. In fact, we are the most accessible primary eye care professional.

Optometry matters to B.C. on a cost level because the annual cost of vision loss in Canada is estimated to be about $19 billion. There are direct and indirect costs. The B.C. portion of that is about $2 billion. Vision loss will cost Canada’s economy, on an annual basis, more than diabetes, cancer and musculoskeletal diseases all combined. That’s how expensive it is to take care of vision problems once they’re diagnosed.

This cost will rise over time for a couple of reasons. One, the increasing prevalence of eye disease among our aging population, and also because of one particular condition, diabetes, rising across Canada, as well, over time.

Over the next decade, we expect — and this is statistical projections — a 30 percent increase in Canadians with vision loss. That would make it about 620,000 in ten years. The cost then, by 2024, would rise to about $24½ billion.

An area that often picks up where optometry and family medicine leave off is the emergency room. That’s another example of where people are ending up with the simplest of eye problems. They’re clogging the wait times. They’re clogging the waiting rooms. These patients can be triaged very simply in an optometry office at the lowest cost. We are an under-utilized, cost-saving resource for B.C.

In 2009, the Ministry of Health took an important step forward by authorizing optometry to prescribe topical medications — so to treat things like allergies or eye infections, inflammatory conditions like dry eye, and so on. In 2012, that was expanded to allow eye drops and topical treatments for glaucoma.

What we would like to request for 2017 is to expand that scope to include oral medications for only those conditions in which optometrists deem them necessary. We have fallen behind other jurisdictions in Canada to maximize our scope of practice in this area. For example, Alberta can prescribe topicals and orals. So can Ontario, and so can a few other provinces in Canada.

With better use of optometry as a resource for these types of conditions, we get to free up family medicine and ophthalmology to focus on the specialized surgical care that only ophthalmology can provide.
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Here are a couple of examples. A patient comes into our office with a scratchy red eye. Now, that could be many things. In this particular case, it led to a diagnosis of herpetic keratitis, or herpes of the eye. The scar was right across the central cornea, so this would be a blind eye if not treated quickly and with the appropriate medication. We can currently prescribe the appropriate antiviral drops for that patient, but they also need to go on oral anti-herpetic pills as well.

The last two times I had to do this, I had to refer the patient back to either the ophthalmologist on call with a two-day wait or back to a walk-in clinic because their GP had a one-week wait for an appointment. The walk-in clinic was maybe a 2½-hour wait, they told me afterwards. And then after that, the GP got on the phone and called me and said: “What do you recommend?” And I told him. They know, too, but when they don’t see it every day and we do, they ask for our advice in those instances. That’s a great example of collaboration, but it’s an example of an unnecessary, silly delay for the patient.

Another example. A patient presents with a swollen, red lump on their eyelid. This can be called a stye or a hordeolum or chalazion. It’s got many names. But a few of them get more swollen, the lid closes, and it progresses to the back of the eye. That can lead to a brain infection and often, within a week, to death. So that requires an oral antibiotic if deemed necessary by the examiner. And in those situations, again, we go back to the ophthalmologist on call or the hospital or the GP and then wait for the phone call asking which medication. We could have prescribed it right there and then with the right scope.

In all examples, if that patient happened to live rurally, guess what it’s like for them. There’s another way to do this — and we’ll talk about that in a future presentation — which is telehealth. Telehealth is under analysis by your finance side as well as your health care delivery side, and optometry could also position ourselves as primary care providers in telehealth anywhere you put us in B.C. Currently, telehealth is only authorized for family medicine and ophthalmology, not for optometry.

There’s a cost to government when care is given outside an optometry office. If we see that patient for that minor red eye, it’s $30 to $47 depending on the nature of the visit. The wait time is zero. If an ophthalmologist sees him, it’s $93 plus all the extra tests done in the office or the hospital and a wait time of one to three days. In rural, it’s two to three weeks.

If we refer to a GP, it’s another $30 to $45, in addition to the $30 we got paid, plus one to seven days — rural, two days to two weeks. And finally, if we go to the emergency room, we’re talking anywhere between an additional $70 to $350 — no firm figure available there, because it depends on who’s there and who sees the patient in the ER.

The point here is clear: this is a cost-saving measure, using an existing resource, using a group that’s been educated to do this since 1999. We just never got given that scope in B.C. because of various reasons, but we think it’s time for that to change.

S. Gibson: Well, there seems to be some cogency to your appeal, but we have in this province, by all accounts, a doctor shortage. I think that to be true. But you apparently don’t have a shortage of your professionals. Why is that? In other words, you’re looking for more work, to be blunt.

S. Gibson: Why is that? Is there an overabundance of folks in your profession? I’m not trying to say this to be argumentative. I’m just curious.

G. Leekha: No, not at all. That’s a good question. I don’t know if I can comment on whether there’s an overabundance. I think that we need a few more in rural and maybe a couple less in the larger markets. If people shifted their distribution, it would work out just fine. I think we have the right number of ODs, optometrists, but I think just the opposition, traditionally, has been either not understanding what we do or how well our education was suited for this particular scope. Or ophthalmology had often just said: “We don’t want change. We like doing these things.”

If you look at how ophthalmology delivers these services, they’re overburdened, and the wait times are absolutely crazy. So even though, if you ask them, they say, “No, we don’t want anybody else to do what we do,” I think that has to change, and that’s why it’s already changed in other provinces. The only reason we’re not doing it already is because we just haven’t been asked to.

R. Austin: First of all, I’ll just comment on what Simon had to say. You know, I live in rural B.C., and there’s a shortage of optometrists in rural B.C. To get an appointment in my town can take weeks if not months, which is partly why I use Dr. Sangha down here. But anyway, that’s another whole discussion.

You mentioned that you’ve brought this forward before. When it comes to scope of practice, usually these decisions are made by the various professions. What has been stopping this? It seems to me like a sort of no-brainer. Why has this not happened in the past? Has it been about territorial turf?

R. Austin: I would have thought that…. Our GPs are overloaded. They tell us they’re overloaded and have too many patients coming in, so I can’t imagine why they would now say, “We don’t want to give this,” when they’re so busy.

G. Leekha: It’s ophthalmology. Ophthalmologists, who do from primary…. Well, not primary. They’ll do from a low level of medical care all the way up to full surgical care. Ophthalmology as a profession can do all of it. It’s just that they are needed for the surgical care. The wait times for eyelid procedures, for cataract surgeries, for anything that would involve any diseases of the eyes…. If it’s surgical, ophthalmology is the only group that can do it.

That’s what they should be focusing on, and if you have a coffee shop conversation, that’s what they would like to focus on. When you get to this advocacy level, they will represent their colleagues and say: “We don’t want our turf to ever be changed.” So traditionally, that’s been the issue.

We collaborate every day — optometry, ophthalmology — with patients. We take care of them. We screen them. If it’s a disease, they go to ophthalmology. It’s a very friendly professional relationship, except when they hear that there might be a change to their turf. That’s the same in every province.

In those provinces where they collaborated a bit more, like Alberta, ophthalmology put up very little opposition, and therefore, oral scope is now in optometry’s hands. Everybody’s quite happy there.

G. Leekha: I just forgot to make a comment. I’m also a patient. I got poked in the eye at water polo last week, and I should have told you guys at the beginning of this visit. That little red spot, that’s…. I should have said it at the beginning.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I wouldn’t even have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out. Nevertheless, physician, heal thyself — all right? Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate it.

Next we have the Out in Schools program, via Skype. We have a gentleman by the name of Brandon Yan.

Just to let you know, we’ve got ten minutes for the presentation. If you want to leave us a couple of minutes at the end to ask any questions that you might have, I can give you a couple of minutes’ warning so you can conclude your thoughts, and we’ll go from there. The floor is yours.

B. Yan: It’ll be, hopefully, fairly quick. I am going to try to share a presentation with you just now. Just let me know if you can still see this.

My name’s Brandon Yan. I’m the program coordinator for Out in Schools. We’re a program based in Vancouver, but we travel across the province to use film and video to facilitate a group discussions to talk about homophobia, transphobia and the effects of bullying with students in elementary school and high school and with educators and administrators across the education system.

Why I’m talking to you now is because recently the B.C. government brought across a couple of interesting changes. The first was in July. The human rights code was amended to include gender identity or expression, which is a really big move for our province, to kind of recognize gender identity and expression as protected grounds.

The second was in September. The Minister of Education announced that all schools will have specific references to sexual orientation and gender identity in their anti-bullying policies, which is also really fantastic news for advocates like myself and for youth across B.C.

Why we do what we do, and why these changes are necessary, is, for instance, folks who identify as trans, especially trans youth, are seven times more likely to express suicidal ideation than the general population. For marginalized youth, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, these create real costs to society — not only financial costs to our health care system and our education system but to personal and social systems as well.

We travel. We do about 110 presentations a year on about a $236,000 budget, which means our presentations cost, roughly, just over $2,000 for what we do.

Our demand last year was so high that we did about 137 presentations. This year, we’ve already got requests from seven communities — Dawson Creek, Prince George, Golden, Castlegar, Cranbrook, Nanaimo and Mission. We have demand for about seven rural tours, so about 75 presentations in total. Our capacity right now for our non-profit is about two.

Our current level of support from the B.C. government is about $26,000, about 11 percent of our budget,
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which really is a gaming grant. In order for us to fulfil the dreams of the B.C. Ministry of Education to make sure that LGBTQ youth are safe and included, and to do the work we do, we’re looking for $161,000 and maybe a partnership with the Ministry of Education.

Realistically, if the Ministry of Education wanted to address the concerns of LGBTQ youth, we’re looking for some more additional funding for the K-to-12 system, specifically for LGBT2Q+ youth — also, given that the B.C. Standing Committee on Children and Youth recommended that all schools and districts should have specific programming for sexual minority and gender minority students. We’re just waiting to see some of those resources flow in through some of those fantastic words that we’re hearing out of the government these days.

That’s basically my presentation — just kind of making sure that this is on the government’s radar when they do the budget this year.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay, thank you very much. Considering the mixup in technology, I’d say you did a pretty good job, a stellar job, of providing us with the facts that we needed. So thank you for that.

S. Hamilton (Chair): There you go. Well, if you have that documentation and it’s not here, make sure you submit it to the committee’s office, and they can form part of the record. We make sure that all the members of the committee get to see it as well.

S. Hamilton (Chair): And that presentation — if you have a website and a link to it, you can also forward that link, and we can get that to all the committee members. We can sit down and watch it in our spare time. If that makes sense.

I’ll go to the committee members for questions, if there are any. Seeing none….

I appreciate the work that you do — advocacy. We know all about bullying in schools. It’s pandemic, and it’s something, obviously, that we take very seriously as a government. I appreciate the advocacy work that you do and all the people that you represent, so thank you for taking the time to present to the committee.

B. Yan: There is a report that just came out of UBC, if anyone’s interested, specifically around the financial cost to the system. I’ll also send this to the Clerk. Basically, by investing in programs like ours or by partnering with programs like ours — because we’re, as far as I know, the only kind of program in B.C. that exists like this — with the idea that if you can prevent young people from committing suicide or attempting suicide, we’re saving our health care system, on average, $80,000 to $150,000 a year per person.

It’s all right here. I’ll send this around. I think there’s a little added bonus for saving lives there.

Guess what? I have Carole James with a question for you, if you’ve got a moment.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You mentioned the additional resources and the partnership that you would hope to build with the Ministry of Education. Is the hope, then, that the program would be replicated in other school districts and around the province? Is the hope that you would be able to partner with communities or have those districts take it on?

I just wondered if you wanted to share a little bit more about what the dream would be if the money came forward.

B. Yan: Well, the dream would be that a program like ours would actually exist in each school district so teachers and educators, rather than relying on us, as a non-profit, would actually have the resources in their own districts to do the work that we do.

Right now we’re getting a lot of demand from administrators and educators to train them in what we do. So there is that kind of train-the-trainer model happening.

I got a request from the Nanaimo school district this past month, after the announcements saying we’re going to have anti-bullying policies to protect everyone. The request was to come to present to every single one of their schools, which is about 39 schools. That would be 50-plus presentations, and that’s half my year done in one school district.

While that’s great, we just don’t have the financial means to meet that demand. The school district also doesn’t have the resources to keep hiring people like me to come in. So if we can place resources and train resources in those districts, I think that would be ideal.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Brandon, again, for taking the time. A very important subject, and we appreciate it. Take care.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Next we have one inspired by you, Carole. I think the mayor mentioned that you had sent a letter out recommending to the Finance
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Committee. I got a last-minute phone call yesterday from the mayor, and said: “Hey, you’re in Victoria.” Anyhow, thank you for that, Carole.

I’d invite George Harvie and Neil Dubord to come on up and take the time to present. Welcome. As I’ve mentioned to others, we’ve got ten minutes for the presentation. We’ll have a few questions after, and we’ll go from there. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.

G. Harvie: Thank you for the opportunity for appearing today. This was a last-minute notice for ourselves. I’m the chief administrative officer for the corporation of Delta, and with me is our chief of police, Neil Dubord. Not that I need security, but he’s here at UBCM, and we’re trying to expose him to everything that goes on. He did say this reminded him of an interview room.

Well, I’d like to go back and tell you a story from about 15 years ago, when I first came to Delta. I worked in Burnaby for over 30 years. At that time, a member of the parks commission, Mr. Hamilton, then a member of council — I came to work for them. And boy, it was a municipality that was in a state of dysfunction.

It was $65 million in debt — external debt. They were borrowing funds for 20-year parks projects, for example, that only lasted ten to 15 years at the best. It was like living on your Visa or MasterCard. It had acres of contaminated landfill sites along River Road, along with just tremendous traffic congestion, a very stagnant economic growth and decaying residential and commercial areas. It also had major crime elements in our commercial and residential areas.

I’d like to take you to now, 15 years later, to today’s date. Let’s look at Delta. It was recently received and ranked as the 14th-best place to live in Canada. We are now basically debt-free. I think we have about $500,000 left, but our finance director won’t pay it off because he’s just too cheap to pay the advanced interest. But we are debt-free, which is tremendous.

We’re not just staying and rotting. We’re actually moving forward. We have just been rated as one of the safest places to live in B.C. and Canada, thanks to Mr. Dubord and our fine Delta police. We have award-winning first responders, and we have received international and regional recognition for our work. We’re rated as a top-five North American microcity for business friendliness and infrastructure, ranked most fiscally responsible in Metro Vancouver and most improved in Metro Vancouver. This morning we received the provincial Open for Business Award.

How did we transform to where Delta is today? One key message: strong partnerships with our provincial government. In the last nine years — and we have booklets available for you, and we’re going to be sending more over — we’ve done $82 million worth of infrastructure projects, with Delta paying less than $12 million. We had received federal money of $19 million towards that $82 million; from the province, $17 million; and from others, $12 million.

So we built that $82 million of infrastructure projects on about 40 cents to the dollar. With that funding, it allowed us to move available tax dollars into other areas — police, public safety, our fire department, our parks department, our engineering department. We made sure our city is clean. But we couldn’t have done that without the ability of using that infrastructure money to do very major requirements for us.

Secondly, we have a robust economic incentives program. It is designed to redevelop and encourage investment in Delta. It’s sort of a no-brainer. What we do is we use our legislative ability — thanks to the provincial government, under the Local Government Act — to look at areas that need a kick, need some economic growth, need some incentives, and we freeze taxes, for example.

We’ll freeze taxes for from three to five years, and it allows businesses to get major projects out of the ground at the current tax level it was at before they started construction. We get that money back within three to four years — in fact, more.

We have a 37-storey highrise almost ready for occupancy up in North Delta. It’s bringing a major ability for us to put some sustainable growth in that area. It was giving us about $40,000 a year. In about another year, we’ll receive between $300,000 to $500,000 from that development. Again, it didn’t cost us, really, any money, because we wouldn’t have got that increase unless we actually helped them. Those economic incentives totalled $2 million towards that development to help it get out of the ground and get on track and invest in Delta.

We also have a number of industrial sites along River Road. Those contaminated sites I talked to you about before — I just mentioned before — are now robust. We are actually putting incentives in, and we’re getting them development. We’re getting them cleaned up, and we’re getting good, clean industry and great-paying jobs in Delta, thanks to those economic incentives.

What do we ask you for today? On behalf of Mayor Jackson and council, we’d like to make three comments. We need to have the province — and we’re recommending to your committee — to continue the ability of local governments to have economic incentive programs.

In fact, I think we can improve on what we can do at a local government level. It’s proven successful, but we need to ensure that we can work with interested developments to create good, sustainable projects and help them. They need assistance when dealing with contaminated sites, for example — very expensive.

No. 2 is that we are desperately recommending continuing the infrastructure program that the province is working on with the federal government. That has been a key for us, as I mentioned. We need to continue those projects for local communities, local governments in B.C.
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Again, it allows you to do those major infrastructure jobs that you just can’t seem to get to because of the costs. It puts people to work, and it allows you to use available tax dollars in other areas to make your city strong.

The last comment that the mayors asked me to mention is that Delta and the south of the Fraser region, again, need a new crossing over the decaying Massey Tunnel. We have the largest port in Canada in Delta — major goods movements. I don’t know anywhere else in North America where they would sit still and have one lane each way, either in the morning or in the afternoon — one lane.

Our businesses are saying to us that they’re starting to notice a decay in their ability to continue growing and attracting employees because of the traffic congestion along the South Fraser Perimeter Road, River Road and Highway 99. We’re desperate to have that tunnel replaced.

It needs replacement. Perhaps many of us know too much about it. It’s in dire straits, so we’re asking you to ensure and recommend, please, that there is funding from the provincial government, to the federal government, for replacing that bridge.

Again, I’d like to thank you, on behalf of Mayor Jackson and council, for the partnerships that we’ve been able to have with the provincial government over the last 15 years to make Delta strong, and we are strong now. But as Mayor Jackson asked me to say to you, she is not happy with 14th. She wants to be No. 1.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity and the ability for us to move Delta ahead, along with the help, the assistance and the partnership of the provincial government.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Harvie. I will go to committee for any questions they might have.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I really didn’t have too many, because I’m pretty familiar with what’s happening. But I do appreciate Mr. Harvie and Chief Dubord coming forward and giving us your time.

I’m just wondering one thing, though. You talked about improving on the economic incentive program — providing opportunities to improve it — and you said that you had ideas where we could make it better. Are we talking about legislative changes, anything to do with the Local Government Act, or…?

G. Harvie: We find in some areas that it’s a bit restrictive when we are trying to work with the developer, especially on a contaminated piece of property. It’s been quite a few years since those changes were initiated, which is great. But I think it’s time for a refresh and another look at them to see how we can actually help local governments do their jobs better.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay. On a personal note, I’d be glad to sit down and discuss that issue with you further.

S. Gibson: I’ll just pay you a compliment. Coming from Abbotsford, we have our own city police in Abbotsford, and we’d always look at the stats. As you know, I think there are 12 or 13 communities in B.C. that have their own police. We’d always look at the stats in the Lower Mainland. Delta — you guys were always…. Chief, congratulations. You know what I’m talking about.

S. Gibson: These guys were always the lowest in Criminal Code violations per thousand. I don’t know how Delta did it, so way to go, you guys.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We’ve got a pretty tough mayor in Delta. She doesn’t tolerate much when it comes to that sort of thing.

G. Harvie: But again, as I mentioned, it’s the ability to have available funds for your first responders, your public safety programs. The infrastructure and the economic incentives and having the economic growth allow us to do that.

We’ve been able to, as MLA Hamilton remembers from council…. Every year, we’ve ensured that we’ve done some minor improvements rather than waiting ten years to do a major one. That’s helped us keep crime down.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Yeah, and if I could add, it’s been my experience when talking to people, just the general public, and they talk about tax dollars…. You say: “Where do you really want to see them spent?” They always talk about public safety. People are willing to pay a little extra money for a stellar police force. I think we’ve got that in Delta.

N. Dubord: Thank you. It’s a well-invested police department. The corporation does very, very well for both the firefighters and the police department. We’re very fortunate.

Thank you very much, gentlemen. Appreciate you taking the time, coming forward and sharing your views.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We have on teleconference — it was supposed to be Skype; sorry about the technical dif-
[ Page 2514 ]
ficulties — the Ending Violence Association of B.C. — Tracy Porteous.

Again, sorry we couldn’t connect via Skype. That would have been nice. Nevertheless, we’ve got you now. To let you know, you have ten minutes for the presentation. If you can conclude a little bit early, we can go to the committee with a couple of minutes’ worth of questions, if you like.

T. Porteous: Sure. I had a PowerPoint all ready for you so you weren’t just looking at another talking head, which I’m sure you’re tired of, but best-laid plans aren’t always the case.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, get a copy of that PowerPoint to the committees office, and it can be distributed to the committee. Just do it before the 14th of October.

T. Porteous: Thanks for taking my opportunity to speak with you today. I was a late entry. So much appreciated.

A little bit of quick history. The Ending Violence Association of B.C. is a provincewide organization that works on behalf of 240 programs that respond to sexual assaults, domestic violence and child abuse. We’ve been at it for about 25 years, and I’ve been at it for a little longer than that.

In the 1980s, from a national perspective, the Solicitor General of Canada directed the RCMP to take spouse assault more seriously. In the same year, the federal Justice Minister encouraged all of his counterparts in the provinces and territories to do the same — to take spouse assault more seriously. By 1985, right across the country, including the territories, there was policy and legislation and programs either developed or in the beginning stages of development that resulted in really what was a cascade of awareness and policy and programs and supports for victims of domestic violence.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for sexual violence. Even though, under the EVA umbrella, we deal with both domestic and sexual violence, I want to focus my comments on sexual violence today because I think we’re at a crisis point in our province in terms of the lack of response.

In the 1970s, really important work began in our province, as in many other provinces across the country, to develop what were called sexual assault centres or sexual assault/women assault centres. At the same time, changes took place in the Criminal Code.

These sexual assault centres were in place in our province up until 2002, when our government cut all the funding to all of the sexual assault/women assault centres. I think that was an attempt to save funds, but I think it was a mistake. By 2005, at a Premier’s public safety forum in Vancouver, the headquarters of the RCMP told the crowd that if you’re a sex predator in B.C., at that point in time — and nothing has really changed since — you have a 98.5 percent chance of getting away with it.

This is connected, many of us believe, to the fact that our province has more murdered and missing indigenous women than any other province and territory. We don’t have cross-sector sexual assault policy. We don’t even have single-sector policy. We have very little training for people whose jobs it is to understand this particular kind of trauma. We really believe that so much more needs to be done.

Most sexual assault survivors don’t come forward to report. I really, fully believe that if you build it, they will come. We are lacking the structures, supports and bridges that need to be in place, especially for young women to come forward.

The largest vulnerable group for sexual assault is girls between the ages of 14 to 24. There’s no question that boys are also victimized in this way, but the epidemic really seems to target girls.

I think right now, more than ever, more than any time in our history, we have an opportunity to create a movement in this area. In the last couple of years alone, social media, in terms of Ghomeshi and Cosby and, more recently, Justice Camp and the sexual assaults being disclosed at universities and the sexual harassment of RCMP officers and people in the military….

Across the world, there are protests of university students talking about the need to respond and be more responsive to sexual assault. I’m a sports fan. I was quite interested, even recently in Rio, that a number of women across the country were disclosing that there were lots of sexual assaults happening during the Olympic Games that we didn’t hear about in mainstream media.

In the aftermath of most earthquakes and floods and tsunamis and hurricanes, sexual assault skyrockets immediately, in terms of women being looted, and in the long-term recovery period. It’s almost like we have this great responsibility in front of us to create some larger change.

We estimate there are about 60,000 sexual and physical assaults against women each year in our province alone. Domestic violence cases, for example, constitute the number one crime that Crown counsel deals with.
[ Page 2515 ]
In 2002, there were about 9,000. By 2009, that went to 12,000. In 2011 and ’12, it went to 13,000. There are very few women that report domestic violence and sexual assault. With domestic violence, only 22 percent report. With sexual assault, only 5 percent report.

The other thing we need to keep in mind is that we know that the evidence suggests that most guys who commit sexual assault have done it before and will do it again. There’s a predatory nature to this crime that we need to get a hold of so that we can protect young women and all women and boys and young men and trans folks. Also, the earlier we can intervene in the lives of predators and the earlier we can intervene in the lives of survivors, the less this is going to cost us down the road in terms of the need for growing, escalating social service and justice costs.

Campus sexual assault. Much kudos to the government for mandating colleges and universities for having to develop a sexual assault policy for their institutions. We’re in the process of helping many of them. That’s a good thing. But it remains a fact that there are more domestic violence homicides happening year after year for the last four years, and sexual assault is on the increase.

Now, it is unfortunate that you don’t have my slides, and I will send them. If you look at the increase in contacts for the 240 services under the EVA umbrella, which are all community-based victim support programs — not shelters, not police programs but community-based services, where it’s really easy to get to and people have not to worry that somebody’s going to take things out of their hands…. In 2007, they had 25,000 contacts; by 2012, 40,000 contacts.

That’s just the 69 community-based services. If you look at all the programs under the EVA umbrella in that same five-year period, their overall contacts have gone from about 60,000 to 90,000. If you look at the formula for their funding, it’s been the same amount of funding that those programs have had for the last 20 years.

If you look at the graph for funding and cost for policing over a ten-year period, it’s at a high incline — the same for the Ministry of Education, the same for Health. I know that the answer to everything isn’t funding, but the answer to a growing epidemic of women who experience sexual assault…. Part of the answer is certainly making sure that there are supports and services there for them when they need them.

A number of years ago, a previous Minister of Finance — I think it was Colin Hansen — said that when people are in crisis in our province, we’re going to be there for them. If it’s a forest fire or if it’s a flood, we’re going to be there for them.

I think we need to expand the view of a crisis to include the kinds of things that happen to girls and women. I just don’t think it’s the answer any longer to leave these programs to languish with anywhere between 200 and 300 clients on a caseload.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Sorry to interrupt. Just about a minute or so left, please.

T. Porteous: Okay. The last thing I would say is that our Premier herself had the courage to come out to say that she had experienced this stranger sexual assault when she was a girl. I applaud her for that, and I really encourage this government to follow that with looking to see how much more you might be able to do with other survivors of this heinous crime. Thank you very much.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much, Tracy. I’ll ask the committee for questions, please.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Tracy, and thank you for the extraordinary work you’ve done for so many years in the province. I think all of us know the kind of effort that you put in, in continuing this work.

I think your example of crisis is a really good term and a really good analogy — that we are there in other crises, that government steps in, in other crises, and surely this is one that needs to be recognized for what it is.

I’ve heard, I know, as probably others have around this table, the kinds of challenges in funding that the community organizations are facing. They really are in the front line. They are the ones who are seeing the individuals coming without any kinds of supports and, in fact, in many cases, having to go back to violent relationships. I think this really is a crisis.

I wanted to also mention one other piece that was brought to our attention just this last year. We had a number of students from Victoria High School come forward to talk about the issue of consent and to meet with the Minister of Education to talk about including consent and the issue of consent in the sex ed program in the new curriculum.

I just wonder if that’s a piece that anyone’s raised. They certainly were raising it based on starting at grade 3, grade 4, beginning with the very basics around what consent means and teaching it in a very basic way so that as students got older, they were well aware of it. I just wondered if there had been any discussion about that at the prevention end, I guess, while we also deal with the crisis end.

T. Porteous: Thank you, Carole. On the prevention front, one really good thing that we’ve been doing for the last five years is going across the province, me and the B.C. Lions, talking to high schools students — so grades 8 to 12 — about consent, about what constitutes sexual assault and about what is sexual harassment, criminal harassment and violence in relationships.

Rather than focusing on the victim or the potential offender, we’re focusing on all of the power of the bystanders to speak up and not let this happen, in the same way that we encourage people to speak up about drinking and
[ Page 2516 ]
driving or to speak up about wearing seatbelts. So we are, but it is a drop in the bucket.

I applaud the idea to have consent training at younger and younger ages, because it really is a life skill. People should understand what constitutes a physical boundary and not pass it over. For a long time, we’ve been teaching girls how not to get raped. But I think it’s time — over time — that we teach boys, and everybody, what healthy human boundaries are and how to have a healthy relationship.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you again, Tracy, for coming forward. It’s a very important subject that none of us here take lightly. That’s for sure. I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. Have a good day.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I guess that being all to come forward, the committee stands adjourned.

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

1) Fort Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce	Bev Vandersteen
2) Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association	Terri O’Neill

9) Oliver Women’s Institute	Helen Overnes
10) Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council	Morgane Oger
11) FortisBC	Doug Stout
12) Camosun College Student Society	Michael Glover
13) United Fisherman and Allied Workers’ Union	Conrad Lewis
14) Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping	Dr. Richard Wiefelspuett
15) BC Doctors of Optometry	Dr. Gurpreet Leekha
16) Out in Schools	Brandon Yan
17) Corporation of Delta	George Harvie
	Neil Dubord

Chair:	Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)
Deputy Chair:	Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)
Members:	Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)
	Robin Austin (Skeena NDP)
	Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)
	Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)
	George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)
	Jennifer Rice (North Coast NDP)
	Jackie Tegart (Fraser-Nicola BC Liberal)
	John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)
Clerk:	Susan Sourial

3) Selkirk College Students’ Union	Zachary Bunting
	Gabrielle Faludi
	Kavy James
	Robin Legere
4) Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society; Boundary Invasive Species Society	Zoe Kirk
	Lisa Scott
	Barb Stewart

5) Vernon Women’s Transition House Society	Brooke McLardy
6) Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy	Alana Murdoch
	Penny Tees
7) Ben Cardinal

8) Support Summerland Schools	Meghann Pleasance
	Megan Steele
	Jane Campardo

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

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FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES