Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 105 — Tuesday, October 4, 2016 (HTML)

Auditorium 1, Prince George Civic Centre
808 Canada Games Way, Prince George, B.C.

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

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

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

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES


CONTENTS
Page
Presentations	2551
K. Greene
G. Paille
M. Mobley
B. Newell
A. Hadland
K. Thompson
L. Ackerman
C. Griffith
S. Farrell
R. Staschuk
J. Johnston
H. Crowley
T. Fedorkiw
D. Jones
W. Lewis
S. Nycholat
H. Reiser
D. King
C. Pohl
C. Ray
L. Wendling
D. Roze
D. Snyder
S. Hamilton
R. Knight
L. Pattie
C. Kinch
T. Bennett
S. Bouman
C. McBride
S. Blyth
P. Harris
C. Giroux-Schmidt
T. Morin Nakashima
R. Witherly
R. Giroday

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

We’re an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly, with a mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance. The committee must issue a report by November 15, 2016, with our recommendations for the 2017 provincial budget.

Our committee is holding a number of public hearings in communities around the province, and British Columbians can participate via teleconference, video conference or Skype. There are a number of ways to submit your ideas to the committee. British Columbians can complete an on-line survey or send a written, audio or video submission through our website, www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We invite all British Columbians to contribute to this process. For those of you who are taking part today, we thank you for taking the time to participate. All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as we prepare our final report to the Legislative Assembly. Just a reminder to everyone who is sending in submissions that the deadline is midnight on Friday, October 14, 2016.

Just first to say a big thank-you to all those people in Dawson Creek. We expected we would be in Dawson Creek today. We weren’t able to get in because of weather, so we’re in Prince George. So thank you to all those who have had to be rescheduled to be able to come in on conference call.

The meeting is going to 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 the end of the meeting, with five minutes for each presenter.

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

Now I’d like to start by asking the committee members to introduce themselves.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We also have assisting the committee today Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office, and Hansard Services are also here helping us record the proceedings. Thanks to Steve and Alexandrea for being here and helping us out as well.

We’ll start with our first presenter. Just to let people know, we may have a little bit of a break between each of the presenters, as we have to call each presenter to be able to get them in.

I’ll begin. As you heard, ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions, and I’ll turn it over to you.

K. Greene: Hello, hon. members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I am Kelly Greene, and I am speaking on behalf of Richmond Schools Stand United, a grassroots, non-partisan group advocating for improved public education. The Richmond school district represents over 20,000 students in 48 schools, and we are helping our communities to connect and speak with a voice that is stronger together.

Every school in Richmond is facing the same challenges, and these challenges are being felt throughout British Columbia. Schools are lacking basic resources, which are either fundraised through PACs or directly paid by parents. Schools are lacking sufficient support teachers and staff, such as teacher-librarians and educational assistants. A disproportionate number of schools in Richmond, when compared to the rest of the province, are physically deficient — for example, with lead
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piping, building envelope failures and seismically dangerous structures.

The fundamental root of these problems is the lack of stable and sufficient funding, the incorrect calculation of capacity and the approval process for the seismic mitigation program by the province.

Starting with the most easily remedied of the problems Richmond students are facing is the extreme vulnerability of schools in an earthquake. Currently, 19 schools in Richmond are rated H1 and H2, which were to be repaired on a priority basis, plus another four schools rated H3, which are also vulnerable but to a lesser catastrophic extent. In Richmond, if the big one strikes during school hours, almost half of our schools will collapse on the children, educators and staff inside.

The B.C. government has delayed seismic remediation funding in Richmond on the basis that our district is not at high enough utilization, with no upgrading since 2011. However, at the most vulnerable schools, many are operating at 100 percent or greater. We find withholding life-saving seismic remediation to be morally questionable.

Minister Bernier has recently recanted the 95 percent capacity rule but is still asking for utilization improvements before releasing seismic funding to our district. The parents in communities of Richmond do not find this acceptable and are asking for the immediate release of funding for multiple seismic projects throughout our city. The world watched in horror as schools collapsed in Sichuan, China, in the earthquake of May 2009. The province has an obligation to prevent that from happening in B.C.

We would also like to dispute the way that the provincial government calculates capacity. Not only is the ministry asking for high utilization, but the ministry calculates utilization in a way that overinflates the number of seats available in a district.

In Richmond, the difference between what the district knows will fit into its schools and what the ministry has calculated will fit amounts to 8 percent, or 1,135 seats. So when the ministry asks districts to aim for the loose target of 95 percent, what that does is force the district to operate at 102 percent. There is no educational benefit to operating at such a high rate, and, in fact, many negative outcomes arise from operating so close to or over capacity.

A school near capacity does not have the flexibility to adapt to fluctuations in enrolment rates, nor does it have the ability to offer space necessary for quality education, like a music room. Nor can it offer specialized spaces, such as a quiet room for students with learning disabilities or undiagnosed challenges.

Additionally, there is a critical shortage of space available for licensed child care, and the government currently considers child care rooms in schools to be empty classrooms. These child care facilities are invaluable supports that our families in Richmond depend on.

The Richmond school board has also noted at the October 3 board meeting that the ministry does not give consideration for school classrooms which are used for adult literacy or the provincially supported StrongStart preschool program. Again, school facilities are in use for education, but those rooms are still considered empty classrooms.

With respect to an ideal operating rate, I have personally consulted with many business people, from manufacturing to high tech to professional consulting, and they have all stated that no business should aim to operate at over 85 percent capacity, due to the risk of complete failure of the business. So a high capacity rate is not a best educational practice, nor is it a best business practice. We are asking for a maximum utilization rate of 85 percent.

Finally, we are asking for the current per-pupil funding model to be reconsidered and changed to provide districts with stable, predictable and sufficient funding. Support staff has been cut to an all-time low. Teacher-librarians and in-class supports are a fraction of what they used to be. In my son’s school, for example, this year the teacher-librarian was cut from a 0.9 to a 0.7 position.

Why is this a problem? Because there are more students than ever in classrooms and early literacy is so important to a student’s success throughout their lifetime. Prior to the cutbacks, multiple times per week primary classes would be divided into smaller work groups and half sent to the library. Without one-on-one support made possible by a teacher-librarian, it would be impossible to develop strong reading skills with 22 or more four-, five- and six-year-olds. This is just one example. There are hundreds more.

Even with these record-level cuts to educational services, administrative costs and building maintenance, Richmond school district was not able to cut enough to meet the shortfall of $3.3 million this year, which was the total amount after the ministry rescinded part of the cuts asked for earlier in the year. Our school district is in the process of closing three schools, and the estimated operating cost savings is $750,000. To Richmond residents, the cost savings of closing schools seems minute compared to the province’s $1.9 billion surplus.

As parents and taxpayers, we are left with two questions. How will the next year’s $3 million shortfall be paid for by the Richmond school district? And will the closures guarantee seismic upgrading projects to be started in our city?

The long-term negative consequences of closing schools will be felt by students, parents, staff and communities and greatly outweigh the savings for the province should these schools close. Educating and supporting the next generation of citizens will create a prosperous British Columbia and a robust, inclusive society. A quality public education is a social good that benefits every member of society, whether they have a child directly enrolled or not.
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We concur with the recommendation of the last two standing committees to provide adequate, stable and sustainable funding to school boards to provide all children with the well-rounded educational opportunities they need to reach their full potential. We further ask for a revised calculation of school facility capacity so that students can learn in a facility which supports the B.C. curriculum.

Finally, we ask for multiple seismic upgrade projects to be funded and commenced immediately, with the expectation of continuous upgrading of Richmond schools, until our over 7,000 at-risk children are safe.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Kelly. We’ll move to questions now.

R. Austin: Thanks, Kelly. It’s Robin Austin here. I wanted to thank you for making this presentation. We’ve heard a lot as we have gone around the province — not just this year, but in past years — around the issue of inadequate funding, stable funding, for our school system. I think it’s really good, though, to have it come from a group of concerned parents. We obviously hear it from school trustees and from those who work within the school establishment, but it’s great that you as a grassroots group have come to make this presentation.

I think there are two main issues that you bring up. One, of course, is seismic upgrading. We know that’s a capital project that we certainly will look at in terms of our recommendations. The other is that most of your problems that you refer to would be solved with proper, sustainable, stable funding. That’s the message that we’ve heard, I’d say, throughout the province, one which this committee has spoken to in past reports and, I’m sure, will speak to again in this one.

My question to you, though, is: can you — not necessarily right now, especially on teleconference — provide this committee with the details as to why there’s a discrepancy between the Ministry of Education’s way of saying what your student capacity is in Richmond and that which the Richmond school district is bringing together? I think it would be interesting for our members here to look at that as we go through our deliberations.

R. Austin: Thanks. If you can just send that to the committee within the next few days, that will be great.

Thank you so much, Kelly, and thank you for rescheduling. I’m sorry we weren’t able to catch you this morning, but we appreciate you coming on. We appreciate your presentation. You gave a very clear picture of the situation you’re facing in your school district.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We’ll just take a brief recess, committee members, while we wait for the next call.

C. James (Deputy Chair): On the line, we have the B.C. Wildlife Federation, region 7B, Peace-Liard — Gerald Paille.

Thank you, Gerald. The presentation will be ten minutes, and five minutes for questions. We appreciate your patience at rebooking. I’ll turn it over to you.

G. Paille: No problem. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to make some points. As you already heard, I am the regional president for the B.C. Wildlife Federation. I’m also the chairman of the B.C. Wildlife Federation’s wildlife allocation committee.

Just to start off, a little bit about our region. Up here we’ve got four clubs — Chetwynd, Hudson’s Hope, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John — and about 1,700 members.

I know you’ve already heard some presentations from other BCWF representatives, with a focus on lack of funding, lack of staffing, additional funding opportunities and moving to a society model. I’ll be focusing on some of those points but for our region.

Hunting is an extremely important activity to our region, not only for sustenance, recreation and the economy but for resident hunting, non-resident hunting and First Nations. There are about 5,000 hunting licences sold in our region every year, which I believe is about the highest per-capita rate across the province.

A survey was done in 2013 indicating that in that year, there were about 7,900 hunters that came to Region 7B to hunt, spending about 120,000 days. About $38 million was the estimate in expenditures, which was also the highest for any region in the province.

Our small businesses rely a lot on the hunting trade up here. In fact, talking to our local business outdoor store owner the other day, he said the week before moose season is busier than the Christmas season for them.

On to some of the impacts we face up here. We’ve got, as you know, a very active oil and gas sector. We’ve got forestry. We already have two reservoirs from B.C. Hydro, with a third on its way. Our region and our gun clubs don’t really take a position for or against those types of activities on the landscape, but we do like to strongly advocate for some mandatory offsetting compensation for fish, wildlife and habitat.
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When Williston Lake was created, a study estimated that previous to the lake, there were about 12,500 moose in the impoundment area. Those were reduced down to about 4,000. The Williston wildlife compensation program really has done little to replace those moose, which has caused a big impact on both First Nations and the life of hunters.

Now we have Site C, which is the largest public investment project ever in British Columbia. We had the joint review panel up here a couple of years ago, which the North Peace Rod and Gun Club presented at. They recognized significant impacts on First Nations. As a result of that, we’ve had a lot of funding for land transfers, revenue-sharing and contracting opportunities for First Nations.

We’re not really sure…. We haven’t been able to find out where that money has come from or if it has been included in the costing for Site C — the estimated $8 billion or $9 billion or whatever it is today.

We had Dr. John Nagy, from the University of Alberta, do an assessment. The North Peace Rod and Gun Club hired him to review B.C. Hydro’s environmental impact study. His conclusion, as he presented to the joint review committee for Site C, is that Hydro did a terrible job in terms of the impact on wildlife and not so bad a job on fish. As a result of that, we also offered up a document to the joint review panel that recommended that Hydro create a trust of about $400 million, of which the interest on it could be used as a compensation package for fish, wildlife and habitat.

Recently we’ve had the Pacific NorthWest LNG project approved by the federal government. We don’t know the status in terms of the proponents — whether they’re going to go ahead or not — but Progress Energy has about 300 wells in our area right now. They’ve also secured sites for up to 13,000 wells, and the estimate is that they’d need to bring on about 200 a year to supply the gas for that project. We’re really concerned about what effect that might have on wildlife.

Our recommendation is that there needs to be funding up front to offset the impacts of projects like Site C and the oil and gas and forestry activity in our area — funds dedicated to fish and wildlife, not for general revenue.

Another trend we’ve seen lately is government coming to us to help fund projects or supporting them in applications to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation or the fish and wildlife compensation program. We really think that a lot of those applications should be core responsibilities of government. There just isn’t the funding to make those happen. The recommendation from us is that we need to see all the revenue from fish and wildlife licence sales go into fish and wildlife and habitat management, and not just into general revenue.

Another issue we have up here is lack of capacity. In other words, we don’t have enough people to do the work that’s involved in properly managing our wildlife, fish and habitat. I sit on a committee related to the moose enhancement project, related to the work Al Gorley has done. Our area had some possibilities turned back because our local people are saying they don’t have the capacity to do it.

Part of the problem — it might be a good problem — is that we have a set of collaborative management agreements with First Nations up here around land and wildlife and parks, and a lot of the existing fish and wildlife budget from here, and staff time, is used to deal with the commitments to First Nations. We totally support collaboration with First Nations, and we recognize their rights in terms of fish, wildlife and habitat, but we think that dealing with those commitments has largely taken away from staff’s ability to look after other core responsibilities up here. The recommendation is that government should be providing funding to offset those commitments to First Nations.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You have one minute left, Gerald. Then we’ll have a bit of time for questions.

I submitted a brief. In that brief, there was also a bit about crop damage. Since I’ve submitted, I’ve learned that it’s maybe not totally accurate. I’ve got a phone call out to somebody who’s got some expertise in that area, and I’d like an opportunity to resubmit the brief with an updated portion on wildlife damage to crops.

C. James (Deputy Chair): That would be terrific. Just make sure it comes in by October 14 at midnight so we can make sure it’s part of the record.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. We’ve had similar comments along the way from other folks who are concerned about the potential for declining wildlife. I think the committee is well aware that hunting is not only a sport but a way to provide sustenance for hundreds, even thousands, of families in this region.

You may have heard that our minister, Steve Thomson, expressed a concern recently about the declining moose population. He has assigned staff to work on that project. You may have heard about that. Mike Morris, one of our MLAs here from Prince George, has lamented a number of times that what he sees are declining populations.

What would you say would be…? In your terms, Gerald, what would be one practical way that government could provide a better environment for the protec-
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tion and the growth of, for example, moose and other animals that are used for meat and for feeding families? That’s my question, really, to you.

G. Paille: Well, a report was just released today. It has an update on the work that’s being done in the Cariboo and the Prince George area. Pretty much the same thing applies up here. We’ve got a lot of linear features and activity on the ground. We’ve had habitat destruction. So, No. 1, some augmentation, replacement of habitat. No. 2 is predators. We know that predators, including wolves and bears, have a significant impact on not only neonatal ungulates but on calves, older calves and adults.

G. Heyman: I actually have a lot of questions, but in the interests of time, I’ll just ask a couple.

We have heard other presentations by other regional Wildlife Federation representatives. Almost everyone points to lack of adequate funding or staff for compensation. You suggest that all of the revenue from licence sales for fish and wildlife be devoted to conservation activities. I just want to clarify whether you think that will be adequate or just a start.

My second question is…. I’ve heard a lot of concern expressed over the years at the fragmenting of wildlife habitat by the expansion of oil and gas well development. It both fragments habitat and interferes with migratory routes. I’d be interested in your commentary on that.

Finally, I’ll ask you the same question I asked another Wildlife Federation representative and others. A number of people have commented, both in these hearings and outside these hearings, on the fragmented approach to management of industrial development impacts on lands by a variety of ministries without any kind of overarching view on cumulative impacts that cross a number of ministry lines.

Some have suggested that there be an overall body that looks at all natural resource development and cumulative impacts. I’m curious to know whether that is something that you have thought about or heard discussed in your area or if you think that would be helpful in managing development while minimizing cumulative impacts.

G. Paille: Your first question. No, it would not be adequate, but it would be better than we are now. I think there’s a $5 million or $6 million adjustment needed just in terms of what government is putting into fish and wildlife management as compared to revenues from licences. But when compared to other jurisdictions similar to ours, that’s still woefully inadequate.

The second question was about the impact of fragmenting habitat. Certainly, the large reservoirs have prevented migration of animals. One concern is for grizzly bears. I know the Y-to-Y folks up here are working on a project to see how that could be mitigated. I went to a predator-prey conference in Revelstoke in spring of 2016, and it’s absolutely clear that roads, cutlines, roads up to windmills and forestry cutblocks make predators much more efficient. There is no doubt about that.

As far as your third question goes…. I know forestry and fish and wildlife up here work fairly well together. Any time that habitat burns are suggested, I believe — from what I’m told internally, anyway — the forestry people here are ready to back up those kinds of wildlife burn initiatives.

One comment I would make is that the Oil and Gas Commission seems to be able to act with impunity at times — with a fast stroke of a pen and the willingness to get things done very quickly — without, maybe, sufficient concern over what effects or impacts it might have on wildlife.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Gerald, and thank you for your rescheduling today. We really appreciate your presentation.

Thank you for rescheduling. We have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions, so I will turn it over to you.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for having me. I’ve been the literacy outreach coordinator here in Dawson Creek for over six years now.

I would like to also thank the committee for the recommendations they’ve made in the past regarding regular continued funding for community literacy coordination in British Columbia. The money we receive from the Ministry of Education has helped run literacy and learning programs in communities across the province and right here in Dawson Creek for at least one more year.

Decoda Literacy Solutions, the provincial literacy network, continues to work to secure multi-year funding, as a lack of dedicated funding makes literacy work in this province and in my community unstable and uncertain. It becomes increasingly difficult, year after year, to expand or create new programs in an effort to fill our com-
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munity’s needs. We are hopeful that the recent strategic consultation process with the Ministry of Education will help us have a clear discussion about outcomes, as well as the funding to support those outcomes.

Now, traditionally, literacy has been viewed as simply reading and writing. However, literacy in its entirety is so much more.

It’s about how we communicate with one another and how we deliver, process and make sense of information. It’s about our health, our quality of life, our understanding of the world around us and the resiliency of individuals and our communities. It has the power to improve health, grow economies and increase security and civic participation. Through literacy development, individuals, families and communities become stronger.

Now, about 40 percent of adults in British Columbia don’t have the literacy skills they need to achieve their goals and to function in the broader society and to develop their knowledge and potential. That represents over one million people who are under-equipped with today’s technology-and-information-based society. As a result, new knowledge-intensive occupations have become increasingly out of reach.

The positive impact of literacy funding in our communities can’t be denied. It affects everything from personal health and employment to the economy and civic participation. Funding enables us to reach all corners of the community, including adults, youth, children and families, seniors, aboriginals and immigrants.

Here in Dawson Creek, our task group members represent the school district, college, literacy organizations, the early-years sector, seniors, employment services and other community service organizations. Locally, we maintain nine Bookshare locations, including one French language Bookshare at Frank Ross Elementary. People of all ages and abilities are able to access a variety of reading material and games for free.

We are also in our sixth year of a partnership which provides weekly technology classes for our community seniors at no cost. In an effort to keep our seniors active and engaged, we also host regular seniors’ game times at the Dawson Creek public library, and we give presentations on the importance of lifelong learning. Literacy Now provides information to individuals and organizations as well as referrals to other community agencies.

I’ve been contacted by folks looking for everything from interactive parent-child groups to settlement services, making inquiries about adult learning and volunteer opportunities within our community. We provide thousands of books, resources and learning materials at local events and programs. We sit on boards and tables, including Success By 6 and Building Learning Together societies, the early learning division of school district 69. We co-plan local family-friendly events with our community partners and work tirelessly to increase awareness and the importance and value of literacy in our community and in our province.

I’d like to ask the committee once more to please make the recommendation to the province to make a commitment to provide regular annual funding in the amount of $2½ million for literacy in British Columbia.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Michele, and thank you for giving us a really good picture of the work you do in your community. I’ll open it up now for questions.

I have a question, Michele. I just wondered if you’re seeing any particular group in your community or any pressure in any particular area more than others right now. We’ve had a good snapshot of other folks’ literacy areas who are feeling pressure in new immigrants or in the area of seniors. I wondered, in your communities that you serve, if there’s one particular demographic that you’re seeing more pressure in than others.

M. Mobley: Right now I would say it would be adult education. We have a lot of adult learners in our community who are trying to go through the retraining process right now because of all the layoffs in the oil and gas industry over the last year or so.

There are a lot of folks wanting to go back to school who didn’t graduate. Since the province has eliminated the GED program, it’s a whole new process on being able to graduate. It’s a lot more time-consuming, not just for the learners but also for the literacy supports in the community, so we’re seeing a lot of pressure there. We’re working with the school district to set up something where folks could achieve their adult Dogwood in partnership with the local literacy society. But the demand almost outweighs what can be provided. It’s hard to keep up.

C. James (Deputy Chair): No, it was a good answer. We’ve got time. No worries.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. This committee is on record of being very supportive of the initiatives of literacy and improving literacy around the province.

A couple of quick questions. How do you find your clients, your customers — maybe just to use that word? In my own community, I have found from time to time — and I may have shared this with the committee — that there are people who are successful in many ways but do have the capacity to hide their literacy issues. As a result, they never hit the radar of people like you, and yet those folks who may need to have help don’t get it. So I’m wondering: how do you get past the embarrassment of adult
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learners who are successful, often, but have very limited literacy skills?

M. Mobley: Well, I would say that in Dawson Creek we are very, very fortunate. We’re not a terribly large community — we’re about 12,000 people — and after a couple of years, you get to know everybody. The literacy network and the learning network overall in Dawson Creek is quite tight, and it’s quite extensive, and we’ve been really fortunate that all of our community organizations work very well together. When somebody has a client within another organization that they suspect might need some help, it becomes that much easier to make that connection and to get them where they need to be. Like I said, we are all so tight. It is a very good network.

S. Gibson: Another supplementary question, if I may. It’s been my experience teaching university students that the males, the boys, have more problems than the females. I would wonder what your reaction is to that experience of mine.

M. Mobley: I can’t speak to that specifically because Literacy Now does more community coordination than we do one-on-one. It would be a great question for the literacy society, as they deal with the one-on-one, individual clients. I work at more the organizational level, so I would help other organizations coordinate their own….

M. Mobley: I think it depends on what you get them in. I have a husband who wasn’t a reader, and he found the right type of non-fiction, and the whole world opened up.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Michele. Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your patience in having to do this via conference call. We appreciate it. Thank you to you and all of you for your work.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We are too. We wish we could have been there in person.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have next the regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen — Bill Newell. Are you on the line, Bill?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Wonderful. Thanks for your patience in being re-booked. The presentation…. You have up to ten minutes and then five minutes for questions by the committee. So I’ll turn it over to you.

B. Newell: Very good. Do I have our two MLAs in the room — Dan Ashton and Jackie Tegart?

B. Newell: Well, I understand you had a tough piece of travel, so thanks for taking the time to reorganize and at least allow us to have a telephone conversation. I appreciate the opportunity.

We have four issues that we discussed at our board of directors which we thought we could bring to the attention of the Finance Committee.

One was the whole issue of rural roads. For those that know regional districts, you know we’re not responsible for roads; the province is. Nevertheless, citizens don’t really understand the difference, so whenever there’s an issue with a road in a rural area, they’re usually contacting their area director or somebody else that’s on staff at the regional district. And we appreciate that. We understand that most normal citizens don’t really understand who does what in government. They just want the service.

For us, we have a good relationship with our local Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure people and Argo. But we don’t quite understand how the process works to get a pothole addressed or how the whole management thing works with regards to signage, vehicles parked in the road allowance, garbage that seems to accumulate in the road allowance. We do, from time to time, do a quick hit with cleanup, or when we get calls we pass
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them on, but we never really have the opportunity to get the loop closed. We don’t know if they respond or what to do if they don’t.

Then, on the other side of that, there’s the whole rehabilitation and repaving of roads in rural areas, especially in our high-density areas where we have a settlement. I understand that there is some sort of a road inspection program and there’s a prioritization. We just need to figure out how to get in on that and allow our elected officials the opportunity to comment on what they think the priorities should be in our area.

That was the one thing, Madam Chair. One was the confusion on roles. Another was maintenance, and the other was a rehabilitation and repaving issue.

Now, did you want questions after each issue, or do you want me to go right through?

C. James (Deputy Chair): If you want to go right through if you’re able to, Bill, and then we’ll go to questions at the end.

B. Newell: Sure. Let me talk about healthy communities, then. I mean, we all know the onerous contribution that the province puts into health care in British Columbia. It’s over 50 percent of your budget. My understanding is that about 96 percent of that is for acute care.

There was a process initiated a few years ago about healthy communities. The province did a good job of coming around to all member municipalities in the regional district and getting us to sign on to the healthy communities charter. We formed a local healthy-living coalition, and we’ve developed all sorts of groups around the regional district in order to work on this.

But there’s no money for the support and operation of these coalitions. For our healthy-living coalition…. I mean, they come to the regional district, and we’ve been giving them a grant each year for the last five years to more or less operate at a very low level. You know how these things work. When you develop a volunteer group, if they spend all their time looking for grants or if they get frustrated in that they don’t have any support staff or they can’t really do the administration necessary to move forward, they just sort of wander away, and it’s been a waste of time.

The regional district and our board of directors is going to continue supporting them. We participate, but I think this is going to die a slow death if the province doesn’t provide some sort of support for this infrastructure that I think they’ve created, especially in the Interior and especially in the regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen. IHA is very supportive with their staff, but that doesn’t help the volunteer group get done what they need to get done.

The third issue I’m sure you’re getting hit with all the time. It’s all about infrastructure. For us, for our green infrastructure, especially our potable water and our wastewater systems, the deficit is just growing on that. Infrastructure is so old, and there are demands for new services all the time.

We’re always trying to catch up with the amount of wastewater going into our lakes, which are very important in the South Okanagan and the Similkameen. All of those nice houses along the lakes are operating on septic systems. As they age, or as they have aged, you have to wonder about the condition of their septic systems.

We installed a system along the west side of Osoyoos Lake a few years ago. That was a big commitment on behalf of those citizens and the town of Osoyoos. But there’s Skaha Lake, Okanagan Lake and all sorts of other lakes, and the cost of infrastructure is growing exponentially just to maintain it, let alone to get new stuff in.

I know the province has good programs and that you work with Canada to get your infrastructure programs out, but I don’t think we’re keeping up with the demand. So if you do have any extra dollars, I’d probably say that’s the highest priority for our regional district at this point. It’s to just try and catch up with the water and wastewater.

Then the fourth issue was, really, our need for additional funding for FireSmarting. Back in 2004, we developed our FireSmarting master plan and developed some prescriptions. We’ve put probably over $2 million into FireSmarting specific areas around the regional district. Now our plan is old.

The way your program works right now is that a local government can apply for up to $15,000, but they have to match that. It’s tough for a regional district to find matching dollars if we don’t have a service, for one thing, and secondly, the $30,000 probably won’t get a FireSmarting master plan anyway, so we think that there needs to be more money. Especially looking at the Fort McMurray situation this year and what happened in the Okanagan back in 2003, we can’t lose sight of the possibilities in this very dry area of the province.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Bill — a good, thorough overview of all the issues you’re facing. We’ll go to questions, now.

Good afternoon, Bill. In one of my communities, in Clinton, they partnered around FireSmart with the local mill and the community and private property owners to look at FireSmarting private property and selling the wood to the mill, with the mill to come in with the expertise. We’re really tight on FireSmart money, but that community, with the mill, thought: “There’s got to be a way that we can do this locally.” Has there been any discussion around that sort of thing?

B. Newell: I know we partner with the First Nations whenever we do work. In fact, most of our prescriptions
[ Page 2559 ]
are filled by either the Penticton Indian Band or the Lower Similkameen Indian band. Those are the two main ones.

As far as the development of a plan or somebody putting money into the development of a plan, I don’t think we’ve actually approached anybody to help us with that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a question around your health community’s infrastructure that you were saying has been built up now. I wonder if you could give a couple of examples of the programming that those grants are providing, just so we have an idea of the kinds of things that you’re looking at in your community.

B. Newell: We started this out, probably back in 2011 or ’12. In our regional district when IHA came around, it was the city of Penticton, the regional district, Penticton Indian Band, IHA, school district 67. I think they were the five partners. Then we had our number of private citizens, and Dr. Gerry Karr was the visionary in getting this healthy-living coalition going and attracting the members to it and getting everybody to sign on to the healthy-living charter.

Since then, they’ve sort of been struggling, trying to get organized and figuring out their role and then the method of delivery. Over the last couple of years, the money that the regional district has put in…. We’ve been putting in about $18,000 a year. It really hires a part-time administrator for them, just in order to help them organize their meetings. They have a couple of conferences a year for their volunteers.

They have probably six or seven local chapters, going all the way from Princeton down to Osoyoos. There are some very active ones and some that are more or less going dormant. It’s really whether you can get a champion in a certain area or not. If you can, you’re very successful. If you can’t, you aren’t. But then, we know with volunteers that they get tired or they get busy or they get frustrated, and you go through cycles.

I think as far as what the regional district board of directors will look at, it’s: “What have we received for our $18,000?” Really, it’s just supporting these other volunteer groups across the regional district. I’m not sure what other tangible benefits there have been.

D. Ashton: Bill, thanks very much for your comments, especially on the interregional stuff that you and I have talked about before, regarding septic and sewer disposal. Also, as we know, we’ve had some very good meetings in the past with ministerial staff at UBCM. But you have my word we’ll bring it up again during our discussions about opportunities, not only for the RDOS but for other regional districts and communities facing the same thing.

R. Austin: Hi, Bill. I just wanted to comment on the first part of your presentation around the process for getting things like potholes fixed. I don’t know how it works in your neck of the woods. But up where I am, in Skeena, the local contractor for snow removal and maintenance of the roads, Nechako Northcoast…. They do in between Smithers and Terrace, all the way out to Rupert.

East of them is a company called Billabong. Billabong has the contract to, essentially, maintain the roads in the summertime. If people make complaints to us, to our office, about potholes or garbage that needs picking up and stuff like that, we simply contact the ministry. They send people out from Billabong.

I would imagine that where you are, a similar thing happens with your local contractor.

Do you know if your regional district ever gets a response as to whether the work has been done? Do they get some sort of closing-the-loop type of thing?

R. Austin: Yeah. I believe they do. From my office’s point of view, they certainly get back in touch with us to tell us it’s done. If we make a complaint or pass on a complaint from my office, then the ministry gets back to us to say: “Yes, this is who they’ve sent out, and this is what’s been done.”

B. Newell: Yeah. I’m not sure it’s quite that robust here. I think there may be a difference between when they get back to an MLA and when they get back to a local government. I’m not sure.

R. Austin: Okay. Anyway, I would try that. We have annual meetings with the MLA office and the contractor and the ministry to try and highlight issues both prior to the winter and after the winter. That’s where you might be able to get in on that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Bill, for your presentation. We really appreciate it. Thanks again for your flexibility in moving the times around.
[ Page 2560 ]

We have ten minutes for your presentation and then five minutes for questions afterwards, so I will turn it over to you.

Well, this is awkward without face-to-face, but good afternoon, Chair and committee members.

I’m a fruit producer from the Peace region, and I wish to make the following comments regarding what I see is our current state of financial affairs.

I think our provincial debt is increasing at an astronomical rate. It’s not a balanced budget, it’s just a transfer of, basically, a debt into the long-term provincial debt so it looks like the budgets are balanced. That is my view.

I think that the use of the IPPs — like, independent power producer contracts — and the PPPs are things that should all be disbanded. I do not believe that it’s anything other than a shell game and a transfer of wealth from the individual taxpayers to people in the back room.

We have one example here in town. It’s our hospital, which is basically run by corporations outside our country. From what I could read into the contract, we are just paying and paying and paying. I really think that we should be just accepting our names and our debts on a straightforward basis. These vehicles should absolutely be banned. And I don’t think there’s any way we should be issuing bonds for India either.

Another thing that I wish to address is…. By the way, I do have a package. I’ve got all this stuff here. I would appreciate, actually, if some of the committee members would at least read one or two of the missives that I’ve got in this package.

I just really think we’ve got more troubles than are outlined here or being brushed over in the media by the political structure. I don’t know. Just not good. Debt is bad.

Anyhow, I’m going to hit B.C. Hydro here. We’ve got Site C, that provincial folly that is going to indebt the taxpayers of our communities — our larger community — significantly. Right now — and I got this right from the former CEO of B.C. Hydro — the accumulated debt or debt obligations…. You can cover with whatever words you want, but it’s a debt that’s funded by the taxpayer’s back. It’s $76 billion for Hydro. And this is all on the premise that we’re going to be running out of hydro in the near future.

That is anything but the truth. I’ve got the most recent numbers from the Hydro report released on Friday. One of the things that’s really glaring is the very poor forecasting efforts of B.C. Hydro. In ’94, they predicted it would grow to 52 percent by ’04. It actually only grew by 18 percent. Then in ’05, they predicted the 20 percent growth by 2016. It grew zero. Most recently, 2012, Hydro said the demand was about 9 percent. In [audio interrupted], it dropped by 1 percent.

Hydro does not need to construct a dam in the Peace River Valley on the backs of the taxpayer. We have an existing facility. I hope the committee members are tuned into the natural gas co-gen plant in the Lower Mainland. But that’s equivalent of Site C, and it’s right by the load. That would be an excellent way to generate any energy.

The Burrard Thermal should stay in place, and we should be ceasing any activity or any more expenditure on the folly of Site C. There are parallels there. There’s no purpose, either. I think we came up with seven purposes during the hearings, and they’re still looking for a solution for the extra energy, wherever they want to put it.

Anyhow, I’ve included in the package a thing on Muskrat Falls in Newfoundland, which is another project out of control. And Manitoba [audio interrupted] is really in trouble, and this really shows it. Again, it’s just transferring wealth from the individual to backroom corporate entities — very unhealthy.

The other thing that I’ll talk about is the carbon tax. I hear all the recent stuff from the feds, but I think that’s really failed policies. We’re on the cusp of a silent revolution. Using solar energy, there’s a thing called a smart flower that now tracks the sun that we can use individually. We don’t have to be dependent on big power. There’s a solar leaf. Another example is that the MGM casino in Nevada has totally become self-sufficient using photovoltaic cells, and they are right off the Nevada grid. I think they dropped the income of Nevada power utility by 3 or 4 percent. So as an interim measure, they’re actually continuing to pay their bills, although they are self-sufficient.

We are on the cusp of change, and I think 20th-century solutions are not solutions. It’s just bad money management — very bad. The other thing is we have checks and balances on all of this for this, and it’s not been effective. I would hope that your committee is concerned about that.

You know, Site C was not referred to the B.C. Utilities Commission because the ministers knew that it would fail the test. That’s one example. The other is that I don’t think that our Auditor General is ringing any bells. She’s not doing her job. She’s not looking after the business of the people of B.C. We have this escalating debt and just a whole bunch of fiscal mismanagement. These are documented in the things that I have here.
[ Page 2561 ]

The other is just a note about the property transfer tax. Taxes are taxes. I guess I resent anything to do with taxes, but we do need them. But if there’s going to be a tax, it should be done fairly. Right now, if you’re a corporate body and you make a sale and you don’t change the board of directors or any of that stuff — you keep it the same — there is not a trigger of a property transfer tax.

I think one of the good examples is coming up, and maybe your committee needs to just investigate to see how much will be lost. But if Enbridge does acquire Spectra Energy, that’s going to be a huge transfer of wealth. As far as I know right now, if it’s corporation to corporation, there will be no trigger of a property transfer, unlike an individual. So an individual home owner will be paying property transfer taxes according to the formulas, but if you incorporated your home — which I could do personally here — then I could transfer that without ever triggering the property transfer tax. I think there’s a great loss there for revenues for our province.

Another one that is…. This deals with the agricultural land reserve. If your property is in the ALR, if it’s a two-acre property or just basically rural residential, you get a 50 percent discount on school taxes. I think that’s a loophole that should be addressed also.

There’s a series of UBCM resolutions. I hear all this talk about LNG. There was a resolution in 2012 that talked about a five-year strategy for natural gas use. I don’t think we should be focusing on the one item — the LNG. We should be looking at transportation, fertilizers, refineries. There’s a whole myriad of uses. We’ve got to do a better job with our natural resources.

I think we need to take a real look at the Norwegian policies. They have a $700 billion treasure chest. If I’ve got it figured out, we’re close to a $200 million debt hole, which I think is unconscionable. You know, this is all hidden. These regulatory deferral accounts are just the wrong way to go. I think that’s fundamentally dishonest, and it is not a normal accounting practice.

So those are some of the things. The other is the carbon tax. There seems to be some pervading effort to continue to impose that on us. I don’t think the rural people should be paying anything to do with a carbon tax. We have to commute to urban centres. We produce the raw resources that go into the urban centres. That carbon tax on my farm is just a huge number, and I would like to see agriculture be removed from the carbon tax. We’re doing a lot with zero chill and all kinds of other efforts so that we do not have to…. We’re conserving the carbon. We’re basically all carbon sinks.

In the end, I just want to state that I think the whole problem we have here — and this is the third time I’ve presented — is that the party system demands, basically, subservience from each of the elected representatives. As a result, there is no meaningful input from the individual elected MLA. It’s not a democracy once you get into the party system, and it doesn’t matter what colour it is. It can be communist, Liberals, NDP — whatever you want to call it — but you become subservient, the individual. It’s basically a cloaked dictatorship. I don’t know if that can ever change, and it just bugs the hell out of me.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Arthur. We really appreciate it. You’ve covered a gamut of issues for us today. I think we have a long list to be able to look at. I can assure you that your presentation is downloaded to people’s iPads, and the members will have the opportunity to go through it more thoroughly.

R. Austin: Hi, Arthur. Thanks very much for your very wide-ranging presentation there. You make a lot of very interesting and very valid points. I’m not going to get into all of the details here because some of those things that you discussed, of course, are discussed at length in the Legislature. There is a divide on that. We all know that. But I would make a couple of comments.

With regards to your warning about private-public partnerships, I’m just going to use an example of the United Kingdom, where I have family. In the 1990s, the Labour government there entered into a large number of public-private partnerships — there they call them PFIs, or private finance initiatives — to build hospitals, etc. They’ve reached a point now where the payments back for these PFIs are so big they’re actually bankrupting numerous parts of the National Health trust. I get your point that the payback can be devastating and take away from the delivery of public services, so thank you for that.

The other thing I would mention — and I don’t want to get into a political, philosophical discussion here — is your suggestion that we should abandon the party system. The trouble with that is that the British parliamentary system was designed around political parties. That is the nature of its origins, so it’s very hard to change a system which was actually designed around political parties. Anyway, I’ll leave it at that, Arthur.

A. Hadland: Well, B.C. in 1905 did not have parties. People were independent. They actually were democratic. But anyhow, it’s okay.

But I really think that IPP and the PPP thing is…. At one time, I used to do consulting. They had a thing they called…. Oh, it was innovative financing. They had all kinds of nice words for it. In reality, the people still had to
[ Page 2562 ]
pay. You know, there’s a fundamental about some money and money management. When you incur a debt and you have a contract and commitment, then you pay that debt. Otherwise, you lose the asset.

Here we are playing games again with, I think, things that are not real, like the IPPs and the PPPs. It’s a shell game, and it’s the taxpayer that’s the dupe.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you so much again, Arthur. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it. We always appreciate individual citizens. We get a lot of groups and organizations but not as many individual citizens making presentations, so thank you so much for your time today.

A. Hadland: I have a package here. What do I have to do to make sure that you access it?

C. James (Deputy Chair): You need to make sure that it’s sent to us by midnight on October 14. You can just do that through the committee website, if you have it electronically, or you can contact the Clerk, who you were in touch with to be able to present today. We can make sure that we all get it.

A. Hadland: Okay. There’s one letter that I sent to Ms. Bellringer I would sure like everybody on the committee to read.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You’re speaking to Carole James. I’m the Deputy Chair.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have our next presenter: Covenant House Vancouver — Krista Thompson. Just to remind everyone, for the presentation, we have up to ten minutes and then five minutes for questions.

Thank you again, Krista, for your flexibility in reconnecting with us. We appreciate it. I’ll turn it over to you.

K. Thompson: Thanks so much, Carole. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much to the committee members and staff for allowing us the opportunity today.

My name is Krista Thompson. I’m the executive director of Covenant House Vancouver. Since about 1997, we have been a service that supports the health, quality of life and productivity of at-risk youth in British Columbia. We serve homeless youth between the ages of 16 and 24 with short-term residential care through our crisis program and longer-term care in our transitional living program. Our key areas of focus are street outreach, crisis intervention, education and housing. We serve a very diverse bunch of kids, including young women, LGBTQ youth and youth with significant mental health concerns.

We recently undertook an in-depth research study to determine what more we could do to help homeless kids move off the streets and on to successful independence. The need is there to expand several of our key program areas. However, many of these programs cannot occur without additional space. For example, since the implementation of our girls programs, there has been a 200 percent increase in female use of our crisis program, and we’ve had to turn away many boys. Through an expansion, Covenant House can be sure that the complex needs of today’s at-risk youth are met and that we meet our target of zero youth on the street in Vancouver.

With less British Columbians participating in the foster care of young people, some young people who are not able to have a safe, healthy home environment often look to the streets, as you know. Adult housing options are just not appropriate for kids. In addition, I’d like to say that the increasing use of strong drugs and mental health issues have increased the load on all service providers.

Last year nearly 1,700 young people came to our door for help. While we were able to serve 1,400 of them, we had to turn away 300 due to a lack of space. We’ve done multiple renovations to maximize every square inch over the years, but the need has simply outgrown our current footprint.

To support this opportunity, we’re very grateful to B.C. Housing for their agreement to secure property on Drake Street in Vancouver. The current plan is to construct a purpose-built facility on this new land and, when that’s complete, rebuild our original site across the road at 575 Drake Street. These two new buildings would eliminate turn-aways for both boys and girls, expand our education programs and housing, enhance our mental health and addictions services, and take a really concrete step toward zero use on the streets in Vancouver.

Total capital expenditure — with construction, contingency and expanded operational resources — represents a $38 million need. The opportunity includes three phases.

Phase 1 sees us develop 530 Drake Street, with a new five-storey building, expanded drop-in centre, crisis beds and sanctuary beds.

Phase 2 sees us develop 575 Drake, which is a new ten-storey building with 75 crisis beds, special spaces for young women and men, a gym, an art and a music room, a study hall, active and quiet space and counselling rooms.
[ Page 2563 ]

Phase 3. We will renovate our 326 West Pender building, expand our Rights of Passage program and provide 20 additional apartments, for a total of 45 apartments.

By getting the young people off the street and decoupled from more expensive services — like policing and justice, health care, etc. — we believe that Covenant House represents a real opportunity to directly invest in positive outcomes for kids. With 57,000 donors, we can match every dollar invested by government. A one-stop approach for kids, Covenant House is bridging the kids’ service needs. We offer progressive, long-term results in preparing them for adulthood. With the leverage investment in and a partnership with Covenant House, government can find new ways to transform the lives of our province’s kids.

That’s my presentation. Thank you for your time. I’m happy to take any questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Krista, and thank you to you and all of your staff at Covenant House for all the work you do.

With the announcement by the Minister for Housing of a fund for housing projects, the $500 million fund, there was reference to the potential for partnerships with not-for-profits and others that are in the business of housing for all sorts of different groups in the community. Have you had a look at that? Are you at the table to potentially look at an opportunity for some of that funding for your projects?

K. Thompson: Yes, absolutely. We meet regularly with the CEO at B.C. Housing to talk about this project. I think we’re looking at ways that we can fit into the new proposals by the minister. I think that’s certainly a live conversation for us, yes. Any direction you can give us on how to handle that or directions to go would be most welcome.

J. Yap: Just to make the comment that my understanding is that there’s a very tight time frame to access this. I think it’s by the end of the fiscal year. No doubt you’ll want to go and have an appointment again with the folks at B.C. Housing.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just a couple of questions. The excitement around the opportunity for a new facility…. When you look at the numbers that you’re dealing with us and when you look at the challenges that the youth are coming to you with, I think it’s an exciting possibility.

I wondered if you’ve set a goal for an amount of money to be able to…. I know you often do matching funds. You described it well. You stretch a dollar like no one can. I wondered if you’ve got a budget worked out for the amount of money you’re looking for from government and the amount that you’re looking at in fundraising.

The second question is just related to the Representative for Children and Youth, who came out with a report today about sexual abuse and sexual assaults of young people. I wondered if that’s an area that you are providing support services or an area you’re feeling pressure with youth who are coming to your facilities.

In terms of the partnership with government, we’re looking, I think, at approximately 20 percent of the total project cost from a blend of various levels of government. We have approached the federal government for an amount, and we would like to approach the province for an amount of $5 million toward the $38 million total project cost.

Secondly, in terms of…. I think you’re talking about sexual abuse as well as sexual exploitation. I can tell you that what we are learning through working with young women and girls here at Covenant House is that a surprisingly significant percentage of them have experienced either sexual interference or sexual abuse. A far greater number than we would prefer have had direct involvement with sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

Well, just on all our behalves, I want to express our appreciation again for the work that you do. I appreciate you taking time to be able to present, and thanks for your flexibility in having to juggle with our weather issues today.

K. Thompson: Well, thank you, and best of luck with the rest of your presentations.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We’ll take a brief recess while we get the next person on the line.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have the NEBC Resource Municipalities Coalition next — Mayor Lori Ackerman and Colin Griffith.

Are you both there? Hi. It’s Carole James, Deputy Chair of the committee.
[ Page 2564 ]

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions. I’d just ask you to make sure that you identify yourself as you speak so that we can make sure that Hansard has it correct in the record.

L. Ackerman: Mayor Lori Ackerman, city of Fort St. John. Joining me is Colin Griffith. Colin is the executive director for the Northeast B.C. Resource Municipalities Coalition. Thank you for the opportunity to present.

Most of you are familiar with the coalition. We represent businesses as well as chambers of commerce. We have over 1,600 members. The city of Fort St. John, the district of Taylor as well as the Northern Rockies regional municipality are the three local governments that are presently involved. I say “presently” because others are considering rejoining. We also have the Northern B.C. Truckers Association, Energy Services B.C. and the chambers of commerce from Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson and Chetwynd joining us as well. That makes up our membership.

I’m going to go through, just quickly, the purpose of the coalition and then hand it over to Mr. Griffith. We are an organization, as I said, of municipalities and business and service sector associations that are focused on all aspects of resource development in northeast British Columbia.

Our mission is very clear. We want to protect and enhance existing resource municipalities and rural communities so that they continue to develop as permanent, sustainable and vibrant communities providing a high quality of life for existing and future residents.

While the coalition supports the important role that the resource municipalities and rural communities play in supporting existing and future resource development, the resource municipalities and rural communities cannot be defined solely on the basis of their service centre function but must be seen as economically diversified, environmentally responsible and socially vibrant municipalities and rural communities that will continue to develop and prosper in the long term.

We are a regionally based organization. We prepare and maintain an economic planning model to assist in researching and analyzing the economic impacts of resource development.

Just a little bit about some of the research that we’ve done. You will find all copies of this on our coalition website, which is www.nebccoalition.com. We have comprehensive economic projections for northeast B.C. We also have submissions and position papers. We have a submission to the B.C. climate action leadership plan, a position on the B.C. provincial sales tax. We submitted to the select standing committee last year as well as the role of municipalities in oil and gas resource development over the last several years. A position paper on long-term transportation priorities. We submitted a position paper to the Commission on Tax Competitiveness.

I’d like to say hello to all the members of the committee that ended up not being able to get to Dawson Creek. This is a sampling of the real world we live in up here with our four seasons. So welcome to northeastern British Columbia.

Anyhow, as you can see by scanning the submission we’ve made to you, we’ve done a lot of work in terms of looking at all of the resources that we have in northeastern British Columbia on a cumulative basis.

Certainly, the most recent focus has been on natural gas development. It’s interesting to note that British Columbia does have the majority of Canada’s natural gas reserves in the four basins in the northeast, so it goes without saying that that is always going to be a current and a major focus going forward.

What may not be so well known is that aside from a vast agricultural area in the northeast and a lot of forestry, we also are the province’s biggest area for wind generation. That may not be so well known. Across the board, northeastern British Columbia, with its very minuscule population of about 70,000 people and 25 percent of the province’s land mass, has a vast amount of B.C.’s resources. Certainly, the development of the resources and access to world markets is one of the key focuses of the coalition.

We’ve quantified, as an example, some of the economic benefits. If you look historically at the period 2005 to 2015, the industry invested billions of dollars in natural gas in northeastern B.C. — something in excess of $60 billion. The benefit of that to the province exceeded $20 billion in that ten-year period. That’s all dropped off with the advent of the glut of natural gas, but the coalition believes that there is an opportunity during this hiatus to look at the long-term planning models for resource development in British Columbia.

We believe there are a number of ways in which some adjustments could be made that would provide additional benefits to the province, in terms of revenue from income taxes and such, which would be a spinoff of a focus on growing and building more permanent resource communities in the northern part of British Columbia. Certainly, that is one of the priorities for the coalition, and we’ve outlined that fairly well in the material we’ve provided to you.

The coalition undertakes a lot of effort to support the initiatives to gain access to world markets. There have
[ Page 2565 ]
been delegations from the coalition to Ottawa. There has been an unending number of meetings with provincial ministers to support all of the initiatives for sustainable development of B.C.’s resources.

The key elements for the coalition going forward are going to be to provide a place in which there can perhaps be a more unified voice for those communities and those citizens and businesses in British Columbia that actually do support sustainable resource development. That is going to be a major initiative going forward.

One of the key issues that we’re currently working on is ensuring that there’s a level playing field for B.C.’s businesses around the provincial sales tax initiative. We’ve been doing a lot of work with the Ministry of Finance for the last five or six months. It’s been very collaborative and has resulted in some added focus on ensuring that there’s more enforcement of B.C.’s existing regulations to ensure that B.C. businesses are competing on a level field with businesses from outside of the province.

There is an initiative underway to meet with the Minister of Finance to present a proposal for a future legislative change that would see B.C.’s legislation put more into line with what we call the Saskatchewan model, where people going into that province are required to post bonds and to basically prove out that they are paying all of the taxes that are due to the province of Saskatchewan — all of which fits nicely under the northwest trade agreement. That’s one of the current focuses.

On an overall basis, we think that the hiatus that we have right now is an opportunity for everybody to take a step back from looking at how we had been approaching resource development in the province and to look at using this period of time for an improved focus on socioeconomic and long-term planning for the day that we do gain access to the world market and all of our resources are in full-scale demand.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Griffith, and thank you very much, Mayor Ackerman, as well. I’ll open it up to the committee for questions and discussions on your presentation.

I have a question just on the issue of the sales tax. As you mentioned, Mr. Griffith, this is an issue that’s come up through Finance Committee before, and I know there was a review going on around PST and some of the unfairness in the issue of PST, particularly for communities that are on the border. I just wanted to make sure that you are involved in those discussions and you feel that they’re moving along to address the issues and the challenges you talked about.

C. Griffith: We have been very involved. We’ve had five meetings with officials from the Ministry of Finance. They have attended public meetings in Fort St. John to hear from the citizens and the local businesses more clearly. We’ve worked, like you said, very closely with the Ministry of Finance. They were having trouble filling some of the positions that were involved in the enforcement and informing, if you like, and there’s been significant progress made in that regard.

In terms of public education and awareness of B.C.’s provincial sales tax rules and regulations, there was a belief that perhaps there could be more done in that area, and the Ministry of Finance has just recently launched into a more focused education and awareness campaign for out-of-town businesses. So that part of it, we think, has seen some significant progress.

In terms of new proposed legislative changes for more alignment with, what we refer to as, the Saskatchewan model, we are going to make those presentations. We’ve done some research on that issue, and we’ll be presenting that to government to get their reaction and to encourage them to take a hard look on implementing such change.

S. Gibson: Simon Gibson, Abbotsford-Mission riding, down out east of Vancouver. I’m familiar with your organization, what you do, Mayor Ackerman and Colin.

My question is really…. My understanding is that you’re still trying to get everybody in the area on side. How’s that going?

L. Ackerman: Actually, if I can just repeat the question so that I…. You’re wondering how we’re doing to get everyone on side?

S. Gibson: My understanding is that you don’t represent all the municipalities in the area, but you’re working hard to achieve a kind of consensus. Is my understanding correct?

L. Ackerman: Well, not everybody belongs to the coalition. We have yet to hear any diverse views from where we’re headed. There is a good conversation happening with three of the other five municipalities about rejoining.

S. Gibson: But you’re actively seeking their membership. Is that my understanding?

L. Ackerman: Well, we’re actively seeking their membership, Mr. Gibson, because the way this is funded is through the municipalities. We would warmly welcome more money to do some more research to bring some quantifiable data back to people like yourself to assist you in making good decisions.

C. Griffith: Can I make one additional comment to that? Initially, in 2014, all of the municipalities, excluding Hudson’s Hope, were founding members of this coalition.
[ Page 2566 ]
There was a bit of a drawback by a number of the municipalities over a strategic approach to the renewal of the Fair Share agreement. It was nothing to do….

There was complete unanimity around the current goals as they’re expressed in the document that you have, and we do receive indications that all the municipalities involved are still supportive of those goals. So it’s not that there’s any disagreement over the fundamental issues and objectives of the municipalities of northeastern British Columbia. This is just an organizational issue that we believe will likely be resolved — in the majority viewpoint, anyhow — in the near future.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, and thank you again for your presentation and for your work. Yes, we regret we couldn’t get to Dawson Creek as well because of the weather. But as you said, it’s a good reminder of British Columbia and the challenges some of the communities face. Thank you again for your flexibility, and thank you for your presentation.

Next we have a presenter during our open-mike section. If I could ask Sean to please come up. Sean Farrell is here from the Prince George and District Community Arts Council.

Sean, as you know, you have five minutes for the presentation. Thank you for being here today. With that, I’ll turn it over to you.

S. Farrell: Thank you, Carole, and thank you, committee. I’m the executive director at the Prince George and District Community Arts Council, a role I’ve had for three weeks. When I saw that the committee was in town at 4:30 today, I thought I’d love to come and observe. Then I checked the website. I thought: “They’re already live right now, so I’m going to come down and see what happens.” So I have not prepared a presentation, but I’m really happy to share an idea that I have with the committee, when looking at investing in arts and culture.

Obviously, as you know, our primary source of funding provincially would be the B.C. Arts Council. We’re very grateful for the generosity of the B.C. Arts Council.

More and more of our members — and the Prince George and District Community Arts Council represents over 100 members — are actually starting to look at arts in the social services context. I think it would be difficult to launch an argument against the idea that arts do and can play a crucial role in areas of health, wellness, mental health, addiction treatment, education and youth engagement.

In my role, I’m starting to take a different look at how arts in Prince George can reach the community. Many of our members do want to launch projects and programs that are addressing some of these things, but it becomes very difficult because it ends up being project-based, based on the availability of funds, project grant program requirements. Of course, the sustainability and predictability of those programs becomes very difficult.

Our arts council is located in two buildings here in Prince George, which are owned and provided to us through the generosity of the city of Prince George. These buildings were developed in the 1960s. We’ve been the occupants since the 1970s. They’re getting old, but they were also developed on a kind of outdated, western European, siloed approach, and we have very little community involvement with our facilities.

Moving forward, I’m planning on, hopefully, engaging various partners so that we could look at a social housing component to the rejuvenation of an arts centre, whereby affordable or a low-barrier housing project could be the home on our current location, where a very dynamic, holistic arts centre also exists, where we have shared spaces for workshops, studios, rehearsal spaces, performance spaces.

The provincial government right now, obviously, is enacting a very ambitious and large funding for affordable housing. I think my request, if anything today, is if the committee can consider that — when we’re talking about investing in the arts, we’re also talking about investing in much-needed social services as well — and find funding programming opportunities where there could be cross-pollination of the kind of project that I’m going to be looking at, where low-barrier or affordable housing also has a vital arts and culture component as well.

I’m excited by the opportunity that I’m going to be having to hopefully engage, potentially, B.C. Housing, the city, etc. That’s my submission today.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Sean — keen and eager. Three weeks on the job, and you’re presenting. Thank you so much and thank you for your creative presentation.

S. Gibson: Quick question. We have a very active group in our community, so I’m familiar with your role. How are you evaluated? How will your board, after three weeks…? At the end of a year, where you have an evaluation, what is the criteria? How do you know you’re succeeding in your role, in your work? I know that sounds like maybe a provocative question, but it’s an important one, I think.

I’ve established a rather ambitious agenda, which is going to be looking at enhancing our membership not just to full-on professional practising artists but on how well we’re engaging the community. I am actively seek-
[ Page 2567 ]
ing to develop an aboriginal arts council within our own arts council. I want to engage amateur musicians, high school bands and concert bands and really bring the community under the roof of the community arts council. That’s one thing.

Very clearly, how well we’re using space that’s generously granted to us…. Again, our model right now is based in the 1970s, where different groups have exclusive space that’s not being shared. I find that to be a real shame when we’re not really engaging some of the sectors of our community and society that probably would benefit the most from an active and ongoing engagement with arts.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, again. I think Prince George is lucky to have your creativity here. Thank you so much.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just to clarify, you are quite right. We do start our Prince George hearings at 4:30. We were due to be in Dawson Creek for this time period. We couldn’t get in because of weather, so we’ve had to re-book the Dawson Creek section of the hearings for earlier this afternoon.

The committee will take a 30-minute recess. Then we have a presentation coming at 3:35.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have as our next presenter the B.C. Dental Association. We have Jocelyn Johnston and Dr. Rob Staschuk.

Thank you for your patience in rescheduling things today, as we couldn’t get into Dawson Creek because of the weather. We appreciate your flexibility. The presentation time we have is ten minutes and then the opportunity to ask questions for five minutes after that. I will turn it over to you.

The British Columbia Dental Association would like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Dr. Rob Staschuk, president of the B.C. Dental Association. I’ve been practising in Port Moody for 25 years and have been active in the dental community, including volunteer work with the College of Dental Surgeons of B.C. and the Vancouver and District Dental Society.

The BCDA is a recognized voice of dentistry in British Columbia, representing over 3,300 general dentists and certified dental specialists. Annually, dentistry contributes $2 billion to the B.C. economy and directly employs approximately 15,000 dental professionals.

As we do every year, I’m here to share with you dentistry’s current oral health concerns and to discuss opportunities for collaboration with government — finding creative solutions. Our requests today centre on increasing access to dental care for low-income children, seniors and persons with disabilities.

Before doing that, I would like to highlight our members’ work to provide care and create innovative partnerships within the current system. I would like to acknowledge the remarkable effort made by the B.C. dental community, who screened over 900 Syrian refugees earlier this year. This was in partnership with Vancouver Coastal public health, Bridge medical clinic and the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia and involved a significant number of hours of volunteer time from our members.

Dentists also volunteer at 20 non-profit dental clinics to provide low-cost or free treatment. These are examples of working together to fill the gaps in the system and, I believe, a demonstration of our members’ commitment to promoting the health of B.C. residents.

Concerns. The second part of my presentation will address issues that B.C. dentists face daily in providing dental care to British Columbians. Concern No. 1 is the ministry dental plan. I’d like to share a story from a colleague who works in a smaller city in the Kootenays. It’s representative of a situation encountered by B.C. dentists every day.

A young girl, about ten years old, comes into the practice, and it is determined that she needs two fillings. My colleague also knows that she is on the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation healthy kids plan, which only pays for about 60 percent of the cost of treatment. Her parents can’t afford to pay the balance of the bill that is often charged.

This is a dilemma that my colleagues encounter daily. Do we treat a child that needs care at a financial loss, or do we not? We need to balance our duties as health professionals with the reality of having to pay for rent, equipment and staff to ensure that we can continue to provide care to our patients. While I always choose to treat the patient, I worry that this system is unsustainable. It essentially asks small business owners to subsidize the cost of care.

The current system is like asking pharmacies to subsidize the cost of drugs. Only 30 percent of B.C. dentists accept ministry fees as a full compensation for dental services and don’t balance-bill. Some of them work in
[ Page 2568 ]
areas with large numbers of ministry patients. Due to the low ministry fees, these dentists are experiencing difficult financial challenges in their dental practices. What I worry about is that fewer and fewer dentists will accept these patients, which will only continue to limit their access to care.

The truth is, there are limits to how many ministry clients we can take when we lose money. The not-for-profit clinics throughout B.C., such as the Abbotsford Food Bank dental clinic and the Emergency Dental Outreach Clinic in Prince George, treat both ministry and non-ministry clients. Often it is the billings of the ministry that subsidize the care of those who cannot afford treatment, such as low-income seniors, the unemployed, the working poor and the homeless.

Last year, not-for-profit clinics treated 42,000 patients. Without a fee increase, their ability to provide care will be eroded. The BCDA requests that the ministry initiate discussions to arrive at a fair fee, recognizing the complex needs of this patient group, the increasing costs of operating a dental practice, and reasonable compensation for dentists to provide this care.

Concern No. 2: collaboration for persons with disabilities. Our second concern is that the current program is not meeting the needs of ministry clients who are persons with disabilities. From a clinical perspective, providing safe and effective treatment to a person with a disability can be challenging. For example, we encounter patients with muscle spasms who move unexpectedly while we’re drilling, or a child with autism who experiences severe anxiety before and during treatment that can cause them to panic.

Many clients require general anesthesia due to complex health challenges. These treatments are usually done in hospital, and unfortunately, wait-lists of up to 24 months are not uncommon. During the wait time, these patients may be dealing with dental pain and infection that may require multiple emergency visits to medical clinics and/or hospital emergency departments. For non-verbal patients, that may result in unrealized pain and impairment that can lead to anguish for caregivers and, in a worst case, result in self-harm and/or violent behaviour.

Between 2003 and 2015, the number of clients registered as persons with disabilities increased 91 percent, to approximately 93,500. That’s an increase of 45,000 cases. This group now represents more than twice the number of income assistance clients. For these medically complex patients, their dental needs are complicated by physical and mental health challenges, including complex medical histories and multiple medications. Significantly more time is required for providing care and for consulting with their physicians, caregivers and those who give consent for care.

Last year this committee recommended that the Ministry of Health initiate discussions with the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation to improve dental care for ministry clients, including preventative care and dental health education. To our disappointment, we believe this meeting has not occurred.

We continue to believe that working together will yield better care and cost savings for the health care system. For example, the community partners program reduces the cost for general anesthesia by one-third, dropping the cost from $1,500 to $1,000. The program, administered by the B.C. Children’s Hospital, contracted initially with seven private facilities throughout the province. However, today there are only four facilities, and they are all located in Metro Vancouver.

I believe that B.C. is capable of delivering great solutions when we work together, but none of us can do it alone. Currently, treatment costs are being incurred by two ministries. We believe that the dental program for persons with disabilities should be moved to the Ministry of Health, which can focus on both the medical and dental needs of the patients and ensure the most efficient use of resources, leading to better oral and overall health care outcomes. This is consistent with the BCDA’s support for the Accessibility 2024 goal of separating disability assistance from income assistance.

Concern No. 3: low-income seniors. Our third concern is the need to assist low-income seniors accessing dental care. A 2015 report by the office of the seniors advocate of B.C. noted that 65 percent of seniors in the province are without health benefits, including dental coverage.

I ask you to imagine — or relate to the experience of someone you know about — the challenge of dental care for seniors. As a person ages, it can be harder for them to brush their teeth regularly and effectively. This might be due to illness, injury or limited range of motion. Similarly, administering dental care to frail seniors is complex and challenging. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s difficult for my staff and me to move a frail person from a wheelchair into the dental chair in my clinic, and the journey to and from the clinic can be a challenge in itself.

Conversely, I can’t provide dental treatment at a care facility or a patient’s home because of the requirements for infection control and sterilization. A possible solution to providing care in long-term care facilities is the employment of a dental coordinator, such as the program that Prince George created, by Northern Health, to take on tasks such as scheduling, coordinating, assisting dentists treating in the facility. These administrative tasks often frustrate and discourage dentists from treating in these facilities.

The profession recognizes the need for a low-income-seniors dental plan as a means of reducing these barriers. In our view, the need is similar to that which led to the creation of the healthy kids program, which provides basic
[ Page 2569 ]
dental care for children in low-income families. As our population ages, the number of seniors will increase and with that, an increasing number of low-income seniors. To meet this need, development and funding for a low-income-seniors dental plan and dental care coordinators to organize the dental program in long-term care facilities will go a long way to meeting this health need.

In conclusion, the British Columbia Dental Association remains committed to the delivery of world-class oral health care for British Columbians and to the opportunity to work with the provincial government to enhance dental treatment in British Columbia. Again, thank you for this opportunity to share our perspective with you today.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Dr. Staschuk. I’ll now open it up for questions.

I’ll start off. I just have a question. I wondered: are there particular areas of the province or are there particular health authorities where you’re seeing a greater pressure, and is there a particular population? You mentioned youth. You mentioned people with special needs, seniors. Is there a particular population that you’re seeing a greater pressure in as well, right now?

J. Johnston: I think right now we’re acutely aware of the access for persons with disabilities or seniors or children, to get into hospitals. All the hospital wait-lists are quite extensive. I’ll give you an example. In Nanaimo right now, there’s no GP who has access to OR time. So if there’s a person with a disability that needs to be treated under general anaesthetic, they have to travel down to Victoria or up-Island to a place where they can either get into the hospital up there or get access to a private facility.

Wait-lists for persons with disabilities are, particularly, quite long. But that problem exists throughout the province. It’s probably the most acute, though, in Nanaimo.

S. Gibson: We, by all accounts, do have a doctor shortage in our province. My first question: is there a dentist shortage? You seem to be looking to do more work or at least serve the public better. Is there a shortage of dentists provincewide?

R. Staschuk: No, I don’t think there’s a shortage of dentists provincewide. There’s a shortage of dentists who are willing or capable of accepting some of the fees that are paid to them, I think, in order to maintain their practices.

I think that’s the initiative. Our goal is that if we could increase the fee to a fair fee, we could increase the number of dentists who are treating this population. If we could spread out that load that we subsidize throughout the province, it would be a great asset to us. It’s a matter of mobilizing some of the people we have out there.

S. Gibson: Just another maybe more technical question. I’m hearing around Abbotsford dentists doing more dental implants as opposed to other procedures. But these seem to be pretty elaborate and not really that common. What is your comment on that?

S. Gibson: Yeah. Is it a trend that you see growing? It seems to be quite popular now or growing in popularity, I guess.

R. Staschuk: Yes. Without a doubt, it is growing in popularity as the technology has improved. It’s allowed people who were previously denture-less into the back areas of the mouth, where you could no longer put any fixed devices in…. They can now have teeth back there again. Also, people with dentures can have implant-supported dentures, which increases their ability to function and chew, and their overall health is improved substantially.

It is still an elective procedure, and it is one of our most elaborate treatments that we have. It doesn’t take away from the other dentistry we’ve done in the past, which can serve a vast majority of the population who can’t afford that elaborate treatment.

R. Austin: I was interested in the part of your presentation around the savings overall to the health care system when we have greater access to regular dental care. Do you have any statistical evidence, Doctor, about the number of patients who are accessing hospitals or emergency rooms as a result of, essentially, dental problems?

My second question is: do you have any statistics or evidence around the increase in diabetes and how that’s affecting health care costs? My understanding is that if you don’t have regular dental checkups and keep your oral health hygiene in good standing, then it can lead to an inability to manage people’s sugars.

R. Staschuk: The first question: statistics. Jocelyn may be able to help with some of those statistics.

One statistic I did just read regarding…. It’s from the Niagara region. They’re actually dealing with very similar issues. They explained that a dental-related emergency visits the emergency wards every nine minutes in that region. They said that often the only treatment
[ Page 2570 ]
that, of course, is available is pain killers and antibiotics, which really does nothing to solve the problem and sometimes repeats itself on a cycle until they get access to some kind of dental facility. If it gets serious enough, then they have to enter into the OR system, the emergency surgery system.

R. Austin: Yeah. I was wondering whether you could furnish us with any sort of data around that.

J. Johnston: I can give you some statistics. There’s not a lot because of the way dentistry is…. Some of it is funded through MSP hospital dentistry. Some isn’t.

I can tell you…. We had some information provided by the Ministry of Health that says that, in a year, 10,000 patients are treated by anaesthetists for dental problems. That’s predominantly young children for early childhood caries, where children under the age of five have extensive dental disease and really require a GA due to the amount of treatment they require. As well, we then have persons with disability who need care or anybody else with a medical condition where they require a hospital setting, and that would include seniors.

In addition, the Canadian Institute for Health Information has estimated that in B.C. alone, just for the cost of the hospital only — not the professional fees of the anaesthetists or the dentists — ECC is estimated to cost $3.5 million.

R. Staschuk: The second question was regarding diabetes. It’s a multifactorial response. Part of the issue is that diabetes, being type 1 or type 2, is two different sequela. Type 2, which offers the lifestyle or age onset, and type 1, both…. When you have these conditions, they decrease your immune response. You have an immune compromised situation happening, which then leads to oral complications.

Bacteria that we don’t necessarily want in the mouth then tend to become an issue, especially if the mouth is left untreated. Those same populations in a healthy person…. Where a relatively healthy person can withstand some of that impact of this increased bacteria, can sometimes tolerate that, people with a lower immune system do not. This can result in more systemic infections, more teeth that require endodontic treatment and/or removal, etc., and also the types of infections that become serious enough that they have to enter emergency wards for, for treatment, with sometimes even IV antibiotics.

The other sequela of that is, then, that same immune compromise — with increased types of the bacteria that exist and the periodontal problems that start to exist in diabetes-related patients — can also lead to cardiovascular problems and concerns as well, which is also extremely negative for health, obviously. Again, it’s multi-vectoral in the sense that it leads to even more drastic costs to the health care system. The preventative nature is very, very important.

I wondered whether there’s any province, from your perspective, across the country that you would look at as a model that provides better supports for people with disabilities or seniors in dental care. Is there anywhere across the country that you would recommend be looked at?

J. Johnston: I think there are elements in each and every province that would be models. For example, in Alberta, they have a dental plan for seniors where seniors are entitled to $5,000 of dental care over a five-year period. At that time, they can get their dentures and such. Then, after the five-year period, that $5,000 comes back or is renewed. That way, seniors can take care of their oral health. Because as they age, of course…. We’ve talked about the frailty. Also, some of the medications can cause problems like dry mouth, which leads to decay. So that’s one area.

In Toronto, for example, they have ten public health clinics that provide dental care for low-income kids and seniors.

Here in B.C., there is only one public dental health clinic that actually delivers dental care. Vancouver public health has a clinic that’s located at Broadway and Commercial. I think it’s called the Lily Lee clinic. I think there’s a name in front of that. That’s an excellent case where you have a clinic that’s devoted to high-risk families and getting children in early to prevent early childhood caries, which we already talked about being a cost to the system.

There are lots of projects like that throughout the country, where they really look and target…. There are some good programs in Ontario, too, for persons with disabilities. I think that every province has tried to deal with it differently.

We would really like to see improved access to some form of GA, maybe within or outside of a hospital system. For example, in Saskatchewan now, they’ve developed clinics that are private GA facilities that are outside of the hospital but supported by the hospital. Patients can go there, which I think would be great here in B.C. Not all of these patients need the full medical support. They just need the general anaesthetic support and access to a hospital in the case of an emergency. If we could start looking at options like that….

I know that the government changed a regulation that allows health authorities to contract with private facilities that are accredited by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for providing dental services. They, for what-
[ Page 2571 ]
ever reason, decided not to include dental offices or facilities that were accredited by the College of Dental Surgeons, which are probably best suited for providing dental care for kids and persons with disabilities. That’s where, I think, sometimes we need even to tweak our regulations so we can see an improvement in the system.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, both of you, for your presentation. If there’s any further information that you want to send along, just to remind you that the deadline is October 14 at midnight. If there are any more materials you think would be helpful to us in our deliberations, please feel free to pass them on. Thank you, both of you.

This closes off the Dawson Creek hearing here in Prince George. Then we’ll come back to our Prince George folks. Just to let people know, we managed to get more than half of the participants who were going to be in Dawson Creek to present to us today in Prince George. So those were good numbers. We managed to get quite a few people, and we’re going to try and fit the other people in, in our other hearing, as we can.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Welcome, everyone, and welcome back, Members. We’re now onto our list for Prince George presenters. For those who are in the audience — I’ll mention it again as people come up — to let you know, the presentations are up to ten minutes and five minutes for questions for the committee.

I’d like to call up our first presenters, Physiotherapists for Northern Communities — Hilary Crowley and Terry Fedorkiw.

H. Crowley: Thank you very much for this opportunity and for inviting us to present to the committee. My name is Hilary Crowley. I’m a Prince George–based physiotherapist. I’ve been here since 1971. I’m a member of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association’s indigenous health committee, as well as the Physiotherapy Association of British Columbia’s rural and remote committee.

This is Terry Fedorkiw, who’s also a Prince George–based physiotherapist, since 1973. She’s currently a UBC Faculty of Medicine assistant professor in clinical education working in native health with patients who live on or close to the street.

As physiotherapists for northern communities, our goal is to improve access to rehabilitation services for residents of our northern, rural and remote communities.

T. Fedorkiw: We appreciate your recommendation to fund an increase in physiotherapy seats following our presentation last September. However, nothing has changed since our presentation as far as our communities are concerned.

Today we would like to update you on our past year and to ask for your continued support on the following resolution: that the Ministry of Advanced Education expand UBC’s master of physical therapy program from 80 seats to 100 seats and designate 20 of those as a fully distributed cohort of the northern physical therapy program situated at UNBC.

H. Crowley: Our situation is still critical. The challenges faced by residents of rural communities when it comes to health and accessing equitable health care have further increased. Seven percent of physiotherapists in B.C. work in rural communities, and yet 15 percent of the population live rurally. The shortfall is greatest in northern B.C., where 86 registered physiotherapists serve a regional population of 350,000 — that’s one per 4,000 people — compared with 3,250 physiotherapists serving a population of 4¼ million in the remainder of B.C., which is one per 1,300.

This represents a more than threefold difference in availability of physiotherapists to the population, and that’s without considering the patient access challenges associated with serving a sparsely distributed population.

One of three British Columbia physiotherapists is over the age of 50. You can tell by looking at us. Furthermore, there is a wave of rural physiotherapists retiring and not being replaced, as new graduates tend to take employment in the Lower Mainland. Our own workforce is aging — we’re now another year older than when we presented last year — and several of us are just hanging on in order to provide the necessary clinical teaching to the students. Very shortly this expertise and commitment will no longer be available.

T. Fedorkiw: Of major concern here in Prince George — and I’m sure it’s different or it’s worse, probably, in Prince Rupert and that — is the temporary closure of our outpatient department until new staff are hired. That will likely be in November. We’re hoping for November, anyway.

The lack of outpatient physiotherapy means that patients who have undergone orthopedic surgeries, especially knee and shoulder replacements, are unable to complete their rehabilitation at the hospital.

It also makes it more difficult to discharge patients with stroke or chronic medical conditions as these rehabilitation services aren’t available to enable patients to return to their own home. Timely discharge of northern residents from specialized units in hospitals elsewhere in B.C. — in Vancouver or Kelowna and that — is also af-
[ Page 2572 ]
fected due to the inability to provide a continuum of care in the north. The physiotherapy profession continues to try to provide services to remote First Nations communities, but these are severely compromised by the shortage of available staff.

Also, for pediatrics, where early physiotherapy intervention is crucial to help an infant with delayed development to achieve their full potential, it is essential that there be no gaps in services for these vulnerable children.

H. Crowley: The need for physiotherapists in British Columbia is supported by the Ministry of Health policy papers. We have full support from both UBC and UNBC for a distributed physiotherapy program of 20 students to be situated at UNBC in partnership with the northern medical program. There is community support, evidenced by letters from several municipalities throughout the north, acknowledging the need for physiotherapy services in their communities, and the northern MLAs are all supporting this initiative.

T. Fedorkiw: Doctors in the Northern Medical Society agree that there’s a critical need for a physiotherapy program at UNBC. They are well aware of the shortages and, in many instances, have stopped referring as they realize the services aren’t available. This means that patients are more likely to become dependent on medications and will have more frequent visits to their doctors or emergency departments. Physiotherapy is much more effective and less costly than these alternatives.

There have also been several articles in the media, illustrating the need from patients, highlighting the need for enhanced physiotherapy services. We’ve had many articles in our local paper here about that, and employers in our northern industries are feeling the effect of untimely return to work from injuries due to limited rehabilitation services.

The seniors advocate stated in her April 2015 report that B.C. was seriously lacking in physiotherapy services for seniors. We have since met with her, and she was shocked to find that there are no physiotherapy services in any of the residential care facilities in Prince George.

H. Crowley: We would now like to update you on the success of physiotherapy education at UNBC. We have a strong foundation on which to build a distributed program of 20 seats. There is strong interest in the northern and rural cohort, and of 85 who applied for this, three identified themselves as being aboriginal. We can build on the academic success of a three-week pilot course.

T. Fedorkiw: Yes, we’ve had a very successful academic pilot course. We’ve had really good success, partnering with the northern medical program and sharing the librarian and computer access for on-line exams. This three-week academic distribution, while modest in scope, provides important proof of concept for the potential of a full academic distribution in the future.

Early results indicate that the northern cohort’s education is equal to and, in some cases, surpasses that of their peers at UBC. The northern and rural cohort has provided us the ability to attract physiotherapists to rural areas, and 50 percent of our students now work in areas which were underserviced, as opposed to 3 percent from the non-NRC. A training program based in the north that targets rural entrants is a well-proven strategy to assist with recruitment and the supply of physiotherapists in northern and rural regions.

H. Crowley: We really don’t understand why the government hasn’t yet released the necessary funds to enable this program to come to fruition. Training in Vancouver only causes more students to move away from northern and rural areas, whereas having the program at UNBC would enable the students to live in these communities and form bonds and networks, which would enhance their professional careers and encourage them to stay in the north where they are most needed.

Again, we ask that the Minister of Advanced Education expand UBC’s master of physical therapy program from 80 seats to 100 seats and designate 20 of those as a fully distributed cohort, the northern physical therapy program, situated at UNBC.

J. Rice: I have a couple of questions, so if there are other people chomping at the bit, I will hold my tongue.

Thank you for your presentation. I think I received a letter just recently from the both of you. I appreciate just how you’ve elaborated on the importance of training people in the north to stay in the north. Using the physiotherapy program as an example, I’ve personally benefited from that in the last six months, having been treated by a student physiotherapist in the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital. I wouldn’t have been able to actually get treatment had we not had the students. The alternative would have been for me to wait till the Legislature resumed and seek treatment in Victoria.

I know firsthand. I realize how important that program is and, even just from the students, how we benefit. I feel it’s really unfortunate that you’ve elaborated the lack of services here in Prince George.

What I was really curious to know about is: when you talk about physicians no longer making referrals, is there any way of tracking the non-referrals? Is someone capturing that data?
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T. Fedorkiw: I don’t believe so. It just became critical in the summer here with the shortage. A lot of our therapists left and went to different places. In the rehab unit in particular, a patient…. Actually, she wrote to the paper about it and said that her doctor told her: “There’s no point in referring you to physiotherapy because there are no physiotherapists to treat.” He was right. There isn’t an outpatient department here.

H. Crowley: We’ve both experienced the need ourselves for physiotherapy recently, and it’s very, very difficult to attain.

J. Rice: What about the lack…? You were talking about the delay of the return to work. Is there a way of capturing that in a numerical sense, or is this more…?

T. Fedorkiw: Again, capturing it…. We haven’t done it, right? Employers complain to us, because as soon as someone is injured, it’s really important that there’s timely intervention. The sooner you see the patient, the sooner they get back to work. You monitor their gradual return to work in a safe environment.

R. Austin: I don’t have a question. I just have a comment. I agree. WorkSafe B.C. will be able to present quite a few statistics on that.

I just want to commend you for continuing to lobby hard on this issue. It is very important for everybody who lives in northern B.C. You just have to look at the success of the northern medical program — and now to see the number of docs who are coming, as part of their training, right across the north. We have a whole whack of them in Terrace, Kitimat and Prince Rupert. More importantly, they’re actually beginning to settle down in Terrace and other places. So it’s not just a question of training these folks up north. We’re now seeing evidence of people being willing to live here.

That, in itself, I think, is great evidence for what you’re proposing, which is to bring people…. Not only do we provide access for education for those who live up here, but we could get…. Those who can’t get into the program down at UBC might be able to come up here, fall in love or whatever and then stay.

I think it’s incredible what you’re doing. Please keep it up. I’m sure that our deliberations will be good ones on this issue.

T. Fedorkiw: When we opened the Plinth Lab at the university in 2011, which was in the medical building, it was with the intention of bringing the full academic program here. That was five years ago. Someone suggested that it would take $25 million to build a building to put the program into. We don’t need a building. We just need some operational costs and then the infrastructure between UBC and us.

R. Austin: Actually, just as an aside, I have Margaret Warcup in my constituency.

R. Austin: I’ve been listening to Margaret go on about this for several years, and it’s wonderful that you’re keeping this up.

I just have one last question, if it will close up. One of the real pressures…. I think you’ve identified well the success of having northern programs and being able to have people, as Robin said, who live and work in the community. I certainly saw it up here with social work programs, as well, in the expansion.

One of the areas that we hear a lot about when it comes to the lack of physio support — and this is in the Lower Mainland and the islands; I’m sure it’s even more acute here — is the follow-ups for people who have hip and knee replacements, for example.

Having the lack of physio and the damage that that can cause…. In fact, as somebody described it to me: “It’s a waste of me having my hip replaced. If I don’t have a physio to be able to help me, I may end up having to go back in and have the entire thing done again.”

H. Crowley: I had my own hip replaced in February, and if I hadn’t known how to treat myself…. Like you say, the surgery isn’t effective without the follow-up to strengthen the muscles, to get the mobility back in your joints and to protect it during that vulnerable time before you’re ready. If it’s difficult in Vancouver or Victoria, it’s a lot more difficult here.

T. Fedorkiw: She is an example of how you can restore 100 percent function. She was curling this morning. She was up on the roof yesterday.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good examples for all of us. Thank you so much for your presentation, and thank you for making a very clear case. We appreciate that.

Next we have the Northern Brain Injury Association, Douglas Jones and Will Lewis.
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Welcome, both of you. As you heard, ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. Thank you for being here. I’ll turn it over to you. Welcome.

D. Jones: My name is Doug Jones. I’m the president of the Northern Brain Injury Association.

W. Lewis: I’m Will Lewis. I’m the program developer for the Northern Brain Injury Association.

D. Jones: Will does all of the work. I come in and sign a few cheques once in a while and have the pleasure of presenting.

Thank you very much, Chairperson and the committee, for allowing us to present this afternoon.

First, just a quick bit. Basically, what we’re going to talk about is who we are and what we do. The Northern Brain Injury Association, or NBIA, was founded in 2002 in response to the lack of brain injury services available for northern British Columbians and survivors of brain injury and their families.

There’s a huge need for services for those with acquired brain injury in the north. Some of the unique factors include the geographical and climatic changes and challenges faced by northern B.C. residents. The time and distances people need to travel for services also contribute to the problem of brain injury and, in some cases, exclusion from services.

The NBIA was formed and started helping out where we could. Currently, we have employees in Quesnel, Terrace, Prince George, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John providing services directly to survivors of brain injury. The NBIA works closely with the Prince George Brain Injured Group in Prince George and the Bulkley Valley association in Smithers to provide services across the entire north.

The NBIA is committed to connecting northern British Columbians with brain injury education and support services. These programs and services are designed to support survivors of brain injury and their families. We try to help connect them with services and resources as close to their home as we can. We use face-to-face interaction whenever possible and take full advantage of modern technology such as computers, teleconferencing and other varieties of electronic tools to overcome those time and distance challenges.

Education about brain injury is critical to community health. The NBIA provides every community in northern B.C. with educational materials and presentations, brain injury prevention posters, brain injury recognition and response information, and advice on how to prevent brain injuries. We also participate in community events, attend health fairs, conduct workshops, provide and assist with bike rodeo school presentations — all to raise awareness about brain injury information. We set up booths. We’re set up at sporting events that range from hockey to horseback riding. We provide community-based support groups for survivors and families.

NBIA’s outreach includes phone and web-based supports to individuals and groups and occasional facilitator visits among nearby communities. Because brain injury and rehabilitation are such emerging fields of medicine and are so incredibly complex, there’s desperate need for greater understanding and advances in virtually every area.

The NBIA is committed to the constant search for new and innovative aids and approaches to assist people with the process of recovering from a brain injury. To that, the Northern Brain Injury Association creates original material to help raise awareness, prevent injury and provide support — some which have had, and continue to receive, interprovincial and international acclaim. We’re very proud of these. Will has done an amazing job at producing.

Our video, Flooding — Becoming Overwhelmed After Brain Injury, has been used as support-group course education material as far away as New York as part of a U.S. congressional presentation on brain injury. Survivors of brain injury tell us that they use the video to explain symptoms to family members and to physicians. It’s also used by the medical profession to help understand brain injury.

The video, Family After Brain Injury, helps survivors and their families deal with life after a family member acquires a brain injury. The personality of the survivor is changed forever, and that affects everything in their world. The newest NBIA video, which will be completed soon, is designed to help survivors manage anger after brain injury, which is often a very challenging issue.

Now, we’ve also produced videos for law enforcement to help them understand how to deal with people with brain injury — our brain injury survivors — including the NBIA video, Police Responding to Persons With A Brain Injury, which is now being used in all police recruit training by the Justice Institute of British Columbia, by the hostage negotiation and crisis teams of the Edmonton police department and for advanced RCMP training in the Pacific region.

Our video, Responding to Law Enforcement, advises survivors of brain injury about how to act in the presence of police in order to keep themselves and others safe. The NBIA is also encouraging government to adopt the voluntary crisis registry so that vulnerable persons’ information is available to first responders en route to a situation.

Our website. We’re also proud of that. It has become an educational resource to colleges and universities from around the globe. Our site has an expansive amount of information and links to even more. It allows people to self-educate about brain injury and offers tips for improving brain function. Some of the NBIA’s downloadable
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printed materials are linked to government brain injury resources, with subjects from childhood brain injury to workplace safety.

As part of the NBIA’s injury prevention campaign, we have created over 70 safety posters directed to everything from skateboarding to distracted driving. We provide them to local governments, schools, ski hills and recreational organizations like mountain biking organizations, snowmobile, off-roading clubs, sport teams, etc. All of the posters are also available in electronic form, so they can be displayed on school monitors.

The Northern Brain Injury Association is very proud to have been the founder of the Libraries of the North project, which placed brain injury books and resource materials in public libraries throughout northern B.C.

In 2013, in partnership with the John Howard Society, Corrections Canada and the Prince George Brain Injured Group, the NBIA initiated and conducted the first in-custody inmate brain injury survey in Canada. That led to a couple of successful pilot projects that are now offered multiple times throughout the year to staff and inmates. They receive education about brain injury and post-injury help that is available. Corrections staff have also told us that the information has taught them skills to prevent situations from escalating, keeping everyone safe.

Northern B.C. is a beautiful place to live. As you’ve been travelling around, you’ve noticed that, if you’re not from here. It can be a very dangerous place as well. We play hard in northern B.C. Between 2005 and 2010, there were 83 workplace fatalities in northern B.C. classified as accidental. During this time period, northern B.C. was home to less than 7 percent of the B.C. population, but we suffered 83 fatalities. That’s over 21 percent of all workplace fatalities in B.C.

We’re also concerned about the high rate of brain injury among First Nations. It’s currently three to five times the national rate, and in some isolated northern communities, it’s as much as seven to eight times. Indigenous people face many barriers to education about brain injury. They have limited local medical resources and often must travel great distances to access emergency medical services.

Though northern B.C. is home to under 7 percent of the provincial population, it accounts for over half of all ATV deaths that occurred from 2006 to 2011 in this province, from two in Metro Vancouver to 33 in northern B.C. Lack of helmet use continues to be a significant cause of brain injury from ATV, snowmobile and motorcycle crashes. It’s difficult to enforce, so the NBIA is tackling that problem by raising awareness about the problem.

Sport injuries in northern B.C. are frequent and expensive. To address the issue, the NBIA invests significant time and energy into preventing injuries through a number of initiatives and events every year, such as helmet-fitting clinics and public education about awareness and prevention at recreation facilities, with contests, posters, flyers and through our website.

Also, we have an annual Happy Helmet Day. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that, but I think we even have a picture of the Premier wearing a helmet on Happy Helmet Day.

The good news is that professional sport teams and organizations, even the military, are finally beginning to get serious about brain injuries. But we’re not there yet.

The NBIA also provides brain injury educational events and workshops for medical and community care professionals throughout the north. We support the development of a northern rehabilitative medical centre, such as B.C.’s only centre currently, G.F. Strong, to enhance access to services to individuals and experiential learning opportunities for students.

The facts show that brain injury is a huge issue. It’s one of the top three issues in the world as far as health issues go — 160,000 Canadians sustain brain injuries every year, and incident rates are rising. It doesn’t just happen to individuals; brain injury happens to families, friends and communities.

Brain injury is the leading cause of death, disability and seizure disorders worldwide. Brain injury is 15 times more common than spinal cord injuries, 30 times more common than breast cancer and 400 times more common that HIV/AIDS. The annual incidence of brain injury in Canada is actually greater than all known cases of multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, HIV/AIDS and breast cancer, per year, combined.

Survivors of brain injury are at three times greater risk of experiencing a second brain injury and face an eight times greater risk of sustaining subsequent injuries as a result of their initial injury.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just one minute left — just so you know. We can go into the question time period; we’ll just have less time for questions. It’s entirely up to you.

D. Jones: Well, the stats are in the handout. Fifty percent of all child deaths from injury are from brain injuries; 30 percent of all traumatic brain injuries are sustained by children. If you look at the stats that are in the handout, it’s really quite sobering, and it’s quite amazing that brain injury doesn’t have a higher profile. That’s our fault. That’s what we do, and that’s what we need your help with.

We need the funding so that we can go forth and we can do this. To that, we would love you to consider contributions to some of the organizations that help brain injury. We’re looking for your recommendation to government to provide more brain injury funding to the Brain Injury Alliance to supplement the programs and services provided by charitable community non-profit brain injury associations.
[ Page 2576 ]

Our goal is to build greater capacity in northern B.C. communities by providing services that really are needed and support for survivors of brain injury and their families. A brain injury doesn’t affect a person’s intelligence; it just alters how they process the information. You can imagine how frustrating that can be to somebody who suffers a brain injury.

We at the NBIA are grateful to the committee for this opportunity to present some of our accomplishments and challenges, and we ask for your help.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We have a couple of minutes for questions.

G. Heyman: I’ll be brief. I want to thank you for the presentation and your work. I was pleased to hear about the educational and informational work you’re both doing and want to do and recognize you’d like to do more of. As someone who had my head mostly protected from a fall by a hardhat, I appreciate the difference it makes. I don’t even like to think about what situation I might have been in otherwise.

I assume that part of your communication program is using people who have used the programs and suffered some form of injury themselves?

W. Lewis: Oh, absolutely. We have survivors actually accompany us so they can give a firsthand account of their experiences, and we find that that really is the most impactful part of our presentation.

J. Tegart: Thank you very much for your presentation. When we talk about awareness, I think all of us have become very aware of the impact of concussions in sports. Certainly in my area — I live in Ashcroft — we’re seeing a great deal more interest in how we ensure that our kids are wearing helmets, that their brains are protected. But as you said, there’s lots more work to be done. So thank you for what you do.

D. Jones: The idea of being able to enforce it…. It’s better if we all just do it. That comes with awareness.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I just want to add, in closing, thank you for your presentation and also thank you for the work that you’re doing — and I appreciated hearing about it — with law enforcement. It’s an issue we hear a lot about — struggles with people with mental health issues and brain injuries, and law enforcement not really knowing how to deal with the issues. So I think it’s good, proactive work that, hopefully, will prevent some tragedies down the road as well. Thank you for that extraordinary work. We really appreciate it.

Next we have the College of New Caledonia — Steve Nycholat and Henry Reiser. As you heard, ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions, and we’ll turn it over to you.

Good evening. My name is Steve Nycholat. I’m the chair of finance of the board of governors of the College of New Caledonia. With me today is our president, Henry Reiser. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our recommendations. We’ll be addressing three major points today.

First, we’ll help you understand the important role CNC plays in educating as well as the economic and community development across the northern and central Interior region. Second, we’ll explain how CNC is well positioned to help provide and achieve goals outlined in the skills-for-jobs blueprint and the top 50 jobs in demand. Finally, we’ll describe to you how the province can help CNC to reach its goals to provide skills training and access to post-secondary education for all learners in northern B.C.

Who we are — students. We provide education and skills training for about 4,200 students across six campuses in Prince George, Quesnel, Mackenzie, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James and Burns Lake. We accommodate another 3,900 students through continuing education skills courses. Our international students make up 6 percent of our total student count.

The average age of our students is 27. Nearly 18 percent of our domestic learners are of self-declared aboriginal ancestry, with two of our campuses having more than 30 percent. Since this data is collected as dependent on students declaring their own ancestry, the actual percentage of aboriginal students is believed to be higher.

How we contribute — training and education. In line with the B.C. skills-for-jobs-blueprint, CNC has a central role to play in developing the highly skilled and educated workforce required in northern British Columbia. Our student outcomes survey reports that 82 percent of CNC’s diplomas, associate degrees, certified graduates are currently in the labour force. The percentage of apprenticeships is even higher, at 95 percent.

Economy. In 2012-13, a B.C. Colleges–commissioned report stated that for every dollar of public money invested in CNC, taxpayers receive a cumulative value of $2.20 over the course of students’ working lives.

How we’re unique — accessibility. CNC’s FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, on-line education is re-
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nowned in how it has helped increase awareness and understanding throughout the world. CNC offers a number of academic upgrading courses which can serve as prerequisites to other college courses, which can help the individuals obtain adult basic education, ABE, certificates or a B.C. adult graduation diploma.

How we are collaborative. CNC continues to look for new and different ways to build capacity throughout partnerships and collaborations with government, industry, K to 12, post-secondary institutions and labour to meet the economic objectives of the province.

Industry partners. CNC is continuing to partner with Canfor and school district 57 to run the Canfor trades program, which introduces grade 7 students to carpentry and electrical trades. We recently received a silver medal at the internationally recognized 2016 Global Best Awards in the STEM category for the northern region. CNC won a medal for its partnership with Dunkley Lumber and the CNC research forest.

Educational partners. The Northern Post-Secondary Council, NPSC, which includes Northwest Community College, NLC, UNBC and CNC is active again and is collaborating with government to offer complementary programming across institutions. It is also working collaboratively with government and institutions in a campaign to raise awareness of the fantastic educational opportunities in the north.

First Nations partners. CNC collaborates with over 20 First Nations across the region and is recognized for numerous partners in the aboriginal service plan. It also relies on continuing support from the Yinka Dene Council, which advises the president and college on appropriate directions and priorities for aboriginal people throughout the region.

Community partners — strong advisory committees across the program areas. Regional communities include the Yinka Dene Council, north Cariboo post-secondary council and the president’s industrial council. All provide invaluable information, assessment and feedback to the college. We rely on consultation with our region’s mayors and community groups in order to ensure that our trajectory falls within line of regional needs and goals.

Research and development. CNC’s office of applied research and innovation is very active in developing partnerships with industrial and the federal government. These research projects link back to the classroom by creating experiential learning opportunities for students and developing essential skills identified in the Conference Board of Canada’s innovation 2.0 documents.

CNC is currently working with numerous other applied research projects with forest innovation, green electrical production and sustainable food production. We currently have over 25 industrial partner research projects on the go. The department currently grosses over $1 million a year and involves over 100 students within its projects. With $1 million of funding from the NSERC, we have recently partnered with the regional forest industry in central British Columbia to establish a long-term industrial research chair in forest health.

Our challenges. In general, CNC’s tuition rates are well below the provincial average. This is because rates were established many years ago, and with only a 2 percent increase allowed over the years, it has never caught up.

Increased government reporting requirements have become problematic for smaller institutions. The recommendations in the ITA report and outlined in the blueprint suggest an even greater emphasis on reporting and accountability, which will further increase the institution workloads. Much of the work submitted has little return or benefit to the institution. The excessive amount of reporting actually hurts CNC because it draws valuable resources away from strategic planning.

The compensation gap between employees and administrators has compressed to the point where many administrators make a lower hourly rate than their employees.

Where are we going? Skills training. CNC is currently providing training for more than three-quarters of the top 50 in-demand jobs and careers.

Accessibility. CNC has begun to launch a digital delivery initiative, DDI, after a successful pilot program. The DDI takes advantage of the improvements in broadband Internet conductivity across northern B.C., innovative utilization and improved technologies to provide synchronous instructor-driven courses to a wider student group and reduce costs. There are currently seven courses being delivered through DDI, four of which are being delivered from Quesnel. We hope to expand the delivery of our other campuses, First Nations communities and other countries in the near future. We will continue to share our progress with the northern post-secondary council.

How the province could help. Provide consistent long-term funding for aboriginal learners. We want to maximize aboriginal learners’ participation in the workforce but realize that many need upgrading and other supports before they can enter traditional programs. CNC is uniquely structured to help because of the community locations throughout northern B.C. In many cases, CNC will also need to take the training to the First Nation reserves. Our development of the DDI will help us do so.

Continue to help fund CNC’s digital delivery initiative. It will allow CNC to be more effective providing access to education to learners in smaller communities, allowing them to remain close to home, which will thereby increase the chances of success.

Continue to help fund applied research along with federal government, our industrial partners and First Nations.

Approve and provide funding for CNC’s civil engineering technology program. The civil engineering technology diploma is an ideal place for providing the province
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to invest a portion of its $270 million for in-demand jobs. Engineers and technicians will play a pivotal role for nearly $175 billion in industrial investment over the next decade. CNC is investing a total of $125,000 in civil engineering technology, $50,000 from core review savings and $75,000 from international education.

Continue to invest in capital projects. Our current five-year capital plan outlines eight priority projects. First is an aboriginal student housing building, which is needed to mitigate the disproportionately high dropout rate of aboriginal students by easing the transitional challenges from moving from rural community to the city setting. The second is the creation of a health sciences centre to replace the existing block in our main building, which is beyond life cycle. The third priority is the creation of a student centre, which we do not currently have space dedicated for — student activities, business and culture.

Transition students to the workforce faster. More funding for workforce transitions will help ensure that our students are able to shift jobs as soon as they have finished their training. Increased CTC- and CODA-type programming will ensure that students will have already gained relevant experience prior to finishing their training.

Allowing tuition review. A one-time catch-up to provincial norms would go a long way to ensure the financial health of the college. It could add an additional $1.4 million to the budget.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation, and thank you for the overview. We now will open it up for questions. We have some time for questions.

S. Gibson: A quick question. Thank you again. I recall, Dr. Reiser, that I’ve seen you here last year. Good to be here again with you.

My query is on completion. I had the privilege of teaching university students for some years, and the students suddenly vanish. You know the story. A student would be taking it, and then they just disappear.

Without being too critical, it’s perhaps more problematic, as you note in your documentation, with our aboriginal friends. So my query is: do you do exit interviews? And how do you retain students, to ensure that if students are dropping out, it’s for legitimate reasons as opposed to reasons that you can control or mitigate? It seems to me this is a huge issue in post-secondary today.

H. Reiser: I’ll answer that question. We do have a fairly broad academic advising group within student services who perform exactly that task. They advise them when they’re coming in. They work with them as they progress through. And when issues are defined, then the students and the advisers work out a strategy.

However, what we are implementing this year is a day-28 and a November 4 count to identify any students that are at risk so that it’s not too late in the semester for remediation. We’re also looking at strategies to have on-line courses, canned courses, that students can use to remediate.

Our observation is that when a student is with their cohort, they normally complete. When a student falls out of their cohort, how can we get them back with their original cohort so they’ll complete the program?

We are faced with particular challenges with First Nations students, for example. We try to support them. We have an aboriginal resource centre. We have elders on campus. But this remains an ongoing challenge, and part of the issue is that funding that is available is not directed towards those kinds of supports. Long-term funding that is predictable, that we can plan around, is the way to go forward.

S. Gibson: As a supplementary, I certainly found and my experience has been that the female students tend to do better than the male students, even outside the aboriginal community. I don’t know whether you want to affirm that. How do we engage more of our young males to get into post-secondary? It’s an area I see that we’re missing, to some extent, in the province.

H. Reiser: Well, part of the problem, though, is that it would appear female students are more intrinsically motivated than the male students are, and we have to come up with strategies to engage them in their learning so that they’re actively learning. We’re doing that through our applied research activities, but we’re also looking at changing some pedagogy so that it’s a little bit more project-based and so that the students, then, can readily identify with what their subject matter is as they progress through.

C. James (Deputy Chair): On the issue you mentioned — the kind of historic challenges around tuition and the tuition that you can charge — I wonder…. We’ve been hearing from a number of colleges around the challenges with the existing funding formula and the lack of rationale, sometimes, around why certain institutions get an amount of money and others don’t.

One of the areas that has come up in previous presentations is the issue of aboriginal funding and, again, that there doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason why some colleges receive more in the area of aboriginal support funding and others don’t. I wondered if that’s also a historic issue that you’re facing at the college.

H. Reiser: In our college, we are one of the first group of 11 who received funding for aboriginal education.
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It’s simply because of the size of the population of First Nations students in our catchment area and in our region.

However, there’s a lot of talk around how we’re trying to engage our First Nations citizens, and the funding — be it the fault of the feds or provincially — is simply not enough. We have funding like ESS, employment skills training, that comes in too late — right? — so we can’t plan, and it’s very unpredictable. That’s a federal fund.

Funding coming from the province is not inadequate. Our challenge is that when we had an opportunity to catch up a number of years ago, that wasn’t chosen — an action that was not to be followed — and we have been paying for that ever since.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, and thank you, gentlemen, for coming and making your presentation tonight. We really appreciate it.

Dave, welcome. Dave is coming in under the open mike. So, Dave, five minutes for the presentation. We appreciate you coming tonight. I will turn it over to you.

The Prince George Backcountry Recreation Society is made up of about seven or eight groups and clubs. They all take part in non-motorized back-country activities.

For a number of years we’ve been quite active throughout the central Interior. As part of that, we now have a volunteer working agreement with B.C. Parks. In that capacity, we look after and maintain a large number of trails and other facilities for B.C. Parks around the central Interior. In fact, what B.C. Parks has told us is that the group looks after about 75 to 85 percent of the maintenance of trails and facilities like cabins and so on that are outside of the high-use parks that are handled by contractors — issued ones with campgrounds and this sort of thing.

Without the assistance of volunteers, like of the member clubs, B.C. Parks here would be in rather rough shape. As it is, it’s stretching us to the limits too, to maintain trails, and that includes bridges, this sort of thing. We help with the restocking of four different cabins with firewood each year — moneys we in part supply, because B.C. Parks often does not have enough.

Anyway, we now have a new park here — ancient forest Chun T’oh Whudujut Park — and it’s going to put further demands on the local park staff. In fact, one of the clubs, the Caledonia Ramblers, probably just saved B.C. Parks close to $50,000 by installing a cement base for a picnic shelter out there as part of the new development of that park. We fortunately have a club member who is a very experienced construction person and has done a lot of cement work and sort of directed the rest of us that had not really much of a clue. Anyway, the project has been completed.

I guess my main point is that I know that the Outdoor Recreation Council has been campaigning for additional funding for B.C. Parks. We feel, here, very strongly that the situation here is getting rather abysmal, desperate, and that without additional funding and without a huge involvement of the various volunteers — particularly from members of the Backcountry Recreation Society — I don’t know where B.C. Parks would be in terms of maintaining our parks in this area.

They are an attraction to visitors and tourists. So I think a little better maintenance, in some cases, and more maintenance and I think more staffing…. They could be enhanced in that manner. This year, Parks phoned us up and said: “Could you come out and could you put a crew together and clean seven in 11 kilometres in the Eskers Park?” It was a full day’s work for us, and this is just ongoing.

Really, all I need to say is just that we feel that the funding for B.C. Parks is grossly below what it needs to be right now. We feel that it probably should be doubled on the maintenance or the operational side of things from roughly $30 million to up more in the $60 million range. And probably there’s need for additional funding in the capital side of things as well.

That is all I wish to say — to make the point that if it wasn’t for us, the park system here would really be in trouble.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for a succinct presentation. We’ve had a number of presentations that make essentially the same point with respect to parks, conservation in general, suggestions for how some additional funding — not enough, but some — could be allocated, and they’re very consistent with your presentation.

First of all, I want to thank you and members of groups like yours — your group and groups like yours — around the province for doing what you do to help maintain parks. I understand that people do it willingly, but there’s also a point where volunteers really can’t replace the responsibility of government to directly fund the maintenance of our heritage in our parks. Aside from the fact that it’s our heritage, it has tremendous economic value.

I would simply invite you, as well as having thanked you for the work you do, to…. We have, I think, until October 14 for some more information to be sent to the Clerk’s office that will form part of the public record of these hearings as well as help us in our deliberations. What would be useful from my perspective is specific examples of areas where maintenance has really fallen be-
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hind and it shows and there’s a great need for the work to be done. That would help us immensely.

D. King: I think we can supply some pictures and some details on some of the things. We’re even maintaining the toilets and looking after the garbage out at the new Ancient Forest Park. Park staff just don’t have the capacity to do so right now.

D. Ashton: Dave, thank you very much. I just want to concur and reinforce what George said. Thank you for the work that you folks do. I know at home, where I come from, we have individuals like the Naramata Wood Whackers. They’re out there on a continual basis just making a difference. So thank you. You do make a huge difference, and it’s greatly appreciated.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you for coming out. We appreciate it. And October 14 by midnight, if you have anything to add that you want to bring in.

Please come up. Cindi Pohl, Christie Ray and Lorna Wendling. Welcome. You have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions. All right. I will turn it over to you. Welcome.

C. Pohl: Thank you. I’m Cindi Pohl, president of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. With me today are chamber vice-president Lorna Wendling and CEO Christie Ray.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. The committee has a long history of working closely with organizations like the Prince George Chamber of Commerce and those across the province collaboratively. We applaud the positive strides made in the past year and value this chance to share some of the issues that are top of mind of our membership.

We have chosen to share some of the key advocacy initiatives that have come forth from our membership in this past year. They are all policy resolutions that have been presented and accepted into the policy book at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce AGM 2016.

The first one is the future of the forest industry and importance to British Columbia’s economy. The B.C. forest industry is the economic backbone of many B.C. communities, a vital part of B.C.’s economy. It is increasingly more important in central and northern B.C.

In 2014, the forest sector saw exports in commodity wood products reach $12.4 billion, which represents approximately 35 percent of the total of all exports in B.C. While this is an impressive number, the overall trend of exports has still not recovered to the levels of exports seen in 2005.

Therefore, to continue to create and nurture the conditions required for a modern and globally competitive forest industry, the chamber recommends a number of detailed actions, including securing access to an economically viable fibre supply and identifying the timber supply that will available, given First Nations and stewardship allocations; improving the integrity of market-based timber pricing systems, stumpage; improving investment certainty; market access; and continuing to develop emerging forest sector markets internationally.

C. Ray: My turn. No. 2 is titled “Renewed Interest in Brownfield Remediation.” Brownfields are an ongoing problem in communities across Canada. They affect both large cities and small, rural municipalities and can be any size, from small former gas stations to large chemical processing sites.

The provincial government plays an important role in setting out the legislative framework as well as supporting the assessment and remediation and risk management activities that need to take place. In fact, the province of B.C. has played a leadership role with its brownfield renewal strategy, which helped to build awareness of brownfield issues. It encouraged communities to take advantage of the revitalization tax exemption through the Community Charter, which allows municipalities to provide property tax exemptions for brownfield redevelopment projects. The strategy included funding for site assessments as seed money to assist in moving brownfield sites across the province back into productive use.

The five-year funding program granted approximately $7 million towards site assessment projects and was completed in 2013-2014. It is important that B.C. maintains its momentum and recognizes that brownfield redevelopment continues to be a business issue.

Number 3 is titled “Canada’s small airports and access to ACAP funding.” This resolution does cover issues that are under federal jurisdiction. We do realize that, but we wanted to familiarize you guys with the issue, however, as it’s important for our B.C. communities that have small airports, and there are a number of them. Of course, healthy airports lead to increased economic development, so I wanted just to give you a bit of a heads-up on this one.

In 1994, the Canadian government created ACAP, which is the airport capital assistance program, as part of the national airports policy to provide essential funding to Canada’s 200 regional local airports for safety improvements. The program is a valuable tool for the nation’s eligible airports. However, ACAP’s program and funding structures have not been kept up to date to meet the demands of the industry as well as inflation rates over the last 20 years.

ACAP provides approximately $38 million per year toward airport essential safety projects. This amount has
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not changed in over 20 years. Many small airports report needing major infrastructure investment far beyond the $38 million mark; however, Transport Canada claims the fund to be underutilized each year. This is because the process is reported as being onerous with unreasonably long associated consultation processes. Moreover, Transport Canada may not receive all requests for funding as there exists an intermediary program to vet the applications. This also means that they may not realize the total amount of money being requested. The decision-making process remains a closed governmental procedure providing no transparency.

Also, there are six small airports across Canada — including YXS in Prince George, which is why we hopped on this one — that have been disqualified from receiving ACAP funding despite being in the same situation as their 200 counterparts in the national airport system. They are deemed essential by the national airports policy, have less than 525,000 passengers annually and are not able to self-fund all capital requirements, which are often safety requirements necessary in Canada. But these six airports sit on land leased by the federal government. That makes them ineligible to receive the ACAP assistance. This needs to be changed.

L. Wendling: The last one we wanted to discuss was in relation to pipeline projects and allowing them sufficient time in order to meet the conditions.

We’re very aware that environmental safety and the conditions that are placed therein are extremely important. We’re not suggesting that those be waylaid or otherwise ignored, though what we are requesting is in relation to pipeline projects. If we take the northern gateway project specifically, they need to get the extra time before the sunset clauses come into play in order to meet those conditions.

In the case of northern gateway, because of certain legal issues, they were unable to address the conditions before the sunset clause came into play. We want to make sure that they are afforded the right time to go through and evaluate those conditions.

The company needs to respond thoughtfully and fully to concerns to develop the project responsibly in the best interest of all stakeholders involved and to consider the long-term health and success of our communities, environment and economy.

This project, deemed to be so beneficial to Canada, should be given reasonable preparation time to meet its conditions. We ask that the province of B.C. support a process that ensures northern gateway and other pipeline projects are allowed an adequate amount of time to successfully meet federal and provincial conditions.

That concludes our presentation. We just want to thank you again for your time and consideration. We hope the information presented here is helpful in your deliberations, in your budgeting process. We would welcome any questions.

J. Rice: Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate the diverse interests that you have raised. I’m just wondering. Your baby, Christie — help me understand the ACAP funding and how you don’t get qualified. Just reiterate that for me, maybe.

C. Ray: It is quite complicated. Essentially, the ACAP fund is $38 million of federal money that is allowed to airports that fall into a specific category, a small NAS airport — so airports that are in the national airport system but are smaller than 525,000 passengers annually. The money is supposed to be for all of them to address their capital requirements — primarily safety, but other stuff too — because they can’t self-fund everything. They’re just too small, but they’ve been deemed to be essential for the system.

There are six airports in that system that fall into…. They kind of fall through the cracks, because they’re sitting on leased federal land, whereas when everything was moved federally to the communities 20 years ago, that only happened six times. Actually, I’m not sure if that was the case originally, but now there only exist six that are like that.

C. Ray: Oh yes. You do have in your package…. We’ve included not only our full presentation, which was more than just our speaking notes today, but also each of our four resolutions in their entirety. The chambers are listed, and the communities that go along with the chambers. So it’s Prince George; London, Ontario; Gander, Newfoundland; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; St. John’s, Newfoundland; and Fredericton.

As long as the airport is sitting on leased land…. Well, it’s ineligible, but basically, it’s determined to be almost like double-dipping in a way, even though the airport pays very high lease rates for the land.

This is an issue that is very much larger than our chamber and the chambers across the country. It’s something that the Canadian Airports Council has taken on in a very, very major way. We are working with them because we happen to be one of the airports. They want as much help as they possibly can, and we feel it’s something that is really imperative to our local economic development.

E. Foster: I’ve got several questions on the first part of your presentation on the forest industry. I’ll qualify that by saying the forest industry fed my family for the first 35 years that I worked.

E. Foster: Yeah, okay. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t make sense to me. If you could please look at “secure access to economically viable fibre,” I don’t know where you think all the fibre is going to come from. You can’t give it to one but still keep it to the others. There’s a finite amount of timber out there. How are we going to…? There’s just not enough timber to go around.

You talk about keeping all the facilities open. We’re seeing this right across the province, certainly not just here. But this corridor was hit harder by the pine beetle than any other part of the province. There’s no question about that.

Then on several other comments…. It would be very nice if we could do it all. I just want to know where you think the timber is going to come from.

C. Ray: Mr. Foster, I wish very, very much that I was an expert in this field, along with the NAS airports field — not that I’m an expert in that field whatsoever. Unfortunately, none of us were the ones to write this. We had foresters writing this and people in COFI.

E. Foster: What happens is that everybody says the same thing, but everybody wants the timber, if you go to any of these tenure holders. I was a tenure holder — okay? — and I wouldn’t give away a stick of wood, because once that starts, then you’re out of business. But please do connect me with whoever wrote this, because I’ll have that conversation with them.

C. Ray: I will. I know that they would be very, very happy to speak with you about this further. It was co-authored by foresters and the mills and COFI, and all that kind of stuff.

E. Foster: It’s an academic piece of writing. I’ll have the conversation with them.

E. Foster: You didn’t get very good information. The timber just doesn’t exist to do all the things that they want to do.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. If there is further information that you want to provide to all committee members, you’re welcome to do that before midnight on the 14th of October, back through the committee stage. Thank you for your work in the community, and thank you for your presentation. We appreciate it.

Next we have the Child Development Centre of Prince George and District — Darrell Roze. Welcome, Darrell. I know you were sitting through, but ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions. I will turn it over to you.

D. Roze: Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to provide input on this process. The child development centre has been providing services to Prince George and surrounding communities for almost 50 years. We are an accredited organization that provides substantial assurance to the quality of our programming.

There are a couple of major benefits to contracting with a charitable organization such as ours, especially a larger one. One of those is that we adhere to evidence-based practices within the services that we provide. Also, we utilize multidisciplinary teams. Through the use of shared observations, we can often elevate the value of our services to the families that we support.

A couple of the major contracted services that we provide are our therapy program and our supported child development program. Within therapy, we have physiotherapy, which is dealing with the large muscle movements such as walking and crawling and such, and balance and range of motion; occupational therapy, which deals primarily with fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and it also deals substantially with mobility devices such as wheelchairs; and speech language pathology, which deals with all types of verbal and non-verbal communication.

Within our supported child development program, we have two areas. The first area is in consulting work. We have supported child development consultants that work with parents and child care providers developing child care plans. And then we have supported child development workers that go into the programs.

I don’t remember if I said this, but supported child development assists children that could not otherwise attend daycares, preschools and after-school care programs. The supported child care workers go into the programs and work directly with the children and implement those care plans. They provide substantial developmental benefits to the children, and they also allow them to participate in the social atmosphere of a child care program, helping them prepare for school entry.

Most of our support comes in a child’s early years. Within all of us, we have an early developmental period,
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and it’s our first few years of life. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to impact a child’s development during that time. We develop our core development during that period, like how we view the world and such, and we also impact our ability for future learning, our capacity to learn for the future. By the time a child gets to kindergarten, that early developmental period — the most important developmental period we all go through — is largely waning.

Within Prince George, we have some substantial concerns. The human early learning project out of the University of British Columbia does developmental mapping around the province. A huge swath of Prince George is involved in some of the worst developmental outcomes that are in the province, and 56 percent of children that are hitting kindergarten from the Bowl area and South Fort George area of Prince George are doing so in a delayed state. So over one in two children are hitting kindergarten in a developmentally vulnerable state.

In the first round of developmental mapping that the human early learning project did, this was the worst area that they mapped. Now, I believe, it’s tied for the worst, so it’s a substantial concern.

Provincially we’re also doing badly. We have 32 percent of children entering kindergarten with those same delays. This contrasts dramatically with the strategic plan that the province put into place in 2009, where they were looking to have those delays reduced to 15 percent. At the time that plan was put into place, delays in the province were sitting at 29 percent, so we’ve gone in the wrong direction.

The failure of the province to make meaningful, or any, improvement in this area has to do with resourcing. There hasn’t been sufficient resourcing to deal with the problem. A second issue is a failure to recognize the programs that were in place that were providing substantial benefits — programs like our therapy programs, programs like the supported child development program.

We know that on average, 10 percent of people, 10 percent of children, have biologically necessary delays. These are the children with special needs. Anything above that is biologically unnecessary. So going back to the issue in this neighbourhood that we’re in right now with 56 percent of children entering kindergarten with delays, we can estimate that 46 percent of those are entering kindergarten with unnecessary delays.

I’d like you to think for a moment what kinds of challenges those children will face going forward and what kind of financial repercussions that’s going to have on our society. As those children enter kindergarten, they are largely exiting that early developmental period. We know that those children, on average, are going to be delayed for the rest of their lives, so those children will face unnecessary challenges when going through the school system. On average, most of those children are going to grow into less productive adults, and more of them are going to be reliant on social assistance as they get older.

Those individuals, as they grow older, will be more predisposed to chronic health conditions and be a burden to our health care system, and those individuals are more likely to become involved in the criminal justice system. So we have a situation where we’re saving a few thousand dollars in services early in those children’s lives that could potentially get them up to typical development. We’re saving that money, and we’re potentially leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs downstream. It doesn’t make any fiscal sense. It doesn’t make any social sense.

It was 24 years ago that the child development centre received its last meaningful increase in staffing. Since that time, the province has failed to keep up with the increased costs that we face in providing those services.

In two of those years, the province has failed to come through with increases to our wage and benefit costs. The most recent of these was last year, when we experienced an $85,000 increase to our costs from a provincially negotiated and provincially approved increase to our wages. This year we’ve experienced a $19,000 increase in cost to our long-term disability costs. That’s through the Healthcare Benefit Trust, a provincially created organization that we’re required to participate with. Again, we don’t think that we are going to be compensated for this $19,000 increase in costs.

In at least the last 15 years, we haven’t been compensated for any cost increases to our building costs. Over that time, we haven’t been compensated for many of our administrative cost increases. In looking at the Bank of Canada’s inflation rate over the last 15 years, it comes up with a 30.79 percent increase in costs over that time. We conservatively estimate that this relates to a $92,000 increase in costs that we haven’t been compensated for.

Allowing a child to go through life with unnecessary delays is shocking to me, and it’s happening continually — as I said, 56 percent of children entering the school system in this major area of Prince George, with many of those having unnecessary delays, many of those having more delays than they should, because we could have helped them.

I participate in the British Columbia Association of Child Development and Intervention, a provincial organization, and I can tell you that this is a provincial concern. Although we have substantial concerns here, this is provincewide — a systemic underfunding of agencies such as us.

We’re asking for consideration on two areas. One is a 50 percent increase to our therapy and supported child development programs. This would not bring us up to full funding. This would allow us to plug a critical gap in demand.

That relates to an increase of $631,230 to our therapy program and a $568,104 increase to our supported
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childhood development program. Those numbers seem large, but they are actually a few thousand dollars per child that we’re looking at, and they provide substantial downstream savings.

A second request is that the province stops systematically underfunding high-level child development services. This would include fully covering the costs, on an ongoing basis, for the increased costs of providing these services. Every time that they aren’t covered results in an annual decrease in services.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We’re going into the question time, Darrell, just so you know.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation. I’ll now open it up for questions.

Darrell, I want to thank you for your work. I think the Child Development Centre in Prince George has an incredible reputation. I know that from my work up here, but I know that from around the province as well. So thank you to you and your staff.

I know many centres have just given up keeping wait-lists now because of the pressures that they’re facing and the challenges. I just wondered if you have any idea of a wait if somebody applies for support right now. If they’re looking for support for child development services or supported child care, are they facing a wait time? Are they facing time to be able to get service?

D. Roze: They’re most definitely facing a wait, but what we’ve done, and what a lot of agencies in northern B.C. have done, is we’ve tried to provide service to almost everybody that needs service. We’re just providing a great deal less service per child.

With some children, that actually works sort of okay, but some…. What we’ll do is we’ll have a block of services for three weeks, and then that child will be off services for three months. The problem with that is children change so quickly early in their lives that they should continually change what service they’re receiving.

So what we’re doing is we’re actually using parents as a bit of therapy aid. We say: “Okay, you’re off the block for three months, off our service block. Continue with these services.” But as the child develops, then those services become less and less relevant to those children.

S. Gibson: There’s not much information…. This is very good information, but there’s not much content in here in terms of your annual budget or your payroll or any of those. I presume that would be material you would be forwarding to us.

This is a very persuasive document, and it’s very emotive, but there’s very little information here that might be of help to the committee. There’s no budget or anything in here, so it’s hard to know…. There’s no information on your payroll or your rent — all those kinds of things that might be of interest to the committee when we’re contemplating considering your request.

Thank you again, Darrell, for coming. Thank you for your work, and thank you for your support of children in the Prince George area.

Next we have the Spruce City Wildlife Association. We have Dustin Snyder and Steve Hamilton who are going to present. Gentlemen, it’s ten minutes for the presentation — up to ten minutes — and up to five minutes for questions. I’ll just give you a wave when we’re getting down to one minute so that you know you’re near your time.

D. Snyder: First off, good afternoon to all of you and thank you very much for coming up to Prince George. My name is Dustin Snyder. I’m the vice-president of the Spruce City Wildlife Association and the regional president for the Omineca area of the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

The Spruce City Wildlife Association was formed in 1970 and has worked hard since its creation for the betterment and conservation of fish, wildlife and habitat in our area. The club has run a salmon hatchery, on and off, for many years. This year is actually our first year in about a decade that we’ll actually be releasing chinook salmon into the Nechako. We’ve worked really hard, and we’re back on that.

Spruce City Wildlife Association is also an affiliate club of the B.C. Wildlife Federation and adds about 200 members to the 50,000-member total that is the BCWF.

First off, I’d like to start off with some info on B.C.’s amazing biodiversity, just some info points here for you.

When it comes to biodiversity in Canada, B.C. is unmatched. Canada holds about 3,200 types of moths, and 2,500 of those can be found here in B.C. Canada holds about 55,000 types of insects, and 35,000 of those can
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be found here in B.C. Of that 35,000, 168 are endemic to B.C., which means they can’t be found anywhere else in the world.

Twenty of the 42 Canadian amphibians can be found in B.C., and 143 of the 196 Canadian mammals live here in B.C. as well. More than half the world’s trumpeter swan population spends time in B.C.’s estuaries each year. And given the amount of steep rock habitat in B.C., it’s no surprise that we hold 60 percent of the world’s mountain goat population. Other impressive tallies include the fact that B.C. holds 30 percent of the world’s bald eagles and 25 percent of the world’s grizzlies.

Having told you these pretty cool facts about B.C., I regret to inform you that throughout its history and under various names, British Columbia’s fish and wildlife management agency has been among the most understaffed and underfunded of any fish and wildlife agency in North America.

From 1974 to 2010, B.C.’s population has nearly doubled. While the provincial budget has increased nearly five times, the budget for natural resource management has barely moved. When we bring these things up to our elected officials locally, we’re told that all the money goes to the big three, which is health, education and social services. Yet when we break it down and remove those big three from the budget, we find that everything else has about tripled.

It isn’t that the big three are taking up the entire budget. It just seems that everything is taking up the entire budget, leaving forestry, lands and natural resources with very little increase over the past 20 years.

We’re seeing a lack of investment in many of our fish and wildlife populations. Mountain caribou are in decline across most of the province, some populations so low that they’ll likely be gone in the next two decades. Chilcotin and Thompson steelhead, once iconic runs in B.C., have gone from about 4,000 fish returning annually to less than 600 and a total fishing closure. Moose populations in the central Interior have also experienced a 50 to 70 percent decline in the last decade. I believe that British Columbia is failing to adequately protect its natural resources in this aspect.

Meanwhile, after years of decline, people are seeming to take up hunting, and its population is skyrocketing, increasing from 86,000 hunters in 2005 to 112,000 in 2015. That’s more than a 30 percent increase. This year alone 68,000 resident hunters applied for only 8,500 moose-hunting lottery opportunities. Hunting in British Columbia has changed also. It’s now a family activity. People bring out their children, wives. It’s no longer kind of the old boys’ club thing. It’s more of a family event.

While most jurisdictions in North America have a dedicated funding model, B.C. does not. Currently 100 percent of freshwater fishing licence fees are dedicated to the HCTF, which is the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, and the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. Only $2.6 million of the $14.5 million in hunting licence fees is put back to fish and wildlife through the HCTF.

Also significant in this time is the breaking bond between our young people and the natural world. Hunting, fishing and trapping are a fundamental part of Canadian society, and a growing body of research links our mental, physical and spiritual health directly to our association with nature.

Having said all that, I’d like to make a few recommendations to the Standing Committee on Finance.

Recommendation No. 1: I’d like to see all hunting licence fee revenue put back into wildlife. It’s important for the overall health of fish, wildlife and their habitat to ensure that adequate funding is in place for wildlife inventories, harvest monitoring and all those supporting services. This would meet the funding model formula recommended by the 2002 recreation stewardship panel.

In the longer term, we suggest looking at moving wildlife delivery functions outside of government, similar to the Freshwater Fisheries Society model. The BCWF believes wildlife management delivery as a non-government organization will create an atmosphere where dollars can be leveraged through partners and corporate sponsors, and we could easily turn each dollar into four.

Effective resource management will increase B.C. residents’ recreation opportunities and contribute to the economy through hunting and angling expenditures and increased revenue for conservation.

Recommendation No. 2 is that natural resource users need to contribute. Natural resource use and extraction in B.C. are taking part in B.C.’s natural shared capital. Government should be collecting rent and dedicating a portion of it to fish and wildlife and conservation. Activities such ecotourism, wildlife viewing, mining, heli-skiing, oil and gas, and logging all should contribute to natural resource conservation. They’re all taking part in being out there and taking some of it away, so once again, they should be putting back into it just like the hunters and fishers are.

In particular, non-renewable natural resource extraction will have a long-term negative effect on biodiversity, and there is currently no mechanism in place to compensate for this.

Recommendation No. 3: complete and implement the draft provincial conservation offset policy. Approved resource development in the province needs to have government direction through policy on how to compensate for cumulative effects, particularly for losses to fish, wildlife and their habitat.

The draft policy discussion paper developed by the Ministry of Environment needs to be endorsed by cabinet and implemented, as well as the funding formula from resource revenues to address cumulative effects to the oil, gas, hydro, mining and transportation sectors.
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In summary, B.C. is very fortunate to have a rich diversity of fish and wildlife and resources, but some of it is starting to disappear. We’re adding more people to British Columbia’s population constantly and putting more stress on our natural resources. At the same time, we’ve cut funding and the capacity to steward these natural resources.

Through the growing membership of the BCWF and its affiliate clubs, like Spruce City, we firmly believe it’s our collaborative responsibility to conserve these resources, and it is critical that we recognize the challenges and opportunities that we face in maintaining B.C.’s diverse species over the long term. This includes investing in measures that will prevent future costly species and habitat recovery projects.

We also strongly believe in the benefits of building on existing fish and wildlife management and education programs, as well as investing in new initiatives around the province.

We invite the B.C. government to join us in maintaining the province through strategy, conserving our diverse wildlife and fish resources and providing education and awareness of conservation and the outdoors. We look forward to working together on the recommendations made on behalf of the membership of the B.C. Wildlife Federation and the Spruce City Wildlife Association.

I’d like to thank you all again for coming to Prince George and giving me the opportunity to present.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s very consistent with a number of presentations that we’ve heard, both in Prince George and elsewhere, over the course of this set of hearings.

I was making a lot of mental and physical notes about points you were making, to follow up. Obviously, I haven’t done quite the research I thought, on a couple of initiatives.

I want to ask you a specific question. I certainly appreciate the point about devoting 100 percent of licence fees. I understand that a number of people have pointed to the Freshwater Fisheries Society as a management model.

You suggested the same thing could be done for wildlife and there’d be a chance to leverage partnerships and private sector dollars for more money. I understand that the main goal there is to get more money put into conservation. Do you see any potential for a conflict of interest? If there are, how do you think those should be managed? Should that be government oversight to ensure that there aren’t conflicts in any of the partnerships that might be entered?

S. Hamilton: Basically, one of the models we’re looking towards is the Pittman-Robertson Act out of the United States. That is something where they take…. For example, if somebody goes out and buys a set of binoculars and they say there’s a 2 percent tax on there, that goes into the communal fund. That’s overseen and goes into every single wildlife habitat and protection program they have out there. That is run by the government there, with input.

We’re looking towards something like that. Like, if you’re using a boat, you’re taking from the natural resources. We want to see a tax put on that, for example, so everybody puts back into the same programs.

D. Snyder: With regards to the conflict-of-interest thing, I don’t know if it may be — pulling it out of my hat here — potentially like a residents-versus-guides sort of thing. Is that kind of what you mean?

G. Heyman: That’s one possible…. There might be others. There might be partnerships with resource extraction companies that might be perfectly fine.

D. Snyder: Right. I don’t think that this would be something, if it was moved out, like the freshwater fisheries model. I don’t think that it would be kind of headed up with one person as CEO. Personally, I think it should be something that should have kind of a variety of stakeholders overseeing it, not just one person who sits at the top and makes all the calls.

Personally, if this were to happen, definitely, there needs to be input from everybody on all ends, whether it’s the guides and the trappers and the hunters and so on and so forth. It needs to be overseen by…. Everybody needs their input, right?

G. Heyman: So it might be a partnership between government ministries and community boards — something like that?

D. Snyder: Potentially, yeah. I personally believe that it might be a little more difficult with regards to grants and that sort of stuff. I don’t know how many grants the government gets.

However, there are quite a few though the HCTF that the government is definitely taking advantage of, being able to leverage those dollars. But I think, for whoever is giving out the grant, it’s probably…. I don’t know whether you want to kind of tug on heartstrings or whatever. But it might be easier for the little guy to get it, rather than the government, right?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. I think you’ll find those statistics be-
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ing used by a lot of the members on this committee over the next while. They were terrific. Thank you for a very clear presentation. Really appreciate it.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Next, I have the University of Northern British Columbia — Robert Knight and Lynda Pattie.

Welcome. Come on up. Just so you know, we have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. I’ll just give you the “high” sign when you’re getting close to the end of your ten minutes. You’re welcome to go into the question time, but just know that you’re eating into that time.

R. Knight: All right, thank you so much. I’m grateful to the members of the select committee for inviting us here today to provide some commentary. Anxious to hear your feedback as well. I appreciate you working through the dinner hour to accommodate our schedules as well.

My name is Robert Knight. I’m the vice-president for finance and business operations at the University of Northern British Columbia — actually, a relatively new employee there, as well as a new resident of British Columbia and very proud and excited to be here.

What I want to talk about tonight…. I’m not going to read remarks per se but just hit some of the highlights. I’ve handed you out a couple of documents. One is actually just the cover page from a report that you’re no doubt very familiar with. The Business Council of British Columbia recently issued this report. It contains a number of recommendations which, I think, articulate quite eloquently and passionately some of the things that I might have said. Rather than trying to write them out myself, I thought I would hand that out to you. My assistant has sent in an electronic copy as well.

My colleague, Lynda Pattie, to whom I’m going to give a few minutes of time to speak as well, also prepared some written remarks. We’ve given you a copy of that, and we can make sure you get an electronic copy.

Primarily, what I wanted to address tonight was the economic impact of higher education and, particularly, the University of Northern British Columbia and the colleges that are in the northern B.C. region — collectively, the economic impact that we have on the province and, indeed, on the nation — and therefore, use that as a way of justifying continued investment into the post-secondary sector. In fact, just the other day there was some exciting news that came from Premier Clark, which I hope is a sort of bellwether of what’s to come in terms of investment into higher education.

One of the handouts I gave you was actually about ten-plus years old. It’s about the education economy of Prince George and the region. If you look at that, it simply looks at the economic impact of having the university and the college here — not only the spending that we collectively do but also the spending that’s done by our students and other visitors to the university. Indeed, that has a huge impact. I think if that study were to be replicated today, it would certainly confirm that and probably show an even higher economic impact.

On a personal note, having just moved here five months ago, I have personally had a huge economic impact on the region. I bought a new automobile here in town, thousands of dollars’ worth of new furniture, made many visits to the local hardware stores, and so on. If you think about that in context, the University of Northern British Columbia has a payroll of close to $60 million. Most of it is being spent by people right here in this region or throughout the province, so it has an enormous impact. That’s not even accounting for the additional spending of the students that are here, their parents when they come to visit, etc. Again, there’s that kind of multiplier effect that I think is beneficial to the community, to the region, to the province and to society as a whole.

I wanted to mention two highlights for us at UNBC this year. One was, of course, being named the No. 1 primarily undergraduate university in Canada. We’re extremely proud of that, and I think everybody in B.C. should be very proud of that. We’re really a little gem, if you will, in the world of higher education. I think it’s important that the word about that be spread.

The other thing happened just today. We had a career fair for our students. Over 50 employers showed up on campus — again, demonstrating the demand for graduates of our university and, indeed, for people with a university education. I do want to make sure…. My boss, Dan Weeks, the president of the university, couldn’t be here tonight, but he said to make sure I mention that not only do we need people in the professions and in the sciences and in the trades, but we also need more artists and more musicians. So the university helps to produce those people who have a positive impact on society here in the region and in the province and beyond.

Let me turn quickly to a couple of the points that were in the BCBC report that I wanted to highlight. Then I’m going to ask my colleague, who’s also an alum of UNBC, to address that as well. If you look at some of the recommendations that are contained in that report from BCBC which was just issued, they call for things like creating a larger, more robust and more export-capable health innovation cluster here. Lynda Pattie will speak to that, and about health databases.

There’s another recommendation in there about more graduate students for British Columbia at our universities. The recommendations call for more graduate student scholarships for both domestic and international students.

Of course, something that’s very important to us at UNBC as well as throughout British Columbia is addi-
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tional support for engineering education. Again, I’m hoping that some of the things that Premier Clark was talking about in her announcement the other day might find their way to helping colleges and universities develop more talent in engineering and technology.

In several places here, there’s mention of the use of health data, innovation in that field — health data analytics. I’m going to turn it over to Lynda and give her an opportunity to talk to you a little bit about the work that’s being done there, partly in collaboration with UNBC. Then we’ll answer questions.

My name, as Robert said, is Lynda Pattie, and I’m the technology director for the Health Data Coalition. I’ve had the privilege of having a long-standing relationship and a role in managing the design development and launch of what is called AMCARE, which stands for the aggregated metrics for clinical analysis research and evaluation.

We never call it that anymore. We just call it AMCARE, because it’s been around forever in northern B.C. UNBC is one of the major partners in this project, along with Northern Health. Robert circulated a paper that really provides a good summary of the initiative and how AMCARE came to be and how it has transitioned into the Health Data Coalition over the last little while.

It’s really allowed the north to lead the way in the adoption of many of the new health initiatives and changes in practice, including some of the things like team-based care, integrated care planning, the introduction of the patient medical home and panel management. All of those initiatives have been identified quite clearly as critical for us to actually transform the health system in British Columbia. One of the things we’ve noticed, because we’ve had this longitudinal relationship with AMCARE, is that we’re able to recognize where better information results in better care and better health outcomes.

UNBC was instrumental in getting the initial iteration operational. We did all of the technical development initially at UNBC and housed all of the systems in their data centre. Over the course of the last couple of years, I think we’ve recognized, provincially, that this is an initiative that needs to be adopted more provincially, so we have transitioned that into the Health Data Coalition.

It’s really a revolutionary initiative that’s going to allow us to use primary care data, which many of the health informatics folks believe is more complete, more accurate and more longitudinal than any of the other date sources that we have. In the distributed network that we’ve adopted, it’s really going to allow us to transform the way that we provide care for patients in the north.

With the advent of the Health Data Coalition, UNBC and AMCARE are now going to transition to true quality improvement and practice reflection. We’re going to be engaging in research opportunities using the Health Data Coalition toolset as a resource to inform system planning, identify gaps and barriers in care, and facilitate the transformation of the health system.

I’m not going to belabour it. It’s a great initiative, and I actually think you probably all know about it. It’s funded through the GPSC, which is partly funded by the Ministry of Health and partly by the Doctors of B.C.

J. Yap: Thank you for your presentation, and a great success story, UNBC. I’m glad to hear the recognition that UNBC is getting. However, UNBC can’t be all things to all people, so if we were asked, “Tell me about UNBC,” what would you say would be the 20-second elevator pitch about UNBC? What is UNBC most proud of and well known for?

R. Knight: I think UNBC is most proud of serving the northern region of B.C. but also being what we like to call a destination university. We think we have programs and opportunities that are attractive to people throughout the province, throughout the country, throughout world. Again, we obviously don’t have the scale to match some of the large research universities, but we think that in our niche, we truly are number one.

We particularly, I think, can enable students to be able to get an understanding of the natural world and the natural sciences. That’s clearly where we have exceptional programs — in forestry, environmental science, and so on. We can educate people not only to be productive workers but to be good citizens and to be good stewards of the environment.

We are Canada’s green university, although some people think that slogan is a little bit outdated or cliché. But we’re still proud of it.

S. Gibson: I know with the government changing university colleges into universities a number of years ago — and one that I was associated with — that’s had some negative impacts on UNBC. I understand some of your programs continue to be under-enrolled. I suppose, perhaps, related to my colleague’s query: are there ways that you, as a university, can become more discrete in programs, offer programs that other universities don’t so that people will come to Prince George as a destination university? You’ve alluded to that.

Traditionally, universities all want to have BAs in sociology, BAs in English. As good as they are, the challenge, of course, for government is…. You know we’re trying to get people into job-ready programs. I’m wondering how UNBC is confronting that challenge.

R. Knight: I think we are trying to address it in a number of ways — again, being better stewards of resources. I find myself in this debate often with faculty members that we cannot employ what I call the Safeway model. You know, they argue that we have to offer everything or nobody will come and shop at our store.

I try to explain that that’s not a good use of our people resources or of our financial resources or even of our physical plant. We’re really a university that could really have an advantage in terms of providing science and technology, math and other kinds of education.

Obviously, we have to have a complete curriculum. But I think through a combination of adding new programs and gradually moving away from other sorts of programs that it doesn’t make sense to offer, on a financial basis…. That’s a tough sell within a university, but I actually have almost 30 years of experience working in the U.S. at universities — I’m a dual citizen — and they started doing that sort of thing 20 years ago.

Part of what I’m trying to do is teach people here at the university their responsibilities. We cannot simply continue doing everything we’ve been doing. We have to think about the future and students and faculty who’ll be coming to the university in the future. It’s all about sustainability and intergenerational equity. I’m trying to use language that they understand and will realize: “Yes, this is a common goal for us.” It’s going to take a little time, but I think we’re making progress.

And thank you to UNBC and thank you to all the faculty. I think anyone who’s travelled through Prince George knows the impact that the university has on the entire community, on the entire city. Whether it’s, as you’ve mentioned, from your president, arts and culture or whether it’s sciences or technology or trades, it’s had a great impact in this community and in the north. So thank you so much for your presentation. We appreciate it.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Next I have YMCA of Northern British Columbia. I have Chris Kinch, who is here to present to us.

Chris, the presentation time is ten minutes and five minutes for questions. I’ll give you the high sign when you get close to the end of your ten minutes. With that, I’ll turn it over to you.

C. Kinch: Wonderful. Good evening, members of the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Grateful for the opportunity to present today.

My name is Chris Kinch. I’m the director of membership and programs at the YMCA of Northern B.C. here in Prince George. We also serve Vanderhoof in the region and have been working with other communities loosely in the region, as well, to expand our services — as well as speaking from a B.C. YMCA perspective for the Ys, the other five associations in the province.

I’ve got this wonderful script here of all these wonderful things I’m supposed to say. But I just came back…. I got double-booked tonight and was just over next door in the library attending a meeting on active aging. It just seemed like a wonderful segue into some of the things we’re talking about and some of the work we’re doing with the YMCA.

We were thankfully highlighted within that meeting by some participants in some of our local programs, as well as highlighting some of the programs that are happening down in Vancouver with the YMCA of Greater Vancouver and the partnerships that are involved in those programs. It just was very inspiring.

It’s Active Aging B.C., the work they’re doing in terms of it and the validation of some of the work we’re doing in terms of the impact and the value of physical activity for all ages but particularly as people are aging — the value that that has in terms of keeping them healthy, keeping them out of care, out of hospitals, back at home. Such a great value for us.

With that, I’ll turn over to the script here a little bit and give you more of the scripted piece of it as well. But I thought that was worth sharing.

The YMCA is a charity that’s working hard to create opportunities for residents in Prince George and across the province. As the committee looks to new ideas to continue to grow the economy and explore priority areas for investment, I would like to challenge you to look at building social and economic health by investing to address social determinants of health issues as well.

Today in B.C., there are a myriad of issues that are making it difficult for individuals and families to thrive. Families are being squeezed for lack of access to high-quality child care, young people are struggling to find work that matches their skills, and newcomers are struggling to gain access to opportunities. Mental health issues are limiting the capacity of many of our community members, and chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and depression are preventing individuals from being fully productive.

Obesity continues to be the second-highest preventable cause of death in B.C., after smoking. Physical inactivity is a large contributor there, one of many pieces that do contribute to that. These issues as a whole have become impediments for many individuals, inhibiting
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their ability to meaningfully contribute to B.C.’s economy and engage fully with their communities.

In the community, we hear every day from the people and the challenges they are facing. Just recently, anecdotally, we had a participant taking part in one of our programs — the cardiac rehabilitation program that we deliver in partnership with the local health authority as well as UNBC and the UBC department of physical therapy.

A young woman in her mid-30s was sharing with us that she’s currently not able to be on the transplant list because of her current health condition and needs to work towards getting onto that transplant list. She spent ten weeks in our program. This program was a new, needed program that I’ll talk about in a moment a little bit further. After those ten weeks and after following up with her doctor, she’s been able to get onto that list. She now meets those qualifications and surpasses them and is now in line to be able to be on that transplant list to continue to contribute and live a healthy life moving forward.

I’ll come back to that program in a second just to explain some of the partnership pieces in that, but it’s just one of the many stories we hear on a daily basis in the work that we are doing.

For individuals to thrive, we know they need children that are in safe, high-quality child care so that they can study or work and contribute to the economy locally and provincially. They need access to places that help them connect to their community and to each other within the local neighbourhoods. They need access to recreational infrastructure to stay healthy. And they need support at every stage and age.

At the YMCA, we’re doing our part. Our work helps to promote healthy living. We are focused on nurturing the potential of children, teens and young adults. We fight inequality, foster social inclusion and protect the most vulnerable families in our communities.

We achieve this through our portfolio of programs and services, including child care, employment, camps, youth leadership, health, fitness — I’ve got a note in here around aquatics; we do not do that locally in Prince George; it’s one of two YMCAs in western Canada that do not, but across the province many facilities do — and volunteer opportunities for community members as well.

As a charity, we don’t turn anyone away because of financial barriers. Locally we’re supporting one in five children through our programs who need assistance financially to access those programs and services and, without that assistance, wouldn’t have access to those programs and services.

In Prince George alone, we serve more than 13,000 individuals. Across B.C., the five YMCAs served more than 215,000 individuals in 2015. Collectively we are the largest operational charity, working in more than 43 communities across the country. We have been doing this for more than 130 years at this stage, but we can’t do it alone. We need the support of community partners, individuals and the private sector, and government.

As the committee looks for ideas to address affordability, job creation and geographical investments within a balanced-budget framework, we offer the following recommendations. First, the YMCA calls on the government to set aside specific allocations for the development of social infrastructure. Two, that the government include projects by charities and not-for-profit organizations on the provincial priority list for federal infrastructure funds.

We agree that investments in hospitals, schools, post-secondary institutions, transit, roads and housing are critically important. However, equally important to building vibrant and healthy communities are investments in social infrastructure like recreation centres, child care — places that house vital community services for the community. Investing in social infrastructure creates jobs, reduces health care costs, and provides young people, families and new immigrants with supportive environments to thrive.

Recently we have applied through the Canada 150 application process for ours. We’ve got necessary facility repairs that we have to do to our local facility here. The facility at this stage is hitting 40 to 50 years, and it’s just at that stage of development — like many other facilities in many communities right now that were built through the ’70s, the ’80s, that are now needing critical repairs to them. The challenge for us is always keeping up with those repairs so that we can serve more and continue to meet the greater needs with it.

All we’ve been asking for through the federal government is $350,000, and we do 50 percent of the rest of that to match those funds with it. That would allow us to do those necessary upgrades to the facility but also to expand our ability to deliver more services to reach more people here in the community.

Lastly, we call on the government to provide multi-year funding to enable effective and collaborative health-promoting initiatives between non-profit organizations and provincial health authorities to scale up. At our YMCA here, we’re working with health partners to address health challenges facing the community. I’ll refer back to the program that I was just talking about — the cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programs.

Prince George was the largest community in the province that did not have these services as a community-based program. We have services in the community that allow participants to call in, other pieces to provide those supports and weekly meetings, but did not have a comprehensive community-based program that would provide ten weeks post being discharged in Kelowna or in St. Paul’s, where you’re sent back to Prince George to have rehabilitation services.

Partnering with UNBC and the UBC department of physical therapy, their physiotherapy program and the
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northern and rural cohort, as well as with the local health authority, we’ve come up with a partnership and a funding framework that is allowing us to meet this need locally, with the YMCA providing space. Northern Health is providing some funding to cover some of the position costs, and UBC is putting up its large capital dollars to make that possible, in terms of making it.

That takes us to March 2018, at this point, in terms of a pilot project. It’s the sustainable funding beyond that that will make the long-term impacts on the health community here in Prince George and on the health of those like the individual I’d spoken to earlier. They cross the age spectrum. We want them to stay healthy, stay engaged and stay involved in our communities.

Thanks to the support of the provincial government, we are helping British Columbians gain access to resources and make healthy choices and easy choices, but there’s more to do. We look forward to continued involvement and partnership to promote healthy living across B.C.

I appreciate the opportunity to present today and thank you very much for coming. I certainly would invite any questions that you might have.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Chris, for your presentation. I’ll open it up to questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): …presentation. As someone who took their first swimming lessons and went to their first camp through the YMCA, thank you. Thank you for the service and supports. I think it’s a well-known community organization in many, many of our communities around the province. We thank you for the work that you do. I think you’ve presented well to let us know that it’s not simply swimming and camps and child care, that you’re actually looking at medical support and community supports, as well, for people, which is wonderful. Thank you so much, Chris, for being here.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Next I have the board of education, school district 57, Prince George, Tim Bennett and Allan Reed. Welcome, both of you.

We have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. Thank you so much for coming tonight.

T. Bennett: Thank you, Chairperson. Good evening. My name is Tim Bennett. I’m a trustee and vice-chair of the board of education for school district 57, Prince George.

The board is again pleased to make a presentation to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We do so in support of 12,900 students. These students are being served by 1,358 full-time-equivalent employees. That represents close to 1,800 individuals supporting K-to-12 education here in our school district.

You’ve received our written submission, which provides you with the current overview of our school district and has identified three challenges of concern to our board. We concluded with some recommendations, and we are very hopeful the committee will consider these.

We strongly support the November 2015 recommendations made by the select standing committee to the Legislature with regards to K-to-12 education and acknowledge that some progress has been made on these recommendations over the last year. The intention of our presentation again this evening is to provide further evidence and demonstrate the continued need to the Legislative Assembly to make K-to-12 education recommendations of the select standing committee a priority for budget allocations.

In coming before you today, we fully understand the Minister of Education’s ministerial mandate letter and the direction set by the B.C. education plan. During the year since we last presented to the committee, we have corresponded with the Premier and the Ministers of Finance, Education, Social Development, and Children and Family Development. We also are proud to say we have a great relationship with our local MLAs.

We have advocated through our provincial association, the British Columbia School Trustees Association, and as a board of education, we are committed to our mission of inspiring learning anywhere and achieving our vision of preparing students to seize life’s opportunities. By making this presentation this evening, we are hopeful that we will be able to demonstrate the continued need for support of public education by the government of British Columbia.

Tonight I’ll be highlighting three challenges as outlined by the board: (1) rural and urban, (2) predictable and sustainable funding and (3) students and families in poverty.

School district 57 operates within the traditional territory of three First Nations, covers 52,000 square kilometres in the centre of the province and encompasses both a large urban centre here in Prince George and three smaller rural communities of varying sizes. We operate 31 elementary schools, eight secondary schools and a multi-use facility for additional educational programs. The 2016-2017 annual budget is $129.2 million for the district.
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The first challenge is our urban and rural divide. Although most of the vast geographical area of our school district may be described as rural and remote, 8 percent of the students in our school district live in a rural setting. These students live in Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount as well as the rural areas surrounding Prince George.

Our rural schools provide crucial infrastructure to their communities beyond simply education for our students. The importance of the community use aspect of our schools cannot be overstated. As a board, we recognize the important fact that during the last school year, we made rural education a priority locally.

You’ve been provided with a copy of a report of our ad hoc committee on rural education, which was presented to the board at its public meeting held in January 2016. Although it is well understood, the ad hoc committee certainly heard that all schools are important to the communities and the neighbourhoods they serve. We found that the economic viability of a rural community is often dependent on the existence of a school offering a complete educational program.

Also, on evenings and weekends, the schools are used for athletic, recreational and cultural opportunities and are a vibrant part of those communities.

We support the resolution at the recent Union of British Columbia Municipalities meeting calling on the provincial government to actively engage in a public consultation process that is required before schools are closed. We are well familiar with that process, as between 2002 and 2010, this board of education closed 24 schools in our school district.

To address our rural education challenge, we recommend that the government ensure that processes are in place to provide equitable access to quality education in rural and remote communities. We further recommend that the work of the Ministry of Education’s Technical Review Committee and the government’s rural advisory council be encouraged and supported.

Predictable and sustainable funding is another concern. For a number of years, we have convened a budget consultation committee comprising trustees, senior administration and representatives of our educational partner groups. That committee’s input and feedback assist the board of education in determining its budget priorities.

For example, the budget consultation committee advised the board that charging a $100 rider fee for student transportation should not be supported. As it turns out, this advice was sound, as on August 10, the government announced its student transportation investments plan that provided funding to school districts that were charging such a fee to remove that fee. This was the third government funding announcement related to the 2016-2017 year after the initial funding announcement on March 15.

All of these announcements provided much-needed additional revenue to school districts in support of our students. However, the succession of announcements throughout and beyond the budget process and deadlines specified in the School Act do not allow for proper local consultation and planning.

One of the challenges since our last presentation to the select standing committee is this government’s reconsideration of its requirement for administrative savings for the 2016-2017 year. However, school districts are still required to maintain and report on mandated administrative savings, measures that were taken in 2015-2016.

We appreciate that the Treasury Board, through the Public Sector Employers Council, approved interim relief during the 2015-2016 year for salaries paid to exempt staff, our principals and our vice-principals. It remains a significant concern to our board of education that school districts must fund these increases out of our general operating funds.

With respect to predictable and sustainable funding, we recommend the following: that government return to the practice of a single March 15 annual funding announcement to allow boards of education to know with certainty their funding for the next school year and that general wage increases for exempt staff, principals and vice-principals be fully funded in the same manner as funding provided to our unionized employees.

We believe that it is well known that our school district has a significant segment of its population defined as vulnerable. We know that the same is true for most school districts in the province. The British Columbia education system is not keeping up with the complexities of today’s students. At the heart of the vulnerability is the number of students and families living in poverty. We wrote to the Premier in December 2015 in response to the 2015 child poverty report card. Every day, our teachers see the impact of child poverty on the students in their classrooms.

To best meet the needs of the learners, we work closely with our teachers and principals to identify the practices and interventions. While they may not completely combat the effects of poverty and social and emotional vulnerability, they are the most likely avenues to improve the life chances of our students.

At the recent UBCM convention in Victoria, the city of Prince George and six other local governments called on the province to adopt a comprehensive and accountable provincial poverty reduction strategy. We support this call, knowing that economic growth and job creation alone are not sufficient ways to address poverty.

Our final recommendation to the select standing committee is to call on government to adopt and fund a comprehensive and accountable provincial poverty reduction strategy. We further recommend that the implementation of such a strategy be facilitated across the Ministries of Education, Health and Children and Family Development. We will ensure that this strategy
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addresses the needs of our students and the families in poverty, which, in turn, will no doubt help improve student achievement.

We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. We recognize that there is only one taxpayer and that all governments have challenges allocating the scarce resources. The School Act requires that there be a board of education for each school district. As trustees elected to that board, we hold fundamental values, including confidence, inclusivity, openness and equitable access. We believe that our recommendations to this committee will reflect those values.

G. Heyman: I don’t really have a question. We’ve had very similar presentations over the course of this year’s hearings as well as previous hearings, but this presentation strikes me as one of the most comprehensive from an educational, social and economic perspective. I just wanted to note that and thank you for looking at the whole issue holistically from the centre of your role as members of the board of education.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your work. There are 60 school districts, as you know, around this province. They’ve all got their challenges. We’ve heard from many of them here. So thank you for being here.

My question is: what about catchment areas? In my school district, where I live, catchment areas are largely being abandoned to allow a holistic approach to using — discarding, to some extent — neighbourhood schools and to allow schools to equalize and, perhaps, not close schools quite so easily. Also, schools of choice within the public system as a way to engage students in different, whether it’s technology or traditional or sports-oriented, that kind of thing…. How are you guys doing in that regard in your district?

T. Bennett: Within the district, as I mentioned, we have 31 elementary schools. We do have a few choice schools. We have a French immersion school, an aboriginal choice school, a traditional school as well as a public Montessori school. The remainder of those schools all have their distinctive catchment areas.

Within the geographical urban centre of Prince George, we’re seeing that in some areas of town, if not a majority of the town, our schools are getting quite full. We are seeing some challenges in our more rural schools in terms of capacity. We do have many schools that we’ve actually had to restrict only to catchment kids to ensure that we are able to serve the catchment students. Those schools have been capped for a few years now.

S. Gibson: So they’re a priority. If they’re filled, you can still bring some other students in from outside once the needs of students of that area are met, right?

T. Bennett: That is correct. Our catchment schools…. We have a transfer process which opens, typically, in the March prior to the new school year to allow transfers. But we do have some schools in our district that are only going to be open to catchment registrations, just due to capacity.

J. Rice: I think I just mostly want to make a comment thanking you for your leadership around addressing the issues of rural and remote education. I represent rural and remote communities. I live in Prince Rupert. Just this year we were experiencing issues around transportation and getting kids from outlying villages, communities accessible only by boat, to school. Kids who lived in Port Edward, a good 20 minutes away, little kids, were taking public transportation. Public transportation doesn’t even coordinate with the school schedule.

I really appreciate these issues that you’ve tackled with the ad hoc committee. I want to just commend you for your leadership on this. Thank you.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. I’ll echo, on all our behalf, how thorough your presentation was. The number of issues that touch on public education, I think, was very well described. Thank you so much for coming tonight.

Welcome. Hi. We have up to ten minutes for the presentation, and then we have up to five minutes for questions. So I will turn it over to you.

S. Bouman: Great. Thank you to the select standing committee for the opportunity to present to you today in Prince George.

My name is Sheila Bouman. I’m here on behalf of every British Columbian that recognizes the importance of sport as a means of ensuring an active and healthy community in every community across our province. I’m here today to thank you for your investment in sport and also to highlight the impact that that is having on citizens
[ Page 2594 ]
across B.C. and to introduce suggestions for how you might amplify that impact.

I’m the CEO of ViaSport, an organization tasked by the provincial government to be the agency responsible for leading the promotion and development of amateur sport across the province. ViaSport British Columbia was created in 2011 as a legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We’re really proud of our roots and of being the organization that continues to champion Olympic values such as excellence, fairness, respect, leadership and peace.

We believe that through sport, life skills and experiences are obtained. We believe that through sport, communities are stronger. We believe that through sport, we have a stronger province. We also believe that sport brings families and communities together as parents, coaches, athletes, volunteers and spectators. It’s one of the many things that provides opportunities for individuals to learn and grow, for social and community bonds to strengthen and for the province to unite.

B.C. has a sport system we should be proud of, with over 670,000 members registered through amateur sport and many more participating recreationally. We should also be very proud of our contribution on the national and international stage. In Rio, because of a strong and united sports system, 45 percent of the Canadian Olympic team were from B.C. or trained in B.C. — and 27 of the Canadian Paralympic team. That’s because of the system that has been nurtured from youth into all ages.

However, this is not good enough. As a province, we have over four million people, and 670,000 is only 20 percent. We believe that through sport, communities and people are stronger. We want to ensure every British Columbian has an opportunity to thrive through sport and physical activity at any stage and with any ambition, whether they be running their first 5K with their granddaughter or training in the Paralympics. To do that, our purpose is to lead a united sport sector that partners with health, education, community development to advance public policy goals.

We have the privilege and responsibility of managing $16 million of government’s investment in sport. This investment supports top-down provincial leadership but also community initiative and activation. Tonight I want to share with you some of the things that ViaSport and our partners are doing to ensure that every British Columbian thrives through your investment.

The leadership of quality sport experiences sits with provincial sport organizations, organizations such as B.C. Athletics, B.C. Ultimate and B.C. Wheelchair Sports. Our direct influence is with those organizations. Our objective is to help these organizations and these leaders be higher performing and have a more significant impact in every corner of the province. One of the tools that helps us do this is our rigorous approach to managing your investment in these organizations.

For example, this year almost $7 million of provincial government investment was allocated to fund 61 accredited provincial and disability sport organizations. This year we also created and implemented Canada’s first-ever provincial investment review process, which aligns funding levels with competency and excellence tied to public policy and provincial objectives. This also creates a fair and transparent process so that other sports may apply for accreditation.

With increased investment from the provincial government, we would be able to target and incent specific areas for improvement. For example, in the 61 organizations, the lowest area of competency is programming to attract and support the development of people from typically under-represented populations. We don’t see enough participation or programming that aligns with the needs of indigenous people, people with disabilities or people new to Canada. The good news is that most of these 61 organizations want to do a better job, and they are looking to ViaSport for leadership, funding and accountability processes to help them measure and monitor return on impact.

There is quite a bit that’s already happening today. I’ll speed ahead and highlight one initiative right here in the north. In support of Accessibility 2024, the province of British Columbia, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and ViaSport made a $350,000 Canada Games legacy investment in a three-year project to provide people living with disabilities more opportunities to participate in sport. We are leading that initiative with other leaders across northern B.C. so that it is a sustainable approach around fostering accessibility for all people with visible and invisible disabilities.

Gender equity. With 41 percent of the people registered in sport that are women and girls, we have a national target of 50 percent. Last year, ViaSport created and launched the first-ever gender-equity-in-sport policy, a social media campaign, education and training, and we have a long way to go. The fastest attrition is with girls under 20 right now. Again, with increased investment, we could target these areas and improve participation and opportunities for marginalized people or under-represented people.

In terms of our second priority, I would like to talk about how we’re enabling community-based sport leadership with your investment. Although community and local sport organizations do not receive core funding through ViaSport, they have an opportunity to apply for $2 million in provincial grants through us. These are not the same as community gaming grants. Those are separate from ViaSport.

I have to tell you that there’s a significant return. For example, last year, 36 unique communities were awarded over $450,000 in event hosting grants. This targeted investment benefited 33,000 athletes, 4,400 coaches, 3,500
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officials and 12,000 volunteers over 121 events. These events don’t just provide an opportunity for athletes to train closer to home, but they foster economic development through sport tourism. B.C. truly is on the map because of your investment over the years in our infrastructure and for being a world-class destination for athletes to train and to compete.

Another grant is the B.C. sport participation program. We had over 2,200 total applicants last year requesting $3.5 million in grants. We were able to award $1.3 million to almost 780 community and provincial applicants. We’re confident that if you were in a position to double the available fund to $3 million, then all community leaders and organizations could make a more significant impact.

In some provinces, gaming and amateur sport grants are consolidated to ensure a targeted approach that aligns with government priorities. Also, targeted reporting allows us to track and report the impact, community by community.

In terms of community development, with $1 million of your investment, we fund nine regional organizations. I know you’ve heard from many of them. The only thing that I will highlight differently than what you’ve heard is that because of your investment in the leadership that I hope we’re providing, we are challenging them to leverage your investment to grow their resources so that they can expand programming, community by community.

For example, these nine regional leaders created 105 new partnerships, of which 33 were with corporations and businesses. They’re able to leverage your resources to expand their resources to provide more programming in their communities and regions.

Lastly, to continue to expand positive sport experiences for every British Columbian — I do hope all 4.5 million — we need a more sustainable business model. Over the last few years, there has been a reduction of government funding transferred through ViaSport to the sport sector as a result of the waning performance of the physical fitness and amateur sport fund. The decline of this fund is mostly due to economic conditions outside of anyone’s control.

We’re very proud that despite the reduced transfer, we were able to unite the leaders to not only sustain their impact through sport but drive innovation and improvements in their business model. All of us realize the importance of leveraging government investment to increase non-government revenue through cost-sharing, partnerships, commercialization of programs and services, sponsorships and value-in-kind.

We’re continuing to leverage your investment and ask that you commit to ensuring no additional decreases to the funding allocation. However, if you want to see more British Columbians have the opportunity to participate and thrive through sport and physical activity, I want to reassure you, from our collective track record, that any increase in funding will have a strong return. Today I hope I’ve demonstrated that over the last five years since our inception, we’ve established a framework and a business practice to assure that every dollar you invest will impact every British Columbian.

Through your investment in our provincial and national partnerships with health, education, recreation and business, we’ll continue to ensure united and efficient improvements to the amateur sport system. Together we’ll create more positive sport experiences that fuel healthier, more active communities, enriching lives through personal, social and economic development. When this government invests in a strong sport system, it is investing in broad public policy that results in a stronger province.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Sheila, for your presentation. I’ll now open up and see if there are any questions around the committee table. You’re quite right that your colleagues have also presented very well and very clearly.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I do have one question. You mentioned the number of partnerships, and you touched on a whole number. Since we had the school board before you, I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the partnership you may have with the school district. I know one of the challenges that many school districts are facing is not having specialized physical education teachers anymore, so teachers are asking for coaching support. I wonder whether your organization, here in this region, is doing that kind of work as well.

S. Bouman: Absolutely. Actually, in all of the regions. One of the things that makes us unique is that we’re working across education, health and sport. For example, we’re working with the Ministry of Health in their Action Schools project, which brings our physical literacy expertise into the school, in alignment with the physical education curriculum.

Our regionalized partners here in the north have been delivering physical literacy training for over six or seven years, through investment in sport, and now we’re able to bring that into the schools in support of the physical activity strategy. It’s a perfect example.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Sheila, for your presentation. We really appreciate it. Thank you for coming tonight.

Next we have the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Network. We have Sian Blyth, Pat Harris and Dr. Chris McBride.

As you probably heard, you have up to ten minutes for your presentation. We’ll have up to five minutes for
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questions afterwards. With that, I will turn it over to you. Thank you so much for coming tonight.

C. McBride: Thank you. It’s a pleasure for us to be here in Prince George, which is the hub of Spinal Cord Injury B.C.’s northern services and a key collaboration centre for the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Network, which we’ll be talking about today.

My name is Chris McBride. I’m the executive director of Spinal Cord Injury B.C. Sian Blyth, to my right here, is the executive director of B.C. Wheelchair Sports. Pat Harris is, I guess, a three-decade veteran of Spinal Cord Injury B.C., a local resident and the current manager of our Access North project.

The three of us are here representing the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Network, which also comprises Sam Sullivan’s Disability Foundation, the Neil Squire Society and the B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association. Together, our five provincial organizations represent over 200 years of service delivery excellence in supporting British Columbians with physical disabilities and in helping make B.C. one of the best places for them to live, work and be active members of our communities.

Why did we form this network? The simple answer is that helping people with spinal cord injury and other physical disabilities to adjust, adopt and thrive in their lives is complex work. We all recognized that working together was a lot better approach than trying to do it on our own.

Through the complementary services that we each provide, the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Network is helping people with physical disabilities to overcome key things and challenges in their life, including social isolation and the negative physical and mental health issues that they face as a result; to connect them to accessible housing and other information and direct supports for daily living; to gain the confidence and skills to ready their return to labour market participation; to engage in active, healthy lifestyles through sport and recreation; and to become active, engaged and productive members of communities throughout B.C.

By working together, we’re also able to leverage each other’s infrastructure to operate more efficiently and to extend our reach, to reach more British Columbians with disabilities who can benefit from our services.

S. Blyth: Through our network, we increase the reach of our service, show an impact and improve efficiencies. Our collective efforts within the Spinal Cord Injury Network acknowledge and address the role that our organizations play in supporting individuals with physical disabilities across B.C., far beyond the field of play and in the realms of rehabilitation, peer support, community reintegration and navigating transitions from the health system to reach community education and employability.

We increase the awareness and continuity of our complementary services, aligned with the goals of Accessibility 2024, with a provincial reach, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of our operations by sharing resources, knowledge and infrastructure and working collaboratively to ensure ongoing sustainability.

Presenting here in Prince George gives us the opportunity to highlight how the network truly ensures that people with physical disabilities can access our multiple services and navigate them with ease. Spinal Cord Injury B.C. has a regional office here in Prince George that is leveraged by members of the network, such as the accessible work space used by the Neil Squire Society.

Pat Harris is based out of Spinal Cord Injury B.C.’s local office and has been an influential member of the board of directors of B.C. Wheelchair Sports, a player of wheelchair basketball and now an advocate of our sport.

We have a natural hub here for wheelchair sports opportunities in Prince George — wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis and wheelchair rugby, to name a few. Our local coordinator, Nancy Harris, works tirelessly to promote accessibility and inclusion in wheelchair sport opportunities and to connect people with the many other services provided by our network, such as peer support with Spinal Cord Injury B.C. and adaptive equipment and devices made by the Disability Foundation’s Tetra Society, using local engineers, technicians and physiotherapists and anyone else who will volunteer their skills to help an individual be more independent at home and leisure.

Our strength is that we can connect an individual living with a physical disability to each other’s services, even when they might not even know they need them. A great example of this is through our Let’s Play program run by B.C. Wheelchair Basketball Society. We are able to give young kids with a physical disability a specially designed sports chair at a very early age. This enables them to play at school and at home and become integrated into their community.

Through our network, these kids and families can access the many services we will provide, such as peer and family support, technology enhancements to help at school and access to leisure opportunities for the whole family. And 62 kids across B.C. now have their own Let’s Play chair.

If we start to provide services at an early age that are easy to navigate, the potential to improve the long-term quality of life for people, individuals, living with a physical disability is truly impactful. As a network, we have greatly increased participation to our vital services for those living with a physical disability for them to be fully active participants in communities throughout B.C.

I’ll hand over to Pat Harris, to highlight some experiences from a northern perspective.

P. Harris: Thank you, Sian, and thank for the opportunity to speak here today. I’ve been a resident of Prince
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George for over 30 years, and it’s a big area to cover. And the province is a huge area to cover. What I would like to speak to you about today is how the services of our five organizations come together to assist people living in all parts of British Columbia.

In particular, I would like to tell a story about a young man who sustained a devastating spinal cord injury that left him and his family desperately seeking assistance. In 1980, a young boy, at the age of 15, fell from a tree while on a family vacation and sustained a spinal cord injury. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

The family lived in Wonowon, north of Fort St. John, at the time. Wonowon is an isolated farming community, and while close to Fort St. John, there were limited services available there. The family was seeking peer supports and recreational activities for their son. It was through the efforts of the BCSCI network that we were able to assist this young man by connecting him with a peer network that was established in Fort St. John and connecting him with wheelchair sports and wheelchair basketball out of Vancouver.

Through this collaboration of services, the family was introduced to other people with spinal cord injuries and their families. As well, an organized effort was started to provide sport wheelchairs for the community, because he wanted to play wheelchair basketball.

That was the start of a wheelchair basketball program back in the early ’80s. This young man started his athletic career through this grassroots program facilitated by the network, the SCI community network. With our support, he eventually moved from Fort St. John to Prince George to attend UNBC, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing.

While in Prince George, he continued to play basketball with the local club for three years, and he eventually moved to Vancouver, where he played with the men’s provincial team and eventually was named to the Canadian men’s basketball team in 1996. He has gone on to compete in three Paralympic Games, representing Canada on the men’s wheelchair basketball team. He just came back from Rio.

I think we all understand that much of our success is a result of the support of family, friends, as well as many of the provincial organizations that provide critical community services. It’s through the collective efforts of the BCSCI network that we’re able to reach and assist people like Bo Hedges — that’s the name of the young fellow — to pursue his career and life goals. Bo has gone on to employment in sports administration, so a journey that began from humble beginnings in Wonowon to Fort St. John to Prince George to Vancouver, with the BCSCI network assisting him along the way.

Bo is just one example of the many people we support throughout the province. He has come full circle and now gives back to his community and the SCI network that started him on his journey by providing peer support to newly injured people and contributing as a board member to the B.C. wheelchair basketball association.

I hope this illustrates the impact and support the BCSCI network provides to people with physical disabilities in B.C. every day. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

C. McBride: Just to wrap up, we’ve sort of given you a little bit of a snapshot of our network, and it’s clear from Pat’s story that we have had a long history of working together collaboratively as a network. But it’s only been in the last seven years that we’ve been able to formalize our network through some funding that was received via the Rick Hansen Institute through the Rick Hansen 25th anniversary.

That funding now runs out, and we’re looking forward to working together to create one-time funding of $5 million over five years to continue our good work and to continue to support people with physical disabilities throughout our province.

D. Ashton: Thank you for your presentation — and, doctor, interesting article in The Spin.

E. Foster: To clarify your ask, you’re looking for $1 million a year over the next five years.

Just a huge thank-you. Thank you for your work, and thank you for sharing the story. I think it’s important for all of us around the committee to hear those stories and to know the successes that are out there as well. I think it was a good reminder for all of us, so thank you again for your collaboration.

Next we have Innergex Renewable Energy — Colleen Giroux-Schmidt. Colleen, welcome. As you probably heard, ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions. I’ll give you the high sign. I know you’ve presented before, so I know you’ve been through this routine. Thank you, Colleen. We appreciate you coming tonight. I’ll turn it over to you.

C. Giroux-Schmidt: No problem. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be up here near Prince George
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and, hopefully, close to where one of our next projects is going to be here in British Columbia, just south of Vanderhoof.

A few remarks to share with you this evening. Most of you are familiar with who Innergex is, but to remind folks who may not be, we’re one of the leading Canadian independent renewable electricity producers in the country. We’ve been active since 1990, and we develop, own and operate run-of-river hydro, wind and solar projects with more than 170 employees here in British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, Idaho and, new this year, France.

We are a publicly traded company, and we have been active in B.C. since 2004. To date, we’ve invested over $2 billion here in British Columbia. That investment has built the 16 run-of-river facilities we’re now producing electricity from, and it’s building the two more which will come on line in early 2017. All the electricity we produce is provided to B.C. Hydro under power purchase agreements. We’ve been part of B.C.’s electricity production since the early 2000s, and we plan to continue to be here as an active partner for the next 40 years and beyond.

Innergex strives for sustainability in all aspects of our business — the energy we produce, the contributions we make to local communities, the revenue we generate, and the returns that we provide to our investors. In other words, we work to develop projects that balance the social, environmental and economic priorities.

At Innergex, we believe that climate change is real, and renewable energy provides a clean, cost-effective and sustainable alternative to fossil fuel energy.

As you’re all well aware, the challenge for government is how to best plan for the future energy needs with a long-term view and a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We applaud B.C. for its leadership on this file and its progress on climate leadership to date. However, there is a need to do more. We at Innergex are committed to continuing to work with both government and communities to help ensure that this continues.

We develop renewable energy because we believe it’s the right choice for our current energy needs and also because we believe it’s the right legacy for future generations. B.C. has already achieved what so much of the world is chasing: a clean electricity system powered by renewable electricity.

Today we have an opportunity to lead the world in the transition to a carbon-free energy system and maximize the economic, social and environmental benefits that will accrue.

B.C. and Canada have legal greenhouse gas emission reduction targets which we need to achieve. It’s also well known that because of our world-class clean electricity system, most of the low-hanging fruit for emission reductions has been realized.

However, although our electricity system is already nearly 100 percent renewable, we still use fossil fuels for transportation, heat and industry. The next step in front of us is a strong commitment to electrify additional segments of our economy and replace fossil fuels over time with made-in-B.C. clean, renewable electricity.

We have tremendous opportunities to electrify the northeast upstream oil and gas sector, to electrify our transportation sector and also to electrify the built environment. B.C. has the renewable resources that would be required to produce this electricity, and companies like Innergex are ready and willing to invest here in the province.

This also requires a strong collaboration and partnership across the entire electricity sector, and Innergex is committed to being a leading player in that work.

There is a gap in infrastructure. That’s one of the challenges that we’ll need to overcome to enable a broad transition to electricity. This could form large transmission lines needed to electrify the northeast or Alberta or the United States, or local interconnection solutions to allow a business park to access the B.C. Hydro grid. It could be smart grid technology and electric vehicle infrastructure to enable faster adoption of electric vehicles across the province.

There’s a need for progressive infrastructure investment. Lately we’ve also heard the federal government speak to their interest in doing more on this front.

B.C. is well positioned to provide leadership and strong collaboration with the federal government through investing in a much-needed enabling infrastructure by creating a new joint clean infrastructure fund. A fund like this could allow the province to harness the creativity of both communities and First Nations, unlock investment from the private sector, enable economic growth across British Columbia. I’d be happy to speak more with you about this in the future.

We are rich in resources in B.C., a blessing of location and geography, but of course getting these resources to market is the hard part. Many countries have similarly advantageous resources. As we recently saw, even our made-in-B.C. renewable electricity competes in a wider marketplace, which is a good thing when others want our product.

For example, the recent three amigos agreement earlier this summer made commitments to transition the North American electricity grid to clean electricity. Part of that is a commitment to have a better, improved North American electricity grid. Ensuring that Canadian and British Columbian electrons are as competitive as possible in that reality is a bigger challenge, and we need to review the current trade barriers that exist, and U.S. subsidies, to ensure that B.C. renewables are able to compete so we can unlock the economic benefits here at home.

At Innergex, we also recommend a review of our current regulatory and permitting processes to ensure that they’re not placing unnecessary cost burdens on renewables.

B.C. has a unique opportunity to lead the world, and what jurisdictions need to do is phase 2 in the transition
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to a carbon-free economy. We can build on our longstanding attention to competitiveness by ensuring that we continue to lead, and we can make a strong commitment to electrification, investing in clean infrastructure over the next several years to unlock unprecedented opportunities for communities across this province. The economic benefits: innovation and enabled climate leadership.

J. Yap: Thank you, Colleen, for your presentation. You gave a good picture of the investments that your company has made in B.C.

Earlier in the tour around the province on this budget consultation, we heard from a group — I think it was in Kamloops — that were talking about solar energy as a great opportunity. Partly, the costs of solar have gone down. The challenge with solar is on the installations.

My question to you is: does Innergex invest in solar as well, whether it’s in B.C. or elsewhere? And do you see solar as being that great opportunity?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: Yeah, we absolutely do. Innergex has an operating solar facility in Ontario today. We’re actively looking at solar development across, sort of, the theatres of war that we operate in. Here in B.C., we recently submitted for five investigative licences for the Kootenay region, which is where the best solar resource in the province is. So we hope to be a solar developer here in the province sometime soon.

G. Heyman: One of the comments that’s often made about renewables is that they’re intermittent and you need a firm dam infrastructure mostly, although geothermal could provide the same to firm it up. Aside from the fact that we have, by B.C. Hydro’s own reports, significant excess capacity for wind and other intermittent renewables, I’m wondering if you can comment on the opportunities of some of the recent developments in grid management as well as integration of things like electric vehicles into a grid in a way that can additionally firm up forms of intermittent power.

My second question is if you could comment on some of the indirect job and economic opportunities provided by smaller-scale distributed energy systems around communities throughout B.C. as opposed to major ones in single locations.

C. Giroux-Schmidt: All right. I first want to clarify that projects like our company does aren’t necessarily intermittent electricity. So there are renewable projects that will provide firm energy, whether that’s pump storage or some of the new other storage technologies that are coming into the marketplace and are increasingly becoming cost-competitive. So I would encourage everyone to think broader than what we’ve known to date in British Columbia for what the future could hold.

Absolutely, a better interconnected grid is critical and will enable more renewables into the mix. Part of that is through folks having batteries in their home, whether that’s through Tesla’s Powerwall that’s coming into the marketplace, having electric vehicles…. There are some neat pilots that are happening where the urban environment becomes a power station that a utility can lever and use to shape and move electricity around.

It also manifests in having better interconnection of our electricity system across Canada. We don’t have a good interconnection right now between provinces, and there’s a great opportunity to play to the strengths of each of the different regions in our country — and then also looking across North America and better lever that.

I’m not an engineer, George, so I’m not going to be able to give you a super technical answer there, but I think it’s emerging. There’s tremendous opportunity there, and it’s something that we would encourage all jurisdictions to be investing in.

In terms of the economic benefits that accrue from smaller projects — I think many of you are blessed to have projects in your ridings and have seen it firsthand. It can be transformative, because in many cases, we have parts of this province that don’t have access to other forms of economic development, and renewables is something that is there, whether it’s through water, wind or sun.

One of the projects we’re most proud of here in the province is our Kwoiek Creek project with the Kanaka Bar First Nation. It’s a wonderful story of a community that’s been completely transformed through the power project. Chief Michell has said recently that that project has reversed 150 years of colonization on his community. Today they have no suicides in their community. Every kid that wants to go to university is going, they have full employment at the band level, and they’re now taking the revenue from the power project and reinvesting it into other economic activity in their community. Without this, they wouldn’t have had anything as that catalyst. It’s, again, something we’re really proud of and hope to be able to reproduce across the country.

E. Foster: Some of the, I guess, criticisms of the clean energy business in the past have been the cost when these power calls went out. You have alluded to it somewhat. Can you speak to the advances in the industry from a costing perspective over where we were, say, ten, 15 years ago?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: Yes. I think wind and solar, as most of us know, because it’s become a very regular news-
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paper story on how the costs have fallen tremendously…. That’s because of increased competition globally. There’s tremendous deployment of those technologies happening, so it’s driving the cost of the technology down. And it continues to fall. There have been recent procurements in Mexico that have surprised even the most experienced proponents on where the costs are going. From a technology cost perspective, that’s been a really good-news story.

I think another piece of it to look at with cost is how we contract projects, and space is there to be more creative or more efficient as we’re learning through different jurisdictions, doing procurement for renewables and finding out what will cause things to go higher or lower and be able to drive that piece of it too. So hard costs and soft costs both have space to come down.

I have two questions. The first question…. In the paragraph where you’re talking about establishing a task force, you talk about a review of the current regulatory and permitting processes. I’m assuming that review would be because there are challenges and barriers. If you could just comment a bit on what those are and what those look like.

And a different, bigger question. We know that recently the federal government approved the Pacific NorthWest LNG project in Port Edward, near Prince Rupert. A lot of the concerns around that project are about emissions and the fact that it’s a gas-burning plant. Could you comment on how renewables could play a role in that facility, if they have a role in that facility?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: I’ll take that one first, because that’s the easier one, I think. It depends on the proponent and what they’re going to choose. That’s not something we can enforce on them. But I think if they chose to use electricity, we absolutely have the resources here in British Columbia that could power as much of that facility with clean, renewable energy right through their value chain from the upstream all the way to the facility.

In terms of permitting barriers, we have…. Because it was a newer sector that came into the province, our sector evolved differently with its permitting reality. Today I think it is time to do a review and look at: what do we know about these projects now?

There were a lot of assumptions made at the beginning that we’ve now been able to prove out through monitoring — to find out that some of the effects that were predicted didn’t in fact happen. There have been benefits instead of adverse effects. So there’s a space to have a more efficient process so it can drive costs down for proponents. That’s what we would encourage doing.

In flagging regulatory there, I’m also speaking to the way the BCUC regulates the electricity sector too. There’s a need to modernize that to better align with what we value today in our choices.

J. Yap: One of the criticisms that I’ve heard out there is that the power that you sell to Hydro is contracted at a higher rate. I know that you and your colleagues in the clean energy industry have a very strong rebuttal to that. Can you give us a summary rebuttal to that?

Every project that’s been contracted from B.C. Hydro in the province has been done through a competitive procurement process. So what’s been contracted at the time were the most cost-effective projects of the day.

What you get when you get an electron from a company like Innergex is not just the electron. You also have a company that has taken the risk. So if something went sideways during construction, if the costs exploded, all of those things, that was on our backs, not on the ratepayers. You also have the wonderful social benefits that have accrued from it — the cost-sharing with communities, all those tax benefits. That is all baked in and loaded into that electron. So we would contend it’s a much stronger value proposition and that they’re cost-competitive.

E. Foster: Could you speak to tidal power? Where that is in the whole scope of things?

C. Giroux-Schmidt: I think it’s still early days compared to where traditional hydro or wind or solar are. There are pilot projects that are starting in the Nova Scotia–New Brunswick region. I think there are some early-stage pilots started here in B.C. It’s not something our company is involved with yet, but as it becomes commercially competitive with the other forms of renewables, I have no doubt we’ll give it a hard look.

I think our challenge here in British Columbia is that we’re blessed with an abundance of everything. We have world-class traditional hydro. We have a world-class wind resource. We have a strong solar resource. We have a strong geothermal resource. We’ll have a strong tidal resource one day. We have a strong offshore wind resource as well. We can use as much of this electricity as we find room for, because we’re not going to run out.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Colleen, for the presentation, and thank you for coming tonight. As always, we appreciate it.

Members, we’ll just take a brief ten-minute recess and then come back for the next presenter.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Our next presentation is the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia — Rhoda
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Witherly and Tammy Morin Nakashima.

Come on up, please. Thank you so much for coming tonight. You have up to ten minutes for your presentation and up to five minutes for questions after that. I’ll just give you the signal when you’re getting close to time. Thank you. We really appreciate you being here to present tonight. The floor is yours.

T. Morin Nakashima: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having us.

Introductions having been made, I’m Tammy Morin Nakashima, president of the B.C. notaries. Today with me is Rhoda Witherly, vice-president of the B.C. notaries. My office is in Richmond-Steveston, and Rhoda is from Prince Rupert.

We’d like to talk about B.C. notaries. They’re governed by the Notaries Act of British Columbia and the discipline of our professional society. Today the position of a notary as a member of one of the branches of the legal profession is sanctioned and safeguarded by law.

B.C. notaries are unique in North America, providing non-contentious legal services to the public. We’ve been doing so for over 100 years.

The Society of Notaries Public represents more than 330 highly trained notary professionals. To become a B.C. notary, an individual must complete a master’s degree at Simon Fraser University, pass a series of six stringent statutory exams and be accepted for membership in the Society of Notaries Public.

The society receives over 1,600 application inquiries from the public annually. On average, 20 to 25 students per year are selected. The average age of a B.C. notary is 43, and 55 percent of our members are women. B.C. notaries also reflect many ethnic backgrounds and languages.

B.C. is one of two unique provinces in Canada to offer residents the convenience of working directly with a professional notary to prepare their legal documents. Families and small businesses across the province enjoy unique ongoing and generational relationships with notaries as they transition through their various home purchases and advanced planning stages of their lives. To that end, I’ll just comment that B.C. notaries did approximately 100,000 residential real estate transactions this year. We joined the government with the Make a Will Week, and it was a very successful week.

B.C. notaries are well equipped to assist people with their documentation needs in the areas of non-contentious matters described in this brief. Notaries are generally more accessible than lawyers. People have a heightened comfort level with notaries, and they often see them as non-contentious professionals who also take on small but important jobs. The do-it-yourself people are more inclined to ask notaries for help, because they have a higher level of trust in them.

R. Witherly: Many people always ask us: “Now, what do notaries do? What do you do?” Well, first of all, we have offices all around the province. There are notaries practising, obviously, in the larger centres and even in the medium-sized centres, but they’re also in very small centres. There’s a notary now over on Haida Gwaii, and there’s also a notary in Fort St. James. I see the members from Terrace and from Prince Rupert here, so of course they will know where Fort St. James is. I’m not sure about everyone else on the committee, but it’s a very small town.

On a daily basis, B.C. notaries provide valuable personal assistance to individuals, families and businesses who are seeking a wide range of services for basically non-contentious legal matters. That includes things like residential and commercial real estate transfers and transactions, mortgage refinancing, wills and advanced care health planning. We do powers of attorney. We do other documents like contracts. For those of us that practise on the coast, we do some marine bills of sale and transfers of vessels. It’s quite a wide range of documents that we deal with.

As in many organizations, we also have had polls done. One of the polls that was quite of interest to us found that 77 percent of all B.C. residents have a favourable impression of notaries. You know, we’re the good guys. For those who have actually used the services of a notary, that number of satisfaction rises to 88 percent.

Notaries provide a trusted tradition for the creation of legal document services to British Columbia, and we’ve been doing it for over 90 years. Increasingly, though, what I know Tammy is finding and what I’m finding in our practice is that people are asking for additional legal documents and additional services, particularly as the governments are expanding the kinds of services that are to be made more accessible to the public. Those include things like probating wills and preparing family-related documents such as pre-nuptial agreements, cohabitation agreements, separations, child custody agreements and simple, uncontested divorces.

B.C. families all across the whole north and across British Columbia — the Okanagan to Haida Gwaii up to Atlin — want more services from local notaries. One of the reasons we’re talking to you today is because there are issues facing notaries in B.C., and one of them is the modernization of the Notaries Act.

As I mentioned, we’ve been providing services for 90 years, and obviously the act that created us sort of matches the 90 years. Some of it really does need to be moved into the 20th century, particularly in terms of the language of the act and the ways to clarify the powers and responsibilities that notaries have in preparing wills and probably expanding the powers to include estates, corporations and routine filings and other non-contentious items, particularly dealing with the end of marriages.

We’ve had the legal providers task force formed, and they have recommended that B.C. notaries and the B.C.
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Law Society come under one regulator. The CEOs of both organizations are in preliminary discussions with respect to that.

One of the issues facing the B.C. notaries is how much the mortgage industry has changed over the years. I don’t know how many of you have recently got a mortgage, but in the last 30 years, financial services and the mortgage industry have become significantly more complex and diversified. In the early ’90s, independent brokers began to displace your friendly loan officer down at your credit union or bank branch. By 2000, roughly 60 percent of residential single-family loans were originated through a private mortgage broker. The brokers are compensated by commission only, and they operate independently, providing service wherever it’s needed — sometimes coming even to your home or to your office.

At the same time, banks, credit unions and other lending institutions have offered a wide range of mortgage products. Again, if you’ve ever gotten a mortgage, you’d know that the choice and array of the terms and the conditions and how you pay and when you pay are just…. It’s actually quite mind-boggling.

When shopping for a mortgage, it’s easy to get lost in the fine print. Mortgages are just becoming so varied that it’s really…. You’re waiting for the old days when they just said: “This is the mortgage, this is how much, and this is what you pay.” But those days — I’m kidding — are really gone.

For us, it does increase some of the responsibilities and some of the difficulties for the consumer.

T. Morin Nakashima: What we’re noticing, as Rhoda has already spoken to…. The wording in the mortgages and the terms and the different kinds of products that are available…. When clients come into our offices, oftentimes they’ll need direction. They need to just finalize before they sign and we register. They just want to make sure that what’s before us is exactly what they understood they were going to have.

With the variety of information that’s going around…. Also, we know that there are some unscrupulous lenders and mortgage sellers who have taken advantage of consumers, especially seniors, who are looking for mortgages or reverse mortgages, with the focus of basically securing a larger commission for themselves.

What we’re finding is that when the clients come in…. I want to just give you an example of a mortgage product. I’ve had young couples come in my office, and they’ve got a selection of terms that they have to decide on in repayment schedules. Do they want to go semi-monthly, monthly, weekly, biweekly? They’ll ask me how to fill that in. They want to know: what does that mean — accelerated, non-accelerated? Which one is the 24 payments a year versus the 26 payments a year? So there are some very important details that they need to have finalized before we register their documents.

What we want to talk about that and why we want to talk about that is…. Section 11(1)(c) of the Mortgage Brokers Act currently provides an exemption from registration under the act for “a member of the Law Society of British Columbia entitled to practise as a solicitor in British Columbia if the loan transaction is made in the course of and as part of the member’s practice.”

Like lawyers, B.C. notaries would like to enjoy that same privilege to prepare mortgage documents and, in the course of this practice, to be called upon to describe the mortgage conditions, the terms and the methods of payment to clients. Currently, as it is, if they ask us questions, we’re offside when we go to explain that. Like lawyers, notaries are educated in the law related to mortgages and are regulated by our professional organization, and we are insured.

There’s some text in here that we’ve proposed as to how the exemption would be placed in regulation. I’m not going to read that because I know you each have it in front of you. It’s part of our submission.

I want to also just give you another example of that, a mortgage example. I’ve had clients in my office — the elderly. They’ll come in. A product that might be before me is one that says they’re going to pledge their property for $800,000 at an interest rate of prime plus seven. They just about have a heart attack, falling off their chair and saying: “All I wanted was $250,000, and I signed for a 2.35 percent mortgage on the interest rate. What is this all about?”

That’s where, again, it’s incumbent on me to be able to make sure that they’re getting the correct product and talk about that. That’s one of the issues that we need to be able to describe and discuss with our clients to make sure that the document that’s been sent over for them to sign is the document, in fact, that they want.

Something in that example that I’ve given you is just a blanket that’s filed on title. Then they have the terms that they sign at the local branch or another set of documents that sets out the actual details of the mortgage. I’ve had some of those elderly clients that panicked about that and said: “I’m at that stage in my life that I don’t want an $800,000 mortgage sitting on my property. I can’t sleep at night — even the thought of it.”

Although they aren’t pledged and accessing that much equity…. It’s for a future use. I’ve phoned the banks and had to have them restructure the loan so that it would be reduced and so that it reflects correctly what the client wants and what they can actually sleep with at night.

The B.C. notaries would like to ask that the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services recommend as follows: that the committee recommend greater access to justice and greater competition to non-contentious laws such as wills, probates, incorporations and uncontested family law matters such as prenuptials and uncontested separations and divorce agreements.

I’m going to pause here for a moment again. I just want
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to speak to that. I’ve had numerous clients over the many years that I’ve been practising, as has Rhoda, and most of our colleagues speak the same story. We know people in the community. They come in. They have a simple probate that they need to handle. They’re just asking us if we could please help them with the paperwork. The do-it-yourself kit allows them to do it. We’re all trained in this. We’re very familiar with it. We do the wills.

When they bring in the document, we can’t even point out something to them so simple as: “You’re named in the will with three…. Your full legal name has to be on the documents.” We would be offside to point out to them: “You need to submit your documents with your full legal name.” Instead, what happens is they’ll fill the documents in. We witness their signature. They send it in to the probate court. They bounce it. A lot of red tape and bureaucracy. It comes back. They then come back to us and say: “I have to correct this mistake.” Then it goes back, and now it’s filed. That can take an extensive and unnecessary delay and a hardship. Those are the kinds of things that we see every day in probate issues.

We also ask that the committee recommend that B.C. notaries be exempted from registration under the Mortgage Brokers Act in order that we can provide for greater consumer protection.

R. Witherly: I think I’d add that the recommendations and what we have here…. Really, we’re just asking that the act, which is the Notaries Act, be modernized. That’s what we’re talking about. Many of the things that we’ve discussed and that Tammy highlighted in the examples can be remedied primarily with a pretty quick legislative amendment. We would ask that these particular ones that we have suggested come from you, because many of them are within the purview of the Finance Committee.

A couple of things. One is it’s very refreshing to have someone come and not ask us for money.

E. Foster: A couple of comments. You referred to the Law Society several times. It looks to me that they might feel that you’re encroaching on their turf a little bit. So my first question would be: how is that working out for you? The other thing is…. This isn’t a financial matter. Do your rules and regulations fall under the Attorney General? Is that where your authority comes from?

T. Morin Nakashima: We have the B.C. Notaries Act — that sets out our powers — and regulations through the Attorney General.

As far as the lawyers, I’ve been 20 years in the business — 40 years, actually, altogether. I worked for lawyers for many years before I became a notary. I can tell you that when I worked for lawyers for all those years, I freelanced. I worked at many, many different offices throughout the Fraser Valley.

It is probably a surprise to hear that many of them support the fact that notaries would do this kind of work. There are a lot of estate work matters and simple incorporations they don’t want to be doing because their time is better spent on the more sophisticated, complex files. They’ll even send their clients to us and be surprised to find out that we’re restricted. We can’t do the work.

T. Morin Nakashima: Over the many, many years, we’ve approached many times. We’ve come very close, but just about the time that something is going to be presented, it’s either an election coming up or something has changed or somebody has been moved out of that position, and we’ve had to start over. As far as I can remember — and I’m going to say at least 30 years’ worth of coming forward — the public has had the support, saying: “Why can’t we use notaries to do the simple probates?”

For example, even with the divorce documents, somebody can buy a do-it-yourself kit. We do wills with clients where they come in, and they’ll say they’ve been separated for 25 years. We recommend that they get a divorce so that the paperwork is very clear as to who’s going to get the pension, and there’s not going to be a big mess for everybody to sort out afterwards about two spouses. It clarifies that there’s one spouse, and things are organized.

It might just be a paper issue. They get along well. They’ve settled all their assets. They just need someone to do the paper, and it’s too complicated. They don’t bother. Then the family is stuck with the mess later.

R. Witherly: Sometimes very simple things. Like, someone will come into your office and they’ve actually gone through and done all that paperwork that comes with going and doing a divorce — all of that sort of thing. They just need a few affidavits sworn on it and stuff. Even those, we don’t do. So, of course, they can’t file their paper without doing their affidavit and having it properly commissioned. They have to go to the lawyer. They have to try and find somebody — at the court registry, maybe — that might do it for them. There are all kinds of really fairly straightforward things that we simply can’t do.

S. Gibson: My assumption is that notaries can take on more work. In other words, you’re saying to us: “We’ve got the capacity to take on more work.”
[ Page 2604 ]

One thing I just want to ask you, if I may, Madam Chair. You’ve got a quote here. It says: “Because of this lack of information, some unscrupulous lenders and mortgage sellers have been known to take advantage of consumers,” blah, blah, blah, etc. How systemic is this? How prevalent is this? You’re putting this in there. This must be something important to you to bring to our attention.

T. Morin Nakashima: Well, it is something that…. We do see clients…. Particularly, again, I’ll go to the elderly — maybe who’s lost a spouse, and they’re not the one familiar with the finances and how go about handling them. They’ve been sold a product, not because it’s the best product for them but because there’s a commission behind it.

I’ve talked about this where a blanket mortgage goes on the title. It’s secured at $800,000, and it’s got that variable-rate interest, which gives a better commission, versus the fixed rate at maybe $100,000 — and then a fixed rate.

S. Gibson: How often do you see this? Like, two or three times a week? Two or three times a month?

R. Witherly: It’s quite hard to quantify, because you don’t necessarily delve into why they chose what they did. It’s just the odd…. The flags start to raise when someone comes in. They’re quite concerned, and they really don’t understand.

It also happens with people that have English as not their first language. I mean, it’s daunting enough for those of us that are really clearly — or we think we’re clearly — conversant in English. Then you get these papers, and there’s someone who…. I see lots of that.

R. Austin: Just for clarification here, both the updating of the act to reflect 21st century language and the change of practice or change of scope can all be done in the same act. Is that correct?

R. Austin: This piece of legislation — again, for clarification — has been prepared, and it’s been approved. It just hasn’t come to the House. Is that what you’re telling us?

R. Witherly: I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s been prepared. We have prepared legislation that we think would be….

R. Austin: So these changes have been agreed to by the government and by the Law Society? Or they haven’t?

T. Morin Nakashima: No. That’s the step that they need to go through. We’re asking for a recommendation. The discussion is on the table.

R. Witherly: I think the Mortgage Brokers Act recommendation, though, is different, because that’s a separate act of its own. That’s really a housekeeping thing, adding the notaries as an exempt party, just like lawyers.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. Thank you for coming, for making a presentation. Thank you for the information.

If there’s anything else you want to add or send in, October 14 is the deadline, by midnight, if there are any other documents that you want to send in.

Thank you, again, for your work in communities around the province. We appreciate it.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Okay. We have our final presentation for the evening. The Prince George District Teachers Association — Richard Giroday and Joanne Hapke.

Welcome, both of you. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. We really appreciate it.

As you may have heard, we have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. We appreciate you coming. I will turn the floor over to you. I’ll give you a wave when you get close when you get close to the one-minute mark, just so you know.

R. Giroday: I want to thank you first for the time and energy that you’ve put in. This is a lot of work. As I sat here, all of a sudden I realized how many communities you have probably been through, how many presentations you’ll have been through. I want to thank you on behalf of the Prince George District Teachers Association for
[ Page 2605 ]
the work that you do on behalf of the citizens of British Columbia and for our province. Thank you very much.

Thank you for giving the Prince George District Teachers Association the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Richard Giroday, and I’m president of the Prince George District Teachers Association, otherwise known as the PGDTA. My co-presenter tonight is Joanne Hapke. She’s our first vice-president.

We represent 780 teachers in school district 57 in the communities of Mackenzie to the north, McBride and Valemount to the east, and the city of Prince George and the outlying areas around Prince George. We also represent 35 associate professionals in school district 57 who are working as school psychologists, speech language pathologists, behavioural specialists, social workers and occupational therapists.

What I share this evening is not only through the eyes of my role as president of the PGDTA but also through the eyes as a grandparent in Prince George, gravely concerned about the state of public education for his family. With 11 grandchildren, you might say I have a vested interest in the solid, stable, fully-funded, quality public education system.

Funding of public education in British Columbia is one of the topics we want to talk about today. Maintaining the public education system is a provincial responsibility of the government. Government spending on public education has been, for a long time and continues to be, insufficient to provide the supports needed for students and classrooms. We’ll talk about some of the situations we’ve run across.

These supports take many forms. One of them that we could talk about first would be a clean and safe environment, which is a basic need for students. Continuing underfunding in the public education system results in less and less support in the form of custodial service. Each year for 15 years, we have witnessed a decline in hours available to our custodial staff in the schools to maintain our schools in basic cleanliness. Those needing to perform the work necessary are stretched beyond their ability to accomplish what should and needs to be done.

I’d like to share another support that has declined for so many years under the lack of funding. A serious shortfall exists in the staffing levels of school psychologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists in our district. That’s just due to the lack of funding.

Speech language pathologists are able to provide service to only about 11 percent of our students requiring support in our district. That means that 89 percent of students with communication difficulties do not receive service. Occupational therapists are able to provide service to only about 2 percent of our students requiring support. That means that 98 percent of students who are developmentally vulnerable do not receive service.

The school psychologists-to-students ratio is 1 to 1,823 students — almost twice the ratio recommended by the national association of school psychologists, which is 1 to 1,000.

There is insufficient money provided in the district budget to hire the additional supporting professionals that are needed for students to be tested and supports put in place that students may achieve at their potential.

When you have a child that has a speech impediment and you know that situation will not be addressed for the first four years of that child’s education, it is gut-wrenching. And I know this from my own personal experiences. Or a child with autism, and you are being told that the public education system is stretched and testing may take time and your child might be better off in a private school setting.

The supports are just not available. This is not the equitable and quality public education system we want for our children or anyone’s children.

The Ministry of Education provides funding for students that meet special education criteria, which is approximately 10 percent of the students in our district. However, there are a significantly great number of students who require additional assistance at school who do not qualify for that additional funding.

These students include students with learning disabilities, communication disorders, below-average IQ, ADHD and students waiting for multidisciplinary assessment for autism or complex developmental behavioural disorders.

These students also require additional support, and they certainly need those supports and resources from teachers, educational assistants, the administration, our associate professionals, learning assistance teachers and resource teachers.

A critical lack of student support is the lack of learning assistance teachers, resource teachers and educational assistants. EAs are the incredible individuals working in classrooms under the direction of teachers who provide support to students previously mentioned — those with the learning disabilities, communication disorders, perhaps below-average IQ and those students who are waiting for assessments.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the district parent advisory committee. One parent spoke to the trustee representative attending the meeting. The parent spoke of the need for more educational assistants. This parent gave the example of a class of 26 students, of which eight need educational assistants, but she would be satisfied if there were just one or two EAs in that class.

There is a huge need everywhere. This type of support is needed everywhere in the system for so many students to ensure all students are successful and achieve their potential. This is a common occurrence I’ve seen in my position over the past three years as president of the Prince George District Teachers Association. Let me just share a few situations that help us to see how serious the lack is for the education and well-being of students.
[ Page 2606 ]

One class of grade 1 students, with two children who have had no testing and therefore no designated and funded support. The teacher asked for EA support for the children, and none was available as there isn’t any money for that help. This first teacher requested assistance, and the reason was that they took up the majority of her time.

That’s very difficult. One student would throw things, swing things, out of control. You might use the term “fly off the handle.” When we talk about throwing things, we’re talking a grade 1 class, where the student would just pick up lunch buckets and start flinging them around the room, or scissors, or whatever the case may be.

That’s very difficult. There were some occasions where she had to take the entire class and leave the classroom as it was unsafe for the students to be in it.

In November, the teacher tested her students to see how they had progressed. The results were as if they had just started the school year. You can imagine how disappointing and frustrating that would be to that particular teacher and the stress that that would place her under, thinking: “I haven’t achieved what I need to achieve.”

So much disruption and commotion, day in, day out. This eventually led to the teacher having to take time off of work. A second teacher entered the same classroom. A period of time later, that teacher too had to take time off of work. A third teacher finished the year.

Teachers become managers and not teachers due to the lack of supports for students. They are just day by day trying to manage a classroom in which the behaviour problems are so severe that the situation cries for support for that student, but there’s no money in the budget to provide it.

Let me share another situation, a class of grade 2s in which there’s a child who screams if and when they’re set off. Now, so many things can set that child off. Again, no support for the teacher in the classroom. The teacher taught the class, if you can imagine this, breathing exercises so that when the child was set off, the other children would do their breathing all together so that they could remain calm, and it would lower their anxiety levels. How do children learn when one of their classmates is screaming at the top of their lungs non-stop?

Now, you might ask: “Perhaps there could be other things that could have been done?” But the bottom line is, and the reality was, that the student was to remain in that classroom, but there was no funding to provide the support that that student needed so that all students had the opportunity of learning in a safe environment.

These types of situations play out all over schools in our district but also in other districts across the province, and why? Because there’s inadequate funding of our public education system. The money is just not there. Vulnerable students need supports in their classrooms that will allow students the quality education each and all deserve.

The PGDTA, on behalf of students, parents, teachers and associate professionals, would like the committee to focus on the following recommendation that comes from the report on the Budget 2016 consultations from last year. This is one of the recommendations from last year. We feel that this hasn’t been addressed.

Recommendation No. 2: “Provide stable, sustainable and adequate funding to enable school districts to fulfil their responsibility to continue to provide access to quality public education, with recognition of the increased costs that school districts have incurred.”

Rural education, for us, is a really serious concern because of Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount, our outlying areas, which are very rural communities with dwindling populations, in some respects. The provincial government has the responsibility to ensure that an equitable education program is available to each child in our province, no matter where they live. Rural schools continue to suffer under inadequate funding, due to decreasing enrolments.

One of the findings from the recent school district 57 ad hoc committee on rural education was that schools are the lifeblood of a community. We have seen across the province the growing concern over rural school closures and what that means for communities. The provincial government heard the public concerns over those closures and provided funding to alleviate closures, but there still remain rural schools that continue to struggle due to inadequate funding for rural schools. We feel that now that the province has indicated a large surplus, reinvesting in rural education is long overdue.

Further recommendations that we would put to you as well. The PGDTA would like the committee to focus on additional recommendations from last year’s report, the report on the Budget 2016 consultations, which we again feel have not been addressed. Recommendation No. 4 in particular: “Restore full and sustained funding to the adult basic education and English-as-a-second-language programs.” Recommendation No. 5: “Provide funding support for capital projects related to infrastructure and equipment, such as building maintenance, renovations and projects related to seismic and efficiency upgrades.”

In summary, we feel that there are yet recommendations from the committee previously that have not been implemented due to funding issues. The quality of public education is slipping. Student supports are not adequate to the need, and rural education has declined considerably in comparison to urban. Often it is voiced: “When things are better, that is when we will deal with issues.” With a surplus of $1.9 billion, it is time the recommendations we have highlighted are given serious consideration and implemented.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. As I’m sure you know, we’ve had many presentations on education. It’s been a theme we’ve heard in every community that we’ve attended.

R. Austin: It’s not so much a question. It’s just a follow-up on what Carole was saying.

By the way, your passion and your caring really came through in your presentation. I could see the hurt that you feel as a teacher witnessing and reading out the fact that so many teachers are struggling to do their jobs with inadequate resources.

I worked as an EA for a while, so I was listening to you thinking: “Déjà vu. I’ve seen this all before.” It’s been a long-standing challenge and something which, it’s fair to say, this committee has agreed on in the past.

It’s not like this is a challenge here. This is not like in the Legislature, where there may be a back and fro about it. Here, in the last two years, this committee has fulfilled these recommendations and understands what we’re hearing from you and other educators right across British Columbia.

I’m sure we’ll have another very good discussion when we go into our deliberations. And I, like you, hope that with a large surplus, finally we can actually see some movement on these recommendations rather than you coming here next year to have to say the same thing, which you have done in years past. I’ll leave it at that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I just want to add my appreciation for the inclusive approach that you took in making the presentation — the mention of the support staff, the classroom assistants, the need for cleanliness in the schools, the adult basic education. It was a very thorough report, and I really appreciated it.

S. Gibson: I just want to thank you for your presentation. As we’ve heard, public education is something we value. There’s no doubt about that. My wife was a public school teacher for her entire career, teaching first graders, so I’ve lived with that. I know it’s very important to this committee. As we’ve heard, the recommendations have gone forward previously. We take it seriously. Thank you very much for coming.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you for closing off our Prince George hearings.

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

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

7) NEBC Resource Municipalities Coalition	Mayor Lori Ackerman
	Colin Griffith
8) Prince George and District Community Arts Council	Sean Farrell

10) Physiotherapists for Northern Communities	Hilary Crowley
	Terry Fedorkiw
11) Northern Brain Injury Association	Douglas Jones
	Will Lewis
12) College of New Caledonia	Steven Nycholat
	Henry Reiser
13) Prince George Back Country Recreation Society	Dave King
14) Prince George Chamber of Commerce	Cindi Pohl
	Christie Ray
	Lorna Wendling
15) Child Development Centre of Prince George and District	Darrell Roze
16) Spruce City Wildlife Association	Dustin Snyder
	Steve Hamilton
17) University of Northern British Columbia	Robert Knight
	Lynda Pattie
18) YMCA of Northern BC	Chris Kinch
19) Board of Education, School District No. 57 (Prince George)	Tim Bennett
20) ViaSport British Columbia	Sheila Bouman
21) BC Spinal Cord Injury Network	Sian Blyth
	Dr. Chris McBride
	Pat Harris
22) Innergex Renewable Energy Inc.	Colleen Giroux-Schmidt

23) The Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia	Rhoda Witherly
	Tammy Morin Nakashima
24) Prince George District Teachers’ Association	Richard Giroday
	Joanne Hapke

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES