Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 106 — Wednesday, October 5, 2016 (HTML)

Present: Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Robin Austin, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Jennifer Rice, 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	2609
J. Morris-Reade
H. Jennings
G. Wallin
L. Wirth
P. Faoro
L. Kishkan
D. Bardua
T. Goulet
A. Klukas
R. Beuschel
J. Leahy
J. Collins

C. James (Deputy Chair): Good morning, 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 parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly, with the mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper released by the Minister of Finance. Our committee must issue a report by November 15 with our recommendations for the 2017 provincial budget.

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in communities across the province, and British Columbians can participate via teleconferencing, video conference or Skype. There are also numerous 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 at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We invite all British Columbians to contribute to this important process. For those of you presenting 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 that if you’re sending something in, the deadline for submissions is midnight on Friday, October 14.

Today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. If time permits, we’ll have an open mike at the end of the meeting, where five minutes are allotted for the presenter.

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

Now I’d like to ask the committee members to introduce themselves. I’ll start with Jennifer.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office. From Hansard Services, we have Steve and Alexandrea, who are also assisting us. Thank you so much.

We’ll move to our presentations. Our first presenter is on conference call. We have, from ASPECT, Janet Morris-Reade.

As you heard, we have ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions. I thank you for presenting today, and I’ll turn it over to you.

J. Morris-Reade: Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank you and the committee on behalf of the Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training, also called ASPECT B.C.

Despite our provincial scope and representation, despite our rich history of delivery and contributions to communities throughout the province, this is a significant occasion for us to speak with this committee today. It provides hope that our sector will be given future opportunities to contribute to the labour market strategies that will best serve British Columbians in the coming year.

ASPECT B.C. represents employment organizations delivering programs across the province. Our members play an essential role to upskill individuals and provide them with the best opportunity to find and maintain success in the workplace.

Our sector currently serves clients through four federal-provincial labour market transfer agreements and through provincial funding under the Ministries of Social Development and Social Innovation; Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training; Advanced Education; and even Agriculture.

During my cross-province tour this summer and fall to meet with each of our member organizations, one theme dominated all others: employment cannot be viewed in a silo. Jobs are only part of the equation.

We all want the same thing. We want a healthy economy with plenty of financially sustainable jobs. We want British Columbians to contribute to that economy through income taxes and disposable income. We want every British Columbian to have access to a meaningful and sustainable livelihood.
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However, our most vulnerable populations need more assistance than employment in order to maintain long-term success and job retention. It just isn’t as simple as pairing someone with an available post. Supports need to be in place with the employer and employee to navigate the early days.

Clients who have had a prolonged absence from the workforce will need ongoing coaching. It may cost more to support them in the short term, but it increases the rate of long-term success significantly and reduces the probability of those same clients returning for further supports. With a more holistic approach to programs and services, the employment sector will thrive, as will our economy.

How do we help British Columbians succeed in the workforce? As I have been visiting our members, I have been asking the question: “What are the barriers to employment for your clients?” The responses have been the following, in no particular order: one would be a lack of services for clients with addictions and mental health challenges; two is a lack of affordable housing; three is a lack of transportation for those trying to get their jobs; and, finally, difficulties finding affordable and high-quality daycare.

Our members are telling us that addictions and mental health challenges are impeding their clients’ opportunities for employment. In many communities, social services cuts have been so drastic that if a client does need mental health supports, there are little or no facilities available. In those communities that do have facilities, they face lengthy waiting lists.

Affordable housing and transportation is another catch-22 that exists in the employment sector. For many who access the employment services, their choice is to live in town and pay unaffordable rent or live outside of town and have difficulty getting to work. Many do not have drivers’ licences or access to a car. In some communities, public transit is spotty or nonexistent, and because of the winter conditions, walking and cycling these vast distances year-round is out of the question. Those who cannot find a home near their work must resort to couch-surfing and shelters. Although we see this situation covered in the media in urban centres, it is even more pronounced in the smaller communities.

Affordable and available daycare is also an issue. There are many available retail and hospitality jobs, but daycare is too expensive to pay for with a minimum-wage job that’s too little to support a family on one income. Finding quality child care is almost impossible in some communities, which means that a population of British Columbians who want to work are being left out of the job market.

As we head towards an environment where there aren’t enough people to fill in-demand jobs, we are missing out on an opportunity for B.C. by creating a situation of not only keeping qualified people out of the workforce but forcing them from keeping their work skills current.

ASPECT has four recommendations for the committee’s consideration. One, invest in mental health and addictions services. The employment sector can only do so much to support individuals seeking employment when there are challenges of mental health. We would like to see the provincial government help get people to work by giving resources for the clients to access services as they transition to the workforce.

Two, continue to fund affordable housing initiatives. I encourage the province to look for innovative ways to house people closer to their work so that they can have sustainable employment.

Three, support investments in transportation infrastructure, especially in rural and remote communities. Transportation is a dominant issue.

Finally, fund affordable, quality child care. Affordable daycare is not just a federal government issue. It needs to be supported at a provincial level. If the province wants to meet the employment needs of the workforce now and in the future, an investment needs to be made now in the wraparound services that support the employment sector.

Currently, many of our members are facing providing these supports for free or having to turn clients away. Public supports for mental health, affordable housing, consistent transportation and quality child care are needed to help make British Columbia thrive both now and in the future.

I would like to thank you for the time that you have offered ASPECT B.C. this morning and welcome any questions that you may have.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Janet, for your presentation. I’ll now open it up to the committee, if people have any questions.

R. Austin: Thank you, Janet. It’s Robin Austin from Skeena here. I actually did a stint with one of your members, the Provincial Networking Group, in Terrace, prior to going into public life, so I know the kind of work and the challenges that your client group faces, challenges that are much greater than the average citizen in terms of getting employment and having support for it.

My question to you…. You mentioned the difference between urban centres and those of us who live in rural B.C. What ideas do you have for providing better transportation in small towns? We think of transportation infrastructure, and we hear a lot about all the big projects that happen in the Lower Mainland. But for those of us who live in small-town B.C., do your members have any ideas as to how we can get dollars and improve transportation in small-town, rural B.C.?

J. Morris-Reade: That is a definite, definite challenge. For example, in Grand Forks, the transportation from
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an outlying community only runs once a week. So for sustaining employment, that is impossible. Even our service providers that are offering employment training and employment-ready programs are having to do that on the one day a week that the bus comes to town, which is also the day that the food banks get stocked. This is a challenge that is completely unseen in the urban areas.

As far as a solution is concerned…. One of the solutions that is being dealt with in the north Island — and it’s being funded, actually, by a federal program — is helping the clients get a driver’s licence. That’s a huge barrier for them. The driver’s licence process is quite expensive. If we had some supports for that, that would help part of the transportation in the outlying areas.

As far as large-scale infrastructure, smaller buses and shuttles that are running more frequently, and helping communities to support that type of transportation, would be very helpful.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. You put the points together very thoughtfully. I know we appreciate that.

I guess my question is…. These issues that you are alerting our committee to — if they were addressed, even in part, would that address the problem? My sense is, and I could be wrong here, that the people that you’re dealing with — there are not necessarily jobs available at all times for them. I’m given the impression from your presentation that if they had transportation and some other issues addressed, there would be jobs available for them. Could you comment on that, please?

J. Morris-Reade: In some communities, there are jobs available, and our members are trying to place people in those jobs. So they’ll have the job, but then they can’t sustain the employment because they are not able to get to and from work, or they’re not in a home life situation that they actually have a home. So that’s also a barrier for them.

S. Gibson: What is your relationship with Work B.C.? Do you have an ongoing communication with that department?

J. Morris-Reade: We do, as a provincial not-for-profit organization. We do have a relationship with all of our stakeholders.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Janet. It’s Carole here. Just one question around an issue that we’ve been hearing about throughout the committee’s tour, which is the issue of adult basic education and the challenges being faced by people to be able to access basic courses, to get upgrading, to be able to get into employment. I just wondered whether you’re hearing anything in your work on that issue as well.

J. Morris-Reade: Yeah, that’s actually a very good issue. One of the challenges in our sector is eligibility to access the existing programs. Some of the programs are only available for EI-attached people or people coming from social services. It doesn’t necessarily capture those that have been unemployed for a while. They are not under those two categories. So reducing the eligibility requirements and allowing access to the existing programs would be a great first step.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Great. Thank you, Janet, for taking the time today and presenting to our committee. We appreciate it. Thanks for your work.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Committee, we’ll just take a minute recess while we call the next teleconference.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Our teleconference has moved to another presentation date, so I’m going to welcome, from the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Invasive Plant Committee, Harry Jennings.

Harry, thank you so much for attending today. As you probably heard, it’s ten minutes for the presentation, five minutes for questions. We appreciate you being here today. Over to you.

H. Jennings: Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you and for coming up to the Cariboo-Chilcotin to listen to our presentations.

It has already been announced that I’m the chair of the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Invasive Plant Committee. The area that we cover is just as long as the name. It’s right out to the coast, including — it occurred to me on the drive up here this morning — Bella Bella, where the Duke of Cambridge and his wife were able to visit. It happens to also be a place on the coast, very far removed and very difficult to access, where there are some serious invasive species and invasive plant issues. So that’s a little bit of a current events thing that helps to overlap with what I’m talking about.

I’m sure, in your travels across the province…. I’m also quite aware that you’ve heard from some of my colleagues already. What I’m here today to do is to bring a little bit of the Cariboo-Chilcotin flavour to that discussion, those presentations, and to kind of reiterate some of the mes-
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sages you’re going to hear. I see on the agenda that Gail Wallin from the Invasive Species Council of B.C. will be here, so you’ll be hearing a little bit of repetition perhaps. But I hope to lend a little local flavour to this.

Our committee is a fairly small group with limited funding mainly because, in this area, for the most part, the Cariboo regional district implements the invasive plant control and monitoring to some extent. They spend the dollars that the province supplies in an attempt to manage invasive plants.

It’s definitely not sufficient to manage the giant affront of the numerous plants — where we concentrate our group is on plants — that we already face — known infestations but also quite a number of new plants and other species that are showing up all the time.

Some of the major points I’d like to make today: talk about level of funding and sort of a broad front, a cohesive, coordinated front towards dealing with invasive plants and invasive species. Invasive species cost the B.C. government, industry and the general public a great deal of revenue and a number of lost opportunities, so investment in prevention and control results in net cost savings to various levels of government, to those various industries out there, which I’m sure you’ve heard from, and the general public.

We need to make sure that the variety of threats that we’re facing, both aquatic environments, terrestrial environment plants…. You’ll hear about bugs and fish and snakes and snails and mussels. It’s an amazing array of threats that are out there, and they will impact a number of B.C. citizens in a whole variety of ways, many of which we don’t even know yet. That’s another point that I’ll speak to in a second.

Invasive species strategy of B.C. We’ve been working for several years now on trying to strengthen, update and implement key priorities from that strategy and then attempt to bring together the disparate groups. Sometimes those aren’t always working in the same direction, but trying.

It’s a huge province — you’re more than aware of that — and there are a lot of differing priorities. People coming from different walks of life and industry, industrial backgrounds, perhaps, and personal experience. They come at this issue in a variety of different ways, so it’s important to collectively try to get those ideas and views and feelings together in as coordinated way as possible so we’re all pulling in the same direction.

That invasive species strategy is an attempt to do that, but it takes care and feeding. It takes a lot of work, as you know, to cover this province, get people together and get them in a position where they can talk to each other, meet face to face if possible, and craft those collective strategies that you can present to government and legitimize the funding that is received and, hopefully, encourage increased funding.

Under that, we have a connection to a national strategy. One of the things that particularly pains myself and a number of the folks I work with is a frustration of dealing with federally regulated companies, particularly the railways. We have fairly good cooperation with pipeline and power companies. That probably varies across the province, but in our region, they participate in our committee.

Railways are conduits across the country and through all of our lands, but they’re federally regulated and tend not to participate — if at all, in a minimal sense — in this effort, so we find ourselves often trying to manage something like an invasive plant. I’ll use plants specifically, because that’s the most noticeable. This is also an issue with private land, but that’s another issue.

We’ve got these major conduits through our area, and we’re trying to treat an invasive plant on, perhaps, B.C. Crown land. Immediately beside that is a federally regulated corridor for a railway, and we can’t do a thing. The plants just keep coming back and forth.

That’s frustrating. That’s actually a waste of our resources. You’re not in a position to — and we shouldn’t — stand back and say: “Well, we won’t do anything because the railways aren’t doing anything.” We have to try and work at it, but it is frustrating. It’s ultimately…. I won’t say completely self-defeating, but it does negate a lot of the good efforts that are done and the money spent.

My hope would be that somehow through mechanisms — through the Legislature, intergovernmental discussions, national forums on invasive species — there would be encouragement to get the federal government on side because they’re the regulators. Our efforts at the local and informal or formal level with these industries has not been successful at all. It probably needs a little bit more of an effort from a higher level.

Stable, long-term funding. That’s a typical request and outlook of many groups and many issues, but both within and beyond government, invasive species require consistent monitoring and treatment. That works at a number of levels, like the non-government partners. We’re at arm’s length from government.

Our main role. We’re a pretty small committee. Essentially, outside of a little bit of education and extension, it’s to provide the Cariboo regional district here, specifically, with a certain amount of oversight — I’ll call it — the support for developing a regional strategic plan so that there is some legitimacy to where the money is spent. Frankly, the number of plants, just in terms of numbers, is quite large that could be managed or attempted to be managed out there.

I already know you’ve heard from ranchers about: “Well, spend more time on our plants.” We go through quite an exercise, and we do have some participation from the ranching community, amongst many groups, trying to find that balance of where the best bang for the buck is in terms of plants.
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Again, the effort is just so broad-based that you couldn’t possibly deal with all the plants that everyone wants to deal with. We have tried to encourage some creative solutions, topics, like you can encourage your cattle to eat weeds, and actually, a lot of the so-called weeds are very nutritious for cattle, and it’s just a matter of training them.

I come from a certain amount of interaction with the ranch community, through my professional career, and it can be a long-term effort to — I don’t want to use the word “educate” — let’s say encourage some new methods out there. But they do exist, and there has been some very encouraging takeup on things like that. We’ve got some good examples of ranchers taking on that type of methodology, and it works.

We need to be creative, but it takes time. It takes effort. It’s labour-intensive, and it does generally take funding. Groups like ours need to have stable long-term funding that we can count on. It tends to be from year to year, and you can’t really plan very well.

Government needs to ensure effective treatment, monitoring, compliance and enforcement on Crown lands. There are issues with reforming or modernizing the Weed Control Act.

As you’re probably all well aware — and I am, from having worked in government for 30-some years — if you have an act and you don’t enforce it or there is no real basis for encouraging people to comply with the act, then it’s a worthless piece of legislation. So if that does move ahead and does get modernized, there need to be funds and effort put in place so that there’s compliance. That includes education and prevention as well. It shouldn’t be all big stick.

I know there have been some discussions around the province about education versus operations and getting things done. One of the points I really wanted to make sure that didn’t get missed here, in knowing that debate takes place, is that there are numerous everyday plants and species that are crossing our borders. That’s generally where they come from. They’re attached to cars, boats, who knows what — just on the wind — and there are a lot of them that we don’t even know are here yet.

A lot of them are in our plant stores and in your horticultural businesses. I don’t mean that they’re attempting to encourage new invasive plants, but a lot of times, it’s just lack of knowledge. We need to be very, very much more forward in that, particularly in the urban areas farther south. A lot of things in people’s yards…. They were in my own gardens. Once you discover how these…. They’re just a pain in your butt until you discover that they’re spreading all over the place, and then you can’t get rid of them.

Research and extension. I mentioned there’s a cumulative effect issue here that goes along with all kinds of other environment issues and climate change. You could go on for a long time. But the climate is changing. We know that. It’s going to encourage a lot more of these invaders, and they affect industries. They affect people’s lives. We need more research into control methods. Biocontrol is a particularly important one. These do cost money, and they do take time, but there are definite positive effects to doing that research.

Communication. Just strengthening…. Increase that. Again, we need to make sure that this is on the forefront of people’s minds before they are complaining: “Why is the river behind my house…?”

This is very much a problem in the Lower Mainland. Things like knotweeds are taking over the rivers and waterways. It used to be purple loosestrife was a big issue because we were concerned about ducks — and it still is to a degree — but things like knotweed are even more insidious. They’ll come right up through your pavement and take over your roads without you knowing it, and pretty soon you have no riparian areas. Salmon — we already have enough issues with that and fisheries.

These things are out there, and all of a sudden, one day the nice plant is taking over your world. It sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t.

The one last thing that I want to say, just because I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I was a government professional for a number of years. Over time, there’s been a lot of attrition. I know there’s a huge debate about public servants and having the government in some of these roles, but it is difficult from an outside government position, like our little committees, to present a consistent front, to do education, prevention and extension when we have quite a turnover of part-time employees doing coordination, having to climb a pretty steep learning curve around an issue like this.

I would just suggest that we have just one or two actually key government professionals in this field. They’re in one location in the province. It’s a giant province, and the issues are quite diverse across the province in this regard with invasive species.

I think there needs to be a serious look at investing again in having at least a few more scientifically trained, educated government extension professionals in at least a few more locations in the province, where they can work hand in hand with industry, with ranchers, with the public and also with our committees, so we can get this message out there and do it in a scientifically educated way and proceed.

J. Rice: Thank you for your presentation, Harry. A couple of questions. Where are those professionals that you spoke of? Where are they located?

H. Jennings: And they might be in the Kootenays. The people are where they happen to be, but it’s in the south primarily. What it means is that there’s a huge amount of the province that…. Folks are available by phone, but you stretch one or two people across the whole province, and you almost never see them. And if you do, it’s just very periodically. They aren’t really able to develop a more localized or regional — let’s call it that — expertise.

I worked in the fields of range, mining, fish and wildlife, logging, forestry. You know, you’re can have head office specialists, somebody in Victoria, perhaps, but when you’re in the Peace country dealing with a very particular issue that’s important to your group or your local public, the chances are you’ll never see that person. You might get a few minutes of their time here and there.

This is the kind of issue that’s very people-oriented, and it needs a little more hands-on contact. So you’re bringing the science, you’re bringing the research, and you can go out there and stand on the ground and look at the problem and talk to people in real time. I don’t mean you have to have a flood of these. It would be great if all of our range agrologists had the time — and we could use more of those, because that is a big issue with our ranching community — to do a lot more of that hands-on work and management, education — in some part, the way we used to. But they just aren’t there.

Again, I’m suggesting even just a couple more spread around the province in our more unique regions would, I think, have a huge effect and also lift the morale of people — that the province is actively trying to manage these issues — because you’d see those people, and they’re generally younger and very energetic and keen.

J. Rice: You were speaking of Bella Bella, which is part of the constituency that I represent. I’m the MLA for North Coast, so Bella Bella, and I have Bella Coola as well. I imagine that some of the coastal issues might be a little bit different than the terrestrial issues. I’m wondering if aquatic invasive species is something that….

H. Jennings: Well, our committee isn’t…. Because we’re so small and our effort is…. We’re trying to focus. Like, we’re a plant committee still. You’ll find the committees across the province are all very diverse. The coastal environment is very different than the interior terrestrial environment, though in Bella Coola there are a lot of plant issues alone. But things like knotweed, that I mentioned, relate to the aquatic environment.

We’ve got major issues with trying to deal with plant species that are connected with riparian areas. We need a lot more research into how to deal with that. A lot of the herbicides and things like that, as one method, are restricted by their ability to be used near riparian areas — the effects on fish, which I recognize is hugely important.

We’re facing more of those types of issues. You can do so much, and then you have to stop and watch. Chunks of the Bella Coola River slump away — when they had their floods a few years back — and there are chunks of knotweed floating downstream and going who knows where, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

There are issues of people that are averse to that chemical type of treatment. I understand that. So we need to have research to find different treatments. It can’t all just be hand pulling, but that can work — manual, mechanical. But they’re labour intensive. They’re costly.

Bella Coola’s a great example. We almost never get to interact down there, but the Nuxalk First Nation is really interested in getting at the forefront of this, because their little regional district just has no staff. But our interaction is so limited. We’re trying to encourage them to take on more of this, but it’s almost impossible to stay in touch because of the distance and the cost. None of us can afford to go down there and visit them. We just can’t even afford to pay the mileage. So there’s an example.

The coastal issues, aquatic issues, the marine issues, with species — Gail could probably talk a lot more to that. I’m not as familiar with the coastal environment. But when you do face some of those issues, again, the complexity of anything that’s in the ocean is that much more….

You know, there are enough problems with the garbage they’re picking up on the shoreline, let alone invasive species and things that are coming, literally being blown up on shore or in the near-shore environment that could be having major effects on fisheries, and we wouldn’t know about it because we’re really not out there.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Harry. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for letting us move you up a couple of minutes. We appreciate that.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thanks for sharing your passion. You’re quite right. There have been good presentations around the province on this issue, and we expect they’ll continue.

C. James (Deputy Chair): The committee will take a brief recess while we wait for our next guest.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Next, we have Invasive Species Council of British Columbia. Gail Wallin is here to present to us. Welcome, Gail. The time we have for the presentation is ten minutes and then up to five minutes for questions. We thank you for attending today, and I will turn the floor over to you.

I’m the executive director for the Invasive Species Council of B.C., which is a provincially registered charity, a provincial charity. We work in partnership across the province with many other people. Obviously, you’ve had many other presentations on invasive species, and we’re working closely with those partners.

I’m going to start off with a couple of things. You may have already heard this before, but invasive species are one of those things that cross boundaries. They cross socioeconomic and environmental boundaries. They cross jurisdictional boundaries. That means that it’s sort of a unique issue that means you have to work together on resolving them.

They have a huge environmental impact. They’re the second-biggest impact to biodiversity in Canada. They have a major economic impact in Canada. The research has shown that it’s $13 billion to $34 billion a year that is lost to invasive species. When you take a look at that, B.C. and Ontario are the two provinces home to most of the invasive species. That means those economic impacts are very specific to our province.

The other thing I just wanted to clarify is invasive species and non-native are not the same thing. There are way more non-native species. I use things like crocuses and daffodils, which are wonderful. They don’t take over your garden. They don’t take over your area. It’s only a very small percentage of the non-native species that we’re concerned about, and those are the aggressive ones that do take over habitats, etc. I just wanted to clarify that it’s not everything.

When it comes to climate change, which is not what I’m going to be talking about today, there are many species that will spread their range with climate change. We’re particularly focused on the ones that are actually leapfrogging into Canada or B.C. because people are moving them. We recognize that many species’ range will change with climate change.

There are three different areas that I want to speak to. The actions that our provincial council are calling for are based on something called the Invasive Species Strategy for B.C.. I didn’t bring a copy of it for you this year. I had copies in the past.

It’s a provincewide strategy. The government of B.C. was a major player in developing it. On both strategies for British Columbia, we’ve brought together partners from across B.C. to build it — people from industry, people from the federal government, from First Nations, etc., to build the strategy — and we’ve all been working with it, including your government.

Three areas in there. Prevention is by far the foundation. The example I use: if you can prevent a dandelion in your area, it’s way better if you get it when there’s one versus thousands. Prevention is key. It’s actually the most cost-effective in all research that’s been done. If you can prevent invasive species from coming in, that’s your best bet. Your next thing is that you want to stop them when they first get here, so with very quick eradication.

Getting people involved in the public campaigns — because government can’t have eyes across the province — getting the public involved and skilled in knowing what to look for is really critical. So provincewide education and training programs are really vital for effective prevention.

Citizen science — having people report, having youth involved, having a very active invasive species month across the province are some of the tools from that provincial side.

Some examples of success. We worked with your government in the past. In 2011, you invested $3 million with us. We delivered our provincewide “Clean, drain, dry” program, which was a foundation for what is your mussel program now. But it’s way bigger than mussels. It deals with many other invasive species by looking at clean, drain, dry.

We’ve also worked with the horticulture industry, and now most of the mainstream horticulture industry is no longer selling invasive species. Even though some of them are not regulated yet, they’ve voluntarily removed them. You still get it, particularly in big-box stores, but there’s no regulation right now, so it’s tougher when we’re working with them. But it’s been a change we’ve been able to bring about.

The other area that needs investment on that prevention side is research — research on pathways, research on prevention, research on operational tools — so that again we can be leaders in Canada. In B.C. and Ontario, we have most of them, so let’s make B.C. the leaders. Let’s be the centre of excellence. Let’s provide those study grants so we can attack all those top priority issues for research.

In 2012, we held a research forum and developed a research map that identified the top priorities collectively agreed to for B.C. We’re doing the same thing in 2017. We just need to get the research done — “we” being the global wheel; not us but everybody doing the research.

The second area is increasing and improving operational practices — absolutely vital. We need to make sure that we’re on top of invasive species when they first arrive and that we eradicate or reduce their population.

Invasive species. Whether it’s knotweed along the roadways, which wrecks your highways and your bridges — you’ve probably heard that; fire ants, where you can’t use your backyards or gardens; knapweeds on rangelands,
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they’re all major impacts. We have to reduce their populations. We have to stop them from spreading from roadsides, gravel pits, trails, so they don’t go into our parks or sensitive habitats.

We need to partner with landowners. You guys can be part of that. We need to invest in training so that people are trained and ready to respond to those. We actually led a partnership program with the Ministry of Community Development for unemployed workers. We put them into training so that they were equipped and ready to work on invasive species, and over 75 percent of them got employment.

There’s success on the operational side. We don’t have American bullfrogs in the Okanagan, because people took action to remove them. We don’t like knapweeds now for our rangeland. You don’t want the yellow star thistle that’s in Montana, so we’ve kept that out of B.C. Those are success stories. We have knapweeds…. Yes, they need more dollars. But we have biocontrol, which are little agents that you get to cut back their population, and pesticides that can control them.

The third area that I want to focus on is stable funding. Just like anything else, with invasive species, you can’t go at them one year and then lay off for five, because it’s totally ineffective. Stable funding needs to be addressed in two ways. One of them: we need to double your investment, which is what we called for last year. You’ve got 94 percent of the Crown land in British Columbia. We’re calling for that $13 million, that doubling your investment, so that you can take care of those trails or roadways, which will decrease the operational costs and losses in the future.

That $13 million would go to those provincewide campaigns. It would deal with the increased control on provincial lands. It needs to include clear funding for invasive species.

You always hear about the plants getting the funding. But things like: “What are you doing about the new nutria or bullfrogs in the new area?” Those are things that…. Nutria’s like a little beaver, by the way. It was released by people. Over 60 percent of invasive species are intentionally or accidentally released by people. They don’t move just by themselves.

The second area around stable funding is the establishment of a trust fund. That was called for in both strategies. The idea of having a $10 million trust fund is the idea that you can respond to those emergencies when they need it.

Sometimes the issue isn’t on government land; sometimes it is. Sometimes the jurisdiction is unclear. So that is meant to be there to be able to allow to respond to emergencies, to be able to respond to outreach campaigns, to address those issues.

Also, whether it’s fire ants or whether it’s knotweeds, which are emerging issues in local areas, they might not be…. For example, here in the Cariboo, when they first get reported here in the Cariboo, let’s take action rather than wait. Those examples from…. The people in the north always look south, and they don’t want what we’ve got down here. The Yukon does not want what B.C.’s got. And the northerners…. We’re not north here, but in principle.

There are a number of examples we’ve provided in the past. We’ll be working through more with partners around tools to use to build that trust fund. For sure, the fines, etc., can go into it, but things like surcharges on the pathways or vectors that spread them — the shipping, etc. Those are examples.

Again, on the funding side, I’d just to talk about the role that groups like ourselves have. We have the ability to leverage. We’re able to take your dollars, your provincial government dollars, and bring in other funding. We ran the largest community adjustment fund, I believe it was, in western Canada. We took federal government funds, and we’d provide inventory and training and experience for work on invasive plants on Crown land. That was a big program.

When I look back at our last five years, there’s one organization…. There are many that you partner with. But we’ve gone from where you’re one-third of our funding up to half, and we’ve been able to leverage in three dollars to your one. That’s the ability that we can bring as outside of government.

I’d like to close by just sort of saying that you guys are lead. British Columbia’s government is lead. You’re recognized in Canada for your leadership in things like the Inter-Ministry Invasive Species Working Group, which is a multiparty group. We have lots of good things going on in B.C. There’s definitely more that needs to be done. We’d like to work in partnership with you and bring together all the rest of our partners.

I should have mentioned at the beginning. Our board actually is a combination of government, industry and community. We have First Nations on our board. We have local governments. We’re keen to work with you. We’re keen to leverage your work and be able to see success in B.C.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You did well — 50 seconds. Very well done. Thank you so much, Gail. We appreciate it. I’ll open it up now for questions, comments.

S. Gibson: Thank you for the important work you do. I guess you have to be an optimist in your kind of work, because it seems like your job is never done.

I suppose my question would be: are we just going to control a lot of these little green monsters, or are we going to eliminate them? My sense is that it’s all about control. In my area, we have aquatic weeds taking over. And the folks around the lake…. I’m working right now with some officials in government, but the feeling is that we’ll
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never really eliminate them, but we’ll just really control them. I’d like your comment on that.

G. Wallin: You’re going to have to be careful about which ones you choose to eradicate and which ones you choose to control. It’s really a priority-setting, area by area. Each area of the province is…. Ideally, we want to eliminate and eradicate some in B.C. For example, up here with flowering rush, three locations in B.C. — one of them being here in the Quesnel area. The goal in those areas, at this point in time, is to eradicate those. I’m not sure which species you’re referring to. But there are some.

Like, we’re probably never, ever going to eradicate knapweeds. And that’s a big…. Guaranteed ranches want to get rid of knapweeds. Everybody wants to get rid of milfoil. We don’t want the milfoil. We don’t want other species to become the milfoil of tomorrow.

We could probably use milfoil as an example, because now you’re strictly into control mechanisms. In B.C., we don’t have a lot of tools in the aquatic environment to make a big difference, and that is a big problem. We have more tools on the land base than we have in the aquatic area, so you’re choosing a tough area to work in, to eliminate, when you don’t have tools.

Right now pike is just getting some noise in the news. It’s an aquatic environment. They’re able to remove them, and they’ll be back to clean some lakes out that are more like private lakes or in mines. They can remove that because they’ve rotenoned the lakes. But that’s not something you can use for your milfoil. I’m not sure exactly which species you were looking at in your booklet.

S. Gibson: Yeah, well, milfoil, and there’s another one. There are two of them. There’s a surface one; there’s a…. Of course, I think it was you that mentioned those toads. Was that you?

S. Gibson: And of course those guys are identifiable. But like you say in here, some of these are very similar to other ones, so the amateur — not an expert like you — doesn’t know how to discern them. But those big frogs — we’ve got them in our area, and people are just blasting them and getting rid of them, because they’re so identifiable.

G. Wallin: Right. All the scientists told us that you don’t need to be an expert. If you clean, drain, dry all your equipment before you leave your lake, you’re not going to bring it to my lake. That’s a start.

If you’re trying to identify the different kinds of milfoil, you might not be the expert. But if you found something different there, that’s the citizen science side, and we want you to report it.

There was just recently a new crab that was found in Puget Sound. It was found because there was an informed citizen that said: “This looks different. Let me get it identified.” So there are lots of roles. You don’t have to be an expert to be, actually, a leader.

I grew up diving in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway, and I benefited greatly from an aquatic invasive species — zebra mussels.

J. Rice: I know you don’t want those, and we don’t want those. Absolutely not.

I’m curious. With all the amount of proposals that would see an increase in shipping traffic…. I live up in Prince Rupert. The Port of Prince Rupert is expanding, which is a great economic benefit for my community. What should we be prepared for — you know, marine aquatic invasive species — and what should we know about that?

G. Wallin: Absolutely. There are two things that’ll happen with marine species. One is they’ll have the ability to move with the tides, our tides and water currents, which is where they think this crab, for example…. It’s just one of many. Ballast waters — right now a brand-new international regulation around ballast waters. It took them years to get it in place, but they just passed it within the last month. Those are the kinds of….

You don’t want it in Prince Rupert. You don’t want ballast water coming in and dumping in the Prince Rupert Harbour there and bringing in whatever’s embedded in there.

But you really don’t want fishermen, also, coming up from Bella Coola, where they have these crabs, these European crabs, bringing them up. Again, it’s really important that Prince Rupert, as an example, would say: “We want to be a ‘Clean, drain, dry’ port. We want to make sure that we’re taking responsible actions.” You don’t have aquariums there that are releasing out into the ocean. You actually have a number of people with saltwater aquariums there. They can have….

For example, not that lionfish are found in aquariums, but you wouldn’t want that introduced. It probably wouldn’t survive in Rupert anyway, being a bit cooler. But that principle of not letting things out — don’t release it — and “Clean, drain, dry.” Those are the kinds of models. Maybe your dock, your marinas there could be part of the ambassador program for the “Clean, drain, dry” program so they’re working with all the people coming in to stay with them.
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C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Gail, and thank you to you and your council for all the work you do and for coming to present to us. You and your colleagues have been very efficient at presenting around the province, and I expect we’ll continue to hear the message as we go through.

G. Wallin: Carole, are there any comments on those resources, or are those all self-explanatory?

C. James (Deputy Chair): I think you presented it very clearly — the pieces that you’re looking for and the areas where you’re looking for support. I don’t know if, committee members, everyone feels good. Yeah.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Fantastic. That’d be very helpful. By October 14 at midnight.

Leslie, come on up. Thank you so much for being here. I know we rushed you along a little bit to be able to be here.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Great. Ten minutes for the presentation and five minutes for questions.

L. Wirth: Thank you very much for entertaining this presentation this morning. I really do appreciate the opportunity to represent the Regional Sport Centre Northern B.C. Society, now known, as of last night at our annual general meeting, as Engage Sport North. It represents a really big shift culturally for the organization but not necessarily for the direction that we go in. We’re pretty happy and excited about the change.

I’d like to thank our provincial government for its strong history of investing in sport here in northern British Columbia and specifically for the investments you’ve made to support the work of the Regional Sport Centre Northern B.C. in our former name as PacificSport Northern B.C. You’ve probably heard from a number of PacificSport organizations already over the course of your consultations. We also shared that name until last night.

My name is Leslie Ann Wirth, and I’m the executive director of Engage Sport North. I’m here to outline the positive impact that your investments have made on the people and communities here in northern British Columbia.

Engage Sport North is the only multisport organization of its kind serving the northern two-thirds of this beautiful province. Our purpose is to advance sport participation and excellence throughout the north. Our territory is vast — north to south, from the Yukon border to 100 Mile House, and east to west, from the Alberta border to Haida Gwaii.

We are the only organization to provide programs and services to athletes, participants, coaches and sport leaders of all ages, in all stages of development, with all abilities and across all sports.

With a staff team of five, and in partnership with local and provincial sport organizations, municipalities and community organizations, in 2015-2016 we provided direct service to more than 4,000 athletes, sport participants, coaches, officials, volunteers and sport leaders. Our goal was to reach 1 percent of our population here in the north, and we exceeded that, so we were quite happy about that. Our work with coaches and officials leads us to confidently estimate that our reach extends to an even further 8,000 athletes training and competing here in the north.

Sport is a means to healthy lives and healthy communities and for advancing broad public policy in areas such as mental and physical health as well as community and economic development. Positive sport experiences fuel the development of healthier and more active communities, enriching lives through personal, social and economic development and creating a greater sense of belonging.

Research demonstrates that when youth, particularly girls, participate in organized sport, they are more likely to complete post-secondary education, refrain from abusing alcohol and using illicit drugs, and less likely to become teenage mothers. These are really important factors for our communities here in northern B.C. Physical activity through sport makes it less likely that risk factors for chronic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis will develop later in life.

In 2015-2016, Engage Sport North facilitated 75,000 hours of physical activity for more than 3,000 people living here in 18 communities in the north. We provided community sport leaders with the tools and training to support their contribution to a healthy and active British Columbia. The 200 sport leaders that we trained last year…. We expect that, over the course of their lifetime, they could impact hundreds and hundreds of other people as well.

Sport is a means for youth to learn important life skills such as teamwork, respect and discipline. It can be used to address a range of community priorities including health, aboriginal youth engagement, economic revitalization, newcomer settlement, citizen participation and
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conflict resolution. Last year, we trained more than 500 youth athletes and worked in ten distinct First Nation communities to help youth athletes and youth leaders to gain these skills.

Our mandate is to provide services, really, for people of all ages. However, a lot of the sport development work we do, because of the funding we receive, is really for children and youth up to the age of 18.

The provincial government’s commitment to a healthy, active and competitive British Columbia is evident through its investment in sport. As a founding member of the ViaSport Regional Alliance, we are enhancing lives and energizing communities via sport and are marshalling the sport and physical activity sectors in the province to take action to achieve this end. Engage Sport North is passionate about this work.

In 2015, your government’s direct contribution of $1.065 million in multisport organizations like Engage Sport North was made across nine different regions in the province to help advance sport participation, coach development and athlete performance. These funds were used to leverage additional funding sources to the regional alliance partners, including 105 new partnerships, of which 33 percent were corporations or businesses and 17 percent were community organizations. So that’s the provincial perspective provided by ViaSport.

Your commitment in sport is an investment that results in a healthier and competitive province. I would like to share with you examples of programs and services that demonstrate a strong return on your investment in Engage Sport North.

Specifically, the $160,000 that you invest in Engage Sport North stimulated further community-based investment for a total of $853,000 plus an additional $181,000 in-kind for services like rent, our facility space in two locations, as well as a number of other in-kind contributions related to advertising a teacher for our sports school, etc., 100 percent of which provided programs and services here in northern British Columbia.

In 2015-2016, your investment in Engage Sport North contributed to the following successes. We advanced sport participation and excellence in 18 northern communities, including ten First Nations and six isolated and remote communities — so all the way up to Kwadacha, all kinds of different places that really have very difficult access at times.

As well, 3,081 participants of all ages and abilities took part in introduction-to-sport programs designed to both develop the necessary physical literacy and fundamental movement skills and pique the interest and excitement to be active for life. And 303 coaches, officials and community sport leaders completed training in 33 distinct sessions, increasing their knowledge and skills with a goal of providing quality sport experience for all northern residents.

As I mentioned, 75,000 hours of organized physical activity for 3,100 participants of all ages and abilities through introduction-to-sport programs, and support and training for 524 developing athletes on a performance pathway, with the goals to represent British Columbia and Team Canada in their respective sports.

In northern British Columbia, we actually have a targeted athlete list that works through the local, provincial and national sport organizations. There are about 60 athletes right now on that list as of yesterday. By us supporting, basically, ten times that, we’re hopeful that a number of those youth athletes will actually also achieve that level.

Our record is really, really good, actually. When you look at that list of 60, in my two years of being with Engage Sport North, I can name at least seven of those athletes that we’ve actually worked directly with. And 25 percent of the gold medals won by Team B.C. in the 2015 Canada Winter Games were won by Engage Sport North–trained athletes. So we’re really, really proud of that.

So 197 trained sport leaders — parents, teachers, volunteers — in physical literacy and fundamental movement skill development. Again, these are the kinds of sport leaders that, actually, once you’re trained and know those skills, every child, every sport encounter that you ever have after that will be influenced by that training. So again, that’s a really key investment and a very key strategy for us.

As a member of the ViaSport Regional Alliance, Engage Sport North is committed to energizing communities via sport. Our vision to be a leader in the development and enhancement of physical literacy in communities across northern B.C. is driven by three key strategies: programming excellence, sustainability and organizational excellence. The organizational values of quality, inclusivity, respect, sustainability, excellence and relevance are the touchstones to ensure that we are working within our mandate to align with your vision for a healthy and competitive province.

We are extremely proud of our work to improve accessibility in sport for people with physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities through strategies that include both integration and specialization. In this current fiscal year, we’ve allocated 10 percent of our fiscal and human resources to ensuring that opportunities to learn, play, train and compete are available, accessible and relevant for this particular population group. We do this in all three program areas — participation, sport development and performance.

We recognize that gender equity is an important goal, and in addition to ensuring that all programs and services are available to people of all gender and orientation, we have recently become certified to provide training and development opportunities for sport leaders in the area through a partnership with the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport. Since February
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2016, we have facilitated eight courses for 65 sport leaders throughout the north, and we are very intentional with our dialogue and practice related to sexism and bullying both on and off the playing field.

Your investment in sport in the north, and in Engage Sport North particularly, is both appreciated and treated with great care. You’ve entrusted us with a lot of money, and we really do value that. We really do try to have the biggest impact for that investment.

We share your goal to improve through intentional practice and have determined that the strategy to invest in people and systems to build capacity to deliver exceptional services will have this outcome.

Specifically, we’ve implemented internal processes to ensure that we are driven by our vision and focused on our strategy: ensuring appropriate stewardship through a newly adopted policy governance model; investing in board training and ongoing professional development and training for staff; communicating openly both internally and externally through transparent reporting and consultation; identifying, mitigating and managing risk; and, of course, our operational scrutiny with the goal to be first-best and then go out and share that.

So the last two years, we focused internally quite a bit, related on making sure that the services that we were going to be delivering were the services that were both appropriate and needed and also a very high quality. Now we’re at a point where we’re going out and really trying to sell ourselves.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Just to let you know, Leslie, you’re eating into the question period time now.

L. Wirth: Thank you again for this opportunity to participate in today’s session. I’m pleased to answer any questions that you may have about Engage Sport North, our programs and services, and our place within the provincial system.

I’ll now open it up. We’ve got a couple of minutes for questions if any committee members….

Just one question from me. You mentioned a number of the groups and organizations that you work with and the areas that you focus on and the age group that you focus on. With most of those young people obviously being in school, I wondered what kinds of partnerships you have with the school district. I know there are lots of challenges now without specialist teachers who used to be there in the school system, who used to provide some of that support. So I wondered what kind of programming you’re doing with the K-to-12 system.

L. Wirth: It certainly varies by community. Up here we have a number of school districts that we work with.

But some examples are a physical literacy mentorship program, where we actually go into communities and provide teachers with tools — some of these physical literacy training tools that I was speaking of — to be able to implement physical literacy in their curriculum. This year, in particular, there is a big project that will be underway. I believe that the goal for that is to have the regional alliance partners actually, again, continue with that type of mentorship, although it’s a new and different way from us doing it in the past.

We also run after-school programs with some of our community schools. We have partnerships, again, in different communities with different schools. But it is a very, very important partnership. That’s one of the ways that we try to ensure that programs are accessible to our people living in the north.

Again, often barriers to participation are parents’ time and cost. The more people that we partner with, the less that those barriers have an impact.

I was reading the press release with the name change. I’m just wondering. You operate out of Prince George and Fort St. John. How about programming west of Prince George?

L. Wirth: That’s a key question and a key strategy. Those 18 communities — obviously, a big chunk of those were net western communities last year. This year what we’ve done, because our funding is actually significantly less this year than in the past…. Our budget for this current fiscal year is actually about 27 percent less than we’ve had in the past.

Based on that, what we’ve done is take a look at providing the types of services that we do but in a more coordinated fashion. A really good example is coming up. This is the first of its kind, but it will be repeated across our district over the next seven months.

We’re providing a sport development and performance camp in Terrace later this month. It’s a three-day camp. It will include opportunities for athletes, participants, parents, coaches, etc. There are about nine different things happening over the course of the three days to ensure that the people that are living outside of the Prince George, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek area have access to the same types of services that we’ve had always being provided in those areas.

We’ve always provided outreach. But they’ve been sort of…. We’ll do a coaching clinic, and then we’ll provide another kind of workshop someplace. We’ve never actually brought a full spectrum of services at one time to
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communities. That’s the approach we’re taking this year.

We have targeted specific communities that are ready to work with us this year. Then, moving forward next year, we’ll evaluate our success with that.

We also, in targeting the communities, chose communities that had sort of a feeder system within them, as well, so that within a two-hour travel distance, other people could come. That’s our approach this year.

The 18 communities…. We may not reach 18 communities next year. Perhaps we’ll only reach ten or 11. But we think we’ll have a bigger impact by doing this because we’ll have a more consistent framework for contact. We will have worked very closely with a number of people in the development and implementation of these camps. That’s how we’re approaching it this year.

S. Gibson: Just quickly, looking at your financial statements here. You previously had funding agreements. What happened to those? I noticed you had funding agreements in 2015. They dropped off.

L. Wirth: I don’t have that particular one in front of me. A number of funding agreements have changed — in the city of Fort St. John, for example. The city of Fort John had a five-year funding agreement with us to provide specific services up there. They were unable, for whatever reason, to be able to continue with that last year and this year.

We’re looking at new ways to make that up. In our plan for this year — which you don’t see in that report — we actually have a target for 10 percent of revenue generation through sponsorship, which is a new approach for the organization as well.

L. Wirth: Yes. It’s quite a bit more than that in total between last year and this year, actually.

L. Wirth: The difference between the two is…. Before I got there, the way that things were reported and the way that they’re reported now are a little bit different. We actually do project accounting now, so we do things a little bit differently.

What you don’t see on there, which is the truth, is that most of our rent in facilities is actually an in-kind contribution, either by the city of Fort St. John or by the Northern Sport Centre in the city of Prince George. So we do have other rent in facility costs related to the kinds of programming that we run outside of those areas.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Leslie Ann, for presenting. We appreciate it.

Next we have the Canadian Union of Public Employees, B.C. — president Paul Faoro. Come on up.

As you probably heard, Paul, up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. I’ll just give you the signal when you get to one. You can eat into the question period time. It’s up to you.

P. Faoro: Well, first off, good morning to the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. It’s a pleasure to be up in beautiful Quesnel.

I’m here representing the Canadian Union of Public Employees, B.C. division. Again, my name is Paul Faoro. I’m the president of that organization. If you’re not aware, CUPE British Columbia now has 85,000 members employed in municipalities, school boards, colleges, health care, universities and community organizations. Our members also provide transit and library services, and we represent many workers in private sector organizations. We are the largest union in British Columbia.

It will come as no surprise to any member of this committee that CUPE B.C. does not support the policy direction and economic choices of the current government. That opposition springs from the fact that so many of our members see firsthand the damage that this government has done and continues to do in our communities.

For the more than 15 years that the B.C. Liberal government has been in power, every key function of provincially funded public services has been underfunded and starved of resources, and that underfunding has occurred at the same time as the wealthy and well-connected in our province enjoy millions of dollars of tax cuts. Tax cuts for the 1 percent and service cuts and fee hikes for the rest of us.

Those are political choices, and the results of those choices become government’s record. Those choices, 15 years of those choices, will be up for public scrutiny, public judgment, in the very near future, and we look forward to that debate.

Again, my organization’s views should be well-known, and I don’t anticipate that my presentation here today is going to change anyone’s mind. So I’m going to leave the rhetoric at that for the moment and speak about a couple of specific recommendations we want to give you as the committee and, more directly, to the Premier and her Finance Minister for the preparation of the next budget.

Given the time constraints in this forum, I have chosen to focus my remarks on two sectors: K to 12 and post-secondary.
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Almost one-third of our members — 27,000 of those members — work in the K-to-12 sector. Underfunding in the K-to-12 sector has been a long-standing issue. It has been a flashpoint over the years, with a number of districts facing serious challenges in meeting their balanced-budget obligations and refusing to meet those requirements on the backs of educational workers and school children. Meanwhile, schools are being closed or are under threat of closure across this province, and the concept of neighbourhood schools has been eroded.

British Columbia ranks second-last in all of Canada when it comes to funding in K-to-12 education. The government’s response to the underfunding crisis has been a series of panicked backroom decisions to manage the issues by chequebook and provide ad hoc funding measures intended only to suppress the public outrage.

At the same time, the province makes the disingenuous claim that funding levels for K to 12 are at record levels. While this is true in real dollars, it’s cynical and, quite frankly, misleading, for two reasons: one, real dollar values tell us very little, in fact, of inflationary costs; and two, numerous costs have been downloaded onto school districts that previously did not exist.

A more honest government would present the figures as a percentage of gross domestic product. When we do this, we see that the share of resources for K to 12 in education has fallen from 3.3 percent of B.C.’s GDP in 2001 to a projected 2.5 percent in 2016. That’s a 25 percent decline over 15 years. Even when you look at the operating grants, a drop of 0.9 percent is seen for the same period. Now, 0.9 may not sound that big but, in actual fact, equates to $2 billion a year.

At the same time as this government has cut funding to the education system, it has dramatically increased taxpayer support to private schools. Funding for private schools has increased 61 percent in the last ten years and is expected to be a total of $358 million in 2016-17 and $374 million in ’17-18. The latter figure would represent a funding increase of 93.8 percent since ’05-06.

CUPE believes that a strong public education system is the best way to ensure that education is inclusive, equitable and accessible. Public education is a great leveller in our society, giving everyone an equal shot for working for success.

We will be filing a detailed submission, but we have some recommendations for you right now:

(1) that adequate, stable and predictable funding be allocated to K to 12 so school districts can meet their obligations to deliver accessible, quality education;

(2) that the budget provisions for the K-to-12 system contain funding necessary to pay a fair wage increase to the support staff who work within the system on a daily basis providing those vital services;

(3) that an independent review of the per-pupil funding formula for school boards, with broad stakeholder input, be implemented and an examination of the fairness of the distribution formula be charged with the responsibility of examining the issue of funding adequacy of our schools;

(4) that the funding to independent schools be eliminated — we realize this, of course, would require a progressive reduction but should be undertaken with the aim of expeditiously redirecting public funds to the public system; and

(5) that adequate funding be provided to the educational mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the new K-to-12 curriculum, and to ensure the continued progress in support of aboriginal students in British Columbia.

I’ll now move on to post-secondary. I’m assuming I still have a few more minutes.

In post-secondary, CUPE represents about 14,000 workers in that sector — instructors, teaching assistants in universities across the province.

Total provincial funding for post-secondary has steadily declined since 2001 by almost $600 million. The government claims to have increased the operating grants by 43 percent since 2001-2002. Sounds good — but they won’t tell you that the expenses for this sector have gone up by 80 percent during the same period. This has put increased pressure on staff at post-secondary institutions trying to do more with less.

As a result, our post-secondary institutions have actually had to pursue private sources of funding. They’re becoming more like education businesses rather than public institutions. B.C.’s three largest institutions — UBC, SFU, UB6 — were all less than 50 percent publicly funded.

Students, especially those from the middle and working class, are paying the price for these policies. Compulsory fees have doubled. In 2001-2002, the average undergrad tuition was $2,500. Today it’s nearly $6,000.

We have three recommendations for you to consider: (1) restore post-secondary funding to the 2001-2002 levels in current dollars and eliminate the present shortfall; (2) ensure that funding levels are high enough and post-secondary institutions remain majority government funded and, therefore, public institutions over the long term; and (3) decrease tuition, lower interest rates on student loans, offer non-repayable student aid and reinstate free English language training and adult basic education.

We will be providing you with a detailed analysis of the figures that I’ve just put forward. My staff will be sending that to your committee, I understand, next week. The 14th is the deadline I had in my head. We’ll make sure that you have ample copies of that.
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Certainly, I’m here to answer any questions. I appreciate I’ve given you a lot of information, and over the coming weeks, certainly, we are available to answer any questions that your committee would have.

I thank you for the time. I thank you for going around the province. I know what that…. I’ve been on the same circuit. I appreciate the energy that you’re putting towards this. Thanks for your time.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Paul. Thank you for you presentation and for coming up to Quesnel.

G. Heyman: Thank you, Paul and again, thank you for taking the time to come here with a presentation as well as the material that is going to be submitted.

I’m happy to see so much of the focus of your statements and recommendations on the overall quality of the public education system, both K to 12 and post-secondary. I have a couple of questions that relate to the work of your members in K to 12.

We heard a bit from one of the school boards about some of the falldown in maintenance that affects student safety. Whether you wish to answer it today or send examples that will form part of the record with the submission — some specific example of what happens when there is not adequate funding for maintenance staff, in terms of both deferred costs that can mount higher as well as impact on student safety and health — would be, I think, worth putting on the record here.

Similarly, from your own perspective and your members’ perspective, some commentary on impact on both their workload and on special needs students — with either size of special needs cohorts in classrooms being too high or not enough teaching assistants to help teachers deal with it — both on those children as well as on other children in the classroom…. I think teachers have talked about that a bit. I would be interested to hear it from the perspective of CUPE members. Thanks again.

P. Faoro: I appreciate the question. It would be easier, and I’d be able to give it greater justice, by providing the committee with examples. Let me just say this. There are a lot of examples that I can provide. We would need quite an addendum to provide you with what is happening in the school districts across this province. We’ll certainly do our best to provide you with that information.

S. Gibson: Thanks for your passion. I’ve talked to you before. I do appreciate it. Good to see you again.

S. Gibson: My wife was a public school teacher — entire career. I taught in a public university for many years. I was a member of CUPE when I was a university student.

I just want you to know that all of us are passionate about public education and post-secondary. Sometimes, how that’s executed, sometimes, how the funds are allocated…. There’s going to be some disagreement. But never doubt that our government is passionate about public education and post-secondary. That’s my statement.

I know we’re going to manoeuvre our way in terms of allocations of precious resources, and we’ll have disagreements about how that’s done. But we’ll never disagree about the founding principles that you’ve talked about today. Thank you for coming up.

P. Faoro: Thank you. Good seeing you again. Thanks for coming to the UBCM last week.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Paul, for your presentation. We appreciate it. Thank you to all your members for the work they do around the province each and every day. We appreciate it.

Next, we have the Quesnel District Teachers Association. I’d like to welcome up Denice Bardua, Tony Goulet and Lisa Kishkan.

Come on up. We have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. You’re welcome to go into the question time period if you want. I’ll just give you a wave when you get to the end of your ten minutes. You can make a decision then whether you want to go a little over or use five minutes for questions. It’s entirely up to you.

L. Kishkan: Thank you. It’s nice to be here. This is, for all three of us, the first time we’ve presented to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. It’s a new experience for us.

I’d just like to take a minute to introduce the three of us and explain, sort of give a preamble, about the three of us sitting at the table together today. Over on my far left, I have Tony Goulet. He’s the board chair for school district 28. On my near left, I have Denice Bardua. She’s the local CUPE president for school district 28. I, of course, am the local teachers union president.

We did get to hear the end of Paul’s presentation, and in fact, Denice will have some local examples for you of some of the effects that we’re feeling in Quesnel because of the cuts to education funding. We call them cuts. I know that we differ a little bit, at times, on the rhetoric around that.
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We’re taking the opportunity to present to you together, because even though we often have a different way of approaching the issues in education, we all feel that the number one priority of this committee and the provincial budget needs to be an increase to public education funding in K to 12.

I know that you’ve heard the BCTF presentation. There is all kinds of research in that presentation. What I’m going to do is focus on four recommendations specifically and then give you a little bit of a local perspective on that. You can take that away with you and take that into consideration as you’re reading the research that’s already been done.

You’ve probably heard the background on Quesnel, but here’s the local background on the teacher organization and what we’re feeling.

Up until very recently, we’ve been experiencing declining enrolment in our school district. This year, we actually had an increase to our student enrolment, although we still experienced cuts in our local budget. The QDTA has approximately 260 members. Denice has, in her local, approximately 300 members. The school district is, in fact, one of the largest employers in Quesnel. We are a significant contributor to the local economy. We’re community members who have chosen to live, stay, work and make a commitment to our community.

We’re a resource-dependent area. Obviously, our primary industry is forestry. We also have secondary industries — mining and agriculture — and then other secondary industries that play out of that.

We’ve been in funding protection in our school district for a number of years, and we expect to remain in funding protection for about four or five more. The implication of this is that as our student population stabilizes, and our student needs remain constant, our district will continue to have to make cuts in our budget.

Number 1 is that there be an immediate, comprehensive, significant and stable increase to the K-to-12 public education system. By stable, I’m differentiating between the grants that have come out in the last several months adding funding to the education system, and a holistic, comprehensive amount of funding that is given to school districts to allocate based on district needs.

What we’re seeing is that there are grants that have been put into the system — and I’m going to speak a little bit about the local implications of that over the last year — that take away the ability of local governance organizations to make local decisions. They’re put in at the last minute and cause stress and angst in communities. That does not work for us. It doesn’t work for our community. It doesn’t work for our members.

Denice will speak a little bit about the implications around those cuts, on CUPE, but I want to go through a little bit and talk to you about the school closure issue in Quesnel last year. I know that provincially, everybody is aware of the school closure issues. Certainly, you’re aware of the rural education enhancement fund that was put in at the last minute as a way of saving certain rural schools but not others. Here’s what that looked like in Quesnel.

Last year our district was forced to make a decision regarding the closure of three of our elementary schools. These schools had stable student populations which had been relatively unchanged for several years. By stable, that doesn’t mean they weren’t small. It means they weren’t declining.

Two of them were rural and had student populations of 60 and 80 students each, as well as empowered and vocal parent and community advocates, which is very critical when we look at the funds that were allocated at the end of the school year last year. The third was an inner-city, dual-track, French immersion–English school with a vulnerable, at-risk English student population and an at-risk and disenfranchised parents community. The population of this school was approximately 260 students.

These are not empty schools. These are not schools with 20 or fewer students. These are not schools that have experienced a significant decrease suddenly in their student population. These are stable, long-term communities. I’ll repeat myself. They’re relatively small, with stable student populations, but they are integral to the health of communities.

I believe you were in Prince George last night, and Prince George had a fantastic component to their presentation that talked about rural education and their ad hoc committee. They discovered — and we have experienced the same thing — that rural schools are integral to the health of a rural community.

However, the school district does not have the financial resources to meet the needs of all the students in this district with the number of sites that they have. This was purely a financial decision in an attempt to meet the learning needs of our school district. The consultation process took months, was at times toxic, and resulted in a decision to close three of the schools.

In response to the advocacy and the outrage, the Ministry of Education bowed to the political pressure and announced the creation of the rural education enhancement fund. This fund was structured in such a way that all decision-making over the funding was removed from locally elected officials and into the hands of the Ministry of Education. Furthermore, it only applied to two of the three schools in our community.

Decisions like this divide our communities, they anger our parents, and they cause long-term damage to relationships. The staff in the schools are now trying to overcome that damage because of the last-minute funding announcement, because of the decision-making that was taken away from our locally elected officials. Quite frankly, it’s a terribly unfair thing to do to small rural communities.
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Quesnel, for better or for worse, is also a rural community. We have all the same components. It’s frustrating — really, really frustrating — that in the years and months leading up to this situation in our community, the board of education, the QDTA and the CUPE support staff, as well as our parent groups, wrote letters, advocated and presented at events such as this. In fact, I was just rereading the brief to this committee from 2012. It was almost word-for-word the same. And the issue was not addressed.

Clearly, there’s been a need to address funding in districts such as ours for many years, and doing so at the eleventh hour is not sustainable or dependable. Furthermore, it’s not responsible. Funding the system on a series of grants creates real instability in schools and classrooms but also in communities.

When districts cannot be sure of the funding they receive from year to year — and this is the on-the-ground implication that we are seeing here — but instead are allocated a series of small targeted grants that aren’t dependable, this impacts their ability to make long-term decisions. Tony will speak a little bit about that. Jobs become temporary, and employment becomes insecure. People leave the profession or the community.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Sorry. You can go into your five-minute question period and use it for presentation. That’s okay.

L. Kishkan: At the very least, it becomes difficult for professionals to make a long-term commitment in terms of buying real estate and choosing to raise their families in our communities. That has an impact far beyond the education system. It impacts the health of our economy and our communities in the province.

I’m only going to read you my final three recommendations. Fully fund the cost increases to the public education system, including those associated with inflation. This includes increases to B.C. Hydro, exempt staff wage increases, collective agreement increases that are provincially negotiated, MSP and other benefits, premiums and costs associated with the next-generation network.

Furthermore, that a significant portion of the $1.9 billion surplus be redirected to the public education system and that school districts be provided with the financial resources necessary to support the implementation of the redesigned provincial curriculum, including funding for release time for in-service as well as teaching and learning resources.

Finally, that the Ministry of Education implement the recommendations of the committee from the previous two years — and, maybe I should clarify, also the Ministry of Finance.

D. Bardua: I think we touched briefly on custodial staff — you’d asked some questions about how this is affecting the support staff — and we are going to put in a written submission on that. Our custodial staff has been cut in schools to such a degree that any regular cleaning, like dusting of the ducts, is no longer being done. The wait-list for technological support is so long that there are teachers right now without functioning computers in their classrooms. We have three carpenters, two electricians, one plumber, one painter, one HVAC specialist and three groundspeople for a district with more than 20 sites.

Teachers often wait months for pieces of equipment that they request for their classrooms, and furthermore, as the teaching staff is cut, so is our support staff. We’re on an old funding formula where, depending on how many teachers are in a school, that’s the support we get for our secretarial staff, our custodial staff, and they’re just overworked and no extra time.

T. Goulet: Good morning. I’d like to just follow up with some comments that Lisa had, and some things. I’ve prepared a brief for you. I’m not going to read it. I do have four recommendations from school district 28, which we’d like to see implemented and you can get more information on.

As the locally elected officials, we are responsible for about a $34 million budget. We have a student count of just over 3,000 kids right now. Over the years, we have seen our enrolment decline, which brings us into funding protection, which Lisa talked about. We’ll be in for about four to five years under the funding protection, which is almost like a mortgage we have to pay back at some point, so it does have an impact on how we deliver services into our classroom and to our kids.

I’m advocating for, of course, increased funding. I think the demands and what’s happening in the public system have outpaced the current funding. We need to really examine and find a way to review the formula that’s being allocated right now and come up with a different system. I think it’s outdated. It was good when we had the number of kids and we had the stability, but once our enrolment declined, we’re coming into some issues about buildings, facilities. We’re doing a whole strategic plan for our district on how we move forward within the next three to five years.

Of course, as a board of education, we’ve reached our limits of program and facility sustainability within our current budget. We have lots of costs that come up. Inflationary pressures, like the rise in energy, the transportation, the infrastructure and the labour costs, all have a bottom line in how we deliver for our kids.

I’m respectfully making the following four recommendations. A sustainable and stable and predictable funding for our K-to-12 public education system. We do appreciate the additional funds that were provided last summer and the REEF and the school closure process that we
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went through. But if we had more time, this could have been used more effectively. They could have been provided in a timely manner. We would have been able to look at things differently, rather than the school closure process that we went through.

When we’re thinking about adding grants and little bits and pots of money, we need to think timewise. It’s tough for a board of education to receive this money, balance, look at everything and come up with a plan that we can work together.

We need a clear policy and measures regarding appropriate financial reserve surpluses. There seems to be some confusion over boards having large surpluses all across the province. The real fact is that boards of education have used surpluses to deliver balanced budgets year after year. We’ve dipped into reserves in order to balance our budget because, legally, we have to balance our budget at the end of each and every year.

We need appropriate funding for exempt staff compensation for the K-to-12 sector. It’s very hard, singling out a small group of employees that shoulder the burden of government cost-cutting measures, and it’s simply a bad public policy.

We need to review the current Ministry of Education funding formula, with specific attention to the distribution model for rural districts. We can’t do this, of course, without the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, the partner groups, CUPE and all of us in the education sector, to make that happen. So our recommendation would be: let’s communicate and make sure that we’re all on the same page in developing something that will sustain our education system.

C. James (Deputy Chair): You did very well, and the three of you managed to use up your time within ten seconds.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your passion about public education and for the work that all of you do.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I will just take a brief recess. We’re just getting our next teleconference on the line.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We now have on the conference call the Western Convenience Stores Association — Andrew Klukas.

As you know, we have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions. I will turn it over to you. Thank you for presenting today.

A. Klukas: Good morning, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to, once again, present to this committee on behalf of the convenience store industry in British Columbia. My name is Andrew Klukas. I’m president of the Western Convenience Stores Association, a trade organization that represents over 7,000 retailers, and we employ more than 51,000 people in western Canada.

In B.C. alone, there are over 2,700 sites, which employ roughly 20,000 people. Approximately 50 percent are independent family-owned stores. Many of these stores may be small businesses, but we contribute significantly to the provincial economy and serve at the centre of many communities.

To give you an idea of our national economic footprint, Canadians purchased over $51 billion of goods and services from our stores in 2015 alone. These sales also resulted in over $18 billion in taxes collected for both the federal and provincial governments. We are also significant employers of new Canadians, providing these entrepreneurs an opportunity to own and operate their own businesses.

Now, there are two main issues that I would like to address today that affect our industry on a daily basis — in particular, the issues of overregulation and red-tape reduction, as well as illegal tobacco.

To start, our association is encouraged by this government’s ongoing efforts to support small business through red-tape-reduction measures. As this committee has likely heard throughout these consultations, small businesses are the first to be impacted by these types of initiatives, so they are appreciated. What many may not realize is that the convenience store sector is one of the most regulated in the country. We are regulated by all levels of government, often due to political will that can have unintended consequences for our members.

In 2013, the Canadian Convenience Stores Association, our national partner, conducted a study around regulations impacting the industry at the federal, provincial and municipal levels by looking at five major cities in Canada, including Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. The study identified 868 regulations that directly impact convenience store operators. Over 100 of these apply in British Columbia, depending on the scale of the store’s operations.

The study went further by estimating the time-value cost to comply with such regulations, and it was estimated to be at over $10,000 per year per site. That is a significant cost to small business owners. It detracts from their ability to run their operations, to hire and train and supervise new employees, or to make time to research and invest in business improvements.
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These regulations could include anything from WorkSafe B.C. requirements to food safety, tobacco sales, lottery taxation, e-cigarettes, insurance requirements and the use of temporary foreign workers. It could also include resolutions or initiatives passed at the municipal level — forcing retailers to include climate change warning labels at gas pumps, just to give an example.

These initiative are well-intended, but their execution can be challenging and costly — in particular, for smaller retailers.

For starters, we recommend government departments and agencies produce an economic impact analysis prior to implementing new laws or regulations. We also recommend that provincial officials determine whether they are the most appropriate space to implement laws or whether municipalities or the federal government should take the lead. More often than not, government regulations have a layering effect that can be burdensome and confusing to retailers. Harmonized legislation under a single jurisdiction should be sought wherever possible.

Another major priority for our association is the persistence of the illegal, untaxed tobacco trade that continues to run rampant in B.C.

Regarding the issue of illegal and untaxed tobacco, the Western Convenience Stores Association, our regional counterparts and the federal association recently engaged government to advocate against overregulation and excessive tax increases on tobacco products. Both of these measures fuel the contraband market and have the opposite of their intended effect in terms of reduced consumption and revenue generation.

Tobacco tax increases are often advocated as a way to reduce smoking rates, particularly youth smoking rates. I want to be clear that the WCSA stands with government in any and all efforts to restrict access to youth and to reduce overall youth smoking rates. We take pride in our responsible retailing efforts, and we offer free age-verification training to all retailers, regardless of membership. The course is called We Expect ID.

It is incredibly important for us to maintain our high industry standards in keeping tobacco out of the hands of youth. We support any efforts that actually work and do not create unintended consequences. Major tobacco tax increases do not restrict or reduce youth smoking rates. Once taxes become too high and prices skyrocket overnight, adult consumers simply purchase their products elsewhere, and they become more accessible to youth.

As the federal government moves to implement plain packaging requirements for tobacco products, retailers in B.C. are very concerned about what this will do to an increasingly strong counterfeit market. Our association has long advocated for greater deterrents to the illicit market, including additional resources for law enforcement and more robust provincial legislation.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and more often than not, tobacco trafficking is directly linked to organized crime and gangs. If you can successfully traffic tobacco, drugs and weapons are never too far behind.

As stated in last year’s prebudget presentation, our assumption had always been that the illicit tobacco trade only flourished in central Canada. But we were wrong. The average rate of all sites tested in B.C. was 15 percent. To put that into perspective, this rate is 50 percent higher than Alberta, which came in at 10 percent. It’s also the highest rate in western Canada. The study does not take into account counterfeit tobacco products and could, therefore, be higher.

Key areas that were surveyed had high volumes of traffic to reflect a good cross-section of the local population — for example, government sites, transit stations, universities and high schools. What continues to trouble us is that youth still have access to these products, and consumption rates in high schools and at universities are high.

We will be releasing the results of our 2016 study in coming weeks, and we hope to share it with each of you. To combat illegal tobacco, we recommend that the province introduce robust legislation that will particularly target traffickers, to help keep communities safe.

We also recommend that the province include crackdowns on illicit tobacco trafficking as part of its ongoing efforts to combat gang and criminal activity. As previously mentioned, trafficking in any product funds these groups and their activities.

Convenience stores are the backbone of many communities. We appreciate the opportunity to present to this committee and will continue to work with you on behalf of small businesses across this province.

I’ll now open it up to committee members. Anyone have any questions, comments?

S. Gibson: Is it the long-term commitment of convenience stores to eventually phase out the sale of cigarettes at some point?

A. Klukas: We will comply with the law. We do see — I think a lot of people would agree — that this is a sunset category. So we will go with that.

S. Gibson: I guess my question was: do you see it as desirable for your stores to phase out cigarettes at some point?

A. Klukas: Certainly, from a health standpoint, one would say that is…. I think our retailers are very, very
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nimble. It may surprise many to realize that changes of this type are not the end of the world for our members. We’re very quick to adapt to change.

Our main concern is that the change does not have unintended consequences. For example, if these products became illegal overnight, on the other side of the equation, we’re looking at a large and flourishing contraband market. The impact would not be what the government or we as retailers intend. In that situation, we’d in fact see the market simply go to an illegal market.

It’s really a question of how this is going to transpire and how you navigate the course from where we are today to a future situation where these products are no longer sold. That really is the question. Our perspective on it is certainly through the lens of the contraband market, because that’s how we’re impacted the most directly. What we see is that efforts to reduce consumption just aren’t working, particularly in the case of youth. However, any efforts that will work, as I said in the presentation, we will support.

You haven’t talked about the coming change to CPP. I’m interested in your thoughts and perhaps your membership’s view on this, because we have heard from other associations representing small and medium-sized businesses.

A. Klukas: I’m going to have to get back to you on that. I know there was some legislation in Ontario, and there was concern that other provinces were going to follow suit. However, it appears that that’s not going forward. But I’m going to have to consult a bit more with some of my members on that subject. We discussed that at a board meeting yesterday, and it was not entirely conclusive.

J. Yap: Actually, it was just announced yesterday that British Columbia will be signing on to the changes, the phasing in of increased rates on CPP over the next several years, so it’s fairly recent. This was a national program for the whole country, and the province had done a consultation. The results of that consultation were announced, and the government is supporting the change to CPP. So I’m just interested in your association’s thoughts.

A. Klukas: Okay. I’ll have to get back to you on that, but in general, we were supportive.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Andrew. You mentioned a report. If you have any more information that you want to get to committee members, or if you want it to be part of the public record, just make sure you get it to us by October 14, at the end of the day, to be able to enter as part of the public record.

A. Klukas: I will be reaching out to each of you with the results of our latest study.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Okay. That would be great. Thank you so much, Andrew. Thank you for coming on, and we appreciate your presentation.

Rebecca, we have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for question time. You can go into your question time if you need to, but I’ll give you the signal when you get close to your minute. Thank you for presenting. We appreciate it. I’ll turn it over to you.

R. Beuschel: Thank you for having me. Good morning. I have provided a written copy, and I am going to read it. It might help you, if you can’t understand my accent, with some of the words.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today about the issue, about my issue, which is the importance of literacy and the work we do in Quesnel. I really appreciate that we live in a democratic society where such presentations are possible and carry meaning.

My name is Rebecca Beuschel. I work as the literacy outreach coordinator for Literacy Quesnel Society. We have been an established not-for-profit society for eight years, and prior to that, we engaged in community literacy work but just in a more informal, ad hoc way.

I actually recognize some of you from previous presentations I’ve made in the past eight years. Every year I’ve presented, either in person or by video conference or made a written submission, because I really believe in the importance of advocating and continuously raising awareness about what is important to me and to my community.

I know you hear many varied presentations, and I want to thank you personally for the recommendation you made last year for annual funding of $2.5 million for community literacy support. I know our provincial organization, Decoda Literacy Solutions, and many community organizations around B.C. really appreciate the level of support that your recommendation represents. I know it’s not a promise that the money will come, but the recommendation is really valuable.

Decoda and our community literacy groups continue to lobby for multi-year funding. As I’m sure you can imagine, the lack of multi-year funding makes the literacy work we do unstable and uncertain. I’m asked constantly if we’re going to continue with activities, or I’m asked by parents attending our events if they’re going to happen again next year. I always have to say, with a little twinge of sadness: “Well, I hope so” or “If the funding’s here, we’ll do it again.” That’s something that I really wish I didn’t have to do, but I can’t promise what I don’t have.

You know, I want people to catch the literacy bug and get excited about the work we’re doing, but it all has a temporary feel to it when we just go year by year. Not
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knowing whether the funding will be there to support us and the activities we coordinate is challenging. It becomes difficult to plan for growth.

As a society, our board of directors does a strategic plan, and we work on it every year. It’s really tricky when we have this big “maybe” category or: “If we get the funding, this is what we’re going to continuing doing.” And there’s that realistic part: “Well, this is what we can do, and if we don’t get funding, this is how we will manage the events from then on.”

So I’ll ask each of you to consider supporting our request again to recommend multi-year funding. Literacy work already comes with so many variables, like what to offer in the community, recruiting and maintaining volunteers, reaching out to those needing support, keeping up with trends, hosting a mix of fun and valued activities. If we could do all this work knowing that funding was no longer a variable, that it was present and stable, that would make a huge difference.

The positive impact of literacy funding to communities as a whole is really clear. It affects everything from health care to employment to the economy. Increased literacy rates improve a community’s ability to participate in today’s B.C. jobs plan.

I have personal experience, as a literacy coordinator, working with individuals in Quesnel who have been registered with Work B.C. programs and needed an extra level of support to make it possible for them to get through their training or for them to complete a certificate program that they’re enrolled in.

Last year I was able to provide some extra support to some individuals, because I knew that the literacy support was critical for their success. So I and our society — I’m the only paid person that works there 20 hours a week — provided this support with no extra funding, no extra staff. We just sort of squeezed it in and made it happen, which is how literacy work is often done. We just squeeze it in. But this isn’t really sustainable.

There are really good things happening when we squeeze it in, because we are responding to the need, but then we can’t promise that the next person in line can get that same kind of help. We squeeze in these extra things, and then we have to scale it back because there are too many things being squeezed in. All of a sudden I’m doing more than 20 hours a week, and nobody wants me to work unpaid, and it’s unrealistic. On and on it goes.

We need ongoing multi-year funding to ensure we are reaching all the parts of the community that need support. It’s adults, youth, children and families, seniors, aboriginal people, immigrants. If we can do the work knowing the funding is stable, then we can really work on growth and also be putting our time into working on additional funding from other sources.

Last year when I presented, I referenced a story about a learner I’d been helping. This particular man struggles with reading and with comprehending what he reads, as well as experiencing test anxiety. His goal was to get his class 3 driver’s licence. He worked one-on-one with me every week for over a year. Last year at this point, I was seeing him, and then we worked together.

He sat several tests, never quite getting enough answers right to pass the test. He kept coming back to me. Each time he failed the test, he’d come back, and we’d continue to work on it together, applying different strategies, looking at what his weaknesses were and strengthening those weaknesses.

Then a couple of months ago he passed the test. He sat it, and he passed it, and I was the first person he called. I was standing in my kitchen, and he called me. He said: “You won’t believe it. I got it.” I was so happy, and he was ecstatic. The next day his mother phoned to thank me. You know, this is a 26-year-old guy who just needed that extra push. He needed that extra support, and now he is going through the training program, and his aim is to get a job and to contribute, in his words, to do something meaningful in the community.

He feels proud of his hard work and his achievement, and there’s no other organization in Quesnel that could have given him the extra time that he required for the extra coaching that he required to get to that point where he passed the test. The learning needs to stick, and for some of us, getting the learning to stick takes longer. Now he has his learner’s licence, and he’s enrolled, and he’s thrilled. Every time he drives by my office, he honks the horn.

His point of connection with his community increased tenfold when he passed. It really solidified his place as a member in the community, and that was really evident when you could see him, physically, in my office and so happy.

There are more stories of people like this, but I won’t tell them. We’ve helped many people and helped some people to different degrees.

Last week we held a trivia challenge event to raise awareness. They were held throughout the province. Whichever groups could have the time to do them, held them. We did ours to help pay the rent because that’s what we have to do. That’s the reality.

We want to be downtown. We want to be in a location where we’re accessible, so we’ve delved into the world of selling used books — $2 a book, if you want to grab one on your way out. That’s just sort of the business that we’re in.

We know the funding is core funding, and because it’s not stable, we like to conservatively budget. We know we need to do other things to make activities possible. So we had a trivia event, which was fun. We sell used books. We do all sorts of things. It’s all fun stuff to engage in, but it does distract us from the literacy work that we really need to be doing.
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Long-term, ongoing funding would help ease the side business of fundraising. We would still do some of it, and it’s a really good way to engage the community, but it wouldn’t be as important as it is now.

I’m here to ask that the government provide the ongoing funding required for the coordination of literacy work, which is a minimum of $2.5 million annually for the province. It’s in accordance with the recommendation that you made last year.

Thank you, once again, for your time and your consideration and listening to me. I look forward to doing it again next year — or maybe not.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much, Rebecca, for your work and for the presentation. This is my third year on the committee. I’ve been struck, around the province, by the variety of presentations and how each local literacy society tailors its programs to the particular community and is plugged into and integrated with the community rather than having a cookie-cutter approach. I think that’s probably one of the things that makes you particularly relevant.

As you talk about the time you spend fundraising taking away from other programs…. Obviously, we’re happy that each year you’ve gotten the $2.5 million, but we take your point that stability is useful — just as we’ve heard from teachers associations and school districts.

It crossed my mind that the time you spend preparing presentations around the province to come to this committee, in some ways, could be spent doing other things. But I also think it’s very useful for the public record to have some of the personal stories, like the one that you brought today. I think that makes it very real.

You did mention that if you had — and here’s where I actually have a question — stability of funding, you could concentrate on growth. I’m wondering if you are talking about simply expanding your reach to more people or some form of growth in the variety of programs as well.

R. Beuschel: Well, it’s a little bit of both. We do some activities, and we don’t do them every year because we have to pick and choose what fills up 20 hours a week, which goes really quickly. We don’t work in July and August, because we try to keep our budget realistic. We try to keep the money that we spend in the most important times of the year.

There are things like…. We’ve done math workshops with parents for free. We make them all free, really trying to get ways for parents to be able to go home and engage with their kids in their learning so that they can feel part of their learning and growth too. Last year we sort of pared that down, because I worked a little bit more with clients from Work B.C. or I worked with people who came in the door.

We just have to feel how it goes, but we would be able to plan into the future to do a set amount of activities if we knew that money was there. And if we had more money, we could just do more of it. We could definitely reach more people, and we could also vary our activities.

Often organizations say: “Oh, you should come and talk to us. Oh, that’s so interesting. Do we have a literacy problem? You should come and talk to our staff, because I didn’t know we had a literacy issue.” Then I go: “Oh, yeah. I would love to. Oh, I’m busy till December. Could I come then?” It’s sort of like, when I can push everything else aside, I’ll squeeze that in. It’s those sorts of things.

We are really good at responding to the needs of the community, which does mean some of the regular stuff has to just get left for a month or a couple of weeks while we respond to the need and do something different. So it would be both. It would be increase who we reach and increase what we’re able to do.

J. Yap: Thank you for presenting. We’ve heard from many of your colleagues around the province. Just to echo what George said, we certainly appreciate how each community takes modest resources and really stretches it.

In your area here, in Quesnel, can you give us an idea, yourself and the volunteers you work with: at any one time, how many people do you touch and support in literacy?

R. Beuschel: Just taking this week, for example, we’ve had about five volunteers working in the literacy society doing a variety of things. Some have been looking after the used book store, when I can be out at community service meetings. We need to keep the bookstore going, because we need to pay the rent. This week alone, three people — brand-new people — have come in and said: “I need help with some reading and writing. Would it be possible for you to help me?”

We’ve had a group approach us who have their own program with their own clients, and they want to train five or six of their staff so that they can work in-house with their own clients who have their own literacy issues. So that’s great, because we love to build that capacity, but it does mean I’ve got to find 20 hours to now go and work with their staff to train them so that I can set them on the road to literacy work.

So I would say we probably reach five or six individuals each week, along with having three or four volunteers each week doing a couple of hours each. Then when you multiply that over time…. There are busier times. There are times when we’ll get the volunteers matched with the learners, which is a program we’re just about to establish, so that they can then work off on their own, which is great, because then we build that capacity, and
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then we go back to looking at the next issue that needs some time given to it.

We had the trivia night. Also, last week, we had a free family literacy event in the library to just role model to parents what they could do at home. So we had, you know, 12 kids there and five adults, and a couple of hours we spent working with them in that sort of environment.

It does change, which is the beauty of the literacy model that we have, because we can tailor it. Like George had said, we can tailor it to meet the needs of our community. So we don’t have to be doing what Abbotsford is doing or whatever.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much, Rebecca, for your presentation. Most importantly, thank you for your work in the community.

C. James (Deputy Chair): I think you’ve presented clearly the benefits of having long-term, stable funding. Thank you so much.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We’ll just take a minute recess while we get our next presenter on the phone.

C. James (Deputy Chair): We have Save Our Northern Seniors — Jean Leahy. Jean, are you on the phone. Can you hear me?

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you. Jean, as you probably know from presenting previously, you have up to ten minutes for the presentation and up to five minutes for questions from the committee. With that, I thank you for presenting, and I’ll turn it over to you.

J. Leahy: Okay. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you very much for hearing from us. It’s an annual visit, I know, but we feel that it’s worthwhile. We want to talk about some issues — the lack of space at Peace Villa, lack of residential care, assisted-living facilities, accessible housing and the opening of 11 beds in the hospital.

We’re also quite short on transportation. We need more handyDART and accessible taxis. We have one, and that’s it.

We want to keep our public facilities public. We do not want them privatized. We are in trouble here with ambulance service for Fort St. John and Fort Nelson. Then we zero in on the recruitment and retention at the hospital and the care home. We proposed, a year ago, a nursing school, so we’re wondering where that’s at. We do have a care aide school, but we don’t have a nursing school.

Basically, we’re supporting the building of the third house at Peace Villa, which would accommodate 60 residents. A daycare. That’s for retention, to keep the care aides here, because male care aides, in particular, are anxious for daycare. Also, we need an activity room. Right now, they have to use the café in the hospital for an activity room, which means that not even a third of the residents are able to get to it.

We have a chart here of our facilities. That’s in your package, a chart for this year. There’s also a chart for last year, so you’ll be able to compare the figures and see that every year the need goes up, not down.

J. Collins: Good morning, everybody. SONS was started some years ago because our care home facility was only 80 beds. Eventually, we got a new facility built called Peace Villa, with 123 beds versus just over 80 in the old facility. The day it opened, it was filled. It has continued to be filled to this day with approximately 24 or 25 people on a waiting list.

Our community is growing. Even though there is a downturn in the economy, it is still growing. The statistics show that we need to plan and answer this question of: how do we care for those that are in need?

There are statistics at the bottom of the chart which show that those on home support or home nursing care is a significant number — our own homes, 140, and bed rest homes, 170. A lot of these people are future candidates for the care home, and we need to plan for that.

We have significant housing in Fort St. John, thanks to the North Peace Seniors Housing Society. Even though there is a lot of beds, there’s still a significant waiting list of 116 plus 22, if you can see that chart under North Peace Seniors Housing. We also have Heritage I, which we would like to see as more of a seniors facility rather than just an independent low-cost facility.

J. Leahy: We in fact would like it to be an assisted-living facility, because there are apartments in it that are accessible — the only building in Fort St. John that has accessible apartments.
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J. Collins: And for Heritage I and II…. Heritage II is an assisted-living facility. These are built adjoining each other, so the people can commute one to the other for meals, etc. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to expand assisted living.

J. Leahy: I might move a bit back to the accessible taxis and the handyDART. We have five handyDARTs. They’re completely booked every day. Saturday is a short day, and we’re asking them to put a handyDART on for all day. And we would like one or two evenings a week, so we can go see a movie or go out for dinner or something like that, because right now, when it comes six o’clock, you can’t go anywhere. That’s hard on some of us.

The public facilities keeping public, of course, is a big issue for us. And the air ambulance is a bad one for Fort Nelson. They just about don’t have any that they can count on.

And, of course, we have to do things that will keep people here, keep the retention and recruitment handy so people are interested. That’s what the daycare is all about — the daycare so that workers have a place for their children. We’re very short of daycare facilities, and there are none that are overnight.

J. Rice: Thank you for your presentation. One health area that I’m curious about — which is not a seniors issue, but it’s been in the media quite a bit — is around maternal health services. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. You touched on it briefly at the beginning of your presentation, in regards to the ambulance services, and I wanted to know if you could elaborate on what the challenges are there.

J. Leahy: Well, the challenges are that they take too long to get places. In particular, north and west of Fort St. John, when you start going to Hudson’s Hope, to Fort Nelson, there are very long waits. At times, they meet halfway between, on the Alaska Highway, but an hour and a half wait or two hours is way too long. People just don’t make it. And Fort Nelson itself is worse off than any of us in that regard.

Just a question. You mentioned the shortage of care aides and the need for care aides. You also mentioned expanding the nursing program. Are you seeing a shortage of care aides, nurses and doctors in the community? Is it all of the…?

J. Leahy: We seem to be continuously short of doctors, although we do have some here now, presently, that can take new patients. That’s a new item. Before, there weren’t enough doctors to do that.

When it comes to the care aides, we are looking forward to an improvement. There’s a school here at Northern Lights College which is training eight care aides. They’re right now in the practicum phase of it, and they are doing their practicum at the care home. They’re all applying there for jobs, so that certainly is going to help. But there will be people leaving here, too, because of the job situation.

You’ve had quite a vacancy of nurse practitioners. I know there were some recruitment strategies put in place, and I’m wondering if you know what the status is of that. Do you know how many nurse practitioners you have or how many positions remain unfilled?

J. Leahy: My information is that we only have one, with the possibility of two nurse practitioners.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Jim. We appreciate both of you presenting today. If there’s any further information that you want to share with us, remember that October 14 is the deadline, at the end of the day. We appreciate your presentation and we appreciate….

J. Collins: Our hospital was built at the same time as the care home. In their wisdom, a 55-bed hospital was built. We have 44 open so that there is future expansion there just by opening up the beds. That would’ve been the right thing to do for the Peace Villa. But today, now, we’re fighting to try and get more space. It would have been nice to have extra beds built.

Thank you again for your presentation, both of you, and thank you for your work in the community.

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

3) Invasive Species Council of British Columbia	Gail Wallin
4) Engage Sport North	Leslie Ann Wirth
5) Canadian Union of Public Employees – BC Division	Paul Faoro
6) Quesnel District Teachers’ Association; Board of Education, School District No. 28 (Quesnel)	Denice Bardua
	Tony Goulet
	Lisa Kishkan

7) Western Convenience Stores Association	Andrew Klukas
8) Literacy Quesnel Society	Rebecca Beuschel

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