Finance and Government Services — Issue No. 108 — Thursday, October 6, 2016 (HTML)

Courtenay Room, Westerly Hotel and Convention Centre
1590 Cliffe Avenue, Courtenay, B.C.

Present: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Robin Austin, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; 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	2655
M. Colclough
R. Kishi
J. Bowman
K. Reed
G. Hartley
T. Odeneal
A. Dalton
T. Bellavia
A. Bonner
R. Bealing
H. Ney
A. Davis
K. Eddy
A. Boyd
K. Tinmouth
S. Aldinger
S. Holland
D. Smith
L. Robert
R. Botterell
I. Mackenzie

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

We’re an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance. The committee must issue a report by November 15, 2016, with its 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 teleconference, video conference or even Skype. There are 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, which can be found at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We invite all British Columbians to contribute to this important process. For those of you in attendance with us today, we thank you for your participation. All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly. Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions is midnight on Friday, October 14, 2016.

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

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

Now I’ll take a moment and ask all of the members of the committee to introduce themselves. I’ll start with Eric to my right, please.

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

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, everyone. Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial from the parliamentary committees office, and Steve and Alexa are here from Hansard Services to record the proceedings.

Before I go to my first person on the agenda here, I’d like to acknowledge that our member for Comox Valley, Mr. Don McRae, is joining us today. Thank you. Welcome to the committee. Thank you for welcoming us to the Comox Valley.

First on our agenda is the Wachiay Friendship Centre, Michael Colclough and Roger Kishi.

Good morning, and welcome. You have ten minutes. When you’re ready, I’ll start the clock, and the floor is yours.

M. Colclough: Good morning. I’m Michael Colclough, executive director, Wachiay Friendship Centre. We would like to begin by acknowledging the unceded traditional territory on the K’ómoks First Nation lands that we do business on and are meeting on today.

The Wachiay Friendship Centre was incorporated as a non-profit service agency, delivering services to the urban aboriginal population, in August 1995. There are 25 friendship centres in the province of B.C. and 118 across Canada. We belong to the provincial and national associations.

Friendship centres represent Canada’s most significant off-reserve indigenous service delivery infrastructure in Canada. We are the primary providers of culturally enhanced programs and services to the indigenous people. Friendship centres have been facilitating the transition of indigenous people from rural, remote reserve living to the urban environment.

For many indigenous people, friendship centres are the first point of contact to obtain referrals for culturally based socioeconomic programs and services. Wachiay delivers a diverse spectrum of services within the Comox Valley regional district area, serving both indigenous and non-indigenous people.
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We have also engaged in three social enterprise companies. One is Wachiay Studio Inc. One is Aq’saak Aboriginal Food Products Ltd. Our new company is Wachiay Aboriginal Multimedia. Our brochure provides some information on each of our programs and the social enterprises, and we welcome any questions on these at the conclusion of our presentation.

R. Kishi: My name is Roger Kishi, and I’m the director of homeless and housing programs at the Wachiay Friendship Centre. Wachiay has delivered B.C. Housing’s homeless outreach program since its inception and was awarded the contract for the homeless prevention program when it was rolled out. Homelessness and affordable housing is an issue here in the Comox Valley. Anecdotal and statistical information indicate a bleak picture for the Comox Valley.

The recent Comox Valley Vital Signs 2016 report, which we’ve presented to you, was just launched on Tuesday. It contains valuable data on a number of indicators, including housing. It reports that our vacancy rate is 0.5 percent, lower than that of Victoria. And 3 percent is considered to be a healthy vacancy rate, as it allows for movement within the market. The few vacancies that do exist may not be affordable, safe or in very good condition.

According to the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association’s rental housing index — and I’ve put the link there on our written report — there are currently 315 households living in overcrowded conditions in the Comox Valley. From 2011 to 2021, the larger census area will require an additional 1,929 new rental units to meet rental demand. Over this ten-year period, 424 additional households are expected to experience core housing need.

More indigenous rental households are in core housing need than non-indigenous households. The number of renters in Courtenay spending more than 30 percent of their before-tax income on rent and utilities was 1,755, or 53 percent of renters, in 2011, putting them in core housing need.

The number of those renters spending more than 50 percent was 915, or 28 percent of renters, putting them at risk of homelessness. These stats are a reflection of renters who have housing but face affordability challenges. It does not address those who are actually homeless.

Emergency shelter turnaways were 890 for 2015. Through our HOP HPP work at Wachiay, we see clients daily facing extreme challenges in accessing and maintaining decent, affordable housing. Low supply creates barriers for the vulnerable and low-income clients we work with.

Even with the rent subsidies through the homeless prevention program, we can’t provide it if they don’t have a rental agreement. Without a rental agreement, we can’t apply a rent subsidy.

Wachiay has worked for many years on addressing homelessness and affordable housing. A concrete solution for this issue in the Comox Valley is net new units of housing. Wachiay is working towards this as a participant of the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness and partnering with M’akola Housing and the city of Courtenay on the Braidwood project to develop and build and operate 34 units of supportive-like housing. This is to address the complete lack of supportive and subsidized housing for single adults and couples.

The Comox Valley regional district has also created a homeless and affordable housing function that raises funds through taxation. The coalition makes recommendations to the CVRD on the allocation of these funds.

The current homeless and affordable housing funding programs need to go towards net new units, and there is also a need to return to subsidized and supportive housing funding programs. The issue of expiring operating agreements continues to threaten the viability and sustainability of existing subsidized housing stock.

Providing adequate housing has a profoundly positive impact on individuals who are homeless or at the risk of homelessness. Safe, secure and affordable housing is a stabilizing factor for individuals. It improves quality of life and has significant impact on mental and physical health, well-being, food security and financial stability.

Research shows that housing reduces drug and alcohol use for single adults who have been chronically underhoused. Stable housing can also encourage self-sufficiency and can be a stepping stone to employment.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation. We welcome any of your questions.

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

My question is related to secondary suites. I come from Abbotsford. On my street, I would say a majority of the homeowners have secondary suites which they rent out. What is the attitude of, say, Courtenay or Comox or other communities in your area with regard to secondary suites, which are very helpful to address some of the issues that you’re speaking to today?

R. Kishi: I’ll put on my other hat. I’m also an elected councillor in the village of Cumberland here in the Comox Valley.

We’ve just recently reviewed and amended our zoning bylaws, and that’s a result of the review of our official community plan in 2014. We are encouraging accessory dwelling units — laneway houses, coach houses, secondary suites. In fact, we’ve implemented a policy for the next six months to waive the permit fees to legalize those kinds of units.
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There are three separate municipalities in the regional district within the Comox Valley, so the approaches are different. But that’s the approach that we’re taking in the village of Cumberland.

S. Gibson: That sounds good, because it’s certainly very helpful. In my community of Abbotsford, there are thousands of secondary suites. Good for you for what you’re doing in your community.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It’s clear the Wachiay provides a huge number of services — in looking at your brochure — for an organization. It sounds to me like housing is one of the biggest pressures that you’re facing and that some of your clients are facing or families that you connect with. I just wondered if you would say that that’s the biggest pressure. If not, are there other areas?

Then the other one I wondered if you could just tell us a little more about is the social enterprise area. It’s intriguing. The issues are intriguing that are listed there. I wondered if you just want to tell us a little bit more about that.

R. Kishi: The housing issue is very important to many of our clients that we deal with every day. It’s a result of housing being such an absolute necessity for the social determinants of health. Without stable housing, people can’t focus on keeping healthy.

So…. I don’t know. I’ll let Michael talk about the social enterprises. I spent a lot of time in the presentation, and we wanted to put that forward, anyways, around the social enterprises as well.

M. Colclough: Thank you for that question. We have three social enterprises. One is Wachiay Studio, which is a screen-printing, industrial-functional printing company located in the back of the centre. It has state-of-the-art screen-printing equipment plus functional-industrial-design-printing equipment. I was just mentioning to the staff here that are doing Hansard that we have one of only eight Thieme 1020 printers in Canada, which is an $85,000 industrial-functional printer. Your mobile devices are screen-printed. The circuits within them, the interface, are all screen-printed in Europe and Asia, and we have a machine here in this valley that is capable of doing that. We’re using it for various other things at this time.

Then we have our Aq’saak Aboriginal Food Products company. That company manufactures teas and chocolates, which are sold in the Legislature.

We have just started another company called Wachiay Aboriginal Multimedia. We’re actually dropping the “aboriginal” in it, and we’re just going with Wachiay Multimedia.

We have three websites — for each of the companies. Wachiay Multimedia was created as a result of the expansion of our organization last year from 5,000 to just over 11,000 square feet here in town. We acquired the assets — broadcast equipment of Jet FM radio station. With a kind grant from the province under their collaborative spaces program, we have just finished installation of all new equipment. We have an audio-video editing room. We have a broadcast station all redone.

The purpose of our social enterprises is not to make money. It has evolved out of my background and my career with the federal government to working with First Nations to create employment. I wanted to bring my expertise to the Wachiay Friendship Centre after retiring from the provincial government. What we are doing is…. I need a carrot to attract the youth. The carrots are these companies and the technology contained within these companies.

This gives us the opportunity to introduce youth to new technology, to provide education and training. We have structured programs that are ten weeks long and up to 30 weeks long. Two of our programs are actually board-certified by school district 71. Grade 10, 11 and 12 students can go through that and receive four credits towards graduation.

The idea is to introduce urban aboriginal youths to the technology involved in television stations, audio-video editing suite, film production, audio production, broadcasting and screen-printing functional print. What that does is open up their eyes to a myriad of opportunities within the Canadian economy.

We hope that after they take our courses — we place a lot of our students in summer-student positions with our partners in the community, which are the newspapers, print companies, Shaw — they will then look for either post-secondary education or continued employment opportunities within the Canadian economy.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Extraordinary. Thank you. I really appreciate it. It’s exciting work.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. Seeing no questions, I’ll wade in and just ask you to comment a little bit on your relationships with local government and regional district in terms of your plans with respect to housing and the development of more housing in the area. Have they come to the table at all?

R. Kishi: The Braidwood project, which I mentioned, is actually a partnership with the city of Courtenay. The city of Courtenay is providing the land for the building. Mr. McRae is not on the committee anymore, but he’s familiar with the history of what has gone on here in the valley. I don’t want to talk about that, because it’ll take days.
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It’s been a project going on for…. Probably almost ten years of trying to move this project forward. At one point there was consensus within the regional district, and that fell apart. Then a property that the regional district had purchased was just transferred to the city of Courtenay. So that’s happening.

Right now, with the Braidwood project, M’akola and Wachiay and the city of Courtenay have agreed to a memorandum of understanding to move the project forward. M’akola Housing, as the developer for the project, has applied for funding to the provincial investment for affordable housing — the first round that we’re awaiting announcements on.

We were also invited by B.C. Housing to apply for the aboriginal call for PIAH as well. And we’re excited to hear the federal government announcing more funding for housing. So we’re going after that kind of funding to make the project come together and make it viable.

S. Hamilton (Chair): That’s good to hear. Thank you very much. We’re out of time, but thank you very much for taking the time to present to the committee. It’s always very interesting topics when we come to housing. It’s a fairly familiar theme that we’ve heard as we’ve travelled around. I’m glad you had the opportunity to present your views. Have a good day.

Next we have Mr. John Bowman from North Island College. Good morning, Mr. Bowman. Welcome. You were probably sitting here when I mentioned earlier about ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes remaining so you can conclude your thoughts, and then we’ll let these guys have you. The floor is yours.

Good morning. My name is John Bowman. I’m president and CEO of North Island College. I want to, first of all, thank the members of the committee for coming to the Comox Valley and making this opportunity available to have input into the development of the provincial budget for 2017-18.

In the time that I have, I’d like to share with you the following information and comments. Firstly, I’m going to provide a brief overview of how our institution is striving to work with and support aboriginal learners and communities to achieve their educational, social and economic goals. As I’m sure you’re aware, assisting indigenous people to increase their participation in and to achieve successful outcomes from post-secondary education is an important provincial and national priority.

As you know, recently the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has recognized that in order to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation, education must be one of the key strategies.

Secondly, I’m going to touch on two of the interrelated issues and challenges related to enabling aboriginal learners on the north Island to gain access and to be successful in completing college programing close to home. The first issue is the imperative, I believe, of providing in-community program delivery for First Nations learners, particularly at the developmental program and one-year certificate levels. The second is the current lack of student housing at North Island College and at other rural institutions in British Columbia.

I’ll conclude my remarks by offering three recommendations for Budget 2017-18 to address these matters that we believe would have positive impacts on the provision of advanced education here on Vancouver Island and elsewhere in British Columbia.

By way of brief background, I think it will be helpful for the committee to be aware that the geographic region served by NIC comprises more than two-thirds of the land mass of Vancouver Island and a large portion of the central mainland coast. We have a population of approximately 160,000. The region is home to 35 First Nations communities, and in 2011, 12 percent of the overall population was of aboriginal ancestry.

We operate from campuses here in the Comox Valley, also in Campbell River, Port Alberni and the Mount Waddington region and a learning centre in Ucluelet. The college offers a comprehensive range of education and training programs, including adult basic education; business; health science; fine arts; human services; tourism and hospitality; a vast array of trades and technical education; and, of course, university studies.

We deliver programs and services through traditional face-to-face methods in campus-based facilities and also through on-line and hybrid programs and through a high-definition interactive instructional television system, which links all of our campuses’ learning centres together.

In June of last year, the college board of governors approved a new five-year strategic plan that sets out our major priorities and goals to the year 2020. Central to the college’s plan is a focus on aboriginal education and indigenization of the college’s programs and services as a whole.

Our intentions are reflected in eight related goals: to develop and implement an aboriginal education policy and action plan in alignment with B.C.’s aboriginal educational and training policy, as well as the Colleges and Institutes Canada indigenous education protocol commitments.

Our second goal is to communicate that indigenous education is, indeed, a priority for us. We are going to ensure government structures also recognize and respect indigenous peoples, and we are striving to implement intellectual and cultural traditions of indigenous peoples throughout the curriculum and learning.

Although we have a number of indigenous employees, one of our goals is to increase that number quite signifi-
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cantly in the coming years. We also have support systems for students and employees to increase understanding and reciprocity among indigenous and non-indigenous people. Enhancing our spaces and learning environments that support indigenous learners is another goal.

Lastly, I can’t underscore the importance of building relationships and being accountable to indigenous communities enough.

Thanks to annual funding allocated by the Ministry of Advanced Education through the aboriginal service plan program, we have been able to provide a number of services, including aboriginal educational advisers, elders-in-residence, as well as offer a number of educational and enhanced instructional programs across the region.

We work closely with an aboriginal education advisory council representing the First Nations in our region as well as a number of other organizations. They have been instrumental in setting priorities and guiding the direction of our programs and services.

In addition, we have a number of subregional committees in the central, north and west coast regions that provide directions and support.

At North Island College, we continue to be committed to being a community college. One of the important strategies we have followed is bringing the college to learners in communities that can’t come to us. Over the past three years, the college has delivered 12 programs in communities across the north Island region in which we do not have dedicated college facilities. We believe making some programs available locally is the only way that many residents of small, more remote First Nations communities are going to be able to access them.

Many prospective learners have children and other family commitments that make it impossible to relocate or to commute to a larger centre to attend college programs. For others, the cost of living associated with being away from home, the culture shock associated with daily living in a larger community and the absence of social supports that family and friends provide for them are significant impediments to accessing and successfully completing specialized career technical programs that are only available on a campus-based delivery model.

A relatively new area for us is the delivery of language revitalization programming. In January, we offered for the first time a Kwak’wala language course through the Sacred Wolf Friendship Centre in Port Hardy. It was highly successful, and we’re looking forward to continuing deliveries of that program.

In July, we received funding from the federal government, through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, to develop a new aboriginal leadership certificate program. The program is being developed in direct response to requests from local First Nations communities and organizations to address their labour market and skills-training needs to fill leadership positions.

Other current and planned community programming includes adult basic education based in Kingcome Inlet; adult basic education and early childhood education and care in Ahousat; ABE and applied business technology in Bella Coola; and aboriginal ecotourism training, in partnership with VIU and the Heiltsuk Tribal Council, across many communities.

Briefly, I’d like to shift focus now to the issue of student housing, which has been much in the news in recent weeks, with the focus of attention being on challenges faced by students finding affordable accommodations in Vancouver and Victoria rental markets in particular.

In early September, student groups called on the provincial government to amend restrictions in government policies dealing with debt financing that would enable post-secondary institutions to finance and build additional student housing units to accommodate the large unmet demand. The provincial government’s announcement on September 19, regarding a $500 million investment in affordable housing, was certainly good news and timely, particularly as among the projects that will be funded are construction of new “student housing through partnerships with post-secondary institutions.”

I want to make this committee aware that the needs and desires to develop new and additional student housing are not solely confined to the markets in greater Vancouver and Victoria or to those post-secondary institutions.

At North Island College, we completed a feasibility study in 2014 for the development of student housing here in the Comox Valley. We documented a need and a business case in the near term for as many as 184 student bed units. Our need is being driven by the needs of students who are moving from other parts of the north Island region to study in the Comox Valley as well as growth in our international student enrolments, which have been quite dramatic in recent years.

As you’ve already heard in the prior presentation, there is currently a lack of good-quality and affordable rental accommodations in the Courtenay-Comox area — in particular, accommodations that are suitable for students. The development of on-campus student housing would also enable NIC to develop additional, complementary services to support aboriginal student success while they’re away from home and family.

Also, the development of new housing at the Comox Valley campus may afford the opportunity for our college to work in partnership with Island Health to support patients and families who must travel from other parts of the north Island to access services at the new Comox Valley hospital that will open next year.

In conclusion, I wish to offer the following three recommendations specifically. They are that in Budget 2017-18, the government of British Columbia:

Number 1, increase the total funding available to post-secondary education institutions through the aboriginal
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service plan program, enable all regionally based institutions to access an equitable amount of funding, and increase the 2017-18 base allocations to post-secondary institutions, such as North Island College, that have a successful track record of success in working with aboriginal, community and organizational partners.

Second, increase the funding to the aboriginal community-based training partnerships program beyond the 2015-16 level, which was $5.7 million. This would greatly enable the expansion of community-based program delivery through the public post-secondary institutions.

Lastly, implement required policy changes and provide a portion of the funding necessary to enable post-secondary institutions to finance the construction and operation of new student residence facilities where a business case can clearly be demonstrated.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Bowman. I appreciate that. I will go to the committee to ask questions.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, and thank you for the extraordinary work you’re doing around aboriginal inclusion and the reconciliation issue.

You may have mentioned it, and I may have missed it. What percentage of your students right now at the college are First Nations or aboriginal?

J. Bowman: I didn’t mention that. Thank you. It’s a great question. Actually, 13 percent.

J. Bowman: Just slightly larger. We certainly want to see that increase even further, but right now it’s just slightly above the per capita.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. What percentage of your students go on to complete a degree? My understanding is, and I could be wrong here, that you offer associates or certificates, and then they transfer. I taught at a university in Abbotsford, so I know….

J. Bowman: That’s a great question. We have university and degree partnerships with a number of universities — Vancouver Island University, UVic, the mainland institutions. We also offer some of our own degrees. We have the bachelor of business administration. Our largest numbers of students who do transfer, about 1,000 annually, are in arts and science, humanities.

I don’t have the statistics off the top of my head of what percent go on, but certainly, many do. Some stop after two years, go into other areas. The transfer system in British Columbia is a model for all of Canada. It is very good.

S. Gibson: I guess a quick supplementary. I taught many First Nations students. Often I found, especially with the male students, the challenge they had was…. You know, I’d work with them, just like you folks do, I’m sure. Often the motivation was growing. I get that. But they didn’t really know what they were going to do with the credential, so their motivation sometimes was a challenge, to be honest.

J. Bowman: Yes. You’ve really put your finger on an important issue. The participation rate and success rate of female aboriginal students is much higher than for males. Certainly, the graduation rate coming out of high schools is higher for females than for males. So there’s a lot of work that we need to do as post-secondary institutions with our secondary school partners to address that issue so that males and females can be successful, complete high school and go on to graduate from college, university.

G. Heyman: Two questions. As you know, the committee made recommendations the last couple of years with respect to finding some way to lift the freeze on the ability of colleges to build housing or rehabilitate existing housing. Have there been any discussions with the Ministries of Advanced Ed or Finance to look for some solutions?

If the freeze was lifted, first of all, I assume that nobody would build housing without a business case.

J. Bowman: The answer to your first question is that we’ve had discussions with Advanced Education about our need for housing, and we’ve been advised that they’re looking at options and ways for the future. There haven’t been any commitments yet. My impression is that there’s interest and there’s a desire to find a way, but that way I don’t think has been found yet in terms of the financial restrictions around debt.

The second question is yes, we have land. We have got a master site planned for our Comox Valley campus, and we have two locations that would be ideally suited to build a residence.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Bowman, for taking the time to present. We appreciate it. Have a good day.

Next we have the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association — Kathleen Reed.
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Ms. Reed, good morning. Welcome. I’m not sure if you’ve heard my earlier dissertation — ten minutes to present. At two minutes, I’ll try to wave you down, and then we can go to the committee. The floor is yours.

K. Reed: I’d like to begin by acknowledging that I’m speaking on the traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation. I’d also like to thank the committee for making the opportunity for citizens to engage in the budget process. Not everyone in the world gets that opportunity, and it’s really cool that B.C. makes that available to us.

I’m the vice-president of the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association. VIUFA represents approximately 500 faculty, technicians and elders. We’re pretty proud that we’re one of the few faculty associations where elders have complete equitable status with other faculty on campus. VIU is in Nanaimo, Cowichan, Powell River and Parksville-Qualicum.

Being a librarian, I couldn’t help but do my research when it comes to a presentation like this. It’s practically in my DNA. So I know from reading recommendations from previous years from your committee, and from scanning Hansard, that you have heard a lot of the same narratives and requests from post-secondary groups over and over. VIUFA supports most if not all of these recommendations from student groups and faculty associations.

Today I’d like to talk to you about a program I haven’t seen mentioned at this committee before but something that I would love to see go forward as a recommendation for a provincewide initiative, and that is the tuition waiver for youth in care program.

Now in 2013, VIU was the first institution in B.C. to adopt the policy to waive tuition fees for youth in care, recognizing that these youth need a helping hand to transform their lives through education.

Thanks to our generous donors, VIU is also able to provide some bursary funding to help with books and living expenses. No funding comes from the province for this program.

I passed you out a card. Hopefully, you have that in front of you. The student on the front is a young woman named Brittany. She was one of the very first people at VIU to receive the benefit of this program. She left home at age 15 and entered the care system, moving away from a family with drug problems and members who had served jail time. At 17, social workers decided that she was fit to live on her own, and she’s been doing so ever since.

For the first 18 months at VIU, pre–tuition waiver, Brittany was working almost full-time and couldn’t take a full course load. The waiver program changed all that for her. She says: “It meant I didn’t have to work two jobs in the summer. Without the program, I couldn’t have graduated on time.” It also allowed her to volunteer in the community with the Storybook Dads program at the Nanaimo correctional facility, where incarcerated men get to read books onto tapes that are then sent to their kids, and at a restorative justice program at the John Howard Society.

I’m very pleased to let you know that graduate she has in fact done, with a BA in criminology and with the career goal of working with at-risk youth. We see that a lot with the folks that are in our program — that they want to give back as social workers, as nurses or as other helping professionals. These are some of the best people that we could possibly get working in the jobs in our provinces, because they have been there and they get it.

The program started with 17 students, and in just three years we have hit 101 students that are taking advantage of it. They are enrolled in programs all over our institution. That is just at VIU. I believe six or seven other institutions have followed our lead.

Giving former youth in care a chance to get an education and a good job breaks them free from a cycle of poverty and violence that many of them have experienced. Particularly with the high number of indigenous youth in care — on Vancouver Island, 70 percent of youth in care, out of approximately 1,000 youths, are indigenous — a program like this, rolled out provincially, would fit with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. It is the right thing to do, and I really believe it does need to be done provincially. I would urge you to make that recommendation to the Legislative Assembly.

Now I am going to return to a more familiar narrative that I’m sure you’ve heard before. As you’ve no doubt heard, the post-secondary system has been slowly eroded since 2001, and we are really now in a desperate situation. Just last week I was talking to our VP of finance, who was telling me that we have stretched the dollar as far as we possibly can stretch it. The big part of the problem is that the single largest investment that the B.C. government makes in post-secondary education, the per-student operating grant, has declined 20 percent since 2001, when adjusted for inflation.

Colleges, institutions and universities are forced to seek other sources of funding to make up for this shortfall. What that means is that we have passed the buck on to students. Tuition fee revenues have increased almost 400 percent since 2001. At VIU, this actually makes the provincial government the minority stakeholder in our institution at this time.

As student tuition becomes our main source of income, the dynamics in our institution shift from education as transformational to education as transactional. That is why Brittany’s classmates are now called “revenue-generating units” instead of learners or contributors. As a faculty member, this is a really troubling shift.

What is desperately needed is a comprehensive, consultative review of the funding formula, because we’re still using a funding formula that was developed in 1983. That’s particularly egregious to me because I was born in
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1983. We shouldn’t be using a funding formula that’s 33 years old without any kind of review.

To give you an example of one issue with the formula, institutions like UBC or SFU receive between $14,000 and $20,000 per graduate student. VIU receives zero dollars.

To make up for that funding shortfall, we have to run cost recovery programs. In other words, we pass the entire cost of the program on to students. It’s simply not fair that students in Nanaimo, solely for the fact that they are not going to school in Point Grey or on Burnaby Mountain, have to pay an elevated amount for their tuition.

Regional inequities and core funding for the system as a whole really need to be addressed. I know a recommendation of your committee has been this review in the past, and I hope to see it in your final report again this year.

I’d like to wrap up with a brief anecdote. Last year some colleagues of mine and I did a study where we sat in our library on the Nanaimo campus at 11 o’clock at night and we observed the activities that were taking place. What stands out for me, crystal clear, is just the sheer number of students that were exhausted. We’d hear students coming in, and they would be either just finished work — they would tell their friends they’d just finished their shift — or they were heading into work.

This is something I hear from a lot of faculty — that the ability of students to regularly attend classes, to finish their degrees in four years or even to stay enrolled at our post-secondary education institutes is being compromised by the fact that students need to work excessive hours to pay for the ever-increasing financial burden we’re placing on them.

Students shouldn’t be the ones to shoulder the burden of provincial underfunding. So please, recommend a review of the funding model for PSEA and of the current student loan program; recommend bringing in a student grant program; and to assist some of the most vulnerable members of our society, like Brittany, I strongly urge you to recommend a provincially funded tuition waiver for kids in care.

Thank you very much for your time, and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.

R. Austin: Thanks very much for your presentation. As you say, a number of the items that you mentioned have been told to us right across the province, in all regions. I think it’s fair to say we have that message loud and clear.

I did want to speak, though, for a minute to your suggestion around the youth in care tuition waiver program. Personally, I think it’s a fabulous program. I know Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has also been pressing the government to fund this program, because it’s not fair for the post-secondary institutions who have signed on to this. They’re using their own operating dollars right now. As you’ve already pointed out, those are already stretched.

I think it’s a worthy cause. I’m glad that you’ve brought it up. We haven’t heard it mentioned here. I’m sure there’ll be very interesting debates behind the scenes once we come to do our deliberations. Thanks very much for bringing it up.

K. Reed: I wanted to give you something different that you haven’t heard before.

J. Rice: It’s actually more of a comment to my colleague. We did hear this once before, in one of the earlier presentations. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where it was. I often forget where we are located.

I wanted to ask…. I understand you’re asking the province to actually fund this, as opposed to the particular institutions. Is one of the problems that certain institutions just don’t have the funds to actually back this problem? Or do you know what’s happening in other institutions with getting this more off the ground?

K. Reed: I can’t speak to other institutions. I would suspect that we have limited dollars, and it has to be made a priority within those institutions.

J. Rice: Just a further comment. I think your presentation was really well done and very succinct.

K. Reed: I’ve got to say, too, that I am super excited to be in Hansard, as a librarian.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Actually, many of us aren’t that happy to be there. But nevertheless….

Thank you very much for the presentation. Just to echo what Jennifer said, it was very succinct, exceptionally well presented.

All right. That was great. Next we have the Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices — two presenters, Gretchen Hartley and Terri Odeneal.

Good morning and welcome. Just as you get settled there, I’ll let you know you have ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to give you a wave with a couple of minutes left so you can wind up your thoughts, and then we’ll go to the committee for questions. The floor is yours, as soon as you’re ready.

G. Hartley: Good morning. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I’m Gretchen Hartley from Cowichan
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Valley Hospice, executive director, and my colleague is Terri Odeneal from Comox Valley Hospice.

Today we’re here asking you to consider recommending provincial anchor funding for hospice care. The number we’re talking about is $75,000 per hospice society per year. We’ll talk about cost-effectiveness of hospice care and its vital importance in assuring that our loved ones receive the care that we all would want and that we deserve at the end of our lives. We’ll talk about how this care is provided and how it’s currently funded.

As we were saying, we represent the Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices. That’s the ten hospices, including Campbell River, Comox Valley, Nanaimo, the west coast. There’s one in Alberni, in Cowichan, Qualicum-Parksville and also Salt Spring, Sooke and Victoria. We’re also helping the Port Hardy crisis society, who are developing a much-needed hospice program for the whole north Island.

We want to start by thanking you for standing committee attention to end-of-life issues over the years. We’re really aware that many hospices have spoken with you, and you’ve made some strong recommendations. We’re sure that this, no doubt, led to the provincial initiative to double hospice beds across the province by 2020, so thank you.

As you may know, the capital funds to support many of the necessary costs for creating hospice beds associated with long-term-care facilities comes from communities. For example, in the first development on Vancouver Island — that was here in the Comox Valley — over $850,000 of a $1.1 million project came from the generosity of donors in the Comox Valley. Terri’s got a link there if you want to take a look at how lovely this little space is. It’s a gem.

A quick primer. As many of you will know, hospice palliative care is specialized care for people living with advancing illness. We help people young and old from all walks of life come to terms with the one thing that faces us all, which is death.

This care is skilled medical, nursing, social and emotional care that focuses on comfort when cure is no longer possible. It’s whole-person care, and that’s really an important thing to remember. It’s focused on the dying person’s own goals for care, as they may change from day to day. And it’s care that supports family members through bereavement.

Here’s the difference that care can make, in the words of one hospice client. There’s a photo of her there. She gave us permission to share her story. She said:

“My beautiful mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer in April 2011. During this difficult, scary, emotional time, my mom was connected with hospice through all of the doctor’s appointments, scans, treatments, ups and downs. It was a true gift.

“My mom passed away on July 20, 2013. I was devastated. Not only had I lost my mom, but I was 5½ months pregnant with our first child. We’d been so hopeful that she would meet my son, Olsen.

“Although I had a great deal of support from friends and family, it was such a relief to talk to someone who could genuinely empathize with what I was experiencing. It gave me great comfort knowing I had their support.”

Hospice palliative care is actually a philosophy rather than a place. Sometimes we get really focused on the places. It’s provided by a team, with family carers really at the core of that team. There’s a lot of expectation, a lot of responsibility for family caregivers.

The family physician continues to provide care, and in most communities here on the Island, we have palliative physicians with specialized training who can offer skilled pain and symptom management. They’re part of a care team which includes specialized nurses, hospice counsellors and volunteers. Hospice palliative care training is really important for all of these specialties.

As you can imagine, for most people at the end of their lives, their medical and physical care is very important, but this care is guided by personal needs and goals. Perhaps, on a given day, complete dulling of pain for one man might take second place to the need to have a lively visit with his grandkids, to be really present with them.

Sometimes a woman experiencing a pain crisis might tell us that really she’s preoccupied with the fact that she hasn’t talked to her brother in a very long time and really feels some need to mend that relationship before the end. Once that’s addressed in some way, sometimes pain becomes more manageable with medication, because we’re whole people. Our bodies react in whole ways.

Hospice palliative care is a specialty that recognizes that physical symptoms do not exist in isolation, and for many of us, concerns about the future of our children after our passing, the spiritual meaning of our death, and desire to live the best possible life in the time that we have are the things that are most important. So psychosocial care is really important at this time of life.

T. Odeneal: One of the things that we’d like to impress upon you today is that hospice palliative care is not only compassionate in allowing for the kind of care that we would all want and that we believe we all deserve, but it’s also cost effective. And I would suggest, while there’s a considerable focus around people wanting to die at home, which is certainly optimal if they can be supported in that setting, we shouldn’t be measuring the place of death as a success. We should be measuring the quality of that death. Dying at home without appropriate supports can be a horrific experience for people, and it can have a long-lasting impact upon their loved ones.

Currently, end-of-life care is expensive. Much of this cost is due to care in the hospital, where most people don’t want to be. They oftentimes receive treatments and interventions that are really not in line with their wishes. Up to 70 percent of the cost of terminal illnesses are due to hospitalizations. Based on the research from the
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Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, hospice palliative care services can reduce the cost of dying and improve patient care in comparison to an acute care setting, saving the delivery system approximately $7,000 to $8,000 per patient.

Studies show that hospice palliative care reduces hospital admissions. It reduces length of stay in hospitals. It reduces intensive care unit, emergency room and acute care utilization and certainly reduces inappropriate or unwanted interventions.

The province’s commitment, as you all know, to double hospice beds has been laudable. It’s absolutely a move in the right direction to make residential hospice care available to people so they’re not in the acute care system. I would respectfully suggest, however, that mandating an increase in hospice beds alone does not ensure that hospice palliative care will be provided for people in these settings, nor does it ensure that hospice palliative care will be available for people being cared for at home.

We need dedicated and well-trained staff for the medical and psychosocial care of the person who’s dying and their loved ones. Presently, funding for this care only supports the very limited medical care of the person who is dying. Health authorities have also been directed to provide this care from existing resources, leaving unfunded the vital psychosocial aspects of care and the hospice palliative care education necessary for the entire care-providing team. These supports are what ensure that a hospice philosophy of care occurs across all settings.

Without these supports, dying people are offered little more than a decorated room. When you walk into a facility that has a lovely setting, if you don’t have the program of care to support the needs of the person who’s dying and their family, you have a decorated room, and we shouldn’t be using that as an indicator of quality.

Certainly, family physicians will continue to care for people in these new hospice beds, and nursing staff will be provided through the health authority, while hospice societies, largely funded by their communities, are being asked to provide the psychosocial aspects of care. That’s what ensures a hospice philosophy of care, if you will — care for the whole person and the entire family. Hospice society counselling staff and volunteers provide the psychosocial components of end-of-life care across the Island, including support for bereavement.

With a minimal investment on the part of the health authority, there is tremendous return on investment in value which includes — I won’t go through all of the descriptions — one-on-one companioning of dying people and their loved ones from the time of diagnosis.

Caregiver support. If we want people to remain in their homes, they have to have personal caregivers. And we oftentimes are killing those caregivers. The psychosocial supports in hospitals and in residential hospices. Bereavement care. The man who has lost his wife — a young man who has lost his wife from aggressive breast cancer — and is now faced with keeping the family together, working and caring and creating a structure for his children. The child who goes back to school and begins to act out because of not having their emotional needs dealt with. These are all domino effects that ripple throughout the system.

Advance care planning and education. Community hospices have been leaders in encouraging conversations that we should all be having. These are not only the right things to do for care; they save the delivery system millions upon millions of dollars if we don’t have unwanted care being offered.

Here in the Comox Valley, we started doing workshops on advance care planning several years ago, after the new legislation. Actually, the model that we developed, using volunteers to conduct these sessions, was adopted by the B.C. Centre for Palliative Care and has been rolled out across the Island. All of the hospices on Vancouver Island came together, developed that, put together a website that, I would suggest — unlike some of the government sites — is a bit more user-friendly and engaging. There’s a web address that you might look at.

I think what you will see is hospices are coming together and doing shared services and sharing knowledge in ways that really add value to the system.

Certainly, then, moving on with wellness care, things like music therapy…. You can look at the attachment we’ve provided.

S. Hamilton (Chair): May I just interrupt you for a second? I’m fascinated by what you’re saying, but if there are any questions, we should probably get them in now. But I’m perfectly willing for you to keep talking.

T. Odeneal: I’m just going to do a real quick closing. There is a table that kind of will show you the value-added that hospices bring on Vancouver Island.

I guess, just kind of in closing, I’d like to share a story from Nanaimo. A woman who had recently immigrated from Syria was receiving skilled and appropriate medical care in the palliative care unit at Nanaimo Regional Hospital. She was obviously finding the experience difficult and very frightening. Neither she nor her family could read or write English. Finding a translator for her tribal dialect was virtually impossible.

One of the hospice volunteers in Nanaimo quickly recognized this woman’s love for flowers and brought some from her garden for her. The woman responded with smiles and joy and tears. In the following days, hospice volunteers could be found laughing, crying and conversing with her — the volunteers in English and the woman in her native language. Their connection was heartfelt and real, even while they couldn’t understand the words that each of them used. The woman’s final days
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were ones of dignity, caring and compassion. This is what we mean by hospice philosophy of care.

Today we’d ask that you consider and recommend hospice societies across the province each receive an annual core funding of $75,000. This funding will help ensure that dying people across the province receive the care that we would want for our loved ones and, we believe, the care that they deserve at a price that’s affordable. We do add value.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. I don’t think you’d get an argument from any member at this table about the value that organizations like yourselves provide to the community, so thank you for that.

E. Foster: To your chart on the back. Let’s take the first one, the Cowichan Valley. You say the number of clients served is 812. Do you have the number of patient days that amounts to?

G. Hartley: No, that’s something we’re just starting to track now. What we’re finding is, with bereavement care, for example, we’re spending more time with clients as they’re bringing more complicated bereavement situations.

G. Hartley: It’s under development under this new doubling initiative, so this is psychosocial care — bereavement care or….

T. Odeneal: We do have a four-bed residential hospice now here that’s been open for just slightly over a year in the Comox Valley. It’s running at about 96 percent occupancy, which, if you know health care, is virtually full occupancy, if you will. By the time someone leaves, it’s not quite the same as acute care.

T. Odeneal: The only funding that is for the residential hospice…. It’s actually operated through a contract with St. Joseph’s General Hospital on a per-patient-day basis from the health authority. That funding only covers the very narrow slice of nursing care for the person who’s dying.

T. Odeneal: I’m not privy to that contract. I can tell you the costs for that run at about $490 per patient day. The contract doesn’t come through the hospice society. With the province’s new goal of associating residential hospice with long-term care facilities, the hospice societies aren’t operating those beds. But we are providing the services that actually make it hospice care, that make it something….

T. Odeneal: Yes, Vernon has a free-standing hospice, and they have had for years. When they started, Vernon had basically three pieces of funding. About a third was coming from the health authority. About a third was coming from Vernon hospice, and another third was part of a patient-pay.

E. Foster: The patient-pay is $39 a day. It’s what they pay to be in there. Then all the rest….

T. Odeneal: That’s changed over…. I mean, when I referenced how they began…. That was about ten years ago when they started, and that has shifted dramatically.

T. Odeneal: That’s correct. Right now in residential hospice, it’s right around $32 a day that’s the patient-pay piece, which is the same per diem that you have in long-term care.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. Well, we ran a little over, but very worthwhile. It was worth the investment in time.

Next we have the North Island Students Union — Tony Bellavia and Andrew Dalton. Gentlemen, good morning. Welcome. While you’re getting settled, ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to give you a high sign if the time is running low, and then we’ll go to the committee for questions.

A. Dalton: Before I start, I just got a message from Vancouver Island University Students Union, who’s supposed to be performing after. Their car broke down in Nanaimo and they’re a little bit behind schedule, but they are coming.

A. Dalton: I don’t know if you’ll be able to fit them in somewhere else if it happens, but they are on their way.

A. Dalton: All right. My name is Andrew Dalton, and I’m an organizer for North Island Students Union. I’m joined here today with Tony Bellavia, acting vice-president of learning and students, from North Island College.

The North Island Students Union is Local 15 of the British Columbia Federation of Students. The students union represents approximately 4,000 students from northern and central Vancouver Island, from Port Hardy to Port Alberni. On behalf of North Island Students Union, I am here as a part of the work we do to ensure the interests of students and their families are heard and acted upon by those who are able to enable positive change within the post-secondary education system in British Columbia.

Change needs to be enacted now in order to reverse the course of reduced quality and affordability we’re currently experiencing, specifically in adult basic education.

Adult basic education is an important component of the post-secondary education system. ABE courses provided through colleges and universities in British Columbia instruct adult learners in high school competency, provide credit toward completing a Dogwood certificate and prepare students for a return to education after a time away. ABE also enables those adults who have completed high school to gain admission to British Columbia’s colleges or universities through earning credit in prerequisite courses required for entry to specific programs or by upgrading skills in particular curriculum areas after a period of absence from formal education.

In recognition of the fact that many adults who require high school education are not in a position to pay for these courses, the government of British Columbia eliminated all tuition fees for adult basic education in 1998 and then again in 2007, after fees had been reintroduced. In December 2014, Premier Clark announced funding cuts for ABE programs across the province. The funding cuts amounted to $6.9 million for adult basic education programs, plus another $9 million from the K-to-12 system.

As a result, the following September saw the reintroduction of tuition fees for ABE programs in post-secondary institutions across the province. With their arms tied, no funding for the programs meant no choice for institutions.

Our discussion today will outline several reasons we have for asking you to call for the reversal of these budget cuts and reinstatement of complete funding for ABE programs across the province.

ABE is a mandatory stepping stone for many people across this province to access the higher education that they need to better their lives and opportunities. In today’s job market, the lack of education is an often unavoidable barrier to being able to live a sustainable life in today’s economy anywhere above the poverty line. The reintroduction of tuition fees in ABE programs across the province removes those initial stepping stones, putting higher education out of many people’s reach along with their possible future.

Along with the massive funding cut came the new adult upgrading grant. To be eligible for the grant, a potential student cannot make over $11.61 per hour if working full-time. That equates to under the poverty line in this province.

So if you make $15 an hour — or what is considered just a living wage in this province, but certainly not the case in Vancouver — and you work full-time, you are way above the eligibility for a grant. You are barely over the poverty line and living from paycheque to paycheque, but you are expected to be able to pay fees as high as $550 at an institution in this province. This is not a realistic expectation for many people.

People return to school to better their opportunities in life because they are not currently available to them. Citizens of British Columbia deserve to be able to make a proper living wage, and higher education is the pathway to that life.

Everyone in this province deserves the right to access higher education, and these funding cuts undermine that right.

There’s a fact sheet for adult upgrading courses and grants found on the website for the Ministry of Advanced Education. On this sheet, the ministry states that institutions have said they find it more difficult each year to maintain their adult upgrading courses on a tuition-free basis.

Instead of choosing to increase funding for these institutions, the decision was made to slash funding, leaving institutions that were already struggling to maintain their programs with existing funding to have to make a choice of whether or not to charge tuition fees.

Implementation is at the discretion of each institution, they say. Yet the implementation of fees for these programs was not actually at the discretion of the institution. Without funding, there is no option but to implement fees. Existing operational budgets could not absorb this new cost.
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T. Bellavia: Thank you, Andrew. I want to extend my thank-you to the panel for this opportunity this morning.

Again, I’m Tony Bellavia. I’m the acting vice-president for learning and students at North Island College, and I’m very proud to be here on behalf of the students and on behalf of North Island Students Union to discuss this issue.

I’m going to expand on Andrew’s comments in two broad areas: firstly, provide some brief background about North Island College itself and the region and students that we serve; and secondly, to highlight the impacts of these changes on the FTE production at North Island College, the general revenue and — specifically and most importantly — the increased barriers to education for the students in this region here.

On the document that was presented this morning, you’ll see several notes on North Island College. I will bypass those. That’s for your reference point. They give you further context for our discussion this morning and potentially answer some of your questions.

I’ll continue on, on the bottom of page 3. North Island College, as many of you know, is a small, rural college that is heavily dependent on ministerial funding to deliver a wide array of programs and services to students.

In 2015, the Ministry of Advanced Education made the decision to reduce base funding to institutions across the province. North Island College’s component of that was $372,000.

As indicated on your document, on the top of page 4, on table 1, it gives you an indication of per-capita funding for North Island College in comparison to other small, rural colleges. You’ll notice that North Island College is heavily, again, dependent on ministerial funding in 2013-14. That was in the range of 74 percent of our base funding.

Due to the cuts in funding — as outlined and articulated by Andrew, in terms of the impacts — NIC’s board of governors, with support of the senior leadership team, made a very difficult decision at one of the board of governors meetings to implement tuition for ABE courses as well as ESL courses and ASE — courses for students with disabilities.

As noted, it was a very challenging and emotional decision for us to implement these fees. Our analysis of the impacts of applying tuition to ABE courses has illustrated several significant, negative results to NIC’s FTE count and bottom line. But again — and I want to stress this most significantly — the impact has negatively impacted students by increasing barriers to education.

The first broad area is FTE production. The analysis of our FTE production at North Island College for the 2014-15 fiscal year, or FTE year, to the following year, 2015-16, is a fairly significant and dramatic reduction in FTE production at 20 percent. So roughly 21 percent and 17 percent of head count there.

This is a fairly significant and dramatic reduction in our FTE production, but what it means is that, or as a result, fewer students are accessing ABE courses, resulting in fewer students moving into post-secondary programs and gaining the necessary knowledge to move into viable and good-paying work. ABE is a transition program. It’s about getting through the program so that students can get on to the programs that they desire and that they need.

In terms of revenue, as I’ve outlined, the reduction to North Island College was $372,000 per fiscal. Our analysis of the ABE tuition that will be generated on a per-fiscal-year is in the range of $220,000. As a result, we are anticipating a net deficit of $150,000 to our operating budget on a yearly basis. As I’ve indicated in the chart, this will be a significant drop in overall budget revenue, which means that it will be more difficult for us to serve the students throughout our region there.

As I’ve noted before, the most significant reason for me to attend here, in partnership with NISU and Andrew, is that this has increased barriers to education for students. Andrew has outlined some of the concerns with the AUG.

I’m looking at the time here. What I want to focus on is what we call our in-community program and our programs primarily for First Nations students here. North Island College prides itself on its ability to deliver in-community programs. We have programs in Bella Coola, in Ahousaht, in Zeballos.

One specific program I’d like to bring to your attention here. We have an educational agreement with the Lip’alhayc Learning Centre and the Nuxalk college in Bella Coola to deliver on-site ABE courses to Nuxalk students. The majority of these students are eligible for AUG funding based on their income threshold. However, and this is feedback directly from the Nuxalk Nation, most of these students have been unwilling to go through the onerous process of filling out the AUG form. The feedback to me is that they don’t trust the process itself. The result is an increased barrier to education for these students. In fact, I’m going to call it a bureaucratic hurdle for them to get over.

As a result, what will happen is either these students will not pursue their education — they will not pursue their upgrading opportunities there — or, from the feedback of the educational coordinator at the Nuxalk college, the Nuxalk Nation will step in and have to pay these fees. The result is, again, students deciding either they’re not going to pursue their education, or the Nuxalk Nation will have to find the funding. It was indicated to me that the Nuxalk Nation has not received any additional funding to support this process here.

In summary, for my part, again, the most significant part of these changes is that I see it as an increased barrier to education for our students.

A. Dalton: A final comment. In closing, the North Island Students Union is recommending an end to the
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clawbacks in funding for post-secondary institutions and a reinstatement of a tuition-free mandate on all ABE courses in B.C. ABE courses are an integral part of accessing post-secondary education for many British Columbians. Funding cuts and clawbacks limit that access and take away the ability for many to thrive in their communities and contribute to the future of this province.

It’s not really a question but just an appreciation for you outlining the importance of the ABE programs and the upgrading thing. People often think that it’s for students who haven’t graduated. In fact, it’s for many students who have graduated and need to go back for additional courses to get into apprenticeships or other programs and services. I think the additional piece you added that is really important for us is the difficulty of filling out the forms, the difficulty of accessing a bureaucracy.

For many students who haven’t had positive experiences at school and education, one more hurdle often means they won’t go. I think you identified that really well. So thank you for bringing that to our attention.

J. Rice: Just a comment. I really appreciate the example that you used with the Nuxalk Nation. I’m the MLA for North Coast, which includes Bella Coola and includes the Nuxalk Nation. I realize it’s more than just the bureaucracy of the paperwork. There’s also doing your taxes.

J. Rice: For many who have not had income, you’ve not necessarily had a history of filling out your income tax. So it’s another level of bureaucracy before you even actually do the paperwork to access the program, whereas if the program was free, people could just show up and get going on their education. An isolated community that has a really historic mistrust with all levels of government…. It’s completely understandable why that is a barrier. I appreciate you highlighting that issue.

T. Bellavia: If I could just add quickly, for example, we have two staff members who have just flown to Bella Coola to support the process and try to support these students to fill out these forms. But even after that process, we still don’t anticipate many students will fill out the AUG forms. Then the Nuxalk Nation, if these students want to continue, will need to pay for that tuition.

J. Rice: That takes away from the Nuxalk Nation actually providing a lot of the basic necessities that they’re struggling to provide, such as housing. I do see how that’s really problematic. Again, thank you for your presentation.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much for taking the time. We do appreciate it. Enjoy your day.

Just in the nick of time, I’m going to guess, we have our friends from the Vancouver Island University Students Union — Avery Bonner. You don’t have company? You were supposed to have James Bowen with you.

A. Bonner: Unfortunately, our car broke down on the highway, so he had to stay with the car, and we had to get some….

Ten minutes for your presentation. When you’re getting close, I’ll get you to conclude your thoughts, and then we can go to the committee for questions. If that works for you, the floor is yours.

A. Bonner: Good morning, members of the committee. My name is Avery Bonner. I’m the director of external relations for the Vancouver Island University Students Union. I would like to thank the committee for their hard work and dedication to the improvement of British Columbians for all. Most of all, thank you for the opportunity to provide comment for the preparation of next year’s provincial budget.

Our students union is member Local 13 of the B.C. Federation of Students and represents over 9,000 students from Powell River to the Cowichan Valley. Our mandate is to advocate for a high-quality, publicly funded and accessible post-secondary education system in British Columbia.

We have three recommendations for inclusion in the upcoming budget: the first, an increase in funding to our colleges and universities; the second, the improvement of financial aid through grants and the elimination of interest on student loans; the third, the restoration of funding for the adult basic education program.

For the first of these points, B.C. students and their families continue to struggle with ever-increasing levels of student debt as the cost of pursuing a post-secondary education remains far greater than the resources students
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and their families have at their disposal. The tuition rate for an undergraduate course back in 2000-2001 was $126. Currently VIU students pay $426 for these same courses. This is an increase of 295 percent to the upfront cost of education for students at VIU, in spite of the 2 percent government cap on tuition increases that the government implemented back in 2005.

The funding that VIU received back in 2000-2001 from the provincial government accounted for 63 percent of the total institutional budget, whereas last year provincial funding made up only 40 percent of the institutional budget.

In the last year, universities across British Columbia have been implementing supplementary tuition fees to make up for the lack of funding that institutions receive from the provincial government. At VIU, this fee was called the new student services fee. Implementing these fees is a way that institutions are getting around that 2 percent government cap.

We have seen multiple institutions around B.C. implement these fees, which unfairly transfer the financial responsibility for funding post-secondary from the provincial government onto the students. The cuts in funding to our universities harm British Columbians, their economy and the social well-being of the province. We strongly urge the government to increase funding for post-secondary institutions across the province.

The second request we have is improvements to the system of financial aid in British Columbia. The federal government has recently increased funding to the Canada student grants program, which has a welcome boost to financial assistance for students across the country. However, because B.C. does not have a comprehensive system of student grants, students in this province receive the least amount of non-repayable financial assistance in the country.

While student loans help students who could not otherwise afford the high cost of education get through the door, they do so with an added expense to B.C. families as a result of the interest applied to those loans. In B.C., the interest rate that is imposed by the province is currently prime plus 2.5 to 5 percent. This means that B.C. has the highest interest rates charged for student loans in Canada.

This is simply unfair. It means that a student who can afford to pay up front pays only the cost of that education. But a low-income student who needs to access those student loans will pay thousands of dollars in interest, making the same education cost more for the lower-income student than it did for the student who had the ability to pay up front. As you could see, this is just simply unfair.

Students at Vancouver Island University are recommending that the province commit to the elimination of interest charged on student loans and introduce an upfront, needs-based grant program that would supplement the existing forms of student financial assistance in B.C. This would make a significant difference in student access and affordability of post-secondary education for current and potential VIU students. We would also recommend a review and reduction of interest charged on student loans in the previous years.

The third recommendation we have is regarding the adult basic education program in British Columbia. The ABE program in British Columbia is an important component of the post-secondary education system. ABE courses provided through colleges and universities in British Columbia instruct adult learners in high school competency, provide credit towards completing a Dogwood and prepare students for a return to education after a time away.

ABE courses allow those adults who have not competed high school to complete their high school diploma in a setting focused on adult learners, rather than needing to return to the high school environment. As you can understand, the ABE program is very important to the province and its communities. This program empowers people to get a post-secondary education in a pursuit of a better life.

Despite the obvious benefits of the ABE program, as you are aware, last academic year all funding for ABE was cut by the provincial government. As a result, ABE courses rose from zero dollars to $326 at VIU per course credit. This means that the B.C. government has cut over $15 million from adult basic education programming.

This means that the tuition-free ABE mandate that was introduced by the Gordon Campbell government has come to an end. The ABE program has been tuition-free in B.C. since 2007. It’s time that we return the funding and make the ABE program free once again.

To summarize our presentation, we would like to see this committee make recommendations to the provincial government on the following three topics: (1) an increase in funding to our colleges and universities, (2) the improvement of student financial aid through grants and the elimination of interest on student loans and (3) the restoration of recent cuts and the return to tuition-free status for the adult basic education programs.

We hope that the committee will, once again, recognize the financial hardship and personal debt that students and their families are being forced to bear and support our recommendations for the 2017 budget.

By helping people access post-secondary education, the government is ensuring the future of a productive society and workforce that will help our economy continue to grow and prosper for decades to come.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. I will go to the committee for questions.
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Particularly around ABE…. That’s a subject we’ve heard a lot about as we’ve travelled around the province. It’s quite topical. So don’t take a lack of questions as indifference, because they’ve all been asked. Nevertheless, I want to open the floor again.

Well, I guess everything’s been asked. Again, it’s not indifference. It’s just we…. You’re doing a very good job communicating your message around the province — not just yourself, but others. Thank you for taking the time and bending over backwards to get here in time. Well done.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good morning. You probably know the routine. Ten minutes and I’ll give you a wave down, and then we’ll go to the committee for questions when you’re ready. Take your time. The floor will be yours when you’re ready to go.

R. Bealing: I’d like to make a note that I didn’t bring my parents and my kids with me this time. I hope that’ll help for that debacle in Nanaimo last year.

I’m a repeat visitor to this event and very much appreciate any opportunity for dialogue with government and to talk about private forest land and what we do. I’m very grateful that a number of you have shown interest in our events and our efforts to share the good news over the years, so I’m going to assume a basic level of understanding.

In the past I’ve talked a lot about…. A very significant issue for us is that our ability to obtain fair value for our product, which is primarily logs, is restricted by government policy. I’m going to change the tune a bit this year. I’m going to talk about some things that government can do and does do at the other end of our business, which is on the expense side — primarily property taxes. This is something we are taking a close look at currently.

I’ll get the ask in right away. What we’re looking for from the committee this year is that you could encourage the Ministry of Finance to continue to work with owners to find a sustainable property tax model for private forest land.

We’ve seen some fairly aggressive increases in our tax bills in recent years. We’re trying to get to the bottom of it and trying to understand what’s caused it. We’ve got some ongoing engagement with government around it. The goal is to have a model that works for government but also doesn’t kind of kill the golden goose, as it were.

Property taxes are very important to us because of the uniquely long investment horizons of growing our crop. In a nutshell, if we’re paying too much for property tax and you carry that cumulative cost for 50 years, it’s enough to undermine any benefits of growing timber. It’s that simple. So we’re trying to find a sweet spot where government gets its piece of the pie and we don’t kill the business model at the same time. However, there’s a bit more background around that.

What we’re excited about with our business is we share a lot of government’s goals. I have some slides in the back of the presentation that speak to that, so I’m going to jump around if you don’t mind.

If we go to page 11, jobs and economy…. We provide family-supporting rural jobs. That’s increasingly significant because there are limited opportunities in rural areas. Growing and harvesting trees in a responsible, sustainable way is a very good way to sustain those jobs. Planting trees, harvesting responsibly, having good roads — those are really good, positive things. If we put trees back in the ground and we look after those crops, there will be crops to harvest in the future. That’s basically what we do. We’re farmers on long-term rotations.

Investment. We are constantly reinvesting in our land. These are also positive things. When we are investing in our land — building infrastructure, planting trees, making investments in crops — it provides employment, taxation revenue and the whole bit that goes along with it.

Fire protection. Nobody has a stronger incentive than us to protect our own crops, so we work very closely with government on that. The same with water protection. We know that if we don’t do a good job of managing water, then we’re going to have difficulty maintaining our social licence and maintaining some flexible regulation.

We also — not deliberately, just by growing trees…. It turns out that growing trees is the most effective way to sequester carbon. We’re all about growing trees, so we’re kind of accidental heroes there. As long as we’re growing trees, we’re doing that.

I’m not going to focus on log exports in detail this time. But you know, really, there are five things.

The property tax is important. Policy distinction for private land — what I mean by that is don’t treat us the same as Crown land. Just respect that somebody has put their name on the title. They’re paying property taxes every year. They’ve invested after-tax dollars in that land. When government does something that affects the value of that land, you’re directly affecting that person. I’m a forest owner myself. That’s something I keep close tabs on.
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With Crown land, it’s owned by the public. If the public has support for something that’s going on, on that land, well, then they bear the cost. With private land, you end up putting all the costs on the owner, and I don’t think that’s something that Canadians are supportive of.

We also need a competitive regulatory framework. We operate in an aggressively competitive global business, and we need to be able to compete with other people around the world that grow and harvest trees on private land. We have to have a regulatory model that reflects Canadian and B.C. values, but at the same time, it has to be internationally competitive.

Another key thing here is provincial jurisdiction. I saw a number of you at UBCM last week, and it’s a key audience for us. We spend lots of time with local government. I think we saw, again, how there is a gap between provincial jurisdiction, provincial goals and vision for resource management and how local government looks at resource management.

More local government control over growing and harvesting trees would be a very negative thing for our model. We’re quite happy to have a clear government policy regime for growing and harvesting trees, but we would be quite anxious that that would go to local government control. I think it’s very important that that responsibility remains with the province.

Of course, I’ve got to say it, because I’m here. We need to be able to obtain internationally competitive prices for our logs. We pay international prices for our diesel, for our machines. We pay high wages. We pay property taxes. All our costs are internationally competitive. When it comes to selling logs, we are currently forced to take a domestic price for logs that we have to sell within the province. A domestic price, as illustrated in one of the slides at the back here…. I think it’s on page 10. It shows the gap between the international prices and our domestic price.

I have to bring it to your attention. I don’t expect you to fix it today. It’s a policy that’s been around a long time. But it is my job to let you know how much harm it causes our business and how much squeeze it puts on our ability to provide all those benefits that we do.

I told you I was going to bounce around a bit with this presentation. If we can just kind of flip through it here. Page 3, that little sliver of yellow land, private land in the pie here. It just goes to show how tiny private land is in the big picture. However, we generate about 10 percent of the provincial harvest, and a lot of the land we manage is in the valley bottoms and close to communities. It’s coastal areas, valley bottoms.

Even though we’re a relatively small piece of the pie, we probably get more attention than a lot of Crown land operations because we are literally in people’s backyards. You see our trucks, equipment, activity. You hear it. So we have to work that much harder to manage those public expectations.

Just a quick flip through some of the benefits here. We have to balance the environment, the needs of our community and making a profit. If we don’t have a profitable business, we don’t have a business.

We’re responsible neighbours. I think you’ve all seen us reaching out to all kinds of communities and other stakeholders out there. We own our land. We take a great deal of pride in it. But we know that other people have interests in what we do on it too, so we work hard on the communications. We also enjoy very positive relations with First Nations communities, our workers, suppliers and customers. There’s a great network of us.

Almost 5,000 direct full-time jobs. That’s a big deal. Those of you that understand rural areas, you know how significant that is. Family-supporting jobs, $1 billion in economic activity, direct tax revenues of $150 million.

I can see we’re winding up here. My ask, just to repeat it one more time, is…. We’re encouraged by the kind of response we’re getting from B.C. Assessment and the Finance Ministry, but we are concerned that property taxes do not spiral out of control and kill our business model. So I’m asking you to encourage the ministry to continue to work with us.

G. Heyman: Two questions. You’ve certainly raised a number of not-very-easily-resolved issues for us, but certainly ones that need attention.

The first question is: with respect to property taxes, do you see any potential sticky points with respect to trade agreements, or have you heard of any? The second question is…. You requested that regulatory control stay with the province and not municipalities. I can imagine a number of reasons, but I’m wondering if you can be more specific about what yours are.

The first one was about the interaction between property taxes and trade agreements. What we’re looking for with property tax is a level playing field with tree growers in competing jurisdictions. We wouldn’t be looking to have…. It would be jolly nice, but the reality is…. We would encourage the province to say: “Okay. What are forest owners in Washington state and Oregon paying in terms of property taxes?” That needs to be part of the conversation. If there’s any reasonableness around international trade negotiations, we would hope that we meet that test.

The second part, local government jurisdiction. Forestry is a long-term thing. Everything we do has got so much to do with confidence. Whether it’s us putting trees in the ground…. We might not be able to harvest them for 50 years. It’s a lot longer in the Interior. We might improve things a little bit, but essentially it’s a half-
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century investment horizon. So if an owner is confident that they can go back and harvest those trees, they’re going to make significant investments. As soon as you start eroding that confidence…. You know, there are other things to invest money in.

Local government tends to take less of a broader vision, certainly in terms of resource stewardship. The province and the federal government tend to have that higher-level thing. They’re thinking about the needs for the tax base, employment, sawmills, that kind of thing.

The other really key thing — and this is our biggest problem on the coast — is the challenge we have attracting sufficient processing capacity. The log export issue is a symptom of an uncompetitive sawmilling sector. It’s not the cause. The mills can get all the logs they need. The real challenge we face is: how do we encourage people to build sawmills — globally competitive, efficient sawmills — on the coast?

If you have a local government…. UBCM was a great example of this. You have some mayors and councillors adopting a resolution that would significantly affect the fibre supply. Can you imagine the kind of impact that has on the investment community that might be thinking about building a mill on Vancouver Island? That’s an example.

The province and the federal government are much more measured in response to those kinds of issues. Local government, effectively, scared away a lot of investment with that announcement.

S. Hamilton (Chair): With that, I’m going to go to Eric for the last question, please.

E. Foster: Thanks, Rod. Do you know of any other industry where government restricts their ability to trade internationally?

R. Bealing: I’m not an expert in those things, Eric. I think where the oil and gas business is concerned, there is a similar policy with oil and gas — that you have to sell your product domestically first. But it’s at the international price. The issue for us isn’t…. We’d be thrilled to sell our logs just down the road. There’s a lot less hassle. The issue is the domestic price.

I can do some research on that and get back to you. But no, I think we’re uniquely punished, as it turns out.

Next, may I call on the Comox Valley Transition Society — Anne Davis and Heather Ney.

Welcome. Good morning. Just while you’re getting settled, ten minutes for the presentation, and then we’ll go to the committee for their thoughts for a few minutes after that. As soon as you’re ready, the floor is yours.

I’m here to talk about increased services and funding for victim services and violence against women, the pending procurement process and housing.

I’m the executive director of the Comox Valley Transition Society, and Anne is the program coordinator. Through what I have to say, I’m going to use the acronym CVTS, which is our organization.

Violence against women continues, and spousal assaults in the Comox Valley increased by 14 percent from 2014 to 2015. The majority of violence-against-women incidents go unreported. There are an increasing number of women coming forward seeking services with the increased attention on the sexualized violence that we’ve seen in the media.

In 2015, Lilli House, our transition house, sheltered 245 women fleeing violence and received almost 1,500 crisis calls. In the past 25 years, we’ve provided Stopping the Violence counselling and Children Who Witness Abuse counselling to over 18,000 women.

In the past six months, we’ve had 101 new referrals for Stopping the Violence counselling, and that means that right now we have 45 women on our wait-list. We do try to mitigate that by providing an additional 38 hours a week of counselling over and above what we’re contracted and funded to provide by MPSSG, and we do this through funds from our social enterprise. In the same period of time, there were 67 new referrals to Children Who Witness Abuse.

There have been no increases to the funding in over ten years. I know you are all very well aware that the cost of operating has increased — hydro, rent, taxes, all of those things. I don’t need to explain it. The only increases we have had are the negotiated wage lifts in the collective agreements, which actually don’t even cover the increased costs of the pension plan and benefits associated with those wage lifts.

In addition, there are varying levels of service between communities in British Columbia for victim services and violence-against-women victims. Some communities have no services, and others have less service — like ourselves, not having an outreach contract.

The women and children we serve have very complex challenges related to the violence that they’ve been exposed to. The challenges include mental health, substance use obstacles, behavioural and developmental issues, housing crisis, family court hurdles, financial and employment challenges, parenting concerns and other challenges related to the complex trauma.

In order for women to overcome the impacts and heal and remain safe, integrated services — including
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those for men who are perpetrators — need to be funded adequately. We also know that the best way to serve perpetrators is to be integrated with the women-serving organizations who serve the victims.

We know that charitable organizations have proven to the government that we can provide services economically, effectively and collaboratively, but we do require the adequate levels of government funding in order for us all to achieve the vision of a violence-free B.C.

I’m asking for additional funding for victim services and violence against women and that funding be provided, including funding for the Integrated Case Assessment Teams which assess high-risk domestic violence cases — of which we had a murder just one night ago in our very own community here.

We also need funding for preventative initiatives, rehabilitative programs, specialized sexual assault services, legal support programs and outreach. We also need funding to provide the services in communities that do not have services at this time.

Now, there’s been lots of talk about rolling back the funding at existing services to fund the new programs — which, I can assure you, will be extremely detrimental to the citizens of our communities. Failure to put the right funding in place is putting the safety of women, children and men — as we know, there are many deaths of men due to the situations of domestic violence — at risk and perpetuates the epidemic of domestic and sexualized violence.

We need to do this to mitigate all the other costs that are incurred due to domestic violence, like policing, health care, child protective services, loss of productivity in the workplace, the justice system. It just continues to exacerbate the social issues that we’re facing today.

About the procurement process. The victim services and violence-against-women programs are going to open procurement. When I looked back at my notes from six years ago — on this very October 6, 2010, we were here — I actually pulled most of what I’m going to say to you right out of that presentation. My point is that the threat of the open procurement has been hanging over our heads for six years, not knowing what or when. So organizations like ourselves that have been delivering these services successfully with no complaints are being forced to compete for our contracts again.

As you can imagine, in the contracts there is a well-developed system of accountability and ways to address complaints or concerns by the government with the service provider. We’ve invested extensively in training our staff that we have now so that they have the competencies to address the complex and specialized field that they work in.

We’ve developed huge partnerships with our community and other serving organizations here. Lots of women who are living with domestic violence feel fear and isolation, and we’ve been able to gain that trustworthiness of them so that they feel confident about the consistency of the service that we deliver. For others, it’s frightening to imagine that the services might go elsewhere or to a large corporation that actually doesn’t have any investment in this very community.

There’s time and money that it would cost non-profits to go through this process, the emotional time that it’s cost in thinking about this process, not only for managers but also for the staff, knowing that their jobs might be going elsewhere or be eliminated altogether. I also think it’s a very poor use of taxpayers’ money to have the government employees go through the hoops of this process when, in my mind, it’s completely unnecessary.

There’s also no evidence, to my knowledge, that other ministries are going through this open procurement. Children and Family’s community living and such ministries are not having to go out to contract, and it’s not lost on us that there’s another area of violence-against-women services delivered by Stroh Health for perpetrators of violence. They’re not going out to tender for their very contract, yet the women’s sector is being forced to go out to tender.

Further, Stroh Health was directly awarded $800,000 to develop a new program or additional programming for perpetrators. It was new funding, and I understand that new funding should — and I believe it should — go out to open procurement. When I inquired about this, I was told that it was a grant. Well, every time that CVTS has received a grant, we’ve had to actually apply and compete for the money that the government is handing out. You can see why we’re confused by all of this. I don’t think I need to say any more about the reason why we should not be going to open procurement.

Because we’re concerned about the quality of service being provided, we urge you to rely on the existing system of accountability and complaint resolution where there are concerns. And where there are not, leave it alone and carry on so that we can provide a good service to the women who are experiencing violence, and their children, because at worst, it will be severely disruptive and potentially lethal for women and children who are victims of violence to make any changes.

Finally, housing. In April 2016, the Comox Valley did a homelessness count, and 57 percent of the homeless were women. Violence against women is the leading cause. A snapshot of the transition house on June 30 revealed nine women in residence had been there on an average of 41 days, one for 115, one for 125. The sheer reason why they were there still is the lack of affordable housing, housing they could find within their budget.

Lilli House is full or overfull 98 percent of the time. When women can’t find a place to live, they go back to their abuser or choose another unsafe situation — couch-surfing, a roommate, sleeping rough. There’s one example
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of a woman who said: “I can find a place to live, but he’s going to make me have sex with him.” Those are the situations that they find themselves in.

Lilli House being full because women can’t find housing also means that other women are put at risk because there’s no room at the transition house when they need it and need to get some safety from a situation. We are turning people away who are at risk.

We also have Amethyst House now, thanks to some great funding from Island Health, a recovery house for women recovering from substance abuse that opened last year. They are having the same issues. You can imagine the challenges of maintaining your sobriety and your recovery when housing cannot be found.

We also have the homelessness prevention program. It’s the rental subsidies. We have ten that our organization can hand out. It’s for 12 months. We help, on average, 19 women a month with those ten subsidies, so we know how to make a dollar go further. The average rent in the Comox Valley is $665, as reported in the Vital Signs, and you know that $375 is what a single person gets on income assistance.

There are many, many barriers. We urge the government to continue to invest in housing, the rent supplement program; reinvest in operating dollars in supportive housing; incent developers to build rental units. Lots of our social issues could be mitigated. We could provide the supports, and people would be able to get on to a life of independence.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I don’t think, at least, not while I’ve been chairing the meetings in the last couple of weeks…. I think it’s our first transition house group that’s presented to us, so I wanted you to keep talking a little bit longer. I wanted to give you the extra time, but now we’re just about out of time.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your ongoing work in the Comox Valley. It’s not really a question; it’s more expressing frustration as well, I guess. I think you’ve identified the work you’ve done. You’ve identified the length of time you’ve done the work. You’ve identified the lack of funding and the increases that you’ve had to do in the work, yet you’re still having to justify doing the work by going through the procurement process.

I know all not-for-profits — the challenges that people face having to write grant proposals, things that take you away from your day-to-day work that you’re doing. From my perspective, this is one more example that is taking you away. I’ll continue to express my frustration at the process and hope that we can find a resolution to be able to provide you with the resources and the support that you need to do the work you need to do.

H. Ney: That was the point I was trying to make. When we are faced with the procurement, it’s going to take money and dollars away from direct service.

G. Heyman: Just to add to Carole’s words, first of all, thank you for the work you do and for your presentation as well as your passion around the challenges. It just strikes me that in a service that essentially deals with vulnerability and uncertainty, to add to that vulnerability and uncertainty for the people trying to provide the services just starts a downward spiral that is actually making things worse. I certainly hope this committee can assist in making that point.

S. Gibson: I’m appreciative of what you’re doing. In my own community of Abbotsford, we have a very similar organization, and I’m always moved by the great work that they do.

You have alerted us to the fact that there’s more reporting now. Previously, in my view, this was an area…. The dark side of this was that there were so many women that were in difficult situations that are now becoming more free to share that, and then calling on people like you folks. I just wanted to acknowledge that and honour you for what you’re doing.

Often it goes hidden in society. The good news is that women are coming more forward, and they’re getting the care they need and getting out of tragic situations that are highly problematic, both for them and for their children. So thank you.

A. Davis: If I may respond to that. The numbers are going up in terms of people reporting to the RCMP, but one of the things that we really need you to appreciate — and I’m sure you do, if you have links with the Abbotsford organization — is that many, many, many of the women who never report to the RCMP, or take a long time to think about it before coming forward, are coming to our organization first. That’s because we have, over 30 years, built a relationship within the community, with First Nations communities locally, with the homeless population. We have built that relationship, so they feel the safety to come to us.

That is a big part of our concern, also, about the procurement. As Heather was saying, if the services went to another organization, that history of trust isn’t there. Women are not going to be coming forward and having help in developing the safety plans and receiving the counselling and support that they’re able to receive from us — whether or not they have reported to the RCMP.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We’re out of time, but I’m going to exercise the prerogative here, because we’re a little
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ahead of schedule. I’m going to go to Jennifer for another question.

J. Rice: Just a quick comment, actually. We were to get a presentation by the Prince Rupert Transition House, but we had the flight and technological problems, so we didn’t get to hear from them.

One thing I know that’s echoing across the province — it’s not a local issue — is the fact that transition houses are becoming de facto homes, and the shelters — way over capacity. Again, there’s that potential of not being there for women fleeing abuse, which is the service that you’re intended to provide.

I acknowledge that that’s a challenge, so I’m hoping that this committee will not only make recommendations as far as the onerous process you have to go through for funding but also make recommendations around housing and homelessness in order for you to continue to do the work that you’re supposed to be doing. Thank you for your work.

If I could add just a comment and a question. You do fabulous work, obviously. In Delta, there is an organization, a university women’s group, that’s trying to organize a transition house, get one off the ground. Delta, to their credit — the community of Delta, the municipality — has actually donated a house. They’ve fundraised to renovate the home, and now they’re looking for operating grants.

There’s been a great partnership, and I’m wondering if you can speak to any of that in the Comox Valley, in terms of the work that you do and any partnerships you might have with the regional district, the local district of Comox or Courtenay.

H. Ney: Well, I think we have great partnerships. We are very supported by the community, by the city of Courtenay, by the regional district. On the housing front, our municipal governments have been a little less friendly to providing land, etc., but there is one project that they have donated land to.

We’re working hard, the coalition to end homelessness in the community, to move things forward. We were successful in getting the regional district…. It’s complicated how it got there, but there’s a tax now that can provide funding to address homelessness. I think we’re the only ones who are there in the province at the moment. There is $160,000 a year to be invested in housing initiatives.

In fact, our organization is the recipient of half of that money this year. We are putting two transitional housing units in Amethyst House, and I hope that very soon, in the next week, I can say that we have an agreement or a commitment from B.C. Housing for the purchase of a fourplex that we can use for housing women and children.

Comox Valley Recovery Centre also got some funding to do some transitional housing units, so it’s eight additional units of housing that will happen in the next six months or so, but that is nothing compared to what we need. I think it’s about 4,900 units that B.C. Housing has committed to in the province, but that’s not going to go very far. We probably need 140 in the Comox Valley in a variety of housing options along the continuum from supportive, transitional, subsidized, low-cost rentals. We need the whole gamut of housing.

I think it’s going to take a lot of partnerships, at all levels of government, between developers, non-profits, everybody. I think that the Comox Valley is doing good work — not without its challenges.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I understand. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for your advocacy.

I hope the committee didn’t mind going a little over time on that one, but it being the first transition house, I thought it was worth the investment.

Our friends from the Campbell River Literacy Association — Anne Boyd and Kat Eddy. Welcome. While you’re getting settled, I’ll just remind you that you have ten minutes for the presentation. I’ll try to get your attention there at the end, and you can conclude your thoughts. Then we can go to the committee for questions. So if you’re ready, the floor is yours.

K. Eddy: Thank you so much. Good morning to the hon. members of the select standing committee. I just want to acknowledge that I’m sad that Claire Trevena is not here. She is our MLA for North Island, as you know. She’s very supportive of our organizations and literacy in general, so I just wanted to acknowledge that we miss her.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, just to let you know, she was at the Port Hardy meeting yesterday, and she’s away up there still.

K. Eddy: My name is Kat Eddy, and I represent the Campbell River Literacy Association. As a non-profit, we offer direct literacy programming to adults, including English as a second language, technology supports to seniors and free tutoring to families with elementary school–aged kids. Our core funding comes to us from the Ministry of Advanced Education’s CALP grant, which is
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the community adult literacy program. It’s a stream that’s been in existence for quite a long time. It’s quite stable and funds our core programming. It is very specific in the user group that we can focus our efforts on, so it is adult-focused.

To my left is Anne Boyd. Anne is the community outreach coordinator for Campbell River Literacy Now.

Campbell River Literacy Now is funded through Decoda Literacy Solutions and is able to service the needs of the entire community regardless of the age range. This group’s primary mandates are public awareness of literacy issues, outreach for community events and a focused approach to embed literacy in all community programming from cradle to grave. So they reach the entire community.

I would like to begin by thanking you for providing us with the opportunity to again share with you our community story of the breadth of impact that provincial literacy coordination has had in Campbell River. We did get to see you in Campbell River a couple of years ago. We’d also like to recognize and show our appreciation for last year’s recommendation by this committee regarding the annual funding of $2.5 million for community literacy works in British Columbia.

We are disappointed, of course, that your recommendation was not carried through into the provincial budget, and we struggle yearly to maintain funding for our provincial literacy network. This challenge causes a state of uncertainty and tests our coordinators’ ability to commit to important collaborative programming.

As a province, we are diverse. A program offered for folks in Vancouver or Victoria or Richmond will likely look very different from one offered in Vernon or Golden or Campbell River. The community-based network was built to be equally diverse. Coordinators are from the communities which they serve, and they believe in the importance of offering responsive, collaborative literacy programming. These coordinators are recognized as an important resource by other community agencies wishing to build connections in some of our most underserviced regions.

I actually personally had a phone call from North Island Employment Foundation, which services the entire north Island. They asked for the contact list for the north Island of our literacy outreach coordinators, because they were trying to offer services in Alert Bay and in Bella Bella, and they didn’t have that key connector in order to start the conversations. That’s kind of the power of this network.

These coordinators understand the challenges and successes of their communities, participate in many of the meeting tables hosted and support direct programming by other agencies.

In a very recent report created by the Campbell River Community Foundation — it was actually just released a couple of days ago — it was stated that 32 percent of our children six and under were vulnerable, meaning that without additional supports, they may face future challenges in school and society.

The flexibility of provincial literacy funding, in partnership with other agencies, has allowed us to assist in being part of the solution. A strong presence at early-years tables has resulted in a focused approach, and through collaborations, the following objectives have been met in our communities. This is where I brag.

All new infants born in Campbell River and the surrounding area receive a Books for Babies bag, with a strong message of the importance of early reading. These bags are delivered through our Vancouver Island Health nurses when they do the home visit after birth, and they’re also delivered through KDC health, which reached the aboriginal communities.

We last year launched the 1,000 x 5 program, which provides just-right reading materials and promotes the significance of parents reading daily with their children. We’ve had the ability to assist with the creation of the Campbell River children’s charter, which is due to release this November. It’s an official document, accepted by the city, that captures the voices of what children think they need to feel safe, supported and happy.

Literacy coordination funding has allowed our communities to meet the identified need of children in a B.C. low-income housing complex. It contributes to the Gathering Place, which is a four-day-a-week after-school program providing healthy snacks and healthy adult modelling to children.

With literacy coordination, Family Literacy Day, which is a super fun event in January, has blossomed from a single targeted reading event to a week-long celebration supported strongly by our school district and local business. Last year we saw 4,000 participants participating in events.

Stepping away from the early years, this funding has also allowed the literacy work to be done with some of our most at-risk populations. For example, the John Howard Society of North Island has just received a pretty large funding stream to build a youth hub. What this youth hub will do is it will provide on-site mental health services to youths from all of north Island, not just the Campbell River community.

Campbell River is a very transient town. A lot of times when youth are struggling in Port Hardy or Port McNeill, they come to Campbell River for services. John Howard understands the impact of literacy and the impact of reconnection to education in the workforce, so they’ve invited us to have an office space and be able to provide services as part of that team.

The funding also allows us to support cultural groups. We’re very involved in our aboriginal early-years tables and our aboriginal groups in general. Campbell River does have four distinct member groups. It allows us to provide support for their programs with resources, con-
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tribution and community activities and the fostering of healthy relationships and support of all children and families.

Finally, the Literacy Now funding supported the development of a program called youth as a second language or English as a second language for youth. What is does is, through our adult literacy program, it provides support for kids for whom English is not the first language spoken in their homes. It gives them an English-speaking tutor for free to help them with their school district homework so that it can help them to excel.

As our province moves forward into the 2017 budget year, we are asking that this committee makes a recommendation of consistent funding and support of Decoda Literacy Solutions literacy outreach model. We are sure that the hon. panel supports that the impacts of increased literacy rates cannot be denied and are far-reaching.

This investment will allow the outreach networks to continue, and work to continue, to meet the diverse and distinctive needs of each of its British Columbian communities. Thanks for your time.

S. Hamilton (Chair): That’s okay. That means there’s time for more questions.

S. Gibson: Thank you very much for the work that you do. We’re hearing all around the province, of course, that it’s critical to the success and well-being of our province.

My question is, and I asked this from time to time from other folks: how do you get your clients? In my community, there are people who have literacy issues, but they’re so embarrassed about it — adults.

We have one businessman in my town, a very successful businessman. He’s basically illiterate but nobody knows except a few of us, right? I guess he’s ashamed to come forward. Of course, it becomes problematic, because the people that most need the help don’t come forward, and the ones that are willing to do it, maybe don’t have as critical issues — especially adult males, I’m finding, in particular. I wonder if you have any comment on that.

A. Boyd: It’s a problem, and we’re always looking for places to reach out. One of the things that we’ve made a priority is to go to the people, not expect the people to come to us. So we work within a lot of other community agencies where we know that…. For instance, John Howard. We run a program with them for disadvantaged youth between 18 and 23. What we try and do is encourage them back to the centre. We work out of Robron Centre in Campbell River, which is a school district facility. We also work closely with continuing ed. When people come back to continuing education, and they’re not ready to start into a formal program, they refer them to us, and we take them through a literacy program.

It’s definitely outreach, outreach, outreach. We try and get as far out into the community as we can. We’re becoming a victim of our own success. We’re now…. How many? One hundred and twenty-three adult learners last year.

We do a one-on-one tutoring model. It’s become…. It’s not as bad to come. We have now a retired judge, two retired lawyers, a retired doctor, who wanted to do something different in their retirement. They’ve come in and trained as literacy tutors, so the program has really gained in status in the community. Now it’s not so difficult for some people to come. Actually, they’re banging down the doors, and we’re wondering where we’re going to get enough tutors to meet the needs at the moment.

We also get a lot of referrals from our Immigrant Welcome Centre. As you know, the provincial level funding was pulled, and unfortunately, we weren’t successful in obtaining that grant. So we do a lot of work alongside. It’s about embedding the literacy and about creating resources for people.

Our CALP funding is fantastic. It keeps our core programming going, but without the Literacy Now funding, without the Decoda funding, that outreach portion just can’t happen. There’s just not enough funding available.

G. Heyman: I’ll be quick. Thank you very much. We’ve continually, over the years, had lots of presentations from local literacy groups — all of them with a common theme about needing the funding but also needing the stability of funding. I look forward to the day when you can have that.

The other feature is each local literacy association gives us a real flavour of how you respond to the community needs. I can’t even count the number I’ve heard. You, again, have mentioned something that…. I was just checking with Carole. I think it’s the first time we’ve heard about the ESL for youth — not that others may not do it, but thank you for bringing it to our attention, and thank you for providing it.

K. Eddy: The literacy community is highly literate. We like to write speeches and talk. [Laughter.]

A. Boyd: What we found…. It was actually the school district that approached us with the youth and the ESL.
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Although the children are learning, getting ESL classes in school, when they go home and need the support with their homework, their parents aren’t able to help them because their language level isn’t high enough. That’s why we ended up developing that program.

The other family literacy program that we do that I think is quite unique is…. We have to focus on adults, of course, through the CALP programming, but we train the parents to help their children. So the parent and the child come together, if their children are struggling in school. Most parents can’t afford…. They can drop their children off for tutoring at $30 an hour. Not too many people can do that. We require the parent to come with the child and learn how to support their child over time, so if they’re struggling in grade 2 or 3, we teach the parent to not just say, “Go do your homework,” but give them some strategies to sit with children and say: “Try this. Try this. Try this.” I think that’s a fairly unique program.

K. Eddy: We’ve actually pulled 15 retired teachers out of retirement to tutor in our program.

K. Eddy: It’s those grey kids that are underserviced and those vulnerable families that just need a little bit of help to push their child forward. It’s a pretty incredible program, actually.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Fantastic. Thank you for taking the time — a pleasure. We’ve heard from lots of literacy groups around the province, so the message is resonating.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good for you. That’s great. We appreciate that. Thanks again. Have a good day.

B.C. Salmon Farmers isn’t here yet, so let’s move ahead. Neither is the district teachers. We’re going to go to Comox Valley Families for Public Education — Shannon Aldinger and Katherine Tinmouth.

I’ll just let you know it’s ten minutes for presentation. I’ll try to give you a wave when time’s winding down, and then we can go to the committee for questions. As soon as you’re ready, it’s all yours.

K. Tinmouth: Good morning, members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Katherine Tinmouth, and with me today is Shannon Aldinger. We are here on behalf of Comox Valley Families for Public Education.

Comox Valley Families for Public Education is a non-partisan group of parents, grandparents and concerned citizens advocating for better public education in B.C. We believe that children should be at the centre of educational policy decision-making and that every child deserves equal access to quality public education, no matter how much their parents earn, how much the school PAC can fundraise or the general income level of the child’s neighbourhood.

We understand this committee has already heard from several groups regarding education funding. To minimize repetition, we will endorse and adopt the submissions of the Parent Advocacy Network for Public Education, PAN, and Families Against Cuts to Education, FACE, that presented to this committee on September 19 in Vancouver. Our submissions today will focus on the specific experience of our district here in school district 71.

In 2015-2016, school district 71 had approximately 8,188 students. We were at 22 schools — 16 elementary schools, one middle school and three high schools. We have faced declining enrolment and had been in funding protection for several years.

Our group formed last spring, as our district was struggling with how to address the estimated $2.7 million shortfall for the 2016-2017 school year and the projected comparably sized cuts for the following year. Current levels of funding have resulted in cuts far beyond budget efficiencies. Educational resources are so reduced that the ability of schools to operate is undermined. Most recently in our district, budget cuts have resulted in proposed school closures and a 4.6-day school week.

Much of the 2015-2016 school year was spent in a consultation process regarding the proposed closure of Puntledge Park Elementary School. Puntledge is a much-loved elementary school in our district. It consistently operates at or above 95 percent capacity. It is seismically safe, centrally located and is adjacent to a 30-acre nature reserve. The projected savings from closure — $720,000 — represented last than 1 percent of school district 71’s annual budget.

Substantial cuts had been made in preceding years, and our district was desperate to find any further available savings. Our community was elated when our trustees said no to selling valuable, long-term capital assets, irreplaceable capital assets, to help fund short-term operating budget shortfalls.

The proposed closure was rejected, and school district 71 was instead forced to implement the 4.6-day workweek.

S. Aldinger: Our school board has now reconfigured the school week to 4.6 days as a budget-saving measure. In practice, this means that instructional time has been
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moved from Friday afternoons, with school ending at noon for elementary school students and at 1 p.m. for our high school students.

As parents, we are deeply concerned that such a significant change to our children’s education was motivated by financial constraints rather than by good, sound educational policy. As the 4.6-day school week has just come into effect this year, a mere four weeks ago, it’s hard to see — too early to see — what all the ramifications will be.

What we can tell already, after a mere four weeks, is that with no school on Friday afternoons, parents in our district face increased child care costs. Low-income families will certainly be hardest hit.

One of the most notable consequences of the 4.6-day school week, however, has been the elimination of mandatory schoolwide recess in elementary schools across our district. That’s right. Children in our district no longer have recess. We’ve been informed by the district that recess had to be eliminated in order to meet the required number of instructional hours under the School Act.

Recognizing, of course, that most elementary students simply cannot sit for three hours in their classroom each morning, many teachers are, of course, including some form of outdoor play of at least 15 minutes a day to replace recess, but that time is now characterized as instructional time. What that means is that our elementary school students, in order to get that outdoor play, lose 15 minutes of instructional time every day. That’s more than an hour a week, and it ends up being over 45 hours in a school year.

Alternatively, some teachers are choosing to incorporate what used to be recess into physical education time. The result of that is that our students then lose time for free play, and that’s important time. As a result, our students would lose the opportunity to socialize with friends and siblings who are in other classes as well as to meet students of different ages and grades in the school. This contact, of course, provides great leadership opportunities for older children as well as builds confidence and a sense of school connectedness for all students. So the lack of free play is a real loss to our students.

Further, because extracurricular activities are also often scheduled during lunch break, enrolment is likely to decline as students opt to see friends at lunch, which is now their only time of day to do so, rather than to enrol in extracurricular activities.

My own daughter, who’s in grade 5, has, over the last two weeks, come to me on three occasions to tell me that she intends to forgo signing up for lunchtime clubs, clubs that she loved in previous years — choir, cross-country running and a chess club which her own father runs at the school. In fact, she’s come to him and said: “It’s probably not worth running the club this year because most students are just wanting to have that lunchtime time for play time.”

Teachers are also reporting problems, as recess was previously an opportunity to do quick preparation, such as make photocopies for classes, to meet with educational assistants to discuss student progress or even to have a break themselves — to eat, to drink or to use the washroom. They no longer have time to do this, as they’re required to be supervising their classes every minute until their lunch break.

As you’ll likely hear from the Comox Valley teachers association, high school teachers now have 12 percent more work. They’re reporting higher levels of stress, and they’re actually grieving our school board’s decision.

Irrespective of the outcome of the grievance, as parents, we’re concerned that the increased workload of high school teachers will result in teacher burnout and less time and energy available to devote to student clubs, intramurals and sports teams. A reduction of these extracurricular activities would be a serious loss to our high school students. These opportunities are invaluable, as they enable students to find peers with common interests and to develop skills and build confidence at a time of life where this is crucial.

Clubs like this foster a sense of interconnectedness in the school community, which research shows is the greatest predictor of educational success. Fostering a sense of school community can also develop a sense of civic-mindedness, which is important to adult life. These are key attributes which we say ought to be promoted and supported in our public schools.

Extracurricular activities are also a key component to public schools’ role as the great equalizer, as they usually involve little or no cost to families, unlike similar activities which are offered through community centres or private clubs. So again, this is a result that will disproportionately impact students from lower-income families.

What we’ve just described is just the latest development in our community’s experience with the chronic funding shortages in public education. All of this, in the last 18 months, has occurred against the backdrop of annual cuts to programs; supplies, including such basic materials as paper; resources, including such things as textbooks and library books; teachers; educational assistants; learning resource assistants; librarians; counsellors; school monitors; custodial staff; maintenance staff; administrative and clerical positions; the availability of timely psychoeducational assessments; and much, much more.

We say the cumulative effect of these cuts on our district is palpable. A local grades 6-7 teacher in our district described to us her daily struggle to provide learning materials to her students. She explained that she doesn’t have textbooks in her classroom. As a result, she and other teachers photocopy worksheets to create booklets for their students. Not only is this inefficient and time intensive, but the difficulties are compounded by the fact
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that there are insufficient paper resources made available by the district and no recess time to do this work.

Teachers at another elementary school have reported to us that, in past years, they’ve been told partway through the year that there’s just no more paper in the budget. So if they want more copies, they need to ask permission.

Now, this committee has previously asked presenters about the role of PAC fundraising. It’s our experience that there’s a growing and unfair expectation that parents, through PACs or otherwise, will fundraise to fill gaps created by chronic underfunding.

In recent years, our school district’s various PACs have had to fundraise or have been asked to contribute by the administration toward such items as sexual health education classes for students, because many grades are not covered by our district and things like school supplies for teachers’ classrooms; technologies for teachers’ use in classrooms; learning assistants; counselling; software licences for math programs; books such as textbooks, library books, levelled readers; specific books for classrooms; curtains and PA systems for school gymnasiums; water fountains; balls and toys for playground use. And I can tell you that this list is not exhaustive.

The growing fundraising demands also create a two-tiered system — one of those who have and those who have not — based upon whether a school is in a wealthy catchment area or not. This increasing inequality flies in the face of the legislative objectives of our public education system. While some schools in our district are fundraising, and are able to fundraise, upwards of $15,000 a year, others raise almost nothing, apart from gaming grants provided at a rate of $20 per student.

A PAC parent describes the futility and hopelessness of fundraising in a low-income school community in an email that’s attached to this submission, at the very last page. I’ll read from it.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Just before you go on, we’re well into the period for questions. I’ll let you use the rest of the time however you want, but we do have one questioner that I know of on the list now.

“I’m Kindle Parsons from Courtenay Elementary School. I’ve been on PAC for the past few years but only because we’re unable to find volunteers from our at-risk school. This year we have a new team.

“It has been hopeless to fundraise off our poor school community. It’s insensitive. It just doesn’t work. Let’s say a Comox area school can raise $3,000 on a fundraiser. Well, we do the same fundraiser, and we make only $300, if we’re lucky. We’re not lucky.

“I’m not on PAC this year, thank goodness. It is such an impossible position to be in. Our school is suffering. I’ve had many meetings with our school principal, Allan Douglas, and MLA Don McRae. Change is happening, just too slowly.

“I’ll try and get the numbers for you. Feel free to share my email. Our struggle is very real at Courtenay Elementary School.”

K. Tinmouth: We were really pleased to read the previous reports of the Finance Committee. We urge the committee to once again make the recommendations that were made in the previous year, specifically recommendations 1, 2 and 3.

In addition to that, we would very much like the committee to consider the following recommendations: that K-to-12 funding, as a percentage of GDP, be restored to 2002 levels; and that the funding protection policy be reviewed with a view to maintaining its underlying compassionate purpose while avoiding the undesired, negative consequences.

We also would like some consideration of the requirement to submit a balanced budget. This has been a real problem in our district, and we realize it has been a problem in districts across the province. What we would prefer to see instead is an appointment of an auditor for any school district that is unable to present a balanced budget and then further consequences if this seems to be a continuing problem.

All in all, we would like to see stable, consistent funding for public education. This is not just a “nice to have.” This is an essential resource. This is good for our kids. This is good for our communities. This is good for our collective financial futures. The consistent erosion that we’ve been seeing in the previous years is really impossible to ignore at this point. We are eroding the system to the point where it cannot function, and it is just not for anyone’s benefit.

R. Austin: It’s not really a question. I just want to thank you for your presentation.

I come from an area, school district 82, where, several years ago, at the outset of this underfunding that you speak of, we went onto a four-day school week. What we found was that there were no real material savings because, of course, the teaching population — which is still, by a far extent, the largest part of the salary — still had to go and provide the curriculum. It’s not like the teachers took a 20 percent pay cut. Obviously, they still had to produce the same amount of curriculum in the hours required.

There were no savings, really, at the end of the day. All that happened was that for four years, all of our kids in school district 82 had an extra day off. Long weekends, particularly for teenagers and for little children, are not a good idea.

I just want to say that what you’ve described today is something that we have all heard now, I think, very well from right across this province. I think that we will have very good deliberations going forward, but it’s time that
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we start to realize that this is a very wealthy jurisdiction, British Columbia. We’re not some Third World country or some developing nation here. Hopefully, now that there is a very large surplus, maybe our recommendations might move the government, whichever way it goes in the next election, to make some changes.

Thank you very much for coming. It was a very passionate presentation. You are at crisis levels here. So are lots of places right around the province.

K. Tinmouth: Yeah. Just picking up on your comment about: “We are not at a Third World level.” When we talk about not having recess, about not having books, about not having paper, about not having basic resources, it feels like we are describing the conditions of a Third World country. We are a rich and successful province with a bright future. That bright future cannot occur without good public education.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Mr. Holland, welcome. While you’re getting settled, I’ll let you know you have ten minutes for the presentation. Then after that, we’ll go to five minutes’ worth of questions from the committee. As soon as you’re ready, the floor is yours.

I am the vice-president of the Comox District Teachers Association. Our president, Nick Moore, sends his regards. Unfortunately, there was a death in the family, so he wasn’t able to attend.

I’m not going to spend a pile of time going through and listing past funding and why you should return to those levels. You’re heard that over and over again. You’ve heard that from the BCTF. I know you’ve heard that from other teachers associations, which, of course, we support.

I’ve provided a bit of background in terms of our district. We’re a mid-sized district. We clearly represent the average in the province. I’m sure what we experience here is — as I’ve heard from previous comments — what you’ve heard and what is experienced elsewhere. But I want to share with you the story of Comox Valley teachers and what we are experiencing with this underfunding that has occurred over the last decade but, certainly, with our cuts that have existed over the last five years.

Over those last five years, we’ve experienced cuts of between $1.5 million and $3 million each year. This has meant just regular erosion of what we’ve been able to provide here in the Comox Valley. I’ve outlined some specific areas where we have really suffered, although this is not a complete list.

Let’s start with the lack of specialist teachers. Specialist teachers are teachers like school psychologists, speech language pathologists and learning support teachers. Individuals are required to address the needs of those students who have struggles within the system and who require supports.

This is a beautiful place to live. We have no problem attracting people to fill positions. What we have a problem with is that we don’t have the money to pay for those positions. I know that other districts can’t even draw the people there because it’s not a desirable place to live. We’re fortunate in that regard, but we don’t have the money to pay those positions.

What that results in is students not being identified with special needs until grade 3, grade 4, grade 5. By that time, for many of them…. I don’t want to say it’s too late because we work with students where they’re at, and we do the best we can. But they’re not receiving the supports they need to be successful. Once they fall behind at that level, it makes it increasingly difficult for them to catch up. They need those supports, and because we don’t have those specialist positions to identify or to support those students, it just leads to continual failure down the road.

The policy of not replacing non-enrolling teachers. As a money-saving endeavour in this district, specialist teachers or non-enrolling teachers — those include our learning support teachers within the schools, librarians and then these specialist positions — on the first day of illness, are not replaced. It means that if they’re regularly scheduled to go into a school on that day and support students, those students are not receiving that support.

I believe the district reported a saving of $300,000 last year from this policy. We understand the financial constraints. We understand why they’ve moved to such a policy. But what’s not acceptable to us is the fact that it means we don’t have these people — the few that we do have — in the classroom, supporting students. These are students that need that support.

The counsellors are another area that’s not replaced — what with non-enrolling teachers not being replaced. Students who are in distress may show up on that day and then find that there is no support for that distress on that day. I don’t see this as being an acceptable situation, but it’s one that is being enacted because of the financial constraints.

Lack of resources for the revised curriculum. I want to start by saying that teachers support the revised curriculum. We’ve had a large number of our teachers who actually participated in the writing of that curriculum. But it’s tough to change curriculum if you don’t have the supports for that.
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To provide an example, social studies. They’ve revamped the entire social studies curriculum — overall, I think, in a positive way — where they’re shifting materials around, shifting dates around that are going to be focused on and leaving greater choice, especially at the senior levels. However, our textbooks are set up from one specific date to the other. With a shift in those dates, it requires new textbooks to be able to cover the material in that course, or it means a sharing of textbooks between grades. This is not a practical solution. We need new textbooks, but there are no resources being provided for the new curriculum to address that — absolutely none. This is not a tenable situation.

One solution that has been suggested is going to the Internet and printing and photocopying materials. While that may supply the actual print material that can be used and can be applied, it’s creating the atmosphere of a throwaway society — where we print off the material, give it to the students and then have to print off more the following year. I personally am not comfortable, and I would hope that our society wouldn’t be comfortable, in generating that concept within our children.

Computer resources are something else that’s lacking. I’ll get more to distance learning at a later point, but those labs that we currently have are being used by distance learning. We don’t have them as a solution for the lack of textbooks. So much of the revised curriculum and so much of the job market out there requires students having that expertise with computers. But when we can’t supply that time for students to go into the labs and work with those computers, we’re not developing those skills as we would see fit.

Librarians. Currently in the Comox Valley, we have one district librarian for 15 elementary schools. This results in a generic approach. We have this one librarian ordering texts, providing materials for 15 schools. It means that we’re not meeting the needs of those individual schools and not meeting the needs of individual students that a regular librarian would have a connection with and be able to provide for.

We do have library clerks, CUPE members, who are there. But over the last two years, they’ve been pulled out and have to do supervision over the lunch hours. It means that our students don’t have library access at lunch and that in most schools, they don’t have that access before or after school. The only time they have access is if they go with a teacher during the school day. If we want a society that is devoted to, and believes in the value of, books and reading, shouldn’t we have library access at all times where possible?

I’m a bit biased in this, in that in the other half of my job, I’m an English teacher. I do naturally have a bias towards students reading, but I would think that all of society would have that bias as well. So limiting that access is certainly a concern.

Our secondary librarians, over the last few years, have been cut to half-time. I know many people who don’t see this as a concern, because…. Well, what do librarians do — order books? Can’t they do that in half the time? But our secondary librarians have become more than that. They’re our technology specialists. As a result of their becoming half-time, it means that teachers are receiving half the support they used to in their use of technology. In many of our high schools, what that has resulted in is teachers using technology half the time. As I mentioned earlier, we’re moving into a job market where we require that computer expertise. If we’re not building those skills, where is that going to lead us?

Secondary school courses. We have wait-lists for courses at the high school level. Students who want to sign up for a course…. Let’s say calculus 12, because they want to go off to university. We’re firm on class size here, I am pleased to say, but once that class hits 30, any other students who want to be in that class are put onto a wait-list — for a high school course. They have to wait for another student to drop out before they can gain access. I see this as an undemocratic way and unfair to the students. We should be meeting their needs about moving forward.

Some of the attempts to move forward on this have been done through distance learning. But what that means is that students who may not learn in that atmosphere are forced to then take those courses in that atmosphere and are not being successful.

You’ve heard about the alternate calendar, and it is certainly a concern for teachers. A couple of areas you might not have heard about from the parents. The establishment of common preparation time means that we no longer have as many specialist teachers at the elementary level. That prep time used to be provided by art teachers, by PE teachers. We no longer have those specialities within the elementary classrooms, so taking away from that learning application.

You heard about the increased teacher workload for secondary teachers. We now teach eight out of eight instead of seven out of eight. Two results there are the increase in the workload and the exhaustion of our secondary teachers, but it also means that our secondary students are receiving less direct instruction — that in order to cover a course, teachers are now making the choice of either cutting back on the material they cover or speeding through the material, which of course leaves some students behind.

The solution is, of course, increased educational funding. I know you’ve advocated for that before, and I hope you will continue to. But I wanted you to hear some of the specific stories about how these cuts have directly impacted students and teachers.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll let you use the remaining time however you want to, Mr. Holland. We’re into the ten minutes, but if you have more you wanted to share….
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S. Holland: I could certainly go into more detail on some of those things, but if there are questions, I’d be glad to entertain any questions you might have of the teachers here in the Comox Valley.

S. Gibson: Thank you for this. I like the way you’ve done the capsule notes. That really makes it helpful for us as we’re analyzing this.

I think you know that this committee is fully committed to public education. Your remarks reflect some others that we’ve heard in our travels around the province, so you need to know that we’ll be considering them very carefully. The value we place on public education will be a hallmark to our analysis.

My wife was a public school teacher for her entire career. I’ve lived for many years with a public school teacher, so I know the challenges of the classroom. She taught first graders for her entire career. So thank you very much for the work you do.

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think you’ve reinforced the parents before you, and you’ve reinforced the presentations we’ve had around the province.

Just a question on the issue of students waiting for courses. I mean, what is the reality? I can guess, but I wanted to ask you what the reality is for students who may be waiting for a course they’re going to need to be able to move on or to move into another program that’s going to prepare them for college or university. What’s happening to the kids who are sitting on those wait-lists right now?

S. Holland: What has tended to happen is that an administrator will walk into the classroom and say: “Are there any students here who are willing to take a distance learning course? I’m looking for those volunteers.”

If those volunteers do not appear, then students are just told: “You are the ones that have been selected.” They have to then do it through distance learning. And some students are highly successful at distance learning. We offer a few blended programs at the high school that I’m at, and the other high schools also have models where we have a teacher supporting them with that program. But it requires a lot of individual focus in order to complete such a class, and not all students have that.

It also disturbs me that there are some courses that are enriched by having a whole classroom atmosphere, and they’re not receiving that exposure. With that loss…. That can carry on beyond — that they’re not getting that experience.

We’ve got about a minute and a half left, Mr. Holland. If there’s anything else you’d like to add, I’ll let you have that time.

S. Holland: I guess one other piece I didn’t touch on, on second-year school courses, was that we’ve had an increase in the student-to-teacher ratio. What the student-to-teacher ratio is, is the number of students per teacher, but within that ratio comes our specialist teachers. Non-enrolling teachers are part of that ratio. So while a 27-to-1 ratio would be ideal — 27 students to one teacher — when you add in the non-enrolling teachers as a part of that formula, we’re now at…. I think that ours worked out to 29.5 to 1. That means that any course that doesn’t have 30 students who want to be a part of it doesn’t exist.

What that’s resulted in is specialty courses — those courses that many students love and attend school for, be it a fine arts course, be it a specialty robotics course, be it a course like history 12…. That’s been one of our courses that has failed to run in past years. Because not enough students signed up for it, it doesn’t exist.

We seem to be in a society that’s been focused on science — chemistry, physics, biology. Those all fill up, along with calculus, but we’ve lost a bit of our humanities through that process. That’s something else that has been lost through the budget cuts. I know it’s not just this district. That has been happening around the province — that students just don’t have the course choices they used to have.

I guess what saddens me most…. I’ve been a teacher now for 20 years, and I didn’t think that 20 years ago I was in the heyday of education. Even when we look back ten years, we’re not able to provide the education that we could provide ten years ago. We can’t provide the education we provided three years ago. It saddens me as a teacher and as a professional.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We’ll end on that. Thank you, Mr. Holland, for taking the time. I appreciate the work that you do on behalf of your students.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Welcome, Line Robert and Dallas Smith of the Island Coastal Economic Trust. Good afternoon. Ten minutes for your presentation. I’ll try to get your attention with a couple of minutes left so you can conclude your thoughts. Then we’ll go to the committee for questions. If you’re ready, the floor is yours.
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D. Smith: Excellent. I appreciate the opportunity to present in front of you again. This is one of my favourite yearly meetings. Being that we have ten minutes…. You guys were ahead of schedule till we all had a nice little nutrition break there. I’ll just get right to the point. We’ve been here before.

Island Coastal Economic Trust has been around for ten years. We just celebrated our tenth anniversary. I’m fortunate enough — or at least, we’ll see, at times — to be one of the founding board members, so I was around when we started and remember why we made some of the decisions that we made.

As you’re all aware, there are three trusts set up in the province. They all had various amounts of money applied to them. Our trust came at a time when it was absolutely needed on Vancouver Island. The forest industry was probably in the worst downturn it had in about 70 years. We were losing thousands of jobs in the resource sector. All of our people were going to the oil sands to work.

The one thing that separates us from some of the other trusts is that we were also dependent on the fishing industry. That is just completely a minute segment of what it used to be. I was just in Alert Bay over the weekend, and there are two seine boats there. There used to be 60 — 60 seine boats that employed seven to eight people each on a fairly full-time basis — and we just lost all of that in 2008.

When we came together as the board of directors, we talked about the models that we could use for implementing the trust, and it was agreed that we just had to start diversifying the economy. We had to start talking about high tech. We had to start talking about diversification of wood products. We had to start talking about tourism. We had to start doing what we could to enhance existing infrastructure, on a regional basis, that would start showing some improvement in not only our economic situation but our social situation that exists.

We’re blessed on the Island to really live in a beautiful part of the world that has all the cultures that make Canada great. There’s a strong First Nations community. There’s strong leadership in First Nations communities. And thanks to this model, we’ve been able to really build some symbiosis between First Nations economic development and infrastructure and non–First Nations community stuff.

Of course, when you go to UBCM, sometimes that doesn’t come out as clear as we’d like it to be — being that that’s fresh in our mind that we were all kicking around Victoria last week listening to all the problems that we have in the world, as opposed to focusing on some of the positive notes. That’s really what I’m here to talk about today — the positive impact that Island Coastal Economic Trust has had not only on Vancouver Island but the province.

We understand the connection between Duncan, Nanaimo, Courtenay-Comox, Campbell River, Port Hardy, and we’ve actually started looking at economic development and infrastructure from that lens now. It probably took a little bit longer than it should have, but there’s no handbook on how we do these things. It was based out of need that we really had to start working together through this trust model.

First Nations projects, local community projects, Rotary club projects — we’ve all really seen the light that if we work together, we’re able to quit competing for the limited dollars that are out there.

Over the ten-year period of Island Coastal Economic Trust, we’ve seen the downturn of the participation of Western Economic Diversification, where they used to have millions of dollars available to the province to mark and to pile up and try to triple up some of these dollars. Well, that’s not there now. So ICET has really become a positive incubator for helping people leverage dollars, not only through the dollars that we have but making their grants acceptable to other funding agencies that are out there.

As we’ve been here four years in a row now, it’s no secret that we’re running on fumes. We’ve made that very clear in our lobbying efforts to government, in our discussions with local councils, local mayors, First Nations. This beautiful, positive momentum that we’ve built is now on fumes. I don’t want to be drastic about it, but that’s where we’re at now. We look at other possibilities of what we can do to keep this momentum going, and ICET is really the foundation of economic development on Vancouver Island.

We look at the high tech sector and how it’s starting to emerge. Vancouver Island has everything that these high tech people want. There’s the quality of life but also the connectivity to Vancouver and the rest of North America. Parksville has really been a leader in that. We’d like to see that momentum grow, up and down the Island, but like I’ve said, we’ve sort of run out of the opportunities to really plan into the future until we get some kind of commitment about a reinvestment.

We’re not asking for a handout. We’re asking for a reinvestment of the dividends that we’ve created through this structured program over the last ten years.

I’ll turn it over to Line, at this point, to maybe walk through some of the specifics of the project so you’ll get an understanding of the breadth and scope of what we’ve done.

L. Robert: You have a tenth anniversary publication here in front of you, which details the breadth and scope of the investments of the past ten years. If you look at that, less than $5 million a year of provincial dollars in those investments. I think you’ve had a pretty strong return there. What I’d like to focus on are some of the…. We’ve invested in a number of areas, but I’d like to focus on some of the key areas in the economy today.
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Right now we have oil stabilizing at approximately $46 a barrel, which will likely leave our dollar in the 76- to 80-cent range for the next long while. That’s what economists are predicting. The impact of that is that it’s good for our exports, it’s good for our tourism sector, and it’s also good for the tech and creative sectors, because they want to invest here because of the low dollar. Those are areas that we have invested in. We have some momentum in those areas.

Tourism. You can take a look at all the projects we’ve developed, but I’m going to focus on where we want to go. For example, the Wild Pacific Trail is the number five amenity in all of B.C. — not on Vancouver Island but in all of B.C. Those are the types of investments that are bringing in international tourists to our province.

Attracting global markets is good for our region, but it’s also good for the province. So we look at attracting markets from outside of our region first, but ultimately, if we can be attracting international markets to our region, it’s also good for the entire B.C. economy. We’ve been working on that with the creation of marine and wildlife visitor centres.

I think we’re on the way to becoming a strong global player in the ecotourism market, and there’s incredible potential to develop that on the north Island. We’ve also been driving international boaters to our harbours with a great deal of transient improvements in those harbours. There’s another area where we’re driving international dollars into our communities.

Another aspect of the global economy is that the Chinese economy is changing right now. The economy is changing to a consumer economy, middle-class economy, which is driving B.C. exports. Where? One of the primary markets that we can attack there is the seafood market.

We have been very active in the shellfish aquaculture sector, in strengthening it. We’ve invested in harbour productivity improvements throughout the region to replace some of the crumbling harbours that we had. We’ve invested in innovation with the Deep Bay field research station, the International Centre for Sturgeon Studies. So we have been an active player supporting the sector, and we continue to do so.

I just had a meeting yesterday with the B.C. Shellfish Growers Association. We’re thinking of where we can go next and how we can support it to ensure that the industry can grow beyond the limits that it has and how to attack those issues with productivity and growth.

Then another area, which we mentioned earlier and Dallas touched on, is the tech sector. Nanaimo is becoming known as an area where there’s a thriving start-up tech community happening, but we also have pockets of tech in other areas in the region that are doing well, not just with businesses starting up but businesses growing in place.

We have some global players now in our region in diverse pockets, and we’ve been supporting that sector with an incubator, with enterprise-level Internet and a number of initiatives that are supporting that. Again, we work very closely with Innovation Island and the tech sector to keep that moving.

So we’re able, with the scope of our influence and the scope of our partners, to see patterns and to drive those patterns forward as a region, rather than see a number of disparate initiatives taking place in different areas.

D. Smith: The ability to mobilize small communities to understand the larger community that they exist in, could thrive in, has really been an eye-opener. The need to meaningfully integrate First Nations into a redeveloped ICET package is really step one, but it’s something that there’s been a lot of thought to.

When ICET was originally created, everybody agreed that First Nations had to be involved, but we never figured out how. We’ve had those discussions. Now we know who the movers and shakers are in economic development in First Nations circles. They’re working with the local chamber of commerce, etc. So really the love-in is in place, but we’re going to run out of the ability to serve hors d’oeuvres to keep the love-in going. That’s really the short and sweet of it.

We look forward to working with everybody. We’ve even, as some First Nations leaders, talked to the federal government about ICET, the opportunities that it brings and the need for the federal government to get involved at that level. There have been no commitments made, obviously, but it’s a discussion that’s happening, whereas in the old days, we would never talk about funding with other people because we wanted to keep it for ourselves.

But the awareness is out there that quarters are nickels now, and the ability to access these funds isn’t there, so it’s really important for us to work with some existing infrastructure that’s in place. We see ICET being that model going forward to make this work into the future.

G. Heyman: I’d like to, first of all, thank you both for the roles you play with ICET, looking at what the future of the Island economy looks like while respecting its present, looking at opportunities.

I just want to take a moment, Dallas Smith, to acknowledge you for the significant role you played over a number of years in helping to reach an agreement on an economically and environmentally sustainable model with First Nations, with forest companies, with concerned citizens and environmentalists in the Great Bear Rainforest. It’s a model that I think will be held up for a long time as people wrestle with how to build an economy without tearing down the environment around us.
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I do have a specific question that actually sprang to mind on one of your earliest comments with respect to the opportunities with high tech and the opportunities with respect to the resource sector. I had a very interesting meeting this summer in Castlegar with somebody who is doing a lot of work to try to highlight the possibilities of a growing tech sector in that region of the province and applying it to adding value to resources.

He was a successful tech entrepreneur in San Francisco, in Vancouver, before returning to his home, Rossland, and wanting to bring his expertise to bear there.

My question is…. I mean, I have some ideas. If there are specific things that you think government can assist with to hasten the process of building the sector on the Island, on the north Island, as well as marrying the sector with resource sector opportunities to add value, I’d be very interested in hearing those.

D. Smith: That’s a great question. A lot of the work is ongoing. Government needs to stay committed to reconciliation. The TRC recommendations really paint a pretty clear picture on what needs to be done, but you don’t need to wait until you’ve implemented a lot of those things to start building these other discussions.

We’re quite comfortable. It’s tough. I speak for a very progressive group of First Nations in my day-to-day job in the Great Bear and things like that, whereas not all First Nations are ready for reconciliation. We all know we need it, but not everybody’s ready for it. So you have to work with who’s willing to work with you to break that new ground and break policy and build some working policy to actually enable First Nations communities to meaningfully be involved in that.

That’s a tough role to put in front of the provincial government, because really the responsibility for First Nations comes from the federal government. So what we need to do is keep working together as a province, between First Nations and the provincial government, bring that message to Ottawa, and just say: “Okay, we’re going to figure out the solutions.” And maybe Ottawa brings a chequebook. That’s really all we see Ottawa doing at the end of the day.

I don’t know if that really answers your question — but a lot more of the existing work, working with who’s willing to reconcile.

L. Robert: With respect to the tech question, one of the things that we’re doing, for example, at the next VIEA summit, is we’re supporting a small entrepreneur tech showcase. The small tech entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to showcase their innovation to the other cohort of businesses that will be attending that.

The idea here is to begin linking tech innovation with the resource sector, with the industries that we already have here, and have that innovation be matched. I don’t know if you were referring to Thoughtexchange, in Rossland. That’s one of the companies where…. It’s not quite a unicorn, I don’t think, but it’s definitely one of those companies that is growing in place in a small community.

We have the quality of life in this region here to be able to leverage that sector and to be able to leverage some of the overflow from the Lower Mainland. We have affordable housing, and that is one of the key things that will help to drive some of the smaller tech companies here and allow them to grow in place. It’s that opportunity. It’s not all located in one area. We have a diversity of offerings for those tech companies to choose based on what their needs may be, because it’s in different communities.

S. Hamilton (Chair): With that, that’s 15 minutes. Thank you very much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Always good topics, and I enjoy hearing it.

Good afternoon. Ten minutes for the presentation. Conclude your thoughts with a couple of minutes left, and then we go to the committee for questions.

R. Botterell: My name is Rob Botterell. I’m presenting on my own behalf. I had a whole presentation all prepared, and then last night I was provided with a news release and a report and a cover letter that I was unaware of, that I’ll speak to, because I think it’s probably more germane than anything I might say.

I actually presented a couple of years ago, here in Courtenay, to this committee before Site C was underway. Now here I am, and Site C is underway.

One of the things the committee will find, I’m sure, through your deliberations, is frequent requests and very justifiable requests for new programs or new spending or various items that need to be addressed. The question always arises when you have so many great ideas: where do you find the money?

What you have in front of you is a letter regarding the cost of renewables. I didn’t have time to make multiple copies of the larger report, so I’ll just speak to it, but it is available on a stick, and there are a couple of copies.

The first point I want to make is that Robert McCullough, who is a well-respected international energy expert, has just completed a review of the falling price of renewable energy relative to conventional generation. Hydroelectric is a form of conventional generation. I’ll leave you to read the 15-page report. It’s great bedtime reading. Around 11:30, it just hits the spot. But I want to draw your attention to a couple of items.

One is that utility-scale solar power…. I’m on page 7 of this report, but you’ll see it when you read it. The cost of solar generation fell dramatically in the 2009-2015 period. The reduction in the long, levelized cost of energy for solar energy over this period is estimated to be an 82 percent drop. The forecast by a well-respected New York
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energy advisor that McCullough has reviewed, the projection, is that solar power will be in the $41 to $57 per megawatt hour level by 2017.

The same goes for onshore wind. The cost of onshore wind has dropped dramatically and is continuing to drop, so there are economies of scale and innovation happening in onshore wind and solar that aren’t happening with traditional technology.

The letter you have in front of you was provided to Mr. Ken Boon and was released. I got a copy last night. I guess he’s done a news release or something. It’s from McCullough to Ken Boon, and what the McCullough Research energy team did was compare the cost of Site C to other types of energy.

I’m going to stay well under ten minutes. I’m going to read you maybe one or two paragraphs. This is what Robert McCullough concluded.

“While there would be costs associated with suspending or halting construction of Site C, I remain of the view that B.C. Hydro could save $113 million on an annual basis by instead building wind and solar. The amount could be higher if tax credits for renewable energy were considered.

“To put it another way, B.C. Hydro could free up an estimated $113 million annually to spend on other pressing infrastructure projects. Alternatively, B.C. Hydro could write a cheque for $57.84 to every B.C. household every year.

“Some critics say that wind and solar are not viable options because they are intermittent, not firm sources of power. However, hydroelectric projects also provide energy subject to monthly and annual variability. As penetration of renewables increases, the portfolio effect of many different renewable projects has reduced the overall variability of output very significantly in recent years.”

If you’re looking for $113 million a year to pay for some of the great presentations you’re getting during this set of budget hearings, there’s your source. The analysis is quite clear that there would be significant savings. I’m not an energy economist, but Mr. McCullough has been at this for 30 years. He actually was actively involved — and probably the lead person — in a variety of major hearings in the U.S.

That’s my presentation. I’m just trying to find you some money so you can work magic.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for the presentation. While certainly an additional $112¾ million a year to spend on the many very important needs that have been identified would probably be welcome by virtually everyone, it might also be welcome by B.C. ratepayers if it was used to pay down some of B.C. Hydro’s debt instead of resulting in steeply climbing rates.

I appreciate this letter and the points that are made in it. They’re very similar, particularly in the comments about the intermittency issue of renewables being addressed by a diversified portfolio, to comments that were made by a representative for Energex. The points made here add to points that have repeatedly been made by people in the renewable sector, and I look forward to some time after May 2017, when the people of B.C. will have a chance to have all of these options reviewed by the B.C. Utilities Commission. Instead of depending on the word of politicians, they can see from independent experts what the best value for British Columbians is.

My direct question to you is…. Mr. McCullough highlights the cost of the utility-scale solar PV as well as onshore wind versus an average levelized cost of energy of Site C of $83.91. As you know, that is very close to the average levelized cost of Site C power that was the accepted figure for a long time, right up until the day that the provincial government announced it was proceeding with Site C.

Somehow the estimate of the cost of Site C power dropped significantly to make it — putting it at that time, anyway, on their paper — much more preferable to the cost of renewables. I think there were some accounting changes that were used to arrive at that figure, and I’m wondering if you are in a position to comment on what those were.

R. Botterell: I’m not an economist, but just briefly, the adjustments that were made to take it down below $83 involved cross-subsidization from B.C. taxpayers in the way it was structured. The most interesting observation that I would make — we’ve used the figure of $83.91 — is that that $83 figure that Mr. McCullough used is actually the level at which B.C. Hydro is proposing to sell power to LNG facilities. If you’re looking for a benchmark to work against, in terms of B.C. Hydro’s potential commercial relations on LNG projects, it’s 83 bucks.

The economists would argue, and Mr. McCullough argued, that it’s artificially low because of the way in which the discount rate was used. But our approach, and it’s sort of Mr. McCullough’s approach, is: “Well, let’s just use the number before part of the cost was transferred over to the provincial taxpayer in the way it was structured.” The savings are there at 83 bucks.

S. Gibson: Thank you for your presentation. I do recall you from last year. It’s good to see you again, Rob.

I think, obviously, it should be said — and this is not a debating environment, of course — that government has looked at this for a long time and deliberated very carefully. I think you know that. It wasn’t a decision that was made haphazardly or randomly. It went through a lot of reflection. On your points you alluded to, regarding wind power, run-of-river and some of the others, the concern was of the reliability. That was one.

The other one that we were advised of was that it would be able to keep the cost of power down. We’re currently, I think, the third lowest on the continent. That was the paradigm that we were trying to pursue. This
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Mr. McCullough I’m not familiar with, but I know B.C. Hydro had a lot of experts that they consulted, and government was comforted by that.

Your points are always appreciated, and it’s good to see you again. Thank you for coming here today.

D. Ashton: Thanks again for coming. I, too, recognize you from last time. I’m just quickly trying to check the gentleman out, and some of his comments and some of his reports. He’s put out a lot of reports. I don’t have the report that you’re speaking of in front of me, but….

D. Ashton: Oh, sorry. I’ve got it electronically now. I look forward to reading that tonight. Thank you. I’m not surfing; I’m actually trying to check some things out as you speak to us. Once again, thanks for coming. We really do appreciate individuals like yourself coming forward all the time.

R. Botterell: One thing I’ll mention is that certainly you’d need to talk to Mr. Boon or Mr. McCullough. I’m an individual citizen and a lawyer, not an economist, but I know that if any of you wanted a more in-depth briefing, Mr. McCullough would be more than happy to do that.

Next we have Isobel Mackenzie, office of the seniors advocate. Good afternoon. Welcome. Ten minutes for your presentation, and then when that’s all done, we’ll go to the committee for five minutes of questions. The floor is yours.

I. Mackenzie: Great. I believe you’ve had something handed out to you that you might want to follow through. It’s got some numbers in it.

First of all, I of course want to thank members of the committee for your commitment to hearing from all British Columbians on their views of the coming budget and how resources should be allocated to meet the diverse needs of this province. I’m here today representing B.C.’s 850,000 seniors, people over the age of 65. As the seniors advocate, I have a statutory obligation to, among other things, make recommendations to government for improvements to systemic issues facing seniors.

My focus today is going to be on the growing economic pressures that face the 20 percent of B.C. seniors who are renters in this province, most particularly those in greater Vancouver and Victoria. I know I’m not speaking to the constituencies of all of the MLAs on the committee, but as I go through some of the numbers, I think you’ll understand the magnitude of the issue.

We know the overwhelming majority of seniors wish to remain independent in their homes for as long as possible and to receive care, if any is needed, in their home. The important thing to recognize is that this desire is the same whether somebody owns their home or whether they rent their accommodation. However, the seniors who are renters, for the most part, have significantly lower incomes than seniors who are homeowners, and they don’t have the home equity to leverage and give them possible other options to finance their care.

To put it in perspective, 58 percent of seniors who rent have a household income of less than $30,000 a year, while 24 percent of seniors who are homeowners have a household income of less than $30,000. So there’s an income challenge here as well as an asset challenge.

Attached are some of the data that quantify this challenge. Also, I have attached some data to support the potential that low-income seniors who rent are moving into residential care as a consequence of the economic incentives not aligning to support independent living and, in fact, could be costing the government more money.

As I highlight the attached information, I hope the committee will share my opinion that increasing the current rental cap for SAFER is both needed and will possibly save money to the health care system through reduced use of residential care for those who cannot afford to live independently due to high rent costs.

Just as a refresher. SAFER, the Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters program — I’m sure you’re all familiar with it through your constituency offices — was established back in 1977 to provide rent supplements for people aged 60 and over.

Currently, 20,241 British Columbians are on SAFER. The gross annual income cutoff to receive SAFER — you could read it’s $30,000 for singles in greater Vancouver, $33,000 for couples. In the rest of the province, it’s $26,000 for singles and $29,000 for couples. Ninety-five percent of SAFER recipients are single, and 91 percent are over the age of 65.

The average income of the recipient of SAFER is $18,534. To put that in perspective, the annual income of a person working full-time at minimum wage is $22,568. The median income for a senior in B.C. — so 50 percent below — is $26,000. And the median income for a person 35 to 54 in B.C. $42,660. So I’m hoping to illustrate to you the real income challenge of this group of seniors.

Over the past ten years, the average market rent has risen by 34 percent. But at the same time, the rental cap for the SAFER subsidy has risen only 9 percent.

On the next sheet, I’ve highlighted two constituencies, or communities, where the issue is most acute. It’s most acute in the areas where the rent exceeds the cap that is allowed for the subsidy.

In Vancouver, an average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,079. The monthly rental cap for SAFER in Vancouver is $765. So for every dollar over
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the $765, there is no subsidy. It’s paid dollar for dollar, 100 percent.

There are 10,235 recipients of SAFER in Vancouver. The average monthly income of the SAFER recipient in Vancouver is slightly higher than the overall average. It’s $1,600 a month, or $19,200 a year. That’s important, because they’re over the GIS cutoff, and being over the GIS cutoff, they lose certain entitlements that increases their costs.

The average monthly rent for a SAFER recipient is slightly lower than the average overall rent. It’s $960. It’s important to recognize that that gap will shrink in years ahead as new people move into rental accommodation at higher rates. This reflects that seniors aren’t moving about very much, so they’ve had incremental increases to their rent each year.

I’ll just walk you through somebody in Vancouver on SAFER. Remember, this is a senior, somebody who has no expectation of income increases in the year and no new job coming down the pike. Their income is $1,600 a month. Their rent is $960. Their SAFER subsidy is $237. Their expenses are $1,006, and we’ve highlighted that in our housing report. That’s things like food. They still have a Fair PharmaCare co-payment, even at this income level. And they are over the GIS cutoff, so they don’t qualify for the $45-a-year bus pass. So they have transportation costs as well as other incidentals.

You can see that after the monthly rent and expenses, this senior has a deficit of $129 every month. We can anticipate that some of that deficit is being funded by not addressing some of the other basic needs that they may have.

Then we look at Victoria. Actually, in Victoria, the issue is a little more acute in terms of the shortfall, because the incomes are lower. Rents are lower. Average monthly rent — $867. Average monthly…. The cap is lower in Victoria because it’s captured in the rest of the province. There are only two zones. It’s $667.

There are 1,840 SAFER recipients in Victoria. Their average income is only $1,550 a month, but again, it exceeds the GIS cutoff. Their average monthly rent is $856. You can see, going through the same process, they have a $136 deficit every month.

We really do have an issue in these high rental market communities. Lesser issues in other, more rural, parts of the province. There are different housing issues in more rural parts of the province. But where the rents are closer to the SAFER cap, the subsidy system works quite well.

One of the things I am going to call this committee’s attention to…. In fact, I have been calling it to the attention both of the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Health. Based on some of the data analysis we have through something called the interRAI, which is a composite assessment of our seniors in residential care, there is some evidence to support that residential care is disproportionately used by low-income people and is potentially being used, we certainly believe, in some part — the question is: by how much? — by seniors in high rental cost areas as a housing substitute.

First fact is 15 percent of people in residential care actually do not have care needs that meet the provincial guidelines. Their care needs are low, so why are they there? We can speculate. One reason might be, as we walk it through, it’s a little less expensive.

But here’s what’s really important: 53 percent of our home support clients do meet the provincial guidelines for residential care. So 53 percent, about 16,000 B.C. seniors, are living at home with a degree of complexity and frailty that would allow them to get into residential care.

You can see the incentives are a little bit skewed. If you look at the left-hand column — somebody living independently in Vancouver, compared to residential care — you can see that, in fact, even after paying a client co-pay for their home support, they’re behind by about $489 a month. If they go into residential care, where they simply pay 80 percent of their net income, and we put $200 a month into the comfort fund for incidentals, they are $125 ahead. So $489 in the hole and $125 ahead.

But the one I want to draw your attention to is the line at the bottom, the government subsidy. This government subsidy, by the way, assumes three hours of home support a day. Less than 20 percent of our home support clients get three hours a day. But I’ve put that in there because that’s really the threshold at which a person really would be unequivocally qualifying for residential care.

You can read the other statistics that follow that. But I think from the perspective of my office, what we see is that objectives align — the objective of seniors to live as independently as possible and the objective of the government to honour that but also to be good stewards of money. In this case, we would be better off to provide the $489 shortfall, through some means, and allow that person to live independently versus have them move into residential care, where we would be providing a much higher subsidy.

I think if you look at the people who are in our care facilities — particularly in greater Vancouver, particularly in Vancouver Coastal and, to a lesser degree, in Victoria — you will find that there are clients there for whom it was economic necessity that had them move there. They could no longer afford to live independently.

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

C. James (Deputy Chair): Thank you, and thank you as well for the report and the recommendation. The committee certainly remembers it from last year. I think you’ve identified and laid out well for us the challenges.
[ Page 2690 ]

I’m sure for other MLAs as well, but in Victoria, probably the biggest-growing client coming to our constituency offices is seniors. As many seniors say, they wait until the last minute because they’re proud and they don’t want to come for help. So you know that when the seniors are coming to your office, they really are at the end of their rope. Housing is probably one of the biggest pieces.

Not really a question. I think that the importance of trying to keep people in their existing housing when we have a housing affordability shortage is critical. I’ve certainly found that, in the renovictions issues that we’ve been dealing with in our community, if they can push seniors out, the ability to find something else affordable is impossible for them.

So to be able to provide support for people to remain in existing housing — as you say, where most people want to stay — through increasing the safer opportunities there for them is a much better option than having people who now add to the homeless count or, as you say, move into residential care that don’t necessarily need to.

I. Mackenzie: You’ve hit on something that I think is important. One of the reasons why…. When people look at homeless and over age 65, the numbers are very low. That’s because, I remind people, homeless people who are age 65 and over have residential care. That is a very expensive housing option.

Just a general question I have is: with the phasing out of retirement as we know it and people working longer — for example, I have a friend who’s a principal of a school; he’s 75, happily doing it — what are the implications for seniors with people working longer voluntarily, not out of necessity but just because they enjoy their work and feel satisfied with it? What are the implications for your work and your role?

I. Mackenzie: Well, I think I have often said that the vast majority of seniors actually are doing very well, and they don’t need our help. This is about the group that does need our help.

The percentage of people aged 65 to 71 that are working has doubled in the last three years. It has gone from 12 percent to 24 percent. That may continue to grow. There are a lot of incentives, many of which rest with the federal government. You see a precipitous drop-off at age 71, when you are now compelled to withdraw from your RRSP and to structure your RIF. So whether the federal government wants to tinker with the financial disincentives, through policy they’ve created, to keep working….

I think it only makes sense that we are living longer. We’re healthier longer. That’s the key, I think. The other thing is, for generations coming up, we began our permanent attachment to the labour force, got a job, much later than previous generations. In order to maximize your CPP, you have to have worked…. I think it’s 45 years. It’s at least 40 years. So if you didn’t start working seriously until you were 28 or 30, you are going to work longer.

G. Heyman: Thank you very much for presenting a pretty succinct case for better housing options for seniors at less cost to government.

I attended a presentation by you some months ago in which we were discussing home support and some of the shortfalls in the funding and provisions of home support. I don’t expect you to answer at length now, but if you have some figures that could demonstrate how a certain level of increased investment in home support services could similarly save money for the health system overall and residential care, I think there’s until midnight on October 14 to submit them and have them form part of the record.

I. Mackenzie: I may have that information by then. A full report on home support is coming out from my office later in the year, and we are looking at that. There is data that tells us people are going into residential care, 50 percent of them, without ever having had any home support. That is a question. We are curious as to why that happened, and we will be probing that.

The other thing that preparing this submission and the home support report revealed was…. We are going to be making some recommendations around the co-payment and the funding. Because as you can see, the minute you’re not on GIS, you actually have a co-pay. And $12 a day doesn’t sound like much, but it’s $360 a month if you’re getting daily service. For some people, that will be, actually, an impediment. Then, at the other end, maybe there are people who could contribute more and, under the current system, are not contributing as much as they could. Only 35 percent of our home support clients are not on GIS. That is telling us something.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time to present. Have a good afternoon.

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

1) Wachiay Friendship Centre	Michael Colclough
	Roger Kishi
2) North Island College	John Bowman
3) Vancouver Island University Faculty Association	Kathleen Reed
4) Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices	Gretchen Hartley
	Terri Odeneal
5) North Island Students’ Union	Tony Bellavia
	Andrew Dalton
6) Vancouver Island University Students’ Union	Avery Bonner
7) Private Forest Landowners Association	Rod Bealing
8) Comox Valley Transition Society	Anne Davis
	Heather Ney
9) Campbell River Literacy Association	Anne Boyd
	Kat Eddy
10) Comox Valley Families for Public Education	Shannon Aldinger
	Katherine Tinmouth
11) Comox District Teachers’ Association	Shawn Holland

12) Island Coastal Economic Trust	Line Robert
	Dallas Smith
13) Rob Botterell
14) Office of the Seniors Advocate	Isobel Mackenzie

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