The committee met at 10 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Bob D’Eith. I am the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We are an all-party parliamentary 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, which includes the following three questions: “What are your top priorities to help make life more affordable in British Columbia? What service improvements should be given priority? What are your ideas, approaches and/or priorities for creating good jobs and to build a sustainable economy in every corner of our province?”

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in the communities around the province, and British Columbians can participate in these public hearings in person, via teleconference, video conference or Skype. There are numerous ways that British Columbians can submit their ideas to the committee. They can complete an on-line survey or send us a written, audio or video submission. More information is available at the committee’s website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We invite all British Columbians to contribute to this important process. For those of you in attendance, we thank you for taking the time to participate today. All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly. Just a reminder: the deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2017. The committee must issue a report by November 15, 2017, with its recommendations for the 2018 provincial budget.

Now, today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. All meetings are recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services, and a complete transcript of the proceedings will be posted on the committee’s website. These meetings are also broadcast as live audio via our website.

I’d like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. From my left, if we could start with Stephanie, that would be great.

S. Cadieux: I’m Stephanie Cadieux, MLA for Surrey South.

T. Redies: I’m Tracy Redies. I’m the MLA for Surrey–White Rock.

P. Milobar: I’m Peter Milobar, MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Dan Ashton. I’m the MLA for Penticton, Peachland.

R. Leonard: Good morning. I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard, MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

M. Dean: I’m Mitzi Dean, MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial and Lisa Hill from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Michael Baer, Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat, from Hansard Services, are also here to record proceedings.

I’d like to first call on the Vancouver Public Library board. Kyla, is it just you today?

K. Epstein: Carellin is running late. She apologizes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Well, you may begin.

Budget Consultation Presentations

VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY BOARD

K. Epstein: Thank you for your time, and good morning. My name is Kyla Epstein, and it is my pleasure to serve as the chair of the Vancouver Public Library board as well as a director with the B.C. Public Library Trustees Association.

I’d like to start this morning by recognizing that I’m speaking today on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. I make this acknowledgment in the spirit of being a settler, in the spirit of reconciliation.

I’m here today to speak to you about the importance of B.C.’s public libraries. Of course, I get a few smiles, because of libraries. I have brought for you — and you have in front of you — a copy of the Vancouver Public Library annual report, as well as our strategic plan, which we are in the process of implementing.

I wanted to start by sharing just a few numbers with you that I find particularly interesting. These numbers come from the province. They are based on 2016 statistics. Last year over 60 million visits, in person and virtual, occurred in libraries around B.C. Over 90,000 children participated in the provincewide Summer Reading Club. Over 50 million items were circulated, and 8.6 million Wi-Fi sessions where public computers were accessed. Over 1.6 million people attended programs, and of those programs, 3,000 were aimed at supporting our province’s newcomers.

[10:05 a.m.]

These numbers are certainly impressive, as are the stories behind them, about communities connecting, learning and growing — stories such as newcomers finding welcoming services and support for integration; entrepreneurs accessing research and tools for start-ups; students learning together, whatever their age or background; and families thriving through the joy of reading and attending programs that support childhood and family development.

Public libraries are our communities’ only fee-free centres for lifelong learning, knowledge exchange, cultural exchange and preserving our communities’ memories and history. Regardless of whether we share these ideas through books, films, music, physical objects or digital platforms, public libraries ensure that everyone has access to information, culture and opportunities to create and share their knowledge and ideas.

As Caitlin Moran writes: “Libraries are a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind, hospitals of the soul and theme parks of the imagination.” Or, as I recently heard someone say: “Libraries are the project of building a common life so that people from different experiences encounter one another.”

Public libraries have been and continue to be a force for equity, hope and prosperity across this country and here in B.C. In addition to providing strong collections and programming, libraries around this province are meeting community needs through digital creation spaces and musical instrument lending and are leading the way on matters of justice, such as the work that library staff are doing towards trans inclusion and the operationalization of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action.

Despite the importance of libraries to communities across this province, there was no mention of public libraries in the July 18 mandate letter to Minister Fleming, and the Ministry of Education’s service plan only briefly refers to its responsibilities under the Library Act.

The lack of an annual increase to provincial funding for public libraries since the reduction in 2009 has been a significant challenge for many public libraries, and the VPL board has requested each year since then that the annual provincial funding be indexed to inflation. While libraries do appreciate the stability of grant funding that the government has provided since 2010, the lack of regular increases means that, each year, libraries receive less and less support due to inflationary pressures. After many years of this, libraries are falling behind in their ability to meet the growing needs.

Last year a Ministry of Education strategic plan for public libraries was developed and launched. Public library representatives involved in the provincial strategic plan process noted that the existing operational grants were critical to the basic operations of the library and any new deliverables or outcomes the ministry sought to achieve through the strategic plan would require additional funding.

Despite this assertion, the ministry maintained its position that there would be no additional funding for public libraries and that the new provincial objectives would need to be addressed within existing funding. This will be unachievable for most libraries in this province.

At UBCM this week, two resolutions are being brought forward noting that the decrease in provincial funding has put additional pressure on municipalities and regional districts around the province. The resolutions call on the province to restore funding to 21 percent of the libraries’ total revenue, a measure that is endorsed by the resolutions committee for the consideration of UBCM representatives.

In addition, we on the VPL board, along with trustees from all over the province, have called upon the government to establish provincial policy to support the delivery of public library services in First Nation communities by First Nation communities. Many of these communities have few to no library services, and this gap inhibits opportunities for our peers to learn, discover and create — opportunities that are available to other British Columbians.

Libraries are deeply democratic institutions — one of the first — and as the current president of the B.C. Library Trustees Association, Jerrilyn Schembri, from the Tumbler Ridge library board says, libraries meet community needs that would otherwise remain unmet.

As one of the 700 B.C. public library trustees and as chair of the Vancouver Public library board, I ask the province to provide for annual increases, adjusted for inflation, to provincial funding for public libraries and the reinstatement of the budget line item for B.C. public libraries within the Ministry of Education budget; for the establishment of a provincial policy for the delivery of public library services in First Nation communities by First Nation communities; and for a strong government commitment to connectivity.

[10:10 a.m.]

Connectivity is critical in the digital age, yet adequate broadband is always in short supply and can be cost-prohibitive for many libraries, particularly those in rural and remote communities. We know that public libraries make a positive difference to how British Columbians connect with and experience all the advantages of living in this province. We also know that public libraries significantly contribute to the government’s goals for a strong and sustainable economy, for better services for everyone in B.C. and in making this province more affordable.

I would like to thank you for your consideration that public libraries are more than books on shelves. What we really are is an inclusive and equitable social and learning infrastructure that ensures that everyone in our community has access and opportunities to create and share knowledge, information and culture.

On behalf of the Vancouver Public Library board and the B.C. Library Trustees Association, thank you for your time and attention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great, thank you very much.

I’d like to open it to the panel for questions. Are there are any questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Epstein. One of the things you made a comment on…. I’d just like some clarification about the 21 percent of revenues.

K. Epstein: Each library across the province…. I don’t have the numbers per library. The operating grant, which is about $14 million per year across the province, comes out of the Ministry of Education, goes to the library on…. There’s a formula for calculating how much it is.

R. Leonard: It’s a bit of a mystery, as I understand.

K. Epstein: It is a bit of a mystery. Each library accounts for a different percentage of their revenue. What they’re calling for is reinstatement up to 21 percent. Of course, that will be more for some libraries and less for others.

This comes particularly, of course, from communities that have less ability to raise the kind of revenue they need for the services they need to offer through their municipal tax system.

R. Leonard: As I recall from the ’80s, it was 23 cents on the dollar that came from the province. When I left the library board, with Vancouver Island Regional Library, it was seven cents.

K. Epstein: That’s about right.

R. Leonard: It’s about seven now?

K. Epstein: It certainly hasn’t gone up.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a quick question, back on that same thing — the 21 percent. What was it cut to?

K. Epstein: It depends on which library you’re talking to. It isn’t across the board anymore. Each library is…. For us, it’s only 1 percent at Vancouver Public Library, but it changes, depending on which system. Also, it’s different for the regional districts than it is for municipal districts.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, a second question. I’m just wondering about the strategy in terms of how digitization is affecting everything in everybody’s lives. I remember that when I was at college, we went to a library to research. Now so much of it’s on line. What strategies are the public libraries taking in terms of trying to deal with digitization?

K. Epstein: There are two parts. There is digitization, meaning the move towards moving the collections towards digital. That has a whole bunch of issues — around things like most digital items are licensed, not purchased, so it’s a question around how libraries can afford licensing.

People get very confused when they want to borrow an e-book. They have to place a hold on it and wait for it. You get people saying: “Well, can’t I just have the copy,” but the library doesn’t own it in the way they would own a physical thing.

In that way, the question is around cost for licensing. There are large negotiations happening with publishers — and nationally. The Canadian Federation of Library Associations is involved with that. So there’s getting the content. That is one part of that.

From the user-side point of view, I think what’s happening is…. Again, less and less you might need to say, “Where do I find this piece of information?” but it might be, “Where do I find a piece of reliable information?” which we’re certainly seeing around media literacy, civic literacy, digital literacy.

Then, also, people are turning more and more to the public library for how to use the devices that they need to use to access digital content. VPL just launched an entire series of programming called digital essentials. This is supporting people.

Then there’s the misconception that everybody has access. We certainly know that across the province and across income levels, that is not true. So there is still a huge digital gap for libraries to fill.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I gather, Carellin, that you would like to speak. There are still a few minutes on the clock, so please. You’ve got about three minutes.

C. Brooks: Thank you. I’ll try and cut it down.

My name is Carellin Brooks. I’m a writer, and I’ve served as the regional representative for the B.C.-Yukon region for the Writers Union of Canada. I’m also the chair of the community relations planning and development committee for the Vancouver Public Library Board.

[10:15 a.m.]

I know that my board chair made the acknowledgement that we are meeting on the traditional, unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, but I’d like to also echo that and echo the board’s ongoing commitment to the work of reconciliation.

When I became a board trustee in 2009, I learned that the heaviest users of public libraries are women with young children but that these women almost never serve on boards because they don’t have the time.

I joined the Vancouver Public Library Board for three reasons. First was that, as a writer, I know how important libraries are to writers, especially emerging writers. Secondly, they paid for my child care, and thirdly, my fellow board members, unlike my child, spoke in complete sentences.

The library was incredibly important to me as a young person who already knew that she wanted to be a writer. I was supported by librarians who never blinked an eye when I took out books about teen pregnancy, drug addiction and gang life — none of which ever happened to me. I like to think that the books were kind of prophylactic.

Today Vancouver Public Library, like libraries around the province, continues to nurture emerging creativity and talent with things like the Inspiration Lab, where writers and musicians can record podcasts and web series and songs. We have a local, self-published author collection, and that helps local, self-published authors represent themselves.

We do this with the help of your provincial contribution of $1.3 million a year, which Kyla has already spoken about. But as she said, it’s not indexed to inflation, and as she also said, rural and remote libraries rely even more on provincial funding.

There’s a hugely important role that the library plays in terms of both the city and rural areas of the indoor public space, and it’s most important for people who have nowhere else to go. As Kyla was saying, we help bridge the digital divide by providing computers, Internet, even lending out devices. A lot of times now this is the only way people can access services.

In closing, I just wanted to say that increasing library funding doesn’t just benefit libraries themselves. It also benefits all those who rely on them — youngsters reading inappropriate books, immigrant Canadians who are learning languages and preserving their heritage languages, folks coming in out of the cold and writers who tell the stories that move us to action.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks.

Dan, you had a question?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation — both of you. Just quickly, fiction or non-fiction? I’m looking at the four books that you’ve written.

C. Brooks: Do you want to know if they’re fiction or non-fiction?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Yeah.

C. Brooks: I like to call some of them fiction-ish. One of them is about rain in Vancouver. We all know that that’s not a super fictional topic.

K. Epstein: Just for your reference, the resolutions are B60 and C4, at UBCM.

T. Redies: One question. Just a little bit more colour around what we could be doing in First Nations communities with libraries. I don’t know how many communities actually have libraries. What are your thoughts on that front?

K. Epstein: It is certainly not for me to speak on behalf of First Nations communities, as I know you wouldn’t expect me to. What I will say is that the Library Act does not conceptualize a solution for First Nations communities. The act very specifically speaks to regional districts and municipalities, but it doesn’t provide a concept for what it might mean for First Nations communities. The act is very short. It’s very quick to read. I have a copy of it in my bag.

I think it would be, actually, a very concrete thing to at least have the act conceptualize what that might look like, very broadly, and like municipalities and regional districts, let them then imagine what that might be in terms of service or operations. But the act doesn’t even prescribe that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. Thanks for coming in.

All right. We’d like to call Robin Tavender.

If you would like to present, please go ahead.

ROBIN TAVENDER

R. Tavender: Thank you, sir.

Well, I guess I’ll begin today…. It has become fashionable. I went to school just before they started teaching about land claims and all this, but because I said it last year, I’ll repeat that I’d be what you’d call a non-status Indian or native American. I don’t fit into one of the traditional boxes that the Crown has gone out of its way to define. I think that’s important when anyone’s suggesting anything about land claims — that we don’t necessarily even have all the pieces on the board quite yet.

[10:20 a.m.]

In any case, I’d like to get right to it and say that I’m here today to talk about something of some urgency. It’s not always regarded as a provincial matter, but I think it is. That’s the war on drugs.

We hear the phrase often enough that maybe it’s just a byword. But we should think about what it says. It says that there is a war. If it is a war on drugs, we should admit that a state of war exists in British Columbia, and casualties are piling up.

I heard last year that a morgue got so full that it made it into the media — that the coroner was complaining about the surplus of bodies. I’m not trying to be macabre or anything about this, but that’s a very serious situation because it shows that the normal, civilian traffic in bodies was much higher than expected. That lends empirical credence to the finding that there’s a state of war or some other sort of emergency that’s really creating a very, very dangerous situation.

Of course, I think we all know that you’d simply have to walk several blocks to the east on lunch break to see some of the fallout from that war. I think that’s the reality here.

Many in universities, government and civil society have demanded the legalization and decriminalization of drugs. Decriminalization immediately, especially for simple possession, to end the stigma, and legalization — this is where the province comes in — to ensure a safe supply of recreational or non-medical drugs. If the government regulates purity and dosage and makes drugs available, government will achieve substantially similar public policy goals, as with the current regime, but with a much smaller risk to the lives of users.

Now, there is some question — it’s a legal question — as to who has control of the pharmacies, as it were. But I think there is some good evidence that in 1891, the province asserted its control over pharmacy with a Pharmacy Act that regulated the practice of pharmacy for the first time within corporate towns in this province.

Since 1891, I think it’s been fairly clear and clearly established that the province has at least a concurrent jurisdiction over drugs and that it’s not an exclusive federal bailiwick. I don’t accede to the argument that the entire country is now one large airport. I don’t believe in that, although I know that’s the view some people would have in terms of drug regulation.

Let’s look at the pace we move on this. The topic of marijuana legalization has exercised the Western mind for 50 years. Now, that’s a long time, and the federal government is starting to make progress on that. But if that’s the empirical amount of time it takes to get movement on one substance that’s arguably more benign than many of the substances that are causing the serious life safety issues, I don’t know that we can wait for federal or international organizations to come around to what is reasonable. I don’t know that that’s possible.

The requirement is some new distribution body that may distribute and manufacture drugs for use within British Columbia. It could in theory be similar to the liquor control branch, a drug control branch with some sort of similar enabling statute — creating, under provincial authority, a market in non-prescription drugs, a system of licensure for private companies to provide products to the drug control branch similar to the liquor distribution model. It could help with supply issues, or, perhaps, something involving licensed wholesalers. Those are bureaucratic details, but I think that the status quo, which leads to such manifest injury and death in the community, is untenable, and something really must be done to redress this failed model of regulation.

I think it’s that necessity that justifies decriminalization and legalization — the necessity of people protecting their own lives, and communities protecting the lives of their members and provinces and all these other political subdivisions that have a duty to protect the interests of their members.

Nothing will adequately reduce the casualties other than a disregarding of the prohibitory statutes, and I think there’s also a constitutional argument for that because of the clear violation of the right to life and security of drug users, who are exposed to the risk of poisonous street drugs.

The counter argument that people choose to use drugs is not a legal conclusion; it’s an expert opinion. There are other expert opinions that suggest people do not really choose to use drugs, but their historical conditions caused them to use drugs — their environment, not their nature, if you will.

For example, one might use drugs because of an old football injury, or, actually, some may simply enjoy the feeling the drugs provide. I don’t think that a puritanical fixation with other people’s enjoyment is a prudent basis for law.

So we are left with some fraction of users who use because of old football injuries or histories, and some people who use because they enjoy the drug experience. A subset will develop a trouble with drugs, but it is very difficult to tell how large the actual using population is and so how common troubles are. But we do know that the statutes make that troubled minority — or group, however large it is — very much at risk.

[10:25 a.m.]

Could I have an indication of how much time I have?

B. D’Eith (Chair): You are at five minutes and 46 seconds.

R. Tavender: Oh, thank you. Okay.

There’s a substantial risk of injury to drug users in the community. I think this is agreed upon by all reasonable people. I think it’s also agreed upon that the risk of injury is — not wholly…. I’m not trying to sit here and be an apologist for carefree drug use as a lifestyle choice or anything like that, but I am saying that the risks of prohibition far outweigh any public policy aim that’s achieved through the prohibition.

If I were a judge, I would declare that the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the B.C. pharmacy regulations have no force or effect with respect to the drugs — especially morphine, because it seems that if we had the morphine that’s already available within the pharmacy system made available to addicts, that would really substantially reduce the risk of the harm of injecting street drugs. This isn’t something that I have personal experience with, but I understand that addicts who prefer opiates or are addicted to opiates can be maintained on morphine. This was a practice for some time in medicine, indefinitely.

So there’s that. The medical profession — if they’re not doing that, isn’t it up to members of the community to do something about that or the province to undertake that duty and institute a new regulatory body, if the College of Physicians and Surgeons won’t take that up?

If were a judge, I would declare the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act no force or effect and the B.C. pharmacy regulation no force or effect. With respect to possession, I would not suspend my declaration. With respect to production and trafficking, I would, for eight months or so, suspend to allow government time to implement a regulatory framework. If, after that time, government had not complied but had least made substantial efforts towards compliance with the good-faith goal of rapid completion, I would entertain granting extensions but not otherwise.

There are simply too many casualties to accept that government is not compelled to act, and the casualty rate is simply staggering. Government has a duty to protect citizens, and the failed drug statutes endanger people. That’s my view on that.

Briefly, just as an end here, I’d like to turn to social assistance payments. It is actually the issue, and those sort of progressive social policy issues, which I’d much rather be discussing in 2017 rather than people dying of being poisoned from injecting street drugs. I’d really much rather be talking about progressive social issues than people dying from injecting poisoned substances that they acquire on the street because there’s no legal alternative.

I’ll turn to social assistance payments briefly. I would like to continue my finding from several years that the social assistance rate is too low by at least the earnings exemptions. It has been raised to $12,000 per year, I understand, this year. Therefore, the social assistance rate is too low by at least $12,000 per year.

This clearly discriminates against disabled people who are unable to work, because they are given an exemption but not given the means to enjoy it. This insufficiency violates the rights of disabled people who collect social assistance, as I have stated in my prior appearances before the other incarnations of this committee — on Monday, September 23, 2013; Tuesday; October 14, 2014; Wednesday, October 14, 2015; and September 19, 2016.

Those transcripts are available in the Hansard, and I would ask members to review them. But the basic thrust of my argument is that it’s well agreed that the social assistance rate is too low, but determining how low it should be or high it should be is a very difficult task, given the widely different opinions on what constitutes independent living.

Thank you for your time, and good luck as a new government.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Tavender.

Are there any questions from the committee?

Okay, seeing none, thank you very much for your time.

We’ll take a short recess.

The committee recessed from 10:29 a.m. to 10:32 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up is Heritage B.C. and Paul Gravett.

Thank you very much for coming.

HERITAGE B.C.

P. Gravett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for this opportunity to speak to you this morning.

Heritage B.C. is the only not-for-profit organization supporting the province’s heritage sector through training and skills development, capacity-building in heritage planning, and funding through the heritage legacy fund. As an organization of provincial scope, we recognize that our members and much of our heritage occupy the lands and territories of the province’s Indigenous peoples.

Now in its 36th year, Heritage B.C. continues to evolve, transforming our role with communities and our relationship with the province to ensure the relevancy of our organization and the vitality of the heritage sector. A cornerstone of our work is the administration of the heritage legacy fund, which was established in 2005 by the then government with the purpose to offer financial support for the conservation of heritage throughout the province. Nearly $2 million in funding has been directed to museums, heritage societies, local governments and First Nations.

Conservation may be a standard way of describing maintenance and preservation of heritage, but it does not readily convey the impactful benefits of managing our heritage.

The Northern Pacific Cannery National Historic Site, a legacy of B.C.’s fisheries identity, has been rejuvenated through extensive ongoing conservation. Today this site is a key part of Port Edward’s local cultural landscape and an economic driver for this area. Another direct result of this conservation work has been the creation of jobs in a remote northern community and the development of a workforce with specialized, transferable skills.

The rehabilitation of Rocheleau Cottage in the historic francophone community of Maillardville today retains its heritage value, another unique feature of B.C.’s identity, through a conservation project that also added much-needed family housing and densification in an urban area.

In Dunster, southeast of Prince George, with a population of 660, a train station has been brought back to life by tradespeople and volunteers to provide a local hub for commerce and community.

These are three examples that highlight some of the benefits of heritage conservation. Conservation goes beyond the rehabilitation of old buildings to regeneration of legacies and the revitalization of communities. Heritage conservation means jobs and economies, skills and training, and identity and community.

[10:35 a.m.]

Recognizing these benefits, we can say heritage not only looks backward, but through investments to conserve, it also leads us forward to consider new ways to develop and engage vital communities. These are the core values of our work at Heritage B.C.

Another cornerstone of our work is the partnership with the heritage branch of the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. For the branch, Heritage B.C. undertakes several initiatives each year that support the sector and help the province in achieving its goals of its heritage policy.

An example is the capacity and economic surveys. The result of this work — the “Heritage Conservation in B.C.” fact sheet — supports the government in monitoring activities in communities, measuring vitality of the heritage sector and assessing its own strategic initiatives.

We estimate that heritage-related tourism brings into the province nearly $32 million annually. This, in turn, generates nearly $57 million in further spending and contributions, including $27 million towards B.C.’s GDP. A further and additional $5.5 million is transferred to taxes on a municipal and provincial and federal level.

Again, heritage is more than the past. It is woven inevto the socioeconomic fabric of our communities. Heritage B.C. applauds the current government’s commitment to increased funding for the arts. Today we are here to ask the government to broaden that crucial mandate and to include the province’s heritage, helping Heritage B.C. and communities to protect and conserve our province’s historic and cultural legacies and to foster the well-known and well-documented benefits.

There is evidence of the real need for this support. The heritage legacy fund receives funding requests four times more than the available funds. The funding program British Columbia — Canada 150, which supports the museum and heritage sectors and which we help to administer, distributed $7.4 million. This has been an extraordinary boost to every region of the province, including 35 First Nations, and related projects. However, the requests for support for this one-time program was $23 million — three times the available funds.

These programs expose the extraordinary need for support, still unmet, that is found in every region of the province. The harsh truth is that only a fraction of the communities received funding for their infrastructure programs.

We’re asking the provincial government to expand its funding mandate and to be a visible, active contributor to our heritage sector, to help British Columbians rehabilitate old buildings while strengthening the social, economic and cultural fabric of our communities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Mr. Gravett.

Any questions?

M. Dean: Thank you so much for your presentation.

I’m just wondering. Can you educate us a little bit on the trends that you’ve observed, say over the last decade, of provincial support for Heritage B.C.?

P. Gravett: I’ll say first that heritage is changing. The approach to heritage is changing. It once was very much about saving a building. Sometimes it might be just saving any old building. It’s very much values-based now. It’s the values of the heritage of what it meant to the people when the structure, in that particular case, was built.

But it also means a lot about the values of the community, as it is today. What does that building represent to that community? A very good example is a community in eastern B.C. that was moved when a dam had been put in the Columbia Basin. They lost their heritage. But today, they’re trying to regain it in an intangible way, but it’s still so important to people about place and who they are in the history of their town and their community.

M. Dean: But financially, has there been a trend in how much support the province has given to heritage activities?

P. Gravett: It would be decreasing.

J. Brar: So you’re asking for, I think, the extension of the one-time funding, which was $23 million? If you can explain that a little bit more. And also, if that is extended, what will you be able to achieve by that?

P. Gravett: The province recently had a program of $7.4 million. That was with the B.C. Museums Association, or administered by the B.C. Museums Association and Heritage B.C. It was open to museums, heritage organizations and similar types of organizations.

[10:40 a.m.]

To a large extent, it was for infrastructure — so built heritage, the buildings. But much more, it was about telling our stories. It allowed people to put up signage to convey the information that the heritage represented, as an example.

These are the things that are sorely missing in the province — an ongoing fund. The fund that we administer on an annual basis is really quite small. It’s about $90,000 a year. You can imagine that that doesn’t go very far in terms of restoring a building, helping societies restore, to put back into place something that’s important to their community. What we need to see is a larger ongoing investment in the province.

J. Brar: Is it capital funding you are asking for or also the operating funding?

P. Gravett: It’s almost like a trick question. Funding is needed in all areas. I’ll be really honest. I may be just leaning a little more towards built heritage, but there’s the interpretive side of heritage, which is more on the museum side. There is organizational support. We know that a lot of organizations in small communities struggle. They want to conserve their heritage. They want to rebuild their towns. They don’t know how to do it. They’re trying to find ways to go about doing this.

In heritage, there are standards. There’s something called the standards and guidelines. They are quite important. Heritage professionals will know about them. But volunteers on the ground will not necessarily know about them. They need help in these areas.

T. Redies: Thanks very much for your presentation. I’m just trying to understand your budget and the linkages between what you’re spending and the economic multipliers. It looks like there’s about $57 million in economic multipliers that comes out of your investments. Am I right? It looks like it’s about $12 million a year, between government funding and funding from private citizens, that you’re spending on an annual basis. What is your annual budget?

P. Gravett: What you see before you, the fact sheet that was distributed…. The baseline information is coming from local governments and regional governments, and this is a commission by the provincial government. We’re looking at what is being spent in these communities. I will say that this is not looking at what a society of volunteer organizations might be spending, although there can be relationships between a municipal government and a not-for-profit government.

It’s looking primarily at their investments. We talk to Stats Canada and B.C. Stats, and we look at ways of extrapolating out what the impacts are and what the implications are, related to that. We’re just now working on the 2016 survey. It’ll take us another month or two before it’s finished. We do it on an annual basis.

We feel good about this. But I will just put out that this is not money that Heritage B.C. is spending. This is money that’s being spent throughout the province. Depending on the information…. If I may, very quickly, in the right-hand corner, at the bottom, there’s a number, $4.28 million. That was a response from 52 local and regional governments. So that just represents those 52.

Did I answer your question?

T. Redies: I think so. But it seems to me that you’re investing, or the government or various communities are investing, around $12 million a year and the economic multiplier is about $57 million. Is that correct?

P. Gravett: There are many multipliers that are going into it. And as I say, we check with the people who know the multipliers, who work on those. In fact, it took months for us to put this particular one together to ensure that we were telling the story as accurately as possible. But it relates to…. Money in can also be additional money spent, and then there’s what is called induced spending. I might be a builder on a site. I go and rent an apartment. I go to stores, and it starts to spin out into the community. So there are different levels of spending that occur as a result of the initial work.

[10:45 a.m.]

S. Cadieux: I’m going to put you on the spot, Paul. Not to feel bad — I’ll do it to others throughout the day as a part of this process. I’ve been here before in a different capacity, the same one you’re in today. I have presented to this committee.

In general, people will come today and throughout the process with a lot of ideas about how to spend more money. And the government, at the end of the day, has to determine what the priorities for spending are. That also means what the priorities for spending decreases are or the priorities for additional taxation or revenue measures, because there are only so many dollars.

From your perspective as a taxpayer or as an organization, from whichever perspective you prefer to answer the question…. I’d like to ask the other side of the equation. A valid request of additional funds into an area that I think most of us both enjoy and see as important…. Where would the dollars, in your mind, come from? Where is government spending too much money…

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re going to run out of time.

S. Cadieux: Sorry.

…or where would the additional revenue come from?

B. D’Eith (Chair): In 15 seconds.

P. Gravett: In 15 seconds. Yes, that does put me on the spot, doesn’t it?

I would have to decline where I feel the government spends too much money. That’s beyond my purview and expertise, quite frankly. To be quite honest, as a citizen, I don’t have an opinion on that. We live in a great province with lots of wonderful services.

I know this may look self-serving, coming here. And Ms. Cadieux, we met once, on the arts side, a number of years ago. These things are important to me as an individual. You asked me as a citizen of the province.

I spent a month in Europe just recently, and cultural tourism is what’s important to me. I see how cities and little places, tiny little places, are managing their heritage and how exciting they are, and I don’t see that on that level here in Canada — not just in B.C. but in Canada.

This is something that we have once. You don’t rebuild heritage. You have it, you retain it, or you lose it. You don’t recreate heritage. It is one of those things about heritage. So it is there for us to retain, or we decide to lose it without the investment. It’s quite a simple equation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very, very much for your time.

P. Gravett: Sorry I didn’t answer your question.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you everyone, and have a good day.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Paul. See you.

Okay, we can call A.J. Brown and Barbara Brown. We also have Farah Ladha as the interpreter. Thank you very much for coming. Are you ready?

[10:50 a.m.]

A.J. BROWN, BARBARA BROWN

B. Brown: Yes, we’re fine, thank you.

Well, good morning, everyone. Once again, A.J. and I are sitting before you, and we really welcome this opportunity to express our point of view about the PWD and CPP disability clawback.

This year, we’re going to try and bring this important issue to you using a different point of view. But before we start, I want to explain that our communications today are enabled using an ASL language interpreter. Our interpreter today is Farah Ladha.

My name is Barbara Brown, and I’m the mother of Amy Jane, who prefers to be known as A.J. A.J. is an accomplished artist and a graduate of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., with a BA degree in literature and music. A.J. is also an author of two short biographies telling the story of some of the most difficult times in her life.

A.J. is the face in front of the story about the B.C. government clawback of her Canada Pension Plan disability pension, and I’ll call that the CPPD from now on. This happens because A.J. receives the B.C. persons with disability pension, or the PWD assistance.

A.J. was born in Vancouver and lives with the consequences of a birth accident that left her profoundly deaf and with a progressive neurological disease that mimics cerebral palsy. A.J. also lives with the after-effects of recurring surgeries to correct scoliosis, a curvature of her spine.

I’m speaking for A.J. today as her progressive disease has robbed her of her voice. As a teenager, she was a ballet student with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. However, A.J. will welcome questions from you after our presentation as she uses a special program on her iPad to communicate, or ASL or email.

It took five years, but following graduation from Gallaudet, A.J. found a job that she worked at for eight years, paying taxes and contributing to her CPP plan. Fatigue and the progressive nature of her disease eventually made working an impossibility. A.J. applied and qualified for CPPD and the PWD assistance. Vancouver Sun journalist Stephen Hume has written several articles about A.J., in 2016 — about her life as a disabled person living on PWD and the effect of the CPPD clawback on her quality of life.

The numbers that I quote here are 2016 numbers. A.J. subsists on federal and provincial disability benefits. With no clawbacks, these benefits would total $1,450 a month — $544 from CPPD and $906 from PWD. But B.C. reduces its payment by the amount A.J. receives federally, and instead, her PWD assistance is just $342, reducing her monthly income to $866.

After deductions for rent in subsidized housing, A.J. is left with $546 on which to live, half the monthly income average in Botswana. People in B.C. are expected to live on Third World incomes in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Last year I spoke on the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. I spoke on the outcome of the accessibility 2025 summit and its disability consultation report. I quoted from the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission and noted that half of the complaints they receive relate to disability-based discrimination.

As I reminded us all at the same time, at the international level, Canada has ratified seven principle human rights conventions and covenants, including the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Last year this committee made a recommendation based on our presentation and those of others making due on PWD with the clawback. Recommendation No. 41 says: “Recognize Canada Pension Plan benefits as earned income for those accessing disability and income assistance.” The key here is that earned income below a certain level is exempt from the clawback policy. In A.J.’s case, her monthly income would rise, in 2016 figures, to $1,450.

[10:55 a.m.]

Last year I explained that deteriorating health conditions had sent us back for more specialist consultations, and A.J. had been advised to begin physiotherapy and other costly regimes to support her during this period of decline. The monthly cost would have been about equal to her $546 income. It was an impossible situation.

Reading recommendation No. 41 simply ignited our resolve to continue appealing the CPPD clawback discrimination. On April 4, 2017, A.J. and I made a presentation at the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s election accountability assembly. I’ve included that as appendix A.

You can see us there if you visit the MVA website. Both John Horgan and Andrew Weaver attended this meeting, and more than 800 people represented 57 civil society institutions who work together for a common good. The 800 gathered together that night represented 200,000 people in Vancouver and 700,000 people across the province. The audience had been told to not clap or make noise after the eight presentations given to the NDP and Green Party leaders. A.J. received a standing ovation following our address.

Mr. Horgan and Dr. Weaver, separately, stood in centre stage, hand over heart, looking straight at A.J. in the front row, declaring: “If elected, I will halt the CPPD clawback.” We did our part. We elected them. Our question today is: when will the clawback end?

Now, I sent over a revised page 4, and evidently, you did not receive it. But it did go over on Sunday. This is our new perspective, a promise to halt the clawback. There may be a very simple way for the clawback to end. A good friend, Robin Tavender, took the time to research B.C.’s CPPD clawback policy. He found that CPPD recipients, when requested by the minister, must complete a Consent to Deduction and Payment Under the CPP Plan. To me, this reads: “B.C. may deduct, if the minister directs it.” Could the minister just stop directing that such consent be signed?

Mr. Horgan has options to put this matter right: designate CPPD pensions as earned income, giving recipients a ceiling for their income that is exempt from clawback; mandate the minister to stop directing that the consent to deduction, etc., be signed by PWD recipients; and finally, fulfil his promise to halt the clawback as he sees fit, but fulfil the promise made publically to more than 800 people on April 4 this year.

As a disabled person, A.J. is a protected person under the charter’s laws. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that section 15 of the charter not only requires governments to refrain from discriminating against protected groups but may also require governments to adopt positive measures to ensure equality or adopt positive measures of protection from discrimination by others.

In other words, governments must go beyond the basics and adopt measures necessary to address the needs of disadvantaged groups. We’re both very grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Ms. Brown. I appreciate it.

Questions?

M. Dean: Thank you for coming and presenting. You spoke earlier on about numbers related to 2016. Have you revised your calculations, given the promise of the new government with the increase in earnings exemption?

B. Brown: No, I haven’t. I can tell you why.

[11:00 a.m.]

A.J. is an artist and sells some of her arts and her art cards. At the local social service or social assistance office, A.J. is in the work group. We’ve been there two or three times to ask for A.J. to be transferred into the broader group so that she can receive more health care benefits and we can appeal certain decisions that have been made. So far that has been refused.

So A.J. was really entitled to more benefits than she’s getting, but so far we have not been able to access them. We had a meeting last week with PLAN. We now have a plan to go about getting the change made.

J. Brar: Thanks for the presentation. I just wanted to know if you have the numbers. How many people are in this situation?

B. Brown: I have tried to find that number out, but it’s very difficult. It took Robin quite some time to find out the policies around the clawback. I, myself, couldn’t access them, even though I spent a long, long time going through government documents. It’s difficult. People do throw the need for confidentiality up, even though we’re not asking for names or addresses or individual incomes. We just want a group number.

I was at a meeting with our federal minister when Carla Qualtrough was the minister of disabilities. She’s now changed. She was going to try and access some of that information for me, but so far I haven’t heard from her.

R. Leonard: Thank you again for your presentation. I really appreciate you being the voice of your daughter and for the communication ability to bring her into the room and into the conversation.

I’m finding it a little complicated. It sounds like there are two streams: persons with disabilities who work versus persons with disabilities who are unable to work. Obviously, as you’ve indicated, there’s a history. Sometimes you’re in one stream, and sometimes you’re in another stream, too — if you’re not able to earn income and pay into CPP and then to be in a place where you are not able to.

I guess the complication that I’m starting to struggle with is that…. I know that our government has increased the income for persons with disabilities by $100 and also created the additional $200 in earnings exemption. But there are some other complications that I….

B. Brown: I think I misspoke. A.J. is in the PWD working category because she can work as a PWD recipient, not prior to becoming disabled. At the present time, there are two streams: PWD people who work and earn income following their application for social assistance and those who don’t work after they receive PWD.

R. Leonard: Right. Okay, the complication to that, too, is the ability to access certain benefits. For instance, I’m assuming physiotherapy access, pharmaceutical access is complicated by being a productive member in our society and earning income. Am I getting into that?

B. Brown: Yes. We discovered a new program. It’s not a new program; it’s a provincial program. I want to call it CSIL. Is that right?

S. Cadieux: Yes.

B. Brown: A.J. is fully entitled to be in it, and it will give her home care assistance. But if she’s in the working group, with PWD, I can’t access it, so I have to get her out of that.

Now she has no fine coordination, so cooking is a real difficulty. She has rods from her neck to her hipbones. She can’t bend. She’s not flexible. Doing housework and keeping her place looking even half decent is impossible for her. She needs some home assistance.

[11:05 a.m.]

We were so frustrated, we’ve been starting to look for something like assisted-living accommodation. But A.J.’s independent. She goes to Emily Carr. She has a huge group of friends. She’s a volunteer with the CPP people. She’s been a volunteer with several disabled groups. She’s not ready for that.

R. Leonard: She’s not ready to be put into a box, which is what our system seems to do.

B. Brown: No. So she needs this CSIL program desperately.

I even offered to sell my place and try and get in a three-bedroom co-op. She would have a bedroom, I would have a bedroom, and a third bedroom would be her studio. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to live with Mom. She’s 52. I’m 80. You know, like this is not our best option.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was wondering…. We’re actually a little bit over time, but I did want to give A.J. a chance to say something. I’d love to hear from her.

If there is anything that you’d like to add to the dialogue, we’d love to hear your voice.

B. Brown: It takes a little bit of time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine. We’ve got some extra time here.

A. Brown: On Facebook, I’m in a group that tossed around the idea of doing a class action suit to halt the clawbacks. I wonder if that has the power to give us back our money since the clawbacks started. But fortunately for the government, none of us can afford a lawyer.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And legal aid is a whole other issue, isn’t it?

B. Brown: Oh yes, we’ve tried that. The line is to your right.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much to both of you. Dan Ashton did want to say one last comment.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Barbara and A.J., I apologize. I just had to deal with an issue where I come from. I apologize for not hearing your presentation. I’ll double-check it with Hansard.

I just want to thank you. I remember it from before and some of the concerns you had brought forward.

B. Brown: Yes, I recognize you.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): If I remember…. A.J., is this correct? Is this “thank you”?

A. Brown: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much.

B. Brown: You’re welcome.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, both of you. We really appreciate you spending the time to come and talk to us again.

A. Brown: Yes, thank you, and it was nice to see you all again.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic.

I’d like to call a ten-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 11:08 a.m. to 11:20 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up is the Simon Fraser Student Society. We have Hangue Kim and Prabjit Bassi.

Go ahead.

SIMON FRASER STUDENT SOCIETY

P. Bassi: Good afternoon, hon. Chair and respected committee. Welcome to SFU. My name is Prab Bassi, and I am a student at Simon Fraser University. I’m also the elected vice-president, external relations, for the Simon Fraser Student Society.

H. Kim: Hello, everyone. My name is Hangue Kim. I currently serve as the president of the Simon Fraser Student Society. Both of us are here to represent the 29,000 undergraduate students at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver.

We’d first like to begin by thanking the government of British Columbia for the following investments: the $1.98 billion for advanced education; $2.6 billion in capital spending over three years by post-secondary institutions across the province; the $24.5 billion in support of infrastructure investments for hospitals, post-secondary, transit and roads, over the course of the fiscal year; the U-Pass B.C. program; maintaining the tuition limit policy and limiting increases for tuition and mandatory fees at 2 percent per year; and the $90 million investment for the energy systems and environmental engineering program by the federal and provincial governments.

The economic value of investments made into post-secondary education can’t be discounted. By 2024, retirements and economic growth are predicted to open up one million jobs. More than three-quarters of job openings will require some type of post-secondary education.

Now that the provincial government has realized a $2.8 billion surplus for the fiscal year, we’d like to recommend that the committee take the following recommendations into consideration.

P. Bassi: Our first recommendation is the creation of a needs-based financial aid program for low-income students attending a B.C. post-secondary institution. B.C. is the only province in Canada which does not have a needs-based grants program. A needs-based grants program is granted to students based on their financial need, as opposed to merit needs, which are given through scholarships.

Since needs-based programs do not exist in B.C., many students from lower-income families need to take out student loans to fund their education. Students who have to take out loans to pay for their education start out in the labour market with huge amounts of debt.

Ontario is actually a prime example of a province that made average college and university tuition free for low-income students by providing needs-based grants. By providing the fundamental right to education to students who cannot afford to pay for post-secondary education, the government of Ontario has opened an opportunity for the province’s economy to grow and, at the same time, has allowed students to gain necessary skills for the labour market.

Likewise, the province of New Brunswick introduced the new tuition access bursary to provide upfront financial assistance to low-income students as well. As I mentioned earlier, B.C. remains an outlier — the only province without a needs-based grants program, where students receive the lowest proportion of non-repayable student assistance in the country.

Although we recently received news that the B.C. government has waived tuition fees for students in care, we are still creating the most indebted generation in Canada who are living in the most expensive housing market. If the B.C. government wants to lay the foundations for growing a robust and diverse economy, it should take a leaf from the government of Ontario and other provinces and create a provincial system of upfront, needs-based grants to support low-income students in achieving a post-secondary education.

H. Kim: Our second recommendation is to demonstrate that funding for the U-Pass B.C. program has been allocated beyond April 2018 as a long-term priority for increasing student affordability. The U-Pass is used by tens of thousands of students at ten institutions in Metro Vancouver and has been a successful program in increasing affordability for students, reinforcing the transit culture and reducing the frequency of driving to campus.

[11:25 a.m.]

The U-Pass allows students to save over $1,500 a year by paying only $41 a month. Even though rates have increased year after year, the most recent U-Pass referendum held at SFU in spring 2016 received a 94 percent approval rate among undergraduate students. It’s arguably the most popular service provided by the student society and the B.C. government to students attending university.

The U-Pass provides a critical service to SFU students in the Metro Vancouver region, as it allows them not only to attend classes at all three campuses, but it is also an essential service for the students who use the pass to not only attend classes but to commute to work and other activities. Even today, myself, Prab, Jeffrey and Jamie used that U-Pass to get to the consultations here today. So we definitely appreciate the service.

The U-Pass program, again, provides a critical service to post-secondary students in Metro Vancouver, and it’s very vital that the provincial government commits to continuing this program.

P. Bassi: Moving on, our final recommendation, but equally important, is to provide targeted funding for post-secondary institutions for mental health support services for students.

Student mental health and well-being is fundamental to academic success and professional development. The B.C. government spends about $1.5 billion per year to fund mental health and substance use programs and services and has planned to invest $5 million over three years to support the development of mental health initiatives to post-secondary institutions. However, the details of the three-year $5 million investments have not been disclosed as of yet. The SFSS recommends to proportionately distribute the $5 million.

Furthermore, it is essential for us to recognize that the average age of SFU students is 21 years old and almost 70 percent of serious mental health issues emerge before the age of 25, meaning that post-secondary students are at the core age of dealing with mental health issues.

The Simon Fraser Student Society conducted multiple surveys over the course of the previous two years, and we learned that over 76 percent of our respondents have considered mental health very important to them. I would also like to point out that 71 percent are placing mental health at the same level of importance as their physical health.

The most surprising statistic to me, personally, is that 97.2 percent of respondents either agree or strongly agree that our society is prejudiced towards mental health.

Also, since 2011, we’ve seen a 194 percent increase in claims for psychology and counselling services that we provide through our healthcare. Students have specifically commented that there’s a lack of advocacy for mental health disabilities. Students urge that suicidal students on campus need more support and that these cases should be taken seriously.

The SFSS highly encourages the government to strategically allocate funds across post-secondary campuses proportionately and highly encourages the government to openly destigmatize mental illness by creating a mandate for every university to create a multi-year comprehensive mental health strategy.

H. Kim: We’d like to thank you for your time today and for giving us this opportunity to speak to the Finance Committee. We now open the floor to any questions that you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much. I will now open the floor to questions that you may have.

H. Kim: Oh, sorry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s okay.

J. Brar: Thanks a lot for your well-prepared, well-done presentation.

As a member of this committee and, of course, this whole committee, one of the challenges that we are going to face at the end of the day…. We are going to, of course, see a lot of presentations like you have made to us for funding. At the end of the day, there will be limited money, and we have to, of course, select what the best ones are for the people of British Columbia, right?

You have made three recommendations. I am going to give you a quick assignment. If you have to select one out of that, which would that be?

P. Bassi: While creating this report, I did a lot of research. We had multiple issues that did come to us where students openly discussed the housing market and also the different maintenance of SFU and then these three. So I decided — and as a team, also — that we would stick to three.

[11:30 a.m.]

I think that the most important, as of right now, is the needs-based financial aid program, since that is nonexistent for B.C. Considering the fact that our housing market is extremely high and students are the most indebted generation of all time, as of right now, a needs-based financial grant program would really, really help low-income students to achieve a post-secondary education, which they may not even consider — entering a post-secondary institution — because of their financial status.

That’s one key consideration that I would really hope that all of you take into consideration.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a quick question for you. In terms of the granting, did the students talk about student loans at all — the idea of, perhaps, interest-free student loans instead of a grant program — and what merits that might have versus a granting program? I’d just like to hear what your thoughts are on that.

P. Bassi: For the needs-based grants program, we actually did have an agreement with almost every institution in B.C. to lobby for the needs-based grants program to you and to the rest of the government. We did discuss the difference between student loan interest and the needs-based grants.

Personally, I heard that the government is looking to reduce or even take away interest from student loans. As of right now, we were trying to focus on creating a mechanism where students — who would not even consider post-secondary institutions because of their financial status — have some sort of incentive. That, essentially, is free tuition. That looks appealing to students who might be feeling discouraged to go and complete their degree, as opposed to taking out a student loan.

That was one topic that we discussed at our board table. Other than that, Hangue, do you have anything to add?

H. Kim: I think you hit the spot right there. No.

P. Bassi: I hope that answered….

J. Brar: Are there any numbers as to what percentage of students would be suitable or qualified for the needs-based grants program?

P. Bassi: That would be up to the discretion of how the program is even created.

J. Brar: So where is the cutoff, then?

P. Bassi: I personally do not…. Yeah, I don’t have the knowledge in that.

M. Dean: Thank you both for your presentation. I really appreciated hearing from you — and the work that’s gone into it, as well.

It’s not a question, but I just wanted to make sure you understood that the $2.8 billion surplus for this fiscal year is already accounted for. Legally, it has to be used to pay down the debt of the province. As Jagrup was saying earlier on, the presentations now are actually informing the budget for next year. So there will be choices to be made about how the limited resources can be allocated.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate your coming in, the time you took and, obviously, the lot of thought that you put into this.

All right. I’m calling the School of Communication, Capilano University — Dr. Michael Markwick.

CAPILANO UNIVERSITY,
SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

M. Markwick: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m grateful for this opportunity. I recognize that we’re meeting on unceded Coast Salish territory, and I affirm my respect and solidarity with them. In this spirit, I’d like to use my time to discuss — as mutually reinforcing imperatives — innovation and emancipation, and to advance four recommendations for next year’s budget for 2018.

Yesterday’s reconciliation walk showed the necessity of ensuring that protection and advancement of human dignity remains foundational for everything government does. On this side of the garden of Gethsemane, there’s no betrayal more fundamental than when a government betrays human dignity.

[11:35 a.m.]

British Columbia recognizes this in adopting, at last, all the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous persons. British Columbia gives effect to the primacy of human dignity by embracing human rights law as quasi-constitutional law. The B.C. Human Rights Act and the restoration of the B.C. Human Rights Commission attest to the moral truth that no one is expendable.

As you saw, it’s very apt that I’m following the SFSS, because I work with the future every day. My work as a professor began right here at SFU Harbour Centre, and today I’m proud to teach at Capilano University. Over the past ten to 15 years I’ve seen, and you have seen, each successive cohort of students conclude that they’ve little to no future in the communities that raised them in British Columbia. My students today do not feel they can start families because of hyperinflation in the real estate market and inflation in the cost of renting. Crucially, they do not want to start families because of the assiduous destruction of the earth’s atmosphere.

My students have been saddled with an environmental debt they can never repay. It is forcing them to make the kinds of existential decisions — can they give birth to a new generation? — our species has only had to confront during times of war, famine and plague. This is intergenerational inequality, and as with every form of inequality, it makes my students expendable, even as British Columbia cannot have a future without them.

Education and, specifically, the university, is one of the fundamental ways we try to keep equality between generations. Since the Dark Ages, the university has allowed us to nurture and enrich new generations, paying our debt to them and allowing them to be the future.

Your restoration of tuition-free adult basic education is a very clear example of the work that must be done on a much larger scale. My colleagues at Capilano University’s ABE program advise me that enrolments plummeted when the previous government imposed tuition constraints on students. After you lifted them, enrolment has gone through the roof.

My first recommendation is that B.C.’s 2018 budget commit the province to redirect resources from the fossil fuel LNG sector to B.C.’s universities and colleges.

To tackle the failure of the market and to serve the public interest in housing security, my second recommendation is that B.C. enact a community land trust act. Modelled on our credit union legislation, this statute would allow Crown, municipal and donated real estate to be used for the creation of new, permanently affordable non-market housing as a new sector.

Since 2007, in this building, with eminent leaders like Carole Anne Soong, we’ve been working with girls, youth and women who’ve been trafficked into prostitution. Very rarely were any of them forced by trafficker’s violence into prostitution. Instead, they taught me that — this is their language — the government of British Columbia has been one of the most ruthless pimps on the street. They were kept in prostitution by public policy, vulnerable to johns and traffickers because they needed to keep their kids fed, make rent and pay tuition.

They’ve helped me draw a sharp distinction between direct human trafficking and what I’ve come to call systemic human trafficking, trafficking by public policy — the shredding of the social safety net.

My third recommendation is that the province take it as a public health and poverty reduction imperative to reverse systemic human trafficking and provide the long-term support necessary to allow girls, youth and women in prostitution to exit and to heal.

I was Rosemary Brown’s chief of staff at the Ontario Human Rights Commission. She is my friend and mentor of happy memory. On the strength of our work in the enforcement of human rights law, my fourth and final recommendation is that in restoring and setting the budget for the B.C. Human Rights Commission, you make it a creature of the Legislature, working, like the Auditor General, at arm’s length from government.

That’s what I have to share with you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much. That’s a lot there.

Questions?

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation. I’d just like to get a little bit more colour around the land trust act and the social housing. Obviously, housing affordability is a huge issue. I have four kids who…. I don’t know if they’ll be able to stay in the province either, to be quite honest. It’s something that I think we all have to work towards regardless of what political stripe we come from.

[11:40 a.m.]

Again, just to know more about your suggestion. How would you use that land trust act to encourage more social housing availability?

M. Markwick: Thank you for the question. In the interests of full disclosure, I was the B.C. Green candidate in West Vancouver–Capilano. I raise that because our population in West Van–Capilano has dropped by 4 percent or so because people can’t afford to start households there.

The district of West Vancouver has purchased land. They want to use that land for housing, but there’s no paradigm. There’s no model in place, as we have in the United States. The Champlain land trust, which Bernie Sanders started….

I’m trying to cut a four-hour lecture down to 30 seconds.

T. Redies: Sure.

M. Markwick: The Champlain land trust holds assets of $300 million, one-third of $1 billion. It’s governed by statute. In the same way that we have credit union legislation allowing, for example, Vancity to flourish…. We could use that model to manage land as a public asset. It would make certain that if the district of West Vancouver were to give land to a land trust, there’s proper accountability in the management of that asset.

In addition to it being permanently affordable housing, the governing structure is quite different from what we would see in social housing or a co-op. One-third of the governance would be government, one-third of the governance would be community, and one-third of the governance would be residents. That guards against nepotism or any form of special treatment in terms of who gets to live there.

J. Brar: What do you mean by restoring the budget for the human rights commission?

M. Markwick: I had the privilege of being in the Legislature — well, in the gallery — for the throne speech, and I heard the announcement that the B.C. Human Rights Commission is to be restored. Well, it will need a budget.

When we worked at the Ontario Human Rights Commission our commission was under the minister for community and social affairs, and there was always tension. In fact — I’m saying this on Hansard — I had to report that a minister’s staffer had tried to interfere in a human rights commission investigation. We had difficulty managing our budget as well.

I think the way forward for British Columbia — I haven’t had a chance to raise this with the Attorney General — would be innovative. It’s for the province to make it a creature of the Legislature so that the budget isn’t set by a minister of the Crown. The budget is set by the House itself. The governance of it, then, is at arm’s length from any particular member of cabinet.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, thank you so much for your time. That was very enlightening. We really appreciate your thoughts.

Is the B.C. Cycling Coalition here? Fantastic. Richard Campbell, hi.

B.C. CYCLING COALITION

R. Campbell: Thank you, Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to present to you this morning. Congratulations on your elections and re-elections. I think it’s an exciting time in B.C. Obviously, lots of issues to deal with.

The British Columbia Cycling Coalition — we have 20 member organizations across the province, with about 50,000 supporters. Our mission is simple: to help enable everyone in the province to cycle for their daily trips, recreation and tourism.

Certainly, in our province, we are making some progress towards that in communities that have made the investment. But the stark reality is there are a lot of people that would like to cycle more in communities around the province, but they don’t do so because they don’t have safe cycling facilities where they feel protected from motor vehicle traffic. That is especially true for children, women and seniors.

We’ve been asking British Columbians to send their experiences regarding cycling on the road to us. You folks may have received some of the letters. It’s quite telling out there. There are a lot of people that, quite frankly, feel intimidated or harassed off our roads. It’s not a huge percentage of drivers, but there are enough out there. So a lot of people are, quite frankly, scared. They get passed too closely, either on purpose or by accident. They get honked at. They get screamed at. They get things thrown at them.

[11:45 a.m.]

Sadly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but women out there face worse harassment than men. Some research from the U.K. indicates that drivers actually pass women closer than they do male cyclists. Unfortunately, women also get shouted at by men, and some will actually try or succeed in touching them when out on the road.

Quite frankly, we’ve all failed to protect the most vulnerable out on our roads. There are several ways to do that. One is investing in separated cycling facilities, where they are physically protected and there is a greater distance so they don’t experience this intimidation and harassment.

Another challenge is…. Of course, people like to walk and cycle, and people are willing to pay more to be in areas of communities where they can. Sadly, these people of lower incomes — students and a lot of families with children — are in areas where there just is not the ability for them to cycle safely for their daily trips. As a result, even though a lot more children still ride bicycles than adults, the number of children riding or walking to school is down from about 60 percent 20 or 30 years ago, when a lot of us grew up, to about 30 percent.

This is causing a huge bunch of problems, including traffic, parents spending more time driving their children around and, of course, traffic crashes. We realize the impact of that with ICBC rates going up. More broadly, there are crashes associated with that. There is a lot of human suffering associated with automobile collisions, both from people that drive but also from people that walk and cycle. This is a problem all over the province that really needs to be addressed in a systematic way. I think that rethinking our priorities on transportation spending is certainly a good start.

For the past few years, the focus has been on these huge highway projects. They run $3 billion plus. Certainly, there are benefits to those, but if you actually spread that money around the province and invest in cycling and walking and transit, you would get far more benefits for everyone from those expenditures, rather than spending it on something that benefits people but a lot smaller number of people.

Communities around the work have done this work, and they’ve figured out how much it’s going to cost to upgrade their cycling network so everyone can feel able to do it. The cost is going to be around $2 billion — a lot of money but far less than one big bridge or highway improvement.

We would like that funding spread out over ten years — $100 million a year from the province — and that can be matched by municipalities and federal governments. There’ll be huge benefits, not just in one area, which happens with a highway project. Every riding, every community around the province would benefit both in health savings and reduced collision costs — far better for the community. There are tourism benefits. There are more jobs created per dollar spent on cycling and walking facilities than highways. So I think this could have broad benefits.

I guess to finish off, there are a lot more numbers in here that show how popular cycling is and how much more younger people, especially, want to cycle. I will tell you just a couple of stories that we’ve heard from people around the province.

There’s this woman in Penticton. She has a physical disability that makes it very painful for her to walk. Unfortunately, there are no separated facilities in Penticton, so she faces the choice of either getting harassed on the road or cycling on the sidewalk, which is illegal. She chooses to do that, but she still gets harassed there.

There has been money invested in facilities up there, but a lot of the time it’s facilities that only appeal to people that are very fit, not the protected bike lanes that would allow her to get around. She doesn’t want to drive. She wants to do the right thing. We just need to do more to enable folks like her, who have some challenges, that want to do it.

Another example is electric bikes. Those can provide essential mobility, especially for people outside of urban areas to get around. Unfortunately, there’s still PST on those, and unlike electric cars, there are no rebates on those. A means-tested rebate on electric bikes, as there is on electric cars, would certainly benefit far more people. Most people can’t afford an electric car, but an electric bike is $1,500 to $3,000 or $4,000. That’s something that’s far more affordable, and the dollars spent in rebates would go a lot further.

[11:50 a.m.]

Again, we hear from people all the time that they’re either getting older or they have injuries. Electric bikes are really important for both allowing people with challenges to get around but also important for everyone to cycle longer distances and can really help provide a transportation solution.

I could probably keep going, but I think there are some questions. If you have any, it would be fantastic.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sure. Thanks, Richard. We appreciate that.

Any questions?

J. Brar: I’m the first one to ask. Thanks for this. I like what you said in your presentation. You have made seven recommendations, right? If you have to implement this and you have a limited number of dollars, where would you start? What would be the first or second thing you would do, keeping in mind that you maximize the value of dollars and also that the benefit reaches to a large number of people?

R. Campbell: Sure. Certainly, it’s increasing the amount that the province is investing in cycling and walking facilities. It has been increasing. I think it was $9.25 million last year, but we have a big province, so anything you can do — however much you increase that — is going to benefit more people. However, we would encourage you to make a bold amount to ensure that everyone in the province has access to safe cycling facilities. Again, the transportation budget is about $3 billion. So certainly, some smarter investments in transportation, I think, are in order.

I guess, secondly, there’s already the clean vehicle rebate. One could perhaps reallocate some of that towards electric bikes and get a lot more bang for your buck and, especially, benefit people of lower incomes who can’t afford an expensive Tesla or something like that.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Richard, for your comments. And that lady from Penticton does have access through Penticton. You know, not on all streets…. Could we do better? Absolutely. But we have made the spaces available.

I come from the area, and we just completed, between Trout Creek and Summerland, the bike lanes. So we’re working on Trout Creek to Penticton and then on through to Peachland and up though Kelowna. We have a lot of work left to do, but it’s not for the lack of trying.

We have made recommendations that when new road construction takes place, we allow for the opportunity of width. Cars are getting smaller, so hopefully, we can use that same roadbed size and provide more access for pedestrians and for bicycle use.

Thank you. Very good points that you brought forward.

R. Campbell: Well, certainly, her comment was more about downtown Penticton, which is challenging. And certainly, the cost-share money from the province, and more leadership, helps that.

Another thing…. And I’ll bring this up with the Minister of Transportation. While the province does have the policy of upgrading bike facilities, there are a lot of cases where it isn’t happening. The road is getting resurfaced, and the shoulder is not fixed up. So we really need to address that systematically so that people don’t have to lobby on individual cases.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Very good points you brought forward.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for bringing up that very thing. I created our regional cycling task force many, many years ago in the Comox Valley, and one of the first issues that came up was the gravel on the shoulders with the infrequent sweeping of highways. Just in the last week, we’ve had a number of resurfacings throughout the areas and the creation of a lot of gravel as well as sand — and problems.

A real uprising to see something done to make sure that the interests of cyclists are taken into account when our transportation routes, which are more than transportation routes for motorized vehicles — making them a priority, the cyclists and walkers…. So I just want to make sure that that’s on the record — that that’s what you’re supporting too. Not just the new infrastructure, but taking care of maintenance and….

R. Campbell: Yeah. And certainly, there have been issues up in the Comox area. I think I received a letter from one of our members up there who has illustrated the challenges of getting some improvements up there. So hopefully, going forward, we can see more improvements made to not just the roads but the shoulders, making sure those are rideable without a mountain bike.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Campbell. We appreciate your time. Keep up the good work.

R. Campbell: Thanks very much. I will send you…. This is a draft edition. I couldn’t figure out how to remove the carriage returns. Apologies for that. I will get you a version without those carriage returns on it.

[11:55 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Calling Capilano Students Union.

CAPILANO STUDENTS UNION

N. Berson: Good morning. Well, thank you for taking the time to speak to us today, and congratulations to all of you on your re-elections.

I’m Noah Berson. I’m the vice-president, external, at the Capilano Students Union, and I’m also a second-year there. This is Patrick Meehan. He’s our policy analyst.

We’ve got several recommendations we’re going to bring to you guys today. The first and our most primary is on-campus housing. Housing — as you guys all, I’m sure, know — is a really pressing issue and a really hot-button issue right now in British Columbia. Our recommendation is to remove unnecessary rules and red tape in Victoria that prevent universities and colleges from building affordable student housing, which could result in thousands of units of student housing across the province.

The demand for on-campus housing is growing year by year, and wait-lists for residences and the desire for residences on campuses continue to grow. Rent is, as I’m sure you guys all know, increasing steadily across the region and across our province, and student housing really helps to tackle that. It’s far more efficient and easier to build student housing in situations rather than trying to build lots of low-income housing. When you build the student housing for the lower price, it really decreases that whole bottom sector of the rental market and allows those folks in low-income situations who really need that low-income housing to take advantage of it.

Our primary ask here is to enable the post-secondary institutions to take on the debt they need, because they’re all very willing to create this housing, and to encourage expansion and building of the student housing on campuses.

P. Meehan: The next ask that we have is around dedicated mental health funding.

As you’re all aware, universities have a set basket of money that they’re able to spend, and any money that they take away from one thing to pay for mental health on campus — increased access to counsellors, increased supports in that regard — is going to be money taken away from something else.

What we’d like to see is we’d like to see the provincial government invest, and we’re looking at $40 million in targeted funding for post-secondary institutions across the province to be able to offer more robust and more dedicated counselling services on their campuses.

As I’m sure you’re aware, people aged 18 to 25 are typically the ones where you’re first seeing the mental health issues crop up. It’s where you’ve left the home. It’s where you’re now in a situation where you’re having to support yourself, and that’s where these issues tend to crop up the most.

Having this dedicated support on campus from the provincial government would enable it to be significantly more robust than the universities are currently able to manage with the limited funds that they have. Right now, we’re looking at some institutions having as much as a six-week wait time to see a counsellor if somebody comes forward with an issue. The average seems to be between two and four weeks.

So if you come forward with an emerging mental health crisis in your life and you go to seek the counselling services that are available on your campus and they say, “Yeah, we can book you next month,” that’s going to be a real significant barrier for you, both in your education and in your life, to be able to seek that support. That dedicated funding there is going to be really important to getting that student the support they need to be able to be successful in their education.

Then I think you’re going to talk about our needs-based grants request.

Interjection.

P. Meehan: Okay, I can do that.

The next thing, in addition to that, is to reduce the costs and barriers of the upfront cost of education. British Columbia is the only province in the country that doesn’t have a needs-based grants program. That’s a significant barrier for students’ access to education.

What we’d like to see is free education for low- and middle-income students — so means-testing through Canada student grants program, a top-up from the provincial government that would enable students to essentially have the cost of their education paid for.

Now, they would obviously still have various costs of education, so that would include rent and food and whatnot, but we believe that tuition shouldn’t be a barrier. Having low- and middle-income students from those backgrounds be able to get that access through a dedicated needs-based grants program would be a huge access lift.

Right now we talk about things like completion grants and loan forgiveness, but that’s on the back end. That front-end support, being able to get students in the door, is the important part.

A student isn’t going to look at the tax rebates they get after they graduate when they’re deciding whether or not to go to post-secondary, whether or not to try to upgrade themselves and maybe potentially be the first person in their family history to go to post-secondary. They’re going to look at the actual upfront costs. If that upfront cost is $5,000 or $6,000 per year or per semester, for example, for tuition, that’s going to be a real barrier to them getting out of their job at a low-wage service sector place and trying to upgrade. So we’d like to see that cost of education be borne through a dedicated needs-based grant program.

[12:00 p.m.]

N. Berson: And then our final recommendation program. As we’ve been talking about, we really are trying to make education accessible for everyone in British Columbia. A really essential part of that, especially in the Lower Mainland but all across British Columbia, is the U-Pass program that allows people who are of any income to have a cheap way to take transit to school.

I personally use the U-Pass program every day. I take three buses to get to Capilano. We really want to see this provincial government continue to encourage the use of the U-Pass program.

I think that’s about it. Any questions would be lovely.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much.

P. Milobar: A quick question around U-Pass. We had another presentation that brought that up as well.

In Kamloops, we have U-Pass, but all the revenue goes to the city as their part of transit funding. Are you saying you just want to make sure the province doesn’t start taking the U-Pass revenue as part of their…? I’m a little confused, because it’s more of a municipally run program than a provincially run program.

P. Meehan: The U-Pass B.C. program, as it’s weirdly called, is the program that implements the U-Pass in Metro Vancouver, but not in Kamloops or Kelowna or Victoria. Very oddly, it’s been called the U-Pass B.C. program.

What that program is, is a joint agreement between TransLink, the post-secondary institutions, the student unions and also the provincial government — the Ministry of Transportation. Because the costs associated with the U-Pass in the Lower Mainland are substantially higher, or would be substantially higher, to be borne by the students, the provincial government has — since 2008, I believe, when the provincial government decided to institute the program — been a financial partner in the program, in the Lower Mainland, specifically.

Whereas it’s a lot more affordable to be able to implement that program in a smaller transit system, such as Kamloops or Kelowna, the scale that exists in Metro Vancouver is such that having that provincial financial support is really valuable.

J. Brar: I have a couple of questions.

The first one I have is under the free education, low- and middle-income students. You have made the recommendation, and the cost, you’re indicating, is $97 million. My first question is: how did you arrive at that cost?

The second one is: when you say support for the U-Pass program, what does it mean? If you can explain that to me.

P. Meehan: In terms of the grants program, what we looked at is the data around the Canada student grants program and how much money is being allocated there, and then the cost of an average four-year degree program, and built that out based on the numbers that exist. So this $97 million number is fairly robustly accurate, assuming that the program doesn’t see a substantial change in the demographics.

Now, that might increase the cost of the program over time. If people from low and middle incomes see this value of going to post-secondary and see the benefit of having this upfront grant and are then able to go, we think that that would just be a benefit to society as a whole.

Sorry, your second question was…?

J. Brar: What do you mean by support for the U-Pass program? Is this the extension or…?

P. Meehan: The Ministry of Transportation dedicates, I believe, approximately $10 million per year towards the U-Pass program in Metro Vancouver, to allow students to go to post-secondary in Metro Vancouver. The U-Pass program right now is sitting at about $41 per month, per student, in Metro Vancouver, whereas what you see in other jurisdictions in British Columbia, where they’ve negotiated the U-Pass with B.C. Transit, is they’re looking at more like $60 or $80 for the semester. So for a four-month window, they’re looking at something sub-$100, for example.

In B.C., it’s up to $41 per month. It keeps sort of gradually ticking upwards, and the provincial Ministry of Transportation money is there to help keep that cost down.

T. Redies: I thought your presentation, actually, was quite well-thought-through, so I just wanted to make that observation. A couple of things. On the $40 million for mental health funding — how did you arrive at that figure? Then I have a second question, maybe once you’ve answered that.

P. Meehan: Well, we took a look at how much money was being dedicated by universities now — a sample. This isn’t a substantially robust costing analysis that we’ve done. We looked at what was being spent now at some universities, some colleges and some regional teaching universities, like Capilano or Kwantlen, and assessed that as being a systemwide thing, and then saw a substantial top-up to try to get rid of those wait-lists.

Essentially, these wait-lists exist because of a lack of funds. If you have more funds, you hire more counsellors, you cut these wait-lists down. So we then topped up a significant increase to be able to hire more counsellors at each of the institutions.

T. Redies: Okay. Then my observation on the student housing — I think, absolutely, we need to do more in this regard. The challenge, of course, is that as the universities take on more debt, that means the province takes on more debt. There are some implications in terms of the credit rating of the province and how, if the government expands its debt levels too significantly, that could trigger a downgrade in our credit rating, which has a whole bunch of bad repercussions.

[12:05 p.m.]

I do think that there are some really interesting opportunities to do some creative things that perhaps would solve the student housing issue. Working with public–private sector partnerships, I think — that’s something that, certainly, I want to have a chat with this committee about at some point in time.

Thanks for raising this. I think it is a real issue. If we could solve some of the student housing challenge, we might solve a lot of the social housing issues that are facing the wider community.

P. Meehan: If I could speak to that, too. I think the debt allocation that would be taken on by the universities would be self-supporting debt rather than taxpayer-supported debt. They’d be paid for by the students that are in those residences themselves. They would be able to be considered not part of that taxpayer-supported debt allocation.

I think that while it would end up being a fairly large number — we’ve estimated something on the order of about $18 billion to $20 billion — to build the housing that is demand-based in B.C., we think that your average credit-rating agency would take a look at that and say that it’s fairly safe debt to take on, knowing the housing issues, knowing that students are wanting to live there and knowing that students are going to be paying for the mortgage through their residency fees.

T. Redies: That’s a fair point.

S. Cadieux: Back to the mental health piece again. There’s more than one challenge with that for sure, and it’s something that we’re looking at, all levels of government are looking at — how to better support citizens with mental health issues, how to reduce stigma and make sure that services are available when people need them and where they need them. That, though, is my question.

Is there any research that you guys have done or that you’re aware of through the universities that has suggested that students are accessing mental health services on campus versus off campus? Some of the anecdotal-type information I’ve heard is that students actually want to receive those services off campus to minimize stigma.

Is the importance of the investment for mental health services and access to mental health services…? In your opinion, does it need to be run through a non-health organization, like a university, or is it just that those services need to be available so, therefore, more available and readily linkable in the community?

P. Meehan: I think that’s a really good point. There are a huge host of avenues and mechanisms for seeking assistance when you need it. I think the benefit of having it tied into the university is that that student then has, within the institution, available options — so for example, having delays or rescheduled exams, having an individual that can work with the instructors to help accommodate that student. So all of those mechanisms within the university to help build that support are then an advantage to that student.

We do see significant usage of the counselling services there, but I think you are right that there needs to be more robust mental health work in our province in general.

M. Dean: Thanks again for your presentation. I’m just wondering: do you have any idea of the difference between what it would cost a student to live in purpose-built accommodation — say the universities can do that and take on that debt — compared to what they’re paying in the community now?

P. Meehan: Capilano opened its first residence housing this year through a creative mechanism that is a short-term mechanism. It’s about a two- or three-year lease on a property that’s going to be rebuilt into new housing for the market. So that housing there is looking at about $600 per month for the residence fee, and then about $600 a month as well for the food cost.

So you’re looking at $1,200 per month to stay in that residence and have three meals a day. Right now, rental accommodation in the Lower Mainland without food is generally going to be about $1,200 or more for a one-bedroom or a studio even. So you do see substantial cost savings. So it’s not just good for the student in terms of being on campus; it’s also just a huge savings of money.

R. Leonard: And also keeps you off the buses.

P. Meehan: There’s a huge raft of benefits to getting students out of the housing market and onto their campuses, right? The decreased bus…. Congestion problems are definitely a problem. I mean, we both bus to Capilano regularly.

[12:10 p.m.]

R. Leonard: The one thing that concerns me about on-campus housing — it’s not that I don’t support it 100 percent — is the land base. How much land is available, and would we be able to say equitably, across British Columbia, that universities actually have the capacity to build on-campus housing? I remember when Simon Fraser was just beginning to have housing up on the mountain.

P. Meehan: The three major universities — Simon Fraser, UVic and UBC — have all done extensive planning processes to be able to accommodate several thousand more, each, units of housing on their campuses. SFU has got a fairly robust land use plan if they’re able to find the financing. UBC has been managing to sort of wiggle money around through their endowment to manage to build, but not at the rate they want to. UVic has got substantial plans.

In terms of the regional teaching universities — Kwantlen, VIU, UFV, Capilano — each of them has significant land allocation for them all around their campuses. Some of it is in the form of parking right now, but if you put 500 students on to campus, and you remove 200 parking spaces, you’re probably saving that space already. You can add parking to a building — underneath it, right?

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s all our time, but thank you very much for your time and your well-thought-out presentation. We really appreciate it.

If we could call Inclusion B.C. We have Faith Bodnar and Karla Verschoor from Inclusion B.C.

INCLUSION B.C.

F. Bodnar: I just want to say we appreciate the time and setting these things up on short notice.

We’ve gone paperless. We’ll have emailed you our submission, and we’ll also email you a couple of reports that I’m going to reference in our presentation.

My name is Faith Bodnar. I’m the executive director of Inclusion B.C. We are a provincial advocacy organization formed in 1955 by local service providers and families who came together, who were in the process of building services for their sons and daughters but recognized that they needed a provincial voice. We’re members of the Canadian Association for Community Living, and every province and territory has an organization like ours.

We are grassroots up, so we are also members of Inclusion International. We’re part of a global movement around human rights for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

I’m going to talk about a couple of issues, primarily around the delivery of early childhood intervention programs for kids with special needs, as well as access to public education. Karla will talk about housing and supports to adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Inclusion B.C., as I said, has 70 member agencies across the province who deliver a full range of supports and services, including to children and youth with special needs and their families, and adults with developmental disabilities. It’s birth through the life span. Many of our members have been around longer than we have. It’s very much a movement that’s well and deep in the province’s history.

Early childhood intervention. The first board I sat on in 1981, when I was just out of university, was the Lloydminster early childhood intervention program. Back in those days and today, it’s considered one of the fundamental investments that a government can make in children who are delayed or at risk of delay early on. It starts at birth. It’s intended as a seamless support for children as they go from early childhood programs into school. It builds on the ability of children to meet their maximum potential before they reach school.

As I said, our members work in a variety of areas under early childhood intervention. I want to talk a little bit about supported child development. It’s important because it provides access to child care spaces for children with special needs in regular community child care programs. We’ve seen, as many of us know, a crisis in access to child care for children in general in this province.

[12:15 p.m.]

It’s particularly acute in supported child care, where inadequate funding for children with special needs means lack of access to early childhood intervention programs that are delivered in those places and that can only be provided in child care spaces. It’s the same for after-school care programs — again, organizations that deliver those kinds of programs need added supports to support kids with special needs.

For kids older than 12, we have the same issue. Many kids with special needs who are 12 or older cannot be home alone, and they need access to community-based funds so that their parents can go out and access age-appropriate programs for them.

Right now we have done some preliminary data-gathering. Our data is somewhat limited, but I think it’s a conservative number that speaks to the growing need — that there are at least 400 children waiting for supported childhood development programs in Vancouver alone.

Supported child development is part of the early childhood intervention programming. Our report, Kids Can’t Wait, for which we brought together 120 child care providers and early childhood intervention providers last November, has identified critical issues around kids who are arriving at school having had no early childhood intervention. These are children with special needs who qualify for ECI, or early childhood intervention, and have not been able to access them.

The growing wait-list we’ve calculated across B.C., based on our members’ input and the working committee of Kids Can’t Wait, estimate 5,000 children are on waiting lists in B.C. for early childhood intervention programs. As we move forward, there have been some significant changes in the focus of the ministry around early childhood, including a move towards crisis intervention. That’s a real concern.

The reason I brought up my history with this area is that early childhood intervention is a family-based delivery program that identifies with families about where their children need the most support. It has been traditionally delivered in families’ homes, and we’re seeing a move with the ministry towards a crisis intervention, which brings us into a child-protection mode.

That’s of concern, because for a family to come forward and say, “I need some help supporting my child,” it’s really been important that we have a firewall between that ask and child protection. So we’re concerned with the move away from a family-centred practice model to a child-protection model.

We have some recommendations. One is that MCFD work collaboratively with our sector to develop good data and avenues for the development and growth of programs. It is a complex sector. It’s difficult for families to navigate, because there are many, many community providers, many of them offering very different things for families, because they’ve adapted over the years and they’ve done amazing jobs with the funding they have. It’s time to sort of get some rationalization around the early childhood sector in B.C.

Two is to address wait-lists immediately by funding programs that include funding for staff training and development. And the last one was significant, because kids are arriving in school, and even when they have the benefit of early childhood intervention, schools are not equipped to continue those programs after kindergarten. So we’re recommending the extension of the early childhood community mandate to eight years instead of six years old.

That gives some really balanced overlap, and it adds resources and adds expertise to the school systems that are struggling with access to therapies and a variety of other programs around the needs of kids with special needs.

Lastly, we want to make sure that kids with special needs in foster care — that their needs are reflected, that we know what’s going on in our foster care system around kids with special needs. Because they may be challenged by not being able to communicate directly some of the things that they’re experiencing. We’re recommending that the ministry work with the Representative for Children and Youth to establish a task force to develop and ensure adequate training — practice standards for kids with special needs in foster care.

I want to move on to our education system. We all know it’s important to safeguard inclusive public education. It’s the foundation of an inclusive society and a society where all children of diverse needs can be welcomed.

We appreciate the new curriculum as an excellent foundation, and it’s built on flexible approaches as well as individual learning needs. It gives teachers the ability to adapt to the learning needs of their students.

We also look forward to the continued implementation of the Supreme Court decision on class composition and size and the restoration of funding. But it needs to be part of a comprehensive funding increase that includes support staff as well — so educational assistants and other specialists.

We held a summit on inclusive education at our conference in Richmond and had close to 200 people this past year. Again, what came through clearly was investments in teacher training are also important.

[12:20 p.m.]

We’re also calling for the collaboration of the province to establish a provincial working group to advise on investments, funding formulas and policy reforms with our public education system.

Just on a note, with the beginning of school…. We’re going to be gathering some more data, but we were advised by a family group based in the North Vancouver school district that as of last week, 50 children that they know of, children with special needs, have been asked not to attend school as yet. So we have a group of children who are being told not to come to school because of a lack of supports for them at school. I was talking with my colleague Karla this morning, and we had a report of a child who was sent home because they don’t have adequate supports for kids with special needs.

We’re going to be collecting more data to find out the scale of that issue across our province. Again, it reinforces the need to certainly implement the Supreme Court decision on class composition and size, and restoration of the funding. We also need to look at the other support staff that support those kids in school.

I’m going to turn it over to Karla Verschoor.

K. Verschoor: I would like to highlight three of the recommendations in our written submission. Picking up where Faith left off, I’m on page 5, if you’re following along.

We were incredibly pleased to hear about the 10,000 new affordable housing units in the September budget update. We look forward to working with the government to ensure that these new units reflect an inclusive housing model.

Solving housing affordability in the market economy is still a particular challenge for people with a fixed income, such as those relying on persons-with-disabilities benefits. The $375-per-month maximum housing allowance poses a huge barrier to addressing affordability in markets like greater Vancouver. Unfortunately, this barrier leaves thousands of adults with intellectual disabilities living in the family home well into their 40s and their 50s, which isn’t really a normative path for most of us.

This leads to my first recommendation: a portable rental subsidy such as that currently under B.C. Housing’s SAFER, the Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters program, which offers a useful model, as it adapts to local markets, for people on persons-with-disabilities benefits which is currently not available. That’s recommendation No. 1.

Moving along to the next page. At Inclusion B.C., our vision is that every British Columbian has the supports needed to live a full and meaningful life in community. But too many adults with intellectual disabilities are being denied residential, life skills, employment and other supports needed to live a safe, healthy and productive life.

Too many young people are falling into a black hole when they leave school at 19. Families that support those adults with disabilities are struggling to access the programs that are in place and are meant to help them. The particularly sad part is that children are sitting at home with their lives on pause.

We recommend an annual increase, which we have in previous budgets as well, of at least 6 percent, based on the projected caseload growth but also pending a full review of CLBC’s mandate and budget needs. Young people with a disability want to graduate from high school, go to college, get a job, get their own place, have loving relationships, be contributing members of the community, not limited by the labels that they wear or limited access to the supports they need to be their best selves.

Just as a side note, two strange stories are coming through our advocacy line. Things like the $2,800 guaranteed respite. Parents are being asked to use that to backfill day programs and to pay for community living supports. As well, even more shocking, I know of three instances where I’ve been in the room when it was suggested that people use persons-with-disabilities benefits to pay for their own supports. For me, that’s quite shocking and really points to the point that these supports are underfunded for people.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Before you go on, Karla, we’ve only got maybe three minutes left for questions. I just want to make sure there’s time for questions.

K. Verschoor: I have 30 seconds left. Can I keep going?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, good. Yes.

K. Verschoor: Okay, the last thing. At Inclusion B.C., we envision that no British Columbian with a disability lives in poverty, but today most people that rely on PWD benefits are unable to find enough work and, in part, are living in poverty.

Inclusion B.C. welcomes the new government’s commitment to increase PWD by $100 and to restore the transit pass for persons-with-disabilities recipients for January 2018. We look forward to working with the government to develop a long-term plan that will increase monthly rates to $1,500, with a legislated commitment to an annual cost-of-living index, which is my final recommendation.

A portable rental subsidy, adequate community living supports and a livable income, together, provide a sound foundation for poverty reduction but also a huge leap forward for full citizenship for people with intellectual disabilities.

[12:25 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Now, we only have a couple of minutes for questions. Anybody? Any questions?

Seeing as I rushed you along, was there anything else you wanted to add?

F. Bodnar: No, that’s good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much, and thanks for your time. We really appreciate it.

Cement Association of Canada, I see you’re in the room.

CEMENT ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

M. McSweeney: We’re here. Nice to see you all again. Welcome to the six new members of the Legislature on this committee, which does so much important work in supporting the Finance Minister in preparing the budget.

It’s a pleasure to be here on the unceded territorial lands of the Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh and Tsleil-Waututh. I saw yesterday the great march on reconciliation that took place here in Vancouver.

Some of you have met Ken and me. We spent two weeks ago in Victoria…. Some of what we will say today will be not new. I know Stephanie and Dan have heard us all before. We, too, went paperless. Well, I guess some people have printed it, but you’ve got our presentation.

We make cement. Cement is a baby-powder-like substance. It’s very light and ships all over the world. The difference between cement and concrete is that cement is the glue that holds the sand, water and aggregate together. There is no substitute, at the current time, for cement.

We make the cement in…. We used to make it in Kamloops, but due to the carbon tax coming in and some ramifications from the carbon tax, that plant got closed down, or mothballed, a few years ago. Some day it may come back. Also, we make cement at Lehigh Hanson in Delta and the LafargeHolcim plant in Richmond. All our aggregates come from Texada Island, both the limestone for cement and the aggregates for much of the work that’s being done and all the concrete here in British Columbia — the Lower Mainland, in particular.

We take the limestone. We put it into a kiln. We heat it up to 1,500 degrees C. It turns from a rock into almost a molten lava. We cool it very quickly, add some additives. It turns into a substance called clinker. Then it’s ground into a substance that looks and feels like baby powder. That’s the chemistry behind cement.

Cement is a real strategic commodity. If you don’t have your own ability to make cement, then you’re subject to importing it from other jurisdictions. Here in British Columbia, we have about 2,000 direct and indirect jobs, over $3 billion of investment in the economy. We’ve got the three cement plants — two operating, as I said earlier; about 135 ready-mix concrete facilities across B.C.; and 17 precast concrete facilities.

Concrete is when you add the cement, water, sand and gravel together, and you put it in a mixer that goes around. Concrete is a local product. Once you add the water to the cement, sand and gravel, you only have about two hours before it loses its properties. If you don’t get it out in time, sometimes you have to jackhammer it out of the back of the concrete mixer.

It’s a real local asset: local jobs, local sand, local water and local aggregates. That’s the one big thing that we want to leave you with. In almost every provincial constituency, you’ll have at least one ready-mix concrete facility. So it’s a real local industry.

[12:30 p.m.]

The cement-making process is considered to be an energy-intensive trade-exposed industry. We use a lot of energy to make the cement. In Canada, we contribute approximately 5 percent of all greenhouse gases. When you make one tonne of cement, it’s about 750 kilograms of greenhouse gases. But when you make concrete, only 7 to 10 percent of the cement goes into the concrete. So you’re down to about 65 or 70 kilograms of GHGs per tonne of concrete. People use the words “cement” and “concrete” interchangeably. Sometimes they’ll say: “Oh, concrete has a lot of greenhouse gases.” No, cement creates the greenhouse gases; concrete has very little greenhouse gases in it.

I should add that we were, and we are, one of Canada’s leading industries in support of carbon pricing. We are acknowledged experts. I sat on Premier Wynne’s climate action group in Ontario. Premier Notley and Minister Shannon Phillips have called upon me to chair stakeholder groups of industry in Alberta. We really support carbon pricing right across the country. It has to be done correctly.

When we had the carbon tax imposed in 2008, what happened was an unintended consequence. The carbon tax only applies to goods manufactured or fuels that you use to manufacture your product here in British Columbia.

What happened was…. Starting in 2008, imports into the province hovered around 5 or 6 percent from Asia. They are today about 40 or 42 percent. Almost one in every two tonnes of cement being used in British Columbia comes from Asia, through the United States, and pays no carbon tax. So all we’ve really done is leave the production of greenhouse gases to jurisdictions that do not have as strong an environmental framework as we have here in British Columbia.

Both political parties have committed to working with the cement industry to try and find a solution. In the last government, we did receive a five-year commitment to about $27 million for technology upgrades that would allow us to replace coal and natural gas with low-carbon or zero-carbon fuels. But we do need to figure out what the long-term solutions are. There are three easy ones.

To exempt the cement industry from the carbon tax. Well, we aren’t advocating for that, because it’s just not practical.

Secondly, you could apply a second carbon tax when cement goes into the concrete industry, and that would catch the imported cement, because provincial governments or subnational governments cannot put taxes on an import industry that they don’t have on a domestic industry. We would, then, have two carbon taxes for the cement industry in particular, but then the government could institute an input tax credit for the domestic cement industry.

This is something that I know has been looked at by the Ministry of Environment. It’s something that we’ll be talking to Minister Heyman and Minister Ralston about, because when we have 40 or 42 percent imports into the province, what that means is that we have plant shutdowns for three or four months a year. That means people are without jobs. This is a very important industry and one that has significant, well-paying jobs.

The third option is an output-based allocation system. You set what your emissions benchmark will be, and on anything below that, you don’t pay the carbon tax. On anything above that, you pay a carbon tax. That’s probably the model that will be adopted in Alberta. It’s one that we’ll be discussing — we have a meeting with Minister Heyman this afternoon — along with our colleagues in the environmental industry, Clean Energy Canada and the Pembina Institute.

We’ve been working, as I said, with environmental groups for the last 18 months to try and collaboratively come up with a solution for all energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries — mining, forestry, refining. It’s not just for cement; it’s for everyone. I believe that both parties, in their campaign platforms, did talk about trying to develop a solution for energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries.

[12:35 p.m.]

Some of the other things that we have. We have a new cement that, when you use that cement, reduces greenhouse gases by 10 percent on that project. Fifty percent of the cement consumed in the Lower Mainland uses this new cement on the building here in the Lower Mainland — the Telus Garden, the new sick kids hospital — but not one tonne is being used by government. As you look to expand your schools, your hospitals, other buildings, infrastructure, we’re looking for government to mandate the use of this new cement.

One tonne of GHGs produced anywhere is bad. This is the biggest societal challenge that we have to face. If we’re going to meet our 2030 and 2050 targets, we need to start now. We need to find every tonne of GHGs that we can. This new cement, produced here by both Lafarge and Lehigh, has no price premium to it and has all the same properties as general-use cement.

The other thing — to wrap up, because I know there may be some questions — is that as we embark upon this historic spend across the country…. Minister Sohi says that between provincial, federal and municipal governments, we will spend $800 billion over the next decade on infrastructure. We want to make sure infrastructure is built once, it’s built right and it’s built to last.

In order to optimize the spending and to protect the taxpayer’s investment, what we’re asking governments to do, before you invest in infrastructure, is three things.

One, run the project through a life-cycle costing. Let’s only build infrastructure and use the building materials that will give us the longest life.

Two, every project that we fund should be with the lowest-carbon-footprint building material. Again, if we’re going to make these targets of 2030 and 2050, we have to start now and we have to view every dollar spent through the lens of climate change. If you believe in that 100-kilometre diet as being a sustainable way of living, you should believe in your 100-kilometre-building-materials diet too. Use the building materials that are close to home. As Ms. Leonard was talking about the buses to the students, think…. If you have students living on campus and not on buses, you’re not generating GHGs. We have to find every GHG that we can and eliminate it, if possible.

Finally, use best available technologies. We have a new concrete, for example, that is having greenhouse gases injected into it. It’s a process developed by a Canadian firm called CarbonCure, based out of Halifax. They’re right across the country. In fact, Butler Brothers concrete, on the Island, has just implemented the CarbonCure technology, where you take carbon dioxide, the CO₂, and you inject it into the concrete. It makes the concrete stronger. So we’re trying to have that closed loop. We’re trying to take our stack gases, our GHGs, and sequester them right into the concrete.

If you have life-cycle costing — build it once, build it right, build it to last — if you have the best available technology and if you look for the lowest carbon footprint, we can see that what we’re going to do on investments in infrastructure over the next ten years will dovetail quite nicely with the climate change plans for the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much.

Any questions?

J. Brar: I do have questions. Thank you, Michael. I know you have been working on this for some time now, particularly your first recommendation that says this can be done by setting up an output-based allocation system for EITE industry or, ultimately, a retail-level carbon tax on all cement sold in B.C. You have been on this task, if I remember correctly, for maybe five or six years now.

I would like to know: why could you not convince the politicians of the day, and how has your proposal changed, if it has changed from where you came from in the beginning and now? If there’s any change in the proposal. That’s one thing.

[12:40 p.m.]

The second question I have is about the new kind of cement you’re talking about — low-carbon-intensity cement. If we make that mandatory, will that cause any job loss in B.C., or will it create more jobs if you do that?

M. McSweeney: I’ll the last question first. No, it shouldn’t. In fact, the Asian producers are not making this new low-carbon cement or, as we call it, Contempra or Portland-limestone cement. It’s being made only in Canada at the present time. So there will be job losses in the countries that import into B.C. but not in B.C. In fact, we’ll probably have less layoffs in B.C. because we’ll have more cement being produced in B.C. When you have more cement being produced, your plants are fully optimized.

Carbon pricing, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade — it’s a very complicated situation. British Columbia led the way on carbon pricing under Premier Gordon Campbell and under Governor Schwarzenegger. They were the first. It was novel back then. The federal government wasn’t supporting it, only B.C. B.C. was an island out there, and hats off to B.C. to do that.

As I’ve found out, nothing is ever simple when you’re talking about carbon taxes or carbon pricing. But what I have learned…. I will electronically send to the committee, for you to read, a report called carbon utilization road map. It talks about the role that government will have to take, through regulation and mandates, going forward, if we are going to meet the 2030 and 2050 targets.

The one thing…. Industry will work with environmental groups in civil society. Our industry has proven that. We do it, and we do it with all sincerity. But it’s not enough. We need government to be an activist, to have an activist agenda here, or we will not make the targets. And if we don’t make the targets, what will happen is, say, in 2025, as we have a federal target of 30 percent and we’re only at, say, 20 percent or 18 percent, all of a sudden industry will be hit hard with regulations to change in five years what they could have changed in 12 years. When that happens, that’s when you see disruption in the economy, and business hates uncertainty.

It’s a complicated situation. I think governments have done their best, but we have to keep moving forward. This is the greatest societal challenge we have, and we have to move forward.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re actually out of time now, but are there any last quick questions, or are we okay?

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

M. McSweeney: You’re welcome. We’ll see you. Good luck as you embark on this gargantuan task.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Ken.

I’d like to call up Yorkville University. Dr. Daren Hancott, go right ahead.

YORKVILLE UNIVERSITY

D. Hancott: Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity on behalf of Yorkville University. Some of you may know about us, and maybe some don’t. So it’s great to have the opportunity to present Yorkville.

For those of you who don’t know, we’re a private university based in New Brunswick, with operations in Ontario and British Columbia. The beauty of my message is that we have the first campus of the university in British Columbia. I’m very pleased to be the principal representing it.

It started back in 2003 with a master’s of counselling program in New Brunswick. I believe it is the largest of its kind in Canada at the moment. Since that time, we’ve opened in Ontario. We own the Toronto Film School in Ontario, which has three campuses and nine diploma programs. We just got approved for a bachelor of business administration there, in project management.

[12:45 p.m.]

In British Columbia, we were approved in 2015 to offer a bachelor of business administration with four specializations, as you can see in my written submission: accounting, supply chain management, project management and energy management. The largest two are accounting and project management. That’s probably no surprise to anyone, but I think all of them are very important to British Columbia. We’re hopeful that all of them will play a role in our growth and, hopefully, integration in the province in providing access to further education for people in those fields that want to progress in their careers.

We’re hopeful to be an operational member of BCCAT shortly. We’ve just been approved for EQA and ISP designation, which means we can begin to attract international students. It’s not a big opportunity for us at the moment, but I think, because we’ve opened in downtown Toronto and British Columbia — Vancouver — that we’ll probably end up getting a lot of international interest because of that. So we’re happy with that.

Our strategy isn’t a national strategy, so I think I can probably say with some degree of certainty we’re one of the only universities in Canada operating in three jurisdictions — New Brunswick, Ontario and B.C. Each is equally important, but they’re all a little bit different. We have to make sure that, obviously, our programs meet the requirements in each of the provinces. So far, that hasn’t been a big problem. I’m happy to report that.

We just secured a campus location which is only five blocks from here, on West Georgia. I think you may all know the difficulty in finding office space, or even space in general, in Vancouver. We may have looked at 30-plus locations before we decided on this one. There’s a very interesting market, and it’s tough to find the right space for our students. The good news is it’s only one block from SkyTrain. They’re very happy about that.

The other thing is…. Obviously, because our province is very diverse and a lot of people don’t want to leave home to go to school, we have a lot of our students who do not come to the campus. They do the whole program on line throughout all of British Columbia. We’re happy to report that that’s working very well, as well.

We’re here because we want to be part of access to education and also create good jobs for British Columbians. I think that’s important. We’ve started to do that. I’m an example of that. We have registrars. We have directors of admissions. We have deans. We have faculty members. These are good jobs. At least from my perspective, a lot of these positions could be people wanting to take on extra assignments from the faculty perspective. Maybe they’re teaching, but not full time. Maybe they just changed careers and are at home. A lot of them have master’s and doctorates, so we fill a niche there.

What I like about that is, obviously, there’s faculty blending the theory and practice, which is so important to our working students. They love the theory, but they also want the practice, because they’re learning to apply things on the job the next day. Our average student is probably in their mid-30s, with jobs, spouses and children. They’re busy people.

I haven’t decided which programs we want to offer next. We are going to apply for a master’s of business administration, but there are other programs as well, possibly in the education field, in the arts and creative industries. I guess you all know about it, but it was in the paper today that this is one of the best years for the industry in British Columbia. I believe it’s up 30 percent or so from last year to $2.6 billion. Because we own the Toronto Film School, I think there may be some opportunities to partner with schools here and maybe do something here and create another industry — or, at least, build on an industry.

It’s a short message, because we’re relatively new. I don’t want to take a lot of this committee’s time. Basically, the two messages are: we’re here, we’re here to grow, and we don’t ask government for money. We’re self-funded. Everything comes from student tuitions. We try to maintain quality and as competitive tuitions as we can so that people can afford to go to school, and to provide an opportunity or a ladder for them to continue right up to a master’s degree — and, hopefully, beyond.

That’s my presentation from Yorkville University. I appreciate the opportunity, and I would like to answer any questions you may have if I can.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. While you’re talking, I’m not surfing. I actually go to see what you’re about on line.

Your per-credit cost per hour — is it atypical or typical of other institutions? You’re speaking about an MBA program, and I was just looking at some of the programs that you offer here in British Columbia.

[12:50 p.m.]

D. Hancott: We try to be competitive. I’d say, in most cases, we are. We wouldn’t have one of the largest counselling programs in Canada if we weren’t. I haven’t done a comparison of every single program, but our business program is competitive.

If you look at an international scale, we’re probably very competitive because of the tuitions many schools charge international students. We don’t have those kinds of premiums. If students transfer credits in with a diploma or a certificate, we try to grant credit for those things if it’s recognized by BCCAT. They don’t complete those things, so you would finish a degree that’s four years maybe in two, depending on your transfer credits.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Your transfers. Okay.

D. Hancott: You know, it depends on individual cases, but that’s kind of our model.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I’m just curious. Sorry to interrupt. One of the things you did say is that — it’s a situation that even my kids have gone through — you get courses at one school and: “Oh, hang on a sec. You have to redo this.” That makes it tough on the kids. Is it a function of the university, or is it a function of the demand for additional revenue for the university? That’s one of my concerns.

D. Hancott: I think it’s institution-specific. I would hope that we have, maybe, more opportunity to do that. But even for us, we have restrictions, because you have to complete a certain number of general studies and a certain number of core and a certain number of specialty. There is not that much flexibility, depending on what you’re bringing in.

If you were a business diploma student bringing in a business diploma to a BBA, you’d probably get more credits than for an arts or science or criminology or something like that. That’s institution-specific. But we try to help people. I’m a fan of not forcing people to do psych 101, math 101, psychology 101 over again, if you’ve demonstrated that. But I’m not in charge of that.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation, and welcome to B.C.

I saw in your report that you’re saying you’re not asking the government for money, but you’re asking for support. So what is it that you’re asking for?

D. Hancott: Not necessarily support. But when we apply for programs, we want to make sure that we get the same due course of action as a public school, because we have to go through the same process. As long as that’s happening, we’re very happy.

We’re happy so far. The students seem to be happy, our faculty seem to be happy, and our space is a good location. As far as I’m concerned, things are going well, and I hope to have a positive presentation next year with more good news.

T. Redies: I’m just curious. You’re able to offer competitive programs. You’re not taking public funding. So how are you able to do that? Is it because you’re focused on just a few areas? I’m just curious how you’re managing to do this.

D. Hancott: It’s tough. We’re efficient. I answer my own phone, so I don’t have a secretary. I mean, I’m not trying to be facetious. We are very lean. I think our classes are fairly small. The average size is about 18. It’s a model that works pretty well, and it’s the way we do business.

You can’t do everything you want to do as quickly as you want — for example, adding the resources. Maybe we’re a little slower on that front, because everything has to come out of the funding model. I don’t think it’s a problem. I think it’s just maybe I’m impatient. Maybe I like to move forward a little faster. But we do take the revenue that’s coming in and fund our programs and fund our opportunities as we can. That’s the model, and it seems to work.

There’s no pot of money to do other things. Lean and mean and doing as much as we can with what we have. Doing more with less, I would say, might be the answer.

T. Redies: Are your faculty paid commensurately with the public universities?

D. Hancott: They’re paid based on the number of students in a class. Some are on contract, and sometimes you pay more or less. I would say if you stretch out our programs to 12 weeks, which some of the universities do…. Some of our programs are six weeks or less. If you double it, it would be equivalent.

I taught one course this summer with 60 students in another school, and I almost died. It wasn’t about the money; I just couldn’t maybe do the work. So we try to structure it so that the pay is commensurate with the work, and it funds the model. If you don’t do that, it’s very difficult. People just get overwhelmed with the workload.

[12:55 p.m.]

It’s not the teaching. It’s the grading. I don’t know if any of you teach, but teaching is fun. Grading is not so much fun. It’s very difficult. I think that’s what takes the time. So we try to chunk things so that students know what to expect and faculty know what to expect. From the backroom side of it, we create a lot of structure so faculty don’t have to do that work — the textbooks, the modules, the on-line learning environment, the writing labs and support for the faculty. I think that might be part of the answer as well.

T. Redies: Thank you. That was interesting.

J. Brar: Do you accept any low-income students? Do you have any program to accept them?

D. Hancott: I’m sure we have a lot of low-income students, but we don’t have scholarships for those students, if that’s what you’re referring to. A lot of students get tuition reimbursement. We have students from corporations who don’t pay until they’re successful. We do some sort of financing plans so that they can afford it.

If you pay a mortgage in Vancouver and now you have to take on an extra $2,000 a month for two courses, sometimes it’s prohibitive. We work with companies to make sure that an individual’s cash flow is important. So if they do well and they apply for reimbursement, maybe the company pays them, and it’s not so painful. But it’s a bit of an issue.

I would love to do more. I would like to see us do more, and maybe that’s something I can take back to consider.

R. Leonard: Do you do any research, or are you just a teaching university?

D. Hancott: A lot of our faculty do research, and we support it, but we’re more of a teaching university. We’re not a research-intensive university.

R. Leonard: I’m just trying to get a sense of where you fit in the realm of post-secondary education, and what elements….

D. Hancott: I would say teaching, because we probably wouldn’t qualify based on the criteria for a research-intensive university. We’re glad to be a teaching institution.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anybody else? Okay.

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Hancott. We appreciate your time and coming to British Columbia.

D. Hancott: Thank you very much. I live in Burnaby, by the way. I love British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to call a lunch recess.

The committee recessed from 12:57 p.m. to 1:49 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could call up, please, the Alliance of B.C. Students, that’d be great. We have Nicki Simpson and Caitlin McCutchen.

Just to remind you, you have ten minutes and then five minutes for questions.

ALLIANCE OF B.C. STUDENTS

C. McCutchen: Awesome. Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing us to come here today and present six of our recommendations for you. In front of you, we have a printed-out submission. We’re also going to be emailing our official one.

[1:50 p.m.]

I’m Caitlin McCutchen, the chairperson for the Alliance of B.C. Students. This is Nicki Simpson, the staff support for the Alliance of B.C. Students. The ABCS is a coalition of undergrad and graduate student societies advocating for accessible and affordable post-secondary education.

Today our six recommendations are on-campus housing and tenancy rights, eliminating interest on students loans, graduate student scholarships, dedicated mental health funding, free education for low- and middle-income students and the continued support for the U-Pass program and funding for the mayors ten-year plan.

The first three recommendations are asks that we’ve lobbied for in the past. In the past year, we’ve specifically focused a lot on on-campus housing. We were extremely excited to see these three recommendations in the mandate letters. We wanted to also thank you for committing to improving the lives of students across the province. We’re looking forward to seeing those asks in the February budget.

I will go through the remaining three, starting with dedicated mental health funding. Mental health and illness is becoming a more serious issue on post-secondary campuses due, in part, to the fact that people are talking about it more. The typical onset for mental illness and mood disorder is between the ages of 18 and 25. That’s when most people will be attending some form of post-secondary education.

Despite the growing number of students who report a mental illness, most don’t actually access treatment. Part of that is due to the stigma attached to having a mental illness, but a lot of it to the availability and access to mental health services.

On-campus resources can be fantastic, but they’re often overused. They’re not overused. They’re just underfunded. There are not as many resources. Campus wait times to talk to a counsellor can be anywhere from two weeks to two months, and lots of counsellors report that the lack of staff, or the understaffing, is the biggest problem they face in the workplace.

We believe that having targeted government funding would ensure post-secondary counselling departments are able to keep up with increased demand for services. Currently funding for mental health services on campus comes out of the university’s budget, and that’s contingent on the board of governors approving that every year. So if there are other priorities, mental health services can fall to the bottom of that list.

Having targeted funding from the government would help to ensure that all students have equitable access to care and services and get the help they need to successfully continue their studies. The Alliance of B.C. Students recommends $40 million in targeted funding to post-secondary institutions for front-line mental health services on campus.

Moving on to our fifth recommendation. It’s free education. B.C. is the only province without a comprehensive needs-based grant system. One of the biggest barriers students cite to accessing post-secondary education is the initial up-front cost. So an up-front, needs-based grant at the point of enrolment will help increase accessibility for those who need it the most.

Students who take out student loans end up paying more for their education. Making vulnerable people with lower incomes pay more for their education just isn’t fair.

These grants should be available to part-time students, full-time students, college students, university students — just to make the playing field more equitable for all British Columbians who want to pursue a post-secondary education. With this, the Alliance of B.C. Students recommends that we have a comprehensive needs-based grant system for post-secondary students in B.C., to match that of the Canada grants program, for low- and middle-income students at a cost of $97 million.

Our sixth and final recommendation is the continued support for the U-Pass program and funding for the mayors ten-year plan. The U-Pass is an invaluable program providing nearly 130,000 students with low-cost travel. A lot of students reported that they would not even be able to attend their post-secondary institution if it were not for the discounted rate of the U-Pass.

This program increases accessibility. It makes life more affordable for students across the Lower Mainland. Continuing supporting this U-Pass program will also continue to support students and, hopefully, foster lifelong transit use.

Funding the mayors ten-year plan will be a reliable way to ensure that transit is fast, affordable and reliable and, hopefully, a better choice than driving. So expanding transit infrastructure and increasing services to address congestion and a growing demand for transit will get people out of their cars. We would recommend the continued support of the U-Pass program and the funding of the mayors ten-year plan.

That concludes our presentation, and we are open to all your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Any questions?

[1:55 p.m.]

P. Milobar: Thanks for the presentation and for touching on the ones that you hadn’t already covered off from previous years.

Free education for low- and middle-income students. The $97 million must be…. You and others today have referenced the same $97 million, so I’m assuming that’s based on a calculation. What is the definition of “low- and middle-income” — and more specifically, probably, the threshold for middle income — to help get to that $97 million?

N. Simpson: I don’t have the exact numbers. I’m sorry. We used the same ones that the federal program goes by.

P. Milobar: So it’s based on the federal program income cutoffs?

N. Simpson: Yes.

P. Milobar: Okay, great.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I was just…. I wasn’t surfing. I was going through your organization on line. Thank you for coming today. I want to say that last year, when you did appear in Victoria and came over, I thought it was very informed, and I think it was really good.

I was just reading some of the comments, not only from yourselves but what some of the ministers have brought forward. You should consider that again, because it gives you an opportunity to be right there. With a new government in place and a new opposition in place, it does make a difference to have those brought face-forward into government while government is actually in session. It’s something to maybe consider.

A Voice: Fantastic.

J. Brar: Thanks for coming today. We have heard other presentations, as well, from students. The number goes from three to six. You have six, and some institutions, other bodies, made about three recommendations.

Keeping in mind that at the end of the day, we will have a limited number of dollars, out of these six recommendations, what would be your first two if you had to mention that these are the two where you see the maximum value of the dollar being applied and, also, the maximum number of students benefiting from that?

C. McCutchen: It’s a great question. For me, it would be the mental health funding and the needs-based grants. Just getting students into post-secondary education is great for the economy. It’s better for them.

Also, getting on-campus student housing is definitely one of my priorities. We can all agree that there’s a housing crunch in the Lower Mainland, and getting those students out of the rental market, putting them on campus, creates affordable housing for them and also takes those students out of the rental market and opens that up to other people.

Those would be my two that I think are the most important.

J. Brar: One more. Removing unnecessary rules that prevent universities and colleges from building affordable student housing — can you explain that? What are those rules?

C. McCutchen: Yeah. Post-secondary institutions are not allowed to take on the initial debt that it would cost to build on-campus housing — so allowing those institutions to take on the debt themselves to start the housing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anyone else?

Okay, seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate it, and we will take all this information you gave us.

C. McCutchen: Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a short recess.

The committee recessed from 1:58 p.m. to 2:13 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next is CUFABC. We have Dr. James Johnson and Dr. Michael Conlon.

Please go ahead.

CONFEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS OF B.C.

J. Johnson: Good afternoon. I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the select standing committee. I am Dr. Jim Johnson, president of CUFABC, which stands for the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia. In my day job, I’m an associate professor of economics at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. With me is Dr. Michael Conlon. He’s our executive director.

CUFA represents somewhere in the vicinity of 5,400 faculty members — both regular and contract faculty members — and librarians at the five research universities: Royal Roads; University of Victoria; Simon Fraser University; of course, UBC; and the University of Northern British Columbia.

[2:15 p.m.]

CUFA is not a trade union federation. We are a lobbying organization. We lobby the government on behalf of our members’ interests and the interests of universities generally, but our five members are all certified trade unions. Most recently, in 2013 and ’14, SFU, UVic and UNBC certified.

What I’d like to do is share with you our core priorities for the 2018 budget. As a lobbying organization concerned with the health of our institutions — and the welfare of our members, of course — our suggestions are grounded in renewing the vitality of the research universities and reversing a decade of fiscal stagnation.

One of our core, key lobbying priorities the last few years was the creation of a provincial graduate scholarship similar to the OGS in Ontario. We were delighted to see that that was recommended by this committee in the last round and that it was adopted by the NDP in their platform. We look forward very much to seeing that in the budget.

Currently we’re not competitive with the other provinces in terms of graduate student funding. This is a very, very important thing for our students. We lose top students to other provinces because we don’t have this. Alberta and Ontario both offer very long-standing…. When I was an undergraduate student in Ontario, the OGS was well established. That was a few years ago, as you can imagine.

The programs they have there are $15,000 each. We have recommended that, similar for B.C., but again, I wish to say how pleased we are and how much we look forward to seeing this excellent initiative in the budget.

Another one of our long-standing lobby priorities is to increase the core funding of B.C. research universities. The Ministry of Advanced Education is the only core ministry to have suffered cuts, both nominal cuts and, of course, real cuts. In both 2012 and 2013, the research universities saw budget cuts, with the most recent being a rolling 2.2 percent cut to their operating grants.

These cuts have come at a time when enrolment at most of the universities has been soaring. The cuts, as you probably know, were billed as administrative efficiencies, but really, that just masked a cut. These cuts have really eroded our capacity.

Even had we not had those cuts, we’d still be facing serious inflationary pressures. Many of the things that the universities spend money on, like libraries — in particular, library acquisitions — and buildings, have increased much faster than the general rate of inflation. There’s been a serious erosion in the capacity of the institutions to serve the students and to do research.

There’s, I guess, an open secret that one of the things that has allowed the universities to carry on during these funding cuts has been the international education business of universities. We’re not opposed to international education. We’re not opposed to bringing students in from abroad. We have no position on the higher tuition they pay.

But this is really no way to fund a university system. It’s distortionary, not all universities benefit similarly, and it’s not sustainable. It’s not going to be possible for the universities to have more and more and more international students every year to cover the costs of their operations.

If you have questions about the international student business that all of our institutions are in, Dr. Conlon is a bit of an expert on that area and would be glad to answer questions when I’m done.

We take the position — in common, essentially, with every labour economist — that investment in post-secondary education yields tremendous social as well as private benefits. There’s been a wealth of research done on the social value of public post-secondary education.

[2:20 p.m.]

We find that university graduates…. Obviously, their incomes are higher. The usual estimate is 7 to 10 percent lifetime earnings. But also, we find that they’re healthier. They have lower hospitalization costs. Of course, they don’t smoke as much. I always thought it had something to do with that. They’re less likely to call on social assistance. They have lower crime rates, more volunteerism, do greater donations. They vote more. These are the social benefits, and of course, there are the private benefits which accrue to the citizens of the province.

We think that investment in post-secondary education remains one of the best investments that the government can make. There are social benefits. There are private benefits. Also, there’s a significant amount of research to indicate that in terms of growth of the economy, in terms of productive capacity, investment in post-secondary education is really an ideal way in which to boost growth. The message is clear. The social dividend is high, the private dividend is high, and it’s a boost to growth and development in the province.

We would like to see the inflation-adjusted funding risen back up to the level it was in 2012-2013, when the cuts happened. So we’d like, in a sense, for the cuts to be restored and then inflation-adjusted.

We were pleased to see a campaign commitment for $100 million for science, technology, engineering and math — STEM programs. That’s a very good first step. We look forward to seeing that in the budget. Our understanding of the government’s commitment to STEM funding is that it would go to post-secondary. We have many institutions in this province in the colleges sector who participate in this area as well. It would go to post-secondary. We’re very pleased to see that. We think that’s the appropriate way to go, and again, we’re hopeful to see that in the budget.

Now I want to talk a bit about matching research funds. This is another key area of concern for us and has been for some time. The province does not offer matching research grants to researchers at the universities. This is unusual. Most provinces do. The result is that there’s a whole series of grants that require matching funds, which are very difficult to get in our universities.

We do have the B.C. knowledge development fund, which is a matching fund, but it’s highly targeted. It’s only available to a few researchers. We’d like to see a program where the province institutes a matching research fund across disciplines that would be more widely accessible.

We did see that there was a doubling of the therapeutics initiative. That’s great. We really applaud that. We’re very pleased with that. We also noted that the Green Party had a research proposal in its platform for $120 million over four years for the development of climate-friendly technologies and innovative ways to achieve desired environmental outcomes. We liked that proposal very much, and we hope that this committee will recommend that proposal to the Minister of Finance. We feel that a $50 million annual investment in a matching fund would be an excellent investment for the province.

Again, we’re very pleased with the moves that have already been made by the government.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Dr. Johnson, we’re just at about ten minutes now.

J. Johnson: Finally, I’d like to talk just a little bit about the next round of collective bargaining. I’d just like to say we’re not a trade union federation, but our members are trade unions. All collective agreements — not just of our members but almost every public sector employer — expire in a couple of years.

What we would like is to see the ministry consult with unions and build reasonable expectations of salary increases into their forecasts, into their funding formula.

[2:25 p.m.]

We think that the last few years — well, more than a few, I’m afraid — the way in which the funding for increases has occurred through PSEC has been very counterproductive. PSEC has acted as a mechanism to inhibit free collective bargaining, both to the detriment of the unions, which of course are our members, and also to the detriment of the universities. It’s been extremely hard to achieve mutually satisfactory outcomes because of the interference of PSEC.

We understand the government’s interest in cost control, of course. But in terms of free and fair collective bargaining, we think that PSEC has been a force for bad, not good. Again, we encourage the government, the Minister of Finance, to consult with the unions in advance of the next round of bargaining so that perhaps things can go a little more smoothly. As you know, we had a major strike in the last round at UNBC. That’s not good for anybody.

To conclude, we believe we have outlined critical challenges facing B.C.’s research universities. Our proposals are not especially expensive. In fact, we think of them as an important investment in the health of the economy, in the health of the province.

We noted at the fiscal update that the province has a surplus. Obviously, our proposals represent a small chunk of that. We think that’s a very good investment. We would hope that this committee would make recommendations along the lines of our four or five proposals.

Thank you, and we look forward to your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We only have a couple of minutes for questions.

One thing I did want to mention is that the surplus doesn’t form part of this budget that’s coming up. It has to go to debt by legislation. While it’s great to think of that, it’s gone. It’s not there anymore.

Anyone else have any questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation, by the way. I hope you were able to catch your breath. Your colour is coming back.

M. Conlon: Just barely, yes.

R. Leonard: On the merit-based scholarships, you put a dollar figure of $15,000. I’m assuming there’s…. Does that have to do with matching with other programs?

The other question was: how big of a…? How many students would be taking part in the scholarship, would you anticipate?

M. Conlon: The $15,000 number comes from the comparators in Alberta and Ontario. The Ontario numbers are inflation adjusted. My understanding is the Alberta number is no longer inflation adjusted. We drew the $15,000 number from that.

Where we drew the recommendation, to be candid, is from the campaign commitment that the current government made of $15 million to a graduate scholarship over the next two years. Based on our calculations, that would help close to 80 percent of the graduate students in British Columbia. A significant number of graduate students would get graduate scholarships if the government funded to that level of commitment.

P. Milobar: Just to that end, part of the language around the request was that we’re falling behind with numbers of graduate students. Are you saying this is just to provide a scholarship, $15,000, to the existing graduate, post-grad numbers, or is this meant to increase the number of people getting post-grad work done in B.C?

J. Johnson: Well, it’s to do a couple of things. First of all, it would allow our top students to stay in the province. Our top students are being recruited by other provinces. We’re losing them. It would allow them to do that, certainly, for students who choose to stay here now. Assuming they met the merit criterion, that would be a benefit to them. It is not just undergraduates who graduate with student debt, I’m afraid. Graduate students do too.

This would be a real benefit to students that would be here anyway. It would certainly be a benefit to the institutions, to be able to keep the very top graduates from our high schools, and it would allow our best students to stay in province.

M. Conlon: Just to answer the other part of your question, I know our proposal is not specifically geared to increased funding for graduate programs per se, and I think the universities would speak for themselves.

[2:30 p.m.]

But graduate students are funded differently than undergraduate students and are often extra to load. So it would be difficult, unless there was specific funding set aside for graduate programs, to increase the aggregate number of graduate students.

What it would do is allow UBC or SFU or UNBC to compete for a student who is being recruited by an Ontario university, when that Ontario university can tag on $15,000 extra that B.C. universities cannot, as of today, but would be able to do if there was a grad scholarship.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, sir. We don’t have any more time for questions. I really appreciate the presentation, and we will look at this with great interest. Thank you so much, and thank you for jumping in. We appreciate it.

If I could call the B.C. Federation of Students, please.

Can I ask you a quick question? How long do you think your presentation is, or do you have any idea how long?

S. Marshall: Ten.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The full ten minutes?

M. Olson: We had planned for it to be about the full ten minutes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, okay. We’re just running a little bit behind. Yeah, that’s fine. Please go ahead, Michael Olson and Simka Marshall. Thank you for joining us.

B.C. FEDERATION OF STUDENTS

S. Marshall: Thank you so much for having us. Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Simka Marshall, and I am the chairperson of the B.C. Federation of Students and a member of the Ahousaht First Nation. I am joined by my colleague Michael Olson.

Before beginning, I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples today during this hearing.

The B.C. Federation of Students, or the BCFS, is B.C.’s provincial student organization. We have our college and university, urban and rural, membership of more than 150,000 students at 14 post-secondary institutions in B.C. Our mandate is to advocate for a high quality, publicly funded and accessible post-secondary education system in British Columbia. We are pleased to have the opportunity to provide comment for the preparation of next year’s budget.

In our written submission, we will identify a number of priorities students believe are key in moving our post-secondary system and economy forward. These include increased funding to colleges, institutes and universities; the implementation of a student debt reduction strategy, based on a comprehensive grant program and the elimination of interest on student loans; the implementation of those education-related recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that are the purview of the provincial government; regulation of tuition fees for international students; and a one-time funding increase to BCcampus for the production and enhancement of open educational resources.

Today’s presentation will focus on three areas from that list: student financial assistance, international student fees and funding for BCcampus.

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 and their families have at their disposal. Graduate outcome surveys conducted by the Ministry of Advanced Education demonstrate that as few as 25 percent of baccalaureate graduates are able to rely on personal savings to fund their post-secondary education, either fully or partially. This means that more than 75 percent of graduates rely on a third party to help them pursue a college or university education, through their family, friends, employment, bank loans and government student loans.

In fact, according to the most recent Baccalaureate Outcomes Survey available on the ministry’s website, 47 percent of graduates report using government student loans or bank loans to fund or partially fund their education. The government’s B.C. student outcomes surveys are useful in tracking funding sources for students who have graduated. However, these surveys do not capture those students who’ve been forced to end their studies without completing.

There is a direct link between debt and completion rates. University of British Columbia researcher Lori McElroy found that students with little or more debt were more than twice as likely to finish their degree than students with high levels of debt. According to McElroy, completion rates for students who carried less than $1,000 of debt was 71 percent, while the completion rate for those carrying more than $10,000 of debt was only 34 percent. Yet, McElroy’s research also found that if even part of their financial aid was non-repayable grants, this has a positive impact on their likeliness of staying in school.

[2:35 p.m.]

This demonstrates that students without the burden of debt — or, at least, with a smaller burden — are more likely to complete their studies. Yet the most recent Canada student loans program statistical review reports that B.C. is in the top three provinces for average federal student loan debt, not taking into account debt incurred from provincial loans, banks or other borrowing sources.

The establishment of an upfront needs-based grants program would not only improve access to post-secondary education but would also lead to an increase in completion rates. This investment would have a disproportional benefit, as it helps realize a return on public funds invested in low- and middle-income learners who would otherwise have left school without graduating and who would otherwise have limited or lower-quality participation in the labour force.

The federal government has recently increased funding to the Canada student grants program, which was a welcome boost of 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 those who could not otherwise have afforded the high costs 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 the loans. The reduction of interest charged on student loans, effective August 1, is a welcome relief to those who are paying back student loans.

However, the application of interest on any level to student loans means that a student who can afford to pay up front pays only the cost but a low-income student who needs to access student loans will pay thousands of dollars in interest. The BCFS has been pleased to see this committee recommend the establishment of a student grants program in the past four successive years and several times prior to that.

For this year’s budget, the British Columbia Federation of Students is again recommending that the province commit to the complete elimination of interest charged on student loans and to the introduction of an upfront needs-based grants program to supplement the existing forms of student financial assistance. Such a move would make a significant difference in student access and affordability and would provide new opportunities to low- and middle-income families.

The second issue we would like to highlight in our presentation is international student tuition fees. International students come to Canada for an opportunity to access one of the top-ranked countries for higher education globally. Yet 16 years of flat or reduced core funding to universities and colleges has resulted in a reliance on ever-increasing fees charged to international students to make up budget shortfalls.

The previous government committed to doubling the number of international students in B.C. schools as a part of its B.C. jobs plan. Arguably, the rationale for this was to infuse British Columbia with a larger pool of educated people from which to fill shortages of workers and grow the economy. However, the government has left the key to attracting potential students completely in the hands of institutions.

By having no regulation on the increase in tuition fees for international students, institutions are free to set prices at whatever number they see fit. There is no consistency across the province. Nor is there predictability in the increase each year.

One of the biggest challenges to international students, from a financial perspective, is the inability to properly budget for a four-year degree. In any given year, these may increase by 3 percent, 5 percent, 9 percent or whatever the institution deems required to balance its budget. This is an unsustainable model, which often results in students struggling to stay in B.C. to finish their studies.

A secondary challenge to the current policy context is that there are no notice requirements for fee increases. Institutions are able to implement substantial fee increases with only a few weeks’ notice, leaving students scrambling to gather resources from their home countries. Unlike domestic students, international students who fail to assemble the necessary resources face removal from their courses and programs and removal from the country.

International student fees at universities in B.C. have risen 485 percent since 1991 — from just under $4,000 in 1991 to more than $23,000, annually, in 2017. International students also pay a vast amount into the local economy on things such as living expenses, arts and culture, and recreation.

According to a report for Global Affairs Canada, it is calculated that in 2015, these expenditures totalled $3.12 billion in annual spending, contributing to over 26,000 jobs. This is a direct contribution of $1.77 billion to the provincial GDP and over $176 million in income taxes. This report demonstrates that the value of international students expands much farther than the campus at which they are studying.

[2:40 p.m.]

For this year’s budget, the British Columbia Federation of Students recommends that the province commit to amending the tuition fee limit policy to include fees for international students. Such a regulation would create fairness, consistency and predictability to changes in international student tuition fees and would respect those who are travelling great distances and paying substantial fees to participate in our educational system. It would also mean that pricing policies for this vital service are set centrally by the B.C. government and are not left to individual boards of governors, who regularly implement international fee increases simply to offset projected budget shortfalls.

The final item we would like to address in our presentation is one-time funding for open educational resources. Tuition fees and ancillary fees are not the only financial barriers that students struggle with these days. The high cost of textbooks has become a serious obstacle to accessing post-secondary education in B.C.

Textbook prices rose by 82 percent between 2002 and 2012, and they now typically cost more than $200. For the many students and families who are already struggling to afford tuition fees and the high cost of living, this unpredictable expense can be a huge burden. Many students end up taking on additional loans or credit card debt, or working longer hours, just to pay for their books.

There is a solution to this problem. Open educational resources, notably in the form of open textbooks, are high-quality resources that are available in digital formats for free, or for a very low cost in print. OER can ease the burden of expensive textbook costs and be made available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and to those who do not have reliable access to the Internet. The previous government has already identified OER as a solution to the textbook dilemma and empowered BCcampus to oversee its implementation provincewide.

Our recommendation is to provide one-time additional funding of $5 million to BCcampus. This infusion of funding will allow BCcampus to create and adapt open textbooks that reflect and serve the diverse needs, in context, of students and educators in B.C.; develop sustainable systems to maintain these open textbooks; create open educational resources that are usable by all students, including those with physical and/or learning disabilities; and create and adapt the required ancillary resources, such as assignments and quizzes, to support open textbooks.

In closing, we would like to express our appreciation for the past support shown for several key recommendations made by our federation and its member local students unions around the province. 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 2018 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.

Thank you for your time. We look forward to your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a quick question. I just wanted to dig in a bit more, into the international students. We’ve had other presenters who are concerned that the international students are being used to finance institutions, as opposed to properly funding universities through public funding. How do you balance the concern that lots of spaces are being given to international students, to charge a lot more, so that the universities can survive, with the rights, as you’re saying, of international students to have a fair tuition? I’m just wondering how that’s balanced, in your mind.

M. Olson: One of the things that we’re addressing — and you’ll see it in our written submission as well, quite clearly — is that at this time, we’re not recommending any changes to the levels of international tuition fees. What we’re looking for specifically is regulation of the increases, to allow for predictability, to allow for proper budgeting for those students when they come over, to know what they’re going to be paying over the course of their studies while they’re in British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So it’s more about a fairness issue.

M. Olson: It’s fairness and, again, a budgeting issue specifically. At this time, we’re not looking to address the fact that…. It’s quite clear. We could also talk about examples of institutions using international student tuition fees as a way to simply make up for budgeting shortfalls right before the beginning of the new academic year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If I could just follow up with just one last question for me. As far as the open education idea, which is great, I’m just wondering. For those, let’s say, who produce textbooks, or the copyright holders, how does that impact?

[2:45 p.m.]

You want to have a robust textbook industry so that people will continue to write awesome textbooks for students. How do you balance that? Is that taken into account with the open education, digital platform? In other words, are their copyright holders being paid, or is it just trying to have some open source…? What is the overall…? Is there a business model around it?

M. Olson: That’s a great question. We’ve been working with the folks at BCcampus, an agency of the Ministry of Advanced Education, specifically to be learning more about the business model around open education resources.

Some of them do rely on open-access information. But when we were looking specifically for what kind of funding would be required to really enhance this as a program — to make it viable and make it be able to offer all those additional services that educators need, such as projects, quizzes, exams and those sorts of ancillary pieces that publishers provide — they identified that additional funding to be able to do that — to be able to pay people to actually be writing this material and making sure things are up to date — is absolutely part of the program that they’re putting together within that agency.

J. Brar: Can you tell me if you know what percentage of revenue comes out of international student fees to different institutions? There may a range about that.

The second one I want to ask…. I like the idea of what you’re saying about the fairness, about building new regulations, that kind of stuff. But can you give me an example as to what kind of regulation you are looking for to bring fairness for international students?

S. Marshall: Just to touch on the second part there in regards to what type of regulation we’d be looking for, there is an existing regulation for domestic student fees where institutions can’t increase it by more than 2 percent, per year. We’re also looking for a regulation — standardization of it across the map. That would be something that we would want to be discussing — what that actually looks like. But what we need is some sort of standardization of that so that there’s predictability for international students and so that it’s not going to be increased by 10 percent in the next year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time now. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much for your thoughtful presentation. I wish you all the best of luck.

Next up is the Association of British Columbia Public Library Directors. Jenny Benedict, hi. Welcome to our committee.

ASSOCIATION OF B.C.
PUBLIC LIBRARY DIRECTORS

J. Benedict: Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. D’Eith and hon. members of the committee. Many thanks for this opportunity to make a presentation this afternoon.

I am Jenny Benedict. I’m the chair of the Association of British Columbia Public Library Directors. Our association consists of the senior executives that lead the 71 public libraries across our province.

I appeared before this committee a year ago. Our association appreciated that the committee made a number of specific recommendations in the report on the Budget 2017 consultations. Specifically, No. 73 was to work with the federal government to support the dedicated delivery of public library services in Indigenous communities on reserve and develop local capacity within those communities; and No. 82, provide inflation-adjusted funding increases to public libraries to enable them to sustain basic levels of service and consider additional increases to implement new innovations in service delivery.

[2:50 p.m.]

In addition, we were grateful to be recognized as critical community infrastructure, on pages 42 and 44 of that report. The report stated: “The importance of community libraries and the wealth of information they contain cannot be understated. Public libraries should be able to continue to provide this valuable service in communities, large and small, throughout the province…. B.C.’s 71 public libraries see nearly 60 million in-person and on-line visitors every year and have 3,500 computer terminals available for public use. Libraries can now offer much more than just the loan of reading materials, including computer and Internet access, community gathering places and opportunities for education.” I’d like to add to those well-articulated points that our public libraries are strategic assets in B.C. communities. We have existing physical and digital infrastructure and well-established community relationships.

We’re critical to people across our province — in particular, vulnerable populations, for whom the public library is their only public Internet access, and young children, who develop early literacy skills through our storytimes and collections. That is integral to their future success in school and the workforce. For kids and teens, public libraries are very often the first places in their communities where they’re allowed to go alone and where they discover their own personal passions.

Adults are upgrading their skills and knowledge through our technology, learning resources and expert assistance — and then older adults, for whom lifelong learning and community connections at our public libraries are really integral to their well-being. For all of these people, investment in our public libraries supports economic vitality, social well-being and cultural development.

Last year we continued to advance our request through the Minister and Deputy Minister of Education, as well as our MLAs, the majority of whom supported the recommendations and many of whom spoke personally with the Minister of Education. Unfortunately, none of these collective efforts resulted in any action, so I am back before you again today.

Over the last decade, previous governments have quietly reduced support for public libraries in a number of ways. One, public libraries were removed as eligible institutions for physical infrastructure grants. The library’s funding line was deleted from the provincial budget, and we are now categorized as “Transfers to other partners” in the overall Ministry of Education budget.

There have been no increases in funding to public libraries since 2005, resulting in public libraries absorbing inflationary increases year over year. Last year a strategic plan — Inspiring Libraries, Connecting Communities — was released, but it’s really just an enabling framework, because it has no funding attached to it or designated resources for implementation.

These decisions really have lacked an understanding of the future cumulative impacts. A quarter of our public libraries are economically vulnerable. They receive between 15 and 40 percent of their total revenue from the province, and these small libraries have total budgets of less than $175,000. So this increase is literally for them to be able to keep their doors open and their lights on.

All public libraries are in need of increased funding for connectivity and technological infrastructure. Our public libraries provide Internet access, expert assistance and tools for people to become digitally literate. The public demand for our resources — and this is across all libraries, small, medium and large — exceeds our capacity. In some locations, we’ve got a total bandwidth for five devices and that’s for staff and the public, so we are requesting that there’s a major need for investment in connectivity infrastructure.

To compete in the job markets of today, we have many adults who are needing to upgrade their skills and their knowledge. Through our public libraries, we have access to free on-line and physical resources and in many locations, essential computer classes. We are in need of increased provincial funding to support current-generation computer equipment, applications, peripherals and networks.

We’re urging this committee and this government to protect our libraries from further reductions and ensure infrastructure support for our 240 locations that serve 360 B.C. communities. Our public libraries are the only places in our communities where every person — regardless of their age, wealth, gender, identification or cultural background — have an equal opportunity to learn, participate, connect and contribute.

[2:55 p.m.]

In summary, our six requests are as follows. Please reinstate the library’s budget line, index our grants for annual inflationary increases to sustain basic levels of service, appropriate new funding to support broadband Internet connectivity and technological infrastructure, allow our public libraries to be eligible for physical infrastructure grants, and work with the federal government to support the dedicated delivery of public library services in Indigenous communities and develop local capacity within those communities.

That concludes my presentation. I’d be happy to entertain your questions.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. I have two questions. The first one is in terms of having a dedicated budget-line item within the ministry. What is the result of being, I guess, lumped into the idea of just transfers? I assume that it’s being lumped in with other agencies. Has it had an impact on how much funding from the province…?

J. Benedict: Yes. It essentially means that the province isn’t able to allocate funding directly to public libraries. It can only allocate it within the Ministry of Education, and then the Ministry of Education prioritizes and decides what to do with it.

R. Leonard: So it makes it harder to track. Does it result in an inconsistency in how much is delivered to libraries?

J. Benedict: I mean, the funding has been static. I would say it makes it challenging to ever present a business case within the Ministry of Education that would result in an increase.

R. Leonard: Okay, that’s where I wanted to go.

The second question. One of the things that I’ve heard from libraries is that there has been, in other areas, a reduction in government service and an increasing reliance on the public to access government services through libraries but without any attendant increase in budget to be able to facilitate that.

J. Benedict: Yes, I think that’s a fair statement. I think there are a number of government services that can only be accessed on line, particularly in health care. That results, then…. There’s been a bit of an over-assumption that everybody has personal Internet connectivity and their own device. I would estimate it to be about 20 percent of the population that does not. That’s where we’re seeing a huge increase in our public libraries.

P. Milobar: Out of your six priorities, are those listed in order? If not, what would be your…? Let’s face it. The odds of getting all six for six in one budget for any group…. What would be your association’s view of the six, in terms of a prioritized list?

J. Benedict: I think that in terms of our prioritized list, the inflationary increases are one. The Internet connectivity is definitely two. And the technical infrastructure…. I mean, “reinstate the budget line” is not a monetary request. That’s a procedural request.

M. Dean: Jenny, thank you so much for your presentation. I’m just wondering. Are you saying to us today that actually some of our libraries are at risk of not being able to be sustained unless some of these proposals are implemented?

J. Benedict: I am saying they are vulnerable. We can certainly follow up with more information as to how close they are. What happens with libraries is that they reduce their number of opening hours, because they don’t have the budget to be open more hours. There are libraries that are only open 21 hours a week.

M. Dean: At what stage would a library be able to make that call? What would be the process of raising that alarm bell?

J. Benedict: That’s a very good question. We have a mix of public library associations and municipal libraries across the province, and it would be different for those different associations, depending on their construct. A municipal library would effectively take a municipal referendum to close. A public library association — the board could decide that it was no longer effectively able to sustain any kind of operations.

[3:00 p.m.]

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation. You mentioned 60 million visits, I think it was, a year. Has that number been increasing over the years? And by what amount?

J. Benedict: I’m going to follow up and put this in writing for you, so that’s something I’d definitely include for you.

T. Redies: The second question I had…. You mentioned that public libraries have 15 to 40 percent of their funding from the provincial government. What’s the difference? Why do some only get 15 and others 40?

J. Benedict: It’s based on a per-capita formula. So it somewhat depends on the municipalities’ ability to raise additional funding within their communities. Some communities that are exceptionally small have very limited ability to do so. Whereas….

T. Redies: Hence, they get more funding.

J. Benedict: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any other questions?

J. Brar: I think you mentioned the percentage…. I don’t remember the percentage anymore. I think a significant number of libraries are dependent on a small amount of money. I think 170-something, you mentioned. What is the percentage? How many libraries are those, if you can explain that?

J. Benedict: I think there are approximately 17 of the libraries that operate with a total budget of $175,000 or less.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Seeing no more questions, was there anything else you wanted to add?

J. Benedict: No.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate all the information.

J. Benedict: Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): For those in the gallery, we’re running a little bit behind. I apologize.

Next up is the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia. Dr. George Davison, welcome.

FEDERATION OF
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATORS OF B.C.

G. Davison: Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee about priorities for the 2018 budget. You have asked questions about improving affordability for families, enhancing services and supports and building a strong and sustainable economy. I hope to be able to address these.

To begin, I’d like to acknowledge that we’re on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations, and we thank them for allowing us to meet.

The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators represents over 10,000 faculty and staff who work and teach at B.C.’s colleges, universities and institutes. Our members teach everything from law to liberal arts to trades training. They are instructors, professors, librarians, archivists and researchers. They are actively engaged in programs designed to bring post-secondary education closer to the communities in which these 18 public institutions operate. We also represent several hundred support staff at two of the institutions and several hundred teachers in private English-language-learning schools.

To begin, I’d like to thank the government for moving rapidly to right a policy wrong made three years ago. Less than three weeks after the new government was sworn in, I was pleased to be at Camosun College when the Premier and the Ministers of Education and Advanced Education announced that funding to adult basic education and English language programs would be reinstated and that these programs would again be tuition-free. A few weeks later, I attended another moving announcement, at Vancouver Island University, to provide tuition waivers to former youth in care, at all 25 post-secondary institutions.

These programs are life-changing. And we’re tremendously proud of the work our members do in working with students of all ages and backgrounds to help them achieve their goals.

As part of the wrong-headed decision to add $1,600 tuition per term to ABE and ELL programs in 2014, other developmental programs that were once tuition-free also began to have tuition charged. These programs are proven ways to reduce poverty and provide students access to education and support networks, to discover new skills and gain confidence in their abilities. The government has set aside contingency funds to deal with enrolment growth in this area, so I urge the committee to recommend the reinstatement of funding for these overlooked developmental programs, including adult special education, and career choices and life success for women.

In the rest of my time before the committee today, I want to cover the core issues impacting post-secondary education today: systemic funding issues, tuition fees and institutional budget mandates.

[3:05 p.m.]

The underlying principle for these issues is shared across our federation. We are motivated to deliver the best educational opportunities for anyone who wants to learn in B.C. The importance of investing in post-secondary education for all has never been greater, but this has not been reflected in post-secondary funding and governance over the last 16 years.

In that time, we’ve seen a shift in the government’s funding priorities. Where post-secondary was once seen as a public good and an area where the government would invest to benefit both individuals and the economy, we now have a situation where the government has increasingly downloaded costs onto students and their families.

The situation has worsened over the years and has brought us to the troubling point we’re at today, where students face tens of thousands of dollars in debt for their education while they contend with out-of-control increases in costs of living. At the same time, institutions are told to do more with less, as their funding has decreased. This has resulted in a series of cascading cost pressures that have put our post-secondary system on shaky financial footing.

At the institution level, operating grants are the largest investment the government makes in post-secondary. After a series of cuts in the last several years, the system is funded now at the same level as it was in 2010-11. After accounting for higher education inflation, this public investment is actually 20 percent lower than it was in 2001.

To put this in context, 25 years ago, just after I came into the system, many institutions received operating grants that amounted to 80 percent of their total revenues. Now, most of the large institutions receive just over 40 percent from the government; one is at 30 percent.

With declining funding, institutions have had to find other ways to bring in revenue to cover their costs, and that has meant increasing tuition. Since 2001, tuition revenues have gone up 400 percent. In that year, government tuition revenues were $452 million. This past year they were $1.828 billion, and they’re forecast to go up 6.1 percent per year for the next couple of years.

Even with domestic tuition fees restricted to a 2 percent increase, students have seen their costs go up dramatically. Whether the institution has added more student fees or worked around the 2 percent cap in any number of ways, students cannot keep up with the increased costs. B.C. students are graduating with record-high student debt, as you heard from my colleagues in the BCFS — typically, it’s $35,000 — all the while contending with astounding increases in costs of living. Many students graduate with more than the average. Our local faculty associations have received stories of students amassing up to $160,000 in student debt. It’s difficult to imagine how these students will be able to pay this off.

We also see the shift in funding in the growing number of international students, also referred to earlier. Now making up almost 20 percent of total student population, international students have become a major source of revenue through the vastly higher tuition fees that they pay. A 50 percent increase in international students was part of the Liberals’ B.C. jobs plan.

Though international students make incredibly valuable contributions to the institutions and classes they attend, they should be valued as learners rather than purely seen as a source of revenue. We need to make sure that these students have the supports that they need to succeed in their education.

Clearly, public operating grants are no longer able to meet the underlying cost pressures facing post-secondary institutions in B.C. They now rely on tuition fees, international student revenue and other outside sources of income to cover basic operating costs. It will be a large challenge to correct the situation that’s evolved over more than a decade, but there are many opportunities to begin to address this situation and provide some relief for students.

One of the first measures that can be taken to relieve institutional funding pressure is to end the practice of tying a percentage of operating grants to the jobs outlined in the 2014 skills-for-jobs blueprint. Currently up to 25 percent of operating grants at many of our institutions must be spent on programs that support the blueprint’s definition of a top 100 job, despite a market and educational reality that may point to the need for scarce resources to be directed elsewhere.

The most glaring example of this misguided programming was the liquefied natural gas industry, where institutions were pushed into LNG-related training, but promised jobs didn’t materialize. It’s hard to tell what impact this program had, but the redirection of resources — and, therefore, courses offered — put pressure on programs that allow students to develop the high-demand skills of today.

[3:10 p.m.]

Critical thinking, communication, problem-solving skills are learned and strengthened in programs like social sciences, humanities and liberal arts. These are crucial skills for tomorrow’s citizens and workers, yet these are the programs that were cut or cancelled at our member institutions.

Another opportunity to reallocate resources to improve post-secondary is to direct more of the now $100 million rural dividend fund to community colleges. Rural community colleges have borne the brunt of the underfunding in post-secondary. Given their smaller service populations, they’ve had to slash their course offerings to keep within their diminishing budgets. This has produced an additional hardship for local students. Where they were once able to upgrade their education locally, now they must pay additional living and travel expenses to attend places of learning outside their hometowns.

Rather than standing by and allowing this trend to continue, we propose strengthening these community colleges by reinvesting provincial dollars into local educational opportunities.

Third, a major cause of decreased choice within post-secondary institutions was the removal of envelope funding in favour of block funding. We propose reinstating envelope funding to provide assurance that core programs will continue to be available to all, no matter where you live.

Fourth, similarly pragmatic options exist to reduce the financial burden that post-secondary students are experiencing. We commend the government for the actions they’ve taken to make post-secondary education more affordable, including the decision to lower the interest rate on student loans to prime. While this doesn’t address the underlying problem of unsustainably high tuition fees, it will allow students to pay down the principle of their loans more quickly.

We urge the government to make student loans interest-free as soon as possible. Prime is 3.2 now.

Fifth, we also commend the government’s openness to creating additional non-repayable student grants, as this is a key policy move that provides a low-cost and effective method to diminish the student debt burden on low-income and middle-class students. We look forward to seeing the details around the government’s proposed $1,000 completion grant, as this is a novel and innovative idea and a positive start. But it doesn’t help get students into the system.

We encourage this committee to review the proposal within the context of a broader strategy regarding non-repayable grants to find the most cost-effective manner in providing some relief to students.

Finally, we ask the government to follow the recommendations of this committee from the previous three years and change the institution mandate letters and capital funding requirements to allow institutions to finance self-supported capital projects, including student residences and housing. This change will increase desperately needed student housing stock, which in turn will reduce the pressure on low vacancy rates in many cities’ rental housing.

In summary, we’re at a challenging point in the post-secondary system in B.C. Sixteen years of underfunding have meant that decisions about choices and opportunities available for students have declined as the importance of post-secondary education has increased.

However, through the implementation of the pragmatic approaches that we’ve outlined, progress is possible. By revising the post-secondary education funding formula, by making practical changes to make post-secondary more affordable to students, by revising institutional mandate letters, we can begin to reverse the underfunding trend in the post-secondary system in B.C. Through our actions today, we can ensure that we’re providing more affordable access and better services and supports, all of which will help build a stronger and more sustainable economy.

Thank you, and I’m pleased to be able to answer any questions you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We only have time for maybe two minutes of questions.

S. Cadieux: Thank you for your presentation. My first question’s related to the adult basic education and ELL funding and the change to tuition-free, which you referenced. You referenced, in your comments, the fact that it’s well proven that in doing this, there’s a positive economic impact.

Can you cite a study or any study that shows the economic impacts of that particular program and whether or not the students actually complete and go on or what the completion rates are — any of those sorts of pieces of information?

G. Davison: I know there are studies by SFU professors that have looked at this. They specialize in developmental education and the impact it has. But anecdotally, all of my colleagues at all of our institutions recognize that these are feeder programs. They’re entry-level programs for students to get into the system. They go into every other program that is offered. They graduate. They become tax-paying citizens. For us, it’s just a commonsense process.

[3:15 p.m.]

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you, sir. I really appreciate your comments. I’ll be frank. I always like partisan comments, because it kind of makes me pay attention a little bit more, to be honest with you.

G. Davison: Sure.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): But can you justify, as a president at a leading university here in British Columbia, a 7.8 percent increase last year to this year? That president has been in place for several years. Is that a fair increase, where everybody is challenged? You’ve come forward with some very good suggestions, and you saw our recommendations. I’ve sat here for five years and tried to get these recommendations through. But I’m one of those people that….

You have to look internally also. That’s something that I would challenge you and your organization to do also. I’ll just leave it with you.

G. Davison: How so?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Look at every penny, sir. If it’s all about the kids, like those individuals sitting in the back, let’s work together and make it all about the kids, not just organizations.

G. Davison: These are adults, but I agree with you.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Sorry. They’re kids to me.

J. Brar: Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s very well done and very well put together. It’s certainly very educational to me.

I particularly would like to…. I know you made a lot of recommendations, and other people have made very similar recommendations as well. My one question to you would be: if we have to pick, at the end of the day, keeping in mind the limited number of dollars, what are the two key recommendations you would recommend as a priority?

The second one I want to ask you is…. You mentioned a significant increase in the tuition fee. The total amount I’m talking about for the international graduates goes from almost $500 million to $2 billion. Is it only the increase, or is it also the number of students going up, and it’s a result of that?

G. Davison: There are lots of factors involved where the tuition revenue increases have occurred. But nothing else has grown at that pace in this system. Combined with the declining operating grants — and that has been very visible from the time I’ve been in the system to now — to the huge increase in tuition fees, it’s become unsupportable for most students in B.C.

Better funding for the system, I think, I would recommend — I won’t be specific about that — but also relief for students. Those are the folks that we’re serving.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Unfortunately, we’re out of time, but thanks, Dr. Davison. We really appreciate your time and all your talks.

Once again to the gallery, we’re running a little bit behind. We may catch up sometime, but I appreciate your patience.

Next up is DigiBC — James Hursthouse and Jon Lutz. Welcome, and thank you for your presentation.

INTERACTIVE AND DIGITAL MEDIA
INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

J. Lutz: Just before we get started, I will apologize. We prepared a PowerPoint for today’s meeting, but unfortunately, for some reason, it hasn’t successfully made its way here. We have our PowerPoint on our phones here.

James is going to lead us through a verbal version of the presentation that we were going to give. We’ll get going.

J. Hursthouse: I’ll take it from there. Thanks very much for your time this afternoon. We do appreciate it. I’m James Hursthouse, executive director at DigiBC, and this is Jon Lutz, our board chair.

DigiBC is the Interactive and Digital Media Industry Association of British Columbia. We’ve been an organization since around 1997 — got our start as New Media B.C. — and over the years have represented different sectors within digital media and digital technology. Right now our key focus is really on what we describe as the creative technology sector, otherwise known as interactive and digital media.

That primarily means companies in three key verticals. One of them is the video games and interactive sector; the other, animation and visual effects sectors; and also digital creative and marketing sector. Video games and interactive currently represents around 6,000 full-time jobs here in British Columbia; animation and visual effects, around 7,000 full-time jobs; and the digital creative and marketing sector we estimate at anywhere between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs — for a total of around 16,000-17,000 people employed in this creative technology sector.

[3:20 p.m.]

I’m sure many of you are aware, but in case you aren’t, I’d like to point out that some of the world’s best-known interactive and digital media product is actually made right here in British Columbia. One of the key things that the organization is undertaking right now is to make sure this great industry here in the province is made aware to kids all over the province, to make sure that they know that these opportunities are right here on their doorstep. Some of the most well-known product which comes out of British Columbia…. I guess the key one, in some ways, is FIFA, the Electronic Arts series.

Jon, maybe you could talk a little bit about FIFA’s performance.

J. Lutz: Yeah. FIFA 18 launches this Friday. It’s a global cultural phenomenon. It sells north of 20 million copies a year, and it’s certainly one of the flag-bearing video game titles in the world. It was the best-selling console game in the world last year, and it’s made right here in British Columbia.

J. Hursthouse: In addition to that, we have a very healthy animation and visual effects sector. A movie that has recently launched, which any of you with kids will probably be aware of, is The Lego Ninjago Movie. This was made right here, in downtown Vancouver, by Animal Logic.

Also, the sector continues to evolve to things like mobile phones and, beyond this, to augmented reality, virtual reality headsets. Apple recently has been running a made-in-Canada section — and not only that but a made-in-Vancouver section — of the app store, in celebration of Canada 150. You can see companies such as Hootsuite, Klei Entertainment, the mobile version of FIFA all featured very prominently in the app store — again, for a global audience.

I think it’s important to note that in the case of video games — and interactive, particularly — we’re not really talking about products any longer. We’re talking about services. As Jon mentioned, FIFA has been a best-selling franchise for many, many years, but FIFA 18 will have a lifespan of — I don’t know — two or three years as a live service, so people are going to continue to play the game. This means that it’s not any longer just developers and artists that are employed. Business analysts, customer support people and a whole range of different types of employees get employed within the sector these days.

If you ask us what it is that connects all of these different types of companies together into this creative technology sector, the answer is really a very unique mix, quite an equal blend of arts roles, creative roles and technology roles within the companies that DigiBC would call its members.

Typically, when you look at a mainstream technology company, it’s probably 80 percent engineering and tech, and 20 percent other. But I think our companies bring this unique blend of creative and arts roles — probably 40 percent arts and creative, 40 percent technology and then 20 percent business and administration within a typical games or animation studio.

We certainly believe it’s very important that B.C. should continue to foster these kinds of employees. We feel that the employees of the future really will be the ones who can blend culture and creative with technology in order to be able to drive innovation forward in a whole range of different sectors.

J. Lutz: Just to add there — if I may, James — the other thing that we bring to the province is transferability of the skills that are developed in our sector. Our sector has obvious curb appeal to youth, and we attract a lot of young talent into our industry, beginning their careers. At the other end, when people leave the interactive or creative technology sector, they’ll go off and set up tech companies in adjacent tech subsectors and start up whole new ventures based on some of the principles and founding learnings that they’ve had in our industry.

Examples of that would be Ayogo Health, using tech to improve health care; Race Rocks 3D, which does 3-D design for Boeing.

A couple of others?

J. Hursthouse: Finger Food Studio, obviously, as many of you might be aware, is doing a lot of work in industrial design, for example.

J. Lutz: I think that when it comes to sort of the vision of us as an organization, and actually for the sector overall, DigiBC’s vision is that British Columbia is the world’s leading centre for interactive and digital media. I think we have that opportunity ahead of us. Arguably, animation and visual effects is the number one cluster in the world right now, due in no small part, we think, to the creation of the DAVE tax credit and the film tax credits a few years ago.

[3:25 p.m.]

I do think, when you look at the games sector, for example, you could make the case that B.C. was the number one jurisdiction for games until around 2009, but we have lost ground quite significantly to other provinces since 2009.

Some of the statistics that we have right here would be that back in 2009, British Columbia had around 6,000 full-time jobs. If you were paying attention — or because you were paying attention — you’ll know that there are still 6,000 jobs here in the province now in 2017. By comparison, Quebec had about 5,100 full-time jobs in 2009 but now boasts around 10,000 full-time jobs. Ontario, which started smaller back in 2009 with 1,966 jobs, has grown to around 3,800. In the case of Quebec, the tax credit is at 37.5 percent, and Ontario is at 35 percent, whereas the games companies in B.C. currently have an interactive digital media tax credit at 17½ percent.

J. Hursthouse: One of our key, I guess, strategic priorities is to sort of figure out, in conjunction with government, how we can create that number one on the world stage across the sectors within the member base that we represent — basically, bringing video games back to its number one position so that we can say without question that we have the number one interactive and digital media sector, at least in Canada if not on a global stage, as part of our vision.

In terms of the short- and medium-term mission, the organization really is trying to ensure that interactive and digital media, as a cornerstone of the broader technology ecosystem, grows and thrives — across the entire province, importantly — for the benefit of both this generation and future generations of British Columbians. Also, we want to ensure that those future generations are not only thrilled to work in this very exciting industry but are also qualified to do so, to be working in interactive and digital media as a robust, diverse and sustainable industry. We realize there’s work to be done there.

J. Lutz: I just think it’s important for everyone to realize, if you don’t already, that we’re in the middle of an industrial revolution right now. Tech is impacting all industries, every aspect of our lives. The video games industry has to be cutting edge in so many different ways.

As James explained earlier, this is more than just getting the pixels to move on the screen. This is about creating living, breathing 3-D worlds, simulating physics, running with thousands of players simultaneously on a server, in live-service environments, running with live events, being programmed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is truly next-generation technology. It’s the kind of jobs that we create, combining creativity with technology, that really spark the imagination and create the potential for people to go on into having a much broader impact in the wider tech sector.

Various provinces and jurisdictions around the world have realized this — more than ten years ago. We’ve been advocating for a competitive level playing field in British Columbia for about the last five or six years, since the original IDMTC was introduced.

We’re not going to be talking specifics today, of the specific changes we’d like to make, because we’re still actually working through our economic impact study with a couple of consulting groups. We’re preparing that for presentation to the government in due course.

J. Hursthouse: As Jon mentioned, we are working on a recommendation white paper, which we’ll deliver to the government shortly, basically around the IDMTC, around its enhancement and extension. Currently the IDMTC is set to expire in the middle of next year, which we think would be disastrous for the industry. But as Jon said, we’ll deliver that white paper in due course, based on fully fleshed-out economic impact studies.

We want to continue to advocate for immigration policies that promote bringing the world’s best creative talent into our sector here in British Columbia. As Jon said, that’s not just for the video games animation sector but for a broader technology strategy as well.

We’re also focused in on education initiatives. Right now there’s a proposal letter with the Ministry of Education, talking about the creation of an education foundation. Again, we don’t view it as an opportunity but actually as more of an obligation for our sector to reach out to kids throughout the province, get them interested in technology, get them interested in the application of arts careers. We have a unique advantage in that regard.

[3:30 p.m.]

A couple of specific projects: Play to Learn, which Electronic Arts has funded in conjunction with a company called EverFi. It’s already in 70 schools throughout the province.

Is that correct?

J. Lutz: In the first year, we hit 50 schools and 3,000 students. We’ll be growing to 70 schools over the next couple of years.

J. Hursthouse: In terms of other sectors or other areas of education that we feel we can bring some benefit, it’s within curriculum and careers engagement, helping kids navigate the career choices ahead of them.

Finally, we’re keen to support the broader mandates of government in terms of growing the broader technology sector. Jon has already talked about how a very healthy, vibrant video game sector can underpin a broader technology strategy. Also, we want to work on programs to help us secure B.C.’s fair share of federal funding — things like the Canadian Media Fund and various other elements — and, finally, engage on other initiatives that could benefit from gamification and citizen motivation.

We look forward to engaging in dialogues around other areas, things like housing affordability, transportation and green city initiatives, and bringing the mind of the creative technologists to bear on those initiatives. I’m happy to take any questions, if you have any. I realize that time is relatively short today, but thank you very much for your attention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. We just have a couple minutes. Before I take any questions, I’d just like to remind both of you that there is a deadline of October 16 to get anything in. The committee actually can’t look at anything past that date, as much as we’d like to. We have to have a final report done by November 15.

We’d very much — I would assume; I can’t speak for the whole group — love to see what you’re proposing. It seems like there are labour issues, tax issues, housing issues, education issues. There’s a whole bunch of things you touched on generally but not specifically, which makes it very difficult for us to make any kind of recommendation. So please, I’d encourage you to get that in.

A Voice: Yeah, we certainly will.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions at all?

R. Leonard: Thanks for the presentation. I know that we have somebody who’s been quite successful who lives up in Cumberland area — in video-gaming. It strikes me that when we think of technology, we often think of the centre of Vancouver. But one of the interests of this government, of course, is to create sustainability and good-paying jobs throughout British Columbia. You did mention getting out into the further reaches of the province. I’m just wondering if you can elaborate a little bit about the challenges and the opportunities that are there.

J. Hursthouse: Maybe I’ll take the first go at that. A couple of things we’ve been doing at a grassroots level include a program called games industry gateway, where initially, with the downtown schools, we’ve been going in and talking to the kids about career opportunities in person. But we came to extend that, using technology such as GoToMeeting or other forms of technology that allow us to have the dialogue with schools in more remote areas of the province. We’ve personally been doing a number of those sessions.

Obviously, as you’ve mentioned, there are companies up in Kelowna, parts of Victoria, Vancouver Island. Part of this initiative is to try and have schools meet or become sort of adopted by companies or have companies adopted by schools so that ongoing dialogue between the games industry specifically, animation industry, and the schools can continue on an ongoing basis.

I think, in addition to that, there are interesting elements of the DAVE tax credit, for example, or the film tax credit, where you get rural incentives. Something like that could be considered for the IDMTC, but again, we’ll leave that to the recommendation white paper in order to flesh that out a little further.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anyone else?

Well, thank you very much for your presentation and everything you do for the industry. We appreciate it.

Next up is Genome B.C. Once again, for people who came in, we’re running a little bit behind. Our apologies. We will get cracking. We have Pascal and Suzanne.

GENOME B.C.

P. Spothelfer: Good afternoon, members of the committee and committee Clerks. I believe that some of you are familiar with Genome British Columbia, or Genome B.C., our history and our contributions to research excellence, job creation, entrepreneurship and B.C.’s economy. I appreciate your interest.

[3:35 p.m.]

Genome B.C. is a catalyst for research in British Columbia on the applications of genomics across B.C.’s key economic and social sectors: health care, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, mining, energy and the environment. B.C.’s opportunity is now. We’re well placed in terms of global leadership and job creation now and well into the future.

The OECD predicts the bioeconomy enabled by genomics will increasingly be a major driver of economic growth. We have created a recognized, world-class genomics capability and ecosystem through careful investment both federally and provincially. Our approach attracts partnerships, which bring private and international investment to the province — over $650 million already in Genome B.C.’s portfolio alone. There’s a significant multiplier beyond that, as a result of B.C.’s genomics research excellence.

B.C. is well positioned to further leverage this investment. Genome B.C.’s 2015-2020 plan, Powering B.C.’s Bioeconomy, shows us what it would look like to see an increase in social and economic benefits for British Columbians. It is a vision for how genomics could solve some of the most pressing needs in the sectors that matter most to B.C., from forestry and mining to health care.

We are midway through a plan that is truly focused on user-driven research and investing in emerging technologies and companies. It builds on B.C.’s talent, infrastructure and research excellence — assets that not only open up opportunities for better health and health care but are also the fuel that will optimize our bioeconomy, including forestry, agriculture and life sciences growth, and provide significant returns to the province. Success for Genome B.C. will be realized when genomics is where information technology is today — integrated, invaluable and ubiquitous.

Genomics will contribute to a healthy population, vibrant communities, resilient ecosystems and natural resources adaptable to climate change. This will take considerable time and effort. To date, we have made significant progress. I would like to share some examples of this progress to date and illustrate how our partnerships are enabling genomics to become a credible solution to real problems.

In the area of applied health research, we work closely with the province through the Ministry of Health, its health authorities and agencies, as well as other partners. For example, we’re working with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, to support the CPO bacterial surveillance program, established in 2014, by genomic fingerprinting of this emerging group of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, in order to reduce hospital-acquired infections in acute care facilities. We’re working with the B.C. Cancer Agency Centre for Clinical Genomics to improve cancer outcomes by increasing the efficiency of genomic testing and increased access to genomic testing for cancer patients.

We are partnering with the first B.C. Women’s Hospital and Health Centre Indigenous health program and working with Indigenous people to enhance equity and access in genomics research and precision health, thus closing the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians’ health care, as highlighted in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, and we are working with the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS to develop and validate a genomics-based hepatitis C drug resistance test, in anticipation of what is expected to be a national recommendation to conduct baseline hepatitis C resistance screening prior to beginning antiviral drug therapy.

In the natural resources and clean-tech sectors, we work closely with industry and the province to mitigate against the impacts of climate change and industrial activities and to support the competitiveness of our sectors. For example, we’re working with Teck to optimize the use of microbes in water treatments to reduce selenium contamination and improve water quality in the Elk Valley. We are working with engineers at Kerr Wood Leidal Associates to develop a genomic tool for monitoring and validating the performance of engineered water treatment systems in order to improve design and management practices for engineered wetlands.

We’re partnering with the province to apply genomics to improve the provincial tree-breeding program, in particular for western red cedar and Douglas fir, to ensure healthy and productive forests for future generations in a changing climate, and we’re working with the city of Vernon to use genomics to source-track E. coli contamination in the water systems. We have also made three investments in companies that are raising capital, hiring people and forging ahead with new product launches, and we have more opportunities in our funnel.

Not only is Genome B.C. working on these efforts; we’re also dedicated to inspiring our future scientists and engineers and to engaging the public. We’re also committed to be a credible source for genomic information for the public, governments, industry and educators. This year alone, Genome B.C.’s Geneskool program reached almost 8,000 students and supported the training of over 100 teachers in 37 communities across British Columbia.

[3:40 p.m.]

We are pleased with our ongoing partnership with Science World, with the new Genome B.C. BodyWorks gallery Lab Zone that complements Geneskool. It is an important part of our plan.

Societal engagement, beginning with education, is a key element in ensuring that our province has the right talent and an environment that celebrates its innovation as a key driver for future bioeconomy for B.C.

We are grateful that the province has seen value in and endorsed our five-year plan with a partial investment. Our plan acts as the framework for how we invest in world-class research to deliver results that can be applied and commercialized as appropriate. It ensures that our work will meet the needs of industry, governments and the citizens of our province. It highlights how we’ll support the creation of new services, products and companies.

We want to work with you to ensure that British Columbia takes full advantage of the opportunities presented by genomics, innovation and B.C.’s future bioeconomy. It also enables us to work with government of the stakeholders to develop the frameworks and policies that are critical for the day-to-day use of genomics across sectors and in health care particularly.

This committee has, in the past, been very supportive of Genome B.C. and even recommended to fund our work, so thank you. Because of the support of the province, B.C. is one of the top genomic clusters in the world, and B.C. citizens are already realizing the economic and social benefits. Let’s continue to ensure that B.C. benefits in all ways from the investment in research, intellectual capital and world-class genomics capabilities.

Thank you for your time, and we are prepared to take questions, if you have any.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Spothelfer. Appreciate it.

Any questions for Genome B.C.?

T. Redies: Thanks for the presentation. It’s really interesting, and I think that there are lots of opportunities for B.C. in the coming years around genomics.

Your presentation doesn’t really have any recommendations. What specifically do you think government could do to support the broader, successive genomics in British Columbia?

P. Spothelfer: We submitted in 2015 the five-year plan, which runs until 2020. Out of that plan, which is an $85 million plan, $54 million has been funded by the province — as the last $20 million March 31 of this year. There is another $31 million that we would like to see invested. So it’s really that plan and the realization of that plan that is our recommendation. We are working with officials in the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance and other ministries to make sure that we can realize this plan.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate it.

Up next, we have HUB Cycling — Laura Jane from HUB Cycling.

HUB CYCLING

L. Jane: First, I just want to say thanks so much for taking the time to have us today. I know it’s probably a long day for you guys. Thanks for still being alert.

My name is Laura Jane, and I’m the acting executive director of HUB Cycling. We’re a registered charity with over 2,000 members; 38,000 direct contacts; 60 organizational members, including many business improvement associations and tech companies; and tens of thousands of people that we reach each year through our events in Metro Vancouver and our education programs.

We also have ten local committee branches that are active in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, Surrey and White Rock, Burnaby, the Tri-Cities, North and West Vancouver, Richmond, Vancouver, Delta, Tsawwassen, New Westminster and Langley. We’re really Metro Vancouver–wide.

We’ve been working for 20 years now to help make Metro Vancouver happier, healthier, safer, more sustainable and more affordable by getting more people riding bikes for transportation.

For those of you who don’t know, cycling is actually the fastest-growing mode of transportation in Metro Vancouver as well as in British Columbia. In addition to that, more than 40 percent of British Columbians want to cycle for transportation more but are hesitant due to the lack of safe cycling facilities.

I speak with parents all the time, for example, who want to let their kids bike more, because they know it’s so important for their kids to be active. But they’re nervous, because there simply is not enough protected infrastructure in the province.

[3:45 p.m.]

Unfortunately, the amount of funding provided by the province for cycling is inadequate to really fill in the gaps in the cycling network. For example, the cost-sharing funding provided for cycling this year through Bike B.C. was just $8 million to be shared among all of the municipalities in the entire province. In total, this amounts to less than $2 per person per year in funding for cycling. By contrast, a country like the Netherlands — where, obviously, you see a lot of people cycling for transportation — invests $44 per person, per year. You see tons of kids and families and women out on bikes.

Increased funding from the province of B.C. would allow municipalities to provide complete cycling networks within ten years, rather than plans that extend beyond our lifetimes and may not even be available to my grandchildren. In Metro Vancouver, TransLink’s vision is to see 15 percent of all trips of less than eight kilometres made by bicycle by 2040. There’s no way this vision will be reached without increased investment from the province.

Increased investment in cycling comes, also, at a much more affordable cost than motor vehicle and public transit infrastructure, but it still demands its fair share of funding. In order to complete the networks that allow people to get around by bicycle, we support the B.C. Cycling Coalition’s call for accelerated provincial investment in cycling at a level of $100 million per year.

Unlike investment in automobile infrastructure, investments in cycling also provide a significant return on investment. When governments invest in safe infrastructure and increase their cycling mode shares, they save in health care, they save in pollution-related costs, they save in congestion costs, and they save in police and ambulance services and insurance rates.

Research from Denmark suggests that the cost-benefit ratio for every dollar invested in cycling infrastructure is at least six to one. In other words, for every dollar spent on transportation cycling, we get about $6 back in savings in health care and other areas.

According to Statistics Canada, the top five biggest killers in Canada are cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory diseases and accidents. Encouraging active transportation reduces the prevalence of all of these things and saves governments money as a result. A recent study in the British Medical Journal followed 264,000 people in Britain over five years. They found that those who cycled to work actually had a 40 percent lower risk of heart disease, cancer and overall mortality. Research from the Netherlands also suggests that cycling investments save 6,500 premature deaths every year.

Increasing investment in safer streets is a financially responsible transportation strategy, particularly because of the return on investment. It was interesting hearing from someone from the tech industry earlier. Bike friendliness also gives B.C. a competitive edge when it comes to attracting tech companies, for example. We partner with the downtown Vancouver business association now, and that’s one of the big reasons why they want more cycling in the downtown core. They want to be competitive and attract those companies that provide a lot of well-paying jobs. It’s also good for tourism.

In Metro Vancouver, provincial funding for cycling projects is in short supply, and municipalities must often compete for funding to improve their cycling networks and implement city plans. As I mentioned previously, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure currently provides about $8 million across the province, through Bike B.C., for all municipalities to split, with some funding for additional cycling infrastructure on their own roads and bridges.

In 2017, many municipalities in Metro Vancouver wanted to improve their bike networks and make their communities healthier but were unable to because there simply was not enough money to go around. Burnaby, the North Shore, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge and Vancouver all applied for B.C. cost-sharing funding last year and were unsuccessful due to the limited amount available.

The Metro Vancouver cycling network is full of gaps. I’m not sure if you’ve tried cycling here. It’s great in some areas, but there is a ton of gaps, and we need to fill these gaps with protected on-street infrastructure and things like cycle highways. Surrey has, arguably, the most ambitious plan for protected all ages and abilities infrastructure in the region, but they will not be able to make this plan reality without increased support from the province.

We encourage the province to do everything they can to encourage people to cycle more, because active transportation has so many benefits. In addition to increased funding for infrastructure, we encourage the province to create an active transportation strategy for the whole province, as well as to modernize the Motor Vehicle Act to be more up to date and protect vulnerable road users, and invest in cycling education for children across the province. We also recommend providing tax incentives, like removing the PST on electric bikes, as has been done for electric cars, to further encourage people to ride.

On page 22 of TransLink’s regional cycling strategy, it says that in order to achieve TransLink’s 2040 vision of most trips in the region by walking, cycling and transit, higher funding levels will be required. We recommend a fair investment in transportation cycling in order to make our province happier, healthier and more sustainable.

We also encourage the province to do its own cost-benefit analysis in order to really better understand how much money can be saved when investments are made in active transportation.

I’m happily open to any questions that you might have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Any questions?

[3:50 p.m.]

L. Jane: We’ll also email over a sheet with all of the information.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. I know the whole active transportation focus that came into my community a few years ago was really helpful. What it did was engage the engineering department at the city and started to create that integration of the idea of active transportation, of complete streets. It really moved things forward, starting with getting kids to school out of their cars and how we create our roads and systems to help support more active transportation.

I certainly see the benefits of getting involved in that education aspect of it and the safety aspect of it. Just this past month, there was a request from our cycling coalition to find education opportunities, pamphlets, that actually help instruct not only cyclists but drivers on how to share the road and to know what the rules of the road are.

Do you see a place for granting opportunities that tie specifically to improving our infrastructure as a prerequisite? There used to be such prerequisites in the greenhouse gas reduction…. What was it called? The new deal on gas tax funds. I see that sometimes you have to have carrots and sticks, and I was wondering how your organization sits on that issue.

L. Jane: If we see opportunities in granting…?

R. Leonard: Yeah, and what’s missing now.

L. Jane: Obviously, with the carrots and sticks, there are two sides to it. We need to make it as safe as possible for people to get around by bike. It’s really hard. You can have all the educational programs in the world, all the Bike to Work Week events. We do that; we organize that. It is still going to be extremely hard to convince some people to ride if they don’t feel safe, so you have to build that infrastructure.

There are opportunities, perhaps, with other funding streams, like through the gas taxes, through the carbon tax, to put that into sustainable transportation. I think that would be huge and, in turn, would have a ripple effect. So I think that’s a great opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation and your time.

L. Jane: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have ViaSport. We have Michelle Tice and Jennifer Heil.

VIASPORT

J. Heil: We’ve just handed you an appendix to our presentation, but I’d like to start by saying thank you, after a long day, for this opportunity to present on behalf of ViaSport. I’d also like to thank our provincial government for its strong history and commitment to investing in sport.

Today I’d like to use our time to share ViaSport’s strategic priorities and to articulate a number of the opportunities that lay ahead for sport in B.C. But first, please let me introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Heil. I’m Olympic champion and Olympic silver medallist in the sport of freestyle mogul skiing. I’m ViaSport’s newest team member, as VP of sport development.

My success on the international scene, my ability to embrace great challenges, to lift my competitors up when I am down, and my unwavering commitment to my community are all because of sport. I’m not unique, though. We know — the evidence is irrefutable — that sport develops leaders and vibrant and healthy communities.

At ViaSport, we unlock the full potential of individuals and communities via sport. As an independent organization, we work across sectors to advance government’s priorities by developing leaders to deliver positive impact through quality sport experiences. We believe that in B.C., the ability to achieve one’s best should be available to all through a coordinated sporting excellence approach. When we say “all,” we mean all ages, all abilities, all stages, in all regions of the province. When we talk about achieving one’s best, we are talking about establishing physical and mental wellness and individual and community development.

[3:55 p.m.]

Today ViaSport manages government’s $16 million investment annually in sport to leverage additional revenue and contributions through our partnerships. There are many examples of how we are maximizing this investment over the long term. For example, ViaSport has built and implemented a target investment funding framework. We have built a funding framework by using the sector’s existing infrastructure to link performance expectations with government investment and rigorous accountability mechanisms. This allows us to ensure that the standards are reinforced and a quality sport experience is delivered.

Quality sport experiences don’t just happen. We take great care to ensure this outcome, and this is where we have a big opportunity. The current approach to physical activity and sport is fragmented across the province. Currently we are not working to the benefit of every child. For the first time in history, we have an inactivity crisis. As a child, you can participate in sport “if,” under the leadership of a qualified coach “if….” Yes, this is a big challenge.

How do we get kids moving again and provide opportunities for all to participate in sport to ensure that everyone has access to a healthy, happy and successful future? It’s by taking a focused approach to investment, by ensuring equitable access and sustained participation and by uniting leaders across sectors to champion change and to continuously enhance our world-class sports system.

I grew up in Alberta, and I lived and trained in Quebec during my national career. I can tell you that what B.C. has here in the province with ViaSport is truly unique and is leading edge.

With a focused approach, incremental dollars will create exponential impact. ViaSport leads the development of a robust delivery system that helps the provincial sport organizations achieve the highest standards for coaching quality.

However, there are many more coaches outside of the provincial sport system. For example, there are close to 6,000 coaches in the B.C. high school system. Some of these coaches are teachers, and many are volunteers who coach over 90,000 students each year. These coaches are not required to take the same mandatory training as those in amateur sport on topics like concussion management, ethical decision-making and developing the whole child.

Qualified coaches are a priority for this government. By taking government’s current investment in coaching and our expertise in quality sport program delivery and accountability, we could scale and create a stronger integration across sport, education, recreation and health provincewide.

ViaSport’s current strategic priorities are built around advancing inclusion and physical literacy. To achieve these priorities, ViaSport is leading provincewide research, initiatives and campaigns to create a more inclusive sport culture. This past year alone, we leveraged government investment to attract $1 million in partnerships from organizations like the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Microsoft Canada to support persons with a disability, marginalized youth, women and girls and the LGBTQI2-S community.

Another key highlight around these objectives includes our participation on the selection committee to identify the recipients of the Premier’s Awards for Aboriginal Youth Excellence in Sport. This year ViaSport united leaders from health, education, recreation, sport, government, private sector and under-represented populations to explore opportunities for increased alignment around physical literacy. These leaders formed the ViaSport physical literacy advisory group and are champions of a coordinated and collaborative approach.

There is good work happening across sectors, the province and the country to foster physical literacy at all ages, especially with an emphasis on children and youth. There is an opportunity to further unite the sector in the next steps with government’s leadership. Currently we see disjointed investment.

Looking forward, we believe in British Columbia’s ability to create an abundant, affordable future with better services for people. By taking a focused funding approach with an increase in incremental dollars, we can build that future for all citizens.

A modest increase in investment into the sports sector of approximately $4 million would ensure that municipal governments are engaged to contribute to a provincial strategy to support tourism and infrastructure investment and that municipal government and school boards are engaged to optimize all public infrastructure with easy access and standardized fees.

[4:00 p.m.]

More young, high-performance athletes would have the opportunity to train and study close to home. Application grants to increase participation for under-represented people and rural communities would be doubled. In 2016, only 58 percent of the 412 applications for provincially funded grants were successful, because of limited funding.

More elementary schools would have access to teacher mentorship and existing sport programs that develop physical literacy for elementary school–aged children and faster development of policies and tested programs to remove barriers to inclusion for women and girls, newcomers, at-risk youth, persons with a disability, Indigenous peoples and older adults — many who are still waiting for access.

As you can see, there are many opportunities ahead to use sport to continue to unlock the full potential of individuals and communities here in British Columbia. We are leading. We are united. We are achieving via sport.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Michelle, did you want to add anything to that at all?

M. Tice: No, I’m good. Thank you. I’m in support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. That’s fine.

J. Heil: And with myself being a new member, Michelle is also here to take questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Any questions?

One question.

J. Brar: Jennifer, thanks for coming today and thanks, of course, for representing the country at that level. Thank you very much for that.

The $4 million, which is basically flat funding…. You did list a number of things that will come out of this, but from a proponent point of view, this proposal seems to me…. It’s a proposal with a very good intent. Don’t take me wrong. But it is very vague — all the bullets you have listed here.

So I ask you again: what will the people of British Columbia get out of this? If we give you $4 million, what will that be?

J. Heil: Already, we’re doing a lot of work in this area. That’s what I mean by: an incremental increase to funding will have exponential results. But we’re limited in the work that we can do — and the scope. For example, we’ve had to turn down 40 percent of our community grants. That’s leaving a lot of people out in rural British Columbia.

We are really activating across multiple sectors. A big part of it is increasing funding but also targeting funding — so as a ViaSport organization, being a centre point to help organize funding and initiatives. We don’t carry out all of these things on our own. We partner with those already in the sector. So a lot of it is being able to create a long-term plan and to create sustainable solutions. Right now, because of incremental funding and it being fragmented, it’s very hard to create that sustainable impact over the long term.

That, in a nutshell, is why ViaSport is well positioned to do all of these things. These are a number of the places where we see big opportunity in order to leverage our partners across the sectors. I could go by each bullet point, if that’s a good use of our time.

Currently, these are lacking, especially across education. As I mentioned, there are 90,000 students that don’t have access to the same rigorous standards and accountability that we have in sport. We’re already doing that work in sport. We have a partnership with the Canadian Coaching Association where we go and train these coaches in sport. But none of that is being done right now in the education sector.

So to take these dollars, we would scale, already, what we’re doing to have great impact — like reaching 90,000 youth. A lot of these places were already there, and it’s a matter of having increased resources to focus that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

I’d like to adjourn for five minutes, please.

The committee recessed from 4:04 p.m. to 4:09 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Metro Vancouver Alliance. It’s James Cavalluzzo and Deborah Littman.

Welcome. Thanks for coming.

[4:10 p.m.]

METRO VANCOUVER ALLIANCE

J. Cavalluzzo: First, let me start by saying I’m not an Olympian, but I’ll do my best.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission, and good afternoon. My name is James Cavalluzzo. I’m a volunteer leader with the Metro Vancouver Alliance, the MVA, and with me are Deborah Littman, who’s our lead organizer, and also Tracey Maynard, back here, who is one of our organizers as well.

I’d like to begin, if I can, by telling you a bit about the MVA, the issues that we’re working on and also how we go about doing that work. We are a civic alliance of 54 academic, community, faith and labour organizations and institutions. We are part of a global network of community-based groups with a very long and fine history of working on issues pertaining to the common good, and we are affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation.

We spend a lot of time building trust and relationships and finding common ground amongst very diverse groups with sometimes different and occasionally overlapping memberships. We use listening campaigns to bring issues to the fore and a discernment process to establish commonalities and priorities.

Our particular method is to engage elected civic leaders in an ongoing dialogue on vital issues. We make thoughtful proposals and ask leaders to work with us to make them happen. We want real changes that benefit the common good, and we don’t just make demands or lobby. We are committed to following through and to building momentum for change within our member institutions and in the broader community.

After our initial founding assembly, which established our priority issues, our next big public effort was the Vancouver mayoral election accountability assembly in 2015. There, one of our major proposals was to address economic justice. Our proposal on that issue of economic justice was for Vancouver to become a living-wage employer itself. We’re very happy to note that that actually happened in 2016, and we thank the city of Vancouver for taking leadership on that issue.

Last year we made a decision to jump into provincial politics through our Provincial Election Accountability Assembly, the first that we’ve had. We invited the leaders of all parties to join us at the assembly. It was held in early April.

John Horgan and Andrew Weaver accepted our invitations. We made specific proposals to build the province that we want, based on the listening campaigns our member institutions undertook. Both Mr. Horgan, who is now the Premier, and Mr. Weaver had positive responses to our proposals, and we invite the committee to consider and support these as well.

For a fair, equal and poverty-free province with economic justice for all, we propose that the new government work with a broad range of advocates and organizations to develop and implement, within one year of the election, a legislated, comprehensive poverty reduction plan. The plan must include measures to address real living wages and the child care crisis in B.C.

We understand that the government, with the support of the Green Party, is committed to a poverty reduction plan and has taken some steps toward making that happen already. We look forward to contributing to the consultations around that poverty reduction plan.

As a first step, though, in addressing poverty, we also asked the leaders about a very specific issue. That was: we asked them to commit to the elimination of the clawback of Canada Pension Plan disability benefits for those people on provincial persons-with-disabilities assistance so that they would still be able to receive their CPP disability benefits on top of any social assistance disability benefits they were entitled to. We think the clawback is an unnecessary and cruel bureaucratic rule that could easily be eliminated.

In addition, we think that further research and consultation on a basic income scheme, including some pilot projects, is also worthwhile.

For a better-housed province, we propose that the province support the construction of 10,000 new affordable housing units each year for the next five years to meet the current need and also invest to preserve and maintain existing affordable, non-profit, cooperative and social housing stock.

[4:15 p.m.]

We are also supporting, and have supported at the municipal level, the development of community land trusts as a way of creating permanent affordable non-market housing. This is a model that has worked in cities with high land costs, such as London, in the United Kingdom. Our sister organization, London Citizens, has worked on that issue very successfully. So there are models that work out there.

The province also has to take steps to strengthen the Residential Tenancy Act to support housing security for tenants. We note that there are some steps that have already been suggested or are underway currently, but we think that rent should be tied to the unit instead of to the tenant so that landlords cannot increase rents unreasonably between tenancies. Other sections of the act that currently allow fixed-lease contracts, renovictions and unfair rent increases because of geography should also be eliminated.

On accessible transit for all, the province should commit to fund a special grant to increase handyDART services by at least 5 percent each year for the next four years. That’s for all TransLink and B.C. Transit handyDART services. This is in addition to the service increases already announced for 2019 and supported through municipal property taxes.

I’ll just note that we had some very compelling testimony at our provincial election assembly, where we had over 800 people attend, about a gentleman who struggled to get the proper public transit access so that he could receive medical services that he needed to survive, basically.

Health care in B.C. also needs a strong foundation. Our proposals around this suggest that the province should establish a primary health care partnership table with representatives from Aboriginal and multicultural communities to identify strategies to reform our primary health care system in the province.

Community health centres must have an annualized global funding model. They must operate on that basis. It has to provide for salaried, team-based primary care, health promotion, disease prevention, community development initiatives and complementary social services. Now is the time to invest in 20 new community-governed, not-for-profit or cooperative community health centres to provide access to primary health care when and where it is needed.

We know that there are many pressures on a new government, especially one in the unique situation we currently have. We acknowledge the complexity of these issues as well as the many positive steps and statements that the government, the Green Party and others have already made.

We stand ready to work with you to build the province we want. We have already written to the cabinet ministers responsible for these commitments, for follow-up meetings, and we’ve conducted training for constituents throughout our community so that they’re prepared to meet with their MLAs over the next coming months to talk about these issues and the commitments that were made at the provincial election assembly. We also hope that this committee will consider our proposals with care, and support our initiatives.

Thank you. I’m very happy to answer any questions you might have. I think we had distributed a copy of the program from our provincial election assembly, so you have a bit more information there about our work.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks very much, James. We appreciate it.

P. Milobar: Recognizing your name is obviously Metro Vancouver Alliance, I’m assuming the 20 health care centres you’re talking about are just strictly for Metro Vancouver, and you would expect the same program provincewide. Or is that a provincewide number?

J. Cavalluzzo: The proposal was developed by one of our research action teams. I believe their intention was looking at this issue as a provincial issue — that 20 pilot projects on community health centres around the province would be a good place to start.

J. Brar: Thank you for your proposal. I think it’s very well done.

There are a lot of commitments already made which are recommended in your proposal. We already committed for the comprehensive poverty reduction plan, for example. Also, building affordable housing — it may not be 10,000 new units, but the commitment is there. Just one follow-up on the question asked by the member earlier. The 20 new non-profit, cooperative community health centres — can you explain a little bit more about that as to what it means and if there’s any cost analysis done on that?

J. Cavalluzzo: I believe there have actually been quite a few studies on that.

[4:20 p.m.]

I used to live in Victoria, and I belonged to the James Bay community health project there, which was a community health centre. It underwent some challenges around funding in the past. Here in Vancouver, I’m a patient at the REACH Community Health Centre. That is a comprehensive health centre. They have dental care. They have complementary care. Oftentimes, I’ll go in, and I’ll see a nurse practitioner rather than a doctor. There’s counselling available. There are a whole set of services. It’s key that these community health centres work on a salaried basis so that it’s not fee-for-service. I think, in the end, you get more holistic care.

For example, one of the folks who testified at the provincial election assembly, talked about how she struggled with diabetes for many years going to a traditional doctor. She didn’t say she didn’t get good care from that doctor. What she found was that when she was able to connect with the REACH Community Health Centre, she got holistic care in the end that stabilized her diabetes and probably prevented very costly implications later on in her life.

I think that there’s a lot of literature, probably, that points to the efficacy of community health centres.

J. Brar: So you’re not talking about…. We proposed in our platform what we call the urgent care health centre, which will open in the evening and go on to particularly deal with the wait time and the non-emergency kind of patients. But this is something completely different.

J. Cavalluzzo: I think it’s more comprehensive. I think it’s also…. There’s a key element of it — that it’s community based. It has a grounding in the community, which is an essential aspect of that model, for sure.

Do you want to add anything?

D. Littman: Just to say it is a model that is preventative as opposed to emergency treatment. We’re really talking about people being able to have comprehensive, full-scale, family-based care which means that, as James is saying, you’re not ending up in the emergency situation. You have good, comprehensive care.

A lot of that model can then be…. The staffing can be done by non-medical staff or nurse practitioners, others, counsellors, people who have other skills. That takes some of the burden off the medical system.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is this more of an integrated approach? Is that the idea? I know in Maple Ridge, we have a Youth Wellness Centre, for example — sort of a wraparound services for mental health for young people, that type of thing.

We’re talking about pilot projects of centres that have…. Is it a multi-disciplinary wraparound type of situation?

D. Littman: Yes, that’s right.

J. Cavalluzzo: Yes, very much so.

M. Dean: To follow up on that, your analysis that you’ve had done — is it based on redirecting existing resources so that it’s actually reformulating the current resources for communities, or is it a proposal to say the provincial government can invest in these as new centres without changing any of the existing services that are available?

J. Cavalluzzo: Well, I’m not an economist. I’m not sure that our research team, which is made up of volunteers, dealt that far into it. In the sense that, presumably, the benefits of having community health care aren’t necessarily immediate. They are probably seen over the longer term.

I suspect that some kind of new infusion into these pilot projects could be monitored in the short term for possible savings. Over time, funding could shift to that model.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, James and Deborah, for your wonderful presentation and all the hard work you’re doing in the community. We really appreciate it.

Next up, we have the North Shore Community Resources — Murray Mollard.

NORTH SHORE COMMUNITY RESOURCES

M. Mollard: Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is Murray Mollard. I’m the executive director of the North Shore Community Resources. I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.

[4:25 p.m.]

I have a strong and great belief in the importance of our democratic processes. The fact that citizens can come before you and speak their mind is, actually, critically important. I’ll say something more about that later in my submission.

North Shore Community Resources is a non-profit organization, a charitable organization, that serves the North Shore community — four municipalities, one village, two First Nations, almost 200,000 people. But quite frankly, we serve beyond the North Shore. That’s partly because services that we provide aren’t necessarily available in other parts of Metro Vancouver. For example, speaking with our caregiver support team — I’ll speak about that a little later — up to 17 percent of clients actually come from beyond the North Shore because the services are not available in other parts of Metro Vancouver.

Our mission is to design and deliver programs and services that enhance well-being, social connections, empowerment and community participation. We do that through a variety of programs: child and family parent programs, community engagement and seniors programs, a community legal services program and our community housing action committee that works on affordable housing.

I will touch on some of these areas — not all of them, but some of them. Some of my comments are specific to the North Shore, specific to North Shore Community Resources, but also, actually, more broadly focused in terms of services I think should be available throughout the province as well.

We are the North Shore’s agency that provides a child care resource and referral program and services as the host agency. We also have the CCRR coordinator for a variety of Metro Vancouver municipalities. As such, we assist many families to learn about and find suitable child care and provide assistance to those who wish to start up their own child care service in their family home. We also provide training and quality assurance functions that are important in the current system.

We are fully supportive of the fact that this government has promised to provide a system for more affordable and accessible child care for British Columbians, and we look forward to the implementation of that promise. As a child care resource and referral agency, we believe that we can continue to provide important services to the local population as we move forward to a new system, as all CCRRs can.

Parents will always benefit from a local agency that can assist them to not only identify potential child care services, whatever the system in place, but also to help them learn about and find the right child care situation that best suits the needs of their children. As noted, we hope to play a continued role in the coordination, training and quality assurance of a new child care system, as that system rolls out.

One matter that I want to bring to the attention of the committee is the funding challenge that is faced by our North Shore early-years planning table. We are the host agency, but really, I speak on behalf of the table’s over 30 members. The table is really a multi-agency, multisector collaboration that works to improve the coordination and the planning and knowledge regarding early childhood development program services on the North Shore.

For some reason, unlike other municipalities in Metro Vancouver, we do not receive any provincial funding for our table’s work. And the funding agreement we have in place with the United Way of the Lower Mainland is scheduled to end in June of 2018. It’s a matter we have raised with senior staff from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We’ll continue to work with them to find an equitable solution for families. We urge you, as a committee, to consider this oversight in your deliberations. We note, in passing, that the North Shore is not the only region in the province that does not receive funding for that table’s critical, important work.

As noted, NSCR provides several programs that support seniors to age in place and live healthy, happy lives as they age. Our Seniors’ One Stop program provides seniors and their families with specific information and advice to meet their health, housing, transportation and other critical needs. Inquiries to our SOS program are becoming increasingly complex, as they often involve multiple issues. Our SOS program has been recognized by Vancouver Coastal Health as a key reference point for seniors to call.

After successive budget cuts from prior funders, SOS in our agency receives no provincial funding. The service that our SOS provides is now almost completely provided by seniors volunteers. We’re, indeed, grateful for their volunteer service for this.

[4:30 p.m.]

Fortunately, we have developed some important partnerships with private-sector individual donors, like Park Community Living, which provide some sponsorship for SOS, but it’s not enough to provide funding for our agency to be able to staff and support the volunteer seniors who provide the bulk of our service.

I spoke earlier about the caregiver support program. As you know, unpaid caregivers provide 75 to 80 percent of in-home caregiving. These caregivers often experience distress in their role, as reported by Isobel Mackenzie, seniors advocate for B.C.

Our program supports the knowledge-based dignity and health of caregivers through the design and delivery of a variety of services and activities, like learning workshops, social networking and caregiver holidays to assist caregivers to maintain their own well-being while they can more effectively care for those that they care for. We offer, specifically for example, Farsi-speaking group services as well, as part of our caregiver support.

Ms. Mackenzie made several recommendations to address the distress experienced by unpaid caregivers and we support those.

We also recommend that community-based organizations like NSCR are provided with enough financial support to operate community-based caregiver support programs. While we do receive some funding from Vancouver Coastal Health via their SMART fund, it’s not enough to operate our program fully. We know the demands on our program and others like it. There aren’t many. For example, in Vancouver, the city of Vancouver doesn’t actually have a caregiver support program, so when I spoke of other citizens coming to our program, it’s partly because other areas don’t have such a program. But we know that those demands will continue to grow as our seniors population ages.

Affordable housing. We operate a community housing action committee, which is an independent, non-partisan volunteer group of community members who work together to advocate for affordable, accessible and appropriate housing for local communities. We know there is a crisis of affordable housing in our communities. North Shore is no exception.

We’ve produced a recent report on empty homes — indeed, over 5,000 empty homes on the North Shore, as well, based on the census 2016 numbers. We know that more supply alone is not enough to actually address this huge challenge. We need more housing supply that’s the right kind of supply, which addresses the needs of families and targets renter populations.

Finally, we know that the need is tied to income, not just market. When we talk about “below-market affordable housing….” Well, the market, as it rises, is not a solution in and of itself. It really needs to be tied to income. I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

We know your government has promised action to address this crisis, and we look forward to your various laws, policies, programs, funding support, etc. to address it.

I just want to say quickly about our community legal services program. We have legal advocates that will advocate fully for those that have lower incomes, with respect to legal issues — often involving affordable housing issues. We’re fortunate to have the support of the Law Foundation of B.C., Legal Services Society and North Shore municipalities to fund our services.

That said, with growing poverty and affordability issues, we know that we cannot meet completely the community demand for legal services, not just for lower-income but for those who have some income but don’t qualify yet simply can’t afford legal services to address legal issues that affect their fundamental living situations, housing, benefits, employment, etc. — family issues that we know are so important to make sure children are safe.

I’ll finish by talking about civic education and democratic participation. We run a Democracy Cafe, which is a non-partisan independent platform for making democracy more open, robust and responsive to community needs by encouraging citizens to participate in civic life and encouraging governments to improve the ways in which citizens can participate in democracy.

I think we’re somewhat unique. There are not a lot of organizations that do this work. There’s really only a handful I can think of. Our activities, we do a variety of things. We hold workshops about how government works and how elections work, so citizens can be informed and ready to participate at election time. We educate about different electoral systems — that’s certainly a topical issue today — so that citizens can make informed decisions about what election system they might prefer. Again, we do so in a non-partisan, objective way, provide pros and cons for the variety of electoral systems that are out there.

[4:35 p.m.]

For democracy at the local, regional, provincial, national level to thrive, we need to invest in civic education. We know our schools do some of this work, but it’s critical that we continue to do this work at an adult level so that people can participate fully and that systems are designed to be inclusive and impactful.

I just want to note this, though. There are actually very little funding opportunities for this kind of work to be done. Often it’s considered political, even if it’s non-partisan, well researched and research-based. Funders often, when they see that this kind of work’s being done, are afraid because it’s considered political work.

I’d ask this committee to make recommendations to fund this kind of grassroots education — non-partisan, community-based organizations to do this kind of work. The legitimacy and success of your work as elected representatives — and, indeed, our democracy — depend on the full engagement of all citizens in democratic life, not just at elections but between elections.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much. Before I go to questions, I had a couple of clarifications, if that’s okay.

There were a number of things that you were talking about. With the early-years planning, was there actually a dollar ask? Was there an ask that you were making?

M. Mollard: Well, at this point, I think what we’re asking is to be treated equitably with other tables around the province. I think the challenge — and the ministry, I know, is trying to work on this — is that there may not be a clear funding formula that is indeed equitable across various jurisdictions. I think they’re trying to do some work on that, and we will be back in touch with them. I think we just don’t want to be left out. It’s really just a matter of fairness to the residents and families in the North Shore — but really, other areas of the province that also are facing that challenge.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So with legal aid, is that more just a general: fund it, but more?

M. Mollard: It is. We know that there’s been a longtime call to find ways to make legal services affordable for British Columbians, where it comes to critical aspects of their lives as well. So yeah, we don’t have a specific funding formula or a funding program there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry, Members, I just wanted to clarify. Are there any questions?

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

All right. Next up we have Ending Violence Association of British Columbia — Tracy Porteous.

T. Porteous: Good afternoon.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great, hello. How are you?

ENDING VIOLENCE ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

T. Porteous: It’s a pleasure to be here in front of you, seeing what we can do together to make the province a bit of a safer place for women and their children and girls.

Between the early 1980s and 2000s, for about 20 years, B.C. played a leadership role in the response to domestic and sexual violence against women and girls. This included programs throughout B.C. to address the needs for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence and child abuse, policies to improve the justice response, coordinated hospital responses for sexual assault, local and provincial initiatives to foster cross-sector coordination and a number of other things.

While I have no intention of dwelling on the past — it’s who I am: to try to be as constructive as possible to work together to figure out what we’re going to do with the future — just a couple of points of context that I think are important. That is the fact that over recent times, we’ve seen the cut to all sexual assault centres and women’s centres in the province and, also, a zero increase for the current community-based anti-violence programs that exist. That’s over the last decade.

That, in turn, has caused tremendous difficulty for those people who are trying to manage heavy caseloads to begin with and, also, an increase in demand for services, because the awareness of sexual and domestic violence has gone through the roof, really in the last ten years.

What’s also a fact that I think most people don’t know is that B.C. is seeing an increase in domestic violence deaths. That’s not a trend that’s happening across the rest of the country.

I think I’d also be remiss not to mention the fact that B.C. is the site of the most heinous serial killer that our country has ever seen, Robert Pickton. He operated in a community, the Downtown Eastside, that still, to this day, has not received any increases to FTEs for their community-based victim assistance program, which is central.

Also, B.C.’s Highway of Tears. We know that many women have been murdered around that area and have gone missing.

[4:40 p.m.]

Similarly, that whole region across the north has not seen any increases to community-based victim assistance programs. I think there’s an unquestionable link between the vulnerability of women and girls where there is a lack of investment in community supports.

I think there are a number of actions that we could collectively work on that actually could significantly make a difference. Some of these things will cost money, but some won’t. I don’t know if you have it yet, but I’ve provided you with a document. It outlines some of the things that we think, in consulting with our members across the province….

By the way, the Ending Violence Association of B.C. is a provincial umbrella that works on behalf of over 300 programs that respond to sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and criminal harassment with cross-sectoral responses, including prevention.

Some of what is ahead of us is the need to invest. I think that compared to what it would cost us from a human perspective, from a societal perspective, from the financial implication of not taking action, doing something earlier is way less expensive than waiting or not doing anything.

I also think, just to make a point in terms of our priorities…. When our province faced the crisis of burning this summer, there was an unquestionable response. The province was going to do what it took to help communities in the response to put the fires out and to do what people in those communities needed. In addition, when there’s a higher increase in crime, whether it be gang violence or other kinds of violence, there are very few limits put on to police overtime when they have to respond.

I think this makes sense. These are considered essential services. I would agree with that. I’m sure you would agree with that. What we haven’t done yet — collectively, as a people, in British Columbia — is see the fact that girls who experience gang rape in their communities…. On reserve and in other communities, especially across the north, this seems to be an unfortunate reality.

We’re not there yet in seeing that that should be an essential service — or for a woman who is fleeing a domestic violence situation where her life is in danger, or if she’s thinking about killing herself because she’s been abused over and over and over in her life. I think those, too, should be considered essential services.

I think the province has been doing a good job in starting to fund something that we call interagency case assessment teams. They’re the teams that manage high-risk domestic violence cases. I think it’s important to continue on that front. These teams are low-cost ways of managing high-risk domestic violence.

You’ve probably heard of domestic violence units, which are really important. That makes sense in a community with a large population, like Vancouver and Surrey, where you have embedded FTEs working under the same roof. In many other communities where the community is smaller, it doesn’t make sense to have an embedded unit, so we’ve developed these things called ICATs that are doing high-risk domestic violence case assessment in a very cost-effective way. We’ve started that, and I think it’s important to continue.

I think another thing we’ve started to do is focus on prevention. My organization started the Be More Than a Bystander campaign with the B.C. Lions, where the unusual partnership between a women’s organization and group of football players is actually doing incredible work. These guys have gone across the province for the last six years, have been talking to kids and adults and have reached 100,000 people in person, helping people understand what to do and what to say in the face of abuse, jokes and violence. Most people don’t know what to do. I think that program is building quite a bit of traction, and I would hope that we continue to support those things that we know are working.

More than anything right now, what I think we need…. It isn’t outlined in this report, but if I wanted to highlight one or two things that aren’t being done, that is to invest in community-based victims services, outreach programs and STV counselling programs. These are the programs that haven’t received any increases over a number of years, and these are the programs that are critical and central to the response to sexual and domestic violence.

My organization has been tracking domestic violence deaths in our province for a number of years now. One thread that is unalterable is the fact that of all the women who have been murdered, none of them was the client of a community-based victim assistance program. That, I think, is significant.

For more than 40 years, collectively we have been studying the issue of violence against women. We have been tabling reports and strategic plans from government. We’ve been conducting death review panels.

[4:45 p.m.]

Among many of the recommendations that are consistent over time is the need to ensure women and girls and children who experience violence have a place to go and disclose. They need to have an intelligent and sophisticated response. They need somebody to make sure that all of the services that potentially could wrap around them are in action.

Those are what community-based victim assistance programs and outreach programs do. They also need the counselling programs to unpack how they are in the situation that they are in and to help them deal with the trauma that they’re experiencing.

I would recommend to you, if you would be so kind, to make whatever connections you could make — those within the current administration and those that might be on the other side.

The NDP promised $4 million this year and $8 million every year thereafter in new money for community-based victim assistance and other community-based programs that respond to violence. These programs are needed. We need to expand them. There are only 69 community-based programs now. We think there needs to be more of them.

We also think that these kinds of programs need to be attached to reserve communities and to friendship centres. The existing programs also need increases in their funding, which they haven’t had. The cost of rent, the cost of salaries, the cost of retention — all of that is almost like a decrease in funding if you don’t have any increases over the years.

Also urgent is the money for training. Those who respond to the tragedy of gender-based violence do so in a very complex field of justice policies, child protection policies, corrections policies, serious mental health issues. They’re doing complicated risk assessment and safety planning and offender management planning. We can’t expect people to do that without any training.

My organization, EVA B.C., has been doing everything we can to cobble together grants to whoever issues grants. We’ve been doing a pretty good job, but it’s very difficult to plan and sustain a workforce, to make sure that they’re trained and ready to respond to this crisis, on grants.

I also think something that nobody in all of my years in this field has prioritized is the salaries, benefits and pensions of those people who work in this area. The anti-violence people never ask this for themselves, but I think that it’s time we start thinking about compensating those people who do this very difficult work, day in, day out. They hear of nothing but the terrible, heinous things that happen. I think that their salaries should be on par with police and teachers and nurses and social workers.

As I mentioned, this report outlines pretty thoroughly, from our consultation with our 300 members, what we think is ahead of us. As you can see, it adds up to a lot more than $8 million.

I would be very happy to assist anybody. I’ll take any of your calls any time. I will meet with you any time to either explain what we’re meaning here or to talk with you about what you think is needed.

In conclusion, I think the safety net for women and children in our province is hanging on by a thread. The women providing the services are doing herculean work with very little. I know that you would agree that this is not a partisan issue. I know that there are people on this panel that have worked, on both sides, that have been doing everything you can to try to increase safety.

I hope your parties will agree, as well, that this is not partisan. I’m ready and willing to roll up my sleeves to work with all of you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tracy. Everybody appreciated that.

Any questions?

J. Brar: I just want clarification here. You are informing us that the government has already announced $4 million for this year and $8 million for next year, under the community-based victim service program. Then you have listed all these new…. Is all this money you have listed over and above the $8 million, or does that include the $8 million?

T. Porteous: My feeling is the thing that’s missing the most, which has been recommended over and over and over, is the need for more community-based victim assistance programs and the need to shore up those that exist. So my feeling is that with the $8 million, we should be using a lot of that to do more community-based victim assistance programs, including those that are attached to reserves and friendship centres.

[4:50 p.m.]

The field of responding to violence against women hasn’t seen an increase in sustainable core funding for many years, so we need a lot more than $8 million. I’m hoping that our administration, with support from the other party, might find some other moneys to do some of the other things that are outlined in here. I think we could get a good start with the $8 million, but what I have for you in this report adds up to about $40 million.

J. Brar: The $8 million — you’re saying that was for the whole thing or only for the community-based victim services program?

T. Porteous: The funding of new community-based victim assistance programs and shoring up the funding of the existing ones I think will eat up the $8 million.

M. Dean: Tracy, thank you so much for your presentation and for all of your work and for how you’ve served vulnerable women and children in our province for so many years. I really appreciate it.

Yes, I was going to ask, adding it all up…. We knew there was $8 million. You’ve explained a bit more about how this gives us something to aim for, for sure.

I had a small question about the programs for men, because pilot projects had been rolled out. Has that pilot program already been rolled out, and then this would be over and above that?

T. Porteous: Yes. As I understand it, the pilot programs only equate to about ten. At some other point in our history in the province, we had about 50 voluntary assaultive men’s treatment programs. What we have right now is…. In the last domestic violence strategic plan, there was money to try to reinvigorate the voluntary programs for men — which, by the way, all of the anti-violence programs across the province have prioritized, have said: “Most women don’t want the relationship to end. They just want the violence to stop.” So we need to find ways to provide behavioural change counselling for these guys.

I think there are only about ten of those programs. There could be 50 to 100.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very, very much for all your work and for putting this together. We really appreciate it.

T. Porteous: My pleasure. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, last but not least, Music B.C., my old alma mater. Hey, I was on the other side of this table not so long ago.

Patrick Aldous and Scott Johnson from Music B.C., thanks for coming.

MUSIC B.C. INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

P. Aldous: Good afternoon, everyone — Chair D’Eith, Deputy Chair Ashton and the rest of the committee. As mentioned, my name is Patrick Aldous. I’m the current vice-president and past president of Music B.C. With me is Scott Johnson, who’s the current president of Music B.C.

Our executive director, Alex Grigg, sends his regrets as he cannot be with us today. He is in Europe on Music B.C. business.

Scott and I are here to address the value of British Columbia’s professional music community to the economic and cultural strength of the province and to the economic diversity of the province. We’re appearing before you to advocate for continued government investment in this sector of our economy and to recommend, specifically, the renewal of the B.C. music fund.

We should note at the outset that in our efforts to advocate for the renewal of the B.C. music fund, we are working in close collaboration with Music Canada, which is a national organization. We understand they will be appearing before you in the Victoria hearings on October 2.

We should note that given the relatively short notice of these hearings and the fact that several members of our core staff are in Europe on Music B.C. business, Music B.C. is still in the process of gathering our supporting written material to be submitted to the committee. These materials, which will include letters of support from a number of B.C. music industry professionals, will be submitted to the committee in the coming days.

I’ll start by providing some information about our organization, which I’m afraid will be old news to the Chair of the committee but will hopefully be of some assistance to the members who are not as familiar with Music B.C.

[4:55 p.m.]

Music B.C. Industry Association is a not-for-profit association serving the for-profit and non-profit music industry in British Columbia, including artists from all genres, industry professionals, service providers, studios, promoters, venues, festivals, producers, agents, managers and educational institutions.

Music B.C. has over 1,000 active members, a full-time staff of four experienced music professionals and a board of directors compromised of 11 individuals, ten of whom are full-time music industry professionals. You can learn more about Music B.C. at our newly redesigned website, www.musicbc.org.

A few words about the B.C. music business. What we call the music business is actually a series of businesses, all of which work together to employ thousands of individuals in the music sector in British Columbia. Amongst these businesses is the recorded music business. This is the business of the creation and exploitation of master recording.

Amongst those working in the creation and production side of this business are recording artists, of course, studio owners, producers, sound engineers, studio musicians, arrangers, conductors, studio crews, instrument and equipment sales and rental businesses. Record companies and independent artists engaged in the exploitation of sound recordings, along with service providers, include independent promotion companies, radio trackers and publicists.

In addition to the recorded music business, there’s the music publishing business, which is the business of the creation and exploitation of compositions. This is primarily the business of songwriters and music publishing companies, along with service providers such as arrangers, transcribers, translators and independent song placement companies.

There is, of course, the live music business, which is the business of every live music venue and festival in the province, along with booking agents, promotors, talent buyers, food and beverage service providers, sound and lights technical crews, security companies, ticketing companies — as well as the musicians themselves, of course.

The merchandising business is the business of creation and exploitation of artist paraphernalia, such as T-shirts, posters, hats. There’s also the sponsorship and endorsement business, which is the association of music and musical artists with advertising and other forms of marketing and promotion activity.

Finally, there’s something we call the fan engagement business, which is the business of direct marketing to an artist’s audience through things such as on-line fan clubs and VIP ticketing programs.

B.C.’s music community includes successful professionals working in all of the above businesses. In addition to all of the professionals working in the foregoing activities, there are service providers and professionals working in a support capacity. This is particularly true for artists, who provide work for personal managers, business managers, accountants, publicists and lawyers, amongst many others.

Often overlooked are the ancillary businesses that benefit from music business activities as well, such as transportation companies, instrument and equipment retailers, hotels and restaurants.

All of this is in addition to the field of music education, which employs not only music teachers in a formal primary, secondary and post-secondary setting but private music teachers throughout the province, many of whom are working professional musicians themselves, supplementing their income through private instruction.

In short, the music industry in British Columbia is a significant employment generator that employs thousands of diverse individuals from all walks of life in green, sustainable jobs. The music business also attracts a significant amount of both domestic and international investment to our province.

In addition to the immediate economic returns that are associated with a business like the live music business in the province of B.C., there is also the issue of the creation of intellectual property, primarily compositions and master recordings, which, if kept in the province, have the potential of delivering economic returns for their creators and the people of B.C. for years to come.

After 15 years of economic challenge and recession, streaming music platforms are poised to help the return of the recorded music business to one of profitability, with almost limitless potential of expansion yet to be tapped. B.C.’s music creators and, in turn, the province are in a position to benefit from this unique moment in history. In addition to the economic impact, music is, of course, a uniting cultural force in our province, which brings people together regardless of income level, gender, ethnicity or language and which enriches our communities and our lives.

A few words about the B.C. music fund. In 2012, the Ontario government launched the Ontario music fund administered by Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. While a talent drain and a brain drain of the music industry has always been an issue between British Columbia and Ontario, the launching of the Ontario music fund made this problem acute.

[5:00 p.m.]

In 2016, following many years of advocacy by the B.C. music industry generally and Music B.C. specifically, Music Canada commissioned the creation of a B.C. music sector study entitled B.C.’s Music Sector: From Adversity to Opportunity. Among its many findings, Music Canada’s report found that B.C. had a music funding gap with other provinces, Ontario in particular, and that this gap was drawing artists, music professionals, recording studios, festivals and other music activity out of the province. In addition, this funding gap was preventing B.C. artists and music business professionals from accessing matching funds from the federal government and the private sector.

Music Canada’s report found that the B.C. recording studio industry, which was once the envy of the country, was in steep decline and in danger of being lost altogether. The study also found that there was insufficient support in B.C. for organizations that exist to grow the music economy, such as Music B.C.

In response to this report and the ongoing efforts of our organization and the B.C. music community at large, the B.C. music fund was introduced in 2016, with funding for the sector of $15 million. The impact of the B.C. music fund has been extremely positive. Its programs were oversubscribed, demonstrating the very real economic demand that the B.C. music fund has met.

While our letters of support from the B.C. music industry will follow our submission today, we would just like to highlight a few passages from some of the letters that we will be delivering in support of our submission.

Vancouver-based, multiple-Juno-award-winning musician Dan Mangan writes: “Many artists in B.C., especially in Vancouver, are facing ongoing temptation to move eastward to Toronto or Montreal, where more affordable urban environments compound the lure of the nation’s music industry epicentre. The B.C. music fund helps keep the temptation of relocation at bay and provides faith that sustainable music careers can be achieved from the west coast.”

Sandee Bathgate, the studio manager of Vancouver’s Warehouse recording studio, writes: “We were very pleased with the introduction of the B.C. music fund because it levelled the playing field for us. From the absolute minute the BCMF was introduced, we noticed an uptick in our bookings, not just from clients that had previously worked at the Warehouse but also bookings by artists and record labels that had never used our facilities previously.”

One of the great success stories of the B.C. music fund was the album No Culture, by the Vancouver-based band Mother Mother, led by Quadra Island–raised siblings Ryan and Molly Guldemond. Mother Mother is a successful indie rock band signed to Universal Music for the world.

All members of the band are either B.C. natives or longtime B.C. residents. They recorded their latest album, No Culture, at the Warehouse studio in Vancouver, which is owned by B.C. music legend Bryan Adams. The album was co-produced by Ryan Guldemond, along with B.C. producers Brian Howes and Jason Van Poederooyen. All of the studio crew and assistants in the studio were B.C.-based music industry professionals. Mr. Howes and Mr. Vander Poederooyen are managed by Vancouver-based Watchdog Management, whose president and co-owner is the Surrey-born and Langley-raised Darren Gilmore. The band is also managed by Watchdog Management.

The album was released on Universal Music Canada in Canada and Def Jam Recordings, a division of Universal in the United States. It debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard album charts, No. 2 on the Billboard album sales charts. Its first single, “The Drugs,” spent three weeks at No. 1 on the alternative rock charts in Canada. The band engaged in a sold-out tour across Canada, culminating in an unprecedented five nights at the Commodore Ballroom. In addition, the album was well-received in the United States, with the band embarking on a successful U.S. tour that included a sold-out show at Los Angeles’s historic Troubadour nightclub.

In preparation for this presentation, I asked Mr. Gilmore, Mother Mother’s manager, if it was fair to say that if it were not for the B.C. music fund, Universal Music would have had the band make No Culture in Ontario. His response to me was that this was “100 percent safe to say. If it weren’t for the BCMF, it would have been OMF — period.”

At this point, I’d like to turn the presentation over to Scott to tell you a bit about the portion of the B.C. music fund that was administered by Music B.C. and what we see, as an organization, as being able to accomplish with that fund.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Patrick, just before you go, we’re at about 11 minutes and 30 seconds. There are 15 minutes total, so if we want time for questions….

[5:05 p.m.]

S. Johnson: I think for my sake…. You were given a handout. It just gives you an idea of some of the programs that we’ve run this year with our one point course. We were given 10 percent allocated from the B.C. music fund to run programs for B.C.-based artists and musicians and arts professionals. That’s who we represent as an industry association. I know that Bob is well familiar with that. We’ve worked really hard to ensure and collaborate with the private sector, the public sector, industry and artists at all levels.

We are the lone recognized industry association for music in the province. I think sometimes, because we know some of the artists that have been successful in this province, we tend to take it for granted. It’s incumbent on us as an organization to sit here before you and just let you know how important this sector is to the province culturally, socially and economically. For us as an industry association, we’ve really tried to create new relationships with the entire music community — to include record studios, promoters, artists, managers, lawyers, entertainment booking agencies. And artists are at the core, still, of what we do.

From our standpoint, we really want to nail home that this is such an important fabric to our province. It was being cannibalized before our first lobby for the fund. Since we received the fund on the first go-round, it has helped enormously. We had unanimous support from industry and artists around the province that we need this fund to continue in some form. So we sit here before you to tell you this is what we need.

I have four pages of programs that we’ve run just in the past six months through Music B.C. — mostly import and export trade initiatives, because creating opportunities for artists and for industry, mostly entrepreneur-based industry, in the province needs to continue.

With that, if there’s anything else you want to…. I have nothing else to add.

P. Aldous: In closing, I’d just like to say that we’ve worked well with Creative B.C., and we’ve developed a mutually respectful and productive relationship with them that we’re honoured to be a part of.

As a closing remark, we’d just like to add that Music B.C. is very aware of the very real challenges facing this government in formulating this budget. Those of us in the B.C. music community are very much ingrained in the British Columbia community at large. We live in rural communities ravaged by this year’s wildfires. We teach or have children in B.C. public schools. We live in cities and neighbourhoods facing the squeeze of the lack of affordable housing. We live in communities ravaged by the fentanyl crisis.

We are aware that when faced with these daunting large-scale social problems, public investment in the arts can move down the funding priority list rather quickly. However, we would ask your indulgence in considering a quote from an American on this issue. President John F. Kennedy, when considering records of his predecessors, once wrote: “Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt understood that the life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of the nation, is very close to the centre of a nation’s purpose, and it is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

We appreciate your patience and consideration, and we’ll take any questions that you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Maybe one quick question. Anything from here at all?

Just to clarify one thing, most of the sectors have tax credits, but this program…. There’s no tax credit in the music industry in British Columbia. So this is the only program, whereas film, television, animation and gaming all have tax credits.

P. Aldous: That’s correct. Yeah, the decision was made that this would be administered as a grant program, as opposed to a tax credit program.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much. That’s it for today.

I want to thank Hansard for your service today, and the staff and all the members. It’s a long day. I appreciate everyone being very attentive the entire time. Thanks very much.

The committee adjourned at 5:09 p.m.