The committee met at 6:32 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

We’re 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. The committee must issue a report by November 15, 2017, with its recommendations for the 2018 provincial budget.

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in communities around the province, and British Columbians can also participate via teleconference, video conference or Skype. There are numerous ways that British Columbians can submit their ideas to the committee. You can complete an on-line survey or send us a written, audio or video submission. More information is available on 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 that the deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2017.

The meeting format. Tonight’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes of questions from the committee.

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

I’d like to now have the members of the committee introduce themselves.

S. Cadieux: 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 evening. Dan Ashton, the MLA for Penticton.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

M. Dean: Mitzi Dean, MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

I’d like to acknowledge that we’re on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples and the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

J. Brar: Jagrup Brar, MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood.

[6:35 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial, Lisa Hill and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat from Hansard Services are also recording the proceedings, and we thank them very much.

Without further ado, I’d like to call the first witness, the Canadian Mental Health Association, British Columbia division, Bev and Kendra.

Come on up. Take it away.

Budget Consultation Presentations

CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH
ASSOCIATION, B.C. DIVISION

B. Gutray: Thank you for this opportunity to present to the committee. The Canadian Mental Health Association has been presenting to this committee for a number of years. In starting, I would like to acknowledge that we are holding this meeting today on the traditional Indigenous territories of the Lekwungen, the Songhees and the Esquimalt Nations.

A little bit about the Canadian Mental Health Association. Members of the committee have our PowerPoint, I am assuming. We are one of Canada’s most-established mental health organizations. In fact, 2018 will mark our 100th anniversary. In B.C., there are 14 branches and a provincial office, and we serve in excess of 80,000 British Columbians. Our vision is mentally healthy people in a healthy society. In B.C., substance use and behavioural disorders have been part of our mandate explicitly since 2005.

Just to move along, I think everyone’s well aware of the facts that in any given year, mental health and substance use problems affect one in five British Columbians. In B.C., like in many jurisdictions, we continue to focus on crisis management when it comes to mental health and substance use services, and we are also often responding in the most expensive ways. We’re often treating people in emergency departments, or we’re ending up with people being in jails. Many of you know that we can do so much better than that.

My next slide is from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and I believe that this is the strongest case to be made of why an investment needs to be made in prevention and early intervention. When we look at children and youth and how they’ve been treated around hospitalization for mental health problems and substance use problems compared to other health conditions, you can see that over an eight-year period, actually, when it comes to all other health conditions, emergency department utilization and hospitalizations go down.

When it comes to child and youth mental health services, what we have is a graph that’s going up. So this is where people believe they get their service, and that’s why they continue to use emergency departments and hospitals. It’s because they’re there, they’re available, and they’re accessible.

Again, we know that there are many children, youth and families that need services, and many members of the committee know this all very, very well. There have been investments, but more needs to be done. And we’re in a very fortunate place, in British Columbia, to have a significant surplus and be in a healthy situation financially, so we can actually really focus on prevention and early intervention.

I have to just say, Mr. Chairman, that it’s not my style to read from the slides, but I promise, in order to get through them, that I will really keep to my time and do this. I’m working really hard at it.

As you can see, another reference from the Canadian Institute for Health Information is that Canadians living in poverty, or those who cannot meet their basic needs, experience two times the rates of mental disorders as the rest of the population. There is a two-way relationship between mental health and substance use and poverty. We know that living in poverty increases the likelihood that you’ll experience mental health and substance use issues and that living with mental health and substance use problems has impacts on your economic security.

[6:40 p.m.]

Just over to the next slide. We’re really looking at repeat hospitalization rates. As you can see, they are broken down from low income to high-income, and these are repeat hospitalizations. This is where we really do want to concentrate and have the biggest impact.

B.C.’s repeat-hospitalization rates are higher than the Canadian average across all income levels, but the gaps between B.C. and the rest of Canada is largest for lower-income people. We want to congratulate this government, for sure, for its focus on trying to alleviate poverty and to have a poverty reduction strategy.

The other point, and one lots of people don’t realize, is that hospitalization caused by alcohol…. This is a graph that’s broken down by neighbourhood income for 2015-2016. As you can see, that hospitalization rate for B.C. compared to Canada…. B.C. has the highest hospitalization rates for alcohol. We know that people in B.C. are more likely to be hospitalized entirely for alcohol-related reasons than the average Canadian. Despite having lower rates of heavy drinking, low-income people are hospitalized for alcohol-related reasons more than higher-income people. It gives you pause. It gives us thought.

The need for investment is really…. We’re failing to adequately support the well-being of people with mental health and substance use issues before problems are severe, and we’ve talked about this for many years. I think what we’ve got today is an opportunity to do something different. Instead, we continue to focus on crisis, as you can see from the indications of hospitalization, police involvement and the overrepresentation of people with mental illness in the corrections system.

At this point, I’m going to turn over my presentation to Kendra.

K. Milne: Thanks, Bev.

As Bev pointed out, B.C. is relying on hospitalization and the most expensive forms of health care more than other provinces in Canada.

CMHA in 2015 and, really, leading up to the last provincial election, had a provincial campaign asking: “What if we did things differently? What would it look like if we really supported people’s mental well-being instead of focusing on symptoms and acute care? What if we intervened before stage 4 of mental health and substance use issues?” The campaign received massive support from individuals and organizations across B.C., and the call to action for B.C. to do better is clear.

In August 2017, CMHA launched a public survey asking for input from the public on how best to deliver services to improve prevention and early intervention outcomes in B.C. Throughout the rest of the presentation, you’ll hear quotes from survey respondents from around B.C. about their experiences with the current system.

One of those quotes: “Living in the north, where there are no services available to help, my husband travelled to the nearest service centre to reach out to addictions counselling. But that was out of pocket and took an entire day of travel, which ended up being an even bigger burden on my family.”

Quotes like that illustrate our first recommendation, which is to provide adequate funding to ensure everyone in B.C. has access to evidence-based, coordinated and accessible mental health and substance use systems at all stages of care and all stages of illness. It’s not enough to focus on crisis and severe symptoms.

We need a coordinated system with increased capacity throughout and particularly focused where we know investments will make a difference. We need to improve people’s health and well-being at all levels of need, ranging all the way from prevention to crisis care.

Another quote:

“My 12-year-old daughter was admitted to hospital. I felt the support she got while there was wonderful — two weeks. However, once discharged, the support vanished. It took months to see a psychiatrist for a proper diagnosis. By that time, her daily life was chaos. The aftermath of not having proper support immediately has been enormous. It is so painful to watch a child struggle.

“She just turned 18. She’s doing well because she’s a fighter. She never set foot in a high school, though. I often wonder what she would be doing now if she had access to proper mental health services five years ago. She is brilliant, creative and resilient. The schools and doctors — walk-in because we can’t find a GP — have really let her down.”

This is from Vancouver Island.

Quotes like that support recommendation 2. Our second recommendation is to increase targeted funding for child and youth mental health and substance use services. We suggest that current levels of funding can be doubled.

[6:45 p.m.]

We know, based on research that’s been done, that one-third of children with mental health and substance use issues in B.C. are currently getting specialized care. There’s a significant gap.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You have about a minute left. You could take a little bit more. You have 15 total, but we’d love to have questions too.

K. Milne: I’m going to run through our slides quickly, then, because we’d like to have a conversation with you.

Skipping over to slide 19, our recommendation No. 3 is to coordinate and ensure adequate funding for provincewide, evidence-based prevention and increased funding for early intervention, mental health and substance use services. Again, that gets at the heart of prioritizing non-crisis care and going upstream. We need to make sure that we intervene early in illness, regardless of the age of the person, because people should not have to wait until crisis to get help.

We’ll skip to recommendation 4 as well, slide 22. Our fourth recommendation is to adequately fund organizations providing community-based mental health and addictions services to support mental well-being in the home communities.

We know that community-based, non-profit organizations are a crucial part of delivering mental health and substance use care in B.C. Those organizations have to be part of the conversation, in terms of solutions as well as the public health care system.

I just want to read you one more quote. This was from our survey in response to a question about identifying what was helpful when someone had a mental health or substance use crisis. The quote is: “What was helpful? A safe place to sleep, even if it was on an uncomfortable foldout chair.”

Our last recommendation is to increase funding for services that support the social determinants of mental health, including ensuring that people have access to secure and affordable housing with supports when they need them, and income supports that actually allow people to meet the cost of living in B.C. We know that regardless of what we provide for mental health services, if we don’t set people up for success in the rest of their lives, we’re going to be failing.

B. Gutray: I think one of our last slides is about the opportunities that are in front of us today. Those opportunities are certainly very well outlined, as far as the federal transfer payments and as far as a very specific targeted fund around mental health. We hope that the committee will take this opportunity to really recommend that these funds be placed in community first — community-based responsive care that is compassionate for those that are dealing with substance use problems and with mental health problems. We believe, also, that funding should be designated from what will be the cannabis money that is going forward.

That summarizes our presentation.

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

P. Milobar: Thank you very much for your presentation. I’ll be really brief. I get a good sense of what you mean when you say double the funding for youths supports, because we already know what the funding for youth supports is. But I always get a little leery when groups ask for “adequate” without a dollar figure around it, because everyone’s definition of adequate is a little different. What’s the order of magnitude that you would deem to be adequate?

B. Gutray: I think this is a challenge for all of us. It varies across health authorities, and it varies across ministries.

I think when we’re talking about adequate community-based funding, we’re talking about something that really matches up closer to the need. What we talked about earlier was that people are using hospitals, and they’re using emergency departments. We want to transfer that need to first response being in the community.

We know, for example, that there’s a lot of money spent by the Ministry of Health, as well as the Ministry of Children and Family Development, but we need to increase that money so that those supports are in community first. So adequate, as far as the actual dollars? We haven’t come forward with that kind of specific recommendation.

J. Brar: Thanks for your proposal. This is our second day. This is the beginning of it. We have already received three proposals, basically indicating the mental health issues, from students. Yours is the fourth one.

I just want to ask you…. We are delivering these mental health services through non-profits and hospitals. Students have their own take on this one. You use the words “coordinated way.” What is the best way we can deliver it, rather than having duplication all over the place?

[6:50 p.m.]

B. Gutray: Pardon? Rather than….

J. Brar: Duplication, right? Each organization delivering its own.

B. Gutray: I think the opportunity is that you have a ministry for mental health and addiction. For the first time, that will allow for that coordination to actually take place and that mapping to take place.

Really, when it comes to mental health spending, we understand the Ministry of Health spending, and we understand the Ministry of Children and Family Development spending. We really don’t know how the spending around prevention works. Often that’s in schools, etc. These dots are not connected.

I would say that your biggest opportunity is you’ve got a ministry focused on this. Let’s put the dots together, and then let’s plug in what is evidence-based and makes a difference. Not all duplication is a bad thing. I mean, it sort of speaks to choice. We’ve got to be able to serve people where they are. If somebody is homeless, the kind of outreach to that individual is different than if somebody is looking for a rental unit.

I’m just saying a lot of that needs to be tailored, but I think the biggest challenge we have right now is that we really don’t know what the map looks like.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. That’s our time. Thank you very, very much for a very thorough and detailed presentation. We really appreciate it. I have a brother who is schizophrenic, so I completely understand everything that you’re saying and the needs for these community-based things. Thank you so much for your time.

Next up is Music Canada — Nick Blasko and Amy Terrill.

Hi, Amy.

MUSIC CANADA

A. Terrill: Good evening, Chair D’Eith, Deputy Chair Ashton, members of the committee.

Nick Blasko, with me here today, is from Amelia Artists and Atomic Productions, right here in Victoria. We’re here today to talk about the value of B.C.’s music community to the cultural and economic strength of all corners of B.C., to reinforce the importance of government investment in this sector and to recommend a renewal of the B.C. music fund.

B.C.’s music community is made up of thousands of artists and musicians from around the province, composers, and hundreds of professionals and small businesses who support them, including managers, agents, labels, recording studios and engineers, producers of live music, public relations and design professionals, and many, many more people. All of these are clean, green jobs, and many require a high level of technical skill.

The industry is an employment generator. It attracts investment and enriches our communities. At its heart is the creation of a product which is an important part of B.C.’s cultural expression and international brand. Music brings people together, no matter their income level, gender, ethnicity or language. It really is a uniting force.

In 2016, after many years of advocacy by the B.C. music community, Music Canada produced a B.C. music sector study, which found that B.C. had a music-funding gap with other provinces. Those provinces were drawing away artists, music professionals, studios and other music activity, not to mention preventing B.C. artists from accessing their fair share of federal dollars. It found that music-related places and spaces were disappearing or extremely expensive. We’re talking about artist housing, rehearsal spaces and performance spaces.

The local recording industry, once the envy of Canada, was declining. B.C. was suffering from a decline in school-based music education and a lack of artist entrepreneur training. There was a scarcity of resources for music in rural, remote and First Nations communities and for disadvantaged youth.

It was in response to our report and the many years of advocacy from the community before it that, at long last, the B.C. music fund was created. That fund is now creating or helping to ensure a sustainable, competitive industry in B.C.

Let’s talk about some concrete results. I know you’ve heard about the outstanding success of the recording by Mother Mother at a previous hearing. Many recordings have received support and are making important gains for the artist. These artists come from all ends of the spectrum, so emerging to very established. Dozens of artists are showcasing in international markets, including Australia, the U.K., Germany and India. This export activity is essential for building and sustaining a career as an artist in what is a global industry. Many artists who can barely afford, quite frankly, to pay their rent, let alone the costs of touring, are getting the help, with this fund, to build sustainable careers. That’s where you can really make a difference.

[6:55 p.m.]

For the first time in its 26-year history, four B.C. bands were showcased at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle, which you may have heard of, and 12 bands at another Seattle festival. Music B.C. is bringing training and development to Kelowna, Victoria, Vancouver, Prince George, and the fund has enabled B.C. to attract the Juno Awards broadcast and festival in 2018.

Nick, here, has some other fantastic experience to share as well.

N. Blasko: I’m going to try and keep this succinct, being mindful of time.

I am a member of British Columbia’s music industry and have run four separate music companies for the better part of the last 17 years, based here in Victoria. I can say that since the announcement and inception of the B.C. music fund, I’ve witnessed a great camaraderie and an excitement and a re-engagement and also a tremendous investment in B.C.’s music companies.

To give some context on what this means on a personal level and also to the businesses and the artists that I support, I thought I’d bring some numbers, and we could review those. In my office alone, the three managers that occupy space have actually managed to record 13 additional records this year. That’s 13 studios that have been employed, and that’s over 100 more musicians that have supported those recordings. They’ve seen five substantial marketing campaigns supported for the export of their artists and their music and recordings.

On the festival front, we’ve been able to grow one of our signature festivals by 25 percent this year, adding a total of 15 B.C. artists. We were able to add over 100 B.C. artists to the Spirit of 150 Victoria program, running for 11 days in July. Rifflandia Festival, which just concluded here in Victoria about two weeks ago, celebrated its tenth year. Going into this year, we were able to confidently reach our goal of 75 percent B.C. artists across the festival, which was a new record for us. We’ve also been able to hire a data analyst to help us quantify and measure our impact in the community and in the province and really put some numbers behind what we do.

I’ll say this. British Columbia has always produced excellent artistry, musicians, producers, innovators. We have been leaders in the music community and music business for many, many years. Certainly, for the past ten years, we’ve seen an erosion due to business conditions, I’d say due to industry consolidation, specifically in Toronto.

It became very, very real and apparent to so many different music companies in British Columbia that we were losing our competitive edge and that we were losing talent to other provinces and south of the border. It was becoming very hard to compete. The fund is very important to remain competitive, and we are here to ask for its renewal and continuation.

A. Terrill: Let me just wrap up for you. Like any new program, we’ve learned many lessons to inform future government investment. The B.C. music community — Nick and I are just two members — is very willing to partner with you to help refine and improve the fund, moving to an annual investment model that will provide certainty and clarity — and rebranding, if that is desired as well.

This is the only investment in the music industry in B.C. from the provincial government. Other creative industries, as you know, are well supported. Like them, an investment in music will bring many, many dividends. We’ve talked about them already.

One final note. The fund was created to be part of a broader B.C. music strategy that includes integration with municipalities and enhancement of music education. As a direct result of the momentum of the B.C. music fund, cities like Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria are engaging with their music communities and really looking to strategize around increased activity. Certainly, we can all speak about the incredible music strategies in cities like Seattle and Nashville and Austin, places like that. We can replicate that kind of success here in B.C.

I will be providing a detailed recommendation in a written submission in a few days that will also reference the music education piece. Today we have a few letters of support, just a sample from around the province. We’re happy to take any questions.

[7:00 p.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation and for being here this evening.

Would it be possible to put a dollar figure on that? You’re talking about an annual investment. I’m sure you’ll be wanting a three-year plan or something, and you have some past experience. Can you just get into a little bit more detail for me and give me some of that information?

A. Terrill: Sure. In terms of what we would be recommending, you mean, in terms of level of investment?

As you know, the music fund is just basically coming to a close, pretty much. There was $15 million invested over what ended up being about two years. We want to wait and see the final results as well.

Creative B.C. is currently undertaking an evaluation of the program, so we’ll have some better numbers. What we can say is that every program — there were about eight, I believe — was oversubscribed, heavily. It demonstrates that there is a very strong need in the community. In most cases, they had double the applications.

N. Blasko: In the live music program alone, which was a $2.5 million allocation of the fund, there was over $10 million in applications to support two streams: presentation and business development. I know it was a very difficult process trying to wade through what were all very valid and important requests for support.

A. Terrill: I think it’s important to wait and see. They’ll have some numbers for you, as well, in terms of actual ROI. That should help inform the decision.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a question. I think it would be helpful for the committee to just maybe understand the distinction between the music industry and, let’s say, the film industry or other industries that have tax credits.

In the film industry, there is $300 million to $500 million a year in tax credits. This year ended up as — what was it? — $2.7 billion, in terms of a record year. But that’s the film industry, which is generally big productions with lots of people who work for those, whereas the music industry is different. Maybe you could explain why, in this case, this type of program is better than, let’s say, other types of creative industry funding and why this is the right way to go.

N. Blasko: I’ll say this. It all starts with supporting the music itself from the earliest points of interface in elementary school through our high school programs and through our universities and music schools and whatnot.

The fund, as it’s currently arranged, has done a great job of touching every step in the chain. I think that rather than a tax credit system, as we see in the film business, putting direct investments of…. We’re talking about investments as low as $1,000 that are making the difference for people to go make records. Those creations go on and create economies and also create careers. I have, firsthand, witnessed artists that have started in their garage and ended in arenas.

I think it’s also important to understand the current state of the music industry with the decline of recorded music sales. It is reinventing itself, but that has made it harder for artists to actually get started — much, much harder. The return is well documented. I think that the early support and, also, the measured and sustained support are key. But I do believe that the way the fund is set up as a matching fund…. It requires investment and belief in a project. It’s amazing what can happen with that extra 50 percent.

A. Terrill: I’ll just add that often the musicians, the artists that we’re all familiar with, or most familiar with, really represent the top 1 to 2 percent. Talk about an industry where the one versus 99 is very evident.

[7:05 p.m.]

The music fund is really supporting that 98 percent of artists for whom it will take a much longer runway for them to get economic return on their investment and on their careers. So that’s really what makes the difference. It’s a little bit different than film as well.

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

I just want to acknowledge Mark Reid, there, who also won a Juno award for teaching in Canada. One of the top teachers in music in Canada. I’m very happy to have you in the gallery. Thank you so much for coming.

And thanks to Amy and Nick for your time.

Okay. Next up we have Royal Roads University — Allan Cahoon.

ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY

A. Cahoon: I brought Katharine Harrold, our vice-president, to join me, in case I get anything wrong.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you tonight. I know, as a student of public administration, that we owe you a debt of gratitude for the work that you do. For you, it’s another day in the Leg., and it just continues. But we appreciate the opportunity to engage in this whole process.

I have to say a couple of things. One is I want to acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Kosampson and Lekwungen peoples. We recognize that we’re visitors and able to learn and to participate because of their legacy and the land that they have.

Secondly, I want to acknowledge what’s happened in Las Vegas today as a very tragic situation. It makes me, as an educator, feel more the importance of what we do in terms of education and how we have an increasingly important role that’s before us.

Well, this is the sixth or seventh, depending on who’s counting, time I’ve appeared for you to introduce Royal Roads. I’ve given out a little summary sheet that has two sides for you to read about who we are, both in terms of mandate and in terms of number. I hope that that’s information that’s useful to you.

For those of you that aren’t graduates of Royal Roads — and we know that some of you are — we’re a different university. We’re quite proud of that. One of the things that’s important for us is that I’ve never asked for any additional financial support on behalf of Royal Roads.

The message that we received was that universities need to live within their means, and that’s what we’ve done. Our funding for 1,980 full-time-equivalents has been frozen since 2009. However, Royal Roads has continued to find efficiencies in operation to support our growth. We now have over 2,500 FTEs. That translates to a head count of approximately 5,000 students.

The numbers are in front of you on that sheet: 70 percent are graduate; 30 percent are undergraduate; 70 percent take our program in a blended or on-line format — that is working professionals; 30 percent are face-to-face intensive programs.

It’s made up of working men and women throughout the province and across Canada. The average age is 40. They come to Royal Roads to learn, to prepare for new careers, new opportunities. And 60 percent of those are women.

Royal Roads has continued to build its domestic base because we feel it’s our responsibility to do so. It’s what the government asked us to do, not to stop at our FTE cap but to continue to add domestic students. We’ve done that without carrying any debt or deficit. We have internalized the need to continue to earn the right to be funded by you and by our students.

We just tabled a five-year business plan with our board to continue to grow responsibly over the next five years, with a longer view to a 25-year horizon, at a conservative estimate of 3.5 percent per year. Eighteen percent of our international students — and that will decline to 16 percent of our students in two years.

Our major limitation has been our physical infrastructure. In essence, we are dealing with a facility that was built for 300 Royal Roads military cadets. The government gave us funding six years ago to build our first purpose-built facility, the Learning and Innovation Centre — which I point out we built on time and below budget.

We’re currently transforming a 100-year-old stable into a modern learning and teaching facility that will create an environment that fosters innovation research and intercultural understanding. It’s on schedule and, we hope, slightly under budget.

[7:10 p.m.]

Over the previous six months, the previous government indicated support for funding new FTEs in the innovation and tech sector, increasing the number of tech graduates by 1,000 per year and co-op placements by 1,400 per year. Royal Roads University was the only research university not included in those funding announcements.

However, I’ve seen the commitments made in the spring budget for priorities like innovation and technology. I’ve also seen the opportunities presented in the confidence and supply agreement between the NDP and the Green Party. I have a proposition, and you won’t have to wait two years for internal academic approvals followed by four years to materialize. We can offer those within the next six months. I truly believe it will help build a strong, sustainable, innovative economy that works for everybody.

With additional investments, Royal Roads will collaboratively design and deliver Indigenous business and leadership programs that reflect First Nations education and training needs with micro-credentials which will be designed in partnership with local First Nations. And they will be delivered on local First Nations territory and include residencies in remote communities such as Fort St. John and Campbell River.

With government and industry input, we’ll develop dynamic new micro-credentials, which will modify graduate certificates and degree specializations that will allow professionals to continuously update their credentials and work qualifications to meet their respective personal and industry and community needs. This works for upgrading skills, allowing for the acquisition of new jobs, as well as for credentialing of new immigrants.

We have some suggestions of things like digital media, leadership skills for the tech sector, human capital development and engagement in the innovative sector, and scaling corporate growth from start-ups to sustainable businesses.

What else? Building infrastructure support. The government’s agenda…. Complete the centre for environmental science and international partnership, which we have the funding for, to build a previously notionally approved new academic building, the centre for innovative research, which will allow us to grow and expand; and a proposed bachelor of commerce specialization in tech entrepreneurship, which is a new specialization as an option in our highly successful bachelor of commerce BCom program in entrepreneurship. It will be designed to focus on that new and emerging opportunity, with convenient micro-credentials that can be combined into specialized degrees or graduate certificates and diplomas, which are modified and designed with industry and students in mind.

We hope the government supports these investments with additional FTE funding that will allow us to build our partnerships with Indigenous communities, support job creation, provide education for marginalized members of our community — with the immigrant communities to develop meaningful learning programs based on their identified needs.

It’ll be continuous, demand-based education for working professionals, and I would highlight or hope to emphasize that no one can design and deliver demand-based programs faster, better or more effectively than Royal Roads, the university that this government created 22 years ago to specifically serve the needs of the labour market.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Would you like to add anything before we go to questions?

K. Harrold: Fully covered, thanks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Fantastic.

Now, will that, what you just presented, come to us in some form?

A. Cahoon: Sure. I was working on it an hour ago, but I’ll edit it and make sure that you have it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just to give you a heads-up with it, there is a deadline: October 16 at 5 p.m.

A. Cahoon: I’d love to send it.

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

Questions?

J. Brar: Thanks for the presentation, first of all. You’re saying that your funding has been frozen since 2009. So are you basically asking for the same level of funding? That’s one question of mine.

Secondly, I think you also mentioned growth there, whether it’s international students or other students. So there is actually growth taking place. What is your other source of revenue? How do you manage growth without asking for more money from the provincial government?

A. Cahoon: Well, we didn’t know that we could. Until the government funded new programs in science and technology and engineering, etc., we managed within our budget. That’s what we assumed. So we’re at 2,500 FTEs, even though we’re funded at 1,980.

[7:15 p.m.]

We felt that that was the responsible thing to do, as long as we had infrastructure and facilities to be able to deliver that. We have a very efficient business model that allows us to operate on that basis, so this is the first request. So yes, continue to fund us for what you funded us. We happen to be the most efficient allocation of funding that you make to any research university; that is, the number of students per funding from the government is the lowest. A little less than 25 percent of our funding comes from the province. It’s an important part of our funding, and we’re asking for an additional amount. About $2 million a year would allow us to expand these programs in these targeted areas, with those kinds of resources.

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

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Cahoon. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

A. Cahoon: Thank you for doing this. As I said, I’m sure you’ve had a busy day already. I don’t take your public service lightly, as I said. As your university, we’re trying to respond to what we think are the opportunities you’re expecting, and certainly, we will stay in touch with those as they materialize.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just before you go, I did want to thank you very much for acknowledging what happened in Las Vegas. One of the young gentlemen who was killed was from Maple Ridge, which is my city, where I live. So it’s been a tough day for a lot of people, and I really appreciate you bringing that up and acknowledging that. Thank you.

All right. Next up we have Wavefront.

I’m very disappointed I didn’t make your lunch today. I couldn’t get there.

M. Sklar: It was delicious.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m sure it was. Rub it in.

Go right ahead.

WAVEFRONT

J. Maynard: Good evening, everyone. My name is James Maynard. I’m the CEO and founder of Wavefront.

We received our start-up funding from the province ten years ago, and I’ve never had the opportunity to actually report back to the budget process about our findings and our experience and the kind of return and, I guess, stewardship that we’ve been able to provide the province with that original investment. Maybe what I could do is just briefly talk about that and then go on and talk about, I think, the urgency and the importance of continued focus on developing the tech sector in British Columbia.

We received our start-up funding from the province ten years ago, 2007. Really, it was money that was earmarked for us to go out and do research and practical development around the kinds of services that would help companies prosper and grow rapidly in the digital age. We were really doing this at a time before there were accelerators and incubators and people were even thinking about this whole digital transformation age.

Ten years later we’ve helped create over 200 companies in British Columbia — actually, I think it’s 300 companies — with about a 70 percent survival rate, which has created about 7,000 jobs here. In terms of practical impact, for every dollar of provincial money that we’ve received, we’ve generated about $6 or $7 of private sector money and about $6 or $7 of federal money, so probably $65 million to match the $5 million that the province gave us ten years ago.

With that, we’ve gone on and we’ve created almost a half-a-billion-dollar impact in the British Columbia economy in the wireless sector. So I think that it’s been a good investment.

[7:20 p.m.]

I think, in terms of our ability to leverage and create a brand for British Columbia and for Canada, that’s a lot of companies to prosper and grow much faster than they could on their own in the digital world.

The benefit, I think, of this is that you’ve now created a large, globally recognized organization in the digital space that has a lot of experience. As this government moves on with a renewed emphasis on the importance of the digital sector and the importance of innovation in our economy, there’s an organization that’s been funded, that’s been successful, and it has a lot of experience and a lot of ability, I think, to provide a resource to the province as we move through this phase.

When we think about innovation, we often think about start-ups and we think about small companies growing rapidly. The piece that’s missing is, with the competitive forces in the world, all of our existing sectors — whether it’s the resource sector, energy, education or health care, those large organizations — are coming under the same competitive pressures and actually require access to the same kinds of innovative techniques that small companies use to grow. Large companies need to use those same techniques and capabilities to actually transform themselves in the digital world.

That’s also something that’s available to the government of British Columbia. As you look at e-government and transformation, Wavefront is here as a not-for-profit, arm’s-length resource that can actually provide some of those techniques and tools to help government transform itself, helping cut the costs of delivery, and I think it increases agility in the marketplace.

We’re not really here with an ask. We’re here to report back and say, you know, we’ve done a pretty good return. We’re now operating in 30 countries around the world. Based here in Vancouver, we have operations in Toronto and Montreal, but we’re actively working with companies in Africa, South America, Mexico, the Middle East and Europe — helping them actually gain footholds.

Over the last six years, we’ve helped 300 companies go into international markets and close 150 contracts. In terms of helping companies start, scale and then connect into market opportunities, I think Wavefront has built a real track record and a strong set of assets that the province can utilize for more growth.

I think the one thing I would have to really strongly emphasize is that as you go in and continue on with your budget deliberations, you need to seriously consider the amount of investment that government really needs, to be relevant in the world when it comes to innovation and digital transformation.

I would strongly suggest that you look at jurisdictions like Finland. I would say: take organizations in the world that are roughly the same size as British Columbia, look at the scale of the innovation and investments that are being made there across their education system, as well as their innovation capacity in terms of investing in industrial sectors, and benchmark against that. If B.C. just looks to itself and looks to its measures and looks to its peers across the country, I think you really miss where the true competitive pressures are coming from.

I would say look at places like Finland, for example — very similar to B.C. in economic makeup and size. I would look at Sweden. I would look at Israel. Then, on the Asian side, I would probably look at places like Singapore. Those are really the organizations that are leading the world, from the OECD perspective, in terms of innovation, digital transformation and economic growth. I think that’s a great place for you to look toward in terms of how you plan your budget spending over the next three to five years.

I just really wanted to offer that and report back. Are there any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there any questions? I have a couple.

Did you have a question, Jagrup?

J. Brar: I was looking for others, but I certainly have a question.

I have one clarification — I don’t want to put you on the spot — on this page. I know this is the way to go, but in the first paragraph, you write: “We have supported the growth of nearly 1,000 start-ups and small and medium entrepreneurs.” Then, if you go down to the “Background,” you write: “Wavefront has supported the growth of more than 800 mobile and wireless companies in B.C. over the last ten years.” Is it the same thing, or is this different? That’s one clarification.

[7:25 p.m.]

The question I wanted to ask…. I have many questions, but I wanted to ask you: can you elaborate a little bit more as to how Finland, Singapore and the other countries you mentioned…? What are they doing?

J. Maynard: Just to clarify, the 1,000 start-up number is all of our impact across Canada. That’s our activities in Atlantic Canada and in Ontario as well as British Columbia. The 800 is just referring to companies in the province of British Columbia.

In terms of global programs, Finland…. Their innovation spend is about 600 million euros a year, and they split that into two. That doesn’t include their commitments and involvement in education, both elementary and post-secondary. Of that 600 million euros, roughly half of it is spent in programs to actually support the acceleration of small companies, so very similar, in Canada, to the NRC-IRAP program, the industrial research assistance program, which is really small, subsidized amounts to help companies deal with research and development and pre-commercialization activities.

The other half is put into long-term strategic initiatives, where Finland…. I think it was called…. Horizon 2030 was, I believe, the program — and this started five years ago — where they said “What are the key investments that Finland has to make to be globally relevant and competitive by the year 2030?” So these were very long-term big bets, where they looked at construction, health care, the digital industries. I can’t remember the other ones.

These were clusters of multinational companies that anchored them with clusters of universities and SMEs — very similar, actually, in concept to some of the supercluster work that’s coming out of the feds, but with a 50 million euro per year commitment on a five-year run rate. That way, there was a core amount of funding that actually allowed these organizations to get up and actually spin their programs and have a runway where you can actually plan.

I think the other one that’s interesting is in the U.K. If you look at the catapult programme, again, they’ve taken key industrial sectors, and they’ve provided for each of those. Advanced manufacturing, aerospace, digital and smart cities are four — and space, aerospace and satellite imagery.

Again, those are long-term programs where the business model is essentially to create brain trusts and think tanks of capacity that are not part of a university. They operate at arm’s length, and they’re like an independent demilitarized zone, I think you could say, between government, academia and industry, to really build core capacity to pull industries ahead.

Those entities were funded at the rate of, I think, committed funding of about 30 million pounds a year. With the expectation of 30 million in core funding, they were expected to raise 30 million through a traditional academic grant process and 30 million through commercial activities.

That’s a really interesting one, because it forces the entities to be commercially viable and maintain their linkages to the market. If you don’t have outputs, you basically miss on a third of your funding.

Those would be the two models that I think are closest to what would probably work best here in B.C. The Israeli model is quite different. I mean, it’s a much more entrepreneurial and less controlled model, I think. In Singapore, they make wild investments in terms of big dreams, big goals, and they probably outspend even the Finns, in terms of funding, money.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you.

Is there anyone over here? Mitzi Dean.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation.

I’m a bit like Jagrup. I’m left wondering how many of these figures apply specifically to B.C. and how many of them apply either nationally or internationally. Is there some other source material that breaks it down a bit more for us to understand it at a provincial level?

J. Maynard: In terms of the benefits back to the province?

M. Dean: Yeah.

J. Maynard: It’s about 80 percent.

M. Dean: So across the board, in all of the different kinds of dimensions that you’ve done in your analysis?

J. Maynard: In terms of the economic outputs, yes. About 80 to 85 percent of it applies back to the province of British Columbia.

[7:30 p.m.]

All of the federal money that we’ve leveraged has flowed back into our operations, headquartered here in Vancouver. Then we have only actually set up operations, like physical premises, outside of B.C. in the last year or year and a half. So all of that money would have flowed in.

I think one of the big benefits to this is that we work very closely with the regional science councils — Accelerate Okanagan, Tectoria here on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo — and we actually work programs together. So when we bring money in, we actually flow it out and run programs concurrently. This isn’t just about landing things in Vancouver; this is about actually building a network that flows value out to the rest of the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. I’ve a quick question. Is there an interface that you have with DigiBC? They presented to us. I’m just wondering whether or not you work with DigiBC at all at any capacity or any level. I know these are slightly different things, but I’m just curious whether there’s any interconnectivity at all.

J. Maynard: We are a pure commercialization innovation entity. That’s what we do. We really don’t engage in advocacy or policy development.

We would collaborate on a working basis with DigiBC, with LifeSciences B.C., with B.C. Tech Association, the Cleantech CEO Alliance. I think we’re really complementary with the work that they do on the policy side. We’re much more about the practical development of how you develop a program where you can work with a large organization so they can digitally transform themselves and partner with SMEs to do that.

We’re, I guess, more the middleware, in terms of the plumbing of getting things done, than the policy work.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. That’s great. Just a follow-up. You had some very, very interesting numbers with Finland and Singapore. If it’s not too much trouble, it would be wonderful…. We can only look at what we’re given on this committee. I don’t want to put you into having to do extra work — you’ve obviously put a lot of extra work in — but if you could, it would be very interesting, I think, for the committee to have some of those numbers. It would be very helpful.

J. Maynard: I think the Canadian example you should probably look at is Ontario. I’d say they’re the furthest down the road in terms of developing innovation policy with investments. Then I think I’ll pull together a couple of other examples just to give you sort of an in-country and then an international perspective.

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

Next up we have the Professional Arts Alliance of Greater Victoria — Doug Jarvis and Heather Lindsay.

D. Jarvis: It’s just myself this evening.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. You can just take a minute, while we all get settled, and get your materials.

PROFESSIONAL ARTS ALLIANCE
OF GREATER VICTORIA

D. Jarvis: Good evening, and thank you, Chair, for this opportunity to come and speak with you this evening.

My name is Doug Jarvis, and I am the administrator for the ProArt Alliance of Greater Victoria. I have been an uninvited guest on the Lekwungen territory since 2001 and make my living here as an artist, curator, administrator and educator.

ProArt is a member-driven organization that represents 18 professional arts organizations that create and manage art and culture services within greater Victoria. We advocate for public sector support in the capital regional district, which is an active and quite engaged region within B.C.’s arts and culture sector.

We look forward to working with the new provincial government to help achieve their expressed goals and objectives of making life more affordable for the people of B.C. with services that people can count on to build a strong, sustainable and innovative economy for everyone.

The arts community in B.C. has been consistently patient in their support of the province’s past initiatives to make B.C. an accessible and vibrant place to live, work, create and dream. We feel that now is our chance to work together in good faith, with no surprises.

[7:35 p.m.]

Access to arts and culture contributes to an open, engaged and healthy lifestyle. As you may know, loneliness is a growing concern in our contemporary society. Strengthening community engagement for all ages and backgrounds promotes inclusion, care, tolerance and openness to the varieties and complexities of life. Arts and culture promote diverse ways of thinking that can teach us to be respectful and open to the possibilities of the world. Arts and culture programs in school can foster lifelong learning and employment opportunities in the arts.

Arts and culture inspire creative and innovative thinking and solutions to some of our most challenging circumstances. Whether they are curbing climate-changing behaviours or dealing with the current opioid crisis, arts and culture work with and across all sectors, strengthening determination and inspiring passion to find solutions.

In terms of supporting our growing tourism industry, arts and culture are often both the companion and the guide to the beautiful land upon which we are guests. The people of this province are the access to this amazing place, and support for our social, economic and cultural health is the best way to provide quality services and to build a strong, sustainable and innovative economy that will enable all British Columbians to reach their full potential.

We thank you for the work that has been done through the B.C. Arts Council to provide opportunities for youth and emerging artists to gain valuable experience in the field. In my capacity as a guest curator at Open Space Arts Society here in Victoria, I’ve written many letters of support for emerging artists and curators looking to gain experience working in the visual arts.

My colleagues across the province have expressed similar gratitude for the opportunities that have been generated through the early career development program in their own communities. The program provides excellent subsistence for emerging artists coming out of some of the best art schools in the country here in B.C., as well as the time and resources to apply their education to the often complicated and hard-to-navigate systems of developing an arts-based practice.

For example, in 2015, Alexis Hogan was awarded an early career development grant to participate in a year-long curatorial residency to work with myself and Aboriginal curator France Trépanier at Open Space. In this time, Alexis was able to research and develop a comprehensive history of Indigenous artists’ participation that she found in the archives of Open Space’s 46-year history.

Making this history visible is helping the organization to better address Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships, as well as further develop its Indigenous emerging arts program, now in its third iteration, which provides intergenerational mentorship and access to contemporary art practices from different artistic and philosophical traditions.

This has been great for the organization, but we also need to build and support the context and working environment that these emerging artists and creative professionals are moving into. It is nice to provide internship-like opportunities for youth, but we also need to support the art organizations and arts infrastructure from which they are seeking long-term employment. It is disheartening to not be able to extend and sustain these early career opportunities into well-paying jobs that allow emerging arts and culture workers to remain in their community to continue to exercise their knowledge.

To that end, ProArt recommends that the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture’s mandate to double the province’s investment in the B.C. Arts Council over four years be made the number one priority in the upcoming budget. We are happy to see that the provincial parties recognize the value of having a strong and healthy Arts Council to feed the arts and culture sector.

We are a little confused that the initiation of doubling the B.C. Arts Council did not make it into the recent budget update, especially after this campaign promise became a popular calling card in the last election. However, we know that all members of the new parliament value the time and energy that the arts and culture sector has been spending to manage and maintain the existing infrastructure.

Our continued request in this forum to double the B.C. Arts Council budget is also not arbitrary. We’ve been saying that for many years. It is in line with the federal government’s commitment to double the Canada Council for the Arts budget, and it will also, put more specifically, help us bring B.C. up to speed with other provinces. The B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture ranks last in per-capita provincial cultural funding.

It is well understood within the arts and culture sector that one level of funding helps to leverage others. There is a lot of work being done to diversify operating resources, but in order to help with the solidary of services in the province, the arts and culture sector needs the best opportunities it can to access support from all available sources.

The B.C. Arts Council has a plan for how they can implement this further investment to support the arts and culture sector in its ability to access further funds and address other pressing issues such as staff capacity, facilities and financial stability.

[7:40 p.m.]

ProArt and other service organizations in B.C. are in support of the councils and their current goals and objectives and believe that they have the expertise and the connection to community to address the needs of the arts sector for the benefit of all.

We know that the arts are an economic generator and that investment in the arts is a valuable return for government. We have been talking with you about this for many years. What we need to do now is engage and support the social benefits that these investments provide to the people that live in B.C.

We need to recognize that arts and culture are life. Support for artists and arts organizations not only provides support for diverse cultural and artistic practices. Some, as my colleague, Aboriginal curator France Trépanier has suggested, exist only as Indigenous art practices here in B.C. But that stronger support for the existing arts infrastructure will provide greater access to how those arts can be engaged, serviced and lived.

From a more specific perspective, I am trying to formulate the language around how to talk about the need for British Columbians to be able to engage in a professional arts context from the time that their parents take them to the field of the Rifflandia music festival here in Victoria, which I think you just heard about, through to when they move into artist community retirement housing, something that we’re dreaming of, and are able to enjoy a full spectrum of community and professional support, services and context for the arts in B.C. from birth to death.

We recommend that the following two items, included in the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture’s mandate, also follow the priority in the upcoming budget: establishing an arts infrastructure fund to help space for B.C. artists and the development of a community capital infrastructure fund to upgrade and build sports facilities, playgrounds, local community centres, and arts and cultural spaces. These items are needed, and we are encouraged to see that they are included. The facilities and human capacity to inhabit these spaces is there in the community. Support for these programs will help to mobilize existing groups to better engage and address the needs of their artists and audiences.

Many of our ProArt member organizations that have been able to configure long-term lease and ownership relationships with properties in the region have struggled over the last administration’s tenure to keep up the necessary renovations, such as seismic and accessibility upgrades such as elevators, due to the majority of their time and resources going to managing their operations with little to no increase in public sector support — support that should match the rise in the cost of living for the organizations themselves along with their staff, contractors and volunteers.

ProArt thanks you for the fact that this parliament values the benefits of arts and culture and that the doubling of the B.C. Arts Council is included in the Tourism, Arts and Culture portfolio. We encourage you to work with and further invest in the existing arts infrastructure and support their ongoing efforts to strengthen and sustain arts and culture in B.C.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there any questions?

P. Milobar: I get what you’re saying. I come from Kamloops. We are very proud of our arts organizations there. We have three professional and a couple of other amateur ones that would be in keeping with what you have listed here. Those groups would have literally several thousands of patrons and attendees.

D. Jarvis: Sorry. What city did you say?

P. Milobar: Kamloops.

D. Jarvis: Kamloops. Great.

P. Milobar: I noticed you’ve listed 18 here. I would imagine it would be exponentially that many more people down in the greater Victoria area.

D. Jarvis: Yes.

P. Milobar: I mean, it was just a budget update. It was primarily just to keep the doors open of government and things like that.

Back to your first recommendation. Is the expectation that you’re not waiting four years for the doubling to be delivered? You’re expecting it to be doubled over the next…. You and your several tens of thousands of supporters, I’m assuming, through the 18 groups had expected an implementation a little quicker than year 4 or 5 of a four-year doubling.

D. Jarvis: I think maybe what the expectation might be is that it does get implemented and that it does get implemented over the time that is suggested. I think there’s probably some urgency that something happen this year to show that, in good faith, this is something that is important to the government. I think in that process, you’ll see that there are certain things that are in place that need attention now. This is where we’re emphasizing the infrastructure and providing resources to organizations, like operating grants, that are already doing the work to help shore them up and let the trickle-down effect happen through them.

[7:45 p.m.]

I was thinking about how 25 percent a year…. Or maybe it’s 60 percent the first year, and it kind of goes down. There needs to be a bit more discussion about what is needed out there in the community.

I think part of what we’re also looking forward to, as a new government is in place, is building a stronger relationship with you, having stronger conversations, being a little bit more together in our voice, provincially, for the arts and working closely with you to provide that feedback on how things are working and where the money could be best spent initially and then with the longer-term plan.

J. Brar: Thanks for coming today.

You mentioned “doubled.” Can you put a dollar figure on that? That’s one thing. The second question I have is: if you get the doubled amount, how is it going to meet the expressed goals, as you mentioned, for your platform, which is making life more affordable, improving services and creating good jobs?

D. Jarvis: I think the doubling…. That’s where I say it’s not necessarily arbitrary. It sounds great. The federal government doubled. Ontario just provided $20 million to their arts council.

What that will mean is the B.C. Arts Council going from what I believe is $24 million up to $48 million. I was thinking about this, how a certain amount of investment…. You’re going to see more outcome, more payback and more strength in the community by investing in the infrastructure, by investing in the facilities and by providing jobs and job security for a lot of organizations.

For myself, as I’ve said, I’ve worked across a few different organizations. So I’m really quite in tune with the need for some kind of work. You need some kind of job to hold on to. Quite often that is…. The part-time jobs and the contracts can really help the health of an organization and the health of the people working there.

I know that everyone in B.C. is interested that we don’t lose everyone that gets educated here to other provinces or to other countries. Again, this is where I’m trying to figure out the wording around how we develop, from early childhood to late in life, a spectrum of professional arts support. I need to do more math over the time, but I’m confident that there is a lot of need out there right now. The arts community is also a very resourceful group, but we’re trying to balance between people, in a very expensive context, trying to sustain a normal standard of living.

I haven’t brought it up yet, but we will, in the future, be looking at and advocating for a living wage. A lot of this is to help give people secure jobs, less stress and more affordability for their families and to keep the jobs here in the region and in the province. I guess I just trust that you respect that when people feel good and secure in their workplace, the benefits to all are going to be exponential.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation.

I understand that you’re talking on behalf of the community of artists and professional artists, but what they do is they create art that’s really important for the community. I’m wondering what strategy might be in place, if there was funding, to make sure that, actually, there’s an increase in accessibility to the different streams of art that would be developed under this umbrella as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just before you start. We’re a little bit over time, so if you could keep it short. Thank you.

D. Jarvis: One thing I would say is that accessibility…. By providing funding, you allow programs to be subsidized, which provides accessibility. For example, I work at Open Space. We do by donation or ticket sales for certain events, but we are able to provide access to the arts for any number of people through the system that we’ve set up.

I would just say that by supporting the arts infrastructure, it allows us to then put on larger events or create different avenues of access or be more creative in the ways that we are able to develop programs and give artists the opportunity to explore the ideas and the engagements that they want with the audience.

[7:50 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Jarvis, for all the work you do in the arts community. Appreciate it.

D. Jarvis: Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Federation of Community Social Services of British Columbia.

FEDERATION OF COMMUNITY
SOCIAL SERVICES OF B.C.

R. FitzZaland: My name is Rick FitzZaland. I’m the executive director of the Federation of Community Social Services of B.C.

I’d like to begin today by acknowledging some positive steps that the new government has already taken to improve the lives of people in our communities. The rate increases to income assistance and for persons with disabilities were long overdue as was the increase to earning exemptions. Expanding the tuition waiver program is something that the federation has advocated for many years. The commitment to reconciliation gives us hope for the future. The promise of affordable, accessible child care is something that will benefit many children and their working parents.

Thank you for understanding that the well-being of our province is tied to the well-being of its people. As you consider the goals and objectives of this government to improve services for people, to make life more affordable and to build a strong, sustainable economy, we would like for you to think about the role that community social services will play in achieving those goals.

I want you to picture a house, a house that was once sturdy, strong and well taken care of. It had a solid roof, fresh paint, flowers on the front porch and enough space for everyone that was living inside. It was built to be the perfect size for the people living in it and had everything they needed — running water, a fireplace and plenty of bedrooms.

Now picture the same house after two decades of neglect and with three times as many people forced to live inside. Sure, there may still be some flowers on the front porch. But the roof leaks, the floor boards are cracked, the chimney is blocked, the bills are unpaid, yet more and more people continue coming inside to look for shelter.

For many years, the federation has presented to this committee and made clear the need for increased investment in social services. Our concern about the severe underfunding of B.C.’s community social services is a matter of public record. It is our assessment, after years of tracking the provincial budget, that the economic prosperity of this province has been built on the backs of vulnerable children, seniors and people with disabilities.

If a house is falling down, a new coat of paint won’t actually fix anything. If the house is falling down, you need to fix the foundation. This sector is at risk. Agencies are continuing to operate with base funding levels that have not changed in over a decade. Underfunding is having a profound impact on the people and organizations that are busy trying to care for others — stress, burnout, injury, illness. The cracks in the foundation are growing.

We, all the people in all the organizations the federation represents, urge you to take a long hard look at the social services sector as you continue planning the future of government services in B.C. Changes are needed in the social care ministries, but changes are also needed in the community sector. The latter has been overlooked for too long.

Recruitment and retention is the largest human resource challenge facing this sector. The community social services sector is one with a highly educated workforce. It’s a sector where most jobs require at least a college diploma, but wages for unionized workers are 10 to 15 percent lower than their counterparts in community health. The disparity gets even greater when you compare with the wages in education and the public service.

I’m glad for the commitment to address the wages of the early childhood education sector, but incomes elsewhere have been dangerously low for too long. This makes the recruitment and retention of skilled staff a huge challenge, and we expect things will only get more difficult as health and education increase their hiring over the coming year.

[7:55 p.m.]

We also continue to worry about the prevalence of workplace violence and aggression in the social service sector. Data obtained from WorkSafe B.C. shows that workplace violence makes up 3.5 percent of all time-loss claims in the province. However, in the health and social service subsector, that number jumps to 12.5 percent. For residential social services, workplace violence represents an astounding 28.5 percent of all claims, and this number has been increasing year over year, as we have previously presented to this committee.

Nowhere else has such a high claim rate. Our sector knows all too well that violence has lasting physical and emotional impact. This can affect people’s mental health and their livelihood. The level of aggression that occurs in the social services sector is a problem that needs to be solved, and the answer is not more security guards. The answer is funding increases to the sector so people don’t have to wait as long for services they need. The answer is funding increases to hire enough staff and to provide them with adequate supervision and training, such as trauma-informed approaches to care, so they can carry out their important work.

A revolving door of new staff, combined with a growing number of vulnerable, desperate people forced to wait for care, creates a volatile mix. A strong, stable economy protects its workers. It keeps caregivers and front-line staff happy, healthy and supported so they can deliver the quality of services and supports the people of B.C. deserve.

Those services are important, more important than most people realize, so I also want to urge you to consider how procurement in the social sector is managed. We understand very well that this is a significant issue for a number of social care ministries. However, we are concerned that current contracting prices devalue the impact of dedicated personal and community-based service delivery.

Organizations bidding on government contracts should be required to demonstrate the value they will provide to the community. Reviewers should take into consideration everything that may be lost beyond the ability to fulfil the contract should a local organization be overlooked. The true value of local, community-based service delivery is immeasurable. That’s why it is our hope that the government will consider a full review of the procurement standards in place for community social services in B.C.

It can be tempting to look at B.C.’s complex social care system and try to address issues with quick, easy solutions. But all of us here know that it’s not that simple. The system that delivers social care in B.C. is too complex for the stopgap, simple solutions that have been tried in the past.

Affordable child care needs to be understood and addressed as part of a system that helps all families: those with young children, those expecting, foster families and children in care. Homelessness needs to be addressed in a way that understands modern poverty and connects a parent’s ability to care for their children and the equally important ability to leave a violent home or put food on the table in spite of having been injured at work.

The work ahead for us is complex, and it will be difficult, but it will be less difficult if we all work together. The entire sector — MCFD, CLBC and other government ministries, community agencies, Indigenous organizations — all needs to be on the same page from day one, moving in the same direction at the same pace.

The carpenter can’t fix the rotten floorboards until the plumber gets at the leaky pipes underneath. The roofer can’t fix the cracks in the roof until the foundation is stable underneath it. Collaboration needs to become the norm, not a “nice to have when we can make time for it.” Our sector can be a great partner and an invaluable resource as this government tackles the items on its agenda. I encourage you to take advantage of our experience, energy and ideas.

Yes, it’s possible to make change. This government has already shown that. But the kind of problems that still lay ahead of us will not be solved with the same tools and tactics we have tried before. We have painted ourselves into a corner, and we need to do something better, something smarter. Our members represent some of the most creative, passionate and caring people in this province. Every day they help the people of B.C. in amazing ways with far, far too little. It has taken a toll.

[8:00 p.m.]

They have spent decades striving to make things better for the people living all around us. They are an integral part of our communities, and they deserve to be treated as such.

You understand that healthy, supported communities make good economic sense, and I hope you also understand that well-funded community social services are necessary for those communities to prosper.

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

Questions?

T. Redies: Thanks very much for your presentation tonight.

We’re trying, with all the participants, to get a sense of what the dollar figure is that’s needed so that we can adequately compare and contrast the different needs. You mentioned that there is increased funding. You mentioned that workers in your area aren’t paid the same as other individuals.

Can you give us some colours, sort of what exactly you want to see? Do you want to see more funding? Do you want to see increased wages? Do you want to see both, and what’s the magnitude?

R. FitzZaland: So you’re coming up to…. The government will be giving instructions to PSEC on the upcoming labour negotiations, our collective agreement, in 2019. It would be good to see that they were given instructions to negotiate pay equity between the sectors. The social service sector is, like I said, in the best-case scenario, 10 to 15 percent below the others. In the worst-case scenarios, it’s over 40 percent. That would be a good, tangible thing to do.

The ministries get additional money, such as the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We welcome the increase that was given to MCFD in the February budget. Almost all of that money went to the hiring of government employees.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the more social workers working inside MCFD were and continue to be important, but without doing any increase in funding for employment in the social services sector, where a lot of the services are directly delivered, you haven’t fixed the whole structure, only part of the structure. So sort of like increases, at least.

It’s different subsector by subsector. CLBC — the needs there are somewhat different than the needs in the communities providing services to MCFD, different to those in the employment sector. But across the board, the community side is always on the short stick.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. I don’t know if this is something that you know, but it’s worth asking. If you took the social services that are provided across British Columbia, what percentage are delivered by community social services? Has that number increased over time?

R. FitzZaland: I can give you just some pieces that I know. I don’t think…. I could get broad numbers for the committee. For example, in the Ministry of Children and Family Development, over 60 percent of their budget is spent on contracts with the community social services sector — so a sizeable chunk of their service delivery.

For CLBC, they have limited direct service delivery. Their facilitators make the first contact with people and help to get them, but ultimately, the service delivery is provided by community agencies. So that’s the overwhelming majority for CLBC. I think that would be the same in employment programs, where there’s not government-side direct service delivery but contracted service delivery.

I would be safe, I think, in saying that the majority of the service delivery in the social sector ministries is from community agencies.

[8:05 p.m.]

R. Leonard: If I may ask another question, following up on that?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, but it will have to be really quick.

R. Leonard: How would you say morale is amongst the workers in community social services as a result of the wage disparity? It’s something I’ve heard of a lot.

R. FitzZaland: It’s going to vary. I mean, that’s a broad statement, right? I think that there are certainly parts of the sector where the morale is horribly low. It doesn’t feel like you’re being supported in doing some extraordinarily difficult jobs. Not only do you go to work and do this very horrid job, but you have to worry about whether you can feed your family.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your time and all the work you put into your presentation.

R. FitzZaland: Thank you and good luck.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up, we have PacificSport Vancouver Island — Drew Cooper

PACIFICSPORT VANCOUVER ISLAND

D. Cooper: Good evening, and thanks for the opportunity to present to you tonight. My name is Drew Cooper. I’m the executive director for PacificSport Vancouver Island. We’re part of a broad network of regional sports centres, connected with the national sports centre, throughout British Columbia.

For the better part of 22 years, working in sport has, for a guy who’s at times been referred to as hyper-competitive, been a dream job for me. I want to share with you some of the successes that we’ve achieved over the last little while and a few concerns and maybe finalize with a question I’d like to leave you with to maybe bring forward in your budget consultations.

PacificSport Vancouver Island. For the majority of our 22 years of existence, we’ve been primarily focused in on high-performance sport. That’s reflected in some of the successes that we’ve had at the recent Rio Olympics, where the national team makeup was 45 percent athletes from British Columbia, and 50 percent of the medals that came out of those games were won by B.C. athletes. When you factor in that B.C. has just 13 percent of the country’s population, we’re doing our stated objective of helping Canadian athletes win gold medals.

A lot of the success that we’ve had has come from the fact that we’re able to work creatively and develop networks and unique relationships. On the basis of that, about seven years ago, we were asked to take on a second mandate, and that is enhancing participation rates for the general population in physical activity.

This has been a real joy for us, because as fun as it is to win gold medals, to see that some of our programs, like our after-school initiative, have an impact on raising attendance levels of kids at school is something that I’ve found way more impactful.

The interesting part about the work that we’re doing at the community level and the grassroots level and to enhance these participation rates is that we now find ourselves working with health, education, recreation and sport in order to achieve some of these goals. I’m going to talk a little bit more about that later.

By the numbers, some of the successes that we’ve had over this past year. So 200 represents the number of coach leaders that we’ve trained this past year. Coaches, as you know, are great community leaders. Those are the folks that are out there working with our kids, and for the most part, they recognize the importance of their role. They’re often older brothers or older sisters. They take on the role of, maybe, absentee parents. The learning that happens in the coach training that we do also enhances people’s ability to communicate, and I feel that they become better parents.

We’ve had 63 different program activities that provide services to people at daycare level right through to frail seniors. We work in 11 schools in an after-school program with 25 kids in each of those schools.

[8:10 p.m.]

This year, brand-new, we kicked off an active transportation program where we’re trying to help families to wean kids off the reliance on vehicles and get them to walk and wheel to school to improve their cardiovascular abilities.

We’re now looking at the possibility of three play communities — physical literacy and you. I’ll talk a little bit about that in the future.

We’ve invested in a trailer that can now accommodate 12 wheelchairs that we’ve come into ownership of. This, along with the work that we’re doing to provide services and support to children with autism, really provides a much broader ability for us to make inclusion a bigger piece of what we’re doing.

We’ve got 17 new and existing special partnerships. And over this past year, we delivered 47 courses, workshops and training opportunities that met the needs of over 900 participants — parents, volunteers, sport administrators and coaches.

A little bit about our after-school sports and art program. This is targeted to schools in the Nanaimo district that are deemed to have a significant number of kids identified as being at risk. As I mentioned, we’ve got 11 schools, 25 kids in each of those schools. We do three different intakes in those schools. It’s had some profound effect, as I mentioned, in terms of improved attendance and improved attitude when they’re at school.

This past year we found a little pocket of money and instituted something called recess guardians. We now have trained up the student leaders within some of these elementary schools to actually lead physical activity during the lunch hour and recess. So we’ve got the after school part covered. We’ve got programs during the lunch time.

Starting next month, we’ll be introducing some preschool physical activity. This is especially important, and many people aren’t aware of this, even teachers: when kids have moderate to vigorous physical activity before school, it activates the brain, the blood flow in the brain, and makes it much more conducive for learning. So we’ve got the morning, the lunch and the afternoon now covered through this program.

Our community development work. For the last three years, we’ve been working with the Cowichan folks. That’s health, recreation, education and sport sector representatives. We’re really shooting to enhance physical activity based on physical literacy principles.

As an example, we’re working with the school district to train K-to-3 teachers on how to deliver a quality phys ed experience where the kids are actually learning proper running mechanics, throwing mechanics, so that their better able to do these fundamental movement skills and therefore stay connected to sport and physical activity.

We’re now embarking on a pretty ambitious three-year plan that should have some pretty significant impact in all aspects of the community — again, ranging from daycare through to frail seniors.

Just using the health sector as an example, one of the programs that we’ve been involved with getting off the ground is a frail seniors program where we work on improving the balance and agility in seniors whose tenancy is to back off from activity so as to prevent falls. It’s actually interesting to note that when they start doing that, the likelihood of falling…. With less activity, the incidence actually goes higher. We’re trying to get these folks to be more active, with the idea that we’re going to keep them out of the emergency wards and therefore be less of a drain on the health care system.

The community health units where immunization happens is another place where we’re able to partner up and have these front-line workers pass the word on to young parents of children to get them to be more physically active. They can direct them to the resources in recreation, in sport, in the education sector, where kids and families can be more active.

[8:15 p.m.]

Then another aspect of what we’re about on the health care front. With the number of stakeholders that we have at the table, we’ve actually been able to get school-based daycare providers to more easily dialogue with the licensing folks.

Believe it or not, children who go to a school and play on the playground equipment and then go to the school-based daycare are sometimes unable to access that same playground equipment, because the licensing standard is different from the school standard. So we’re getting these people to talk and resolve those kinds of issues.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Mr. Cooper, you’ve got a minute left.

D. Cooper: Okay. I want to just quickly go towards three quick items.

The demand for our programs is huge. With the proper resources, we could easily triple what we’re doing. We’re currently experiencing stagnant wages for our staff, for about four or five years. Cutbacks that we’ve had recently have really not allowed us to make any kinds of gains in that area. Thirdly, we’re probably the only centre in the province in the PacificSport Group that doesn’t have a quality facility to operate out of.

A solution that I posed last year was the suggestion that a one-cent tax per can on sugary drinks would potentially double the sport budget that currently exists. My question to this group to bring forward is: what’s holding us back from instituting a modest one-cent-per-can tax on sugary drinks to help properly fund the work that we’re doing?

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

Questions?

R. Leonard: What is your budget? What have you been operating on?

D. Cooper: Our budget, currently, is approximately $130,000 that we get from the provincial government. I leverage that 3.3 times. Up until about a year ago, our budget was, I believe, $160,000 or $165,000 from the provincial government. So 40 percent of my time is out there trying to dig for dollars to sustain the work that we’re doing, whereas I could be developing more relationships and getting more of the job done.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think it’s the challenge of all non-profits, isn’t it?

D. Cooper: Well, it struck me that after the social services representative and the arts representative, it was going to sound a little repetitious.

I like to think that we are solution-based. Sport people think on their feet. We’ve brought a solution, or what we believe is a solution, to the table. I hope it will be carried forward to the budget consultations.

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

Let’s adjourn for three or four minutes so we can have a quick break.

The committee recessed from 8:18 p.m. to 8:22 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. We’re on the air again. Next up, we have Lauren Bard and Brittany Gyte.

LAUREN BARD, BRITTANY GYTE

L. Bard: Hello. My name is Lauren Bard, and I’m a speech-language pathologist working with preschool-age children in the Victoria and Sooke areas. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about the importance of adequate funding for early intervention speech-language programs in B.C.

Since, of course, the government is responsible to everyone in the province, it is essential that our taxpayers’ money be spent as wisely as possible, whether it’s spent for economical or ethical reasons. Adequate funding for speech-language services for preschoolers achieves both ethical and economic goals. I’m hopeful that this budget will be forward-thinking enough to increase funding now, with the knowledge that the full benefits will be felt far into the future.

Publicly funded preschool speech-language services provide support for children aged zero to five, and we help children with diverse communication challenges, including but not limited to difficulty understanding language, using language, using language socially, speaking clearly, difficulty with stuttering. We also help children who have hearing loss. These children, many of them, are also at risk for difficulty in learning to read and write once they enter school.

Because communication is central to so many other skills, helping these kids reach their communication potential early is important for their success in school and then in the workforce, as well as for their mental health and for their relationships. Of course, it’s easier to address these challenges earlier at the preschool level than waiting till they’re in school, as zero to five is a fabulous time for brain growth and development. If we can help address these issues before we see these later consequences, it really helps everyone down the road.

The Canadian Public Health Association reports that for every $1 spent on early childhood health and development, we save up to $9 in future health, social and justice services. That’s a really amazing return on investment, but it also highlights the economic devastation if we don’t provide those services early enough. With at least 14.2 percent of B.C. kindergartners having vulnerabilities with their communications skills and general knowledge, this is a problem that needs addressing now.

[8:25 p.m.]

Ethically, we must also provide therapy. Article 23 of the UN’s convention on the rights of the child says that children deserve to have adequate access to free health care and rehabilitative services so that they can achieve their full potential, and speech-language services would be part of that.

Communication Matters is a speech-language pathology advocacy group in B.C. They surveyed speech-language pathologists who worked in publicly funded preschool programs in December 2016, and 141 speech therapists responded. Of those 141, only 5 percent said that they were able to provide what was clinically recommended to the majority of children on their caseload. That means that 95 percent of them were not able to provide what was clinically recommended to the majority of children on their caseload, which means most children were not getting the services that they really need. As well, 80 percent said that having more speech-language pathologists in their community would have the biggest impact on their work.

We have a real shortage of publicly funded speech-language pathologists in B.C. We’re well educated, we’re well trained, we’re efficient, and we do good work when we can to create real, positive change for these children and for their families. Together with our health authorities and our managers, we’re trying to be creative to stretch our dollars further, but to be blunt, we need more funding to hire more speech-language pathologists so that we can do our job. We cannot be effective when we are so understaffed.

This understaffing is leading us to limit our programming in a variety of ways. For example, one program in Victoria limits service to about 12 sessions a year per child in an attempt to give everybody a little bit of something. What ends up happening, though, is that most of those children are not getting enough to make the change that they could make and that they deserve to make.

Other programs end up limiting their service to children who are a little bit older, say three to five, or seeing children who have moderate and severe difficulties only. Again, most of those children with moderate and severe difficulties aren’t getting all that they need, and the kids with milder difficulties, who might make great progress with a bit of therapy, are getting nothing.

We’re also experiencing long wait-lists for most programs. Children are waiting, depending on the program, sometimes months and months before getting anything. Sometimes they’re aging out before they get any service at all in B.C., and we really think that’s unacceptable.

When we water down our service this much, it means we’re not as effective as we could be. It means that we’re pushing this problem later on, so children are entering school without the skills that they really need. This pushes the problem onto our very, very stretched thin speech-language colleagues in the school system and impacts our teachers and the classrooms in general. It’s really heartbreaking, as a therapist, to see this. It’s heartbreaking to know that I could help these kids more if there were more of me to do it, but that’s not the case right now.

I’d like to introduce Brittany Gyte, who’s here with me tonight. She has a son who accesses services, and she’d like to share her story.

B. Gyte: Hello. My son Owen Stenner was being seen at the Wale Road health unit for speech therapy. We were told that, as of September, he’s no longer able to be seen because of program changes. We had two days a week scheduled until the end of December, and they were all cancelled. Owen was on the wait-list for 18 months in total — nine months before he was seen for an assessment and another nine months until he was seen on a weekly basis. During that time, we reached out for private therapy, but it’s $120 an hour, so we couldn’t afford it.

He is diagnosed with a severe phonological speech delay. He is currently at a two-year-old level, but he turns five in February. This makes me worried for him, as he’s starting kindergarten next fall. I worry that in a year’s time, he will start school and struggle, as the support needs for students in schools far exceeds the amount of available EAs. I worry that Owen will be frustrated and, ultimately, use physical aggression because he can’t use his words, which takes us to insecurity, low self-esteem, anger issues and becoming introverted. He is having a hard time communicating and connecting with kids his age, and I feel this will progress into mental health issues if not dealt with now.

[8:30 p.m.]

Just before our sessions were cancelled, we were working on the number one. He finally got it, and he uses it all the time. He’s gained at least five new sounds during this past year of therapy. This may not seem like a big deal, but it’s huge for us. He’s made big improvements since starting speech therapy last September. His therapist sees a huge potential in him and was wanting to keep him on board until he started kindergarten. My hope for him is to be able to say his name by the time he starts kindergarten.

Preschoolers like Owen need these services to give them the best chance moving forward. The HealthLink B.C. website indicates the following: “It is important to track your child’s speech and language development. A child can overcome many speech and language problems with treatment, especially when you catch problems early.” But it frustrates me that without a blossoming money tree, I can’t access this treatment. It’s difficult to put a price tag on a child but, more specifically, mine.

The opportunity to communicate is a basic human right. I hope our system will reconsider. I hope my son will be on the receiving end of this valuable therapy. It is a gift that keeps giving to society, our family and, most importantly, to Owen. These children are our future. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

L. Bard: Thank you, Brittany.

I think Brittany and Owen’s story really clearly shows the amazing positive impact that having appropriate service can provide for these kids. Owen has made excellent, excellent gains in the past year, and we should all be really, really proud of him. It also, though, shows the problem with having these long wait-lists. No child should have to wait 18 months before starting the therapy that he needed 18 months before that. And then to have that therapy taken away…. Unfortunately, that is what we are forced to do, given that we don’t have adequate funding levels right now.

Again, it also makes economic sense that we help these kids earlier rather than later. Putting the money up now will, hopefully, give us a big return in the future. That’s why we’re asking today that you direct more funding towards the preschool-based speech-language pathology services in B.C. Thank you so much for letting us speak today.

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

I think, Peter, you were way back at the beginning there. Go ahead.

P. Milobar: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Brittany. I can speak from experience too. I have two kids that went through some speech therapy, and you guys do great work. So hang in there, and hopefully it works out for your son.

The question I have is around the funding level. Obviously, we’re working on budgets and numbers, so we can’t just insert the word “adequate” for funding. I say that because all levels of government — federal, provincial or municipal — will introduce programs or change funding, to increase funding sometimes, and groups will say: “Well, that’s great, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. We need more to make it actually successful.” So what is your view of what dollar figure is considered an actual relevant or successful bump to funding, versus kind of a token bump to funding?

L. Bard: Honestly, it needs to be doubled. I realize that’s not going to happen, but I would say that in Victoria, the number of speech-language pathologists that we have is about half of what we should have, given guidelines about how many kids we should have on caseload. The guidelines are about 25 to 40 children on caseload for a full-time speech-language pathologist. Most caseloads are about double that. So if we want to bring it back down to that appropriate level, I would say that’s what it is.

Other communities in B.C. will be a little different. Some will need more speech-language pathologists to reach that number; some will need a little less. But I can really only speak to what I see here in terms of that level. In terms of what that dollar amount is, I’m not sure.

P. Milobar: But it gives us a reference point. Thank you.

S. Cadieux: Thank you, Brittany, for sharing. As the former minister responsible, this is an area that I was never satisfied with in terms of what we were able to do or not able to do. I think it’s very important. I think the early interventions, broadly, are some of the best money we can spend as a government, and they are inadequate, in my mind, at this time. So thank you.

I have more knowledge of the current number that’s being spent and what a doubling would be. But actually, my question, Lauren, is: where are we going to get the speech-language pathologists?

L. Bard: UBC doubled their grad output program in the last couple of years.

S. Cadieux: Yeah, we did that two years ago.

[8:35 p.m.]

L. Bard: So we know there are more coming out than there were, say, five or ten years ago.

Personally, I see some therapists being pushed into private therapy. Working in public therapy, you’re dealing with unmanageable caseloads and you’re dealing with budget cuts all the time. So people go private.

The other thing is that although we need to hire more speech-language pathologists, there are other ways to use that money that make the SLP time more effective — for example, hiring communicative disorder assistants. They are cheaper. Although, we need to pay them better than we do in B.C., or we won’t attract qualified, good people. But they are cheaper.

They work in coordination with SLPs. They have a more limited scope of practice, and they need supervision by us. So you can’t replace us with them directly. But something like that would stretch that money further and give kids more therapy time without putting out more SLPs.

I do wonder, too, if the profession sometimes limits how many people are being put out so that we don’t end up with what happened with teachers many years ago of then there are no jobs. But I realize it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.

S. Cadieux: Good. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Was that your question?

T. Redies: I just want to make a comment. That was my question as well.

Brittany, I just want to say how much I appreciated you sharing your story. Again, I had a daughter who was diagnosed with severe language delay at two years. Thankfully, she got through it, and she’s doing her master’s. So there’s real hope with early intervention. I’m a big believer in it.

So thank you, Lauren, for bringing this forward. And thank you for sharing your personal story with us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Without any more further questions….

Thank you, Brittany, very much for your personal story. Lauren, thanks for a very good presentation. We appreciate your time.

L. Bard: Thank you so much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Board Voice Society of B.C. — Doug Hayman.

Hello, Doug.

BOARD VOICE SOCIETY OF B.C.

D. Hayman: My name is Doug Hayman. I’m the chair of the Board Voice Society of B.C. Some of you, I think, know about Board Voice. For those of you who don’t, we’re an organization representing boards of directors of community social service agencies in this province and their members.

We have about 69 multiservice agencies as members and over 700 board members who are Members of Board Voice. We’re founded on the belief that board leadership is critical to supporting high-quality services and to making our communities better places to live. Board directors are community volunteers, business leaders and community philanthropists who put their time, resources and reputations on the line to serve communities across B.C. Many of you have probably sat on boards. I’m sure you have.

What we do is we bring the voice of board directors to decision-makers to highlight our shared beliefs and values and to bring the community voice to community challenges and to share the impact of policies on our organizations and on citizens in our communities. We also connect community-based social services boards together at a community level to better understand the issues facing our communities and how we might build on those community assets. And we champion strong governance practices. We don’t pretend to represent all boards or board members, but we do believe that we generally reflect the views of boards across the province.

I want to bring two items to your attention today. The first relates to a very long-standing issue. I heard Rick FitzZaland talk about it earlier. It has to do with sustainability issues faced by community services agencies.

Volunteer board members are increasingly challenged by the demands placed on their agencies without the capacity to effectively respond. There are many related issues — some difficult to overcome, always taxing for hard-pressed community agencies trying to fulfil their responsibilities.

For example, and it’s a small example, differential wages paid to workers doing essentially the same work but funded through a different ministry. Our boards, in their fiduciary responsibilities, find it unacceptable that workers hired and trained by their agencies are then quickly hired away to do the same work elsewhere. This is a drain on already precarious agency resources and creates ongoing service disruptions and poor services to people.

[8:40 p.m.]

I heard today of a situation where an agency in Duncan lost five front-line workers to the Ministry of Education. Education’s hiring. Exactly the same qualifications. Boom. Five staff gone over to another organization that is paying $1.50 more an hour for the exact same kind of work. This is going on and on around the province, and it’s a real problem for organizations.

Our view of the many agencies providing services in B.C. is that we see them as centres of professional support in our communities, requiring stable funding, good governance, good management, equitable and living wages, adequate administration and well-supported and trained staff. In many respects, these organizations are no different than hospitals or schools in their importance to the communities they serve. To adequately serve our communities, they need to be sustainable and recognized for their contributions.

We think it’s time to come to grips with the many challenges facing this community sector through a considered response to the issues that have been raised over the years by umbrella organizations like Board Voice, Inclusion B.C., the Federation of Community Social Services and others. Agency sustainability is one of the many irritants that, in the long run, might be better addressed by a social policy framework or what we’ve been calling a B.C. framework for well-being, which is the main idea that I wanted to raise with you this evening.

At its highest level, what we’ve been talking about is an overarching framework of principles, values, social goals, roles and responsibilities intended to provide direction to all social ministries, including Health, Education, Children and Families and all the others, and their funded agencies and organizations, with a goal of better outcomes for people. It would also outline processes for monitoring progress.

We see a framework possibly providing a lens for reviewing programs, policy and legislation and mandates, a strategic planning and priority-setting tool, a model for engagement and transparency, a common language and vision to collectively set our sights on and a renewed call to action around innovation, collaboration and outcomes.

Board Voice has been actively tilling the soil across B.C. with respect to this idea for the past four years. First, we canvassed agency boards, then municipal councils and other organizations. In 2014, UBCM passed a resolution supporting a consultation process on this idea, and this year the B.C. Chamber of Commerce passed a motion of support for a social policy framework brought forward by the Surrey Board of Trade.

Over this past year, we’ve been talking to British Columbians across the province about the kind of province we want for their future. The findings from this consultation will be presented at a Board Voice conference in November. Most of these organizations recognize the need for a better way to get at the complex issues we face today and recognize that these issues don’t fit neatly into the mandate of any one ministry. Over the years, they have seen ad hoc responses to serious issues, reinventing how to work together each time.

We have also seen report after report outlining the issues that stem from one part of the system not communicating appropriately with another, leading to disruption or disaster. We’ve also heard calls for more comprehensive community social planning. It’s time for a better way.

New systems and processes need to be built in to regularize and streamline the work across all ministries and communities. Over this past year, we became aware that the B.C. Public Service was working internally on elements of a social policy framework for the province. We have not seen the results of this work, but we understand a draft has been developed, and we’re hoping that this will continue to move forward.

What we’re requesting in this regard is that a team be established in government dedicated to the development and management of a social policy framework and that funding be set aside to conduct a broad consultation to ensure that this framework is community-informed.

Thirdly, that the government work with Board Voice, its partners — which are the B.C. Government Employees Union, the B.C. Association of Social Workers, the Federation of Community Social Services of B.C., Volunteer B.C., the B.C. Association of Community Response Networks and the Union of B.C. Municipalities and others — to assist in making this idea a reality on the ground.

There’s some additional information on this in this package. I’m not going to go through it, but if you have any questions, I’d be pleased to try and answer them right now.

[8:45 p.m.]

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

Any questions?

M. Dean: Thanks so much for your presentation. We’ve asked other people, as well, who have come and presented here before to get a bit more specific on the dollar figure. Do you have a three-year budget that you’ve developed?

D. Hayman: We don’t have a budget with respect to the consultation process that we’re suggesting. We think, probably internally, a team could be put together without any new funding. However, a consultation will cost. It could cost up to half a million dollars, I think, to do a comprehensive consultation process, but I could be off on that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anyone else?

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hayman. Really appreciate your time and effort.

Okay, next up we have the Greater Victoria Regional Child Care Council — Enid Elliot and Jessica Hrechka Fee.

GREATER VICTORIA REGIONAL
CHILD CARE COUNCIL

J. Hrechka Fee: Thank you for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you for being here.

J. Hrechka Fee: It’s a good thing we’re early. You guys are 15 minutes ahead of schedule. You must be ready for bed.

E. Elliot: I would think you are tired. I was sort of pinching myself to stay awake.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re actually right on time.

E. Elliot: Oh, okay.

Good evening to all of you. I first want to just acknowledge that we are on Coast Salish traditional territory, where children have been loved and cared for, for thousands of years. I’m Enid Elliot and have been a visitor here for 40 years. I’m here with Jessica Hrechka Fee.

We’ve also come with some of our students in the second-year cohort of early learning and care from Camosun College. We hope that they’ll get to see that there’s an intention by this government, by this group, to validate the work of caring for young children. At this point, many of the graduates of our program do not find jobs which have satisfactory wages or pensions or benefits.

I actually happen to have last year’s talk here. I thought of reading last year’s talk. I could have even read the talk I did the year before because things have not really changed when we think about child care. We still need child care. For anyone who somehow missed the statistics and the arguments, I’d be happy to send you the links. I feel sure you may have heard from other parts of the province that this is an issue.

We do need a sensible, affordable-to-parents system of child care, with care that is accessible and welcoming to all children and families and pays educators a living wage plus benefits. It will cost money, but Quebec has found it pays off.

We don’t care if you’re motivated to do it because you think it might be economically a good idea. Men and women need to work, and their children need to be in good, healthy situations where they thrive. Please, just do it.

We don’t care if you want Canada to look better on the international scene. At the moment, Canada lags behind other industrialized countries, which seem to have found a way to support families and children with a flexible system of child care. Let’s just do it.

We don’t care if you want to do it because children deserve to be cared for in care that is regulated and of good quality. At this moment, spaces are so few and far between. Parents have no choice, so they grab anything, whether it is legitimate or not. Please, let’s just do it.

We don’t care if you do it because providing child care in people’s communities means a lower carbon footprint. Families will not have to drive 45 minutes to drop off their child and then 45 minutes back to work, and then repeat on the way home. Child care in neighbourhoods that is supported with qualified educators, good spaces and does not cost parents their monthly salary can make neighbourhoods hubs again. Just do it.

[8:50 p.m.]

We don’t care if you do it because your daughter is unexpectedly having another baby while finishing her schooling. That will mean two children in child care, one of them under three.

The costs of child care are surprisingly high, the second expense after rent, before food. It becomes personal, but it should be personal. We are a community. We all know young people struggling to make ends meet. Housing is expensive; so is food. They need our support. We should support all families, because we don’t know what gifts they each bring or will bring. We must act in good faith.

We have to say that we hope we don’t see you next year, unless it is to thank you. We hope you will have laid out a plan that will begin to build a system that supports young children and their families, not something half-baked that pays parents an allowance or subsidizes a few spaces or gives out grants that centres spend hours on in hopes of securing a few dollars.

It will have to be big, bold and brave, but we urge you to take it. It will take courage, but someone will need to do it. In the long run, it will benefit all of us.

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

Did you want to add anything?

J. Hrechka Fee: I’m here to support questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay.

J. Hrechka Fee: We do hope you ask questions.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. I don’t remember you folks from last year, but I remember a lady…

A Voice: Oh, Sharon Gregson.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Sharon Gregson.

…who came in, on numerous occasions, to speak about child care.

What are you looking at? What would you like to see us put a recommendation forward to government for? Is it $10 daycare? Give me a number of what you are looking at, or is it just quality daycare?

E. Elliot: It’s such a complicated answer. I could say, “Oh, well, we need so many more spaces,” right? That said, right now we don’t have enough educators to fill the spaces that we do have. We don’t have enough qualified educators. Then that would mean we’ve got to beef up some of the educational programs we have for early childhood educators.

That said, I would also say: “Well, you have to change the wages they make.” One of the things we find at the college is that within five years, a huge percentage of the people that we graduate leave to go on and get better-paying jobs. We are educating early childhood educators, but they’re leaving the field because they can’t really sustain themselves.

Then what are we talking about for children? It’s not really a very good picture, because there is just not enough care for children. We know young people right now…. It’s one of the ways, at least, of supporting young families.

I would say you’ve got to start with probably care for children under three. The most need is that age group. But it probably needs, I would say, just a consistent thought-out plan rather than what we have right now, which is fragmented, incoherent and doesn’t make any sense.

J. Hrechka Fee: Just to add to that, Sharon Gregson’s work to support the $10-a-day plan, while it’s a…. I can’t put enough emphasis on that it’s a plan. It’s a plan to move child care forward in the province. It’s a well-thought-out plan that talks about succession planning, education planning for early childhood educators and how to do that in a really thoughtful way.

There are a lot of layers and complexities that Enid talks about, and it’s not simply lower fees for parents.

We do look at this future generation. In my eight years teaching post-secondary, I have students, two sets of students that have left the field already to move on to other jobs or go back to post-secondary. It isn’t a bad thing when they go back to post-secondary, but let’s find them jobs that allow them to work with children. Let’s let children work with caregivers that have higher levels of education and want to continue their work, their professional development in early childhood education.

[8:55 p.m.]

J. Brar: Thanks for coming today. In this debate, there are all kinds of things people talk about. If universal daycare is the ultimate objective, where would you like to see the child care situation in B.C. in the next three years, and what are the three things you would like to see happening, practically?

J. Hrechka Fee: Ours might vary a little bit, but they’re pretty similar.

E. Elliot: Yeah, the next three years. I guess my feeling is that in the next three years, what I’d like to see is that there has been some thought put forward in a plan on how things were going to move forward — so that it was moving forward, so that parents could see that they were going to see child care and that there was some kind of thoughtful process.

I guess I say that because of having watched what has ended up happening, in that so many people need child care now. There’s a push on the government. We don’t have enough educators, so then they say, “Well, you can operate with one qualified early childhood educator, and we’ll let you have someone who’s just done one course to be the other people working with children.” Well, that starts to lower the quality of child care. It’s been more of a knee-jerk reaction response to planning child care.

My pie-in-the-sky idea would be that…. I know ECEBC has thought long and hard about this and has a lot more thought-out ideas than I can now call to my mind. But I just feel that it needs to be well-thought-out and planned, step-by-step, for it to move forward. As I said, under-three care is desperately needed right now in our province.

J. Hrechka Fee: I would echo Enid. I think the plan would be a first priority — committing to a plan and how we’ll work through that plan. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to have to have phases. It’s going to have to have lots of conversation with community. If it is going to be really progressive, I think there’s a lot of really creative, interested people in this field and in this work that are committed and interested in working on that plan and moving it forward.

If we look at the framework for British Columbia for the early years, it was created by people who have worked in the field for years and years. All around the world, people look at the B.C. plan for early learning and care. That was a plan that was developed by early childhood educators in B.C. So I’d echo the plan.

Then I think the other two priorities would be lower fees for families, so more affordable child care, and on the heels of that would be also…. I guess the piece would have to do with either wages or education of early childhood educators. We have these students that are paying $10,000 for their education, and they’re going out to the field where the starting wage in Victoria is $17.25 an hour. It’s going to take them years and years and years to pay off their student loans.

I guess those would be kind of three things.

S. Cadieux: I have two questions. They’ll be quick. One is just a show of hands of the students. How many of the students access the ECE bursaries that are available?

A Voice: My application for bursary wasn’t accepted, but I know other people that aren’t here who also applied but did receive it.

S. Cadieux: Thanks. The second question is a clarification. Enid, you used the word “legitimate” child care. Can you explain that?

E. Elliot: By legitimate, I mean regulated child care — child care that is being done in a thoughtful, careful way and also meets the regulations that are laid out by our province. There’s an awful lot of child care that is not necessarily licensed or is not necessarily of the kind of quality I think any of us would feel very good about.

[9:00 p.m.]

J. Hrechka Fee: And while they might be licensed, they only have to have 20 hours of course work to open a licensed facility operated by VIHA right now — 20 hours.

E. Elliot: You’ve got things, situations, like…. You’ve got families advertising in the paper for somebody to apply to look after their children. They’re not going to ask for criminal record checks. They’re just going to hope that somebody will come and be able to look after their children. I mean, families who are trying to work are somewhat desperate in the kind of care that they will accept. So it allows for all kinds of unusual settings for children to be in.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): We have a couple of minutes left. I’m curious. You mentioned that…. This is an institution like Sprott Shaw or something like that. Is that…? That you are educators from?

J. Hrechka Fee: We’re representing Camosun College.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay. Sorry. I just pulled a name out of my head.

J. Hrechka Fee: Public institute.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thank you. So all these bright, shining faces that I see behind you know full well the organization they want to get into, they want to get educated by. They know what’s at the end of their education term. Are they just going in it for the money? Where they leave after four or five years? Are they going in because they care and they want to help parents raise their kids?

I guess there’s this balance. I’m all for…. Father of two children, desperate to find child care, because my wife works, and I worked. We were fortunate that we did. We didn’t have to run an advertisement to get child care, but it was a search to get on a list and to be able to find it. But we accomplished it, and our kids came through it quite well — thank you to the kids, students, that are behind you.

E. Elliot: These young women behind me.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Well, I’m sorry. It’s just, I guess, the age…. Thanks to the students like what you have there, that made a difference in our lives. There’s a need, there’s a desire, and I see it being fulfilled. We’re not able to fill it up as much as we would like to, but it seems that there is a direction that’s taking place right now where more and more people are getting into this to try and help out. It’s just a balance, you know. It’s a supply and demand for me. It’s the way I look at it.

We have made recommendations before, and you’ve probably seen them in our recommendations, from the previous years, to try and help out with this. But, my gosh, with Sharon’s comments and with your comments today, I’m a little bit perplexed how government steps forward on this and actually creates what is really needed out there, to be frank.

E. Elliot: Well, it’s interesting. I just spent time with a group. It was early childhood education for sustainability. There was a conference in Vancouver, but an international group met ahead of time of the early childhood educators. It was interesting to me to talk to different educators from other countries who represent different systems.

I have to say that when I talk with the Norwegian early childhood educators…. Their educators have three years of education to work in child care or early childhood programs, and 98 percent of their children are in child care. They see it as just a right and something that happens for children. And in fact, the college instructors make less than the people who work with the children.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Norway also has a $900 billion trust fund from their oil industry that helps facilitate a lot of the social aspects of that particular country. So I think you have to compare apples to apples. It’s a good example that you’ve brought forward.

I’d really like to carry this conversation on after, because I think you’ve hit on some very good points that we should consider. If you don’t mind, I might be in touch with you and have a chat on the phone.

E. Elliot: Yeah.

J. Hrechka Fee: I know that the students are really excited about being here. I have one question: are they able to take a picture with you guys standing in the background?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, it’s funny. I felt so guilty. We had students here who wanted to do that last time, and I said no. I felt so awful — so yes.

We’d have to take a very short recess, and I apologize to Lloyd, who’s up next. It will only take one minute.

I did want to say that I have five children, and I understand the mortgage payment side of this and how important it is. I really appreciate the time and effort and the complexity. Thank you for the questions.

J. Hrechka Fee: Yeah. I can tell you all these students are here because they care.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right. Good.

So if I could take a very short recess.

The committee recessed from 9:05 p.m. to 9:07 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, everybody, for coming.

Up next, last but not least, we have Deloitte. We have Jamie Sawchuk.

I appreciate you indulging us with the picture. It put us a little bit behind schedule, but the floor is yours. Please go ahead.

DELOITTE

J. Sawchuk: Thank you, Chair. I very much appreciate the indulgence. I have two daughters, and I really wish they could be here tonight.

Thank you to all of you for your service. From a Deloitte perspective, we really appreciate people that commit to public service and to serving in rooms like this, late at night.

It’s an honour to be here this evening on the territory of the Coast Salish First Nations.

I’m Jamie Sawchuk. I’m a professional engineer and a partner in Deloitte, and I’m a very proud British Columbian. I lead our public service practice here in British Columbia and our British Columbia innovation group. I moved to Victoria a number of years ago and now employ 100 people in high-tech jobs in this city. So I’m very proud of what we have accomplished, working together with other British Columbians.

You may know Deloitte as Canada’s largest professional firm owned by Canadians, employing Canadians and helping Canadian companies. But you might not know the newer chapters of Deloitte. We have one of the largest groups serving First Nations in Canada and in British Columbia, and in that service, we help those First Nations create the leadership, the governance and the structural capabilities to make decisions for their own communities.

You may not know that Deloitte is one of the largest digital companies in the world. We employ thousands of people in digital jobs, helping create the next generation technology economy in AI, in big data and digital services.

Deloitte serves governments across Canada, helping governments like you figure out fiscal priorities, how to improve health care outcomes, how to address social challenges and how to deal with things like the opioid crisis and housing affordability when there aren’t clear answers for those vexing types of questions.

When it comes to some of these questions, like how do we create a shared sustainable economy, within Deloitte, we found it was important to find our voice on the future of Canada and the future of our great province. I hope to share some of that with you today.

[9:10 p.m.]

Over the past six years, we’ve done a lot of research. Where do we go as a nation in terms of increasing our productivity and increasing our competitiveness on the global stage? More recently, we’ve looked into innovation. How do we drive a more innovative culture?

In the past year, we’ve looked at the question of courage. Within Canada, we need to have more courage to make the bold decisions that our previous generations made on our behalf. We have forged Confederation. We have created railways that tied our countries together. We created a national health care system. Those took tough decisions. We need more of that.

This summer we looked at some of the bold decisions that we think need to be made to secure the next 25 years, so when we look at Canada’s 175th birthday, we are the envy of the world. We see no reason why Canada and British Columbia can’t take that position.

Why is it so important now? From our perspective, there are a number of factors. As Canadians and British Columbians, we enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. But our history does not guarantee our future. In fact, our relative position against other leading economies is declining.

Our research shows some disturbing or unsettling trends. When you look at the risks of the future, 42 percent of the Canadian workforce is at risk of their jobs being automated — 42 percent. Only 13 percent of Canadian companies are ready for that disruption. Those are statistics that should concern all of us as British Columbians and Canadians.

Additionally, we see our relative quality of life is decreasing relative to other OECD countries. We are one of the best places in the world to live, but our United Nations housing development index is decreasing.

What’s particularly concerning is that our education is decreasing relative to other countries. Canada’s highly educated labour force has traditionally been one of our strongest competitive advantages. This is eroding particularly when we need it most, as we look on to the technology economy of the future. Our workforce is aging. Technology is changing the jobs. And despite our efforts, our educational systems are not keeping up.

As leaders in Canada and in British Columbia, we have some choices. We would encourage you to make those tough, purposeful choices. When we look at those choices, we have a lot of confidence that you will make the right ones. When we look through our history, we’ve made good decisions. We have it in our DNA to make those tough decisions for future generations.

Over the past summer, we’ve conducted round tables and asked leaders across Canada and here in British Columbia from the public and private sectors: what shall we do? Three bold actions came to the fore. One, we should dominate the world stage. You will have some of this material in front of you. We need to focus our investment on creating global champions and avoid the temptation to peanut butter it across everything and everybody. I’ll come back to this point.

Two, we need to have a bold voice. We look to our neighbours to the south with some concern about what they’re doing in terms of protectionism. In Canada, we have this opportunity to be open and diverse. We should play that purposefully on the global stage.

Third, we should prepare, all of us, for the jobs of tomorrow. Those kids were amazing, and for sure we should focus on that generation. But we should also be mindful of their parents, because the jobs their parents have are going to shift in the next five to ten years, and we’re not used to re-educating people mid-career. We’re going to have to think about our educational system as more than just K to 12 plus some post-secondary for bright talent like that.

[9:15 p.m.]

Specifically, what does that mean for B.C.? We’ve studied the global economy, and we see some strategic shifts that B.C. is incredibly well positioned to take advantage of. One, there’s a transition to digital economies on the west coast of North America. If you study history, you would find that the largest companies used to be in the east. They’re now in the west. They used to be resource-based, and they’re now technology-based. Two, 100 years ago the global economy was a Eurocentric economy. When you look to the next 100 years, it will be an Asian-centric economy. We are at the nexus in terms of taking advantage of that.

Within this context, we’d like to learn from other innovators, and we’d encourage you to look at the lessons from Israel. Israel is a nation of eight million people, with no large resource competitive advantage. They decided purposefully years ago that they needed to out-innovate. Today, Israel is a global technology leader. They’re known as Innovation Nation. While they focused their defence spending to drive their technology advantage, British Columbia is maybe not a defence powerhouse. But we’re fiercely proud of our health care.

Over the next 20 years, we will spend $500 billion on health care. We can either spend it, or we can strategically spend it, with an eye to the future in securing the jobs for our future generations. When we look at that…. We’ve asked British Columbian leaders of all stripes, what should we do? Then this June we brought together global leaders and asked in the global stage, what should British Columbia do?

They identified six steps. Focus on personalized health by leveraging the existing strengths in UBC, the genomics science centre and the personalized oncogenomics program. This is the future of health care, and we are going to look back on the history of health care and think it was like before we understood the difference between blood types. This is very much the future, and B.C. has a great opportunity to be a global leader.

Second, we need to look seriously at creating a secure health and genomic health data platform. B.C. has a heterogeneous population, and we are very well served to create that data platform. Thirty years ago leaders decided to capture longitudinal health data in our province. We have that as a strategic asset. We need to figure out how to use it as a strategic asset to secure health care and jobs.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Jamie, we’re at ten minutes right now, just so you know. Keep going, but be aware.

J. Sawchuk: Okay.

If we do that, I think we’re quite confident you will create the jobs of tomorrow.

We would also encourage you to look at other lessons learned around the world. In New Zealand, they’re investing in children and driving improved health care outcomes. In Australia, they’re doing very innovative things in creating a sustainable shared economy. There are some great global lessons learned on addressing housing affordability in different regions.

Thank you for your time. I’m open to answering any questions.

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

Questions? I have a quick question for you. Have you looked into taxing robots? I know that seems like a crazy thing, but I mean, in terms of the labour force going down. If it’s replacing labour and being able to reuse that to retrain labour, is that something that Deloitte has looked at? Is it an option?

J. Sawchuk: Certainly, there’s been some discussion around the concept of if we tax labour, do we tax robots? I think you want to focus taxation policy on: how do you drive economic growth, and what’s the appropriate tax policy for that economic growth?

We’re going to have to, in terms of future public policy, consider those types of questions. I can follow up on that specific question if you’re looking for more information.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sure.

T. Redies: Just a question. You mentioned health sciences and genomic opportunities for B.C. Are there any other areas of rapidly advancing digital technologies where you think B.C. could have a competitive advantage?

J. Sawchuk: Ah yes, absolutely. We worked with B.C. leaders to create the digital technology supercluster strategy.

B.C is the number one tech ecosystem in Canada. It’s not Waterloo. It’s not Toronto. It’s us. But most of us don’t know that, and we don’t play the card the way we should.

[9:20 p.m.]

When you look at the tech sector, people talk about unicorns, which are billion-dollar companies that were created pretty much overnight. Canada has created five. We’ve created three. We punch way above our weight in that sector, yet we don’t give ourselves the credit for doing that. When you look at the jobs, they’ve moved from Silicon Valley to Seattle. We should be taking full advantage of that sector.

J. Brar: You also mentioned the transition to a digital economy. What would you recommend for us to make as the investment that would be best for the people of British Columbia?

J. Sawchuk: We would seriously suggest that you consider expanding the higher education and the technology jobs. I know there’s been a lot of discussion around STEM jobs and STEM careers and creating more positions in post-secondary education for STEM-related. We would suggest a multiple of what people are considering.

If you’re looking at bold bets in securing the future for those generations, let’s train them for the jobs of tomorrow.

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

Well, thank you very much. That was very interesting. I really appreciate it, and the reading was really good too. I really enjoyed that. Thanks so much. I guess we’re finished.

I just want to thank the committee for being here late tonight. I know it was a long day. I really appreciate everyone being here.

Thanks again to Susan and her team and, of course, everyone at Hansard. Thanks for being here tonight. With that, we will stand adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 9:22 p.m.