The committee met at 4 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good afternoon, 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.

I’d like to begin with the recognition that our public hearing today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa, Okanagan and Sinixt peoples. You can correct me if I’ve got those pronunciations wrong.

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, which includes the following three questions. What are your top priorities to help make life more affordable in British Columbia? Two, what service improvements should be given priority? Three, what are your ideas, approaches and/or priorities for creating good jobs and to build a sustainable economy in every corner of our province?

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in the communities around the province, and British Columbians can participate in these public hearings in person, via teleconference, video conference or Skype. There are a number of ways that British Columbians can submit their ideas to the committee. They can complete an on-line survey or send us a written, audio or video submission. For more information, please come to our 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.

All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report for the Legislative Assembly. Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2017, and the committee must issue a report by November 15, 2017, with its recommendations for the 2018 provincial budget.

Now, today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. If time permits, we will also have an open-mike period at the end of the meeting, with five minutes allotted for each presenter. If you wish to speak, please register with Stephanie at the information table.

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

Now I’d like to ask our members of the committee to introduce themselves.

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

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

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

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

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

A. Weaver: Andrew Weaver, MLA for Oak Bay–Gordon Head.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Assisting our committee today are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Michael Baer and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services are also here to record the proceedings.

I’d also like to make a special welcome to Cheryl Ann Archibald from the national assembly of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, who is here on a parliamentary staff exchange. Welcome, and thanks for coming.

I’d like to bring up our first witness, which is Selkirk College Students Union, Gabrielle Faludi — come on up; don’t be shy — Santanna Hernandez and Halley Gugliotta.

Before we start, Mitzi Dean is also on the line. Do you want to introduce yourself?

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

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. The floor is yours, Selkirk College Students Union.

Budget Consultation Presentations

SELKIRK COLLEGE STUDENTS UNION

S. Hernandez: Good afternoon, standing committee members. My name is Santanna Hernandez. I’m the chairperson of the Selkirk College Students Union, and I’m joined by Gabrielle Faludi, one of our staff members, and Halley Gugliotta. She is our secretary.

[4:05 p.m.]

Before I begin, I’m going to also acknowledge the territories. I’d just like to acknowledge our respect and our gratitude for the First Nations of the West Kootenay–Boundary region — the Sinixt, the Ktunaxa, the Syilx and the Secwepemc — whose traditional territories Selkirk College operates on.

The Selkirk College Students Union represents all students at Selkirk College. We have over 2,000 members at eight campuses in six communities, servicing an area the geographical equivalent of the area from Richmond to Hope as well as White Rock to Sechelt. Our organization is Local 2 of the B.C. Federation of Students.

The students union exists to provide member services to students in West Kootenay and to advocate for a high-quality system of publicly funded and administered post-secondary education. To this end, we are happy to be able to speak to you today about our needs for our members. We want to assure you on Selkirk College students’ perspective on a number of topics, including tuition fees, student financial assistance and funding for post-secondary education. These would be too exhaustive to cover in our brief time together. So we will provide the committee with a more fulsome report at a later time.

Today we hope to highlight a major issue for the entire post-secondary education system, which is the high cost of tuition fees. It is our recommendation that government immediately freeze tuition fees and implement a schedule for their reduction.

Tuition fees are the single largest financial barrier to attaining post-secondary education. According to Statistics Canada, last year British Columbia’s average undergraduate student paid $5,534 in tuition. In the past, the B.C. Liberal government made obtuse and irrelevant claims that because B.C.’s tuition fees were about average compared to other provinces, there was no problem. The rationale — that being average makes destructive public policy somehow tolerable — is unhealthy and illogical.

Increasing tuition fees does three things. It further weakens the financial position of the working class and makes workers more dependent on their employers, it systematically maintains the financial depression of marginalized communities, and it reduces the contribution made by the wealthy. We should not concern ourselves with the overemphasized and overvalued opinions of the wealthy who do not wish to pay the taxes necessary to fund post-secondary education.

It is certain that this committee will hear from those wishing to protect the regime of abysmally low taxes in our province. In response to that, we say that the actual living and breathing people, not the corporate boardrooms that make up a legal person, should take the government’s priority.

In the July 2017 mandate letter to the Minister of Advanced Education, Premier John Horgan is clear that he expects Minister Mark to support the government’s three priorities — making life more affordable, delivering the services that people count on and building a strong, sustainable, innovative economy. If the citizens of our province are to take these priorities seriously in the context of post-secondary education, we can only expect that government intends to confront the growing issue of tuition fees. Let’s explore those three priorities for a moment.

(1) Making life more affordable. Tuition fees, in addition to mandatory auxiliary fees, represent for most students a large portion of their total expenses each semester. Many students already struggle to find enough work through the summer, only to find that they still need to take on debt to address the full upfront cost of their education. The balance is generally met by continuing to work throughout the school year, taking energy and focus away from their studies, and by curtailing or going without basic necessities like a healthy diet and sufficient living space and transportation. Freezing and then reducing tuition fees would make life more affordable, and it would mean less undue strain on the lives of students and their families.

(2) Delivering the services that people count on. The vast majority of new jobs in our province require a post-secondary education. This means that the vast majority of people finishing high school or needing to find a new job depend on a system that has significant financial barriers to participation. Families throughout our province are making hard choices and struggling through hard times just to make what is necessary possible. Government has a responsibility to ensure that its priorities serve the needs of its primary constituents, the common people, by restoring funding to the system and mandating a freeze and a scheduled reduction in tuition fees.

[4:10 p.m.]

(3) Building a strong, sustainable, innovative economy. Faced with the prospect of a large debt once their studies are complete, students are led to consider which career paths would lead to the best prospects for individual income. This leads many students away from the areas where they have the strongest aptitude, where they have the most genuine curiosity and where their passions would find their greatest expression.

To limit a person’s potential to simply the best they can do in the field that is not their choice does not capture their greatest potential. It is only limiting the potential of our society as a whole. To build a strong, sustainable economy, the government must ensure that each of us is best equipped to achieve our potential and that our contributions are not limited by the scarcity analysis that we just have to struggle through to pay the bills.

I’ll finish my statements by saying again that our organization appreciates the opportunity to present to the committee today. The 2018 budget is an opportunity for government to show that it hears the concerns of students and will work to ensure that anyone who needs an education will be able to have a fair shake. Post-secondary education is a complex and expensive government service, but its success is critical for our province’s future and government’s economic plans.

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

Now we have questions.

J. Brar: I just want to ask you…. We have already heard from a number of student associations, coming to us and raising issues about affordability or improving services and all of that. They are listing a number of things.

One of the questions which I want to ask you is about mental health. We heard time and again — a huge issue, particularly in the Lower Mainland — from students talking about…. Mental health is a huge issue. Subsequently, they are asking us to provide funding for this issue. What is your experience in this area, or the institutions you deal with, about the mental health issues?

S. Hernandez: I think my statement touched on that a bit. The cost of tuition fees adds undue stress. Having one trigger is just a waterfall for other triggers to come into play.

I know for myself…. I look at what my student load debt is. I’m only in my third year of studies, and I have over $50,000 in student debt for those three years. I also have four children. So if I’m not making a sufficient amount of money afterwards, I’m still going to make up those….

I think of my own personal stresses. A reduction in tuition fees would substantially help support that, as well as looking at other programs that we can put in place to support students around housing, food and transportation.

J. Brar: So you’re asking us to freeze tuition fees at this point in time.

S. Hernandez: At this point, yes.

A. Weaver: I was going to ask about the student housing question. For Selkirk, is that an issue at all?

S. Hernandez: It is definitely a huge issue because we are so spread out in our communities. Our main campuses are located in Castlegar and Nelson. Especially with our high international population coming over, a lot of them are having a huge issue finding housing. We don’t have the infrastructure that they have in other areas. We’re constantly trying to work with our institution to try to mitigate that. But without government support, we’re not getting as far as we could.

G. Faludi: Could I add to that?

Part of the problem…. We definitely have a local housing crunch. I actually just came from a housing conference that we’re doing in Nelson, from the Nelson Committee on Homelessness. We have a 0.7 vacancy rate in Nelson at the moment, and of course, students are among the people who are impacted by that. Because many of our students don’t have community connections — so many people travel here to attend — they don’t have that in to find the housing. Most of the housing isn’t even posted.

Definitely. Creating affordable housing or some sort of initiative going forward to create affordable housing and also construct it, because we’re at capacity as it is in the region, would be really important to us. Our former chairperson was living in a house where she was living with seven other people.

S. Hernandez: Fifteen other people.

G. Faludi: Fifteen other people.

S. Hernandez: Because of their courses, they just rotated who got to sleep in what bed at what time.

G. Faludi: It’s definitely a very real problem in this region. I absolutely must stress that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): One of the things that has happened is setting the interest rate at prime for the student loans. I’m just wondering…. One of the proposals is to actually get rid of interest altogether on student loans. What are your thoughts on that?

[4:15 p.m.]

S. Hernandez: That’s a small portion. It’s similar to something like looking at the grant programs. With tuition fees constantly increasing…. I mean, you freeze the tuition on my student loan, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t change that, next year, my tuition is going to be 2 percent higher and potentially higher. I know, last year, if you look at the fees and the tuition increase, my expenses actually increased by 6 percent because of a new fee they decided to introduce as well as the tuition increase.

Even if we freeze interest rates, it’s a slight change in my debt load, but it’s not stopping my debt load from increasing each and every year. As a pre-med student, I’m looking at going to school for the next six to eight years, and I can only think of what that’s going to look in six to eight years from now when I’m finishing my post-secondary education and I have four children following into that education system right behind me.

A. Weaver: I just wanted to…. I think that’s a very good point you make. The fee creep is a way that universities, colleges, post-secondary are getting around the 2 percent tuition cap. We’ve seen that. We’ve heard other institutions, too, raise it through student housing increases and other random fees that get at it. That’s a good point to bring up. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate your clear message about how you want to freeze tuition fees with the idea of eventually lowering tuition fees. I think we heard that loud and clear. So thank you so much for your presentation and your time. Just a reminder that the deadline for any written submission part of this is October 16 at 5 p.m. So if you could please get that in.

Judy Pollard, there you are. You have the floor, Judy.

JUDY POLLARD

J. Pollard: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you this afternoon.

My name is Judy Pollard, and I am speaking on behalf of myself and Toni Hoyland. We have prepared a submission supporting the consideration of a community plan for a public system of integrated early care and learning in British Columbia.

You may have heard of something called $10-a-day child care. That terminology’s been bantered around for a while now, and it came, actually, out of this community plan that was written in 2009. The community plan is much more extensive and detailed and progressive than simply $10-a-day, although ten dollars a day for child care would obviously be a benefit for many, many people.

Toni and I both have been early childhood educators for something like 45 years, which is really hard for me to imagine. We have been strong advocates in the field of early care and learning for most of that time. We’re retired college instructors in early care and learning, and both of us taught for many years at Selkirk College, so it’s really interesting to see such a strong presentation by Selkirk College students. We both are past presidents of Early Childhood Educators of B.C., so we have a very long history in this particular field and on this topic.

I believe that you have our written submission available to you there.

The children and families in British Columbia need and have a right to universally accessible, high-quality, affordable, licenced early care and learning programs. The New Democratic Party acknowledged the importance of supporting this community plan when they campaigned on a promise of making it a reality in the last election.

[4:20 p.m.]

With the implementation of the community plan, significant benefits will accrue to children, families, early childhood educators, communities and society as a whole. The current patchwork of services is damaging to everyone involved and must change. It is critical that we see some change in the existing situation. As we approach the upcoming February budget, it is imperative that concrete financial plans be included that will resource this commitment.

What is at stake here? Firstly, it’s young children. It is critical that in the early years of a person’s life, opportunities are maximized for enhancing brain growth and development for resilience, effective communication and relationships, emotional intelligence, self-esteem and confidence. Providing young children with quality early care and learning programs will contribute to the above and also the building of citizens who will be strong, active participants in society and poised to deal with the complexities of the modern world.

Research has shown that children who have strong supports in their early years are productive economically in their own lives and in their communities. That’s contributing to the tax base and also to the pensions of their elders. You may have heard of some of the cost-benefit analysis that has been done in both the States and Canada showing that, at absolute minimum, the return on putting funding into early care and learning is a 2 to 1 benefit.

In Quebec, there’s been a funded child care program now for a number of years, and that’s shown very dramatic benefits to the economy of Quebec as well as to a whole lot of other factors.

Secondly, at stake are families, of course. Families today juggle the basic needs of housing, food and care and support of children. Approximately 20 percent of families can access high-quality, regulated early care and learning spaces. Wait-lists are very long, and parents often place their children on wait-lists before they are born. So 80 percent of families are left to cobble together a variety of care situations, including unregulated care, grandparents, neighbours and drop-ins.

In this area and I know in pretty much all areas of B.C., there are many, many children who are involved in a different type of care every day of the week — so four or five different types of care. They go to preschool. They go to drop-in programs. They’re with grandparents. They’re with neighbours. They’re with parents part of the time. It’s a big mix of environments for those children. The complexity and lack of consistency of these arrangements is not beneficial to the children’s development and learning and can create a very unstable and chaotic environment for families.

Through the implementation of the community plan, families will have access to consistent, quality, regulated services that they can rely on, and they will be more confident that their children will be in safe, nurturing and reliable places. Once the plan is in place, families will be better able to enter the workforce, access education and training programs and be financial contributors to society.

According to the 2009 report 15 by 15: A Comprehensive Policy Framework for Early Human Capital Investment in B.C. — you may have heard of this report; this came out of HELP at UBC: “The lack of work-life balance wastes over $400 billion in economic investment and will cost our economy 20 percent in GDP growth over the next 60 years.” With the implementation of the community plan, we can create broad, equitable access to the conditions that help children and families thrive, so we can move past this work-life imbalance that exists now.

At stake also are early childhood educators. Early childhood educators have subsidized child care costs by supporting families through their consistently low wages and lack of employment benefits. This demonstrates a lack of respect and fair compensation for the complex, demanding and extremely important work they do.

A few days ago I was actually at my physiotherapist’s office, and I realized the person standing beside me was a graduate of a program I had taught in many years previous. She told me that she had been working in her current situation for 16 years and earns barely above minimum wage. She had significantly hurt her back that day just helping children put toys away. She could hardly stand up, and she could hardly walk. She was talking to the receptionist to see if there was any way that she could get any support. She has no benefit plan. She’s been working in that field 16 years, and she probably couldn’t go to work for quite a few days after that.

Another factor for early childhood educators is that there are massive and ongoing societal changes that necessitate early childhood educators getting the skills and knowledge to address the increasingly complex needs of children and families.

[4:25 p.m.]

Another factor is brain development research. In the past 20 to 30 years, there’s been a lot of insight into the ways that children learn and how to provide environments that best support them. As with all teachers, early childhood educators need to access ongoing, current research and learning in order to optimize children’s growth, learning and care. With the community plan in place, early childhood educators will have access to professional development to keep them current, to provide equitable wages and benefits and to enable long-term commitment to the field.

In conclusion, we look forward to seeing financial support for the community plan in the February budget. We believe that it is really critical. It is really time that this significant sort of change happened.

You mentioned in your introduction that there were three questions that you were looking to answer as you listened to people around the province. We believe strongly — and there’s very significant research to back up — that good-quality early care and learning is an answer to all of those three questions. It is something that will move our society forward and help to build strong citizens.

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

P. Milobar: Thanks for the presentation. Obviously, you’re very well versed on the subject.

What would you consider a meaningful implementation timeline or dollars in February? In other words….

J. Pollard: How many dollars in February?

P. Milobar: Well, no. We’re trying to get a sense…. Would you see a plan that takes three years to roll out as a success? Or do you expect that things should be able to, within the early childhood system, unfold over the next year — that type of thing — and that that is doable? I’m just trying to get a sense from you with your expertise.

J. Pollard: I think that there needs to be a time frame through which to unroll this kind of plan. It’s a complicated plan.

The first step in it is actually an act, a child care act. That act would actually pull together the services for children and families under the Ministry of Education. So it’s actually a reshifting of what we have now. Now we have multiple ministries that are dealing with child care issues and early learning issues.

The first step would be to develop an act. Then the second step would be to develop supports. I would say initially for families. There’s this huge access problem for families. The costs are very significant for families.

If we don’t do something about helping families be able to afford, which we need to do really quickly, we just push the services underground more and more. That’s what’s happened over the last 15 years. So much service has gone underground. We’ve lost really good-quality services because there hasn’t been support for families that can’t afford it, and they can’t get to it. So that’s really critical. We really have to put things in place that will help families be able to afford child care services and early learning services.

Now, in terms of what that might look like, I don’t know. I couldn’t take a guess in dollar terms. But I think there’s a lot of preliminary work that needs to happen to make this a very good approach and needs to be carefully laid out. At the same time, the planning piece of it is the piece trying to immediately provide support to people.

T. Redies: Thank you for your presentation.

I guess one of the issues in this is having sufficiently trained individuals to provide the early childhood education. I don’t know if you could give us some thoughts as to how you would ramp that up. I’m presuming today, if we started to build out these child care centres, I guess the issue might be that we don’t have enough people to actually staff them.

How long is the training? Do you see it being an issue in the short term or medium term, in terms of having the people to provide the support?

J. Pollard: You’re absolutely right. Having qualified people is a huge issue. The main obstacle there is the wages that they get when they become qualified. It’s not too enticing when you know you’re going to get minimum wage or maybe a tiny bit above minimum wage for a two-year training program.

[4:30 p.m.]

T. Redies: It’s two years. Okay.

J. Pollard: That’s very common around the province. There certainly is a need to have a degree program, in terms of all the factors I mentioned about the increased knowledge base and needing to be up to date and knowledgable with research and that kind of thing.

The world is much more sophisticated than it was when I started in the field in 1970. The complexity is much, much greater in terms of working with the children and the families. It’s much greater, so there’s a need for more training.

The students were talking about tuition fees, that kind of thing — that’s a huge issue — but also the fact that they come out of that training and their wages are so low. Also, because of that, they fall out of the field really quickly. If we didn’t have so many graduates falling out of the field because they can get paid more at the coffee shop, we wouldn’t have nearly the problem. It is really an additional problem.

We can’t actually fund people…. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe we can. But to fund people to take the training is, other than…. There are some minimal support programs, but it doesn’t really give them very much. But we can, I think, support people financially to go beyond the basic training and help them to be able to access beyond that. They will continue their learning, they’ll have professional development and that kind of thing, and they will keep current.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. I think you clarified and made very real some of the challenges that the early childhood education system is facing, especially the idea of one of the rationalizations for making it more affordable and the response of the community to be going underground to provide lesser-quality care just because of affordability. I think that’s a big challenge. So thank you very much for doing that.

I wanted to just ask you quickly in terms of the rollout. We’ve heard from some other early childhood educators talking about the importance of getting to the under-3s as a priority. I was just wondering if you could comment on that aspect of how the rollout should maybe occur.

J. Pollard: There’s definitely a high demand for care for children under the age of three, for sure. And there is a real shortage of qualified staff in that area because it’s additional to the basic training levels. There have been some sorts of piecemeal attempts over the last few years to try to ease that a little bit.

I don’t know if you are familiar with licensed family child care. It’s a little different than licensed group child care. In licensed family child care, an individual who is not qualified may care for five children at a time. That person may have a mix of ages, from one up to school age, in that group.

Then a change was made to licensing so that a person could have seven children, so then they could add more younger children in the group. That person then needed to be licensed in order to be able to do that. That added a little bit of capacity, is what I’m saying. By increasing the numbers in licensed family child care, when you had the broader licensing for those ones….

Am I confusing you? Licensing is really confusing, actually. It increased capacity there. It hasn’t done anything about solving the problem, in fact.

[4:35 p.m.]

Another issue that, as I mentioned, is so significant here is that because families cannot access programs for their children — and this includes children up to school age — those children are in so many different places in a week. They might be in an infant-toddler placement for two days a week, but they can’t get beyond two days a week. That’s all they have access to. So then they have other care arrangements.

This is a really, really confusing situation for the children and for the families.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we’re out of time, Judy. But thank you very much for your thoughts, obviously. To echo what Peter said, you obviously know this inside and out, so we really appreciate your wisdom on this and all the time and effort you put into your submission.

All right. Next up we have the Castlegar Hospice Society. Suzanne Lehbauer, please go ahead.

CASTLEGAR HOSPICE SOCIETY

S. Lehbauer: My name is Suzanne Lehbauer. I’m the executive director of Castlegar Hospice Society. This is my fifth presentation to the committee. I was hoping by now you’d be getting tired of me and just give me what I want. But I guess not.

Anyway, before we start, if I could just ask the panel: are any one of you planning on not dying? Raise your hand. Okay, so we’re all on the same page here. Unless you’ve got that portrait of Dorian Gray in your attic, you know, we’re all bound. Death is the great equalizer. It really is.

Most of us share a common hope that when death comes to us or a loved one, it’s going to be peaceful. In a perfect world, we would be surrounded by loved ones, be safe, well cared for, comfortable and, as many of our clients say specifically, pain-free. We want to have our friends and families receive the support they need to work through their grief.

Castlegar Hospice Society has been in operation since 1985. I have been with them for the past ten years. I have a volunteer support work group of approximately 30 people. They range in age from university students, who are in the rural palliative medicine program — so in their early 20s — right up to 88-year old Anne Fomenoff, who is actually the founder of Castlegar Hospice. You may be familiar with her daughter, Gloria Taylor, who was very involved in the fight for medical assistance in dying. So we’ve got quite a background in this small, rural area.

You may have also seen us lately on CBC with a brand-new, innovative program that I put in place, which is granting living wishes through virtual reality. It is something brand-new to hospice. My first client was a 95-year-old gentleman with a mind as sharp as a tack. His virtual trip was to Kenya on a safari, and it brought back these incredible memories of when he was there on a cruise with his wife.

It is very exciting to get these new, innovative programs coming up. The next one that I’m working on is utilizing animatronic animals in grief support and also pain support with our clients. That’s through the Hasbro joy of life. I know I’m not following the submission here. Please excuse me, because I’ll just talk. So that’s very exciting as well. I’m looking forward to having some good publicity about that.

I’m very proud of what we do in this area. Everything we do is on a without-border basis, so all of our programs are considered to be regional in that anyone in our Interior Health region is able to access them. Not all of the hospices have all of the same services in the area, so we’re happy to have open doors to everyone.

[4:40 p.m.]

We’ve been recognized provincially — three years receiving the BCHPCA and Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem award recognizing end-of-life care for British Columbians. Last year I was very pleased to receive the provincial B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association Award of Excellence for personal service in hospice palliative care.

We receive about 15 percent of our yearly budget from the Interior Health Authority. Our budget is about one-quarter of what it should be, so we work very hard with very little. In a year, we will raise approximately 85 percent of our budget from the local community and grants to support the programs and services. We provide services through volunteer support workers, which is the equivalent of about $200,000 a year. That’s good bang for your buck. It really is.

We deliver educational programs to the area, to the region, not only for hospice palliative care training but also in advance care planning, grief and bereavement, end-of-life training and also, now, medical-assistance-in-dying workshops for other hospices.

We have programs such as our weekly grief walk-and-talk support group. We have Bereavement Buddies, Stepping Stones to Grief, and we help people go through the maze that is our health care system.

We have community partnerships that have minimized the duplication of services. I’ve sat on and provided input, as well as grief and bereavement training, to the West Kootenay Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Postvention committees, also through the Interior Health and hospice partnership committee.

Our big project has always been to establish a regional hospice centre. The closest hospice facility is in Kelowna — 3½ hours away from Castlegar. What we do have in the area for specific hospice services are rooms either in a long-term-care facility or in our regional hospital in Trail or the hospital in Nelson. Anyone who is familiar with hospice services knows that a room in a facility, no matter how much you dress it up or give it a nice name, is not the same as having a hospice centre.

It has been an incredible journey, the last ten years, trying to get this project going. Our city of Castlegar has been a huge backer of hospice palliative care. They donated a piece of land to us in 2013, and we’ve received the support of our local mayors and regional districts, as well, for this project.

What is holding us back is getting operational funding and capital funding. That is, once again, my request — that in the budget, you look to hospice services and hospice centres in rural B.C. so that we can get equitable funding as have our brother and sister hospices on the coast. That’s my pitch. There’s a lot more in the report that has been given to you, with these statistics.

There is certainly a big push right now to have end-of-life clients in their home, and most people would prefer to be at home to die. But you know what? It’s just not a reality for everyone. We see caregiver burnout non-stop. In some cases, we have client families saying: “You know, I can’t be a husband/wife/child/partner because all I’m thinking about is: ‘When is that next medication given? How am I going to make it through another night, staying up with my loved one?’” For any of you who have been through the hospice services or been in a centre in Kelowna or Kamloops or Vernon or Vancouver or on the Island, you know that it is a safe place for a person to spend their final days, and it also gives support to the family and friends.

[4:45 p.m.]

We look at our hospice centre, when we get one, as being more than providing end-of-life care. It’s also to provide pain management, to provide the grief and bereavement services, to provide excellence in service and training for the region. So it’s to be that hub for all of the services that are needed with hospice palliative care and grief and bereavement support as well as what we do with advance care planning. And, of course, now we’re somewhat involved in medical assistance in dying, certainly with support for families.

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

S. Lehbauer: I know I’ve probably gone over my time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, you’re actually fine.

Mitzi, I wanted to give you a first opportunity because we didn’t get to you last time. I apologize.

M. Dean: Thanks. I appreciate that, Bob.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Obviously, it’s a really critical issue and a very moving issue as well. I’m just wondering whether there are provincial standards or national standards that apply to hospice services and hospice centres that govern the services that you’re delivering.

S. Lehbauer: Yes. Services provided in a hospice facility would come under the health authority guidelines. There are specific guidelines in place. Does that answer your question?

M. Dean: Do you feel that you’re able to deliver to those standards with the facilities in this report that you have? If you didn’t do your extra fundraising and the extra work that you do, then would you fall short of the expectations of those standards?

S. Lehbauer: Well, with the hospices on the coast or in Kelowna, Vernon or Penticton, the majority of operational funding is provided through the ministry, through the health authority.

T. Redies: Hi, Suzanne. Thanks for your presentation. You mentioned you’ve been given land by the city. So in terms of what you’re looking for from a capital perspective, can you give us some sense of the dollars? Like, how big a hospice? How much capital do you need? What would be the operating funding you would need based on the donations that you get, etc.? I’m just trying to get an understanding of the dollar figure.

S. Lehbauer: Yes, I can. We do have a prospectus that’s been put together by a consultant and is on its way to the Minister of Health. We’re looking at about $3.8 million for capital costs. That’s for a ten-bed hospice, and that’s what the recommendation is through the Fraser Health Authority. Even if you are not occupying all of those beds initially, it’s going to save you costs in the long run because you are going to have to expand. So having it in place from the outset is going to save costs in the long run.

T. Redies: If I could just ask a follow-up question, because of course, ten beds is not a lot. So I guess it’s got to be a combination of a hospice centre and then providing more care at home to support people who are at home. Is that it?

S. Lehbauer: Yes. It would be providing hospice care and also respite care, pain management and then all of the supporting programs that go along with that. As I said, we may be in a rural community, but we provide a lot of services, and we’ve certainly been recognized in that aspect as well.

T. Redies: I just also want to say congratulations on being so innovative in terms of thinking about using virtual reality. I would never have thought of that, and I think that’s really thinking outside the box, so to speak, in terms of end-of-life care. So congratulations.

S. Lehbauer: Thank you. I really see it going places. We’re using Google Daydream with Google Pixel right now, so I’m trying to worm my way into Google somehow to either let them utilize our story and get something in return or work with them on some of the issues that we’ve found need to be addressed when you’re dealing with people at such a delicate stage in life.

[4:50 p.m.]

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. Hospice is something fairly near and dear to my heart. In my community, we have four hospice beds, and we’re going to be getting two more. One of the parameters for hospice in our health authority is that it has to be attached to residential care, as opposed to being a stand-alone facility. So what springs to my mind is: I know you have land, but are there other opportunities for you to partner with residential care facilities?

In terms of servicing the greater community, ten beds are a lot of beds. I’m just wondering what your historical data is, in terms of how many people you tend to be serving and how many you think would actually benefit from these ten beds.

S. Lehbauer: Well, of course, every community would like to have their own specific hospice centre, but in terms of finances, it’s not realistic. So we are looking at the greater West Kootenay regional health area, which would include Trail, Nelson, Rossland, Salmo, Grand Forks, all the way over as far east as Creston. We would be looking at a fairly large area. In actual fact, there is no hospice east of us, as well, until you get past the Alberta border. So it may be a bit of a challenge for those in the East Kootenays to come, but it would certainly be an option for them.

There is another opportunity that we have in mind if we’re not able to get the centre. That is partnering with Castleview Care Centre here. It is considered a P3 — which is part private and part publicly funded. That’s something we have talked about with them. It is an option. It’s not that we just have that specific tunnel vision on the freestanding one. In terms of the larger picture of what we want to do with services, programs and training, that would be optimal for us, but yes, there is a backup plan.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Suzanne. We’re out of time now, but thank you so much for your presentation and for everything you do for your community. We really appreciate it. Thanks very much.

S. Lehbauer: Thank you so much for hearing me today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia — John Leech, via teleconference.

The floor is yours, John.

APPLIED SCIENCE TECHNOLOGISTS
AND TECHNICIANS OF B.C.

J. Leech: Good afternoon. Thanks very much for the opportunity to present. Sorry I can’t be there in person. I think you well know that your work is important for all of us in B.C., and we’re here to provide some support and assistance.

Today I’ll outline a few recommendations that we believe will be helpful in your cause and that will help grow our economy, as well as deal with people that can be greater contributors to the economy. Just as a refresher, and very briefly, ASTTBC is a self-governing professional regulatory body. We’re about 10,500 engineering and applied science technologists, technicians and technical specialists. In my brief, we talk about how we’re in the middle of the pack — so between the university degrees and folks with those credentials on the one hand and the trades on the other.

What I’ll do is walk through, highlighting some of the contents of my brief, and then wrap up in time to cover off some of the key recommendations. I don’t think I need to emphasize the point that STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — and careers related to that are in fact, in so many ways, the backbone of our economy. We know how technology is at play in our everyday lives but may be less aware, in the general public, of the many, many applications of technology at play behind the scenes.

What we are going to do with our brief is outline a few practical means by which to engage and embrace technology for all the uses. In our brief, I make reference to poverty, which has been clearly identified in the budget briefing notes. I don’t think I’m saying anything out of turn when I indicate that I had a great meeting last week with Minister Shane Simpson. We talked a little bit about the application of technology and how ASTT might be able to be of some assistance.

[4:55 p.m.]

One of the critical features of ASTTBC is that in addition to our professional regulatory role — obviously, that’s a very serious one in terms of public health, safety and service to the public generally — we are involved in supporting groups that are not fully engaged nor fully represented in the engineering and technology workforce. Through the brief, we highlight some of those. Let me mention a few now.

One very recent study, which was a focus of discussion with the ministry the other day, is work we did with people with diverse abilities — that’s the term we’re using — so looking at people with varied abilities and how they fit into the workforce. We’ve done a lot of work over the last ten years with First Nations. About 13 percent of our membership are women. There’s a big job to be done to enhance the participation of young girls and women in the engineering and technology sectors. And then, of course, working with internationally trained professionals.

On that point, ASTT together with the B.C. government have created a number of job-ready elements and resources that help internationally trained individuals get into the job market as quickly as possible. We see, in that regard, maintaining our high standards but also not finding ourselves in a position of being a roadblock, because that certainly doesn’t help them coming into our economy, or ourselves.

On page 2 of our brief, we outline a few areas where ASTT members work, just to give you a flavour. We make sure that the streets are safe, ideally with traffic signals that are in sync; that the water we get out of our taps is in fact fit to drink; that our resources are extracted and transported in an environmentally responsible way; and that fire systems work. Our members are found in health care as biomedical engineering technologists and technicians, making sure that the equipment in the health care environment is working and helping to serve the patients.

We make the point that ASTT technology professionals are, in fact, B.C.-critical. We believe government could do more to give greater emphasis to this middle ground I spoke of just a moment ago, of diplomas of technology or technician certificates in engineering and applied science technology.

These programs produce job-ready grads who enter rewarding, well-paid and, I believe — and my research seems to show and practical, on the job, as I travel around the province — recession-proof careers, critical to everyday life and to our economy.

In terms of concern around technology skills and education, we outline the point that technology in fact permeates every job and workplace in B.C., and increasingly so. Tech skills are critical to the growth and prosperity of not only the technology sector but resource industries, construction, transportation, health care, government and various service sectors.

I mentioned First Nations earlier on. Right now we are involved in a pilot project in Kamloops providing public works technician training for First Nations. As First Nations build capacity for self-governance, there’s going to be a need for technology skills, and ASTT is providing that kind of service and a level of education in that middle ground that will help them achieve that self-governance and use the skills of their own people.

It goes without saying, maybe, that the effective use of technology and technology skills also enhances companies’ innovativeness and their competitiveness. So productivity is a key issue.

We talk, and have done for years, about tech ed and the skills for British Columbia. We have identified, through a number of reports, the demonstrable need — I won’t use the term “crisis” but certainly a critical need — for engineering and applied science technologists and technicians.

We have a track record — and that’s the good news — linking with government to fully articulate a strategic focus and make sure we have the stats available to showcase the need for these technology fields, and again, we stress the need for additional work on the part of government to address this need. In the middle of page 3, we point to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives that raised questions about where these technologists, engineers and other people are coming from.

We say that technology education is mission-critical and that action is needed. There remains a need on the part of government to support and fund additional technician and technology education programs throughout the province.

We have found over the years that the B.C. jobs plan has helped to serve as a good foundation for employers as well as individuals, as we look at the need for various skills.

We congratulate government on the labour market information that is produced. We’re pleased that a few years ago the government indicated that technical training, in addition to trades — so the middle ground — is an important area warranting attention on the part of government.

[5:00 p.m.]

We do say in here that there’s a need to grow — and we see more evidence of this all the time — a strong science and technology culture, along with the various strategies. We know of the need to enhance technology applications in K to 12 to make sure that young people see the value and the potential in the various uses of technology and the potential careers that might arise from taking a STEM education.

One of the critical points we’ve been making over the years, and we really want to stress it again this year, is the need to connect the dots between industry needs, on the one hand, and technology education and training offerings, on the other. Let’s make sure, as we go forward, that new funding goes into technology programs where industry has clearly called for that particular need.

On a little bit more of a social side of the equation, when we did that study on people with…. We used the term “disabilities” at the time, but we found that people really found that term less than helpful as they looked to engage in the workplace. So we say “dis the dis” — get rid of “dis” out of “disability” — and let’s move to tech-ability. Let’s make sure that people, regardless of their abilities, have full access and are fully engaged in the engineering and technology workforce.

B. D’Eith (Chair): John, sorry to interrupt. You’ve got about a minute and a half left, and I want to make sure you get to your recommendations.

J. Leech: Sure. Thank you very much.

Going into the recommendations, we’ve got six in total. I’m not going to repeat some of them because we’ve already covered them. Just building on the science and technology culture in B.C., we have certainly suggested that Science World be considered as a lead agency.

Targeting was two — post-secondary education and training that is targeted to labour market needs. We use, by way of example, the funding that’s provided through the ITA, I think. The other one that we make at the top there is funding for Aboriginal technologist and technician programs. Again, I think this committee doesn’t need any reminder of the kind of work we need to do and how we can be helpful there.

With three, we’re talking about technology education and careers — so making sure that folks in the K-to-12 system are applying technology, that we enhance the work placements in K to 12 and that we use the resources of groups like the BIG Little Science Centre up in Kamloops. I make a couple of recommendations specifically around funding on that.

With four, I’ve already mentioned getting rid of the “dis” in disability, and let’s stress tech-ability. You can count on ASTTBC to assist you with that initiative.

With five, we talk about engaging people with these various abilities, and specifically — and we don’t often do this — we’ve suggested $1.5 million over three years to secure technology employment for people who are currently marginalized or less than engaged in the workforce.

Finally, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, provide funding for what, at the moment, we’re characterizing as a technology workforce resource centre, where we would find a hub for the services that are provided to the folks that are not as fully engaged as they need to be.

On that point, I will ask, as you suggest, if there are any questions.

S. Cadieux: Hi, John. The $1.5 million that you’re suggesting, asking for, around disability employment. Can you explain how that would work? I’m assuming that isn’t about training people with disabilities to be technologists. So how does that work?

J. Leech: Sure. We have a current proposal in with the ministry, in fact, to take our first initiative. Our full report is up on the website. I encourage you to have a look at it. What we’re proposing is that we actually get into the job market.

What we’ve found with employers is that, while they talk a good talk — and I don’t mean this in a disparaging way — about being inclusive, the reality is that they’re not engaging that many people with various abilities. What we’re proposing to do is that we will go in…. We’re in a unique position to go into employers and help them in a proactive way to find the kind of job function that can be handled by people with varied abilities. We’ve been working with Community Living, BIM, Sam Sullivan, Rick Hansen and other groups to find out what skills currently exist and then, through the process, marry the two.

[5:05 p.m.]

It’s characterized as a research and innovation project — the proposal we have in there right now. We’re hoping that it will get approved. But then we would take it beyond research and innovation and actually get people into the job market.

J. Brar: Thank you for your presentation.

My understanding from your answer to the previous question is that this program — you are basically saying $1.5 million over three years — is only designed for people with disabilities. That’s my understanding. Is that right?

J. Leech: Yes, I’ll agree with you on your use of the term of “disability.” That’s for sure. That’s the intent.

If somebody, for example, was an individual living with Down syndrome, on the spectrum — there are certain functions within the engineering and technology community that can be ably handled — what we would do is work with employers to help them be proactive in working with them.

I should add, too, to the committee, that we have 40 employers set right now, ready to go. Support includes groups like WorkSafe, Telus, Hydro — large and medium-sized enterprises that say: “You’ve done some good work with the first phase. Secondly, we trust you ASTTBC, and we’re prepared to roll up our sleeves and get to work on it.”

J. Brar: Another question is about recommendation 6, where you say: “technology workforce resource centre.” Is that existing right now, or is it a completely new concept?

J. Leech: Thank you for asking. I’ve been trotting it out with a few of your colleagues in Victoria as well as others in the industry as a concept. It’s an idea.

We bought a building in Surrey 25 years ago, October 1, moved in. We see a centre being constructed, or a part of the existing structure, possibly, that would serve as the hub for delivering services — high-tech services, using webinar and the latest technology — throughout the province of British Columbia in the engineering and technology fields.

I might add that some of the training that’s required in some of these fields is not stuff that needs one or two years. Fire protection technicians, which was in high demand…. We did a project — again, partnered with the B.C. government — and got 60 people that went through this program with a high level of engagement.

Again, no matter the abilities, I think what we need to do, and it’s critical…. We talk about poverty, and the minister spoke about this when we were talking about it. That’s part of the economic side of it. One of the real challenges, I think, for us is to find opportunities, to be proactive in finding opportunities, for these individuals to get into the workforce.

The kinds of careers and fields in which ASTT is involved are in high demand. Secondly — I think many of you know this — ASTT delivers on its promises. We will undertake this kind of a project, and you can be guaranteed of a positive outcome.

J. Brar: Do you have a location in mind?

J. Leech: Yes. We’ve made our home here in Surrey for 25 years. We don’t have a site yet. We haven’t gotten that far. The suggestion is that a modest $150K be put aside to actually research this out more fully.

I might add that I’ve spoken to Shayne Ramsay, for example, at B.C. Housing. So we’ve been tossing this around with a number of folks to see what kind of interest there is, and the feedback is extraordinarily positive. The challenge is what the partnership might look like and, in particular, what the B.C. government might do to actually see this kind of a centre come into fruition.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, John. We’re out of time. We have other questions, so obviously, we’ll have to take them off line. We really appreciate your presentation, your innovative ideas, and we look forward to discussing them as a committee.

J. Leech: You bet. I appreciate that. I’m available at any time. Just give me a buzz.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Next up we have the B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation, B.C.’s school fruit and vegetable nutritional program, via teleconference.

Patricia Tonn, are you there?

P. Tonn: Yes, I’m here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

B.C. AGRICULTURE IN THE
CLASSROOM FOUNDATION

P. Tonn: Thank you. I’m pleased to present the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program today. My name is Pat Tonn. I’m the executive director for B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation. We’re a registered charitable foundation, and we coordinate this program in partnership with the Ministries of Health, Agriculture and Education.

I hope that you each have in front of you our written proposal so you can follow with me and have the statistics to ask questions.

[5:10 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, we have them. Go ahead.

P. Tonn: Yes. Okay. This program started because students need a healthy, balanced diet to learn, to grow and to prevent health concerns like chronic disease and obesity later in life. The program provides a variety of B.C. fruits and vegetables right to the classroom for students to try and make healthy eating a part of their routine, which can last a lifetime.

The objectives are noted there: to increase the acceptability and exposure to, and willingness to try, fruits and vegetables so students have an awareness and availability of B.C. grown products — sometimes that’s challenging in the corners of the province — and they have an awareness of safe handling practices of fresh produce; to support the local economy through business for farmers and distributors; and to build those relationships in our food chain in B.C.

It’s becoming more than that. It’s meeting and surpassing the objectives. Because we reach children and youth in the captive school setting, it’s the most effective way to target both the program objectives and the use of funds.

Schools have a role to ensure their environment helps students learn and make healthy choices. Principals and teachers are embracing the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program. Teachers notice that there is better attention in class when they’re eating fruits and vegetables, as opposed to when children have sugary sweet snacks.

Some of the students tell us, and this comes in feedback from the program: “I like the crunch of cucumbers” or “Cherry tomatoes taste like candy.” Imagine that. An elementary school student said he did not like peppers. But once he had a bite, he decided that he really liked peppers now. Kiwi that’s grown here on the Lower Mainland has become a new favourite fruit in Nanaimo. Primary students are now asking for milk on a regular basis.

This program is also admired by parents. Of course, students are reminding each other to eat their fruits and vegetables, so it’s not always mom saying to do so.

I’ll just overview the program to give you the basics. It started in 2006. We started with about ten schools. It was always intended to be kindergarten-to-grade-12 and started in the public school system. The students got snacks, like apples or plums or pears, cucumbers or peppers — 36 different types of hand-held B.C. products 12 times during the school year. Then, in 2011, the program was expanded to First Nations schools as well. Some of those are in very remote regions of our province.

Now we’re at half a million students around the province with the school fruit and vegetable nutritional program. In 2013, Plus Milk was added to the program for grades K to 2. In 2015, the milk program was added to grades 3 to 5 as well. So now we have 153,000 students enjoying milk servings as well.

We’re in over 90 percent of public and First Nations schools in the province. That’s no easy feat. That’s a lot of thanks to our partners, like the farmers and growers in B.C. We used Overwaitea Foods and Saputo for our distribution systems, as well as independent and volunteer distributors in the far-reaching corners of the province. Also, a very sophisticated computer program and distribution system and, of course, our staff.

The specific stats are in the program background section of your handout. I just gave you an overview there. On the next page, you’ll see the students and the images of happy students on the page that are having milk and fruits and vegetables.

Then, in 2014, the Fresh to You Fundraiser was added to the program for schools to extend the fresh products to the home and to the community through a fundraising initiative, which is taking care of its own. It’s not a cost to the program any longer.

The B.C. Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation is proud to organize and deliver this program. It’s through a grant provided by the Ministry of Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority since the start in 2006. More recently, the contributions for 50 percent of the milk program are from the B.C. Dairy Association, and the First Nations Health Authority for an additional serving to First Nations students.

[5:15 p.m.]

The effectiveness? Well, we’re reaching all corners of the province and the centre too, including the First Nations schools. We know by evaluation — one that was done with First Nation schools around the province in 2012 and an additional one for all schools in the province in the 2012-13 school year — that students are willing to try fruit and vegetable snacks and increase their intake, all while enjoying the variety that they’ve been able to try through the B.C. school fruit and vegetable program. In 2017-18, this school year, we’re doing an additional independent study to measure the effectiveness of the program after ten consecutive years in the system.

We also know, from our grocery store and producer partners, that those same B.C. fruits and vegetables are requested by children and, of course, their parents, at the retail level. We believe that together we are making a difference.

What does that mean in terms of the program cost? On the final page, you can see a schematic of the program and how it works. The program has maintained annually, since 2006, by the Ministry of Health, but those funds are depleted to near zero by June of 2018 — so the end of this school year. For the program to run in 2016 and ’17, it included over half a million servings of fruits and vegetables and 153,000 servings of milk. The cost for that was $4.8 million. The new year is forecasted at nearly the same.

The contributions that are currently a part of the program are $2.5 million from the Provincial Health Authority and the Ministry of Health; $350,000, which is 50 percent of the cost of the milk program, from the B.C. Dairy Association; and $74,000 from the First Nations Health Authority for the second serving to First Nations students for a total of $2.9 million. With the above budgeted contributions, an additional $2 million annually would maintain this program. We are requesting a three-year commitment to the B.C. school fruit and vegetable nutritional program for $6 million. That is our recommendation.

Are there any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much. I remember watching a documentary that Michael Moore did, Where to Invade Next, where he showed the difference in France versus the U.S. in school lunches and trying to fight obesity in the U.S.A. It brought that immediately to mind — to see how healthy choices make such a profound impact on children as they grow older and make the right choices. So thank you very much for all the work that you’ve done and also the work that you’re going to do in the future. We really appreciate it.

Andrew Weaver would like to ask you a question.

A. Weaver: You’re providing 562,568 servings 12 times a year to many, many people. My question is: with your program, do you have any evidence that it would be more effective by providing fewer people more servings than lots of people just a few servings?

Also, is it appropriate to target everyone, or are there better ways of spending the money in terms of targeting specific areas, specific groups, specific schools where there might be greater issues of obesity or unhealthy lifestyles so that vegetables, fruit and milk are available on a daily basis?

P. Tonn: That’s a very good question. In fact, that’s what we’re proposing to research in this school year. The program has been going for ten years now. We have a good base of statistics or students to be able to survey.

The Ministry of Health, in its wisdom, began with the 12 or 13 servings as what they thought was essential to change behaviour patterns. Now we’re going to measure that. We’re also going to measure specific grades, as well as regional areas of the province. So we will know more, after this year that we’re serving, through the research. But yeah, we have considered what would be the best choices to have the best impact for the program.

[5:20 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Mitzi, did you want to ask any questions?

M. Dean: No, it’s been covered. Thanks, Bob.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

Well, thank you very much, Patricia. We really appreciate your presentation, and we look forward to talking about your proposals in the committee.

P. Tonn: Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Vincent Salvo.

Hello, Vincent. You have the floor.

VINCENT SALVO

V. Salvo: Good afternoon. I’d like to thank you for this opportunity, and thank the staff as well. A topic of discussion was whether you were going to make it in today or not. One of the positive effects here, maybe the only one, is that we get less rain. Had this been a normal day, as it was predicted, you wouldn’t have, probably, gotten into Cancelgar.

I want to start with a story about political donations. A friend pointed out her donation was, unfortunately, not…. It was out of her pocket. The law says you get a refund, but she doesn’t make enough money to file a tax return — ergo, does not get a refund. I was intrigued by that. I’m not surprised, but I wondered how many other people were in the same situation. I was amazed to find out that one out of every three tax filers in British Columbia did not pay taxes. That’s from the 2014 T1 analysis done by Revenue Canada data.

Another friend said: “Well, that’s because a whole bunch of people don’t pay any taxes because of all the loopholes and all the rest of the whatevers.” I said: “Okay.” I tried to look at that, but I don’t have access any longer to the kinds of resources that would allow me to do that easily. So I couldn’t determine how many of the people who had not filed taxes actually had low before-tax incomes to get the difference — taxable income versus non-taxable income.

I did look into it. As I said, one-third of all…. That’s a big number. It’s actually the majority of people under the age of 25, and women outnumber non-tax-filers in British Columbia as well. Women are more likely to not file taxes.

An easy fix is, obviously, to make the tax credit refundable. If you don’t make enough money to pay tax, you simply get a refund. It’s a negative income tax, if you like. Maybe that’s too advanced, but negative income tax has been something that’s been talked about by people as diverse as the Mennonite committee and Martin Luther King, and even a whole bunch of right-wing conservatives in the United States. Friedman was the first one to pick it up, because it was going to cut back on the need for big government.

Maybe a way to start looking at that…. There have been a number of experiments done throughout Canada and the United States, looking at the effects of negative income tax on employment and employability and a number of things. Most of them have been subsequently ignored, like a lot of recommendations that come from committees’ work in analyzing what’s going on in our society. Regardless of that fact, I would still recommend that the tax credit be made refundable, sooner rather than later.

I would further suggest that the tax system be made a subject for investigation for a future committee — the whole tax system.

[5:25 p.m.]

Our personal income tax system is now so opaque that it takes literally a lawyer and/or an accountant to get definitive responses for people. This is simply inappropriate, I think, in any democratic society. The longer it goes and the more exemptions we get, the more complex the whole process becomes.

I am not recommending a zero flat tax. I believe in progressive taxation systems.

I would hope that, in the future, as we see a move toward a more representative electoral system, that we’re not going to have the kind of debates that we’ve had in the past, with the veering to the left, veering to the right, doings and un-doings of good work by one or another party in power.

Depending on which side of the spectrum you live on, either veering to the right is good or veering to the left is good. But one of the things that’s incontestable is that we keep doing this back and forth — not often; it’s been 16 years now.

When I lived here in the ’70s, I was here for the second and third year of the Barrett government when I moved to Canada, when I came to Canada. I was working on the west coast with the then West Coast District Society of Indian Chiefs. There were some fantastic innovations that were done at that time, making all kinds of changes possible in our society, opening up lots and lots of opportunities for people.

When I came from there to the Kootenays and I was teaching, I had people in my class who were employed in social service delivery who were not fully qualified and therefore had to take courses. So they had to take courses from me. I hope I brainwashed some of them, because I taught social inequality, and I taught criminology, and then later I taught organizational theory and all kinds of stuff.

What I want to say is a series of questions, I think, that need to be answered. I think that the biggest problem facing our society today is global warming, or climate change. That’s compounded by one that I think is equally as important, and that’s global inequality — or huge, massive inequality — and all the correlates of social inequality. We’re not going to get peace without justice.

I think a series of questions have to be asked. How did we get here? Why are we here? What are the correlates? Are corporations in our society? I think they are. I think corporations are much too powerful in our society. I don’t think unions are nearly powerful enough. One of the correlates of increasing inequality is decreasing unionization and the legislation which sets the picture for it.

I would like to see a dialogue opened on the issue of tax. When I say dialogue, I mean dialogue. When I was negotiating, and I’ve been on both sides of the table…. I know that sounds awful, but I have been. I was in management when I was in Alberta, and then I was a head of a union when I was in Alberta. I was a head of a union here too, actually.

I do think that we need to get beyond that conflict to real dialogue. The basis of that…. My hope was in the work of some people out of the Harvard school of management, Getting to Yes.

[5:30 p.m.]

The follow-up to that approach of principled bargaining has been picked up by a number of people and, most interesting, by a researcher called Mark Gerzon, whose book Leading Through Conflict…. I’m going to just read that one piece. “As I worked in more than 100 organizations or communities over the past decade, I kept track of which form of discourse my clients most desired, most wanted. They did not want more speeches and presentations.” Sorry. [Laughter.] “They did not want more debates between two know-it-alls, each of whom was sure they were right and the other person was wrong. They did not want yet another ‘exchange of views’ that skirted difficult issues and papered over problems. What they yearned for was deep, honest, inclusive and respectful dialogue.”

I really do believe that the way to get that is by opening dialogue with suggested, either, questions or action alternatives.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at about 11 minutes now, so we’re over time. Was there anything else you wanted to wrap up, or is that good?

V. Salvo: No, that’s the gist of what I wanted to say. It’s very different than….

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, that’s fine. Thank you very much.

A. Weaver: I actually do really like your suggestion for taking a look at the way we do our tax system here. It’s one of the things we are looking at — some of these boutique tax credits that are complex. You’ll see, in the Budget Implementation Act, in this year’s debate that a number of them are being removed, some of them because of federal jurisdiction and others because of decisions made by government.

Also, thank you for your compelling argument on the political donation tax credit refund. It seems to me you made a very compelling case that it’s based on fairness. That’s something that I think I’ll take very seriously in my contribution to this discussion.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Vince. We really appreciate your thoughts. Lots to think about there.

Next up we have B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association — David DeRosa.

B.C. PRINCIPALS AND
VICE-PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION

D. DeRosa: Good afternoon. I’m curious. I’m new to the process. Thank you very much, first of all, for having me and for the opportunity to represent my association. I’m just making sure that you’ve received the document through the submission process.

Some Voices: No.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I don’t have anything electronically. Did you happen to print out copies?

D. DeRosa: I did.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. Just to be safe, can you follow up with the staff in regards to making sure we have the written — electronically?

D. DeRosa: I only have four copies.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We can just share. That’s fine.

Anyway, David. Go ahead.

D. DeRosa: My role at the association is one of president-elect. I’m a principal in a high school very close to here — Stanley Humphries Secondary School in Castlegar. I was asked by our current president, Kevin Reimer, and our executive director, Kit Krieger, to be here in person to present our brief.

Where I would like to start is maybe just provide a little bit of context in terms of where the association philosophically takes its guidance. In a nutshell, the BCPVPA serves its members by supporting effective leadership in education through representation, advocacy and leadership development. When we take a look at the four asks in the brief, you can see that they’re very much connected to that philosophy and that strategic guiding.

[5:35 p.m.]

The first request is that government fund the restoration of principals and vice-principals to non-enrolling positions lost due to the 2016 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. I’d like to just tell you a quick story about an example that I have of the implication there. There’s a lengthier outline of what the impact on the system has been when you remove 350 principals and vice-principals from a non-enrolling position, like a special ed teaching position. The impact on our most vulnerable students and their families is significant.

The story I have is from a colleague and friend of mine in the Okanagan. He and I had been talking earlier this year, in April, prior to things being solidified in the MOA, and he had a very significant concern. His vice-principal was a trained specialist in special education and looked after their school. A significant portion of her role as vice-principal was as the student support teacher. So when the MOA was implemented, she no longer had the capacity to be the student support teacher and had to take on a different role.

You can imagine, in that particular school, that he was very upset because of the programs that she was providing to parents and students and the direct support to teachers and classrooms that she could do daily without significant interruption to her other role and responsibilities. She was assigned regular classroom instruction as a consequence and, therefore, has to be in class specifically — you take attendance, and she’s teaching kids — so less flexibility to do her vice-principal role and responsibilities.

Most importantly, the challenge across the sector has happened approximately 350 times, based on our data and our surveys back from our members. We’re not replacing our colleagues that have been removed from their special education positions. There aren’t enough qualified people, and that’s the most significant challenge we’re facing.

I’m sure, anecdotally, you’re starting to hear some of that coming out of our metro communities, where we’re challenged to hire enough teachers to fill those positions. In fact, it’s more challenging to find qualified people to do that. So that’s the first one.

We’re requesting that government approve and fund the full implementation of the regional salary grids for principals and vice-principals contained in the October 2014 BCPSEA report Realities, Risks and Rewards.

Since about 2008, we’ve had a significant ongoing challenge related to compression and then, in some cases, inversion, where our highest-paid teachers are making more than vice-principals and principals. So when you look at the recruiting pool for who becomes a principal or vice-principal, if they’re making more money than the people that you’re trying to hire from, it makes it a very challenging process.

When you start to look at the challenges that school districts are facing in terms of having had moneys released through PSEC and following up on the BCPSEA report, districts don’t have access to funded resources through the ministry. They’re having to use funding that’s already part of the per-student allocation.

Recently, I think October 1, there was a story from Sea to Sky school district where they’re looking to get their principals and vice-principals and, in fact, other exempt employees — directors of instruction, superintendents and assistant superintendents — to a place where they can start to avoid compression and inversion again. They’re looking at $200,000, and if they don’t get that funding directly from government to support that need, it’ll have to come from somewhere else in their allocation.

[5:40 p.m.]

When you look across district to district — there are 60 school districts — the challenges are very similar throughout the province. Funding those increases as outlined by BCPSEA would be a great start for recruitment and retention of leadership positions in our education system.

The third point — you’ll start to get a sense of the theme here: that government fund improvements to the benefits packages for exempt staff that are at least equal to those of teachers. This might come as a surprise. Again, it’s that pool of potential principals and vice-principals. You’re drawing from teachers, and teachers’ benefits packages exceed those of the people that are supervising them, which is quite unique across labour.

I’ll give you a quick anecdotal example. My wife and I are both educators. She’s a teacher; she’s an amazing master teacher. I’m a principal. When we go to our family dentist, it’s her plan that my services and work gets put on because her plan exceeds mine. On that same theme of growing and retaining leadership positions across the province in education, it gets more and more challenging when you start to look at the bigger picture.

Then the last one: that the provincial education budget invest in leadership development. This has been a good-news story for us as an association. We’ve had some initial investments. In 2016-17, government invested $125,000. We’re anticipating another investment for this year of $200,000, but our ask is for $1.8 million. This is across all of the sectors of the education system — the B.C. Superintendents Association, trustees, BCASBO, BCPVPA and BCTF.

When we talk about leadership and leadership development, right now there are some great programs in individual districts, and then there are no programs in some districts because they’re just challenged to find the resources to support that. We’re relying on quite a diverse set of university master’s degree programs and the skill sets in a growing reality of more complex and a greater volume of responsibility as a vice-principal and principal. We need to look at leadership structures in British Columbia to continue to be one of the highest-performing systems in the world.

I’ll give you a quick example there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): David, we’re at ten minutes right now. If you could wrap it up, that would be great.

D. DeRosa: Sure. Just one example. In our area right here, there are two high schools. There are five secondary administrators. We’re all grads of 1984. Five of us are 51 years old, and the membership capacity to mentor is very strained. We’re looking for credentialing certification processes around leadership in education in British Columbia.

Any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I’ll just ask a quick question myself. I understand what you’re saying in regard to retention. I understand that. Playing devil’s advocate just for a moment here, are you saying that principals and vice-principals should always earn more money than teachers? To me, I can think of situations where you could have a star teacher, as you might have a star basketball player who might make more money than the coach.

I’m just wondering. I understand what you’re saying, and it’s only a devil’s advocate type of thing. I do think it’s a question of balance, so I do agree with that. But it just sounded like principals and vice-principals should always earn more than teachers. I’m not sure that that is necessarily always the case. I’m only asking that just so we can discuss that, not because I necessarily agree or disagree.

D. DeRosa: That’s fair, I think. In the context of workplace environments, there are a couple of things that happen. There’s leadership, and then there’s management.

[5:45 p.m.]

In a collective agreement workplace, the management component is a challenging structure. There’s the process of hiring the best teachers that we can and retaining them. Then there’s leadership. The role of leadership for principals and vice-principals is diverse and great depth in terms of…. We are the ones that are responsible for implementing provincial plans. We are the ones that are responsible for implementing regional or district plans. Then we also are responsible to the parents, our parent advisory committee.

At the end of the day, if we’re going to continue to move forward and be innovative and strategic in that process, then it’s that leadership and management of the principal and vice-principal group that ensures that those innovative strategies are implemented and carried forward. That’s in the context of a collective agreement workplace environment.

A. Weaver: I’ll start by saying that, in my view, the single most difficult job in education would be a vice-principal, where you’re caught in between leadership, management as well as teaching in the daytime. With that said, a while back — I forget the exact year — the Principals and Vice-Principals Association was together with the teachers. You were one group. This separation into two groups has created a bit of an us versus them in our public education system.

I’m wondering whether or not your organization and the teachers’ organizations are interested at all in coming together again, recognizing that a vice-principal is really a teacher most of the time — 75 percent of the time, typically, and 25 percent in administration. And a principal was a teacher at one point too. So it’s not us versus them. It’s a colleague who has gone into a slightly different role.

D. DeRosa: It’s definitely “us and us.” At the end of the day, whatever processes play out provincially, I’m back in my school with my staff and doing the amazing work that B.C. teachers do, in schools across this province, that make a great system and one that has caught the attention of the world. We’re also “us with us” with our employers, which are the trustees, the boards and government. So thank you for acknowledging the challenge that that places because it is challenging.

In 1987, the BCTF voted through a process. I don’t have all the specific details, but that’s when the organization was created, a separate organization, as part of the B.C. Teachers Federation process. Since then, the evolving context and challenges…. The balance between management and leadership has been one that, I suppose, is relatively well documented.

As for the question or the conversation about the two groups rejoining, I don’t know that I can speak to that directly. But there would be challenges at this stage. We’re finding those challenges right now with the memorandum of agreement and returning to a collective agreement from 15 or so years ago. We’re seeing a bit of “us and them” in terms of roles and responsibilities. Since then, we’ve evolved, through pressures or innovation or creativity, to have working relationships that we value and that are critical, especially with our most vulnerable learners. That’s the first topic that I started with, in terms of working together with our teachers.

I don’t know if I answered that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, David. We’re out of time now, but I really appreciate you bringing this perspective. I personally wasn’t aware of this particular dynamic, and I really appreciate the time and energy for you to explain these things. I really appreciate that, and I’m sure we’ll discuss this thoroughly with the committee. Thanks for your presentation.

[5:50 p.m.]

Next up is Dave Carter. Thanks for waiting. Dave Carter has a five-minute presentation. We’re just putting this in now because we have a gap. Normally, we would do these at the end.

DAVID CARTER

D. Carter: I appreciate that. My presentation is with regards to affordable housing. What I’m suggesting is that we streamline building regulations to make the construction of housing available and affordable to a broader range of people.

Now, the example I give. I have 20 acres. I have it registered as a farm, but in order to start building on my property for a habitable dwelling, I have to install a septic system, and that would be at the minimum cost of $20,000 to $30,000.

Unfortunately, now I can’t install it myself with oversight from the government. The government has changed the regulations so that this is now in the hands of registered contractors that rather have the market cornered. It’s an expensive thing to start with. Before you can have a dwelling where you’re inhabiting, you have to have a septic system in that costs a minimum of $20,000.

Now, the sort of housing that I would like to build on my property and provide for people would be tiny homes — what’s generally thought of as tiny homes, a couple hundred square feet. I’ve seen some very nice buildings built that are 300 to 400 square feet — sound construction, safely built buildings — that have come in under $4,000. This is using a mixture of new and used materials, salvaged material, which people have put these things together with. I see that as being a very affordable building, as compared to what is on the market, what we see on the market.

What I’m suggesting is that we make allowances for homeowners to, again, be able to install their own septic, with inspection and oversight from the government. Further to that, I would like to allow the construction of composting toilets. People can do this themselves — build their own composting toilets or purchase and install composting toilets, as there are many available on the market. Also, the construction of their own grey-water systems and the purchase and installation of prefabricated available grey-water systems. This is for your sink and your shower water.

To put this into perspective, as far as the concerns with regards to infections with feces, handwashing is really the front line of defence — whatever system you’re using. Approved washrooms can become unsanitary if they’re not maintained. You can have infections in a household or a restaurant or any number of places simply by not maintaining your facilities.

I’m of the opinion that we’ve made a very expensive, unnecessarily expensive, hurdle that people have to jump over in order to just get started on the whole process of making affordable housing.

Now, also with regards to this is the use of used materials. Apparently, it’s prohibited to use glass in the construction. I can understand the reason — that the person that is buying a new house is being scammed if someone has taken used glass and put it in. The seals can fail, and you can wind up with fog in your windows. It’s not what a new homeowner paying the dollar on the market is going to want to see.

When we’re striving for affordable housing for people, we’re building structures that are meant so you have a warm place to sleep and you have a roof over your head. I think that the last…. You know, you could put it into the building record that you’re using used glass. I think the fellow that’s been sleeping under a bridge or in a shelter…. One of the things that he wouldn’t be thinking of as being really important is whether or not his glass has got some fog in it. I think it’s safe to use used materials such as glass, and in cases like that, we should be encouraging it.

[5:55 p.m.]

Also, I would like to — but I don’t know how much jurisdiction the province has over this — see a relax in zoning in rural areas, as far as multi-dwellings go. On my 20 acres — well, it’s actually two ten-acre parcels — I’m limited to two dwellings per parcel. I think it’d be feasible for me to house a lot more people than that on the property in small houses. We wouldn’t be imposing a health hazard or any sort of a hazard.

I’d like to…. I don’t know how much influence the government has on these things, but I just put that out there. I think there are places in rural areas that could be populated more densely with small housing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): David, that’s over five minutes now.

Just as a comment, a couple of things. I appreciate your presentation. The Finance Committee is tasked really to look at talking about things that are going to be taken into account in the budget, for the 2018 budget. Those are often very much financial considerations.

In this case, what I would consider…. There are municipal issues. The zoning issues are municipal, so I would talk to the local municipality about potentially relaxing. I have a number of people I know who are part of the tiny-home movement. I appreciate what you’re going through, because everybody who’s working in the tiny-home, microhome, movement is running into the same sort of roadblocks, which the sort of traditional construction….

The other thing, too, is the Ministry of Housing — which also deals with municipalities, again — may well be the one to write a letter to in regards to this type of issue. Also, some of the zoning would probably be municipal, as well, in terms of what the requirements are. In terms of the standards, those might be provincial as well. There are these cross-jurisdictional issues that you’re dealing with. Some letters might go to a ministry; others would go to the local municipality.

What you’re doing is great. You’re thinking outside the box and trying to come up with affordable housing. That’s great. Obviously, some of the traditional constraints are there, so you may run into the same roadblocks that a lot of people are running into.

We don’t have time for questions, unfortunately. I was just making a comment, and I appreciate your presentation and your time.

D. Carter: Sure, no problem. Sorry, my direction with this may have been misplaced. But I appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, that’s fine. We’re happy to hear from everyone, so thank you very much, David.

D. Carter: Great, and thanks for your audience.

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

The committee recessed from 5:57 p.m. to 6:05 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): This is the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We’re in Castlegar. I’d like to call Habitat for Humanity Southeast B.C. — Bob Huff.

You have the floor.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY
SOUTHEAST B.C.

B. Huff: Well, thank you very much for coming to the West Kootenays.

You probably have my brief bio. I work for Habitat for Humanity. I represent the southeastern British Columbia affiliate. Our region goes from Rock Creek to the Alberta border — 50,000-some square kilometres.

I think I’ll be the only person from Habitat for Humanity that may appear before your committee. I didn’t find out until just the last minute that you were inviting people to come and make their presentations, so it had already passed through Victoria and Vancouver — the heartland of where we started out.

A little background. We had some per-door funding from B.C. Housing this current year. It’s the first time since 2008 that we received any per-door funding. It was $2 million. We saw a spike in our homes started from…. I had to get the numbers from everybody else who is part of Habitat. We went from nine homes built in 2016 to currently 30 underway, and that’s attributable to the good fortune of having B.C. Housing believe in our mission.

Going back a bit, like 2014, we had ten homes built; in 2015, 12. It would have not been possible to have as many homes started if it wasn’t for the funding we received from the government. The last time we had any per-door funding was in 2008. The same thing. We had a very small number of homes leading up, a spike in 2008, and again, afterwards, nothing much.

Most of the other provinces in Canada have a way of contributing one way or the other to Habitat for Humanity. Not to say that we don’t appreciate the help that we’ve received, but we have been sort of managing to do it on our own. But we haven’t been able to build the sustained serving of families and building homes that the rest of Canada has — Edmonton, for example. Everything is bigger in Alberta. They’ve built 70 homes this year.

We scale it to our abilities. I think one of the reasons affordable housing and homelessness is on the agenda of many governments in Canada is the price and affordability of homes has skyrocketed. One of the problems that Habitat for Humanity faces is that land acquisition costs have also gone up substantially.

We’re fortunate in the Kootenays and the Boundary. Essentially, all the land that we built on has been through donations by the municipalities. They see that it addresses a need in their communities.

[6:10 p.m.]

Less fortunate are those in Victoria. Victoria built no homes this year, even though they are very active. Yolanda — you may have met Yolanda — does a wonderful job. She’s one of the mentors for the rest of the Habitat for Humanity executive directors. It’s simply a matter of her having to compete with developers on purchasing land.

That becomes a real sticking point. Same with Vancouver. The Okanagan has come that way now. My colleagues in Kelowna just had to bid $450,000 for a site that they want to use for multifamily and are trying to get more density on that piece of land. As well intentioned as municipalities and developers are, at the end of the day, we are having to compete in a marketplace for land. Some of the funding that was available this year…. If you take the per-square-foot charge to build a house, the land is a substantial portion of that.

We have a lot of donors and supporters in the boundaries. I’ll speak, because that’s my firsthand knowledge. We have Roxul, who donates all the insulation for our homes. We have Interfor, who very graciously has donated lumber in the past. It’s a community effort.

We fundraise in multiple ways. We have a gift-in-kind program with Habitat Canada where we have companies like Dow Corning that contribute rigid Styrofoam and expanding foam for homes. We have companies that are participating that also donate plumbing, electrical parts. It’s a real stew, a conglomerate, of people who actually contribute to Habitat for Humanity home build.

Some of the documents I’ve attached…. I’m sorry I didn’t submit them on line. Like I say, I just heard about this and was asked to attend by our B.C. caucus chair of Habitat for Humanity yesterday. No, I guess it was Monday. At the last minute, I tried to put together some information.

What Habitat does that is so different is that we are trying to solve issues of poverty, and especially intergenerational poverty. By allowing a family to have a home and a zero percent interest mortgage, we allow that family to kind of break the cycle of poverty. That’s one of our expressions. We believe strongly that we are part of that continuum. There’s home ownership. There’s affordable home ownership. There’s housing that’s provided through social enterprise and co-ops. There’s, again, B.C. Housing that provides subsidized housing.

The model that we work on is that we provide these homes to low-income families who fall in the LICO, the low-income index, and by allowing them to aspire to the same kind of life that middle-class people aspire to, they become less dependent on all the social net stuff. I’ve shown, in some of the documents I’ve provided, that people rely less on food banks. They rely less on social services. That becomes one of those hidden costs that we relieve society from.

So 39 percent of the families who move into Habitat homes have come out of subsidized housing. What we do is make room for more families to move into subsidized housing, because it’s restricted as to how many spots are available in these developments.

One of the things that is most significant, and one of the things that I like to try and tell our donors and people who are supporting Habitat, is that it’s the second-generational benefits that are the most critical. Children are allowed to grow up in a neighbourhood. They’re allowed to feel like they’re part of the neighbourhood. They aren’t moved from school to school as situations change with either employment or landlords.

One of the studies I gave you shows how the ability of children to excel…. A higher percentage of them go on to post-secondary education. It’s one of those points I like to underscore but is taken for granted by someone like myself who comes from a middle-class background.

[6:15 p.m.]

The fact that we have these homes go to low-income families…. One of the questions I’ve gotten is: “Well, does that stay in low income?” It does, actually. Habitat for Humanity always has the first right of refusal to buy back the home.

Not everybody looks at the Habitat home as a forever home. We would rather buy that home back than pay for the costs of building a new one. If a family, let’s say, graduates into a situation where they can use that equity that they’ve accumulated for a down payment on another home that’s more appropriate for their situation, then that still keeps it in the low-income spectrum.

We believe strongly that that equity the family is able to achieve, whether it’s in ten, 20 or 30 years, allows them, by the time they retire, to be able to have the normal things that many people take for granted. Low-income people, a lot of times, don’t have a pension plan. A lot of times they don’t have savings. Up to 40 or 50 percent of the cost of living goes towards rent in many communities now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Bob, we’re at ten minutes right now. Did you want to wrap up quickly, and then we can go to questions?

B. Huff: Somebody cancelled, so I thought I had two spots.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, no. Nice try. [Laughter.]

B. Huff: Well, I’m passionate about this. I believe that Habitat helps to solve part of the problem. There are no simple, quick fixes, right?

If this committee makes their recommendations and deems it a worthy issue to support, I can tell you that it’s actually money well spent, well invested. The social returns on investment for Habitat homes are something that have been noted many times in all kinds of different studies.

A. Weaver: I’m just hoping that you’re going to upload your files to the site.

B. Huff: We just spoke about that. They will be loaded up by tomorrow.

A. Weaver: Okay. That’s what I was hoping.

S. Cadieux: Assuming there was a $2 million grant from B.C. Housing and it allowed you to essentially build or put under construction approximately 20 extra homes in a year, according to your numbers, that would be the equivalent of $100,000 per unit.

What are the selling prices of these homes? Let me do my list so you can go through it all at once. What kind of mortgage is it that people are taking on? I understand the mortgage rate. But what is the size of the mortgage people are taking on? How often do the homes change hands, on average? And if you have first right of refusal to buy back, at what cost do you buy back?

B. Huff: The per-door funding, actually, was $50,000 per home. We haven’t utilized all that money. We still have the opportunity to utilize those funds. The MOU, memorandum of understanding, actually goes into 2018 as well, so I would expect that the total funds will be used up by the time the MOU expires.

The zero percent interest mortgage that we offer is always scheduled to the income of the family. We never exceed 30 percent of the family’s income. We want families to be able to thrive rather than survive, so the term of a mortgage will depend. Our minimum mortgage payment is $400. It can vary with affiliates.

We’ll have families who will take 30 or 35 years to pay off their mortgage. We’ve actually had two families in the Boundary region, in Grand Forks, who have paid off their mortgage within 15 years. But then again, house prices were a lot more affordable there.

[6:20 p.m.]

We sell the home at an appraised market value. CRA is always looking at the way non-profits operate, and we have to sell at fair market value. So we have appraisals done, and that’s what the home sells for. If we do a purchase or a buyback, our mortgage is written so that we pay back the equity that the family has accrued. There is no increase in the fair market value that they are allowed to collect.

R. Leonard: One of my concerns…. You asked similar questions that I had. I guess the concern is that because it’s over a period of a certain number of years, you have the homeowners own the home, and there are no strings attached in terms of the value of the property, so it becomes not necessarily an affordable house. If you built it for $100,000, equity grows, and it’s now worth $1 million. You have to buy it back at…. It becomes the value of $1 million.

Although you’ve invested in affordability, at the end of the day, do you still have a unit that’s affordable?

B. Huff: I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t clear. What happens is the mortgage document is written so that we buy it back for the original appraised value.

R. Leonard: The original appraised value.

B. Huff: Yes.

A Voice: The mortgage value at the beginning.

B. Huff: What that does is the family still has….

B. D’Eith (Chair): The equity they’re accumulating is what they’ve paid off, not what the market value is.

B. Huff: Yes. That’s right. We have to have a sustainable business practice moving forward.

R. Leonard: Yeah. That’s what I was looking for — where the sustainability is. So thank you. That does clarify it very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re actually over time now. Thank you very much, Bob. I really appreciate it.

Next up we have the Society for Protection and Care of Seniors — Janice Androsoff and Margaret Crawford. So ten minutes. The floor is yours.

SOCIETY FOR PROTECTION
AND CARE OF SENIORS

J. Androsoff: I’m Janice, and this is Margaret. We represent the Society for Protection and Care of Seniors. It’s a health care advocacy group in the greater Trail area. We’re concerned about the state of rural health care.

Centralization of services over the past several years has forced patients to travel to Kelowna — in some cases, for services that were available here at one time. Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital is just that: a regional hospital that should provide a wide range of services to the region.

There have been cutbacks to personnel since 2001. Health care structure should be a pyramid with lots of front-line personnel at the base and a few administrators at the top. We think, maybe, that Interior Health is top-heavy with administrators and that the number of administrators and their bonuses affect the amount of money left for the front-line workers.

Margaret is going to continue.

M. Crawford: We, concerned citizens of the West Kootenay, have been absolutely dismayed by the erosion of services that we have seen at our Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail since 2001. The erosion has resulted in a toxic environment in our hospital, in which staff morale and confidence are at an all-time low.

[6:25 p.m.]

Being micromanaged from Kelowna, an urban centre, has not worked because there’s a great lack of understanding as to what we in a rural community need and face, particularly in the winter months. The centralization of services requires patients to travel four hours one way to Kelowna, to pay for accommodation and meals there and, in many cases, to find someone to drive them or some method of transportation there and back. Greyhound Bus is wanting to reduce services between Trail and Kelowna to two trips a week.

There is a volunteer driver program out of Castlegar here, but it costs $250 a day to Kelowna, and many seniors cannot afford this — in fact, most, in our area. If the patient has to stay overnight, and often you would have to do so, then the patient has to also pay for the driver’s accommodation as well as their own. Obviously, this gets very expensive.

To the citizens of the West Kootenays, this is not cost-effective for anyone, and we feel that providing medical services closer to home is a much more viable solution. We know it is.

Along with the diminution of other services, we want to address the issue of the loss or cutting back of key physicians and surgeons at KBRH. Over the last several years, we have lost Dr. Henry Ukpeh, our pediatrician; Dr. Vincent Loyola, our pathologist; Dr. Andre De Greef, our plastic surgeon. Others have seen their hours cut or their ability to provide services reduced.

Dr. Ukpeh and Dr. Loyola have now both relocated, in spite of wanting to stay in this area. Dr. De Greef is still here and wanting to stay. Last fall, 2016, the manpower committee of Interior Health said that there was enough work in this area for two full-time plastic surgeons.

I’ll just add a note here that Dr. De Greef, over the last 14 years, has serviced the area between Invermere and Rock Creek because there’s no plastic surgeon in the East Kootenays. This has worked very well. He’s been a very capable man with a broad range of ability. He wants to stay here, and we want him to stay here. He has strong support from the community. We’ve got a petition that we’ve sent in to Chris Mazurkewich and also to our MLA, and we’ve accumulated — I haven’t got the final tally — somewhere around 1,300 signatures, which is a fairly significant number for our area. It shows the caring that the people in the community have for this man.

This past spring one new plastic surgeon was hired with a specialty in hand surgery, and this is the area on which he wishes to focus. By the end of this past June, 2017, Interior Health said that they were not recruiting any further plastic surgeons beyond the one they had hired in May 2017. The Interior Health feels that there’s no longer any wait-list for plastic surgery, but there was a very long wait-list of almost 2,000 people last October. I can’t believe they’ve all just disappeared into the woodwork. I don’t think it works that way.

We understand that Fernie has been given funding under the Rural Coordination Centre of B.C. in order to provide surgical and obstetrics services locally because studies have shown that delivery of these services closer to home is more cost-effective. We’re wondering if that same sort of funding could be made available to us here in the West Kootenay. As far as I know, it was someone in Interior Health who actually investigated that and established it for Fernie. I don’t think that’s something that’s done through people in the community, just the average citizen.

We need funds to restore our lost services at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital. Please try and hear our sincere desire for that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Margaret, and thank you, Janice.

Any questions?

A. Weaver: A quick one. Is the problem hospital time for these…?

M. Crawford: It’s OR time for Dr. De Greef.

A. Weaver: OR time. Is it because of the fact that the OR time…? Is the OR time free, or is it being used for something else?

[6:30 p.m.]

M. Crawford: From my understanding, there is OR time available at both Kootenay Lake Hospital and Kootenay Boundary. We do a lot of things back and forth between the two. We go over there for anything to do with eyes and that kind of thing. We have all our cataract surgery over there. There are a lot of shared services and shared surgical services.

J. Brar: Thanks for coming and fighting for the seniors.

My understanding is that as far as the emergency services are concerned, they’re available as needed, or is that not the case?

M. Crawford: Let’s put it this way. If a patient comes in with an emergency and there’s not a plastic surgeon available, then they have to be shipped to Kelowna. Last October 28, I know for a fact there was a man who came in who had been badly injured at Teck. His hand was bleeding so badly and so profusely and he was in such trauma that if Dr. De Greef had not intervened at that point, he would have been sent to Kelowna but would have had to have the hand amputated.

J. Brar: When they’re shipped to Kelowna, do you have to pay for it?

M. Crawford: No, you don’t have to pay for it, but most often it’s road ambulance. So it’s four hours there on rough winter roads.

J. Brar: If you can clarify: when do you actually have to use the road ambulance?

M. Crawford: It’s used often. I can’t tell you exactly how often, but I can tell you that it’s frequently used.

J. Brar: What I mean is: is the hospital closed or not available? When are people using it?

M. Crawford: Oh, I understand what you mean. No, it’s not that the hospital is closed. It’s that there will not be a specialist available. Usually the plastic surgeon works in conjunction with an orthopedic surgeon or one of the general surgeons, say around breast reconstruction. Or if there’s an emergency trauma, like from Teck, then he would help the orthopedic surgeon in that regard — maybe doing a skin grafting or something like that, depending on what’s needed.

The plastic surgeon we’ve had was able to step into the breach in every way imaginable because of the experience he’s had. He’s taught plastic surgery in several hospitals around the world. He also has had a subspecialty in ear, nose and throat, so he’s been able to act as backup for our Dr. Cook, who’s our ear, nose and throat doctor here. Without Dr. De Greef here, in practice, Dr. Cook has no backup. He has a waiting list, I heard the other day, of about 800 people.

J. Androsoff: It’s not just emergency and people needing an ambulance to go to Kelowna. It’s that if you need to see a specialist, you probably have to drive to Kelowna to see one.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate hearing about your needs in the community, and I appreciate you coming in.

Next I’d like to call Selkirk College Faculty Association — Rebecca Jacobson and Dr. Duff Sutherland. So that’s bookends today. We had the Selkirk College Students Union first, and we have the Selkirk College Faculty Association last. So there you go. The floor is yours.

SELKIRK COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION

D. Sutherland: Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee about priorities for the 2018 budget.

You’ve asked questions about improving affordability for families, enhancing services and supports and building a strong and sustainable economy. I hope to be able to address these.

To begin, I’d like to acknowledge that where we are now is the territory of the Sinixt. This is a territory that was also made use of by the Okanagan and the Ktunaxa. We thank them for allowing us to meet.

The Selkirk College Faculty Association represents over 170 faculty, faculty assistants, researchers and research assistants at Selkirk College. Our members teach everything from digital arts and new media to nursing, from blacksmithing to English and history at the college’s campuses in Castlegar and Nelson.

Our members are also librarians, counsellors and IT specialists. SCFA members are actively engaged in programs designed to bring post-secondary education closer to our local communities. For 50 years, this education has provided a chance for young and old to get ahead in our region and beyond.

[6:35 p.m.]

Provincially the SCFA is a member of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, which represents teaching and support staff at 25 post-secondary institutions.

To begin with, the SCFA would like to thank the government for moving rapidly to right a policy wrong made three years ago. We are happy that funding for adult basic education and English-language-learning programs was reinstated and that these programs are tuition-free again. We had learned that applications to enrol in ABE programs at Selkirk College had declined significantly during the period that the tuition process was in place. We also strongly support the government’s decision to provide tuition waivers to former youth in care at all 25 post-secondary institutions.

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

As part of the decision to add $1,600 tuition per term to ABE and ELL in 2014, other developmental programs that were once tuition-free also began to have tuition charged. These programs are a proven way to reduce poverty and provide students with access to education and a support network to discover new skills and gain confidence in their abilities.

The government has set aside contingency funds to deal with enrolment growth in this area. We urge the committee to recommend the reinstatement of funding for these overlooked developmental programs, including adult special education.

In the rest of my time before the committee today, I want to cover the core issues impacting post-secondary education today: systemic funding issues, tuition fees and institutional budget mandates. The underlying principle for these issues is shared by most post-secondary institutions across the province. We are motivated to deliver the best education possible for anyone who wants to learn. The importance of investing in post-secondary education for all has never been greater, but this has not been reflected in post-secondary funding and governance over the last 16 years.

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

The situation has worsened over the years and brought us to the point we are at today. Our students stay tens of thousands of dollars in debt for their education, amongst the highest in Canada, when they graduate, while they contend with ongoing increases in the cost of living. Most of our students are forced to work for wages, more than they should, while they study. At the same time, institutions are told to do more with their funding. This has resulted in a series of cascading cost pressures that have put our post-secondary system on a shaky financial footing.

At the institutional level, operating grants are the largest investment that the provincial government makes in post-secondary institutions. According to the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, after a series of cuts in the last several years, the system is now funded at the same level as in 2010-2011. After accounting for higher education inflation, this public investment is actually 20 percent lower than in 2001.

To put this into context, 24 years ago, just after I began my first teaching job at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, many institutions received operating grants that amounted to 80 percent of their revenues. Now most institutions receive just over 40 percent, and one is at 30 percent. Selkirk College is at 56 percent.

With declining funding, institutions have had to find other ways to bring in revenue to cover their costs — namely, by increasing tuition. Since 2001, tuition revenues have gone up by 400 percent. In that year, government tuition revenues were $452 million. This past year they were over $1.8 billion and are forecast to go up 6.1 percent per year for the next couple of years.

Even with domestic tuition fees restricted to a 2 percent increase, students have seen their costs go up dramatically. Whether the institution has added more student fees, such as a 4.5 percent student fee at Selkirk College, or worked around the 2 percent cap in any number of ways, students cannot keep up with the increased costs.

[6:40 p.m.]

B.C. students are graduating with record high debt, typically around $35,000, all while they are contending with increases to costs of living. I’m sure the student union was talking about this, this morning. Many students graduate with more than the average. Our local faculty associations have received stories of students with up to $160,000 in student debt. These students will likely never pay this off.

We also see the shift in funding in the growing number of international students attending institutions in B.C. Now making up almost 20 percent of the total student population, international students have become a major source of revenue through the vastly higher tuition fees that they pay, compared to domestic students.

A 50 percent increase in international students was part of the B.C. Liberals’ jobs plan. International students make incredibly valuable contributions to institutions such as Selkirk College, to the classes they attend and in our communities where they live and work. They should be valued primarily as learners, rather than as important sources of revenue. We need to make sure these students have the supports that they need to succeed in their education, in the classroom and in the community, through adequate student housing in places like Castlegar and Nelson.

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

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

The most glaring example of the misguided programming the blueprint produced is in the liquefied natural gas industry, where institutions were pushed into LNG-related training, but the promised jobs did not materialize. It’s hard to tell what effect the blueprint had, but the redirection of resources put pressure across the system on programs that allow students to develop high-demand skills of today.

Critical thinking, communication and problem-solving skills are learned and strengthened in programs like the social sciences, humanities and liberal arts and sciences. These are crucial lifelong skills for tomorrow’s citizens and workers. These programs require long-term, stable funding to succeed. They also need public investment in the long-neglected facilities where they are taught. Selkirk College’s Castlegar campus has been the workhorse for 50 years for this region, but needs upgrading to meet the needs of its current and future learners.

Another opportunity to reallocate resources to improve post-secondary education is to direct more of the now $100 million rural dividend fund to community colleges. Rural community colleges have borne the brunt of the underfunding of post-secondary education. Given their smaller service populations, they have struggled to maintain their course offerings to keep within tight budgets.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Dr. Sutherland, we’re at ten minutes now. If you could wrap it up, that’d be great. Thank you.

D. Sutherland: Okay, I’ll wrap it up. I’ll highlight the last few things here.

Rather than allowing this trend to continue, we propose strengthening these community colleges by reinvesting provincial dollars into local educational opportunities. We also favour moving away from block funding back to envelope funding to ensure the protection of core programs.

We favour taking away interest on student loans. It’s another area which we would like to see the government focus on. We would like to see the commendable grants for students who complete expanded to students for access to the system, and we would also like to see institutions be able to have self-supported capital projects.

In general, we strongly support actions that provide more affordable access, better services and supports for students, all of which will make for a stronger, sustainable economy.

Thank you for listening.

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

[6:45 p.m.]

S. Cadieux: Thank you for your presentation. I do have a question, though, and it’s something I’m trying to get sorted out. A number of presenters and others have made this statement about tuition fees going up 400 percent. Now, tuition revenue has gone up 400 percent. That is not tuition fees.

D. Sutherland: Revenue, yes.

S. Cadieux: It’s a misleading statement. It’s not being borne by individual students in that way. Now, tuition fees, on average, have gone up about 220 percent in British Columbia in that time, according to StatsCan, for an average four-year degree. That changes depending on the degree and the program. Some are more; some are less. That’s not insignificant, certainly, but it’s not far off the Canadian average of 185 percent.

The number doesn’t fit the increase that you’re quoting of 400 percent in tuition revenues. It doesn’t take into account, or it fails to acknowledge, that a large proportion of that revenue is now gained from foreign students, who are handled differently at institutions, as well as a 50,000 increase in the number of students paying that tuition. So there are a number of things here.

I’m curious as to why that keeps being repeated in that way. Are there specific programs where you have seen that kind of an increase in the student fee — of 400 percent?

D. Sutherland: What I find is it’s just kind of an effective and interesting way of looking at it. The government was collecting a certain amount of money from tuition, and now they’re collecting a considerable amount more than they did in the past. Of course, there’s inflation and more students.

S. Cadieux: Right. There are also 50,000 more students.

D. Sutherland: It’s just that you can see that there is more money being taken from students.

S. Cadieux: But not per student. Yeah, there is — 200 percent — but not the way in which it’s portrayed. I just think it’s important to portray it honestly. That’s all.

D. Sutherland: I don’t think it’s a dishonest statement.

S. Cadieux: Okay.

J. Brar: Just to clarify, on the same issue. You’re saying government is taking money from the international students. If yes, how much?

D. Sutherland: I don’t have the separate figures on how much of that $1.8 billion is international students, but I know that at Selkirk College, certainly, the tuition fees for international students are considerably higher than for domestic students, and they will go up twice this year, by 40 percent. There will be two fee increases this year that will add up to a 40 percent increase.

J. Brar: On average, for a college of your size, what percentage of the total revenue will be coming from international students?

D. Sutherland: From what I remember of the budget statement from last year, it’s $1.5 million, and we have a budget in the 30 millions. That’s what I recall of the budget.

I just know from our members, from their experience in the classroom, the general point is that students are feeling the pressure of high tuition and high student fees. You can cut it any way you want, but it has hurt their standard of living, and they are accumulating very high debt. They’re living, many international students, in often very poor conditions because there’s just not adequate housing in these communities to accommodate them all.

A. Weaver: I tend to agree with Stephanie about the reporting of the numbers. I think it doesn’t do the case, which is so compelling as it is, justice. It can be criticized because there are more students and international fees.

We’ve focused on the foreign student fees, but most jurisdictions in the world charge differential fees, the argument being that the taxpayer is subsidizing the Canadian students, and why should the taxpayer subsidize the education from afar? I recognize the enrichment of the environment, but again, I think focusing on the Canadian students is probably more compelling as well.

[6:50 p.m.]

I want to thank you for your comments on the blueprint. I mean, this has got to be one of the most disastrous things that happened to public post-secondary education in the province of British Columbia. Whether it be universities, colleges from north to south, east to west, memos were circulating trying to wrap every program around LNG, and it was fiscally irresponsible. It was reckless in terms of the management of the post-secondary.

I thank you for bringing it here, because I have heard no end of academics across British Columbia complain about the fact that their programs had to somehow fit into the LNG mould — this myth of delivering a pot of gold that was never going to happen.

P. Milobar: Coming from an area of the province that needs lots of tradespeople…. Frankly, even though they didn’t go to the LNG, a lot of them are employed.

A question I have for you. We’ve heard from several institutions. In just about every city we’ve gone to, all the institutions in that catchment area have come, and there’s been a lot of mention around the international students. Along with both Dr. Weaver and Stephanie, I’m trying to wrap my head around….

It’s literally a global market for those students. They can pick and choose and go wherever. They’ve already made the decision to leave their country, to travel for educational purposes. So it’s kind of a free market in that respect. You can charge what the market will bear, or you just don’t get students. So I’m wondering where that line is.

My daughter went to school in California. There it’s even out-of-state because she went to a state university. The same premise as our universities — it’s state-funded, offset. If you were a student from out of state, the tuition went from $6,200 U.S. a year to $21,000 U.S. a year. That was even if you were from Oregon. Thankfully, she had a scholarship but…. So it’s not unique, I guess is what I’m saying, and in fact, in the States it goes state by state, even.

Obviously, there’s been a concerted discussion from all the post-secondary institutions around what the ask of this committee was going to be, because it’s been almost word for word the same, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with being organized in your lobbying efforts. But I’m trying to get a better understanding of the thought process behind the concern around what institutions are charging for international students versus the student debt load of domestic students and how that’s suddenly getting blended together. Does that make any sense — what my head is trying to understand?

D. Sutherland: Yeah. I understand what you’re saying. I’d be interested to hear the discussion at other places that you’ve heard about this.

What we’ve talked about at our institution is the precariousness of depending on…. Such a relatively high percentage of the operating budget is dependent on the tuition from international students. At Selkirk College, we don’t have a lot of diversity in our international students. They come from, really, one county — and maybe even one part of one country. So if there are any kinds of financial, economic problems in that area, or other types of problems, we are concerned about what would happen to that revenue. It could be lost. In that case, I’m looking at those students as revenue that we’re now relying on at the college.

Then I would just say that the broader point we’ve been concerned about is that we’ve moved away from a system that was much more, as a percentage, funded by the taxpayers of British Columbia, to a system which depends on these other sources of revenue which seem less secure than they were in the past. For international students, they add a lot to our college. There’s no doubt about that. But they do affect the decision-making at the college as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we are way over time, but I thought it was important to have a fulsome discussion of this very important issue.

Mitzi, I’m sorry we didn’t get to you, but that is our last presenter.

M. Dean: I’m good. Thanks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there any other people here? Okay, we’re going to adjourn. Thank you very much, and thank you for your presentations, everyone.

The committee adjourned at 6:54 p.m.