The committee met at 8 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good morning, 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 a recognition that our public hearing today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket people.

We are an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with the mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance, which includes the following three questions:

(1) What are your top priorities to help make life more affordable in British Columbia?

(2) What service improvements should be given priority?

(3) What are your ideas, approaches and/or priorities for creating good jobs and to build a sustainable economy in every corner of our province?

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in the communities around the province, and British Columbians can participate in these public hearings in person, via teleconference, video conference or Skype. There are numerous other 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 go 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 today. All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly.

Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2017. The committee must issue a report by November 15, 2017, with its recommendations for the 2018 budget.

Today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. If time permits, we’ll 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 proceeding will be posted on the committee’s website. These meetings are also broadcast live on the website.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

S. Cadieux: Stephanie Cadieux, Surrey South.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We also have Tracy Redies and Peter Milobar.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, Courtenay-Comox.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And Jagrup Brar.

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

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

I’d also like to welcome Cheryl Ann Archibald. She’s a Hansard senior editor from the National Assembly of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana who is here on a parliamentary staff exchange.

First up we have the Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society, via teleconference — Martha Rans.

Martha, good morning. The floor is yours — our first presentation of the day.

Budget Consultation Presentations

PACIFIC LEGAL EDUCATION
AND OUTREACH SOCIETY

M. Rans: Great. Good morning. First, let me begin my remarks by thanking you, the Chair, and members of the Finance Committee for providing me an opportunity to speak this morning, particularly since you are in the Columbia Basin, where we are running a project.

[8:05 a.m.]

My name is Martha Rans. I am the legal director of the Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society. We run a program called Law for Non-profits, which provides information, education and advice to non-profits.

The project began, in part, when a 24-unit housing society serving Indigenous youth in Vancouver went profoundly sideways. It was the “everything that could go wrong, went wrong” file. We had rogue board members, no insurance, bedbugs, an employment standards complaint and violence in the society. After a year, there were five lawyers involved, and the costs were over $100,000. Those would be the legal costs alone.

Most of the problems, and thus the costs, were preventable. Some of you on this committee, I know, are familiar with the legal costs that come when there’s a crisis, whether it’s in a business, in a non-profit or in our lives. It’s no different when a non-profit goes sideways, except that our dollars could be spent in more productive ways.

Preventing problems by enhancing education, information and advice costs little and saves a lot. What came to mind as I was writing this was the adage “An ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure.”

Right now we know there are 27,000 societies in the province of B.C. They touch every citizen in the province and are funded by every ministry in the province. There are MCFD-funded community and social service agencies, 5,000 gaming grantees, 800 funded by B.C. Housing and thousands more by the B.C. Arts Council. Some of you have either been executive directors or been involved as board members, I know, of many of these societies.

In 2017, more than half of the 56 workshops on the new Societies Act that are being held here in the Columbia Basin, thanks to the generosity of the Columbia Basin Trust, are supporting those societies who, since proclamation in November 2016, are working diligently to transition under the new Societies Act. So far, we’ve supported at least 300 of the approximately 1,500 in the Columbia Basin region with direct support.

At a workshop I gave yesterday in Vancouver, one participant came from Prince George and another from Kamloops. Why? Because the Societies Act transition deadline is looming, and they need to have a source to answer questions. There’s an urgent and pressing need for support, particularly in underserved and rural areas of the province.

I’m here to make the case for why a modest allocation of provincial funds would go a long way to address the needs of societies. It would save every ministry funds by enabling societies to use every dollar for programs and prevent needless crisis and upheaval.

With provincial support through the ministry of children’s services and the Ministry of Finance, we would be able to broaden our reach and ensure, with the hard work of the Societies Act registry staff, that as societies transition, they would do so in compliance with the Societies Act. As I’m sure many of you know, the registry staff is not in a position to provide legal advice to those individuals who are calling and seeking assistance with the transition.

Our services are not limited to the Societies Act. They include a number of legal compliance issues, like privacy, employment, human rights and basic contract law. What we have found is that when you open the door to talking about bylaws, you often end up talking about other issues.

A modest allocation of $75,000 would ensure that we had dedicated staff to answer questions across the province. We are getting approximately five inquiries a week, mostly from outside the Lower Mainland.

A further $75,000 would ensure that we could provide the follow-up support through additional legal advice clinics to support non-profit societies.

We have the capability to offer more distance services. As well, we have begun to develop relationships with solicitors across the province who are interested in supporting the project through providing either reduced-fee services or pro bono services to non-profit societies. They already support the societies, in many cases, by being on their board, but in some cases are prevented, of course, from providing legal advice.

[8:10 a.m.]

All of these services could be embedded within existing services provided across the province. We’re not asking for funds to create a new legal clinic, although I might wish to suggest that that would be a good way to spend our province’s funds — giving access to justice. What we are suggesting, however, is that we take advantage of the existing societies that are supporting various non-profits across the province and try to enhance what they are doing by supporting their ability to provide services directly in those communities.

The way we’re going to solve many of the issues that confront us is by building local capacity, not by shuttling high-priced people to rural areas. A law line, like the one that we would like us to have — and I’m thinking about both a phone and an electronically enabled system — would enable us to answer the quick questions that most people have, whether it’s about an annual meeting, whether it’s a housing society wondering if they can change their constitution, or a question about the differences between a contractor and an employee for an artistic director of a music festival.

We know that we can do a lot with a little, and we’re asking the government to assist us to do that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Martha. Obviously, I’ve participated in some of the legal clinics. Could you talk a little bit more about the activation of volunteers that your organization does and how you’d be able to leverage this money?

M. Rans: What we have been doing right now is that we have a project in the Columbia Basin. We trained 12 volunteer mentors. There are two retired lawyers, but all the others are experienced board members and community members. They are working with a webinar that we created that was funded by the law foundation and meeting all over, in small communities, for free, to support people with the transition.

We’ve done that with, I think, approximately $35,000 of support through the Columbia Basin Trust. Does that answer…?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Martha.

And another question, from Tracy Redies.

T. Redies: Hi, Martha. Thanks very much for your presentation. I’m just curious. I like your idea. I think societies can certainly leverage their resources in the communities perhaps better than other entities.

One thing that I have seen, though, is that in some cases, there’s a bit of a challenge around governance. I’m just wondering: with your background, with a legal education and that, would you think that there might be a value in having some type of governance program with societies, just to make sure the proper standards, etc., are being followed?

M. Rans: There’s a very strong connection between the compliance with the Societies Act and good governance practices. What we’ve done in the three projects that we have initiated in the province is we have identified various folks who do board training. When individuals are coming with what is clearly a governance issue, we are suggesting that they seek those resources.

The Columbia Basin Trust is unusual because they have a non-profit advisers program and actually have consultants whose role it is to provide those kinds of ongoing supports. There’s a very close link to governance. However, what’s been missing, historically, within governance training has been access to the legal side of the equation.

Once you start talking about access to records under the Societies Act, you end up stuck, talking about privacy. Right now what I know is that a great many societies don’t have privacy policies and are asking for us to come back and do privacy workshops. If we had manna from heaven, that would be an area that I would be working on next.

[8:15 a.m.]

The other issues that arise are employment issues. You start talking about: “Well, we have one part-time staff person, and there’s a conflict on the board about how to use their time.” It ends up being they don’t understand the difference between a contractor and an employee or, alternatively, that they’ve been used to having people as contractors when in fact they’re employees, which is actually more common in small, rural, primarily volunteer-based organizations.

I see a very strong connection. I think that governance training isn’t going to solve many of the issues, though, in part because a lot of that training is focused at the expense of all the other issues that arise. We did a survey of non-profits in 2013 that was funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario, and they said their number one issue was employment and human rights, followed by privacy. Governance was actually at the bottom. Lawyers, when asked, had governance at the top and employment and human rights at the bottom. It was quite striking.

I’d be happy to share that research with the committee, because it might provide some context to the sector and to why their legal needs are actually multifaceted. The vision in the project is to try to address as many of them as we can — not in an in-depth way, you understand, but sort of the ounce of prevention, right? A little knowledge goes a long way, consistently delivered over a significant area of time.

If I may say, the kind of opposite is the situation when we look at education around human rights in this province, given the closure of the B.C. Human Rights Commission. I worked for the commission for six years, and I can tell you that as someone now who provides information, education and advice to non-profit societies as respondents, the lack of knowledge of basic human rights concepts is significant.

I don’t know that it really was any different before, but I do know there were staff dedicated to getting that education out. I firmly believe many of the issues we confront in managing a society and in working with each other as human beings are actually issues that can be resolved if people understand what their legal rights and obligations are.

T. Redies: Thank you very much. I think we would be interested in receiving that information. It’s very helpful.

M. Rans: I’m working on a submission, and I’m working to a grant deadline.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Martha. Just a reminder that October 16 is the deadline, at 5 p.m. The fact that the Human Rights Commission is being started up again must be something that you’re very excited about.

Anyway, thank you very much for everything you do in the community. I know it seems like a large mountain to climb for you all the time, so I appreciate all your efforts.

M. Rans: Well, thank you. I am excited at the prospect of a reallocation of our provincial resources to areas that affect people on a daily basis.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Martha.

Next, if I could call the College of the Rockies — Dianne Teslak and David Walls.

Good morning. The floor is yours.

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES

D. Walls: Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to present today. My name is David Walls, and I’m president of the College of the Rockies. With me is Dianne Teslak, our vice-president, finance and corporate services.

The College of the Rockies offers a comprehensive range of programs, from university studies and baccalaureate degrees to diplomas and certificates in career and technical training and trades education. We also offer adult upgrading courses to prepare students for higher education and the workforce, and continuing education courses to support lifelong learning.

Our programs are designed to be accessible, affordable and responsive to the evolving needs of our students, community, business and industry.

[8:20 a.m.]

We have seven campuses located throughout southern B.C. Our main campus and Gold Creek campus are here in Cranbrook, and we have five satellite campuses located in Creston, Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Fernie. We serve a population of close to 80,000 people, who are widely dispersed within our large 45,000-square-kilometre region, an area about 1½ times the size of Vancouver Island.

Each year College of the Rockies serves approximately 2,200 full-time-equivalent students through face-to-face and on-line instruction and issues more than 1,000 credentials, including our own College of the Rockies degree, the bachelor of business administration in sustainable business practices.

This morning we’ll be presenting you with our top three priority areas as well as a solution for consideration that does not include a request for additional government funding.

Our top priority at College of the Rockies — indeed, at colleges across the B.C. system, which I’m sure you’ve heard — is for additional student housing. Affordable rental accommodation for students is a growing issue in our college region. Our communities have accommodated students through private rental properties and homestays, but availability for many of these opportunities is at a record low. In Cranbrook, Canada Mortgage and Housing reports that their vacancy rate for a one-bedroom unit is 1 percent while the vacancy rate for all rental properties is only slightly better than 1.7 percent.

The demand for spaces in our current 97-bed, dorm-style student residence exceeds our availability. We continually have large wait-lists. This disparity between supply and demand pushes many of our students off campus, which, in turn, puts pressure on affordable housing options for others in our community.

We’ve heard, in fact, that students are choosing to pursue their education elsewhere — and sometimes across the border to the east, in Alberta — because they’re not able to secure housing here in Cranbrook. Our housing limitations also restrict our ability to grow our international operations, which we’ve become dependent on, in times of flat government funding and increasing costs, to subsidize our core operations.

Our ability to meet the needs of our student population is restricted by not only the lack of beds that we can provide but also by the style of housing we currently can offer. Many of our present students come from out of town, and we’re not able to accommodate for short-term housing while they’re in school. As well, our Aboriginal students do not have space to have their families join them while studying at our campuses.

Our second priority is around supports for all students. At College of the Rockies, we’re very proud of our vision to create and deliver the most personal experience in Canada. We are certainly all aware of the troubling statistics around mental health issues for college students as well as instances of needs for academic accommodations, indigenizing curriculum and student supports to create a welcoming and recognizable experience to support success for our Indigenous students.

Our third priority is related to one-time funding. One-time funding from government is very much appreciated, but it doesn’t provide the sustainability for activities that have been initiated. Oftentimes the recipient cause of one-time funding is not something that can be satisfied with a short-term project.

Additionally, our base operations are being subsidized more and more through alternative streams of revenue, such as our international student fees. These alternative sources are inconsistent and difficult to forecast as they’re subject to the normal ebbs and flows of the marketplace. In the case of international revenues, they are subject to global events.

D. Teslak: As the vice-president, finance and corporate services, at College of the Rockies, I can assure you that the college sector in B.C. has been innovative in dealing with flat and reduced government funding during prolonged times of cost increases and tuition control.

We have realized some efficiencies through the collaborative efforts of the administrative systems delivery transformation initiative of our ministry and have seen cost savings of approximately $50,000. However, these savings are insignificant when compared to the reductions of approximately $500,000 to our block grant. Nevertheless, we do believe in sectorwide collaboration and will continue to look for opportunities to work together to find cost and service efficiencies.

I would like to offer a real solution to adequately resourcing our priorities, as identified by President Walls. This solution lies in financial flexibility.

Approximately eight years ago budget legislation was passed to amend the College and Institute and University acts without consultation with or prior knowledge of the Ministry of Advanced Education and the sector. This created a situation where B.C.’s colleges and universities are in a significantly different financial position from the K-to-12 system and other public sectors.

[8:25 a.m.]

In a nutshell, we are not able to have an annual deficit, the definition of which includes all non-cash expenditures, such as capital asset amortization. We are not able to save up to support normal ebbs and flows in business cycles in our non-government-supported streams of operations, such as international education and contract training. We are not able to develop long-term plans that would involve saving up to invest in projects like student housing. We are not able to use prior year surpluses to support ongoing costs of causes upon expiration of one-time funding. Finally, we are restricted in our agility to respond to unexpected needs and conditions in our communities, where training and retraining efforts could have significant positive impact for local industry.

Providing us with the ability to access our retained earnings savings accounts would help us sustain our operations through the years when alternative streams of revenue may be negatively impacted.

Three years ago the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services specifically recommended a review of accounting standards that limit post-secondary institutions’ abilities to self-finance selected capital projects, and to work with post-secondary institutions and the Auditor General to identify potential solutions. Yet these government administrative and accounting policies continue to restrict our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the changing needs of our students and, in fact, limit our potential to be less dependent on government funding.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that targeted access to cash reserves would address the three priorities and would self-finance student housing, enable us to improve the quality of our educational services, improve student support services, address student and labour market demand and help fund cost pressures.

College of the Rockies is most interested in opening a dialogue with government to explore how we could move forward with this solution. Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Dianne and David.

T. Redies: Hi, thanks for your presentation. I feel your pain. I was on the board of governors with the University of Victoria, so I understand this issue.

The challenge, of course, is that notwithstanding you would be accessing cash reserves, it has to pass through, I think, the income statement, and then it rolls up into the government’s income statement. We have a challenge, because I do think that there are lots of universities and colleges where the infrastructure has not been kept up to speed, but I’m not sure if we can realistically see the universities accessing their cash reserves without it impacting the government’s income statement.

I’m not helping here. I’m not really asking a question but making an observation, that I understand the situation. It’s something we’re going to have to figure out.

A. Weaver: Well, I totally disagree. I think it’s a question of priorities and what you value in society. I recognize the importance of student housing. It’s not only College of the Rockies; it’s every post-secondary institution in the province. They’re unable to actually build self-financing housing units, which would also ease the issue of affordability in our communities, because we’ve got these students in rental accommodations, driving up rental rates because of low-accommodation rates.

There must be innovative ways of creating, perhaps, arms-length organizations that house debt, which get it off the book. I’m open to any and all ideas you have. I do know, for example, that Thompson Rivers did a partnership with a developer who rented back, leased back the units that were built. There’s one example there. The University of Victoria is looking at other examples.

It really is a question of priorities — nothing more, nothing less — and I think that it’s time we move on. If we’re going to deal with the affordability issue, we must deal with the issue that you raise.

D. Walls: I agree, Doctor. We have, if I could just respond to that, been looking at different options and working with the private sector, as an example. But the challenge here in Cranbrook is that the cost of building is still higher than what the current properties are on sale for. So there’s a reluctance for private developers, without us being able to guarantee income, because students tend to be here for eight months of the year. They’re wanting to work with us, but we haven’t been able to come up with any agreement.

[8:30 a.m.]

Of course, something…. We still have to pay, right? If it’s rental, we will have to pay some money out of our operating back to those institutions as well. The tuition won’t cover all of the costs, and they need some guarantees. That’s the challenge.

Our current residence…. We actually, in those days — it’s now 25 years old — were able to borrow money, pay off the mortgage. We managed to do that. So it really could be as simple as that, actually, or taking the money out of our net assets and paying the money back to offset the depreciation.

We realize that there are different possibilities. I guess we just need some kind of green light to say go ahead, because we’re desperate in terms of the accommodation situation.

A. Weaver: You’re not alone in the province of British Columbia.

D. Walls: I know. But I would have to say that not every college or university…. There may be different solutions, depending on the region.

J. Brar: Good morning, and thank you for your presentation.

We have heard loud and clear from various colleges, universities and even student associations about the issue of housing. I understand what you are asking for. The majority of the institutions and the student associations, actually, have highlighted the same issue — to allow the institutions to basically build the housing.

I just want to ask you: did you explore the opportunity of any way that you can work with the private sector here, a private developer who will build? There is a demand, of course, and this is a good business proposal, in my view. That’s one thing I would like to ask you, if you can respond to that.

Secondly, I would like to know what percentage of your students are international and what percentage of your revenue comes from them.

D. Walls: Yes. I’ll let Dianne answer some of the ones around the revenue side.

In reverse order, I guess, in terms of our international students, we’re sitting at around 14 percent of our student base. In terms of the revenue side, I don’t know….

D. Teslak: In terms of gross revenue, from our audited financial statement, we have approximately upwards of 30 percent of our gross revenue coming from our international activities and our business development activities — so contract training and that sort of thing. It is a significant stream of revenue to support our core operations.

D. Walls: We also have a substantial interest overseas, where we actually deliver overseas as well. It’s not just students coming here. There’s quite a global outreach in there.

You asked the question around working with the public sector. The answer is yes. We do have several private companies that we’re talking to. The city here would like us to build downtown, to help revitalize the downtown area.

Again, it’s one of those things. We can’t proceed with that without some agreement from the government as well. We’re open to anything. Our preference is to build on campus, to develop the community there, but we’re certainly prepared to work with the private sector. But private-public partnerships sometimes end up by costing more. At least the money has to come from a different source. There’s still a cost to it. Thank you for the question.

R. Leonard: You mentioned that the dorms are 25 years old. I’m just wondering how old your campus is. Also, how do you fund ongoing maintenance? Do you have issues with deferred maintenance?

D. Teslak: Various parts of our campus are of a slightly different age. Our oldest building was built in 1975, I think, and then we’ve added new buildings since then. So it’s a little bit difficult to say how old our campus is.

Certainly, we have some deferred maintenance issues. We do, of course, receive funding specifically to address some of those things through our routine capital funding, so our deferred maintenance is not as big a priority for us currently as student housing would be.

I just also want to mention that the beauty of student housing as a capital asset is that it can produce a revenue stream, whereas an academic building doesn’t necessarily produce the same sort of revenue stream. So it eases a little bit of that impact on the rolled-up government financial statements.

D. Walls: I’ll just add to that. The revenue that we get from the residence — most of that now is going back into deferred maintenance. We weren’t able to do much during the time when we paid the mortgage off, for the 20 years, but now we’re bringing that residence up to speed because of the revenue that comes in.

[8:35 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you very much for your presentation. Now, are you putting this in electronically, as well, so that we have…?

D. Walls: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. A lot of good stuff in there. Thank you very much.

D. Walls: Appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Canadian Taxpayers Federation — Kris Sims.

Hello, Kris. The floor is yours.

CANADIAN TAXPAYERS FEDERATION

K. Sims: Hello, and thank you so much for having us. By “us” I mean me, but I am representing our many thousands of supporters across the country and, specifically, here in British Columbia.

I wanted to start off, first, by thanking you for going to all corners of the province. I know it means a lot to people in every region of our great province to have people travelling, speaking with them and hearing their concerns. On behalf of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we sincerely appreciate that.

The way that we usually try to present these things is a form of a top ten, because we know that you guys are getting inundated with requests for spending, for funding and for subsidization. We like to keep things nice and brief and just present, from our supporters’ standpoint, on the things that we’re hearing from our supporters within the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, things that they would like to see focused upon. So I really appreciate your time this morning.

Our taxpayers’ top ten for the province of British Columbia this year are as follows. Please do your very best to balance the B.C. budget. Please cancel the B.C. carbon tax. Eliminate the Medical Services Plan premium. Stop raiding Crown corporations. Please turn ICBC into a co-op, open it up to competition and try to keep politicians away from it. Please don’t kill the Site C dam. Get government contracts, including boards and councils, under control. Eliminate the vote tax. Don’t block Kinder Morgan pipeline’s expansion. Reduce spending, while lowering taxes.

Let’s start with one. We at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation cannot stress this enough: balancing the B.C. budget. Our supporters overwhelmingly want to see balanced budgets in British Columbia. Our supporters understand that balancing a household or a business budget is very important, and they work hard to achieve that goal. They want to see the same actions and efforts in their elected officials at every level of government.

Before approving spending during this budget session, Finance department officials and politicians need to ask: is this truly necessary? Does the province need this, and does it need it right now? Can we do this cheaper? Can we do this in another way? And can we afford it?

The frugal thinking that’s needed to balance the budget applies to everything from subsidizing big corporations and funding niche projects to everyday spending on government office operations. Provinces with balanced budgets attract companies, which pay taxes and employ people. Those people then buy property, shop in local stores and enrol their children in local schools.

Balancing the provincial budget is part of the steel frame of a powerful economic vehicle, and it benefits people of all income levels. It’s an indicator of good management and sound planning. Please make balancing the B.C. budget a key priority as you consider spending plans.

Two, cancel the B.C. carbon tax. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation opposed the imposition of the carbon tax when it was first dreamed up, and we would like it repealed now. While the B.C. carbon tax has been used as a gold-standard example of a good carbon tax to the rest of Canada, all because it was deemed revenue-neutral, we now know that this wasn’t true.

It’s been discovered that the B.C. carbon tax hasn’t been revenue-neutral for years, because the previous government had been adding old tax credits to their carbon tax balance sheet to make it appear revenue-neutral. Now the newly elected B.C. government has dropped the notion of making the B.C. carbon tax even appear to be revenue-neutral.

This carbon tax is just a tax with a different name attached to it. It is imposed on families, households and businesses under the banner of stopping man-made climate change. The carbon tax punishes British Columbians for driving their vehicles, heating their homes and running their businesses. By creating and expanding taxes like the carbon tax, you are taking away people’s money that could be used for groceries, renting a better home, paying for after-school care and putting their kids in sports. Whatever they would have chosen to do with that money of theirs, that choice has been taken away.

[8:40 a.m.]

By the time we have a $50-per-tonne carbon tax in B.C., one year ahead of the federally imposed schedule, B.C. families could be paying more than $700 per year just for this tax. Imagine paying at least 15 cents more per litre for gasoline, 13 cents more per litre for diesel forever.

Our experience with government wading into issues like this, wielding the carrot and stick of grants and taxes, is that it doesn’t work. Governments continue to grow, continue to insert themselves into the private choices and lives of everyday people. They are then dependent upon those imposed taxes to continue growing. The only real result is that people have less of their own money left in their bank accounts and wallets every month. Please cancel the B.C. carbon tax.

Three, eliminate the medical services premium, MSP. Our supporters want the medical services premium eliminated. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has long argued that the MSP was unfair, expensive to collect and a burden on B.C. businesses and taxpayers.

We are very, very pleased to see that the MSP was cut in half, finally, by the previous government, and we are very encouraged to see that this new government has promised to eliminate it altogether. The 50 percent cut means that a family making $51,000 per year gets a $900 tax cut per year, and we are eagerly looking forward to this unfair tax being eliminated.

We are also pleased to see that British Columbians don’t need to apply for these savings. They don’t need to wait in a queue or fill out a complicated piece of paperwork based on their income or location. It’s just a simple cut. We urge the government to continue with this clear and simple method as they cancel this health care tax.

Four, stop raiding Crown corporations. Our supporters know where their money comes from, their own hard work, and they want to be confident where it’s going. They know that governments raiding the funds of Crown corporations to balance their budgets is wrong, and they want it to stop. Raiding corporations, like B.C. Hydro and ICBC, takes money away from ratepayers, and it generates a deep distrust. If a British Columbian is being billed for car insurance or paying for hydro usage, they expect that money to go towards those things to operate the corporation in a frugal manner and to provide a good service.

To have a government of the day scoop up accumulated money out of an already expensive service to paper over their own mismanagement is wrong. It is taxation without voice, consultation or consent, and it should stop.

Five, please turn ICBC into a co-op and open it up to competition. During the budget update in Victoria last month, the Minister of Finance listed ICBC as one of the top fiscal problems facing the province. She said that something would need to be done to fix that problem as these budget consultations go forward. We agree. ICBC needs an overhaul.

Drivers in British Columbia pay some of the highest insurance rates in Canada, and they are set to keep increasing. No matter how safe a driver is in B.C., that driver cannot shop around for the lowest auto insurance rate. They cannot bundle their basic car insurance with their home or property insurance. When compared to other jurisdictions, like Alberta, Nova Scotia and even Quebec, it’s astounding that B.C. drivers have been subjected to this expensive government monopoly for as long as they have.

We at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have offered a solution to this ongoing saga of ICBC: mutualize it. Turn it into a co-op owned by drivers, like the way that Mountain Equipment Co-op is run. Then take that newly formed ICBC co-op and open it up to competition from other companies for basic auto insurance.

This will create choice for B.C. drivers and reduce insurance rates through competition. It will shield B.C. drivers from unavoidable spikes and monopoly premium costs. It will also prevent politicians from raiding the ICBC coffers and manipulating this Crown corporation. ICBC will be an option, a co-op owned by drivers who choose it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Kris, you’re at nine minutes right now. You’ve got a minute left.

K. Sims: All right. I will chipmunk my way through this and speed things up.

Please don’t kill the Site C dam. While we continue to have concerns and share the many concerns about the amount of taxpayers’ dollars being spent on the Site C hydro dam megaproject, we also expect to get some return on this huge taxpayer investment. B.C. Hydro says that at this stage, killing Site C would cost taxpayers $7.3 billion. According to reports, that’s nearly the same amount as completing it, but we wouldn’t have a hydroelectric dam at the end of the journey.

[8:45 a.m.]

There’s a reason why many of our supporters want to see the Site C dam completed. They do want hydroelectricity to be an affordable source of stable and clean energy for the next generations of British Columbians.

Since we’re nearly out of time, one of the main reasons they’re concerned is that we’ve seen green energy things fail in places like Ontario, where they’ve got enormous spikes in hydro costs. So they really want a stable, affordable form of energy.

Seven, get government salaries on boards and councils under control. In some cases, folks who sit on these unelected boards and councils — things like TransLink — make more than the Prime Minister of Canada. That’s astounding to many ratepayers and taxpayers, and we would like some scrutiny there.

Eight, please don’t block the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. While we share the grave concerns about the environment, we also understand that the federal government, the Trudeau government, has approved this project. It’s under very heavy scrutiny, and we’re confident in the safety protocols.

Nine, please eliminate the vote tax. We were told during the last election that taxpayers wouldn’t be footing the bill to transition politicians away from money coming from unions and big corporations. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a transition fund that’s been imposed. We call that a vote tax. We were promised we weren’t going to get one, and we’re asking you to please repeal that.

Ten — this is what we were based on, what we were founded on, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. On behalf of B.C. taxpayers, please reduce spending and lower our taxes. Canadians surrender more than 40 percent of their incomes in taxes now, and B.C. is one of the most expensive places to live.

You’ve been hearing submissions, and will continue to hear many from groups throughout our great province, that are asking for more spending, more money and more government — fund this and subsidize that. We’re asking you to stop. We want you to reduce spending, cut taxes and shrink the government.

To finish off, one of B.C.’s most popular Premiers, W.A.C. Bennett, reportedly took taxpayers’ money so seriously that he would personally negotiate contracts down to the dollar, and he would ask his staff to come and ask his personal permission before making a long-distance phone call from their offices because it was costing taxpayers money.

Thank you very much for your time. I’m sorry if I’ve gone over time.

A. Weaver: Thanks. I find it quite remarkable, your comments on the Site C dam, in light of the fact your predecessor, Jordan Bateman, said: “This is such a massive investment. You better make sure that these numbers are solid and that the long-term interests are protected.”

We’re going through that process right now, yet your statement to us, here today, would suggest precluding that process, based solely on the unaudited numbers of B.C. Hydro. It’s hard for me to take the rest of your submission seriously when you’ve undermined your previous position so categorically while we’re in a process of review.

I also have questions as to…. You say you represent Canadian taxpayers. How many people do you actually consult when you put this document together?

K. Sims: I consulted our B.C. supporters, and we also have many, many thousands of supporters across Canada.

A. Weaver: I don’t care about the Canadians. I care about British Columbia. We’re a B.C. legislature. About how many did you actually consult before this was put together?

K. Sims: I would have to find that number for you, but they’re all of our B.C. supporters. We send out a survey, and I would get that number for you. I don’t have it right in front of me.

A. Weaver: Do you know about how many B.C. supporters you have?

K. Sims: Thousands.

A. Weaver: Okay. You have a process whereby they submit, and you make recommendations.

K. Sims: Yes.

A. Weaver: Okay. Why do you think it’s in your jurisdiction as a taxpayer to make recommendations on a pipeline, which has really got nothing to do with taxation?

K. Sims: I wanted to address both of those issues. With great respect, Dr. Weaver, that stage of the Site C dam is when I needed to start rushing through my presentation a little bit more than I would like to.

We deeply share the concerns about the Site C dam, and our supporters mostly want to see it go through, with cautions. They’re very, very concerned about the number of taxpayer dollars that have already gone into this. If I could just generalize….

A. Weaver: It’s not $7 billion. It’s a couple of billion — not $7 billion, the number you quoted.

K. Sims: The most recent number that I got from B.C. Hydro…. Again, it’s difficult to get the actual numbers. I heard again this morning on CKNW that it was a couple of billion. It’s billions of dollars.

A. Weaver: A couple of billion.

K. Sims: But a couple of billion is billions.

A. Weaver: I mean, it’s important. If you’re making a presentation to this committee where you’re using numbers that are clearly not correct….

[8:50 a.m.]

K. Sims: The latest numbers that I had were from B.C. Hydro, and again, that’s where we’re trying to get our numbers from. So I’m trying to trust the Crown corporation.

A. Weaver: I don’t want to have an argument.

K. Sims: Well, I understand.

A. Weaver: But I will say that the reason why we’re before the BCUC process right now is there has been no independent audit of those numbers. I would argue, an organization like yours, if it wants to remain credible, as you have done, should be pushing for such independent oversight of these numbers. You’re making it….

K. Sims: Oh, we want independent oversight.

A. Weaver: But you don’t, because you were just saying you wanted Site C to go ahead.

K. Sims: Again, like we said, we have severe cautions and concerns about this project, and I was trying to articulate that in our presentation. What I’m trying to do is to speak for our supporters. Our supporters, with caution, want to see it go forward at this stage. It’s because they’ve already seen so much investment go into it, and they’re very, very leery about the future if they don’t have very sustainable, very stable hydroelectric power that is affordable.

Again, sir, I do, personally and on behalf of our supporters, share your concerns. We fully want independent oversight for this project. We fully want numbers that we can trust. The latest number that I had, from an official Crown corporation, was the number that I included in my report. That’s what I’m trying to base this on. We’re very much looking forward to the review and the results coming forward.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to call a time-out.

K. Sims: Oh no, no. Oh no, I’m trying to agree with him, and I’m fully…. Okay.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, just we’re out of time. Thank you very much for your presentation. We won’t have any more time for questions. We’re done, but thank you very much for your presentation.

K. Sims: I appreciate it very much. Thank you all for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up, if we could call the B.C. Chiropractic Association — Dr. Jay Robinson.

Dr. Robinson, the floor is yours.

B.C. CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATION

J. Robinson: Thanks for the opportunity to present to you today. Thanks for your participation on this committee and for being all over the province like this.

I’m Dr. Jay Robinson. I’m the president of the British Columbia Chiropractic Association. We represent almost all of the doctors of chiropractic here in B.C. There are about 1,100 of us. That includes 200 that are in remote rural communities.

The package that you have in front of you contains a lot of information about chiropractic care in B.C. There are also references at the back, if there’s anything you’d like to look up or check. I’m just going to hit some of the high points.

There are over a million British Columbians who visit a chiropractor each year — a million individual British Columbians. A recent survey of Canadians shows that 90 percent of us have suffered some musculoskeletal pain in the previous 12 months. Half of those also have other medical conditions at the same time. Clearly, we all need to work together to best treat the patients and the people of British Columbia.

Studies show that over 90 percent of people who go to chiropractors report that they found that it helped with their pains and that it has reduced their need for pain medication, but almost 40 percent of the population has a financial barrier in the way of receiving the care they need. Many of those have turned to potentially harmful painkillers — opioids, other prescriptions and even street drugs now. That’s where our opioid crisis is coming from.

Our family doctor colleagues are telling us that one of the main reasons they don’t refer to chiropractic or physiotherapy, etc., is because they recognize these financial barriers for many of their patients, and they’re uncomfortable in sending patients out for care that they may not be able to afford to actually get. It’s important to note that almost one-third of all visits to our family doctors are for musculoskeletal care. That’s the care that the chiropractors and physiotherapists give. My apologies for a few duplicate slides in there.

Chiropractors are unique in their ability to diagnose, treat and prevent these musculoskeletal conditions. In fact, it’s recognized. The Doctors of B.C. now have a musculoskeletal module that they’re using to educate the family physicians, and in it, they recommend spinal manipulation. That’s chiropractic care. It’s like a mini-primer on chiropractic. In fact, we work with a variety of other health care organizations, all of us working together for the patients of B.C. — which, as we saw earlier, are almost all of us now.

It brings up the question: do we really need more medical doctors? A lot of the public outcry says that we do. But maybe we don’t. The Doctors of B.C. and the B.C. Chiropractic Association both believe that if we use our existing doctors better, there is no shortage.

Back to that 40 percent that have financial barriers to receiving care. That’s the opioid crisis here in B.C. Studies have shown that between 40 and 50 percent of opioid users are low-back patients. In fact, 12 percent of British Columbia residents are dispensed an opioid prescription each year.

[8:55 a.m.]

The lowest-income group uses triple the amount of opioids that the highest-income group uses. You can see the costs associated with that problem. It’s on the top slide on page 7. You’re currently spending an unbelievable $48,000 per year for each opioid addict, not to mention all the needless opioid overdose deaths.

There are new guidelines that are trying to help with this problem. The fact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. requires having a discussion with patients, a documented discussion, about conservative management of pain first…. Conservative management is, again, chiropractic care.

Didn’t we just see there is little or no coverage or treatment available to the lower-income group of British Columbians? Yeah. Musculoskeletal treatment providers were all delisted in January 2002 by the previous government. Musculoskeletal treatment is what these patients require. When they can’t get it, they’ve been left to get opioids. When they can’t get opioids, they’re left looking for street drugs. Close to 2,000 of those people have died in the last two years from overdose.

Since delisting musculoskeletal care in 2002, we’ve seen an enormous rise in surgical wait-lists, excessive imaging tests being ordered, and an almost unbelievable opioid crisis and skyrocketing of costs. The coverage that is available for those on premium assistance was frozen at 1990s levels. The compensation offered to the caregivers is well below the poverty level. No one in health care can afford to treat patients for those dollars, and the patients who need the care can’t afford the extra charges that are required in order to receive the care. The system is not helping those who need it the most.

What about extended benefits? Only half of British Columbians have extended health care insurance. Again, it’s the upper-income earners who typically have this, not those in the bottom third who need the majority of care.

What else has happened to these patients? Well, they’re getting referred to surgical consult as well as diagnostic imaging that they don’t often need. VGH alone has almost 6,000 patients waiting for a consultation with a back surgeon. The surgeons are telling us that over 90 percent of those on this wait-list are not surgical cases. In fact, Vancouver General Hospital does refer patients to chiropractors as part of the spine flex program at ICORD. But once again, you have to be able to afford it.

Here at the Chiropractic Association, we stepped up and offered, at our cost and as part of a study, to do the initial exams for the surgeons because chiropractors and the surgeons do the same exams. We had several on staff at VGH very excited about this. Unfortunately, chiropractors still do not have B.C.-wide access to the patient record system knows as the PAC system. So this project is currently on hold.

Chiropractors do have access to the PAC system on Vancouver Island, so we’ve been able to create a joint initiative between chiropractic, Vancouver General Hospital, Island Health and the Cowichan Valley division of family practice in an effort to provide timely diagnosis and treatment for low back and spinal stenosis patients there. The Chiropractic Association is paying for the whole thing. We’d sure love some help.

We’re part of other initiatives and partnerships too. There are numerous of them mentioned in that document. As you can see, we’re becoming very valued members of the interdisciplinary teams.

Where we are being used, we’re opening up access to family physicians practices by managing their musculoskeletal patients, which is increasing capacity for patients with other conditions. We’re reducing wait times and duplications of treatments visits. We’re offering conservative care for patients with musculoskeletal pain. The studies are showing that this dramatically reduces opioid and other drug use, while at the same time increasing the patient’s functional capacity in their daily life.

There are some studies in there that showed zero percent opioid use when chiropractors were involved from the beginning — and decreases in opioid use. It’s saving money. There are some strong cost-effectiveness figures at the bottom of your page 9 there. There are 28 percent fewer visits to family physicians as a result.

The Ontario study showed MRI requests were reduced by 27 percent when chiropractors are involved. Those tests are about $1,000 each. That segues perfectly into a discussion on diagnostic imaging. X-rays, CTs, MRIs, etc. — that’s diagnostic imaging. It’s already part of the chiropractic scope of practice here in B.C. In many parts of Canada, these tests are covered by the provincial medical plans, but not here.

Here in B.C., it’s a different, frustrating story. When patients present to a chiropractor with a condition that requires imaging, they must go back to their medical doctor in order to get the referral to the imaging lab. Then they have to go back to their medical doctor again to get the results. Only then can they go to the chiropractor for treatment. This often delays the patient’s care a month or more, which leads to chronicity, which is the creation of yet another chronic pain patient.

[9:00 a.m.]

Currently 20 percent of British Columbians suffer from chronic pain. That’s one out of every five of us. That’s not to mention the increased costs for medical doctor visits that aren’t really required. These visits take up needed space and waste valuable time in our medical colleagues’ offices. Further — tragically, further — when some patients go to hospitals and X-ray labs, they’re being told they must pay up to $60 to receive their test results.

If chiropractors in B.C. all had access to the PAC system, this would never again happen to B.C. patients. This costs nothing to implement, just a word from you. Studies show that it will be cheaper, and less tests will be ordered if you do this. This needs to happen now to prevent further delay to British Columbians receiving care and further expense for our beleaguered health care system.

Yes, we are aware of the connect care system that will address some of these PACS issues. However, we’re also being told that it’ll be a decade before we’re part of connect care. That’s still another decade people are waiting.

We recommend and ask that you consider that we be part of the team, integrated into collaborative, interdisciplinary teams; and that funding be restored to the group of people who can’t afford and have no other choice; and that care be streamlined, so we don’t have these wait-lists and the PAC system is available to all of British Columbians.

Thanks for listening today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Robinson.

Questions?

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation, Dr. Robinson.

You say that there are ten years expected before you get access to connect care. I don’t know this system. You mentioned PACS as well. I’m just wondering: what is this ten years about?

J. Robinson: That’s a really good question. We don’t really know what that’s about.

Connect care is the system that is supposed to be replacing PACS. In the long term, it’s being developed. The PAC system is an on-line computer system that allows all the physicians access to all the patients’ records. The connect care system will allow everyone access to their records, apparently.

In the conversations I’ve had with the Doctors of B.C. and others, they’re saying: “Yeah, it’ll come in. Chiropractic will be on it eventually, but it could be a decade.” That’s all the information that we have. I have not got any further response in reaching out to the connect care people.

J. Brar: Thanks, Dr. Robinson, for your presentation.

You made three recommendations. I just want to ask you: do you have any study done elsewhere to support these recommendations?

J. Robinson: Absolutely. Some of them are referenced in the back. We’ve got lots of stuff going on in Ontario, where these things are all going on already, and we’re seeing the benefit of this. We have dramatic differences in Alberta, where things like this are already being done. This is not unique, and we’re not asking for something that isn’t functioning somewhere else.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. Very interesting. I think we all learned a lot about this. I wasn’t aware of the connection between opioid and chiropractic, and that’s very compelling, very interesting. Thank you.

J. Robinson: Thank you. Yeah. It’s not a natural jump, is it?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, no. Thank you very much.

Okay. Next up we have the College of the Rockies Faculty Association — Joan Kaun.

Hi, Joan. How are you?

J. Kaun: Good morning.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The floor is all yours.

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

J. Kaun: Good morning. Welcome to Cranbrook.

I’m Joan Kaun. I’m an instructor in the office administration program at the College of the Rockies and president of the College of the Rockies Faculty Association. Our association represents over 200 full- and part-time instructors at our seven campuses in the East Kootenay region. Programs at our college include trades, health, business, arts and science, English language training and adult basic education.

My message to you today will focus on the needs and priorities of rural regions of B.C. that need to be addressed in the upcoming provincial budget. I’m sure you’ll hear similar topics from my colleagues throughout the province.

First, I’d like to thank our new government for moving rapidly this summer to reinstate funding for ABE and English language training, allowing those programs to once again to be accessed tuition-free. Our college was one of the last to reinstate tuition in January of 2016 and was one of the first to jump on and promote free tuition this summer. I don’t have specific data, but I do know that our numbers were lower in ABE and they’re gaining again this year, so that’s a great move.

[9:05 a.m.]

At the College of the Rockies, we pride ourselves on building relationships with our students and giving them a high-quality and affordable post-secondary experience close to home. As an example, a first-year student in arts and science has tuition fees of about $5,000. But a student who has to leave our area to take the same courses in the Lower Mainland will pay approximately $18,000 because of additional living expenses.

Providing affordable quality close to home is becoming increasingly challenging with the funding restraints we are facing. Public post-secondary education in B.C. has been experiencing serious funding challenges for several years. The per-student operating grants have declined since 2001 by 20 percent, when adjusted for inflation.

Colleges, institutes and universities are forced to seek other sources of funding to make up for the shortfall. Tuition fees are annually increased by 2 percent — the maximum allowed. Some programs have been redesigned so tuition fees can be re-established and exceed that 2 percent limit. Recruitment of international students increases each year, and partnerships are becoming more and more common.

The cost of post-secondary education is being shifted to students and families. An annual tuition fee of 2 percent may not sound significant, but many students face additional fees — including for technology use, printing fees and textbooks — that are not capped at 2 percent. When you consider that wages aren’t increasing significantly, but groceries and other living expenses are, it’s becoming more and more difficult for students to find the resources they need to balance their educational budgets. Education is becoming an opportunity for the rich. Students shouldn’t be treated unfairly because of income or that they live in the rural areas.

The funding formula is not adapted for specific community needs. Rural community colleges and large, urban ones are all funded based on estimates of student FTEs. The funding pressures on rural colleges differ from urban centres. The potential student population is lower and further spread out geographically.

David mentioned earlier how large our area is. It takes about five or six hours to cover our furthest campuses. We must provide services at multiple campuses and recognize that many locations still rely on limited Internet services.

Student housing at the Cranbrook campus is also a huge challenge. Even students in our own East Kootenay area often need a place to live. It’s just too far to commute. We share this as a priority with our administration, as was presented earlier by our president.

Recruiting more international students has definitely increased our revenues and grown the diversity of our college and community, but it does bring additional challenges. International students require additional support services, including tutoring, exam invigilation, educational advising, counselling, registration services and basic computer, math and English support.

Our faculty also needs support to understand these students and resources to ensure quality education. Many faculty find themselves offering longer office hours, struggling with ensuring integrity of exams and spending extra time supporting basic skills.

Domestic students also need additional support services to assist them in understanding and dealing with the cultural differences. Unfortunately, the goal to increase international students to help balance the budget means domestic students are not always able to enrol into the courses or programs of their choice. Faculty and support services are stretched to the maximum and beyond.

Students, domestic and international, shouldn’t be referred to as revenue-generating units, but this does happen in our province. Students should be valued as learners, contributors to the education community and contributors to our communities, economically and socially. They should be given opportunities to learn without encountering financial barriers — their own and the institution’s.

Provincially, operating grants are the largest investment that the provincial government makes in post-secondary institutions. Today’s grants are $18 million lower than they were four years ago, with the system funded at the same level as 2010-11. To put it into context, 25 years ago, institutions received operating grants that amounted to 80 percent of their revenues. Now most of the large institutions receive just over 40 percent. College of the Rockies is at about 48 percent. Public operating grants are no longer able to meet the underlying cost pressures facing post-secondary institutions in B.C.

[9:10 a.m.]

Community colleges have borne the brunt of underfunding of post-secondary education. We encourage you to strengthen community colleges by reinvesting provincial dollars into local educational opportunities. Reinstating envelope funding to provide assurance that core programs will continue to be available to all, no matter where you live, would be a huge step in the right direction.

Similar options exist to reduce the financial burden to post-secondary students. We commend the government for the actions they’ve already taken to make post-secondary education more affordable, including the decision to lower the interest rate on student loans and for their goal to make student loans interest-free. We urge the government to make student loans interest-free as soon as possible.

Lastly, we ask the government to follow the recommendations of this committee from the previous three years and change the institution mandate letters to allow capital funding requirements that would allow institutions to finance self-supportive capital projects, including student residences and housing. We support the college’s priorities that were presented to you earlier this morning.

Thank you very much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Joan. I have a quick question for you.

We’ve actually heard a lot about international students in this tour, but there haven’t actually been a lot of solutions. It’s like there’s a reliance on international students for revenues for colleges and universities, but the students are saying we should, you know, cap or deal with their tuition fees. Do you have any thoughts on what this committee can do in terms of recommendations? We have a lot of people bringing it up, but not a lot of ideas and solutions. Do you have any thoughts about that?

J. Kaun: Increase our block funding, and then we can reduce our need for recruiting the internationals.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re saying if you decrease the reliance on international students, that it would naturally take care of itself. Is that part of the solution?

J. Kaun: It would help. We are recruiting. We’re trying to…. Our increase this year was, I think I heard on the radio this morning, 139 additional international students. That was a lot. We had a huge influx. Our college was great at increasing instructors in certain programs.

We have some programs…. Our business admin program right now has 66 percent international students. It’s a huge impact on the domestic students as well, and some are going elsewhere.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, that’s a good point. Is that actually taking away domestic seats, do you think, or not?

J. Kaun: I think some of them are choosing to leave.

R. Leonard: She said something that twigged something that I maybe should have asked the college itself. Since you brought it up, I’ll ask you.

J. Kaun: Maybe they can help answer.

R. Leonard: You made the point about your adult basic education, that your college was one of the last to get rid of the tuition. What I recognize is that different colleges have charged different amounts for the adult basic education and the tuition, and in doing that, they’ve obviously taken it out of other sources of revenues.

One of the challenges that I heard early on was that in restoring the free tuition for adult basic education, it’s going to be different across the different colleges, and by having been more altruistic about providing the adult basic education, you are then being penalized because you are not being restored to the same level as somebody else, some other institution that charged more.

J. Kaun: That’s our understanding.

I have to correct you. Our college was one of the last to start charging the tuition fees, back in 2016.

R. Leonard: Right. I thought that’s what I said. Obviously not.

Because that’s come to mind, I guess the question is: how can we be more equitable in terms of responding to that free tuition without penalizing the colleges that have been more supportive of students?

J. Kaun: Wow. That’s a detail that I’m not…. I don’t know the answer.

R. Leonard: Perhaps the college, having heard that question, will be able to respond in a submission.

B. D’Eith (Chair): They can always follow up after.

J. Kaun: That would be good.

S. Cadieux: Thank you for your presentation. Again, my question is about adult basic education as well. I don’t know if you’ll know this, but perhaps if you don’t, you can get this information for me. I’m curious to know what the completion rates are for adult basic education courses — the number of students that enter a course in the beginning and how many actually complete the course.

[9:15 a.m.]

J. Kaun: That information I don’t know, but I will look into it.

J. Brar: You were saying that the provincial grant to you — the operating grant, I’m talking about — used to be, in 2010-2011, about 80 percent. Now it has gone down to almost between 40 to 48 percent.

J. Kaun: I believe it was 2001 that it was closer to 80 percent.

J. Brar: Okay. Now it’s gone down to almost 40 to 50 percent. You are receiving 48 percent. What is your ultimate source of revenue? Is that international student fees? Is there any other stream of revenue?

J. Kaun: Dianne mentioned earlier that international projects and students account for 30 percent of our gross revenue, and 48 percent is government funding. That leaves 22 percent from other.

J. Brar: The second question that I want to ask, I asked, probably, some other institutions too. This overdependence of revenue on international student fees, is this is not a kind of dangerous situation for institutions like yours if somehow the international students withdraw for any reason, or something happens?

J. Kaun: We think the international students do have an impact on our local….We’re a community college, and we appear to be focusing more on our international than we are recruiting our local students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think our committee has just come on to Pacific Time. All of a sudden, the questions started coming up.

Thank you very much, Joan. We really appreciate your time. Hopefully, the college is listening to some of the questions we asked. We’d be very happy to receive any supplemental information.

Next up we have Special Olympics B.C. That’s Dan Howe. Hi, Dan.

SPECIAL OLYMPICS B.C.

D. Howe: Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Dan Howe. I’m the CEO of Special Olympics B.C.

When Special Olympics started in B.C. 37 years ago, we knew that giving people with intellectual disabilities the chance to participate in sport could transform their feelings about themselves, building confidence, restoring pride and opening a door to a more hopeful future. But we never realized the transformative impact that Special Olympics would have on communities around the province.

Sport does for Special Olympic athletes what it does for any athlete. It builds skills and confidence. It create friendships. It lets athletes feel the things that they may normally never feel. But with Special Olympics, it does much more.

We want to thank all of those in government for the financial support we receive. Without this support, we simply could not offer the range of life-changing experiences that we do.

One of the most important focuses of Special Olympics B.C. is to improve the health of individuals with intellectual disabilities through sport. People with intellectual disabilities make up approximately 1 to 2 percent of the population yet, as a group, experience poorer health than the general population.

Studies have found that men with an intellectual disability will die 13 years younger than those without and that females will die up to 20 years younger than those without an intellectual disability. This is not okay, especially since these same studies have found that the primary cause of these premature deaths was preventable lifestyle factors such as a lack of exercise and poor diet.

Other research suggests that 36 percent of children with intellectual disabilities have psychiatric disorders, as compared to 8 percent of children without intellectual disabilities.

[9:20 a.m.]

And 39 to 68 percent of female children and 16 to 30 percent of male children with a disability will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Only 34.3 percent of women with intellectual disabilities in Ontario were screened for cervical cancer, compared to 66.8 percent of their peers.

Obesity in children with ID was found to be two to three times more likely than in their non-disabled peers. Through Special Olympics health screening data, 30 percent of children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities, globally, were found to be obese, but that jumps to 46.2 percent for males and 57.7 percent for females in North America. It is suggested that only 7 to 8 percent of people with intellectual disabilities eat a balanced diet.

In an attempt to manage challenging or aggressive behaviour, people with intellectual disabilities are often prescribed multiple psychotropic medications concurrently. These same medications can further lead to medical complications like obesity and diabetes.

Yet all is not bad. A pilot project in Kansas involved 282 consultations, utilized a multidisciplinary team approach to review medication and care plans and saw a $3.1 million reduction in health care costs after the costs of the interventions were deducted. This was achieved through reductions in medications, emergency room diversions and in-patient diversions. We, too, can reduce our health care costs, while giving a better level of health care to individuals with intellectual disabilities.

I mentioned that health is a major focus of Special Olympics B.C. Not only are we trying to encourage individuals with an intellectual disability to get active, but we also do a lot of work around nutrition, healthy lifestyles and education. Still, we only reach a small percentage of the population in B.C. who have an intellectual disability. We need to get more people active and more people eating better.

Additionally, we run healthy athlete screenings in in different communities that are open to any person with an intellectual disability, whether they’re in Special Olympics or not. We run screenings for Opening Eyes, Special Smiles, Healthy Hearing, Fit Feet, Health Promotion, FUNfitness and Strong Minds. All are free and conducted by medical professionals. For example, in the Opening Eyes section, anyone needing prescription glasses receives them for free. Through our sponsorships, we are able to offer that.

Last spring Special Olympics B.C. invited agencies and organizations that support individuals with intellectual disabilities to meet regarding the health of individuals. Approximately 70 individuals attended, representing over 40 agencies. There is great support to work together to address the health issues that so many individuals with intellectual disabilities face.

Our goal is simple. We want to eliminate the health disparities between people with intellectual disabilities and the general public and, in so doing, reduce health care costs. How we achieve our goal, however, is not simple. While we have great support of this goal, we need help. We need help with policy. We need help with maneuvering through government. We need help reaching out to people. We need help to coordinate all the good work that can be done by those in the field willing to help. We simply will not solve this issue without the support of government.

With respect, we ask for the government’s support to establish an office of health services for individuals with intellectual disabilities dedicated to eliminating the health disparities that currently exist. This office is needed to capture and coordinate the momentum we’ve already made. We have over 40 organizations which care deeply about this and are willing to help.

With a small stimulus, together we could restructure services and then support it in a way that will reduce costs on the health care system, even after the costs of the offices are factored in. The person hired would work with community agencies, government ministries and medical professionals to make the province a leader in health care for people with intellectual disabilities.

After all, do people with intellectual disabilities not deserve the same level of health care as others? We have many people and agencies willing to help get us there, but we need government to help us.

Support is also needed to introduce us to key people in government that could help us with this, assist with the research needed here in B.C. to gain a full and complete understanding of the issues and to help break down the barriers to good health that currently exist.

[9:25 a.m.]

Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today. And thank you for providing us with the funding and support needed to provide these important programs and opportunities. We couldn’t do it without you.

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

S. Cadieux: I’m very aware of the health issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and also their tremendous ability to contribute despite their lack of ability, in many cases, given other biases in society that we’re still working on. That said, it’s an interesting proposal.

Do you have any estimation of what setting up a centre like this would cost?

D. Howe: We believe that the key thing is having somebody within government who could assist us in coordinating everything. When we’re talking about an office of health services, we’re not talking about a huge administrative branch or anything. We’re simply talking about somebody with the ability to make connections and make recommendations and get to the right people.

Even more so, we’ve got all of these agencies willing to help. Right now we’re trying to coordinate it while we’re running our own programs, and we’re just finding it overwhelming. So we don’t look at this as a huge endeavour.

S. Cadieux: Great. I’m just going to follow up with that, though. In my experience, both in and out of government — by that, I mean in the advocacy world and in the non-profit world before government, and now having been within the government structure for eight years — I would argue the best place for something like this is probably not inside the bureaucracy.

I’m not sure that a coordinating body within the ministry is actually useful. However, I would agree you would need people who were dedicated contact people, like a contact point. But I don’t know that you’d want any kind of coordination operated through government. I’m just cautioning.

D. Howe: The reason we’re suggesting that is there are so many touch points within government that affect the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

For example, we know all of the good work that is being done through some of the ministries, and we need to be able to make some changes within some of those areas as well, in terms of policies around the amount of time a doctor can spend with somebody with an intellectual disability. Sometimes the individual cannot explain their problem in the time allocated to them, so they don’t get the proper care.

We need to have more support around those people who are running group homes — that the meals they provide are nutritious meals, that they are encouraged to support that. We need our support activity…. We need support of the education system so that we can encourage activities at very young ages of people within there.

We believe that having somebody with some influence in government can work with all of those agencies to help us with that. We also know that we have a lot of support in the field who are willing to work on that as well. Special Olympics B.C., for example, is going to continue to do our work on healthy athlete screening. It’s going to continue to do our work on all of that. But we also know that we work with a lot of other agencies and that by coordinating all of us, we can do a much better job.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Dan, I’m just curious. I wonder if this falls in a crack somewhere, in terms of all the ministries. Have you talked to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions — the new minister, Judy Darcy — at all? There’s a new ministry set up to deal with mental health.

Now, I know that this is slightly different, in a sense. There might be genetic issues. But do you also deal with people with brain injuries? How large a net do you deal with, in terms of the individuals that you work with?

In fact, there’s already a new ministry that may be able to interface and provide some of that structure. The whole point of what you’re talking about is exactly why there’s a new ministry. It’s because of all the touch points throughout all the ministries. That’s why there was a need for a new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. I’m just wondering if it would be worth talking directly to the minister to see if there’s a potential fit there, in terms of getting some help from the new ministry. Have you thought of that at all?

[9:30 a.m.]

D. Howe: One of the things that we’re asking for is to help us connect with the various people in the various ministries. People with…. Your question about brain injuries. If it happens after the age of 18, then they’re not considered part of our program. It must be before.

We believe that we need to touch so many agencies. Mental Health is one, and it’s a big one. But we also need to work with Health. We need to work with Education. We need to work with many of the agencies out there. Whoever can help us do that, we’d appreciate the support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I would encourage you to talk to the minister in the new ministry, because there might be an interface there. I realize it might not be a perfect fit. But the reason why that ministry was set up was exactly what you’re talking about: the intersection with education and health care and, in your case, sport and the whole thing.

S. Cadieux: I’m just going to add as well, and I’m not sure…. Have you had these conversations with the office of the Advocate for Service Quality?

D. Howe: Not yet.

S. Cadieux: Yeah, I think that would be the best place to start because that office does have a mandate to support cross-government access to services for people with intellectual disabilities. That’s in the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, it’s a difficult one. You’re right. It does fit into so many interactions with so many different ministries. Those are great suggestions.

Thank you very much, Dan, and thanks for all the work you do with the Special Olympics. We really appreciate your coming in.

Next up we have Anydos, via teleconference — Annastasia Oraegbunem. Are you there? Hello?

Oh, Mitzi is on the line. Mitzi, are you there?

M. Dean: Yeah, I’m here, Bob.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, good. Okay. We’ve got Mitzi.

We’re going to take a short recess until we get our next presenter.

The committee recessed from 9:32 a.m. to 9:50 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hello, is this Greg Brown? Hi, Greg. Bob D’Eith here, Chair of the Finance Committee. So you’re with the Smithers Wellness Local Action Team via teleconference?

G. Brown: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, you have the floor. Please go ahead.

SMITHERS WELLNESS LOCAL ACTION TEAM

G. Brown: Thank you very much. I’m in the room with Cheryl Hofweber, and she’ll join in with the presentation as we go along.

My name is Greg Brown. I am a member of the local action team in Smithers. I’m also an elected councillor for the town of Smithers, although I don’t represent the town of Smithers with this presentation. I just represent myself as a member of the local action team.

You may or may not be aware of the local action teams in the province. But just to back up and give the 50,000-foot level, Shared Care, which was an agreement between the Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health, I believe started up in 2013 with funding from both the Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health.

One of the joint programs out of that umbrella agreement was the Child and Youth Mental Health and Substance Use Collaborative. Their aim was to tackle the so-called wicked problem, or the challenging problem, of mental health and substance use with children and youth, as we know is such an important issue in our communities and leads to such short-term and long-term consequences. It’s really flaring up now with the opioid crisis.

It means a lot to lots of people. One of the things that they started with was eight local action teams in the interior of B.C., which have, over the years, expanded to 60 local action teams around the province. This has included Smithers.

Maybe at this point, I’ll pass the phone over to Cheryl, and she can describe the makeup of the local action team in Smithers and how long it’s been going for. We’ll come back to me.

C. Hofweber: The north was invited to join the collaborative in December 2015. So we’ve been functioning as a local action team for almost two years. The team is made up of people from various agencies: MCFD; we have a physician on board; child and youth mental health; Northern Health is involved; many local representatives; as well, parents and youth have been on the committee.

The idea is that the system isn’t working as it is now. How, from the grassroots level, do we make it user-friendly, do we help parents navigate a very complex system when they’re in crisis? How do we get more collaboration?

That’s what we’ve been doing. Through the collaborative, we’ve been introduced to the ACEs study, to trauma-informed schools, to trauma-informed communities and to the public health crises that present and the understanding that if we can work here preventively and do interventions, we can impact the quality of life for many people as well as the long-term health costs.

That’s the mission of the local action team right now. We have probably over 150 people in the community who have been trained through trauma-informed conferences, locally, and we’ve had school conferences as well. We’re planting some big seeds and working with the community to nurture this.

We’re at the information level, the discussion, and where do we go from here.

G. Brown: Thanks, Cheryl. It’s back to Greg.

That helps. I can tell you my story about how I got involved with the local action team. It was kind of a circular fashion. Reconciliation Canada hosted a truth and reconciliation dialogue in the Bulkley Valley. In that day, we talked about the intergenerational trauma from residential school systems. One of the facilitators from Reconciliation Canada referenced trauma-informed schools and talked about it with a lot of promise and talked about it with a lot of hope. It really intrigued me, so after that day, I started asking around.

[9:55 a.m.]

It turns out that the local action team was organizing around this idea of a trauma-informed lens. The next week there was going to be a woman from UNBC, an expert in ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, and trauma-informed practice. Her name is Linda O’Neill. I went to that workshop, and my eyes widened wide open to the applicability of looking at societal issues and societal challenges and societal opportunities through the lens of early childhood experiences. Adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, really has a high fidelity to science.

They’re really bringing the lens of what we know about neurobiology to the brain and introducing people and making them aware of what happens when there’s sort of a high level of stress in a person’s early life. It really sets them off on the wrong foot.

Coming out of that are a bunch of strategies. They’re kind of commonsense strategies that people use. They’re not complex. But in school systems, in ER rooms, in homeless shelters, intervention on inappropriate behaviour in street populations, a trauma-informed approach can really move the needle in terms of getting people back into care they need.

Also, the second thing why it’s so promising is that it fosters individual resilience. It starts putting the onus or the responsibility of getting people back onto a better footing, onto a better course, making better decisions for themselves — it gives the responsibility back to the individual who’s having the issues in the first place.

For me, the high-level framing…. As a politician, I like to call it a way to build compassionate communities or communities of compassion and opportunity. I think it goes hand in hand. I don’t think this approach really invites people to take a compassionate look at people’s issues.

I think there’s a lot of applicability, both with the framework of trauma-informed practice and ACEs. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to roll out. I know it’s rolling out well in our school systems now.

The high school in Smithers is really taking a lead on this and building a culture of applying this. It’s early stages, but it looks promising. I would make a plug for this approach, for a grassroots, community-based, collaboratively-designed approach to these wicked problems, like child and youth mental health.

At some point, things need to be bureaucratized and implemented across the province. But there’s real hope in giving resources to allow someone like Cheryl to be brought on in a paid capacity to organize people and to share and use the wisdom of the community to try to solve these problems.

At the heart of it, I believe part of the solution is a more relationship-based intervention. If we, as a community, can come together and get families to intervene in a relationship-based intervention, get families first and empower our families to help solve their children’s mental health and substance use problems, I think it’ll get less reliant on government intervention and really costly interventions.

I’m painting a big picture here with broad strokes. But my sense on this as a political person who’s dealing with homelessness, who’s dealing with drug use…. We try to reduce crime and violence in our communities. We’re also trying to get more and more kids through the high school system and graduated and on to other successful roles in our economy.

I think getting this framework into the schools is a really promising one. Getting this framework into doctor’s offices is a promising one. Getting this framework into ER rooms is a promising one.

I don’t know what your budget looks like going forward, in terms of supporting shared care or supporting the collaborative and the local action teams, but this is a plug to say that the local action teams in Smithers were a very good investment. Even if the funding doesn’t continue, we will continue. We’ll have to scrape by and find ways to resource our programming.

I think it’s been a success, so far, in the Smithers region. I’ll leave it at that. We’re open for questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Greg and Cheryl. Questions from the committee?

[10:00 a.m.]

Not seeing any questions, thank you very, very much for your presentation and your commitment. Local activation like this is very, very interesting, and we’ll certainly discuss that as a committee. Thank you very much.

G. Brown: Thanks for your time. Bye for now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next we’d like to call Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce — Susan Clovechok.

Hello, Susan. The floor is yours.

COLUMBIA VALLEY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

S. Clovechok: Thank you. As the executive director for the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce, and on behalf of our board of directors, I thank the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the opportunity to make this presentation today.

The Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce is an organization within the business community, promoting and supporting responsible commerce through effective advocacy, communication, networking and education, on behalf of our membership.

Our chamber represents 276 member businesses from the 11 communities that we serve. In addition to typical chamber activities, we assist in facilitating conversations and providing meeting space for individuals who wish to provide economic opportunities for our communities, and we are the first point of contact for business owners wishing to sell their businesses and investors seeking to invest in local businesses.

My presentation today will address issues as they relate and affect the economic well-being of our region in the Columbia Valley.

Firstly, we ask the government to continue the rural dividend, a program developed to promote and build capacity in rural communities for continued economic diversity, resiliency and growth. Our communities have received approximately $780,000 in funding from the rural dividend program during the first two intakes, and we await the announcements on the third intake.

The funding has enabled development of the Columbia Valley Economic Development Commission and the hiring of our first economic development officer in collaboration with the RDEK area directors and the villages and municipalities in our area; the development of an economic development plan for Canal Flats — a community that was impacted by a mill closure in 2015 — and the capacity to execute that plan; and the building of a 25-kilometre paved trail, a tourism asset connecting the communities of Invermere and Fairmont Hot Springs.

In fact, today, as I speak, 775 local school children are preparing to run the first paved six kilometres of that trail, the westside legacy trail, in the Run for Dreams. These children were all invited to raise $20 on pledge forms, but yesterday I heard from the director that most have raised over $100 each, which speaks to the community support and belief in this project.

However, without the rural dividend fund and the support of many other community members, those 775 kids would not have the chance to participate in the largest running event ever held in our valley, nor contribute and learn about the power of community, which is an unintended positive outcome of the project and of the rural dividend fund.

These initiatives are all projects identified by the community and supported by the community to help our local economies be strong and resilient. They increase our capacity for economic growth in ways that are reflective of our unique vision. The rural dividend is a successful program, and we urge the government to continue the program. I believe that there are applications awaiting.

My next initiative that I’d like to talk about is the resort municipality initiative, RMI. We’d like this program to continue, but it needs to be reviewed in detail with a view to empower resort municipalities to develop their tourism destinations in a way that is meaningful and sustainable.

The allocation of funds and the regulations need to be reviewed. In many respects, these funds are similar to the rural dividend and could potentially be moved into the rural dividend, thereby eliminating the need to administer a separate program or create additional resort municipalities. This is something we’d like the government to take a close look at — at the opportunities for improvement.

Our next issue is public transportation. As you are well aware, Greyhound is eliminating routes in rural communities, impacting our ability to retain our citizens who are unable to drive themselves but require access to larger centres — in our case, often out of province — for medical and social purposes.

[10:05 a.m.]

This issue impacts not only seniors, but all demographics within our community. The chamber asks that the government review transportation options made available to rural communities, as current programs are designed primarily with urban settings in mind.

In the Columbia Valley, we have B.C. Transit service that operates Monday through Friday and a medical service — Health Connections, from Interior Health — that operates Mondays and Fridays, except on long weekends, to the regional hospital in Cranbrook. We do not have any service on weekends and, until just this August, no reasonable transportation service into Calgary, where many specialist medical appointments take place. The Greyhound solution that we have now requires a 16-hour overnight trip — not a great option for anyone, particularly our seniors.

Therefore, despite our limited capacity, the chamber worked with a member to provide a biweekly service to Calgary. The service operates Wednesdays and Thursdays every other week to allow for overnight stays. It isn’t ideal, but ridership is growing.

We have subsidized this service through the sale of advertising on the bus, but we only have the funds to operate until approximately February. If, at that time, the ridership doesn’t sustain the service, we may be forced to discontinue the service. Finding an alternative in additional funding is a challenge, since we are working with a for-profit business to provide an important community service. I am confident that we could find the funding. However, it will be time-consuming, in particular for organizations like ours with limited human resource capacity.

We would like the flexibility, through the B.C. Transit funding, to create transit solutions for our community that meet the needs of our community but don’t fit into a box predetermined by urban centres.

For the next three items, we’ve worked with young chamber member Eden Yesh to develop policy, of which I have provided you copies. We submitted two of these policies to the delegates of the B.C. chamber AGM this past May. Both policies were adopted by the delegates unanimously.

Briefly, because you do have it in writing: mobilizing rural investment. Access to investment capital is crucial to business and economic development anywhere, but it is especially important to rural areas. Research initiatives completed by the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition, the B.C. Economic Development Association and the Rural Development Institute have noted that it’s often difficult to access business financing, specifically patient equity investment financing, in rural communities.

We recommend that the government create a B.C. economic and development investment fund program which would enable individuals within B.C. communities to pool their capital together and invest in local for-profit entities. These funds would be controlled by a local group of officers and directors who may be chosen by the founders of each CEDIF or by the CEDIF’s investors at an annual general meeting.

The second policy that we submitted to the B.C. chamber and that was adopted is improving capital-raising exemptions for B.C. cooperatives. There is an opportunity to increase the retention and circulation of B.C.’s hard-earned money in our own province. That will lead to meaningful job creation, increased provincial tax revenues, increased local wealth and economic resiliency. Cooperatives are democratic corporations with considerable investor protections and director accountability mechanisms built into the legislation under which they are incorporated.

The chamber recommends that the government make changes to the existing co-op securities regulations by amending BCI 45-530 in the following ways: increase the $5,000 cap per investor by raising it to a higher maximum or allow a $5,000 maximum contribution per calendar year; remove the twelve-month membership requirement for purchasing investment shares; significantly increase the maximum number of investors allowed in a community investment co-op — currently it’s capped at 150; and establish a total investment portfolio level where B.C. co-ops would be required to use the offering memorandum exemption under the B.C. Securities Act.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

The last one that I’ve added — and I apologize for the printout, but I added it quickly this morning — is to talk about regulating and managing emerging short-term rental business enterprises. This is the Airbnb. We’d like to see…. I’m sure you’ve heard this throughout the province and will continue to hear it. Municipalities need the province to regulate and manage so that they can take action in their communities.

[10:10 a.m.]

The number of Airbnbs is, in fact, impacting our ability for affordable housing and staff housing for our tourism industry as well.

In conclusion, the Columbia Valley and rural areas of similar profile in the province need to be considered by the government as the government creates the 2018 budget. It’s imperative that we are able to attract sustainable business and promote business growth in ways that reflect our communities so that our economy is diverse, resilient and strong and our citizens are successful.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much, Susan.

Are there any questions for the presenter?

A. Weaver: I’m interested in learning more about your improving capital-raising exemptions for B.C. cooperatives and raising the maximum. Is this because you want to make major investments? But perhaps you’re not as big an area that would have many people, so you’ll want fewer people to be able to invest more?

S. Clovechok: Yes, both of those. The changes to co-ops would benefit all of British Columbia. Obviously, we’ve put it forward as a rural initiative, but it would also benefit urban centres. But when communities get behind for-profit business, they’re restricted to invest in those businesses. They can’t buy shares until they’ve been a member for 12 months. They can only invest $5,000, which if you’re trying to do a start-up business, is not enough, frankly. It’s not sustainable to grow that business.

A. Weaver: Okay. You also have…. On the mobilizing rural investment capital, you say that there are best practices that we could build upon.

S. Clovechok: Yes. Nova Scotia and Alberta have some solutions that they’ve worked with in those provinces — some examples.

A. Weaver: Have they been tested in a longitudinal study?

S. Clovechok: Yes. All the references are there. I would be happy to talk more about it. I know that Eden Yesh, who’s a young business leader in our community and works with Kootenay Employment Services, is very passionate about this initiative.

A. Weaver: What’s his name?

S. Clovechok: Eden Yesh.

R. Leonard: Any other questions for the presenter? No?

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you coming in and sharing your well-thought-out presentation.

Next up we have someone on teleconference. It’s the Hospital Employees Union. Do we have Lou Black and Chris Kinkaid?

HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES UNION

C. Kinkaid: Great. Thank you.

I’m Chris Kinkaid, research director at HEU. As you said, I’m here with Lou Black, also a research analyst at the union. We’ve got some prepared comments here. We’ll be within ten minutes on that. Then I think we’ll have some questions.

A bit about us. HEU is the oldest and largest health care union in B.C. We’ve got 49,000 members working in public, non-profit and private employers within the health sector, and we’ve got 270 job classifications. We’ve got HEU members working in every part of the health care team — hospitals, care homes, community agencies, group homes, clinics, labs, First Nations health agencies. We’re a membership-based organization. Our members care very deeply about providing good services to patients, residents and clients.

Unfortunately, 16 years of funding shortfalls and a lack of capital investment in our health care system has undermined our members’ ability to deliver quality care. Since 2001, the B.C. government’s per-capita investment in the health care of its citizens has slipped from second to eighth place among Canadian provinces.

Funding of health care programs has not kept up with population growth, demographic change and other inflationary pressures. The lack of investment has had serious consequences in terms of crowded ERs, longer surgery wait-lists, reduced access to residential and home care and primary care, and a failure to urgently address the mental health and addiction crisis in a timely manner.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

For HEU members, that lack of investment has also meant increasing workload as program delivery is stretched to the limit. It has contributed to chronically high injury rates for health care workers, which outpace the rest of the B.C. workforce.

[10:15 a.m.]

This ongoing lack of investment has also been accompanied by widespread privatization of services in the health sector. That has fragmented service delivery and depressed wages and benefits in a labour force that’s overwhelmingly female and disproportionately racialized.

A lack of investment in health care and other services has impacted access and undermined both the health and safety and the economic security of workers.

L. Black: For the reasons that Chris just outlined, our union welcomes the government’s efforts to ease the financial burden on B.C. families, improve services and create an economy that will support our communities into the future. The historic confidence and supply agreement reached between the NDP and Green caucuses provided a stable foundation for achieving these objectives.

In particular, HEU supports the health initiatives that have been identified, such as prevention, action on reducing prescription drug costs, expanding team-based care and responding to the crisis in mental health and addictions with a dedicated ministry and targeted resources. We are especially pleased that the agreement addresses the crisis in seniors care through investments in home care and residential care staffing and by ensuring that clear standards of care are developed, monitored and enforced.

We will be providing the committee with a written submission offering more detail on a number of these priorities, but in the limited time that we have with you today, we’re going to focus on staffing levels in long-term care and on the issue of public-private partnerships in the health sector.

Turning to staffing levels. As you know, there’s widespread agreement with staffing in long-term care facilities that long-term care facilities must be increased to improve caring conditions for seniors. In fact, this committee came to the same conclusion in their last report. All parties in the Legislature have committed themselves now to improving staffing levels, and the former Health Minister announced in March earlier this year that 1,500 more full-time staff over four years will be hired in order to achieve an average of 3.36 hours per resident per day in long-term care facilities across each health authority.

That’s the minimum staffing guideline set out by the province. As you likely know, B.C.’s seniors advocate has found that 90 percent of funded care homes fail to meet even that number. So this goal is a move in the right direction, but our current conditions in long-term care mean that seniors often fail to have even the most basic of needs met. That’s why we believe that the staffing plan needs to be accelerated and met sooner than 2021.

In addition, we need a comprehensive review process. It should establish appropriate staffing levels, corresponding funding approaches and strong accountability measures. This will also require resources from the 2018 budget.

Seniors today are entering care older. They’re less physically independent and they’re closer to the end of life. This places much greater demands on staff. Our members often feel torn by the constant tension that’s created between the gap of what they’re physically able to do versus what they want to and feel that they should be doing. Residents aren’t toileted in a timely manner. At best, they’re bathed weekly, and they’re spending the last months of their life feeling a lack of human companionship.

Evidence supports staff turnover as being the most determining factor in resident outcomes. The quality of relationship that comes with continuity of care is well established as being critical and aids caregivers to learn about a resident’s preferences, triggers and typical state of health. That ongoing connection between a caregiver and resident also reduces the confusion and heightened agitation that can accompany change for seniors.

Contracting out and contract flipping, with its mass firings and replacement of staff, stands firmly in contradiction to this concept of staff continuity. These practices are the direct result of government policies and legislation that were introduced over the last 16 years. They work to drive down wages and working conditions and cause instability in the sector.

The practices have also deprived thousands of women, statistically more likely than men to live out senior years in poverty, of a pension. They’ve lost a pension. They’ve also lost decent, family-supporting wages and benefits and employment security. The government’s senior care strategy must address these damaging practices that put at risk the continuity of care for seniors and the economic security of care workers.

[10:20 a.m.]

Our recommendations, then, are to accelerate the goal of achieving a minimum 3.36 hour per resident per day at funded care homes, resource a comprehensive review process to establish appropriate staffing levels and corresponding funding approaches and accountability measures, and end the practice of contracting out and contract flipping in residential care.

C. Kinkaid: The other thing we want to highlight in our talk today is the use of P3s, specifically in health infrastructure. I’ll assume that’s a known term, but I’m talking about the private financing rather than public financing to build and operate public assets such as hospitals. HEU believes that B.C.’s experiment with P3s has failed taxpayers, patients and health care workers and that it must be re-evaluated.

The former government used P3s. One of the most negative aspects of them is cost. The former Auditor General touched on this issue in 2014 and found that while government’s weighted average cost of borrowing is about 4 percent, on the $2.3 billion that government borrowed through health….

I got a beep there. Is everything okay?

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s okay. Keep going.

C. Kinkaid: Sorry. The P3 cost of borrowing is 7.5 percent. I was just trying to emphasize the difference in the cost of borrowing there when I got distracted. That’s a big spread, that difference.

Until last July, the only data available on P3 spending was in the value-for-money reports that are put out by Partnerships B.C., which is a government agency that both promotes and evaluates P3 projects. In July, Partnerships B.C. added a supplement to several of its value-for-money reports that included actual comparable spending costs — the proposed P3 versus traditional forms of public sector delivery.

The supplements were added to the reports on three of the most recent based hospital P3s. They show that those hospital P3s, in the end…. The payment schedules in those supplements show that the public will spend $260 million more than their assumed traditional delivery costs, according to those supplements. In the U.K., many health authorities have bought out P3s as a cheaper alternative to paying out future P3 obligations. We’re saying we should also consider this approach here.

Health authorities are paying quite a premium for P3-supplied infrastructure out of their operating budgets. They’re sort of complicated and inflexible contracts, and they undermine health authorities’ ability to respond to other changes with their budget — in population health needs, technological and work process changes and any other issues that could be arising over the typically 30 years that a P3 contract would last. They’re sort of locked in with their budgets.

Another feature of the health care–related P3s that HEU is critical of is the bundling of various non-clinical services as part of those P3 projects. The result is you contract out a range of services. It varies from project to project, but things like housekeeping, food services, helpdesk, portering, laundry, maintenance and other functions. The practice has usually just led to lower wages and benefits for those workers and a loss of control, at the same time, by government and health authorities over direction of that part of the workforce.

Our union has serious questions about the value of bundling those services into existing P3s or as part of P3s that are currently in the pipeline. We urge the government to take steps to remove them from existing and proposed P3 arrangements.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Lou, we’re at 11 minutes now, so if you wouldn’t mind wrapping up so we have time for questions.

C. Kinkaid: Okay. Actually, we’ve got a couple of recommendations on that, and I’ll just finish there and turn it over.

Just on that P3, we were going to recommend that we end the use of those. Also, undertake a study as to whether savings to the public could result from buying out any currently existing P3s. And end that bundling of non-clinical health services.

Sorry. We took 11 minutes. Thanks for your time today. We do have a written submission that outlines those things and more. We’ve got a few minutes left for questions, I hope.

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

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation. Appreciate the comments.

You went through a long list of issues around increasing the care in residential care facilities — increasing the hours. One of the issues that we’ve heard about in the past relates to injury to workers and the lack of sufficient staffing and education.

[10:25 a.m.]

I’ve heard before, from management at Island Health, regarding the costs to the health care system because of staff injuries. I’m wondering if you have some recommendations within your submission that will reflect on the issue of staffing levels and injuries and education.

L. Black: We do, in fact. That is going to be part of this submission.

One of the key components is that, right now, there are a lot of innovations. There’s been the high-risk strategy to prevent violence-related injuries, for example, which is substantially high, especially among care aides in the long-term care sector.

The training and the strategy is applied quite unevenly at this point. If you work directly for a health authority, you will receive standardized training. You will, for example, receive an in-classroom portion of training. But if you work outside of the health authority, it’s hit and miss. There’s no obligation for those employers to provide it. So it’s piecemeal in that respect.

We feel that there needs to be ministry oversight and that there needs to be greater coordination among the health employers — standardized training that’s applied to every employer across every health authority. But that’s going to require much greater coordination and some ministry oversight as an overall strategy.

R. Leonard: Thank you.

P. Milobar: Thank you for the presentation.

Just to get a sense of the prioritization of any new money going into health care…. Maybe this is going to put you on the spot, I guess, as labour leaders. Would your preference be, if there’s only a certain amount of money able to go into the health care pot, for more capacity — i.e., more staff — or higher wages for the existing staff?

C. Kinkaid: I don’t know that it’s a simple choice. It probably matters from program to program and from job type to job type and from facility to facility. Bargaining is something that takes place next year for some and the year after for others, so wages are set in that context.

There were a series of good recommendations back in March around staffing. Certainly, in long-term care, one of the things we’ve focused on is staffing levels. That’s going to make a big difference to the health and safety, like the previous person was just asking about, and it’s going to make a big difference to quality care.

I think we have to recognize the staffing in long-term care is one of the top priorities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time right now, Lou and Chris. Thank you very much for your presentation. We look forward to your written submission.

Okay. So a little bit of a change. We’re going to do a five-minute presentation from school district No. 5, if Chris Johns wouldn’t mind coming up.

We just want to make sure we get you in. Unfortunately, we won’t have time for questions, but at least, we want to give you a chance to say a few words. Also, you’re more than welcome to make a written submission as well.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 5,
SOUTHEAST KOOTENAY

C. Johns: Right. Thank you, Chair. Welcome to Cranbrook and Southeast Kootenay, with the problem time zone. I’ve been listening too.

I came prepared to either do the five minutes or have a slot because somebody didn’t show up. We just found out about the hearing on Tuesday, so it’s been a rush job. We put together…. I think there’s a handout that everybody has got.

Basically, what I’m going to focus on in my short time is issues under capital funding and the recommendations from last year’s select standing committee, because I made a presentation last year and the year before and the year before that to the select standing committee.

Recommendation 45. We’re supporting that initiative again, with a couple of examples. Mount Baker Senior Secondary here in Cranbrook is 66 years old. It’s the largest secondary school in the East and West Kootenay. It badly needs replacement. We’re spending a lot of money on upgrades to it that continue to band-aid it together. Eventually, it has to be replaced.

[10:30 a.m.]

I appreciate that there are seismic upgrade issues on the coast, 155-some-odd schools, but I think our recommendation to the committee would be that there has to be a plan in place for the rest of the province. We understand the need for the 155 schools at the coast. We also understand the use of portables that is going on in the province, due to the Supreme Court decision and also the growing population.

We have that problem in Fernie. We need a new elementary school in Fernie. We have…. I believe the last count was six portables in place in Fernie Secondary. We’re one of the fastest-growing communities in the province. Portables in Surrey — yes, we get that. Portables here in school district No. 5 also.

We would ask you to take a look at how you can take some of that money and have a plan in place for the rest of the province, outside of the Lower Mainland and the Island.

Under operational funding, again, one of the concerns that we’ve had as a school district from year to year is the predictable, sustainable and yearly funding to enable school districts to fulfil their responsibility to continue to provide access to quality public education. Specifically, the issue around the Supreme Court decision and the implementation of those teacher numbers that are coming into our district, those need to be fully and properly funded. So we’re endorsing recommendation 49 again.

Lastly, in my short time I’ve got, recommendation 51: the support and resources to implement what’s being reported here as a new curriculum. It’s actually a revised curriculum. It’s very exciting to be part of that changeover, and we are embracing that wholeheartedly. But there are spinoff costs associated with that. We, again, ask the committee to make sure that that gets reflected in your report. Those are unique costs. Professional development costs for teachers under this new revised curriculum, in particular.

We have asked in the past to have some kind of update as to where the recommendations…. I mean, the work that the committee does…. These are only part of the ones that are specific to education. We would be very much interested to know how these recommendations are actually implemented.

I will hang around to the very end, if any members of the committee want to ask me any further questions. I think I’ve tried to keep it narrowed on what our school district identify as priorities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Chris. We actually have time for one little question, if you like.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for slipping in and stepping up.

A quick question. Yesterday we had a presentation from the Principals and Vice-Principals Association of B.C. The question arises about the capacity of school districts to actually recruit and retain principals and vice-principals and where the funding is coming from to draw them in. I’m wondering if that’s an issue for you in this school district. It’s a question I’d like to ask all school districts.

C. Johns: Yes, it’s an ongoing issue across the province, rural districts especially. I think what we’re looking at is mentorship programs that are in the process. They’re already being implemented — coaching programs that are happening with existing principals and vice-principals and bringing on new ones. But yes, it is a problem.

Specialist teachers are a problem — French as a second language, student services teachers, counsellors, learning assistance teachers and assessment counsellors. Any of the speciality areas are all areas that we have to work very hard to compete.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, that’s perfect timing, Chris. Thank you very much for your presentation and thanks for coming.

Next up we have Bonnie Spence-Vinge.

BONNIE SPENCE-VINGE

B. Spence-Vinge: Good morning. Thank you for having me here today, everyone.

To help you understand my perspective on supporting family caregivers of loved ones living with a mental illness, I want to share some of my background with you. I am a former assistant director of the special education branch for the Ministry of Education here in British Columbia; an assistant superintendent of schools for school district no. 5 and a former colleague of your previous presenter, Chris Johns; and an executive director of education for the government of Nunavut.

My career has afforded me many opportunities to work interministerially with a variety of professionals. Currently, I volunteer as the chairperson for the Cranbrook Hub for Refugees, and I work for the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.

[10:35 a.m.]

I am here today primarily as a family member. I’m the mother of children with mental illness. About 15 years ago, my husband and I were seeking help and resources for our children. Even with the people and the information that I knew about in the system in Cranbrook, I was uncertain and struggling to know what was happening with our children and the best way to support them.

It wasn’t until we stumbled upon the B.C. Schizophrenia Society that we found the information and support that we needed to be able to continue to advocate and support our children. Local volunteers and family members who had heard about BCSS’s Strengthening Families Together program brought it here to Cranbrook. My husband and I were relieved at what we learned through this course.

Through the course, we met other families living with mental illness, fighting for their loved ones with schizophrenia and other persistent mental illnesses. We learned a lot more about mental illness, how to relate to our loved ones and what supports and resources were available in our community.

Yet as we continued to support our children, we would come up against other frustrations and often felt alone in our struggles with the system. But we knew that we could call BCSS and speak to someone so that we wouldn’t be alone, and we knew we could access the BCSS website and get concise, accurate information and quickly be able to navigate through the system. Just by knowing that there’s a world of people dealing with the same thing and that we are not alone was a great relief.

As an educator working in the social service field, I knew that we, as parents and family members, had rights and that we had a legitimate role in the care of our children. To support our children the best that we could, we needed to be involved.

Ten years ago we pushed and pushed to get ourselves at the table. We kept insisting that we needed information the system had, and we didn’t give up. But that was only possible because I had some understanding and insight into the system. It was only possible because we had support from other friends and families, and we were able to connect to others going through exactly the same situation.

Today the situation has improved a lot. Many of the organizations and systems in government are much better now at including family members than they were before. But as a new regional educator for BCSS in the Cranbrook-Creston region, I’m still connecting with many families who are still frustrated and lost.

In the past, people would have to call and connect with someone in a larger town or area like Vancouver or Kelowna or Kamloops. Before me, there was no one physically present, on the ground, supporting people in this region. Just by being here, families locally now know that they have someone to turn to.

One family member told me: “Everyone should know the information that you provide through your support and education programs like Strengthening Families Together.” If they had known this information in the beginning of their journey in supporting their loved ones, it would have been so much easier and much less stressful.

All this information is there. But families need to know where to look and to be in a position where they know they’re not alone and be supported in understanding what is happening. With the demands placed on our health care system, people like me have been able to help families gain a timely response, find the information they need and understand that they are not intruding in their loved one’s care.

Families helping in ensuring those living with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses have a right to be there. It’s a positive thing that they’re involved in the process. I am able to help families face to face and find the information and resources that are available within the Cranbrook-Creston region and help the system share that information with families.

In regards to mental health support and resources like those that BCSS offers, Cranbrook has been, and continues to be, underserved. Families need to know that there are others like them in this very community facing the same struggles that they are facing.

In a Huffington Post article from 2014: “Research has indicated that verbalizing feelings can have a significant therapeutic effect on the brain” and “that social support can help build resilience against stress.”

[10:40 a.m.]

According to the Mayo Clinic caregiver support groups, like those offered through BCSS, it means that people in the community feel less lonely, isolated and judged; gain a sense of empowerment and control; have improved coping skills; experience reduced stress, depression and anxiety, which leads to lower rates of clinical depression and substance use, as a result of caregiving; develop a clear understanding of what to expect; get practical advice or information about treatment options; improve their caregiving ability; and give better quality of care for the loved one.

We’re all affected by mental illness, whether we’re the ones with the mental illness ourselves or if we are helping and supporting friends and family who are affected by mental illness. Since I have started, I’ve seen that people are thirsty for more support and information. I know my husband and I were searching and needing the support that families are still continuing to need now.

By being in the community, we are letting people understand that mental illness in our communities is normal, that when we talk about mental health resources and impacts, we are talking about resources and impacts to everyone in B.C.

By being able to connect in person with someone with the same experience and to get personal support, British Columbians across the province feel valued and important as we build towards better health outcomes and resiliency in our communities.

Thank you for your time. I will be pleased to address any questions you might have or provide clarification, as you wish.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Bonnie. I really appreciate you coming to the committee. I have a brother, who just turned 50, who is schizophrenic, and our family has been dealing with that for decades. I certainly empathize with everything you’ve gone through and what the people around you and the people you’re helping go through.

I just have a quick question about what you’re specifically asking in terms of the Finance Committee. We recommend to the Minister of Finance resources. Now, of course, there’s a new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, which we hope will connect the dots, so to speak, and put a spotlight on these issues moving forward.

Are there any specific recommendations that you might have in terms of funding for mental health that we could hear about?

B. Spence-Vinge: If you’re speaking about mental health in general?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, no. Especially here, in the rural areas. It would be nice to know if there are some specific recommendations that you might have.

B. Spence-Vinge: Certainly. If I’m speaking as a family member, one of my recommendations would be…. There is a tremendous need and an absolute dearth of respite care. It does not exist outside of the Lower Mainland, and even then, it’s very sparse.

We have many family members who are providing care, because they have a loved one living in their home, or if they’re not living in their home, they are still providing daily contact and support with regards to shopping, meals, recreation, just spending time with folks. It is exhausting and overwhelming for people. Those opportunities for respite care do not exist. So we have many people who are themselves becoming unwell and unable, then, to continue to provide that support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It can be very stressful — well, it is very stressful — on families.

Any other questions?

A. Weaver: To get clarification, respite care funding comes from…? Is it from the MCFD or from Health?

B. Spence-Vinge: It has been from the Ministry of Health.

S. Cadieux: It depends if you’re dealing with children or if you’re dealing with adults.

B. Spence-Vinge: Yes, that’s right. I’m particularly referencing adults, but it certainly is an issue for children. There is just absolutely no respite service at all.

A. Weaver: In the Kootenays.

B. Spence-Vinge: When you’re talking about adults.

A. Weaver: Wow.

B. D’Eith (Chair): One of the issues that a number of people that are dealing with early-onset dementia…. Sometimes that’s being brought on, like with mental illness….

B. Spence-Vinge: Same. Very similar.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sometimes the medication pushes people out. That’s one of the side effects sometimes. I know that one of the problems with younger people…. There might be facilities for seniors who might have that, but then there are these gaps.

B. Spence-Vinge: Yes, and it is a major gap.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So you’re talking about a gap with respite care.

Thank you very much, Bonnie, for your commitment to mental health and your presentation today.

B. Spence-Vinge: Well, thank you for the opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have Laurie Scott from Communication Matters B.C.

[10:45 a.m.]

L. Scott: Is it eight minutes or ten minutes?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Ten minutes.

COMMUNICATION MATTERS B.C.

L. Scott: Okay. I’m going to put my timer on so I can try to keep myself on time.

Hello, and thank you for coming to Cranbrook and giving me this opportunity to speak with you about the provision of speech and language services for young children in British Columbia.

My name is Laurie Scott. I am a speech-language pathologist who is committed to the call to action from the Communication Matters B.C. group, which is a speech and language pathology advocacy group for young children.

We are asking that all children in B.C. who need speech and language support, or you’ll have me refer to it as SLP, have access to effective and timely support. This means the addition of many more speech-language pathology positions across the province and a mandate to collect more data to determine further need.

I’ve uploaded some things to your website today that I hope you have on your iPad. I’m not sure if I did it correctly. If not, I will send you the information along at another time or after this conversation.

In B.C., our most precious resource is the young children living in our province. My colleagues from Communication Matters have sent you some documents — as well, I just referred to them; I hope that you’re reviewing them now — with some key findings from a survey in 2015.

A survey was conducted across this province of speech and language pathologists who service young children in publicly funded programs. And 114 respondents indicated that 85 percent of us carry caseloads far beyond the recommendation of 25 to 40 children. Some caseloads are in the 60 to 80 range, and some even exceeding that, up to 160 children.

Only 5 percent of the SLPs that were surveyed, the preschool SLPs, said they were able to provide a level of service they would recommend to the majority of their caseload. Eighty-five percent of the SLPs also reported some sort of a wait-list.

Some of the comments made on the survey by SLPs across this province are: “We are in in a crisis. We are giving very poor service to children in our communities.” “I want to be able to help children to make real changes that have a positive impact on their lives. Instead, I feel like I’m able to provide a very thin service.” “This provincial government is neglecting the children of this province. I am disappointed and ashamed.”

The past two weeks I’ve conducted some action research in Cranbrook. Action research is when you go out and interview community members and ask them how to help solve the problem. Here are some things that people told me. I spoke with parents. I spoke with daycare directors, daycare staff, kindergarten teachers, early-years coordinators, including going out to the reserve and speaking to Aboriginal infant and child development and their early intervention teams.

People said: “I would just go to Calgary because there are no services here.” “I went to Lethbridge because my doctor wouldn’t refer me.” “Children with speech and language disorders are the highest priority for our kindergarten classroom.” “Children with speech and language difficulties are consistently the biggest concern for our program.” “Parents in our program struggle with barriers and accessing services.” “It’s just not good.” “I’m worried about my daughter. She saw an SLP three times at daycare but is not offered any more services. Now she’s in grade 1 and still can’t communicate well for her age and doesn’t have access to SLP services in our schools.”

[10:50 a.m.]

Thirty-two percent of children in B.C. are vulnerable, based on the EDI results. Chaos. We are challenged by providing services to families who live in more remote and rural communities. We have staffing and resource difficulties and can’t support the kids with communication needs and daycare.

Here’s what else we know about B.C. preschoolers based on the EDI — that 9.4 percent of kindergarten students in B.C. demonstrate vulnerability for language and cognitive development. At least 14.2 percent of B.C. kindergarten students are vulnerable in their communication skills and general knowledge.

What does the research say, anyways, about children’s development? Again, these documents will be forwarded to you so that you can see the citations if you don’t have them now. The ability to communicate through speech and language is fundamental to a child’s literacy development. Children are more likely to benefit from treatment when communication disorders are identified early on. Children with language impairments are four to five times more likely to have reading difficulties while in school, and 30 percent of children with speech disorders also have reading difficulties.

Investing early will help, for every dollar spent on early childhood development saves up to $9 in future health, social and justice services. In Canada, boys with language impairments have a higher rate of arrests and convictions than boys who do not. A Canadian study also found that young adults between 18 and 24s who have had a history of language impairment have the highest rates of psychiatric disorders in the community at 37 percent.

Children’s brains are geared to learn quickly in early childhood. The first six years of life is an important time in a child’s life for learning the basics of speech, language and other foundational skills. After age six, neural plasticity is reduced and it becomes more difficult for the human brain to learn speech.

Children with more speech and language skills face many risks throughout life. Poor communication skills are closely linked to poor chances. Children with delayed speech and language skills are at risk for failure at school, problems connecting with others, fewer educational opportunities and poorer professional opportunities.

Children with poor communication skills are also at risk for lower self-esteem, poor self-confidence and higher risk for mental health issues as they get older. Studies have shown a close link between communication skills and increased chances of being jailed. Child development is one of the key indicators of the social determinants of health. A recent U.K. study recommends it should be treated as a public health issue.

This province can do great things for kids. Look what happened when we introduced the newborn screening program. It’s been a huge success at identifying kids at birth who have a hearing loss. Funding free community programs for parents and tots like StrongStart have helped many families connect, and kids develop important skills for our schools.

Our most precious resource, our children, need a voice. Communication matters. So this SLP advocacy group for young children is asking this province that all children in B.C. who need speech-language pathology support have access to timely and effective service. This means the addition of more SLPs in the community immediately and a mandate to collect more data to determine further need.

Consider the UN rights of the child. Consider article 23: you have the right to special education and care. Article 24: you have the right to the best health care possible. Article 28: you have the right to good quality education. Consider our recent TRC document: the call to action to close the gap for First Nations children and the call to action to offer culturally appropriate early child development programs for our young First Nations family and children.

I’d like, in closing, if I still have time, to read you a letter that I received from a parent at the eleventh hour last night.

I believe I’ve gone over. Can I read this letter? It’s going to take another minute. Or should I forward it to you?

[10:55 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re actually fine.

L. Scott: Okay. I just have to find it on my email. Here is the letter. It starts:

“Dear Laurie:

“I would like to start by thanking you for talking about this very important issue. The SLP services in the area are very inadequate compared to the high needs in our area, and families and children are suffering the consequence.

“When Nash was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2½, it was very difficult news to hear. Our boy — who once babbled, copied noises, called us mom and dad — was now silent.

“I assumed, living in Canada, that services we would need to help our son would be there for us to utilize. We were shocked when we found that we were only allotted six sessions with an SLP. Six sessions for a boy who no longer speaks? That’s when I found out about the massive workload that is placed on most SLPs who are with Interior Health and that we have one SLP for a very large region.

“We were fortunate enough to find a private SLP, but that’s basically like winning the lottery around here. Funding that could have gone towards other therapies to help with Nash’s motor skills and cognitive abilities are now going towards the speech therapy at $120-an-hour, because we had to hire privately.

“There are families in the Kootenays that are all desperate to hear their children speak, and the provincial government has made it impossible for these children to get the services needed to help them. Six sessions to help a boy who has lost his ability to speak. What about the kids with less severe speech issues? What will they get — even fewer sessions?

“The reality of our broken system has long set in for us, because we’ve been in this fight for a few years. Now we are dealing with the downfalls of the education system. Watching parents who are just beginning their journey with autism, seeing their frustrations and having to explain to them how little help there is available as far as SLP services go, never gets easier. It’s heartbreaking to see their anger and frustration, because I remember how it all felt.

“Things need to change. I hope the concerns of families like ours can be heard so these changes can happen. Thank you for listening and for telling our story.

“Sincerely, Kristy Nickerson.”

In conclusion, I’d like to thank you, again, for your time. I strongly urge you to consider the needs of the young children in this province and how we can best support their development.

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

I just want to mention that we did not receive your package, so if you could please follow up. We’d really appreciate that so we have the written….

I can say firsthand…. My nephew had learning and speech issues early on, and he did get the help he needed in the States, where my sister lives. It was a very profound impact because they did intervene so much earlier. So I can see the benefit firsthand as to how early intervention really helps.

A. Weaver: I went to your website to get a sense of the dollar value that you had. On your website, it says you’re looking for 200 SLPs, about. Can I estimate, then, that that’s like a $16 million ask or a $14 million ask for SLP funding?

L. Scott: I’m sorry. I can’t put a dollar number to what that would mean for the province. I think maybe we’d have to have that conversation with other people. Yeah, unfortunately, I don’t know if I can put a dollar to that.

A. Weaver: Do you know, also, that in the present budget, the budget update, there was $681 million, I believe, for additional funding for children to get the services they need when they need it in the K-to-12 system? I wonder to what extent SLPs are included in that. I don’t know the answer to that. I was wondering if you have….

L. Scott: That’s good to know.

A. Weaver: You might have a look at the budget that’s right here now, as well, because there might be something in there.

L. Scott: That’s very good. Okay, thank you — $681 million.

A. Weaver: I think it was $681 million, yeah.

P. Milobar: We heard from physiotherapists that, depending where you are in the province, there’s either a great many of them, or as you get more and more remote, they’re harder and harder to find.

Would you prefer to see not only a funding increase, but would your expectation be that there be some geographic constraints or pockets of that funding so that it’s not just a pot of money, and then all of a sudden the urban areas see a dearth of therapists but not in the areas that are…?

L. Scott: That’s right. That is a big challenge. Probably in consultation with the health authorities — that might be better to look at with them. We do use things like telepractice. We do have some tools like that. But the travel and the distance that it takes to go to some of the outlying communities would take a bigger budget.

[11:00 a.m.]

I think the health authorities…. I know that’s one of Interior Health’s five key strategies this year — how to provide the best services to remote and urban communities.

Yes, I think that’s really important to know. For the communities that are more away from the urban centres, like Cranbrook, there are bigger gaps.

T. Redies: Just an observation. As the parent of a child who had a severe language delay and, thankfully, got support — now doing her master’s — I really appreciate the early intervention. It’s absolutely critical. I just want to thank you for your passionate advocacy for children, because this is very, very important.

L. Scott: It’s extremely important. Our children have been flying under the radar for a long, long time, and families have increased burdens. To come to a committee like this is difficult for them. It’s very overwhelming, but I definitely have the support of this community and many SLPs and parents like you behind our mission across the province. So you’ll be hearing from my colleagues and other centres about their stories in their communities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we’re out of time, but thank you very much, Laurie. We appreciate your presentation. Please do follow up on the written submission.

L. Scott: Okay. Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right now we have Heather Baroody and Pierre Cenerelli, Graduate Student Society at Simon Fraser University, via teleconference. Please go ahead.

GRADUATE STUDENT SOCIETY
AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

H. Baroody: On behalf of the Graduate Student Society at Simon Fraser, a.k.a. the GSS, we wish to thank you for providing us with the opportunity to present to the all-party Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services regarding our suggestions for the British Columbia 2018-2019 budget.

We represent up to 3,700 students in nearly 40 academic programs at SFU in our Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver campuses. The GSS is a recognized university student society under the British Columbia Society Act. We collect and administer membership and other fees on our members’ behalf and use them to administer a group benefit plan, as well as provide services, grants and other funding, social and professional activities and a student space.

Recent surveys mentioned in the document we sent highlight some of the benefits of a graduate degree, including economic benefits. The study also found that unemployment within the surveyed group of graduates is quite low. Nearly half of them held positions outside academia, within government, non-private organizations or the private sector. Nearly all the surveyed students in their current position deemed it a useful step along their desired career path.

Overall, then, having a degree helps elevate salaries and reduce unemployment and can lead to positive career outcomes, especially out of academia. These measures clearly indicate the benefit of a graduate degree for both individual students and the economy as a whole. In order to ensure that the economic potential reaches as many British Columbians as possible, we believe it’s necessary to improve funding for our graduate students, provide effective transit to campus and adequately maintain our education facilities.

As such, we urge the Finance Committee to consider our ideas: increasing investment in graduate students, renewing the support for the U-Pass B.C. program in public transit, graduate and family-friendly student housing, as well as deferred maintenance at SFU.

Although PhDs do go on to earn more money than people with bachelor’s degrees, we also hold substantially more student debt. This, overall, reduces our ability to contribute to the economy, delaying entry into the housing market and making it more difficult to have a family.

A survey conducted here at the GSS last fall among SFU graduate students broadly confirmed that funding, or lack thereof, remains an important, if not the most important, issue among our members.

[11:05 a.m.]

Nearly 40 percent of them do not receive an offer of funding upon admission, and close to 50 percent indicate that they were unsatisfied with the funding that they received. Well over half of our students rely on employment outside the university to support themselves during their study, and 42 percent indicate that graduate scholarships was the number one advocacy issue.

British Columbia is one of the few Canadian provinces that does not provide some sort of scholarship or fellowship to its graduate students. Given the high cost of living in British Columbia and the educational opportunities available elsewhere, B.C. universities require a significant investment from the province if they are to contend in the increasingly competitive world of advanced education. Although it’s difficult to obtain data on the reasons students choose not to study in B.C., anecdotal evidence from SFU graduate programs suggest that many of them struggle to attract top candidates because of the prohibitive cost of living in the Lower Mainland. Providing additional funding to the graduate students would really go a long way to solving this problem.

Provinces such as Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and Manitoba all offer graduate students provincially funded scholarships, valued on average at $5,000 per academic term, or $15,000 for a full academic year. Supporting 1,000 graduates across the province’s post-secondary institutions would therefore cost the government $15 million a year, and it would significantly increase B.C.’s ability to attract and retain the very best graduate students. In addition, if the institutes were allowed to manage these funds directly, the government could continue to exert control on how the money is being spent but would not need to establish additional administrative structures to manage the funds.

In light of these facts, we respectfully request that the B.C. government create a provincewide graduate fellowship for 1,000 students. At $15,000 per award, this new program would represent an annual investment of $15 million in the province’s future. To keep administrative costs down for the province, we recommend that the funds be administered and distributed to the graduate students by the post-secondary institutes.

The second topic is a renewed support of the U-Pass B.C. program and public transit. First, we’d like to thank the provincial government for its continued support of the U-Pass B.C. program. We look forward to finalizing an agreement that would freeze the rates until at least December 2019. We’re also pleased to note that TransLink’s ten-year plan is being implemented as announced. We’re also pleased that both the province and the federal government have said they will contribute to financing this expansion. We look forward to the possibility of even more investments in the next few years.

Our post-secondary students consider the U-Pass an essential service and have voted consistently and overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the program. In our last referendum, nearly 90 percent of our members voted in favour of continuing the program, even though there was an announced increase. Our survey indicates that over half of our respondents take public transit to campus, and 50 percent of respondents indicated that improvement to transit was their number one advocacy issue. We also should note that the program is one of the most important means still available to the B.C. government to address the serious cost constraints faced by all students in the Lower Mainland.

The Mayors Council has agreed to provide its share of funding to support the first phase of the investment promised by both the governments. We are hopeful, too, that an appropriate portion of the $2 billion investment in public transit will support improved services to SFU specifically. We respectfully ask that the province begin working with the other two levels of government to prepare for phase 2 of this investment. We continue to believe that one of the most tangible ways to increase access to post-secondary institutions for British Columbians is to provide affordable, efficient and reliable public transportation.

In light of these considerations, we respectfully respect that the B.C. government renew the U-Pass program beyond the end of the extension of the current contract on December 31, 2019. Students wish to sign a contract, of at least five years, which would (a) limit the price increase for the pass to inflation or less and (b) include direct financial support from the government. We also wish to see our provincial government play an increasing role in supporting TransLink’s current ten-year plan and subsequent expansions.

[11:10 a.m.]

The third issue we’re raising is one that many British Columbians can relate to. This is our housing. Since the closing in 2015 of our SFU Louis Riel residence, the university does not offer any student accommodations that are appropriate for couples or families. From the survey we conducted, our members made it clear that housing was an important issue. Over half the respondents indicated that housing was an occasional or frequent source of stress and that they would live on campus if suitable housing was available.

In spite of these clear signs that housing for couples and families is currently last in SFU’s strategic plan…. That is only to begin in 2028, and the plan is already two years behind, so 2030 would be the earliest start date for this kind of project.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Heather, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to remind you that you have about a minute left.

H. Baroody: Perfect. We’re wrapping up here.

The main point is that, under the University Act, to authorize universities we’re proposing…. It states that “erecting, repairing, adding to or furnishing or equipping any building or other structure….” In spite of this, SFU’s administration has, on numerous occasions, indicated that the government has not authorized them to borrow money to build residences.

In light of these considerations, we request that the B.C. government authorize universities, including SFU, to borrow money with specific purposes to build student residences. This would also alleviate the housing affordability issue in B.C.

The last issue, briefly, is deferred maintenance. If we could just tack on “to maintain or increase the routine capital allowance that currently provides to SFU institutions,” that would be wonderful.

We’d like to thank the committee for taking the time to listen to our main recommendations with respect to the government of B.C.’s 2018-2019 budget. I will now gladly entertain any questions that you may have on our presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Heather and Pierre.

J. Brar: Thank you, Pierre and Heather, for your presentation. We have, actually, heard a number of presentations from student organizations, and your group was, I would like to say, the most organized. There are a lot of similarities in all the proposals.

The question I wanted to ask you is a little different. We also heard a presentation from the administration of SFU. One of the things they mentioned was that there was an MOU signed between SFU and the government of B.C. to increase the number of FTE students, basically, from 2,500 to 5,000. So I want to ask you as to: what is your perspective on that one?

P. Cenerelli: That’s a complex question, in the sense that, of course, increasing FTEs means that universities are capable of taking in more money, due to the increased fees they get and that they can collect. At the same time, in the short term, that can cause specific problems because they can’t build the buildings fast enough to accommodate all the new students. So I think any increase like that would probably have to be measured very carefully and done in a way that we make sure that we have the physical infrastructure to take people in.

Then, on top of that, of course, you need to hire new teachers, new professors, new faculty, new TAs and new sessional teachers. So they’d have to be very careful how they take them in. Our concern would be, probably, if it’s done too quickly, it could have really adverse effects, especially in the short term.

J. Brar: I appreciate your comments as to how to do it. But from your perspective, do you see the demand there, in that area?

P. Cenerelli: I don’t know the numbers. I would say that one suggestion, perhaps, for the committee would be that one of the ways of seeing if the demand is there is to see what kind of waiting lists the universities have, in terms of when they take students in.

[11:15 a.m.]

If the waiting list is huge, typically these are students that the universities have deemed can or should be in universities. But if the waiting list is short, I don’t know if the demand is there. Again, that would depend a lot on what kind of waiting list they have, and if they don’t have it, then I would say that they probably don’t have the actual demand.

We do know that a waiting list exists. Whether it justifies a doubling of the numbers, I don’t know.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We did hear from the president of SFU, Andrew Petter, and he did actually echo a similar thing about this being phased. If it was increased, it would have to be phased. He also said that there has been pressure to increase GPAs because of waiting lists and because of the pressure on programs. He seemed to say that there was a huge demand. But fair enough.

Thank you very much, Pierre and Heather. That’s all our questions. Thank you for your presentation.

Next up we have Jim de Bolebec. We do have your presentation on line. The floor is yours.

JIM DE BOLEBEC

J. de Bolebec: Thank you. I’ve never made a presentation like this before, so I hope I do okay.

My proposal is to equalize health care throughout B.C. Currently, there is a two-tier medical service plan in B.C. — one for residents of larger communities and the other for rural communities.

Over the last few years, health authorities such as Interior Health have continued to relocate services that were once available in smaller communities to larger centres such as Cranbrook. This puts an undue burden on residents in these communities that have to travel to larger centres at their own expense. People that live in larger communities are not encumbered with this burden, yet we both pay the same MSP premiums — in other words, a two-tiered system. In other provinces, people that have to travel due to facilities not having all the necessary services or specialists are reimbursed for expenses.

My recommendation is that the following should be brought in January 1, 2018.

Immediate reimbursement for travel over an 80-kilometre round trip from one’s home community.

Over 150 kilometres from home community — a minimum of one night’s accommodation to be paid and a minimum of 1.5 days of meals.

Children under 18 years of age and people requiring assistance or medical treatment that is invasive — costs will be paid for escorts.

Transit fares to be reimbursed 100 percent — taxi, bus, handyDART, etc.

Private vehicle travel at the current government rate of 53 cents per kilometre.

Meals at the current government rate of $51.50 per day, no receipts needed. These should be adjusted annually as the government adjusts their rates of pay.

Accommodation — $30.75 per private lodgings.

Accommodation paid at government-arranged rates for hotels.

Parking reimbursed 100 percent.

If this policy is not enacted, B.C. will continue to have a two-tiered medical insurance plan in one of the few provinces that charge residents for a service which is compulsory.

Further considerations. I brought the application for a request for travel assistance. Very few qualify. I would like to point out that I had to stop at two locations even to get these forms. In other provinces, they are available on line. In Golden, neither the hospital nor the clinic have any reference to assistance in their waiting rooms.

Golden residents currently have to travel to Cranbrook to pick up items such as wheelchairs, walkers, etc., as Interior Health has closed out this service from the local hospital — another inconvenience that should also be reimbursed for residents having to travel for these items.

You may want to say that you can deduct travel expenses from income tax, which is true. Income tax is dependent on income, and for one or two trips, one may not qualify. Yet for many people, this is a financial burden, which could require going without.

[11:20 a.m.]

People with chronic diseases often have no income, so there is nothing to deduct these costs from. Additionally, this comes about once per year. Therefore, one may have to wait over a year to receive a rebate.

The round-trip distance from Golden to Cranbrook is 492 kilometres; Kelowna, 692; Calgary, 516. These are not short trips.

Let’s right some of the wrongs that the past 16 years have inflicted on the residents of this province. That’s my submission.

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

Any questions?

Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate you taking the time to come to the committee. Being the first time, it’s good. Thank you for coming out. We want to hear.

Ronna-Rae has a question for you.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much.

I’m aware of the travel assistance program that exists in British Columbia and that reimburses for ferry and plane travel, etc. You make mention of the request for travel assistance. I’m assuming that that’s part of the TAP. It usually comes from a doctor, as opposed to just being out in hospitals or wherever it was that you said you found them.

I’m just wondering. What you’re saying is that you’d like to expand the travel assistance so that it includes people who travel by car for long, remote distances for services that aren’t available locally.

J. de Bolebec: I take it you have never actually read the travel request for travel assistance.

R. Leonard: I’ve used it many, many times myself.

J. de Bolebec: Because if you had, I don’t think you would have said what you just said. Very few people qualify for it. In a lot of cases, they will not pick up travel costs for people’s own personal cars. So you are actually out of that pocket money.

If you want, I do have the forms here. You can take a look at them.

R. Leonard: I’m actually very aware of them. Thank you very much. I’m just asking if you want to see that program expanded so that it does include your travel costs by vehicle.

J. de Bolebec: That’s what I’d like to see — have it expanded and the forms to be available on line, as they are in other provinces.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Jim. I appreciate your presentation.

Next up we have Alex Hemingway. Alex, are you on the phone?

A. Hemingway: Hi there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hi.

I’d like to introduce the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives — Alex Hemingway.

The floor is yours, Alex.

CANADIAN CENTRE FOR
POLICY ALTERNATIVES

A. Hemingway: Thanks very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is celebrating our 20th year of researching and writing on the challenges facing B.C. I’m very happy to present our recommendations for the 2018 budget.

Beginning with the economic outlook, at first glance, B.C.’s economy appears stronger than ever. The province is on track for a real GDP growth of over 3 percent for the fourth consecutive year, and employment growth has returned to levels last seen during the mid-2000s boom.

However, the recent economic performance is not sustainable in the absence of government action, because it has been driven by the out-of-control private housing markets in Metro Vancouver and Victoria. Real estate and residential construction accounted for over a third of GDP growth in 2016 and similar shares over the past five years.

B.C.’s real estate boom has dramatically increased the gap between winners and losers in the housing market and has created a housing affordability crisis with quite tremendous social and economic consequences.

Another worrying sign is that the prosperity has not been broadly shared in our province. Unemployment rates remain at 7 percent or higher in the Cariboo, where I grew up. Kootenay and the Thompson-Okanagan regions are far above the provincial average unemployment rates.

Recent strong job growth has not resulted in meaningful wage increases for many workers. Median weekly wages have barely gone up since 2013, after adjusting for inflation. The data also shows that many of the job vacancies we see are for very low pay.

[11:25 a.m.]

Low wages help explain why 12 percent of the British Columbians who used food banks last year were working but not earning enough to afford groceries and 21 percent of homeless people in Metro Vancouver had a part-time or full-time job. This is not what a strong, sustainable economy looks like.

CCPA recommends that the 2018 B.C. budget prioritize measures to reduce poverty, enhance public services, build affordable housing and help green our infrastructure. This will also encourage economic growth, reduce B.C.’s vulnerability to swings in international commodity markets and can lead us on a path towards good jobs and shared prosperity.

B.C. is in a strong fiscal position to make these types of strategic public investments. The province has a manageable debt level and borrowing costs are at historic lows. There’s also room to raise additional revenue in a fair, inequality-reducing manner, and that’s a point I’ll return to a little bit later. In order to tackle the challenges we face in B.C., CCPA B.C. has identified seven priority areas for action in the budget.

First, Budget 2018 should begin funding the implementation of universal affordable quality child care, based on the widely endorsed community plan for a public system of integrated early care and learning. That’s also known as the $10-a-day child care plan.

This investment will have positive ripple effects across the economy, taking pressure off of young working families, allowing more mothers to participate in the workforce, which will increase tax revenues almost immediately, and creating direct new jobs.

Budget 2018 should provide stable funding over the next three years in four key areas on child care: improving affordability; increasing the number of licensed child care spaces; enhancing quality; and investing in the early childhood education workforce. You can review our forthcoming written submission for more details on this and a number of the other recommendations I’m going to outline here.

Second, we welcome the B.C. government’s commitment to develop and implement a comprehensive poverty reduction plan. Tolerating high rates of poverty and homelessness is not only wrong but extremely costly. Our research has shown that poverty costs us between $8.1 billion and $9.2 billion annually as a province in lost productivity, lower school success, higher health costs and criminal justice system costs.

We recommend that while public consultations are in progress on a plan, Budget 2018 should include funding for priority poverty reduction measures that can be implemented immediately. These include an immediate additional increase of income assistance and disability rates by $200 to $400 per month, depending on family size; increased staffing to reduce wait times on B.C.’s welfare phone line; and funding to begin proactive enforcement of the Employment Standards Act to combat wage theft and other workplace violations.

Third, the budget should ensure funding resources are available to strengthen public education and health care. Budget 2018 should fast-track capital investments to relieve overcrowded public schools and complete seismic upgrading. We also recommend eliminating public funding for elite private schools.

B.C.’s colleges and universities have seen provincial operating grants plummet as a share of their revenue, which puts into question their very status as public institutions. We therefore recommend higher funding for these institutions on the operating side.

We also recommend the development of a grants program to make post-secondary education free for lower-income families, with the aim of eventually working towards a universal reduction and elimination of tuition fees.

In health care, it’s imperative to increase staffing levels in seniors care facilities to meet minimum guidelines as quickly as possible and to avoid using the demonstrably wasteful P3 model when planning new capital investments in health care and beyond.

Budget 2018 should fast-track the development of an essential drugs program and position this as the first phase in the development of a universal PharmaCare program which, evidence and our own work have shown, would reduce total drug spending dramatically.

[11:30 a.m.]

Fourth, Budget 2018 should include major investments in affordable housing to deliver on the government’s commitment of 114,000 new units over ten years. This buildout should focus primarily on rental housing, with the lion’s share in the form of social and cooperative housing.

To contribute to the financing and also to make the tax system fairer, we recommend a progressive property surtax, with gradually rising rates on property values above $1 million, which would raise about $1.7 billion in Metro Vancouver alone.

We also recommend reformulating the $800-million-per-year expenditure on the homeowner grant, turning this into a housing grant that would go to owner and renter households alike but would be linked to income.

Fifth, Budget 2018 should expand the climate action initiative. We very much welcome the September budget update resumption of carbon tax increases and the break with the policy of revenue neutrality, which was misplaced. A go-slow approach of $5-per-year increases, though, is inconsistent with the extreme urgency of the climate crisis, the consequences of which are being handed off to my generation.

We recommend that B.C. reassert leadership on carbon pricing, with annual increases of $10 per tonne starting in 2018, with half of the carbon tax revenues flowing into a reformed credit to middle- and low-income households and the other half available to fund the climate action initiative.

Six, and related, the new budget should provide stable long-term funding for high-quality public transportation. The new government’s promise to pay 40 percent of the full Metro Vancouver mayors’ transportation plan is welcome.

With respect to the region’s share of the cost, the provincial government should support TransLink’s push for a development cost charge on new construction.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Alex, you have about 30 seconds left before your ten minutes are up. If you could wrap it up.

A. Hemingway: Great. I’m on the final item here.

Seventh and finally, Budget 2018 should work to improve the fairness of the provincial tax system. We welcome the measures announced in the September update that begin restoring some fairness by increasing both the corporate and the top personal rates, as well as the 50 percent reduction in MSP premiums, which is B.C.’s least fair tax.

As the government moves towards fully phasing out MSP premiums, we recommend that all MSP revenue — $2.6 billion in 2016-17 — be fully replaced with a combination of fairer personal and business taxes.

We also recommend convening a fair tax commission to review the entire provincial tax system, including natural resource royalties, and recommend measures to make our tax system more fair and to ensure that fiscal capacity is at hand to address the urgent problems we face.

Taken together, these actions represent a bold plan to build a strong and sustainable economy that works for everyone in B.C. I’ll leave it there.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present, and I’d be happy to take any questions you may have.

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

J. Brar: Thank you, Alex, for your wonderful presentation.

I appreciate the role CCPA has played, particularly for the most vulnerable people, particularly children, of this province. I appreciate that.

The question I have for you is…. I know CCPA has been pretty vocal, forceful, asking for the comprehensive poverty reduction plan, which we have now made the commitment on. I have to ask you about the number of initiatives you have listed. I don’t have a calculator, but probably the cost would go up beyond $5 billion. As the provincial government, there’s a commitment to a balanced budget at the same time. I want to ask you. We are building the comprehensive poverty reduction plan. In your opinion, what will be the four key pillars of that plan?

A. Hemingway: One thing I’d like to refer you to is work that our office has done, our director Seth Klein and my colleague Iglika Ivanova, on the issue of poverty reduction. I can pass on some of those pieces of research. I’m happy to follow up that way.

[11:35 a.m.]

One of the items I mentioned, specifically, in reference to poverty reduction is the income assistance rate. The increase that we’ve seen brought into force this month is very welcome. However, these are still poverty levels of income for people. We live in a very rich society. I take the point about the constraints around budget.

Just as a piece of context on that, I think it’s worth pointing out that what we’ve seen over the past 16 years is quite a dramatic decline in the share of B.C.’s total economy, share of GDP, going to public operating spending. It’s fallen by a few percentage points of GDP. What that amounts to is, if we were spending the same share of our economy today, in terms of public operating spending, as we were in 2000, we’d actually be making an additional $6 billion in public investment.

That’s part of why we thought it was important to outline opportunities on the revenue side. We do have these accumulated social deficits that have built up in B.C. In fact, we do have the opportunity to address them. I think that’s one important piece of context on this.

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

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation.

One of the, I guess, paradigm shifts that we’re talking about right now between the P3s and public investment in capital infrastructure…. I’m curious about your comments on the impact of…. My understanding is that P3s kind of came to the forefront as a way of reducing the debt load of government and, therefore, not impacting the credit ratings of government — which, of course, then impacts the amount of debt that we accumulate. Not just the amount of debt we accumulate but how much it costs us to pay it back.

I’m just wondering if you can make a sort of broad comment about being able to shift from P3 to direct government spending.

A. Hemingway: One of the main issues…. There are a number of factors that drive up the overall costs of P3 projects versus publicly financed projects. The main driver, though, is the cost of financing. The cost of government borrowing is less than the private sector cost. That’s one of the main drivers of increased costs of P3s. The Auditor General in Ontario did some work on this a couple of years ago and found that the Ontario government had spent, unnecessarily, an extra $8 billion by financing projects in this way.

In terms of the debt issue, there’s sort of a bit of an accounting fiction going on there. Whether government takes on debt to invest in a capital project or whether it takes on contractual obligations to pay a private partner over the course of a project, those are still financial obligations that the province takes on. It’s a bit of a red herring, in my view.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, Alex, but thank you very much for your presentation.

I was just going to say that we didn’t actually receive…. We don’t have access to your presentation. Have you submitted it?

A. Hemingway: It’s being copy-edited right now. Our full submission, which goes into much greater detail, is being copy-edited, and it will be uploaded either today or tomorrow.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Just a reminder that 5 p.m., October 16, is the deadline for submissions.

A. Hemingway: Yes, we’re aware.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Alex. The committee will take all of that and discuss it at length, I’m sure.

A. Hemingway: Thank you very much for hearing from us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ll take a short recess.

The committee recessed from 11:39 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hello, Annastasia, are you there?

A. Oraegbunem: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anydos, via teleconference, you have the floor. Please go ahead.

ANNASTASIA ORAEGBUNEM

A. Oraegbunem: Okay. My name is Annastasia Oraegbunem. I want to make a brief report on education, because I’m specialized in educational leadership and policy.

I noticed some few things, like school closures. I’m very much concerned about it, as a party member. I’ll be much more interested to know some things like what has caused the closure of the elementary schools, because the report I’ve been seeing in my research is that British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta are the top performers among all the provinces. The grades the students have on the education and skill reports — it’s very much more, compared to other provinces.

On the other hand, I’m seeing that, apart from all these performances, there are about 190-something schools being closed. There are things the other provinces are doing — like Ontario. In 2015, they were able to start up a junior kindergarten for four-year-old children. Alberta has approved that and is about to start it in 2018. But in British Columbia, up to now, I have not seen or heard of anything like that in progress. So I want to contribute that, too, because I know that they can handle it.

I want to know if it’s because the issues they have in education, lack of funding, have made the project not to be in the plan up to now. That’s the very few things I wanted to point out in my presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Does the committee have any questions, at all?

J. Brar: Thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate you raising these issues. They’re very important. I just want to ask you if there’s any school being closed close to your community.

A. Oraegbunem: I just have a report. That was a 2012 report from the British Columbia Teachers Federation, and it was in 2012.

J. Brar: That’s the old one.

A. Oraegbunem: Yeah, it’s an old one. But I just pointed that out to know if that was the reason that, up to now, involving four-year-old children in kindergarten school programs has not been in the plan.

Because even in the school now, they have this app that teachers are using — the ISL. They involve junior kindergarten, but it doesn’t exist in their school. The four-year-old, who doesn’t go to school, has a school plan. So even though they have it, there’s nothing much more showing that they have it in plan for next year or the next two years.

I want to know if there were issues that are yet to be solved, that they don’t have those plans to achieve that.

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

We are now adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 11:50 a.m.