The committee met at 4 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good afternoon. 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 would like to begin with the recognition that our public hearing today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Secwepemc people. We are an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly with a mandate to hold public consultations on the next provincial budget. The consultations are based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance, which includes the following three questions:

(1) What are your top priorities to 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 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. More information is available on the committee’s website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We invite all British Columbians to participate in 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 provincial 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 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 as a live audio on our website.

First, I’d like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

S. Cadieux: Stephanie Cadieux, MLA for Surrey South.

T. Redies: Hi, Tracy Redies, MLA for Surrey–White Rock.

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

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

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

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

B. D’Eith (Chair): Also assisting the committee today are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Michael Baer and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services are also here to record the proceedings — doing a wonderful job, as usual.

I’d also like to welcome, if he could put up his hand there, Eton Moses, a documentation and preparation assistant from the National Assembly of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, who is here on a parliamentary staff exchange. Welcome to our event. I appreciate it.

First presenter. We have Thompson Rivers University Students Union — Leif Douglass, Brandon Hayashi and Cole Hickson. Very nice presentation, by the way.

Budget Consultation Presentations

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

L. Douglass: First of all, we’d just like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present today. We really appreciate that. My name is Leif Douglass. I’m the campaigns coordinator for the Thompson Rivers University Students Union.

C. Hickson: My name is Cole Hickson. I am the vice-president external at Thompson Rivers University Students Union.

B. Hayashi: My name is Brandon Hayashi. I’m a campaigns committee representative with the union.

L. Douglass: The TRU Students Union represents over 10,000 students here in Kamloops. On behalf of those members, we have two recommendations for the committee today.

Our first recommendation is for a full re-evaluation of the Thompson Rivers University funding formula. Our second recommendation is for the phasing out of public investment in provincial RESP grants, loan remission programs and education tax credits and to reinvest these dollars in to the creation of an upfront, need-based grants program.

In terms of our first recommendation on funding, it’s important to briefly talk about the basics of post-secondary education funding in B.C., because it can be a fairly complex topic.

[4:05 p.m.]

Post-secondary education institutions in B.C. each receive what’s called a block grant from the provincial government. Alongside this, the provincial government also sets a target for the number of full-time-equivalent students that that institution should serve with that block grant. How close post-secondary education institutions are to meeting these targets are generally referred to as utilization rates.

In 2015-16 TRU had the utilization rate of over 105 percent. This is because we served about 500 more full-time-equivalent students than what we were targeted for. Now, utilization rates vary wildly across the province, ranging from under 50 percent to about 115 percent. You can find a full list on page 4 of institutions across the province and their utilization rates.

Due to our high utilization rate here at TRU, our funding is being spread across more students and, as a result, TRU ranks 20th out of 25 institutions in B.C. in per-student funding, with only about $7,500 per student. This is significantly below the average level of funding in B.C.

This level of underfunding has many impacts. Undergraduate students face reduced program options and support services. Most graduate programs are completely unfunded, which means they’re offered on a cost recovery basis, which makes them prohibitively expensive for students. This also impacts our entire region. This is the university that serves Kamloops and all of the surrounding communities for post-secondary education needs, primarily.

With current provincial funding of about $64 million, TRU has an economic impact of about $355 million on our region and over $650 million on the province. With appropriate government funding, this impact could actually be much higher.

We’ve already been talking about this issue on the TRU campus, and as a result, over 3,500 students, faculty and staff have added their names in support of re-evaluating the TRU funding formula. In the upcoming year, we’ll be making presentations to community organizations across this region to talk about this same issue.

TRU needs to have its funding formula re-evaluated to ensure that provincial funding reflects how TRU has grown and changed over the last decade.

B. Hayashi: Our second recommendation is to phase out provincial investment in RESPs, loan remission programs and education tax credits and to reinvest that money into the creation of a new, needs-based grant program for B.C. But first, it’s important to talk about why we have financial aid.

We as a union believe that the full social, economic and fiscal benefits of post-secondary education are not automatically generated. They can only be realized if there’s a provincial system that is directed to outcomes that underlay these benefits.

We as a student union have identified these outcomes as participation rates that meet labour market demands while remaining equitable across all incomes; timely completion, with a rate approaching 90 percent that is not financially determined; and transition from study to employment at a rate approaching 100 percent with no debt bias on career decisions or no debt limitation on social and economic participation. This submission will look at the effectiveness of RESPs, loan remission, tax credits and needs-based grants for the purpose of meeting these outcomes.

First, let’s talk about RESPs. Just for some background — I’m sure you all know this — RESPs are a special education savings account where families can invest in the success of their children, and the government provides matching grants, and that money grows, tax free, until eligible withdrawal. The primary problem with RESP programs is that they disproportionately benefit high-income households. Only 25 percent of dependents from families from the lowest income demographic have an RESP account by the time they turn 18 versus the 70 percent at the highest income bracket.

Effective student financial aid should be doing the opposite of this: helping out those with the greatest need. What this means is that RESPs have a limited impact on participation, completion and transition rates, as they are not helping those who face financial barriers to post-secondary education.

Next, I’d like to talk about loan remission. Just for some background, the B.C. completion grant is the largest provincial loan remission program available, representing $32 million in loan forgiveness in 2015 alone. It forgives loans on a yearly basis, and the number of students receiving the completion grant and the size of each grant given out depends on the total number of applicants and the size of the budget in that provincial budget cycle.

Loan remission programs are ineffective as financial aid for two main reasons. First, loan remission programs don’t help students without the financial resources to pay the upfront costs of post-secondary education, or it doesn’t help those who are debt-averse. Second, as remission amounts are not publicly available and most change from year to year, that makes it difficult for students to plan accordingly, and it puts them in awkward financial situations. This, in turn, limits the benefit for participation and completion rates.

In terms of transition, we see something similar to outcomes in RESPs where, overall, upon completion, debt is relatively lower, but that doesn’t result in significantly more students participating in or completing post-secondary education.

[4:10 p.m.]

We’d like to highlight the new opportunity award, which provides $1,000 of loan remission for each university graduate in B.C. We think it’s great to see that financial support for students, and we’re thankful to have it. But we believe that it’s a poor student financial aid policy because it doesn’t necessarily improve participation or completion rates. Students who are debt-averse or unable to complete their studies due to financial reasons remain without help because they’re not completing the program. So we propose rolling this grant into a more comprehensive, upfront grant system for the students of B.C.

C. Hickson: Awesome. Next is education tax credits. Currently education tax credits in B.C. are available in an amount equivalent to tuition fees plus $200 for each month of study. While that may seem impressive, the actual outcomes are much less so.

In looking at the participation and completion rates, we see a number of problems arise. First, the majority of education tax credits are transferred to a future year and to a relative, because students often don’t earn enough money to make use of them. Second, education tax credits that are used provide benefits in the spring, over eight months after the majority of costs are due. Third, calculating benefits from tax credits is often complex for students to figure out, particularly for students who may be doing their own taxes for the first time.

In relation to transition, tax credits function in a very similar way to loan remission, in terms of transition outcomes, as they are largely transferred after graduation, in essence providing loan remission for graduates but not helping additional students access or complete their education.

As stated in the federal government’s 2016 budget, these credits are not targeted based on income and often provide little direct support to students at the time they need it most. We believe it is time for our province to move in that same direction.

Finally, on to need-based grants. There is no comprehensive system of need-based grants in B.C. While there are some specific grants available through the skills-for-jobs blueprint and for students with disabilities, B.C. remains one of the only provinces that does not offer need-based grants that are broadly available.

When comparing outcomes of need-based grants, they are an improvement on nearly every metric, as they target those who need financial assistance, are provided at the time costs are due, and the criteria is transparent, allowing students to effectively engage in financial planning.

These characteristics mean that an upfront provincial grant system is best positioned to get new students into post-secondary education, help students struggling financially complete their education, and successfully transition the largest number of students into the workforce.

In our conclusion, we have two recommendations for the committee. First is for a full re-evaluation of TRU’s funding formula. Second is for the complete repurposing of provincial investment in RESP grants, student loan remission programs, education tax credits and putting that into a new, upfront need-based program.

That is all. We are happy to take any questions now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Well done. That was very thorough, very well presented. We appreciate the amount of thought that you put into this presentation.

A. Weaver: Thanks. I mean, it was very impressive. You, frankly, could be giving lessons to some other people on how to make effective and compelling presentations to this committee. I’m sure my colleagues would agree with me on that.

T. Redies: We all agree. We all agree.

A. Weaver: I had one question with respect to your first recommendation. What would you say to Vancouver Island University? I mean, does this same argument apply to Vancouver Island University, Kwantlen University, Capilano University? Or would you argue that Thompson Rivers is somehow different from the other ones that I mentioned?

L. Douglass: I would say…. To be honest, we developed this work specifically around TRU, so I wouldn’t say we’re as knowledgable to speak necessarily to the unique situation at Kwantlen or VIU.

I would say, broadly, special purpose teaching universities face significant funding challenges often, so I would imagine places like VIU and Kwantlen do face a lot of those same issues as well. But again, I mean, this is something that we developed specifically around TRU data. I haven’t recently looked at specific data around those institutions to speak sort of comprehensively to that.

C. Hickson: TRU does find itself in a unique position. We offer trades programs, adult basic education, undergraduate degrees all the way to masters, doing research and a law school.

A. Weaver: The parallel with VIU is direct. They do exactly the same thing as well.

C. Hickson: For sure. Yeah.

[4:15 p.m.]

S. Cadieux: Can you guys explain your graphs, or your chart, on this page. It doesn’t make sense to me.

I understand your request. I understand what you’re suggesting in terms of replacing current programming around tax credits and RESP funding and so on into a needs-based program, but the data that you’re showing doesn’t seem to support that. Can you explain that?

L. Douglass: Yeah, totally. We do annual polling through a company called Vector polling. They’re a national polling firm. In terms of those questions, it was basically saying….

The two questions. The first one is: should the government of B.C. have a system of grants for students, knowing that we don’t have one and knowing it would take additional tax dollars? That was basically showing that the result we got was overwhelmingly yes.

The second question was to give people a range of options in terms of saying: what do you think is the most effective way to help students?

S. Cadieux: Yeah, I understand that. But according to that, 45 percent of people suggest that RRSPs, which I’m assuming you mean as RESPs, and tax credits are actually more effective ways to support students than needs-based grants.

L. Douglass: Oh. I apologize. That’s a typo. We must have missed that one.

In terms of that grant…. Those should be reversed. The top result was actually for need-based grants at 30 percent. Those should be flipped, actually.

S. Cadieux: Okay.

L. Douglass: I could follow up with the committee to give you the proper statistics after.

S. Cadieux: Sure. That’d be great. I’d appreciate that. Thank you.

L. Douglass: Yeah. The top result was, in fact, need-based grants from that.

S. Cadieux: It didn’t seem to fit with your very thorough presentation. Thank you.

L. Douglass: Apologies for that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Stephanie. Very good catch.

It would really be very helpful, given how nice this is, if you could replace that and get us a new one by 5 p.m. on October 16. Otherwise, we can’t look at it.

Great eye there, Stephanie. Well done.

P. Milobar: I had a question around that too.

Also, in line with what others said, I just wanted to quickly say thank you. It makes me very proud to represent Kamloops and Kamloops–North Thompson. Truthfully, I think we’ve heard from almost every school on here, and you’re the only student union that has actually offered a potential solution to how to work within existing dollars and that — around RESP reallocations and things like that.

In fact, you might be the only group, period, that’s given us a potential solution for any topic, other than to just say: “Give us more money.” So I just want to say well done to you guys for doing that.

A. Weaver: We look forward to the presentation from your university and faculty association, shortly. You’ve set the bar very high.

R. Leonard: Yes, thanks for your presentation. I just have a couple of things.

The RESP program is a federal program, not provincial. I just wanted to….

T. Redies: There’s a provincial component as well, Ronna.

R. Leonard: To the grant portion of it?

L. Douglass: Yeah, there’s both federal and provincial.

R. Leonard: Okay. Well, there you go. The students are smarter than us.

L. Douglass: We did a federal submission as well, with a recommendation around that.

C. Hickson: There are parallels to the federal financial aid system, as we mention, with the education tax credits. They are pulling that back as well, because they realize how ineffective that form of financial aid is too. We’re just trying to point out the problems with RESPs, as well, in that submission.

R. Leonard: Okay. I want to just clarify. Your position is a little different from some of the other student unions that we’ve had present to us in that there seems to be a focus from the other student unions on how to manage debt in the long term, whereas you are talking about trying to stem it before it starts so that it opens doors for participation.

Then, the question that I know will be asked, not saying that it will be me…. When you open the door for participation without some…. If you have to bring something to the game, if you have to pay into your education, you’re more likely to complete. Are you going to participate to the fullest extent if the doors are just wide open? That’s one of the arguments that I’ve heard.

I do believe the benefits of the tax credit do have…. There are benefits in the long term. I know because my kids have enjoyed those benefits.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve got to wrap it up.

R. Leonard: I just wanted to get clarity on that one.

[4:20 p.m.]

L. Douglass: Yeah, totally. What I would say is that the current system, in terms of how we’ve approached this, is that yes, those benefit students. But who primarily benefit are students from middle- to higher-income families. Missing out are students from the lowest-income sector — right? — who may not have parents who could put away money in an RESP for them, who aren’t knowledgable about the tax system and things like this. Those are the students who aren’t going to school because they don’t have enough money to face those upfront costs.

What we’d like to see is a shift from some of those current financial aid systems into something that can be targeted directly at those who have the greatest need, in terms of improving the numbers of students who can participate and, therefore, complete and enter the economy as well.

C. Hickson: Education is a profound equalizer, and we just want to ensure people from all socioeconomic backgrounds have the opportunity to realize their potential.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, time is up, but thank you very much, gentlemen. A very good presentation. We really appreciate it. Please get that in so that we can have the right graph. That’d be great.

Next up we have the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association — Kevin Boon.

B.C. CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION

K. Boon: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to present before you today. It’s always nice when you guys come to our hometown. It makes it much simpler for us, and we do appreciate it.

Just a bit of history here. The B.C. Cattlemen’s Association has been the official voice of the cattle ranchers in British Columbia since 1929. We represent over 1,100 ranchers throughout the entire province with a mission to promote, encourage, protect and develop the cattle industry in British Columbia in an environmentally responsible manner. Today, for the purposes of budget allocation, the association asks the province to consider the following spending areas that will reduce the fiscal burden on family-run ranches, while providing benefits to B.C.’s society and its environment.

These three key issues that we’ve brought before you today are on forage enhancement in wildfire areas, water storage for climate adaptation and highway fencing program renewal. We’ve respectfully limited our requests to these three essentials, a lot to do with the timeliness of the fire situation here in British Columbia this year. We felt it was key to bring some of these forward as you look at the job of rehabilitating these lands out there at this point in time.

My first one will be on forage enhancement in wildfire areas. The investment we’re requesting at this point would be a $3 million investment. With over three million acres being decimated in the province, infrastructure can and will be replaced. Above and beyond that, there is an even greater challenge in establishing a short-term action plan, as well as a long-term management plan. Restoring economic stability and environmental health to these rural areas is vital at this point in time.

Ranching and grazing take place over much of the areas impacted by the fires. For the B.C. cattle industry, it is critical that the province invest immediately in grass-seeding critical burned areas. The benefit of grass-seeding these areas that have been burned by wildfires is to reduce the opportunity for the induction and infestation of invasive weeds. This is a huge problem for us and a growing one throughout the province. We know from past experience that one of the biggest ways to establish these is in fire seasons. The fireguards and the equipment that move around transport these weeds in. By an investment at this time, we can reduce millions of dollars’ worth of remedial work that is going to be required in the years to come.

As well as reducing these infestations, it will reduce soil erosion. With the reduced capacity to hold the snowpack, we will see an increased speed in the freshet runoff this year, which will take a lot of the soil into the water system. It will also provide essential feed supply for wildlife and livestock, as well as a great opportunity to sequester carbon to offset some of the wildfire impact.

Investing now is a strong preventative measure. A conservative estimate is 1 percent of the total burned area needing immediate restoration — this being in fireguards, landing areas, places like that that are highly susceptible. With an average cost — and these are very rough figures — of about $100 per acre for seed and for the application of it, an immediate investment of $3 million would be required to cover that 1 percent that we estimate is a coverage. Our recommendation, then, is to immediately invest $3 million for forage enhancement environmental stability as part of the post-wildfire recovery effort.

[4:25 p.m.]

The second area is water storage for climate adaptation. Communities need to consider ways to adapt to the changing climate. In order to see long-term benefits from climate adaptation responses, the province will need to invest in infrastructure and change some of the policies. Water storage has been identified as one of the most important factors for climate change adaptation.

While we know that agriculture is a major benefactor of water storage and is often the reason for constructing them, the analysis that we have done identifies that there are many others who benefit, including recreation, wildlife, fish habitat, fish migration, wildfire suppression and flood mitigation. This is supported by the analysis that the B.C. Cattlemen’s did with the B.C. government in a cost-benefit analysis titled a Study for Costs and Benefits Associated with Dams and Reservoirs on the B.C. Cattle Ranches. We have attached a copy of this to the submission that we emailed in.

More dams and reservoirs will be needed to meet the growing need for water for communities, food production, environmental needs, etc. These green initiatives benefit many different interests and end-users. However, they require financial investment.

Again, the unprecedented wildfires this year have changed not only the landscape but also the forest hydrology. Over the next 20 years, these burned areas will see drastic, long-lasting impacts. Spring runoff will occur earlier than normal and will happen over shorter periods of time and will increase the volume of water being shed from melting snowpacks. Severe erosion and localized flooding will occur.

B.C. Cattlemen’s is concerned about the long-term impacts to ranchers and the environment from post-fire changes in forest hydrology. By investing in water storage, the province has an opportunity to mitigate post-fire impacts and turn wildfire disasters into an opportunity to address the long-term needs of a resource-based economy.

We recommend that the province invest $10 million per year over the next three years to protect, maintain and build water storage infrastructure. We believe that it’ll take three years’ worth of investment to necessarily see a visible change for climate adaptation and post-fire runoff control.

The third area of investment we would encourage is to reinvest in the highways fencing program. We have run three successful programs to this point, two within the last seven years. In that, we have been able to cover, in total, over 600 applications and have been able to complete over 837 kilometres of highway fence.

The importance of this is not solely to the cattle ranchers. In fact, I would say it is secondary. The main purpose of this is really public protection. We have to be able to protect the motoring public, and good solid fences on these highways are the way to do it.

In our own survey that we have done within our association of our members, since we started the program in 2010 and up to last year, we’ve seen a 72 percent decrease in the amount of animals that we have seen hit on the highways. We don’t know what this translates to for ICBC claims or for the actual ones, but we know that these are the accidents that we are being reported to by our members.

We believe that this should be an ongoing program. The program, what we have done, those kilometres…. We keep getting continuous applications forward. We currently have about 1,500 kilometres of applications in front of us. The applications are based on a high-priority high-risk assessment each year, and we go out and rebuild the fences that are of the highest risk to the motoring public.

We would recommend that, actually, this program become more of a permanent basis within the transportation budget, and we would recommend that…. An annual investment of $2 million towards this program would allow us to catch up and be ahead of the game in being able to replace this deteriorating infrastructure.

With that, I’ll leave you with these three program and incentives or requests and open it up for questions, if you have any.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well thank you so much, Kevin.

Just a clarification. I notice that you mentioned about seeding these areas. We did have a presentation from a society that deals with invasive weeds and invasive animals and whatnot.

K. Boon: Invasive Species Council.

[4:30 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Species, yes. Now, one of the interesting things they said was that often the grass seed is contaminated with invasive species. So did you have any thoughts on ensuring that that regrassing is actually helpful?

K. Boon: Yeah, they’re absolutely correct. It’s one of the major issues that we have in obtaining seed and clean seed. There are different classes of seed and different varieties that have different infestations.

The requirement is for certified seed to be below a certain level. They have below 1 percent of weed seeds. Often those weed seeds are ones that are not the invasive plants. They may be weeds but are much easier controlled. The nice part is that grass, once established, is a major competitor for most weeds, especially the domestic ones. A lot of the weeds we’re talking about would be foreign invaders that are new to an area or are coming in from some other source.

We also see huge infestations right now. We have a huge threat to our grasslands and our forest lands here by certain weeds, especially spotted knapweed. We’re losing thousands of acres a year to it. We know the fight and the challenge that is ahead of us, to try and just stop that growth, let alone get control of it. So we’re very concerned, with the size of these wildfires this year, that if we don’t establish something there in the form of grass to hold the soil and everything else, there will be nothing for competition. We fully understand the weeds that do come with the grass, but the threat of that is far outweighed by the value of putting that grass seed out there.

P. Milobar: Thanks, Kevin. Yeah. It was Gail that pointed that out, and you pretty much reiterated what she said. So it’s good to know that there’s consistency there.

Really quick, I just want to make sure…. On your forage enhancement, you base that on per acre. That is meant to be an acre, not per hectare, so it doesn’t suddenly become 2½ times less than what you were asking for.

K. Boon: Yes, and I apologize. While I was in school, they did change to the metric system. However, I was a little slow at catching on, so I still do the conversion over, a lot of times, to the acre.

Basically, it’s 1.214 million hectares that are out there. For the purposes of trying to come up with a number — it’s always important, I’ve found, that we have a basis behind this number — I did my conversions back to hectares. A lot of what we’re talking about here are thousands of miles of fireguards that have been put in out there in landing areas.

The simple calculation for me is: 16½ feet by half a mile equals one acre. A lot of these fireguards are about three cat widths wide. I rounded it up and said that that was 16½ feet each; it was probably a little bit less than that. So I’m talking about every half mile covering three acres. When I sat and figured this down to what it would do, that would do us 5,000 kilometres, basically, of fireguard. You can do our calculation in different ways. At the end of the day, we felt that 1 percent….

If we go out and you tour or look at some of the areas that have been devastated, we have, basically, networks of fireguards where the fire was so intense and moved so quickly that as one fireguard was being built, it was jumping the fireguard behind them and they had to start a new one in other areas.

We have, literally, fireguards on top of fireguards. These will be helpful in some aspects, I believe, in doing some of the salvage operations that will be required for the forest industry to keep some of these in place, to be able to utilize them. But as we’re doing that, we feel it’s extremely important that we get some growth on these, of some sort of vegetation. We would prefer it to be grass over the weeds, because we know that, down the road, those weeds will become a major invader.

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

One thing I just want to mention. Some of the recommendations were for immediate…. Just keep in mind that we’re recommending for the next budget, which would come out in February of 2018. Now, of course, we encourage you to please get these to the right ministries, at least if there are funds now. There are funds for restoration right now. We’d encourage you to get this proposal to the ministries as well. Just keep it clear that we’re talking about the budget that’s coming up, not the budget that we just had.

K. Boon: Yeah, we fully considered that, I guess, in putting this in here. However, due to the importance then, when we looked at it….

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, I just wanted you to know so that you don’t….

K. Boon: It probably won’t get done this fall anyway.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s fine. I just wanted to make sure that you understand what we’re trying to accomplish. At the same time, I’d very much encourage you to get these things out to the appropriate ministries.

K. Boon: Absolutely.

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

[4:35 p.m.]

All right. Next I’d like to call the B.C. School Trustees Association — Gordon Swan.

Hello, Gordon.

B.C. SCHOOL TRUSTEES ASSOCIATION

G. Swan: Good afternoon. My name is Gordon Swan, president of the B.C. School Trustees Association. I’m here today representing all 60 boards of education and school districts across British Columbia. We want to thank you for this opportunity to provide you with our input and priorities for the upcoming 2018 provincial budget.

Our highest priority is, of course, B.C.’s public education system, which is one of the best in the world — in my mind, the best. But I’m a little biased. The cornerstone of every community in our province, as well as our economic and cultural future, is our B.C. public education system.

Although significant money was added to the overall K-to-12 education budget for this school year, all of the additional money was directed at fulfilling the new obligations for schools arising out of the Supreme Court of Canada–ordered reinstatement of collective agreement clauses and the resulting memorandum of agreement with the B.C. Teachers Federation.

In reality, school districts have no additional money this fall to address identified needs, inflation or new initiatives. We believe investing in public education is a valuable use of limited provincial resources that brings both positive short- and long-term returns to students, communities, government and society as a whole.

We want all students to succeed — Indigenous students, immigrants and refugees, students with special needs, children in care, disadvantaged individuals and those who live in rural and remote communities. We need to provide them all with the required programs and resources needed to be successful and to succeed on their own terms.

While we can be proud of B.C.’s public schools, we do not yet ensure equal access and success to those students facing unique challenges. If you are to see equal outcomes for all students, then equitable investments must be made. In particular, there is a need to invest in programs that provide equal opportunities for students with special needs, our Indigenous students and students who live in remote locations.

This will require additions to public education funding but also changes to the way in which we allocate those resources. There are many options when it comes to how you could effectively invest in K-to-12 education towards improving student outcomes. Some of these options are relatively inexpensive and would significantly create improvements across the province.

We respectfully request that you increase school district general operating grants by the cost of inflation each and every year, without assigning the use of those funds. This allows school districts to spend money where it is needed in local schools. We also ask that you get rid of the requirement of forced administrative savings and replace that money with an investment in school and district leadership, a key component of ensuring student success.

Pay the cost of implementing and maintaining the next-generation network project in all school districts to ensure equity of access to technology in all schools across the province. Add to the annual facilities grant that all schools receive to maintain school buildings. Safe and adequately maintained facilities should not be optional. Increase learning resource grants to school districts so that students have the books, equipment and resources necessary to provide a learning environment reflective of the 21st-century economy.

The key, though, is allowing school districts the flexibility to meet the needs of students at the local level by ensuring that operational funding is not tied to one-size-fits-all requirements. Simply beyond increasing the quantum of money that comes to school districts, which is truly needed, changes in government policy and regulations could both improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current spending. School districts have very little flexibility now, as to how dollars are spent, with over 90 percent of their budgets tied to meeting government requirements and collective agreement obligations.

There has been an increasing trend towards targeted funding and restrictive provincial requirements that are often unproductive and unwarranted. Last year, for example, school districts were tied to specific transportation grant requirements, targeted rural education grants and the requirements of the memorandum of agreement.

Virtually every new dollar received by school districts over the previous 18 months was tied to specific external requirements or new obligations. There was no opportunity for decision-making by boards of education to address local priorities. This does not allow for effective or efficient allocation of resources to meet the needs of schools, students and at the school district level.

[4:40 p.m.]

The time has come to remove at least some of these restrictive requirements and allow boards of education to make financial decisions in the best interests of their students as co-governors of the education system.

Beyond maintaining operational funding at a workable level for school districts and ensuring boards have the flexibility to meet student needs, it is important that funding for new capital projects also be sufficient to address the significant backlog of needs for new schools, seismic upgrading and the replacement of aging facilities that are getting to end of life.

While we recognize the limitations of government spending and providing dollars, the expedited process necessary to address these building projects within a reasonable length of time is of critical importance. This will take an ongoing commitment of government far beyond the upcoming 2018 budget.

Needed changes to both the funding of school districts and related government policies must be initiated in the February 2018 budget. We do, however, recommend a long-range, minimum-five-year plan to address both the operational and capital funding of the K-to-12 education system as well as the needed improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of current allocation and spending requirements. It will take more than a single term of government to implement all the recommendations that we foresee.

Should government also announce broad programs or policy changes in other sectors during the upcoming budget year, we would expect that all incurred costs of any impact or expanded mandates for the K-to-12 education system would be fully covered by new government funding.

If school districts are to become directly or indirectly responsible for child care–early learning programs, expanded youth mental health programs or other new initiatives of government, all of the operational capital costs of these programs must be covered by additional funding from government.

Certainly, our hope, though, would be that government would also commit to co-construction of new programs under consideration for placement within school districts. As co-governors of public education, boards of education should have the opportunity to participate in both the design and initiation of any programs and responsibilities that are to be added to the school districts they oversee.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today. Please be assured that B.C. school trustees and our member boards are committed to working with government to find meaningful and effective answers to these concerns. We are committed to be part of the solution and not just a requester of additional funds.

I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

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

T. Redies: Thanks, Gordon, for your presentation.

I just have a couple of questions. Do you have a sense of the quantum ask you’re putting forward here, in terms of dollars across the various initiatives?

G. Swan: If we look at deferred maintenance…. We know that in Vancouver, for example, because they did a recent audit, there’s about $700 million in deferred maintenance. I’ve heard Minister Fleming use a number of about $1.2 billion. On that, we’re not sure of the exact number because there hasn’t been a collection of that data recently. We think the first thing on the capital and annual facility grant is to go out and get that new data.

What I can tell you is $100 million in annual facilities grants and allocation for tens of billions of dollars of assets in the province isn’t enough to sustain that.

T. Redies: My second question is with respect to the operating grants and indexing them to inflation, which seems quite reasonable. The question I would have is: what do you do with districts that are perhaps experiencing declining enrolments of students and other districts that are actually increasing? It might be that the inflation adjustment wouldn’t be enough, and it might be too much for some districts. How would you suggest that be managed?

G. Swan: We’ve actually talked with the ministry about being involved in the upcoming funding formula review. We think that’s another method to look at that in terms of equitable access and knowing that there are unique differences across the province. To us, part of that is being engaged in an actual review that doesn’t just look at the quantum but actually looks at how we allocate.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We did have a presentation from principals and vice-principals about some of the challenges that they’re encountering between how administrators and teachers are interacting in terms of salaries and things. Did you have any comments on how to manage that in the future, coming forward?

[4:45 p.m.]

G. Swan: There are a few areas. We know there’s a need for about a $5.5 million compensation improvement for school district administrators. Part of that is there’s a new regional funding model that was approved by the Public Sector Employers Council but not funded. So it makes sense that if government is approving a new model, it would fund it. Beyond that, we also have to invest in leadership development with our prime educators and with our principals and vice-principals. They are the key leaders of those schools.

In terms of policy changes, one of the things that could happen right now…. If I was a principal in a school, and I had gone off on parental leave, and there is a teacher in that school that we want to move up into that position for the next nine to 12 months, they have to give up their seniority. So it’s very hard to convince someone: “We’d like you to take on a leadership role. You have some potential. But to do that, you’re going to have to give up ten or 15 years of seniority.” That doesn’t make sense to me.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is that partially because they’re now separated, as opposed to…?

G. Swan: They’re separated, but we could deal with that through policy changes and through engagement with the B.C. Teachers Federation, I think.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I really appreciate that. Thank you very much, Gordon, for the presentation.

Next up we have Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association — Star Mahara.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

S. Mahara: Hello to everybody. Weyt-kp xwexwéytep. That’s how we would say that in the territory here. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the priorities that our association and the members that we represent want to see addressed in the next provincial budget.

I’m the vice-president of Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association — TRUFA, if I say that later. We’re a certified trade union and a professional association that speaks on behalf of our roughly 800 faculty members. We have instructors and researchers. We cover the librarians, counsellors and educational coordinators that work at our university in Kamloops and also in our campus at Williams Lake, and we have small satellite campuses in some of the rural regions.

As post-secondary educators, we see firsthand the benefits that learning, research and scholarship have on our students and also on our community and the region in which our universities operate. What we’re looking for in the next budget, primarily, are measures that produce better access for learners in our region and promote a supportive learning environment.

To achieve these goals, we have some specific recommendations. But before I get into those details, I want to make a few comments about the role that our university plays in Kamloops and the region and the problems that are facing post-secondary education throughout B.C., but most noticeably here at Thompson Rivers University, and you’ve probably already been hearing from other post-secondary….

We have a student base of about 13,000 full-time students. We also have, through open learning, approximately another 12,000 students that use the on-line and remote classrooms learning to start, enhance or complete their post-secondary education. Approximately 11 percent of our students come from 16 different First Nations in the province and other groups of Aboriginal peoples.

Since we were launched as TRU in 2005, we have worked to meet the post-secondary education needs of a large region of the province while maintaining our commitment to being a comprehensive learning institution. By comprehensive, I mean we provide a broad range of programs from undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, diplomas and certificates. We have trades and apprenticeship programs. We have adult basic education, university preparation. We offer all of these things.

Providing this broad base of learning opportunities is part of our commitment to the region. Certainly, we are one of the largest catchment areas of any post-secondary institution. Our region runs from Clearwater to Merritt, from Kamloops to Lytton, Lillooet and up to Williams Lake.

[4:50 p.m.]

Under the Thompson Rivers University Act, our institution has the legislative obligation to offer baccalaureate and masters-level programs. We’re mandated to offer adult basic ed and training, to undertake and maintain research and scholarly activities in support of undergraduate and graduate degree programs and also to serve the education and training needs of our region. This all-inclusive mandate is unique among B.C. post-secondary institutions, we believe.

Like other post-secondary institutions, TRU struggles with the issue of funding. The largest single investment that the provincial government makes in post-secondary education comes in the form of the provincial operating grant.

We believe that the funding formula that underpins the operating grant, a formula that has been in place for more than 15 years, does not reflect the legislative mandate under which we’re operating currently. It has resulted in continuing struggles for administrators and faculty as we attempt to meet the multi-faceted educational obligations that we have under the legislation.

One glaring example is the failure of the current funding formula to recognize that we have to deliver graduate programs. That’s something that 15 years ago, when the formula was created, we didn’t have to do. While we face the same challenges that other universities face — the growing demand of maintaining and growing our enrolments, changing technology, the need to constantly update our course offerings and align them with the changing demands of the economy, the job market — all of this translates into higher costs for the institution.

We also face that additional challenge of delivering the post-secondary education to a geographically large region — a huge number of rural centres and diverse students that we have from trades, ABE, UE prep, university, undergraduate, master’s. We have to be able to support our research mandate. All of these costs, as you know, have moved well ahead of the operating grant that we receive from the government.

Just a few facts. When measured on a per-student basis and adjusted for the impact of inflation, the real per-student operating grants to public post-secondary institutions have been in a steady decline over the last decade and a half. I’m sure you’re aware of that. In the 2015-2016 fiscal year, the real per-student operating grants had dropped by 20 percent since 2001.

At TRU, like elsewhere, the funding pressures are most evident in the rise in tuition fees. The cost of post-secondary education has primarily been shifted to the students and families as tuition revenues have increased almost 400 percent in that same time period since 2001.

Institutional budgets, as we all know, are increasingly relying on outside revenue sources. At TRU, the provincial operating grant covers now only 42 percent of our university’s revenue, meaning that almost 60 percent comes from tuition and other sources. Nearly 41 percent of our revenue comes from tuition alone. In fiscal 2016-2017, for the first time in our 47-year history as a post-secondary institution, student tuition revenue will eclipse the value of the government grant in funding TRU, which was formerly UCC, formerly CC, Cariboo College.

As educators we are deeply concerned about both cuts to core funding and the shifting of the financial burden on to students. The funding shortfalls have resulted in larger class size. We have fewer instructional staff and more contract staff precisely at a time when national student surveys indicate that the small class size and contact with professors are a main reason students come to TRU. It’s one of the reasons they choose us and one of the things we’re really proud of.

Additionally, what we’re seeing in our classrooms is that with tuition fees and the accompanying student debt rise, students are having to take longer to complete their programs. They’re also having to work one, two and sometimes three jobs, part-time jobs, to finance their education. I want to tell you, as a faculty member, I have firsthand experience of the struggles and the negative impact that increased outside work has on our students’ abilities to focus on their studies and be successful.

[4:55 p.m.]

I’m a nursing faculty. We want our students to be able to focus on their studies and be able to graduate and be safe, competent and ethical practitioners. When they’re half-asleep in class sometimes, because they can’t afford to come, and they’re working two jobs….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Star, just so you’re aware, there’s about a minute and a half left. I want to make sure you get to your recommendations.

S. Mahara: All right. So the rising tuition fees — got that.

Serious concern that…. It’s really about accessibility, then, to public post-secondary education, especially in our region. I’m not going to talk about that, then. That’s funny. I did this today, and it was five minutes.

Let me move to the recommendations, then, for the next year’s budget. First of all, we want to thank you — we’ll get this in really quickly — for acting quickly to restore the tuition-free status to ABE. Those are our most vulnerable students, and we are really happy about that.

Here are three. We have three recommendations. The first is to improve funding opportunities for students, including a revitalized, non-payable student grant program; interest-free student loans; and dedicated funding for student support services, like math and writing and learning centres. These all help students complete their program and be successful; get their degree in a timely way without a heavy debt load; and contribute to their communities, the economy and the province.

The second is a post-secondary institutional funding formula that better responds to the cost pressures that are faced by our institutions. We recommend a comprehensive, fully consultative review to address core funding needs of all of our public colleges, institutes and regional universities and appropriate funding levels to reflect the specific mandate of post-secondary institutions, such as TRU.

The third. We are recommending again — I think we did this in the last couple of years — to reinstate the envelope, as opposed to block, funding to ensure that core programs are adequately funded at TRU and they’re available not only in Kamloops but to the smaller communities that we have to serve.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Star. Appreciate it.

J. Brar: Thanks for coming today and making the presentation.

I just want to ask you to clarify more about your recommendation 3, which is, basically, the reinstatement of envelope, as opposed to block, funding to ensure that core programs are adequately funded at TRU and continue to be available, not only in Kamloops but in small communities in our areas. What does that mean?

S. Mahara: That means that we used to get funding for nursing, funding for ABE, funding for UE prep. So we would then know that we had the budget. Now we’re getting one big block of funding. By the time you cut it and put it in various places and priorities, sometimes those programs, especially the UE prep and ABE and some of our funding to Williams Lake, get cut.

We have other more, not that they’re more important, sexy kinds of things that draw the attention of people. They get the funding. Some of the ones that are not get cut. We’re not able to put in enough for research and scholarship, supports and infrastructure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It was interesting. Some students were saying…. I’m not sure who was saying it, to be honest.

S. Mahara: Was it the TRUSUs?

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve had a few presentations on this issue. It’s the fact that some students are choosing career paths based on their ability to pay student loans back, as opposed to what their interest or actual desire is in terms of their career path. They’re choosing something that they might not necessarily want to do.

Have you found that in your experience at all, given this big student debt load that we’re finding now?

S. Mahara: I’m from nursing, so our students almost all get jobs. They come into nursing mostly because they want to be nurses and they want to work in that. I think that students are not able to get all the courses that they need sometimes, so I’m finding more that they’re choosing areas where there are more sections of courses so that they can get them and then not have to go — to try to keep their debt down by trying to finish early and not have to take five years to finish instead of four.

I haven’t really heard that, but I’m sure our students, TRUSU, would be on top of that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you very much, Star. We really appreciate your recommendations and your thoughts. We will take everything into consideration.

[5:00 p.m.]

Next up we have the Kamloops Brain Injury Association — David Johnson.

KAMLOOPS BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION

D. Johnson: Hello. My name is Dave Johnson. I’m the executive director of the Kamloops Brain Injury Association. Thank you for making the time to listen to our submission today. I propose to tell you a little bit about KBIA and about brain injury, tell you what we hope you’re going to consider in the next budget, and then answer any questions that you might have.

KBIA has been working since 1986 here in Kamloops. We cover the Kamloops region. We define that as from Clearwater down to Merritt and from Spences Bridge over to Chase. We work with brain injury survivors after their main interactions with the medical system and once they’re back in the community. So we work with people with mild to moderate brain injuries, not the severe cases. Those folks stay in the medical system.

We provide individualized support and life skills. Now, in English, that means that every brain injury is different. And each person has different challenges. One survivor might need some help learning to control their emotions. Another one might have speech problems. And a third one can’t do math anymore.

If you think about it, your brain controls everything from our thinking to our breathing to our emotions to our movement. So an injury to your brain can affect any part of your person. What we provide is a really wide variety of supports, and it’s, frankly, hard to explain quite simply.

We do a lot of group work. It’s cost-effective. I’ll give one example. We have what we call community kitchen. Survivors come and we make meals together with them. It’s to introduce nutritious and low-cost recipes, help survivors learn, or sometimes re-learn, how to prepare food, how to budget and how to store food properly.

Preparing your own food is a pretty basic skill, but a lot of people, especially after a car accident that injures their head, need help with basic skills, and that’s what we do. The majority of our clients do not have ICBC payouts or WorkSafe settlements. I can’t charge my survivors tuition. And they often can’t work. What this means is they’re on public income support. So these budgeting, low-cost meals are very important for these folks.

We also have an education and prevention program, the main focus being grade 4 students. We want kids to wear helmets, wear their safety gear. If we can get them young, basically those habits are going to stay for a lifetime. We also do some adult education. Next Tuesday I’m going to go talk to Fortis.

In our adult education, I want to bring up one group, which is our weekly visits up to the local penitentiary. We meet with inmates who have self-identified as having a brain injury, and we help them understand what’s happened to their brain. We also give them some strategies on how to reduce impulsive behaviour. Also, another priority for us is helping them improve decision-making. Those are common areas a brain injury will affect. To be blunt, if some of these people took a little bit longer to think things through, they wouldn’t be in the penitentiary. So we think building those skills is a good thing.

One of the submissions that you folks have already received is from the Brain Injury Alliance. In it, you’ll note that up to 80 percent of all inmates in penitentiaries have suffered a brain injury. That’s both in Canada and in the U.S. It’s pretty stable. The general population is only about 8½ percent. Other studies look at homeless. Fifty percent of these folks have had brain injuries. So we know that brain injuries result in cognitive deficits, reduced emotional control and reduced decision-making.

If you put it all together, it’s easy — or, I think, reasonable — to see a link between brain injury and some negative social outcomes, particularly prisons, addictions, homelessness. I would say if 80 percent of the people in our penitentiaries have brain injuries, we need to probably have a look at our justice system, but that’s a bit of an aside.

Our work is how to help survivors and society avoid those negative social outcomes. Money spent on our work reduces money you’re going to have to spend on prisons, on homelessness and addictions. Our survivors are, frankly, at higher risk, so an investment in them helps reduce those other problems.

Enough about us. We’re going to be requesting you review the Brain Injury Alliance’s submission, hopefully favourably. Now, I’ll be open. I get money from the alliance, so of course I’m going to say that. Why do you guys want to do this? Why would you want to consider it? Well, that’s the real question.

I’d like to highlight a couple of those reasons. One is decentralization. B.C. is a big province. You guys are touring around. I don’t have to tell you that.

[5:05 p.m.]

We’ve already decentralized some of our medical care to the health regions. Here in the Interior Health Authority, brain injuries for folks who are between the ages of 19 and 65 are handled by one department, and folks over 65 are handled by another department. Up in the northern health unit, it’s all in one group. Now, I don’t know if that’s a good solution for either of those areas, but I do know that in Kamloops, the over-65s have a hard time getting the services, so we put the Brain Injury Alliance money that we receive toward that local problem. Up in Prince George, they do something else with it.

The alliance allows each part of the province to get the services that part of the province needs. There’s some research out of a university in Calgary that shows that in Canada there are higher rates of brain injury in rural areas than there are in urban areas. A structure that allows government funds to adjust for differences between Vancouver, Smithers and Kelowna is a positive thing. The technical term the European Union uses is subsidiarity, but basically, the idea is let the people closest to the problem work on solving the problem.

Another reason to consider the alliance funding is prevalence. Acquired brain injuries are 400 times as likely as HIV in B.C., but over the last few years, HIV has gotten 11 times the funding. Both of these conditions are lifelong. Both of them have no cure. So 400 times the incidence but 1/11 of the funding? That seems like an odd allocation to me.

Now, we know that different problems get different levels of funding. That’s a political process, a social process. Thank you for inviting me to take part in that process today. But the outcomes aren’t always ideal, and we sometimes need to adjust. That’s part of, I think, what we’re proposing. Brain injuries are a lot more common than we used to think, and maybe we need to adjust for that.

Brain injury is an invisible injury. It’s, by and large, inside the skull, and you can’t see that. The typical person doesn’t see it. Even doctors aren’t able to see that. Technology has helped us learn a lot, but Kamloops got its first MRI in 2004, so this is still pretty new stuff.

Ty Pozzobon was a rodeo rider who recently died. They confirmed that he had a brain injury only through an autopsy. They had to send it down to Seattle, because that’s where the state of the technology is. Anyone who saw him ride or, perhaps more importantly, saw him fall, knows he had a brain injury, but medical science wasn’t able to pin that down.

Now, invisible means that it’s hard to raise funds. Many people respond to the easy to understand and the easy to grasp, while complex things are harder to raise support for. You’re all politicians. You understand campaigning. Okay, a short, simple slogan is: it works. A long, complicated discussion of the nuanced opinion on a complex issue is a lot harder to get out there.

I’m looking at Dr. Weaver. Charismatic megafauna is a term I’m sure you’re familiar with. I used to work with refugee children in Africa. I can assure you it is much easier to raise money for refugee children in Africa than it is to try and explain an invisible, complicated injury.

I am perfectly willing to keep selling tickets to our golf tournament. Milobar can tell you that. He’s faced me before. I will privately fundraise, but not every association is going to succeed on that path. The reality is that with the federal plan, the taxation of high income earners, if that goes through, charity fundraising across the board is going to be harder for us and other agencies as well.

We’ve gone from 45 non-profit brain injury associations in 2001 to only 15 today. Funding is the main reason that those have gone down. I think, as the budget committee, you guys are in a position to have some influence on that.

I’ll just repeat it again. I think our work reduces costs on your prisons line, and it’s going to reduce costs on your homeless line and your addictions line. We’re a low-cost preventative measure, and we are working on a population that is at higher risk than many others. Brain injury is impacting people in B.C. We have a network that does this work already, and we have an effective, reputable channel to move government funds to decentralized, locally sensitive agencies. That channel is the Brain Injury Alliance. It’s been working for several years now.

My association’s request to you folks is that you consider that submission and consider it favourably. Thank you for your time and your consideration. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have.

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

S. Cadieux: I’ve got a couple of pieces for you. First of all is a question. Don’t jump into the answer. I’ll give you all of them at once. Are you faced with a lot of people coming for service to the Brain Injury Alliance or to your organization that have FASD?

[5:10 p.m.]

The next comment is around the fundraising. Understandably, it’s challenging. I come out of your world, but it still concerns me that the brain injury group has not been able to be a little more sustainable as a provincial collective organization over time, from a financial perspective.

I don’t expect any organization to raise all of their dollars or all the dollars that they would like to have. I mean, that’s the reality, but I think it is concerning a little bit. Part of that challenge was there was a stream of money available from government for neurotraumatic injuries that fizzled away because the organizations couldn’t stay organized enough to access that money. That theoretically still exists and should be accessed.

Again, there is a piece there, I think, that’s missing, in terms of organization. I would suggest, personally, that that be looked at in terms of going back, as organizations have now strengthened and the structure has now strengthened, and revisiting that relationship.

I do think that you’re absolutely right in your comments about the value of providing support to people on something that very few people understand, in that it saves costs down the line and provides for better life outcomes. I definitely value the work that you do and appreciate that there are people like you and your organization there to do it, so thank you very much.

D. Johnson: Starting with the question about FASD, or fetal alcohol spectrum, we do get a few people in. I actually have recently been able to work with a local group, Boogie the Bridge, to get some funding to start working with people with FASD. I found out about that last week. I’m very excited about that, and we will be reaching out.

The main difference between FASD and an acquired brain injury is that FASD happens while you’re in the womb while an acquired brain injury happens after you’re born. The effects are very similar, and the things that you can do to help folks with these challenges are very similar, so my team is already ready. They have the right skills to help, so we are going to move in on that.

I alluded to working with refugee children in Africa. I was away for 20 years, and I only came back last year. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot of the history of these things. I think there are some good folks on the Brain Injury Alliance who would be happy to maybe answer that question better, but I’m not that one. I do know that they are trying to build a sustainable, long-term solution for that very challenge.

J. Brar: Thank you, David. Thanks for coming and making the presentation and also for your deep and very sincere commitment to helping people with brain injuries.

I just want to say to you that I completely understand your frustration. Democracy, the way the system is set up, is based on who can lobby the best. We are trying to make some changes to hopefully give you a more level playing field in that area, if we succeed.

Having said that, the question I wanted to ask you is this. Is this because of a lack of marketing or putting forth powerful proposals or a lack of clarity between the health care system and what you do? When people, whosoever…. All of us are part of that too. When we develop the budget, what you do overlaps with what the health care system provides. Can you comment on that? Is that a confusion point in between what you are trying to say?

D. Johnson: Sure. First of all, I lived in a non-democratic country for 20 years, so I am in no way criticizing democracy. I am so happy to be here. It’s nice to be home.

[5:15 p.m.]

To your main question, I think that brain injury is something that is becoming better understood. We started in ’86, and part of that was because there were no other supports. Since ’86, the scientific knowledge has advanced, and with that growing, we are also seeing people coming together to advocate for it better.

The work we’re doing is sort of post-medical. The medical system works with the injury. Then they say: “Okay, you’re good to go back in the community.” Unlike a broken arm or a broken leg where you can now walk, a brain injury doesn’t heal the same way, but they look okay. That’s why I called it an invisible injury. It is difficult to market it clearly. You’re right. We are still struggling on how to articulate that. Also, it’s more of a social intervention than a medical intervention many times. People think: “Oh, injury. You should see a doctor.” Well, the doctors have finished. So it’s a bit of both.

I hope that helps.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Our time is up, David. Thank you very much. I wanted to echo the rest of the committee in terms of your commitment to the people of the area and to brain injury. Thank you very much for your obviously heartfelt presentation.

Next up we have the Kamloops Art Gallery, Western Canada Theatre, Kamloops Symphony — Margaret Chrumka, Lori Marchand and Kathy Humphreys. There are three groups, right? Just a reminder that there’s ten minutes. I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to talk, so just a quick reminder. Please go ahead.

KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY,
WESTERN CANADA THEATRE,
KAMLOOPS SYMPHONY

M. Chrumka: Thank you very much for the opportunity to make this presentation on behalf of the Kamloops arts community — a community that supports museums, a wide array of performing arts venues, a strong local music scene and over 100 community arts organizations, as well as three major professional arts organizations, which we represent.

My name is Margaret Chrumka. I’m the executive director with the Kamloops Art Gallery. I’ve been with the gallery for the past five years, carrying on the passion and force that my predecessor Jann Bailey demonstrated in the 25 years plus that she was with the gallery. And 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the Kamloops Art Gallery in our community.

K. Humphreys: Good afternoon. I’m Kathy Humphreys, executive director of the Kamloops Symphony. I’ve been in my position for more than 27 years — I’m not going to pretend that I’m a young spring chicken anymore — and Kamloops Symphony Music School and Kamloops Symphony orchestra.

L. Marchand: My name is Lori Marchand. I’m the executive director of Western Canada Theatre. I’ve been in my role for 18 of the company’s 42 years in this community. I am also the current vice-chair of the B.C. Arts Council.

All three of our organizations have received provincial and national recognition for the work that we do in our regional communities, all while ensuring our programs and work remain affordable to everyone in our community, including children and seniors; enhancing our regional education system from kindergarten to post-secondary; and contributing to a strong, sustainable and innovative economy.

M. Chrumka: Specifically in my role at the art gallery, I’ve been able to bring a renewed commitment to increasing our annual attendance and membership in a cost-effective manner. That’s definitely integral for us, all three of us.

I’m happy to say that we’ve seen great success on these fronts. In spite of the wildfires that pretty much ravaged our community this past summer and the significant decrease in tourism that many of us saw, we at the gallery received and saw our highest level of attendance in five years. This is due to a sustained commitment to reaching and connecting with new audiences, while maintaining an unwavering focus on presenting artwork of cultural significance.

Funding from the B.C. Arts Council continues to ensure that we support artists in our province in achieving levels of excellence. I stress the word “excellence” because that is the mandate of the B.C. Arts Council. It reflects our contributions in this sector, socially and economically.

Our community gaming grant ensures our education programs, including spring and summer art camps for children and youth, remain accessible, meaning affordable. We continue to work with groups like Arbour Aboriginal Artists Collective in offering monthly workshops for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth and young adults to ensure that we are recognizing the needs of the diversity of our population here in Kamloops.

[5:20 p.m.]

Ultimately, in all our efforts, we work to demonstrate the importance of art in our lives — for our health, for our well-being — and to ensure we nurture thoughtful citizens and livable places.

K. Humphreys: The Kamloops Symphony is one of just two professional orchestral music organizations in the interior of B.C. We also have the distinction of maintaining the orchestra and a non-profit conservatory-style music school in one of the smallest communities in Canada to do so.

Last year was a pivotal one, with the celebration of our 40th anniversary and the successful transition from our 27-year music director, Bruce Dunn, to a new, young, energetic, well-educated conductor, Dina Gilbert, from Montreal, through a national search process. The number of qualified applicants, from across the country and beyond, is testament to the breadth of reputation that the Kamloops Symphony and the arts community that exists here have been able to create.

Funding from the B.C. Arts Council has contributed to our ongoing development, although not as well as we might have liked, over the years. The high artistic level of achievement in recent performances is just the beginning of our focus on artistic excellence in the years to come.

In the past year, we’ve seen increasing attendance both in Kamloops and in Salmon Arm, the chief cities in which we currently perform. Increased regional service is a key part of our new strategic plan. Our community gaming grant supports lower prices for performances in Salmon Arm, reflecting the needs of that community; performance opportunities in our community, for students at the Kamloops Symphony Music School; and access to free, open dress rehearsals for everyone.

Audiences for rehearsals typically include young children, their parents, and seniors. We offer reduced ticket prices, for every performance, for music students and young adults ages 19 to 34. Through these access programs, we are nurturing new audiences and contributing to the sustainability of live orchestral music for future generations.

L. Marchand: WCT is also unique in the country. There is not another theatre company of our size and scale, in a community of our size, recognized for the excellence and breadth of our productions, from new Indigenous work — impactful work that directly addresses the recommendations of the TRC, such as Children of God, a brand-new musical that is based on the residential school experience — to wonderful hits like Mamma Mia!, which brought in an audience of over 10,000, in 12 days, to our little theatre. Through co-productions and touring our work, featuring many B.C. artists, our work is on stages from coast to coast, expanding the impact of our work and our artists across the country.

The funding we receive from the B.C. Arts Council is critical to ensuring that our work continues to meet these high standards. In the past number of years, thanks to the most recent increase in funding to the B.C. Arts Council, we have expanded our theatre classes to include specific classes for children and youth on the autism spectrum, as well as children and youth with Down syndrome. We have strong connections with Thompson Rivers University and UBC co-op programs, and we offer meaningful hands-on experience in marketing research and tourism.

The funds we receive through the community gaming grant enable us to ensure that price is never a barrier to attending our productions. Reduced pricing for children, students and seniors — along with our pay-what-you-can matinees — ensures that every person in our regional community, who wishes to attend, can.

M. Chrumka: We’re here before you today, in conjunction with our counterparts from across the province, to say thank you to all parties for recognizing the value of the arts and recommending a doubling of the B.C. Arts Council budget.

In Minister Beare’s mandate letter, we note that this is to happen over the next four years. With this in mind, we would respectfully request an immediate increase to B.C. Arts Council’s granting budget in the amount of $8 million, bringing the total granting budget to $34 million in 2018 and 2019. We applaud the goal of attaining $48 million, and we thank you for this initiative.

Additionally, we cannot overstate the importance of creating and maintaining a cultural facilities infrastructure fund. Many of our arts and cultural facilities are in need of substantial upgrading simply to maintain the current level of operations.

[5:25 p.m.]

Looking to the future, Kamloops is one of the fastest-growing cities in the province. To accommodate this growth, improved and increased infrastructure is critical. Provincial contributions increase our success rate at attracting federal and corporate dollars for these necessary and critical upgrades.

K. Humphreys: In terms of impact, regional organizations like ours face ever-increasing demands on our resources. We’re working extremely hard to make up the difference as, in many cases, we’re working with operational funding and grants that have not increased or have not kept up with the growth and expenses.

In smaller communities such as ours, our access to large corporate support is limited, as we’re working outside of major centres, where most of the head offices are located. While our local community is recognized for its generosity, we’re facing donor fatigue and, frankly, losing ground.

With an increased B.C. Arts Council budget, we sincerely hope that it will be possible to address the inequities of the distribution of funding that have failed to live up to the B.C. Arts Council’s mission statement. The mission of the council is to: “Engage all British Columbians in a healthy arts and cultural community that is recognized for its excellence.”

Small regional communities throughout B.C. are not being engaged or provided access to the professional performing arts. With support, existing professional organizations can contribute to this mission. There are also new and exciting young artists who have limited access to funding.

To address this issue, it is not simply a matter of dividing the pie into smaller pieces. Often, the core organizations, like the three we represent today, provide and maintain the infrastructure and training necessary to support not only their own but the work of the smaller and emerging artists and companies. By reallocating funding from the larger and more established organizations, we run the risk of destabilizing the entire sector.

L. Marchand: In many cases, arts organizations are receiving gaming grants that exceed the funding they currently receive from the B.C. Arts Council. Some have even experienced decreases, with grants that are now considerably lower than they were ten years ago, despite increases in budget and services provided to the community.

As such, the community gaming grants have also become a critical component of a vibrant arts and culture scene in British Columbia. Hence, we echo the call of the Alliance for Arts and Culture for increased access for the arts community to funding from the gaming branch.

Collectively, our organizations serve a broad regional community roughly the size of Belgium. We directly serve over 10,000 students in the local school system. We honour our elders and seniors with discounts and specific opportunities for them to participate in our programing.

We support and encourage the work of emerging artists and the next generation of innovative, critical thinkers. We engage with and create opportunities for tourism. Over decades, we have created meaningful relationships with the regional Indigenous communities, with specific programing and opportunities directly in line with the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The investment from the provincial government through the B.C. Arts Council and gaming funds have helped to make this possible.

K. Humphreys: On behalf of all of us, thank you for taking the time to hear our request in our community. We look forward to working with you to fulfil the objectives of Minister Beare’s mandate letter.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, and thank you for your commitment to the arts. Having worked in the arts for many years myself, I understand the challenges and the fact that you do it because of this, right? If you didn’t have this, then it wouldn’t work, right? So I appreciate the commitment to the arts and everything that you’re saying in all three of your organizations.

I did want to clarify one thing. You’re asking for $8 million. When you say “immediately,” I assume you’re meaning in the next budget. That’s actually faster than doing it, let’s say, over four years, which would be presumably $6 million a year if you did it equally.

Just to clarify, you’re asking for a slightly accelerated increase to the B.C. Arts Council than the ministry may be considering right now. Is that the case? I just want to clarify that.

L. Marchand: Yes. Our feel is that an immediate increase, of course, would have immediate impact and would help to address some of the most pressing concerns.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Then, when you talk about gaming grants, is there a number that you’re thinking of in terms of…? You said “increased gaming grants.” But is there…?

M. Chrumka: Double.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s why I ask. I’m just curious about that. I just wanted to clarify those things before we go to questions because I just wasn’t sure about that.

Stephanie, did you have a question?

[5:30 p.m.]

S. Cadieux: It’s kind of along the same lines. First of all, thank you, Lori. This is a public opportunity I have to thank you for having Realwheels bring Skydive up in 2010, previous to my coming into politics. I know how hard we worked to try and raise the money to tour that show, and I know how much, as a theatre, we appreciated other theatres to bring us along.

I think that’s the sort of thing that you’re addressing here today — to talk about how the funding to the arts council and through gaming helps theatres like yours and other organizations to ensure that there’s local content and to help some of those emerging artists and groups to thrive and be able to put their work on a stage.

With the potential increase, or the increase that’s been promised but not yet delivered and you’re looking to speed up, what kind of impact, for your theatre, as an example, would that have — sort of putting it in real terms?

L. Marchand: In real terms, I know the areas that we’ve targeted, for us, are the educational programs, so it really is that next generation. As I mentioned in my little brief synopsis, some of the things that we’ve been able to do have been able to expand to include targeted courses for children and youth with special needs. I know, provincially and nationally, it’s a really large discussion about how to make sure that our work is not only financially accessible but accessible beyond barriers.

You mentioned Skydive, which was an amazing production. One of the other initiatives that we were looking to undertake was…. We did a production of The Miracle Worker, and we wanted to have at least one performance signed. We don’t have those resources here. In order to bring up interpreters to do one performance was actually in the neighbourhood of about $4,000, making it completely unaffordable for us to do.

S. Cadieux: That’s a good example.

L. Marchand: These kinds of initiatives are, at the moment, funded by project funding. You complete the project. Then the funding is gone, and it’s up to the organization to find other resources in order to support that dedicated, specific work. Increased operating would enable us to take that burden off and basically stop stealing from Peter to pay Paul in order to support some of that increased access.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you again, and thank you again for your commitment to the arts. We really appreciate your presentation.

All right. Next up we have Allied Golf Association of British Columbia — Trevor Smith. Hello, Trevor.

ALLIED GOLF ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

T. Smith: A pleasure to be here. I will start off by saying I’ll be well within my ten minutes. I don’t have as many people here with me as I’d like to.

It’s the first time sitting with this committee. I’d like to just go through a couple of things that we do. Along with the handout, I handed out a little scorecard that you’ll see. This is one of the ways that we get our message across.

[5:35 p.m.]

The Allied Golf Association of British Columbia started approximately 12 years ago with the rationale that in working with government, it was much easier to put all of the different groups together and come at you with one voice than it was to be diverse and have three or four different voices speaking at once.

That’s the reason we came together about ten years ago, and that is really our vision — to provide one cohesive voice for the golf industry and to provide leadership, advocacy and a cooperative resource for the golf industry in British Columbia. In a lot of our dealings with the province, we found that there was a complete lack of real understanding on both parts of what our industry provides in terms of economics to the province of British Columbia, especially from a tourism point of view.

We also work with approximately 330 golf courses in the province, and the majority of them are very community-oriented. Clearwater, Revelstoke — all of the small communities in British Columbia — seem to either work around a curling club or a golf course. When you add all of those together, it’s actually quite a large force.

In the handout, in 2015, we developed the first industry scorecard. That scorecard basically was to deal with issues surrounding golf — how we can promote ourselves and the issues from an economic, environmental and financial component. We broke those down into three pillars: economics, environmental, and health and wellness.

The new card that I have with me today shows a different scoring on it. We looked at different avenues and, over the past eight or nine years, really worked the best we could with government to deal with some of the issues that were outstanding, whether they were public perception issues or tourism and economics in general.

The golf industry, for those of you who don’t know, is about a $2.08 billion industry. It provides about 44,000 jobs in British Columbia, and 43 percent of those jobs are student employment–related jobs. It provides $1.09 billion in household income and $465 million in taxes. Strangely enough, it provides more than ski, fitness and rec centres, and spectator sports, including the NHL in Canada. It’s a large business, and one of those ones that just seems to slip under the radar. Until we put all of this data together, we didn’t really realize how important to an economy we actually were.

I mentioned before local community involvement. We have 300 golf courses, mostly locally owned and operated, which are venues for community interaction and charitable benefits, including tournaments and those types of things that are put on and taxation benefits.

Golf is the number one sport for participation in Canada and in British Columbia. It is greater than soccer and hockey, strangely enough. That seems to be a point where we’d like to see continued growth because you are outside, you are participating, and it is a game that does last for life. You can play it when you’re five, and you can play it when you’re 95. You don’t need a team to play it with. You can play it by yourself. It has some very far outreaching physical benefits as well.

I’m not sure if any of you have noticed in the last two or three years, but Canadians and British Columbians are playing on the professional tour all across the U.S. and Europe and the world. We have put forward up in the neighbourhood of ten to 12 very high-profile golfers coming out of British Columbia. We look at that as quite a success in what we can produce here in Canada and British Columbia.

We look at B.C. as a golf destination. Right now with collaboration, we spend a considerable amount of time and effort with Destination B.C. We’ve developed a relationship where we have split funding for promoting golf as a destination all through the southeast into Asia and, again, into Europe.

A meeting we just had in Kelowna last week on Tuesday really went to say that that relationship with Destination B.C. has surpassed what we thought it was going to be. I have data available for that if anyone is interested.

[5:40 p.m.]

Green space. The green space area is another one of interest for government and has been in the past. There are 200,000 hectares of green space attributed to Canadian golf courses, and that includes 41,000 hectares of unmanaged wildlife and plant habitat. So a golf course, depending on where it’s located, definitely has an opportunity to bring well-managed green spaces into the communities. Presently, we pride ourselves on our environmental stewardship. We have put together….

This is one of the reasons I’m here today. I’m not going to be asking for money. I’m going to be asking for the opportunity to collaborate. With collaboration, there tends to be a shared financial component, but for us as an industry, we’ve determined over the past ten years that collaborating with government on their perceptions of what our industry can and can’t do, and how we can come to the table with our own partners…. That relationship has worked exceptionally well.

IPM programs. Integrated pesticide management programs. We’re working presently with ministry staff on finishing a manual that we worked on together to provide an integrated pest management manual that will be mandatory on all golf courses in British Columbia.

For setting a greener standard, we also work with an organization that first came out of the U.S. What it does is it brings classrooms…. It works on the STEM program where science, technology, engineering and math are all put together, but they’re done actually on a golf course site.

A golf course has so many different aspects to it. It’s four programs that we’ve put together so far that have just…. The students have had an amazing time. The teachers use us now on a regular basis to provide that education on outdoor environmentalism to local communities within Vancouver, Kamloops and Prince George at this time.

The other thing that we’re certainly concerned about is water management and the perception of water management. We’re looking at water conservation practices and water taxation rates that are coming forward in the next four or five years. So these are issues that we want to be upfront on. We want to be able to share what government’s ideas are on water management, water conservation and taxation as it applies to golf courses.

I guess what our ask is, from an environmental standpoint, is that we want to be able to create relationships with all of the different departments that impact, as I say, some of these things that are on our scorecard, but to be able to look forward to how we can supply for you what your beliefs are that we need to implement on golf courses, and to be able to work with local governments, not just provincial governments, as well. Because a lot of the information and regulations stem from the larger cities but tend to trickle down into the smaller communities once they’re put in force.

The other ask is to continue to collaborate with tourism and the economy. Tourism and the economy for us is huge. We’d like to ask the province to help us grow tourism in British Columbia by continuing to work with us with Destination B.C. and other British Columbia tourism programs.

In a nutshell, golf is good for British Columbians. Golf is good for our health, it’s good for our environment, and it’s good for the economy of British Columbia. On that note, I’m just going to wrap it up. If you’ve got any questions, please feel free.

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

Any questions from the committee at all?

J. Brar: Thank you, Trevor, for coming and making a nice presentation.

[5:45 p.m.]

I just want to get clarification. I think at one point in time you said you’re not asking for any funding. But under “Our Ask,” you are asking for provision of matching funding for the industry to promote B.C. tourism and B.C. golf courses. Is that something different?

T. Smith: Well, I guess I could preface that a little bit. I should have followed through on it. What we’re looking for is continued collaboration. Already we are dealing with matching funding through the Golf Marketing Alliance, which is a group that works with Destination B.C. and provides an avenue for regional DMOs to funnel money through to different regions.

What that does is it increases the “buy” for tourism through collaboration from all the groups. We have to put our money into the program, and it’s matched by the government. That’s not something that we’re looking to change at all. We would like to continue to collaborate with you on that. That’s the discussion.

The ask for tourism involvement would be to recognize that there is a value in it, and then to continue looking at other ways to be able to do it. So is there going to be money involved in it? I’m sure there always is. But we want to be able to continue to keep a relationship going that we already have that I think is important for growing golf and tourism in British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Trevor, just to pick up on that. Would you say that if there was an ask, it would be to maintain and perhaps increase the relationship that you have with Destination B.C., if there was a recommendation of some kind on that specific issue?

T. Smith: Correct. I mean, I could come up with a number and say this is what it is that we’d like, but we’re more interested….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sure. Numbers are good. We like numbers.

Interjection.

T. Smith: Well, you scratch our back, and we scratch yours. That’s more or less what we’re looking at, is continuing that present relationship.

As it goes, from Environment right now, we’ve had matching funding. The ministry has allowed us to put together an IPM manual that works for the province of British Columbia. So there has been matched funding on that as well. I’m happy to say that it was in the $30,000 to $50,000 range that we had to be able to do that.

A lot of that came from our conversations and relationships. That funding was…. All of a sudden, it made sense. It was an important aspect of putting together things for both of us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your time and your presentation. We appreciate everything you’re doing for our province and for golf and for fitness and adding to our economy. Thanks, Trevor.

Okay. Next up we have A Way Home Kamloops — Traci Anderson, Katherine McParland. I’m just going to step out for two secs, but go ahead.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

A WAY HOME KAMLOOPS

K. McParland: My name is Katherine McParland, with the A Way Home committee to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness here in Kamloops. Today we come to you with a request for funding for a provincial plan to end youth homelessness and, at a local level, for funding to create safe suites, a housing-first option for our youth experiencing homelessness.

T. Anderson: My name is Traci Anderson. I am actually the executive director of the boys and girls club here in Kamloops, but I’m also a supervisory partner to A Way Home Kamloops — so supervising Katherine and all the great work she does.

K. McParland: It’s cold and dark, and the snow is falling. Your feet are numb, with fingers like icicles. You need a place to be warm. Your tummy rumbles as you try and remember the last time you ate. Loneliness sets in as you remember loved ones from the past.

[5:50 p.m.]

A car pulls over. You get in. You don’t know who the person is. In desperation, you place your wet socks on the dashboard, praying they will dry. Does this person have a place that you can go?

Every hour is a struggle of survival. This is the voice of youth homelessness.

Let me share the story of a young person that we just supported. Her name is Krystal. She grew up in the foster care system. When she turned 19, she aged out into homelessness. Krystal didn’t know where to go for help or for support. She was told to go to income assistance but didn’t know how to get there. Krystal ended up living in a graveyard in our community with an older man. One morning Krystal woke up, and that man had passed away in his sleep. She didn’t know where to go or where to turn.

Our team connected with her, and we tried so many different housing options. Wherever we placed her, the street came in. She experience sexual exploitation, violence and suicide attempts. We actually couldn’t keep her safe.

This is where the community need for safe suites rose. I know this firsthand, as I myself was one of those youth who aged out of foster care into homelessness, and I am here today to ask for change for our young people.

Kamloops is a pretty unique community. We are one of two communities across Canada that received funding to develop a youth homelessness action plan in 2012. We created the A Way Home plan. Our community momentum was recognized nationally, and they took our name to become A Way Home Canada. Most recently, it’s become A Way Home America and A Way Home Scotland, an international phenomenon that began here in Kamloops.

To date, our A Way Home committee consists of 133 people from all sectors — landlords, businesses, non-profits and, of course, youth. It is really first-voice led — that is those youth with lived experience are leading the way.

We have a team of youth that is called Youth Against Youth Homelessness who are creating changes for their peers. We have six action teams — prevention, housing, supports, fund development, employment and education. Our local Thompson Rivers University has partnered with A Way Home to provide five bursaries a year for youth that are experiencing homelessness in our community.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

Probably the most interesting part of A Way Home is we created the Kamloops Youth Housing First wrapforce, which has received a lot of attention nationally. What it is, is a centralized housing and supports intake system. A youth can walk into 19 different organizations and say, “I’m homeless. I need help,” and they will be connected to the wrapforce. They become connected to the sector as opposed to a singular organization.

This has revolutionized the way our community works together. It no longer consists of one organization or one ministry that has to support these youth. We all have a responsibility, and we can all play a part in creating change. Through this program, we’ve been able to develop a full housing continuum. As I shared, the youth — that story in the beginning — was unable to find a housing option that met her needs.

In our community, we’re really doing all that we can locally at this level. We received a total of 92 referrals this year. Thirty-three youth were on the streets or living in the shelter system, 43 were couch-surfing or experiencing episodic homelessness, and 16 of these kids were transitioning from the foster care system.

Most recently we conducted Canada’s first local youth point-in-time count. We identified 48 youth who had aged out of foster care, and 36 of these kids had experienced homelessness since aging out. This is a critical issue that we as a province need to get behind.

As a community, we’ve been able to house 37 of these youth, but I cannot rest at night, because there are 55 kids that are in need of housing that we have been unable to help. Our team reviewed these applications, and what we discovered is that we don’t have the housing options these kids need. They need a safe place where they can transcend the streets and there is staff that protect them and keep them safe so they can move forward with their lives.

T. Anderson: In July 2015, our wrapforce team and our housing development team created over eight different options for youth in Kamloops, part of that continuum of housing. We recognized quickly, and we did attempt a safe suites project. We were unsuccessful because the street always came in — back to Katherine’s story that she told in the beginning.

[5:55 p.m.]

Recognizing that, we definitely need that safe suite project. We call it a project, but really it’s about a home to support youth. We have developed a business plan that we will put on line so you can have access to that.

It’s really about those 55 youth that we are unable to house. We know from doing a count last October, a year ago this week, that there were more kids. There was at least a minimum of 86 kids that we discovered were homeless in Kamloops during that week of October.

We know that there’s more that we can do. Part of the safe suites project is around connecting with the youth through the wrapforce and then building that relationship with them. Once we bring them in, we can support them. These are typically the hardest-to-house youth in our community. And right now, they have nowhere to go.

We know that we connect with them. We build the relationships. We learn with them. We help set goals for their future. We have a lot of different program options and opportunities for the youth within our continuum.

We also provide that support. We’ve been fortunate enough to receive some funding through HPS to provide support through the boys and girls club. His name is Doug. Everybody loves Doug. He has been a blessing for the work that we’re doing. He can connect with those youths. So we have that piece of it.

But we do need ministry support, provincial support. None of what we’ve done to date have we received provincial dollars for. We are really asking for that support in creating a provincial youth homelessness plan.

K. McParland: For us as a community, we recognize that the model we’ve created is scalable. We know it is. What we are planning on doing is developing a plan for a provincial plan to end youth homelessness. Government is going to need to champion that plan, but we are going to do some of that background work for you and do some consultations with community. We’re going to develop a provincial Youth Against Youth Homelessness advisory.

What we recognize is that this needs to be a shared responsibility. If one ministry takes the role of mom and dad, it’s up to all the other ministries to be aunties and uncles. We all have a part to play. The business sector…. And that’s what we’ve been able to do at a local level, a microcapsule of that.

We would really like to elevate that and ensure that communities across the province have an opportunity to ensure every youth in B.C. has a home. There are a lot of different communities that are moving forward and plans. By the province setting the provincial direction and the resources needed, communities will be able to end youth homelessness. This will prevent adult homelessness. There is a cost benefit in that work.

A Way Home Kamloops has set a strategic priority in this direction. I am doing my masters practicum next year, so I will be hoping to meet with all of you around this work. I hope that we can partner together to ensure every youth in B.C. has a safe home.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good job. Very nice.

A. Weaver: Maybe I missed it. How are you funded now? Is it in partnership with the city of Kamloops or…?

T. Anderson: We have a variety of different funding. Our project and what we do is so complex. We’re privately funded. We have a lot of business funders for some of the homes. Katherine can probably elaborate. We have a Home Depot home.

K. McParland: We’ve gotten all the business sponsors to sign on to provide year-long rental subsidies for our young people. So we have Subway homes, Honda homes, Home Depot homes, Home Hardware homes — you name it.

The funding for my position comes through the United Way TNC, and the Conconi Foundation is incredible. Federal homelessness partnering strategy dollars are how we fund Doug’s position.

A. Weaver: One final follow-up. Are you in touch with any people in Victoria? We have a massive youth homelessness issue in Victoria.

K. McParland: Yes.

A. Weaver: You are? Okay. Has the city of Victoria approached you to help them get something like this going there?

K. McParland: On our list of people to connect with will be the MLAs in Victoria. I partnered with the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth office to undertake this work.

A. Weaver: I’m one of them, so make sure you…. It sounds like a good idea.

K. McParland: I should get your business card.

A. Weaver: Okay, super.

J. Brar: Thank you to both of you for coming today and making a very compelling presentation.

[6:00 p.m.]

Actually, that brings a lot of memories back to me. I accepted the welfare challenge quite a while ago, to live on welfare for one month just to tell the story which you’re telling. It is very important, and usually, it is kind of forgotten by people.

I appreciate what you’re doing. Particularly, your success story is very important for people, as is the work you are doing for the most vulnerable people.

We are committed to build what we call a comprehensive poverty reduction plan. I hope that will make a difference to the people you are talking about. We are also committed to affordable housing. We have a stand-alone minister for that, so I hope you will work with her as well.

I really appreciate the work you are doing and, of course, the extraordinary work United Way does for the most vulnerable people. I don’t have a question, but I just want to appreciate your efforts to make a difference.

T. Redies: I just want to applaud you both, especially Katherine. It sounds like you’ve come from tough circumstances and have made something really marvellous out of your experiences. I really commend you for that. It’s quite inspirational, actually, to listen to you.

I have one question, I guess, in terms of the 55 homeless youth that were not able to find housing. Is it because they need additional supports around them in order to make it successful?

K. McParland: What they really require is 24-hour staffing. Often, for example, if young girls are experiencing sexual exploitation and are trying to leave that life behind, those men will come in wherever they are. We can’t place them in scattered-site housing units. We really need those staff to be the gatekeepers and allow the youth to have a safe place to begin to stabilize so that they can begin looking at their mental health and substance use and start moving forward on their life goals.

R. Leonard: Thank you so very much for your presentation.

I have to say I’m really excited about your wrapforce. Having worked in my community, one of the challenges in reaching out to different communities was the question of how we can all work together, particularly putting forward some kind of model where different agencies, rather than competing with one another or working in silos, can actually work together. I hope that there’s lots of meat in that to be able to share as you go forward.

Thank you so much for recognizing and working so hard on youth homelessness. People just don’t realize, and it’s big.

T. Anderson: We do have a lot of supporting documents that are scalable. They can be utilized across the province, as far as agreements and partnerships and all of those things that would help other communities.

K. McParland: If you have a business card, I’d love to share those with you.

R. Leonard: I only got a phone last week, so I’m waiting for my business cards.

P. Milobar: Congratulations for this. It’s nice to see the update from the last time we chatted. It has been years of community collaboration to break down those silos and get everyone working together.

I just want to be really clear on your ask today, though, also, on the local level. It’s great that the province wants to take these steps, but as we’ve witnessed locally, it can take years to get to where you are today.

Locally, you’re hoping…. While the rest of that provincial piece gets put into place, your direct ask would be…. Just to clarify, that’s roughly $200,000 a year to try to make the local project get going. Perhaps the others, then, could be modelled after that and speed things along.

K. McParland: Yeah. The community contributions in the annual operating budget are, I believe, $160,000. Our community is really doing all that we can. Your dollars would just help us leverage that work so that we can help the youth with the support they need.

P. Milobar: Okay. I just didn’t want that local ask to get lost in the broader, worthy, provincial ask at the same time.

[6:05 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time. But thank you very much for your passion and your commitment to this cause, both Tracy and Katherine.

Next up we have Kamloops Health Coalition — Rick Turner. You have the floor, Rick.

KAMLOOPS HEALTH COALITION

R. Turner: Good evening, and thank you. I’m here really to, I think, reinforce and encourage something that has begun but is needed in such a bad way. I’m sure Peter can speak to the local example when you folks meet and talk about things.

For many years, the health model has been a doctor-focused model, particularly in primary care and also with a lot of patients with chronic conditions. That needs to change to more integrated health care. That integrated health care will result in better health outcomes. It will cost money, I think, to get going, to get it started, to reorganize a lot of services, but in the long run, I think it’s going to be more efficient, more cost-effective and, again, result in better outcomes and less of a need for follow-up, which is costly as well as painful and debilitating to many people who need health care.

First, a quick introduction. The Kamloops Health Coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan network of hundreds of local citizens who advocate for a good, strong, public health care system. We are seniors, youth, working people, health care workers, people of faith, multi-ethnic, families, students — a broad cross-section of people from across Kamloops. The B.C. Health Coalition, which I also co-chair, is also a broad, non-profit, non-partisan network of approximately 600,000 British Columbians from all across the province and from all segments of the community, in all walks of life.

I want to thank you, first of all, for this opportunity to share our concerns for an urgent care centre in Kamloops and the need for more doctors in Kamloops as well. A change in health care delivery models to a more effective model of health care can result in a more effective use of dollars, care and better-quality outcomes.

These concerns, especially around urgent care, arise because, for many years now, many Kamloopsians and people from neighbouring communities have been unable to get the urgent care they need. Many have been forced to wait five and six hours in the emergency room at Royal Inland Hospital or wait for long periods of time in the cold in order to get to a walk-in clinic. Many of these people do not have family physicians.

Estimates have ranged from…. Of approximately 90,000 residents of Kamloops, 15,000 to 30,000 of them are without a general practitioner. Often many who do have a doctor and need urgent care are unable to get an appointment for several days after calling their doctor. Consistently, I’ve heard Minister Lake and representatives of local doctor organizations estimate that Kamloops needs approximately 20 or maybe even 25 doctors on occasion.

However, I had the good fortune, through other work I do with the Aboriginal Friendship Society, to meet last week with Mr. Jason Giesbrecht, the executive director of primary care transformation for the Interior Health Authority. Mr. Giesbrecht estimated that that number has been reduced to as many as perhaps 10,000 residents who are still seeking a family physician. He also said that with recent hiring of nurse practitioners and doctors, perhaps only ten to 15 more doctors are needed at this time.

In any event, in spite of research that shows that Canada no longer has a doctor shortage, and in spite of efforts to recruit more general practitioners to Kamloops, we consistently come up short. Also, many of the current doctors are older and looking at retirement and semi-retirement. More needs to be done to attract doctors to this area. Extra pay, tax breaks and free housing are some of the incentives that have been successful in relieving the doctor shortage in some communities in B.C. Perhaps more incentives can be provided to attract doctors to Kamloops and surrounding communities.

Also, today’s young doctors are looking for a different balance in their lives between their practices and their lifestyles. Models of health care delivery other than the doctor-centred approach should be employed to attract more doctors and reduce the need for doctors.

I quote from Marcy Cohen, her paper, which was a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives submission to the Select Standing Committee on Health, particularly pages 7 to 11 — and in this case, page 11.

“Many younger physicians are achieving this balance by choosing to opt out of establishing their own fee-for-service practice and work in practices such as walk-in clinics, where they have fewer responsibilities and more control over their hours of work.

“The growth of walk-in clinics and other types of low-responsibility practices goes against what the research tells us is needed to maximize both quality of care and its cost-effectiveness.

[6:10 p.m.]

“In 2013, approximately 60 percent of the 4.6 million Canadian patients without a regular family physician went to a walk-in clinic for their medical care. Another 13 percent went to emergency.

“Increasing access to team-based primary care can address these dual challenges — that is, the need for easier access to high-quality, full-service primary care for a greater portion of the population and, at the same time, the need of family physicians for better work-life balance.

“Recent research findings demonstrate that the capacity of a primary care practice to increase access and provide all the recommended preventative, chronic and acute care interventions is greatly enhanced when that practice includes non-physician providers.

“There is also a growing body of evidence showing that a well-functioning primary care team can reduce work stress and physician burnout by allowing the physicians to access the support and expertise of other providers and control their hours of work, while knowing that their patients’ needs are being met.”

Also to keep in mind, the integrated team approach not only reduces the need for doctors but also wait times for patients as well. Myself and thousands of Kamloopsians are tired of waiting long periods of time to see a doctor, especially in the cold when I’m terribly ill. I am also sick and tired of seeing others, particularly elderly people in their 80s, having to stand on sidewalks in minus-20-degree weather in lineups starting at 7 a.m., just to get an appointment at some time during the day.

Nurse practitioners have also been a welcome relief in reducing wait times for people who are ill and have reduced the need for physicians, but there is a shortage of these health care professionals also.

An urgent care centre staffed with health care professionals and using an integrated team-based primary and community care approach is needed. In addition to a doctor, a team might also include non-physician providers — for example, nurses, mental health and substance abuse counsellors, case managers, pharmacists, etc., with the appropriate skills and expertise. They have been found to be effective in reducing wait times, spending health care dollars more wisely, improving access to physicians when a physician is needed and improving the quality of care provided to people living with chronic conditions.

The team approach has also been effective in reducing wait times in other areas of health care, including surgeries, and, again, reduces the need for doctors. It has doctors doing what only doctors can do and lets other health care providers do what they do — and is, again, more timely, consistent and appropriate for patients.

That last piece was also from a CCPA paper, Reducing Surgical Wait Times. The link is on the paper that I gave when I came at the beginning.

Cohen’s research concluded that team-based primary care saved the health care system many dollars, which could then be used in other areas where it might be needed.

In particular, a Conference Board of Canada study that followed type 2 diabetes and depression found that if all patients in Canada with these conditions were treated with team-based primary care in 2011, there would be a 15 percent reduction in complications from type 2 diabetes and an 8 percent increase in productivity in the population with depression. This results in a significant reduction in costs, a combined savings of $262 million in direct health care costs and $2.7 billion in productivity gains.

She goes on to say that well-established international evidence from Barbara Starfield shows that health systems with a stronger primary care orientation have lower-cost, high-quality outcomes and reduced health inequalities. The research provides a strong case for making primary care transformation the centrepiece of health care reform in Canada. That’s from Cohen’s paper, page 9.

The research also shows that perhaps the majority of those seeking emergency care suffer from chronic conditions and that continuous visits to the emergency room is not the most effective model.

Today in Canada, the majority of health services and expenditures are for people living with chronic conditions. It is estimated that two-thirds of medical admissions via emergency room are due to the exacerbation of a chronic disease and 80 percent of primary care physician visits are related to chronic conditions. Not surprisingly, more effective management of chronic conditions in the community to avoid unnecessary emergency room visits and hospital admissions has become a key goal of primary care reform in Canada.

[6:15 p.m.]

The research tells us that the best way to improve the quality of care for people living with chronic conditions is to ensure that care is coordinated, comprehensive, continuous and timely — that is, same-day access. Slow progress on achieving this goal has been attributed to the limited implementation of interdisciplinary teams in primary care. The research summarized below looks at recent evidence showing how team-based care improves care quality, particularly for people living with chronic conditions.

An international meta-analysis assessed the effectiveness of strategies to improve care coordination by looking at 36 randomized control trials, comparing primary care practices that provided coordinated care and those that did not. They found a 20 percent reduction in hospital admissions among patients with chronic medical conditions and a 31 percent reduction in emergency room visits for patients over 65 within practices providing coordinated care.

The four interventions identified as effective were: (1) case management by an individual other than the primary care clinician; (2) expanded, improved utilization of interdisciplinary team members; (3) promotion of patient self-management; and (4) patient education. Again, Cohen backs that up on page 7 of her paper.

I just close with, if the effective use of this model were to replace the doctor-focused models in urgent care, similar results would be obtained — that is, we would have a more effective use of health care professionals, better use of our health care dollars, a more timely delivery of needed services and better quality outcomes for patients.

Thank you for your attention to my presentation.

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

Questions?

A. Weaver: Thank you for the presentation.

I do agree with your overall assessment. Just for the record, you cannot get a general practitioner anywhere south of Mill Bay. That’s a city of 350,000 in the greater Victoria area, so there’s nobody to accept it.

The problem is it’s not going to be solved overnight. There are whole problems in terms of billing for nurse practitioners because they can’t bill through the MSP. There’s a whole generation of young doctors — and I ask what your research has shown — who are more interested in salaried positions than they are in the administrative burden of the MSP billing system. I wonder to what extent you’ve explored salaried components of primary care practitioners as opposed to only the fee-for-service type.

R. Turner: My understanding, and I’m not an authority on it, is there are better models available. I’m really reluctant to go into detail, sir, because I’m not an expert on it.

A. Weaver: The final thing is I totally agree with the model. I think we have a good example of that in Parksville, where the Oceanside Health Centre was created. The problem there is demand went so up that you still have five-hour waits, so the creation, in and of itself, of the model may not actually reduce wait times unless uptake is more speedy. I mean, Oceanside is exactly the model you’re talking about, but the wait times are no different from other places.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Turner, for your very thorough presentation on integrated health care. The committee will absolutely be discussing this at length.

Next we’d like to call Karl Wolfe.

KARL WOLFE

K. Wolfe: Thank you very much for taking the time to come and visit us today.

I’m recently retired. I used to work for the Liquor Distribution Branch, as Peter knows, as many of you know around the table. I have been very adamant over the last several years to deal with something that is becoming full blown, and it’s called homelessness. We’re seeing it in B.C. We’re seeing it in Canada. We’re seeing it in Kamloops.

If anything, this summer showed us as Canadians — and I was getting this from all over the world with people that I was chatting with, being the activist that I am — that Canada has never been more loved ever, in history. How we were able to use Kamloops as a mecca, as a sanctuary to take care of families in very dire times, to stand up to the gates of hell, if you almost want to call it that, and fight one of the most horrific fires this province or this country has ever seen.

[6:20 p.m.]

It steams right back to what we’re seeing now with more homelessness in Kamloops. I am not here to challenge anybody that’s got any ideas out there. If anything, I am here to reinforce the simple fact that the men and women, whether it’s ASK Wellness, Bob Hughes, Project Connect that are out here today, as Stuart Wood will be used as temporary housing in Kamloops…. There are many, many good men and women that I’ve met in this journey.

I am known all across Kamloops as simply an activist. I can be a pain in the butt at times with all my emails to my sisters and brothers, but it’s with passion.

At the age of five, I chose to finally step up to a man that was beating me. I was thrown down a flight of stairs, all because I spilled a glass of milk. I had one of the most resilient mothers on the planet who realized that she had to take me out of an environment where I was being abused.

When I ran up those stairs, all I said to myself was: “This is not going to happen to any little boy or girl or any woman on this planet — ever.” It’s taken 51 years, I guess, for me to finally have the courage to not just stand up to protect liquor stores or be against a location of Ajax, but to sit there and, fundamentally, reach down to everybody that homelessness…. These men and women, these families, ran away from something. Something happened in their lives.

If anything, with all the good men and women that we have in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, that…. What I was able to witness in this last civic election, where I had many, many people coming up to me and saying: “Your question at that conference — you hit it right on.” Thirty candidates all agree that we can do better with housing and homelessness in Kamloops.

What seems to be holding back these organizations and these good people — whether they’re builders, planners, developers, ex-CFL Grey Cup winners who have come back to their home who want to build and make a better community for all of us in Kamloops — is the resounding fact that we need more resources here in Kamloops.

There’s a city council that’s going to be new as of Monday. I have no political ambitions whatsoever. I am going to be an activist the rest of my life. I reinforce that simply by when the time comes, you stand up and you challenge. And you stand up for the people that you believe in. An injury to one is an injury to all.

I’d like nothing better for this panel to reinforce this Monday that the city council, even though it’s only going to be for one year and then they’re going to have another election, be given the resources that they need to fight this homelessness issue. It’s huge.

We’ve heard that there are going to be modular homes coming next year. A long time coming. My concern has always been: what are we going to do with these men and women when we put them in those homes?

I’m a firm believer that right now, in history, we just proved, through one of the most traumatic times in B.C. history, that when we come together as citizens, we can achieve anything, and anything is possible. My concern being and again…. Using ASK Wellness, Bob Hughes, Project Connect — what have you — you might have even had more and more people coming today with the same housing issue.

These men and women need resources. Utilize a new city council, a new directive. Give them the funding that they need. I think for many, many years, city councils across British Columbia weren’t given the funding that they needed. Whether it was school district 73…. It could have been underfunded, and it was underfunded. Housing and homelessness have been underfunded for many, many years.

It’s now, for the first time in our history, where we have three political parties, during the election, all agreeing that homelessness and housing was a major concern. I’m looking across the table from men and women that may be NDP, may be Liberal, may be Green. I’m striving for one simple message today. It’s time for unity in our province.

We need to take these men and women off the streets, out of people’s backyards, out of the garbage cans. We need to give the RCMP in Kamloops and British Columbia and Canada, for that matter, more resources to deal with this.

To fight homelessness is going to get back to education and prevention. I’m just simply here as a voice. I will be at the council meeting on Monday when the new council is sworn in. I will reinforce exactly what I’m saying today to them.

Whatever it takes, I hope that this panel comes together, uniformly, and agrees that we in Kamloops…. It was given even last week that Kamloops is probably one of the few areas where this will work, where we can take these men and women off the streets. So think of it now.

[6:25 p.m.]

Winter is coming. Let’s get these men and women and families off the streets. Let’s get them the care that they need — health care, dental, medical, counselling, support — so when the modular homes come next year, these men and women have already been as successful as they possibly can with the transition of drugs, alcohol, whatever it may be.

I see a lot of faces right now. I don’t know if you want me to continue or not. Questions, please ask.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Before I get to questions, I just want to clarify something. With the modular homes that are being proposed, there is a 24-7 service that goes with those. It’s not just the homes; it’s a service as well. Are you aware of that?

K. Wolfe: I’m aware of that but….

B. D’Eith (Chair): It was more a clarification. When you said that the homes…. How are we going to take care of them? Part of it is both. I just wanted…. You’re aware. Of course, that does take time. The issue that you’re saying is: what do we do right now?

One of the things you have to understand is that we are here to give recommendations for the 2018-2019 budget. What I would really, strongly, suggest, too, is to talk to the new Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. Talk to the Minister of Housing. Talk to the minister who’s dealing with poverty reduction.

That’s what they’re tasked to do: to deal with this specific situation. I would encourage you to do that, because they can deal with those issues now. We are here to advise for the next budget.

I just want to make sure that when you go away, you don’t think we can advise something that can happen tomorrow.

K. Wolfe: If that was Utopia, I think all of us would be very welcome to that idea.

A Voice: Actually, the modular homes could happen right away.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know the modular homes can happen right away. I’m just saying that this group of MLAs, what we’re tasked to do…. Just to make sure that we were clear on that. It’s not that we wouldn’t want to go and say: “Let’s do this right now.” That’s not our task, which is to hear, listen and then come up with recommendations for the next budget.

I would encourage you to bring this voice forward to the ministers who are in charge of this and your city councillors. You’ve already talked about that.

P. Milobar: Thanks, Karl. You’ve never been one to shy away from letting your opinion be known. That’s always a good thing.

To go to the heart of it, as Bob was saying, there’s the immediate. There’s also… These are things that are going to take years and keep fermenting. Really, what you’re asking for, in terms of next year’s budget and future budgets, is to make sure that there are moneys in there, especially for supporting the built-in organizations in different communities that are already trying to do this work, to make sure they have extra resources into the budgets, moving forward, to be able to provide expanded services over and above what they’re currently providing.

K. Wolfe: I have no bones…. I have had more people say to me: “Karl, you’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

I believe that our city councils across B.C. have been underfunded for years. In issues like this, where, today…. I’m serving notice, as a voice, again, as always.

I appreciate your kind words, Peter. It means a lot. I have every intention of sitting down with you and Todd Stone. I’m going to take your direction, as you said, as well. I’m not going anywhere. Peter knows this best. For five years, I’ve tried to save the world from my basement after I lost my son. It’s a challenge every day. Every day I get up wanting to make this life better for everybody, again, because of the promise that I made — the promise at the age of five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13.

All of you had the same visions and the same promises. That’s where you are right now. Again, I just choose to do this as an activist. Driving up here today, I had two people say to me: “Karl, you need to run for council.” You know what? That’s not my bag. At the end of the day, I wish to be a voice, and continue to be a voice forever. I am more than willing to work with anybody. That, today, is why I’m here.

I’m going to sit down on Monday and say exactly what I’m saying to a new city council. I would like nothing better for you all today to sit there and say: “Karl, we’re going to take care of it tomorrow. Thank you very much. You’re absolutely right.”

The concern being that we need to get these men and women off the streets. We need to do it a.s.a.p. I know that you can’t do that. But again, I’m here to reinforce…. The voice that will not go away, and I will do everything I can to help my brothers and sisters that have been doing it longer than I have, as voices.

A. Weaver: Just very quickly. You did say something that I think was very important. You said that issues like homelessness are those that require everyone to work together. I couldn’t agree more.

[6:30 p.m.]

I think, actually, you’ll see that this committee, and a lot that happens in the Legislature…. People are working together. We only see some of the conflict in the news, but we have a shared goal here to advise the budget process in a manner that we can all agree on. There are more commonalities between us than there are dissimilarities between us. I think that is happening, and I’m quite excited by that.

K. Wolfe: Well, it’s a long time coming. Again, if there’s any issue in B.C. and Kamloops right now that all parties should be united on, it’s this, and housing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I can tell you that this is a consistent issue around the province. I’m from Maple Ridge. We have a tent city. Victoria. It’s a provincewide crisis, really, and we’re all working hard to try and figure out a way to solve these issues. It’s not going to be overnight, but I think we can all agree that this is a priority for the government. Thank you very much.

K. Wolfe: Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for listening to my rant.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Cyrus Centre Ministries — Maren Kroeker and Les Talvio.

L. Talvio: Good evening. I’m right out of my comfort zone, sitting here before you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine.

A. Weaver: Don’t worry. We’re out of our comfort zone too. [Laughter.]

CYRUS CENTRE MINISTRIES

L. Talvio: I’m Les Talvio, the executive director of Cyrus Centre and the co-founder. I’d like to acknowledge Joyce McElhoes in the background, who is also the co-founder of Cyrus Centre in 2004.

In 2004, Cyrus Centre was formed. It came out of the first point-in-time homeless count to take place in the Fraser Valley. During this homeless count, there were two focus groups that took place with youth that were on the streets, because there were too many youth to do it in one setting. During the focus group, one of the questions that was asked of the youth is: “Can you tell us your top-five needs? What are your top-five needs if we could address them right now?”

The youth told us that No. 1 was laundry. They said: “How do we go to school or look for a job if we’re dirty and we can’t afford to do laundry?”

No. 2 on their list was showers. They said the same thing. “How do we go to a job interview if we’re smelling?” The only place at the time to access showers was at the rec centre, where they would have to pay to use the pool.

No. 3 was food.

No. 4 on their list was a place where they could go talk to adults and be heard and only given advice if they asked for it.

No. 5 was shelter. Until Cyrus Centre opened in Abbotsford, the only place where youth could access a meal in 2004 was at the Sikh temple.

Youth were prostituting themselves and being sexually exploited for having their basic needs met — needs such as showers, laundry, a cheeseburger.

The youth we serve are youth and young adults from age 12 to 24 throughout the Fraser Valley and the Fraser Canyon, at two central locations in Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Youth who are homeless, sexually exploited, addicted, affected by poverty — our youth are coming from Boston Bar to Surrey and all points in between.

Most recently, in 2014, the youth safe house in Maple Ridge lost its federal funding and closed its doors. That in itself has impacted us in the valley.

Currently Cyrus Centre provides the only youth shelter safe house between the Okanagan and Metro Vancouver and makes up two of the four shelters in the province that take youth under the age of 16. While I use the language “shelter,” truly what we’re offering is emergency supportive transitional housing for youth.

The youngest youth that we’ve seen come through our doors was a ten-year-old girl who was being sexually exploited. She was accompanied by an 11-year-old and a 12-year-old. All three were using Ecstasy, pot and alcohol. They were being pimped by a 28-year-old male. Through efforts ranging from coming to our doors, involving MCFD, the police and other service providers, we were able to get them off the streets and also bring forward charges against the man who was exploiting them.

[6:35 p.m.]

In 2004, when we opened, we had two staff and one volunteer at one location. We were open eight hours a day. As of 2017, we have 21 staff — 13 full-time, eight part-time. We have over 60 volunteers, three locations in two cities, Abbotsford and Chilliwack. We are the only physical location open 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, in the Fraser Valley and Fraser Canyon, where youth can access services.

Youth have shown up in the middle of the night, suicidal and in distress. We’ve had police at our doors at one o’clock in the morning, looking for a bed after hours, or the hospital contacting us, looking for a bed.

M. Kroeker: It’s important to note that in the Fraser Valley and Fraser Canyon district, youth homelessness is higher than the national average. Our centre opened up in Chilliwack in 2014 as a result of the point-in-time count, which found that 44 percent of homeless people in the city of Chilliwack were under the age of 19.

This year’s homeless count found that 30 percent of homeless people in Abbotsford were under the age of 29, and 35 percent in Chilliwack were under the age of 29, which is higher than the 20 percent of the national average. In Abbotsford, there has been a 59 percent increase in youth homelessness since 2014. In Chilliwack, there has been an 18 percent increase.

It’s important to also note that the Metro Vancouver population is about five times larger than the population of the Fraser Valley regional district. However, the youth homeless population is only two times larger.

L. Talvio: In 2016, we had 213 intakes of youth into our emergency housing program. However, we turned away 242 youth because we were full. Turnaway numbers were impacted by the competitive rental market. Abbotsford has the lowest vacancy rate in all of Canada, and MCFD’s centralized screening intake system has caused youth to stay in our beds approximately 20 percent longer, because it takes us that much longer to go from filing a report with MCFD to actually having a supervisor now take on that file.

The youth emergency housing program in Abbotsford consists of six beds, and in Chilliwack it consists of eight beds. The length of stay varies, depending on the plan of care and how it’s progressing. However, typically, they range from a week to just over a month. We’ve had stays as short as one day and up to three months.

In our resource centres in both Abbotsford and Chilliwack, we provide services such as meals, showers, laundry facilities, food bank, advocacy referrals, mediation, life skills training, support, as well as a program geared towards aging-out youth up to the age of 24 called the breakfast club.

This program includes housing support, employment coaching, workshops and more. The workshops provided are in conjunction with other community groups and businesses — financial literacy; Fraser Health providing sexual health, hygiene care and mental health workshops; different employment programs or businesses coming in and doing employment workshops and such.

Babich House is a semi-independent living home in an eight-bedroom house staffed by house parents. We aren’t giving these youth a house, but we’re giving them a home.

Youth live in community. They’re supported by a youth agreement from MCFD, providing for their room and board. They live in community. They have their own locked rooms, their own independent areas, in the house. We also provide subsidized living for two university students who play the role of an older sibling in the house. They provide mentorship for the youth.

This program has seen an 80 percent success rate in seeing youth move on into independent living, employment or entering back into the education system, either through high school or through UFV.

We also provide extreme weather shelters in Abbotsford and Chilliwack for when the weather dips below zero or if we have significant snowfall amounts. We provide outreach services and transportation services in the city of Abbotsford, providing transportation to the variety of different extreme weather shelters. We also coordinate the extreme weather plan for the city of Abbotsford.

[6:40 p.m.]

Currently we receive $30,000 annually from MCFD for our Abbotsford youth emergency housing program, which is approximately 5 percent of our budget of $545,000. In Chilliwack, we receive $35,280 annually from MCFD for our Chilliwack youth emergency housing program, or 10 percent of our budget. Currently we receive no government funding for Babich House, and during extreme weather events, we receive a fee-for-service from B.C. Housing.

Our funds come from grassroots fundraisers put on by the community — different businesses, corporations and private donors. We put on three fundraisers every year. We do a banquet in November. We partake in the Coldest Night of the Year walk, which is a national walk. We do this in both Abbotsford and Chilliwack, in February. In the summer, we have a fundraiser called the Leap of Faith, where people collect pledges to jump out of a perfectly fine airplane. This is actually our most successful fundraiser, and we’re always looking for more jumpers.

We’ve been subsidizing the government in our 13 years of operation by providing care. MCFD is the number one source of referrals for our beds, followed by Fraser Health, the police department and self-referrals.

We’re asking the government to provide funding dollars to help sustain what we are currently doing, as well as to help meet the ever-increasing needs of housing in the Fraser Valley and the Fraser Canyon. To that note, we’re asking for the government to put forward 150,000 additional dollars for Cyrus Centre, to be split equally — $75,000 in Abbotsford and $75,000 in Chilliwack.

At that point, any questions? I’d be happy to answer.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you for your help in the community, especially with youth. In know in Maple Ridge, when we lost Iron Horse, it was a big blow to our community. We’re working hard with our own tent city and many other issues and many youths coming out of foster care. I completely empathize with everything that you’re dealing with. We’ve heard all over British Columbia similar stories. That’s just to set up.

Any questions?

R. Leonard: Well, thank you very much. You presented a pretty compelling case. I’m not familiar, exactly, with the way that the bureaucracies work. Is there a question of certification to be able to access funding from MCFD? Why is it that you don’t get any funding?

L. Talvio: One of the most common answers that we’ve had is…. We’ve had two ministries argue back and forth. We’ve had B.C. Housing say it’s MCFD’s issue, and we’ve had MCFD tell us it’s a B.C. Housing issue. We’ve only been able to access funds through the local MCFD budgets, which have been extremely small.

Again, all our funds have come from the community. We’ve had a lot of promises that haven’t come through. We have accessed some HPS funding just recently. Chilliwack was just named a rural community, so we were able to access dollars there for a housing support worker. We’re currently applying for funds from HPS again for a Ladmore recruitment worker.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, I think you could probably see at least the direction of the present government with making university education and college free for children aging out of foster care as at least a start, a step in the right direction. There is a long way to go.

J. Brar: I’m wondering. Do you participate in the RFP process?

L. Talvio: In the which?

J. Brar: In the request for proposal process? When the ministry sends any requests for proposal, do you participate in that?

L. Talvio: Yes, we do.

J. Brar: So you don’t get funding.

L. Talvio: Currently we have not.

J. Brar: Do you ask them why they rejected you, and did they give you an answer? What I’m wondering is…. It may be the design of the program, and because of which, you are being denied. There may be confusion between two ministries. That’s what you probably have to figure out.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We really appreciate your time and your commitment to our youth.

Next up we have Tony Brumell.

[6:45 p.m.]

TONY BRUMELL

T. Brumell: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m very pleased to be able to talk to you this evening. I have, of course, talked to two of you in the past. I want to call Mr. Milobar “Your Worship,” but that’s no longer.

Mr. Weaver, of course…. We have done a tour of the Ajax property a couple of years back. You stuck around long enough to think that maybe I was able to give you some worthy, valuable information. I’m hoping I can do so tonight.

I am not a scientist. There are certainly those in this town who would laugh at the very idea that I should call myself a fisherman. Lamentably for them, I still do call myself a fisherman.

One of the few experiences that I have had, nearly 30 years ago and certainly something that is still with me today, was when we spent an amazing afternoon at the mouth of Deadmans Creek. I spent that day, about six hours, waiting for a fish to strike, and I ended up with a 22-pound Thompson River steelhead, a spectacular critter, too big for me to keep. I did not keep it. I put it back. I did not, at the time, understand just how serious it was to take a single steelhead out of that river.

At the time, or shortly thereafter, I found out that the numbers of the Thompson River steelhead had dwindled to around 700. I was told at the time by First Nations that this was not a sustainable number of fish. We tried and tried, year after year, and government, unfortunately, wilfully stood by and watched the extirpation — in fact, possibly the extinction — of the Thompson River steelhead.

According to Mr. Greg Gordon, whom I do not know…. He now says that the numbers of Thompson River steelhead are perhaps below 300. This is way beyond crisis mode. This is way beyond endangered. This is to the point where I don’t even know if enough money could be spent to try and save these fish. I do know that they were an iconic species. I can remember seeing 50 or 60 fishermen down at Spences Bridge, in the river, all trying to catch the amazing Thompson River steelhead at the time.

Those numbers have disappeared. Of course, there have been sporadic catch-and-release fisheries. Catch-and-kill disappeared long, long ago — at least 15 years ago, maybe longer. Catch-and-release has its own impacts. There’s a certain percentage of those fish that die simply from being caught once. If they get caught twice, they almost always die.

There is a hatchery that I believe could be available. That is the Spius Creek Hatchery. Right now, I believe it is owned and operated by the DFO. I think, from what I understand, they are hatching salmon. It’s time, if we are literally facing an extinction-level event for this species, that something could be done to convert the Spius Creek Hatchery to steelhead. The infrastructure is essentially the same. We were talking for several years of the potential for a new hatchery on the river that flows to Spences Bridge. I can’t remember the name of it, but it comes down from Merritt.

The time for that is past. At 250 or 300 fish, we have to do something right now, or this species will simply disappear, basically forever.

[6:50 p.m.]

There’s not much more I can say, except that I would hope that you would see that the financing and the investment in this particular species could turn around and, certainly, offer certain numbers of employment. Also, perhaps if it were rejuvenated enough whereby tourism…. Believe me, tourists would come from all around the world to Spences Bridge to fish the Thompson River steelhead. That could be visited again. That could be returned if the will was there to do so.

I’ll leave you this article. It’s just a letter to the editor. I mean, it’s not a scientific article. It’s not anything of the sort. It’s just a man who knows what the hell he’s doing.

I would also say that a chap I tried to get a hold of today — his name is Rob Bison — is our local steelhead expert. He is with the Ministry of Environment. He’s basically at the head of his division. His number is 371-6244. I would entreat you to maybe get in touch with Mr. Bison and discuss the possibility of getting into this to maybe stop the extinction of this particular species.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Tony. I appreciate that.

Are there questions?

A. Weaver: I was just doing a little bit of searching while you say it. I see, on the ministry website, it says: “The Thompson River steelhead fishery is one of B.C.’s most renowned sport fisheries and attracts anglers from throughout the province, the rest of Canada and other countries.” Then it goes on to talk about decline. So it clearly has historical significance, as well, in this area. It is, I believe, coho and chinook that are presently released out of the hatchery that you mentioned — Spius....

T. Brumell: Spius Creek. I think so.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Tony. I mean, certainly, salmon and the fisheries are a big issue. It’s certainly one that I’m sure we’ll all talk about at great length. We appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

Next up we have Thompson Rivers University — Alan Shaver and Jim Thomson.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY

J. Thomson: Welcome to Kamloops. My name is Jim Thomson. I’m the chair of the board of governors at TRU. On behalf of the board of governors, we’d like to welcome you to Kamloops. Obviously, Alan and I are here to talk about education and, specifically, Thompson Rivers University.

To start off with — I know we have a limited time — we’d like to acknowledge and thank the provincial government for its recent support on two major projects at TRU. One is the partial funding for the construction of our new industrial trades and technology centre. The second is the imminent construction of the nursing and population health building. We were pleased to get a letter confirming that this government is going to live up to the commitment from the previous government in this regard. So thank you very much for that. There’s the trade school. There’s the new nursing school.

One of the real big things that we’re running into is a shortage of people in the health services sector. The funding for the nursing and population health building is going to help us train more, and we have a new master’s program in nursing. For every nursing student that gets admitted to TRU, we’re turning away seven applicants. So there’s a big demand, and it’s very relevant to the community.

It’s Dr. Shaver who often tells us that it’s important that the university be relevant and serve the needs and well-being of the community.

A. Shaver: My name is Alan Shaver. I’ve been the president of Thompson Rivers University for seven years. It has certainly been a pleasure to serve the people of Kamloops.

[6:55 p.m.]

One of the things the university does is it supports the local economy and the people. One of the things we’re trying to do is diversify the economy through an engineering program. What we’re looking at is the growth of a high-tech industry coming to Kamloops for a number of reasons. One of the things that they always say is that they need talent. One of the things that we need for our students is employment. We think the university can bridge those two needs through an engineering program in software engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering.

We support all kinds of industries, including resource extraction industries. But we want to be part of the diversification of those kinds of industry so that we have a greener economy, if you will, and something that will be a little less susceptible to the ups and downs of the resource market.

We have the first two years. We did that through reallocation of our internal budget. But we need support for the third and fourth years. We want to get across the fact that this has been very carefully designed to meet the needs of our students, their parents and also the economy.

We’re looking at very close relationships with the local industry, including mandatory co-op or work-integrated learning so that the people are ready from the get-go to contribute to the economy. In particular, we’ve got a lot of start-ups here. We are looking for internships in start-up companies so that these students, when they graduate, will have some knowledge of how to start a company.

The business school is very interested in getting their hands on our students while they are in course to teach them the rudiments of entrepreneurship and innovation. That, I think, is a very promising approach, and it’s something that addresses a gap in the whole province. As you may know, it’s part of a proposal from the Research Universities Council of British Columbia.

Back to you, Jim.

J. Thomson: New models of universities…. As the world evolves, obviously, universities are evolving with it. When I see what’s going on at TRU today, compared to what was going on in universities when I went to school 35 to 40 years ago, it’s a whole new world.

There’s a diversity of mandates. TRU has a mandate for openness. So as long as somebody has a grade 12 education, they get admitted. We don’t have real entrance barriers.

We have a mandate for open access, comprehensive programming and research. With that, comes a very diverse range of students, from the typical student who went to school when I did compared to what’s there now. We have multigenerational students, people that are new immigrants, Indigenous students — a whole variety of students. With those different students, there are different needs.

In the rural areas, compared to urban centres, we monitor very closely the transition rate from high school to university. In the Interior, the rates are a little bit lower than they are at urban centres. To reach out and attract those students and get them into the secondary education system and maintain them when they are there is an expensive and time-consuming process.

The next one is that the pedagogy has changed. The whole way that students are taught and learn at university has changed from when I went a long time ago. They’re web-based learning, blended-learning, work-integrated learning and, as Alan talked about, co-op.

[7:00 p.m.]

Internships. I know in our own company, we’ve hired students all summer from the business program in the office. One was working on a CPA designation. Another one was just finishing the office administration program. It’s really a good asset for the businesses, as well as the students, who just leave well equipped to move on with their further education and a career.

Student support has changed. We get students from all over the world coming here, from all across Canada. The level of support for students has changed. We’ve got digital administration, registration co-ops, internships, mentor programs, work study, summer programs, career services, service learning, volunteer learning — all sorts of support that we’ve offered.

One of the things that TRU did and got a start on — I think even before the government had put out a mandate — was to develop a sexual violence and misconduct policy. There’s an act out, but we were ahead of the curve on that. We did, and that was an expensive and time-consuming process. There was no funding for that. We had to find the resources for that internally.

The other thing that I’m sure you’re well aware of at other institutions, and ours is no different, are high rates of mental health issues at university today. I know your government has spoken about making mental health a huge mandate. I’m pleased to announce that our president, Alan Shaver, is going to be announcing a mental health task force in the very near future. But that’s something that’s…. Again, there’s no funding for it.

The last one is that we really take seriously the Truth and Reconciliation report and the recommendations, and we’ve been doing what we can to implement those on campus. Again, we need resources for these sorts of things.

I’ll turn it back to Alan.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Gentlemen, just so you are aware, we’re just at about ten minutes now. If you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up, then we can get our questions.

A. Shaver: I’ll wrap it up.

We used to be able to build residences through P3s. The change in the budget reporting entity means we haven’t been able to do that since before I got here seven years ago. We need that room. We need some way of building residences. We have a very low vacancy rate in Kamloops. Our students need low-rent accommodation, so they’re really competing. We need to be able to build price-sensitive residences. Right now, even though it’s funded, we can’t do that.

What we’re calling for is a revision and a review of the funding for post-secondary education to look at these unfunded needs and also to look at inequities between institutions that have grown in over the 15 years.

Thank you very much for listening.

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

We have heard a number of colleges, universities, students saying similar things, especially around mental health. I’m just curious on what your views are on dedicated funding for mental health on campuses. I know a number of the student unions have been asking for…. One of the problems, they said, is when the money comes to the institution, with the scarcity of resources, it doesn’t go to mental health. It’ll go to something else. What are your feelings in regards to dedicated funding for something like that?

A. Shaver: Well, if someone was to come to us and say, “We’ll pay for your sexual violence coordinators,” I’d say: “Sold.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Well, I was just curious. I wanted to just hear between…. We’re hearing students, we’re hearing faculty, and we’re hearing from university colleges.

A. Shaver: Well, I think if the institutions make it a priority like we have and the government makes it a priority, we should partner on it. Part of being a partner is being honest.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you.

Questions?

S. Cadieux: It’s actually not a fund-related question. Your presentation is clear on those aspects, not dissimilar to the ones we’ve heard from other institutions.

[7:05 p.m.]

I am curious just about the comment you made about being an open university, very welcoming and that you don’t have a lot of barriers to entry. I assume that’s not true for all programs, though. I assume there’s GPA requirements for some entry. Otherwise, you’d have a real problem on your hands in sorting out who you could admit and who you didn’t.

A. Shaver: A high school diploma is needed for arts, science and business. We mentioned, for example, nursing. That’s a capped program, so we’re turning away eligible students. There are some other, similar types of programs as well.

Thank you for that clarification.

A. Weaver: I just wanted to say how delighted I was to hear your emphasis on the software, electrical and computer engineering, because it’s a desperate need.

You’re working with the other research universities. For example, UBC is looking for a similar model in terms of clean energy in the Squamish region. You’re all together in that?

A. Shaver: Yes. It’s a concerted approach to what I mentioned is quite a gap in British Columbia with respect to the number of engineers. We have chosen to go for third and fourth year in that area as sort of our contribution. This has been done in concert with the other research universities.

A. Weaver: You’ve got something that Vancouver or Victoria don’t have, even Kelowna now. You have affordability. It’s still affordable, so you get those start-ups here. You have a huge opportunity, a really exciting opportunity.

A. Shaver: Correct. We’re really very much aware of that, and we’re very close to the entrepreneurial community here. They come on campus, and we go into their offices. We’re celebrating all the start-ups.

A. Weaver: If you train here, you live here too.

A. Shaver: Correct. That is the philosophy of Thompson Rivers University, and it works. We can prove it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I do want to applaud you, Alan and Jim, for bringing business training into your programs too. I work in the arts, and the same thing. We found those in arts training to be amazing performers, but they didn’t know how to put on their own shows or do anything. This is similar with entrepreneurialism. So I wanted to applaud you on that vision, because I do think having skills plus business is a winning combination.

P. Milobar: Thank you, Alan and Jim, for that.

Just maybe, Alan, a bit more detail around the engineering and why it’s the two years right now. The kids come for the two years, but then they have to leave. Your hope is to keep them here for the whole four — and the implementation to get them. Unlike other schools that may get some of those new seats, where they would take the four or five years to finally get a new graduate out, TRU could conceivably be having those new graduates out in a two- to three-year window from the phased ramp-up.

A. Shaver: We have a number of students in first and second year already, and many of them want to go into one of these three that we’ve talked about. So if we establish a third year, we’ll populate it now. We’re ready to go. We can then establish the fourth year and basically bootstrap ourselves. Then we’ll have students graduating right away. So we don’t have to start at year 1; we can start at year 3.

P. Milobar: Which for some of those local tech companies is critical, because they need those skilled workers now.

A. Shaver: Critical. Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time. I really appreciate — I’m sure we all do — your very thorough and compelling presentation. We thank you very much for all the work you do with our young minds. Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Jim.

A. Shaver: Thanks for your support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have New Voice Speech and Language — Adrienne Yates.

Hi, Adrienne.

NEW VOICE SPEECH AND LANGUAGE

A. Yates: Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you here tonight. My name is Adrienne Yates, and I’m here as a speech-language pathologist who works with preschool-aged children.

When I was 17 years old, I had an existential crisis. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My father, a wise man and high school counsellor, commented: “What about something like speech therapy, Adrienne? I mean, there’s nothing you like to do more than talk.”

[7:10 p.m.]

He was right. The seed was planted. I couldn’t imagine a more rewarding career than to help those who have difficulty communicating. To this day there’s never been a time where I wished I was not a speech pathologist. There have been trying moments, of course, but it continues to fascinate and challenge me every day, and there is no other career path I could imagine.

During my 11-year career, I’ve had the privilege to work in a number of areas that SLPs serve, but the caseload that keeps pulling me back is working in early intervention. It is my passion for these young children and their families that brings me here before you today.

As the representatives for our provincial government, you’re tasked with being responsible for every person in our province. An investment in early intervention speech pathology will allow you to meet both ethical and economic targets. In fact, a study from 2013 has shown that returns are up to $9 for every dollar invested in early childhood intervention.

Effective communication is vital to every area of our daily lives. It’s essential for school success and crucial for securing employment. This is in addition to our daily connection with family members, friends and others in the community.

The children that we work with often start at a disadvantage before they even reach school. By investing in a young child’s communication skills at an early age, we’re helping to reduce problems further down the line with the education, health and justice systems.

To name a few examples, a report from Speech-Language and Audiology Canada tells us that children with language impairments are four to five times more likely to have difficulties reading than their peers. Success in reading is a key part of success in school. Those with reading difficulties struggle with most subjects and require additional assistance in the classroom, costing money and creating children who lack the confidence and ability to interpret written material.

A staggering report showed that 66 to 90 percent of young people in young offender institutions have below-average language skills, and 35 percent do not have basic communication skills seen in most 11-year-olds. Now, one cannot assume causality, but it’s easy to imagine how insufficient communication can isolate youth, leading them to engage in illegal activity and antisocial behaviour. Additionally, it’s unlikely that their comprehension of language would be sufficient to grab the language used in the judicial system to indict them.

In Kamloops, we currently have 5.6 full-time-equivalent speech-language pathologists working in early intervention. The caseload between the two agencies that serve this population is approximately 250. This is a caseload that stops seeing children when they enter the school system. It’s estimated that another 70 clients were discharged only last month into school.

The therapists in this area cover a vast geographical area. We service Chase, the North Shuswap, Savona, Logan Lake, Merritt, Barriere, Sun Peaks, 100 Mile House and the lake region surrounding 100 Mile House. For some of these areas, therapists are travelling over two hours in each direction to reach their destination. This means that the areas are served infrequently, and the cost is high for therapists to reach there.

TherapyBC put out a paper on promoting manageable workloads and recommended a caseload of 26 to 30 clients per FTE. Our therapists are currently seeing unmanageable numbers of approximately 45 per FTE. This is 50 percent above the highest recommended amount. Despite this, we are able to work with families to create change.

A parent, Heather, agreed to share her experience of speech therapy with her son, Connor.

“I’m the mother of a wonderful boy named Connor, who is now 4½. Connor’s story begins as an infant, when he had difficult times staying asleep at night. This lasted until he was over three. When he was two years old, he would become easily over-stimulated and have many tantrums per day.

“For Connor, he was not able to communicate to me that he was tired, hungry, upset or sad. He would have horrible fits and endless hours of meltdowns. It was not pleasant taking him to any public gathering, such as birthday parties or restaurants, as I was having difficulty figuring out what was triggering him. As a first-time mother, I did not know that this behaviour was all that unusual for a child his age, but I knew I was exhausted and having difficulty coping with his increasing tantruming behaviour and felt it was my fault as his mother.

“At 2½ years, we decided to start preschool so that I could get a break, as I was wearing out, and to help him socialize with other children. Very quickly his preschool teacher noticed that Connor had behaviours out of the norm and recommended connecting with an outside agency. I called that day, and Connor was quickly screened and several recommendations and referrals to support Connor were made, which included speech and language therapy.

“This has changed all our lives. Through regular speech therapy, Connor learned to talk and pronounce words. The therapist noted that Connor was able to pronounce most sounds but could not transfer the sounds to make actual words.

“Connor started in full-time daycare with a support staff in place to help him. The therapist went to Connor’s daycare to provide the staff with strategies on how to work with Connor as well as attended meetings with the support people for him. The therapist spent countless hours working hand in hand with Connor, his primary caregivers and the daycare staff, setting up plans and working with everyone.

“Now, at 4½, he’s talking in full sentences and has no meltdowns due to not being able to communicate. He has learned how to make eye contact and has recently started imaginative play.

“Without the early intervention, no one in our family could imagine Connor starting kindergarten. Early intervention for Connor has made all the difference in his ability to communicate with the world. He will now be able to attend kindergarten and be at a comparable level with his peers, giving him the best chance to succeed. Our whole family is so grateful for all the help we have received these past two years.

“My son now has an imagination, can talk to you with eye contact, can express his wants and desires and even tell stories. We are still awaiting a comprehensive assessment from another agency and are looking forward to having a full blueprint for his future. Connor is the poster child for early intervention.”

[7:15 p.m.]

I want to thank Heather for sharing her story. It shows that when therapy is provided as recommended, significant changes can be made from an early age. Unfortunately, that is too frequently not the case. In a survey of B.C. early intervention SLPs, only 5 percent felt that they were providing the services that their families required.

In my experience, the ones who do not receive adequate service are the ones who often need it the most. Connor had a family that was committed to therapy, came to their scheduled appointments and had a supportive team, including dedicated family members, daycare providers and other professionals, who regularly came together to monitor Connor’s progress.

Many of our families are struggling in so many areas that even their child’s chance at communicating effectively is not a high priority for them. Families may be dealing with issues such as poverty, transportation, learning other languages — or their own language — and learning difficulties. With the availability of our current service provision, we’re unable to give these families the extra support they need to help their children thrive.

Families who miss sessions or who have difficulties returning phone calls or responding to letters are quickly struck from the list, leaving their child without the help they require. These are the children who go on to need assistance in multiple areas in school, struggle with finding gainful employment, and many find themselves in law courts, being accused of crimes they may not even truly understand.

Today I’m asking you to join me in my pursuit of helping children to find their voice and learn to communicate effectively. I ask that all children who require speech and language therapy have access to timely and effective service. We require more positions for early intervention speech-language pathologists in B.C.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Adrienne. We really appreciate it. We’ve heard a couple of presentations on early intervention and speech pathology, and we really appreciate your obvious passion for early intervention and its importance.

Are there any questions?

Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

A. Weaver: Can I ask one?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, sorry. My apologies.

A. Weaver: Will you upload your presentation to the website so that we have access?

A. Yates: Yes, I can.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just so you know, October 16, 5 p.m., is the deadline. So if you could please get it in before then. Otherwise, we can’t look at it. But your presentation is being transcribed.

A. Yates: Sure. No problem. Thank you very much.

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

Next up we have United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo — Ms. Danalee Baker. Hello.

D. Baker: Hi. Good evening. Am I the last one?

B. D’Eith (Chair): You are.

D. Baker: Okay. I got the short straw here.

Alan is actually our board member, and he decided to stay for moral support. I’m hoping that’s okay.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Fantastic.

UNITED WAY THOMPSON NICOLA CARIBOO

D. Baker: Welcome to Kamloops, and welcome home, Peter. It’s always great to see you. I know you were in Cranbrook this morning. I was scheduled to do the presentation by phone, but I’m just really excited that we were able to do this in person. So thank you so much for your energy.

[7:20 p.m.]

We’re here today to talk about bc211, and I know you’re getting your materials at the moment. One of the questions that you’d posed to a community was: what service improvements should be given priority? We are here to ask that you fund the telephone and text for bc211 across the province. We’d like to give you some information about that.

I also apologize. I printed out maybe too small a version of my PowerPoint.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We have it electronically.

D. Baker: Perfect. That’s great.

My name is Danalee Baker. I’m the executive director for United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo, and Alan Shaver is a member of our board of directors. We actually have a really great relationship. I was here for moral support for his presentation as well.

We’re here to talk about bc211. This is a vital social service support for our entire province, and it contributes to the well-being of all citizens. There are not many services that you can say will affect every single citizen in this province. We’re here on behalf of all the United Ways in B.C. and all the citizens of B.C. to ask you to fund this service, including telephone and text, to every single corner of this province.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of bc211 before, but many people have not. That’s not actually uncommon. Really, bc211 has been centred in the Lower Mainland for the last decade, and just recently, in June of this year, it has been expanded to the entire province on line.

We’ll also talk about, in a moment, that Vancouver Island has just received telephone and text. We’re really excited about that. But it still leaves the rest of the province at a disadvantage.

So 211, we like to call it, is the social service hotline. It’s a free one-stop shop that’s 24-7 for all community social services and government services. It’s confidential and delivered by highly trained specialists. It’s available 24-7, 365 days a year and in 160 languages. I really want to emphasize that. There’s no other place that you can get translation services within a minute. They have them all on line. It’s not just languages; it’s also the dialects of languages.

And 211 is not new. It’s been in the United States since 1997, and it’s a service that 90 percent of Americans currently have. If you go travelling to the States ever, please try it if you need any kind of service.

Recently, for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the Texas 211 was listed as the third most utilized resource, only behind FEMA, which is the emergency service there. They had 40,000 calls in the first three hours, and 380,000 calls in the first three days. People are certainly utilizing this around the world.

In 2001 in Canada, the CRTC granted United Way the use of 211, and we have been working…. Obviously, it’s more difficult for us, as we are a non-profit, to have this spread across Canada, but we have grown it significantly, as you will see in an upcoming slide. We’ve made a commitment to all the citizens across Canada that we will do our best to have this coverage from coast to coast to coast.

In 2010, the United Way of the Lower Mainland brought it to B.C., and it became bc211. Across the country, it’s just 211. Somehow they just wanted to be different and brand it, so we’re working with bc211, but it’s essentially the same service.

As I mentioned, on June 14 of this year, all the United Ways came together. We were tired of waiting for funding or a big donor to come forward. We just wanted to put this service out there and prove it and then have the impact fuel our ask in the future. That’s what we’re doing right now.

We’ve launched this on line all across B.C. The biggest challenge was uploading all the records, of course, from all the remote communities up in the northwest of British Columbia and all around. Right now bc211 has 13,000 records all across the province. Of course, because we don’t have the telephone or text except for the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, there is an on-line web chat version. You can right now, if you wanted to — maybe not during my presentation but maybe right after — do an on-line web chat and actually connect with someone. It’s sort of like Facebook Messenger, etc. So you can have a somewhat personal interaction with this service.

As I mentioned, on September 18, Vancouver Island now, the entire island, has telephone and text. Very excited. Telus has actually sponsored that for $300,000. So really excited about that.

[7:25 p.m.]

One of the other great things about 211 is that most people…. Right now you’re working until late. You may want to deal with a problem or want to gather some information after you go home; bc211 would be there at midnight or at two in the morning, when you can’t sleep and you just want to find some information for a friend or if you want to get a referral for yourself. It can be in the language of your choice.

If you can see the map of Canada, this is the progress we’ve made of 211 across Canada. Right now 70 percent of Canadians have access to 211. Not all of the provinces have telephone and text, but 90 percent of them do.

The next slide there is the icon. I just wanted to give you a sense of what that bc211 website looks like. Those icons are meant to help people with potential literacy issues or communication issues, if they’re just landing on that site, right away. All of these icons are built from the previous year’s trend data. So if people were searching for housing, housing would be right up there. If there was something strange, like people wanted to know about urban chickens, that chicken one would be up there.

In the Lower Mainland, last year, there were 52,000 calls to bc211. As you can see on that slide, there are almost 300,000 on-line visits. People are actually accessing this service more on line because it’s a simple thing to do from your smartphone. It’s anonymous and confidential. If you’re in the closet, trying to get away from — I’m not trying to stereotype — potentially an abusive husband, you can do that quickly in the closet and no one has to hear you speaking on the phone.

It has been a fantastic resource. They found that 58 percent of the callers were female, but it’s essentially 50-50. Those are the top five reasons that folks would call.

As we mentioned, the next slide says: “Dial 211.” We feel, of course, that the on-line platform is fantastic. But we really feel that the 211 telephone and text is the most powerful way to connect with our citizens, especially when someone is in crisis. If someone does have literacy issues or mental health…. When you go on the Internet, you just get barraged by information. Also, if you were in a crisis situation, an easy-to-remember phone number can connect you person-to-person when you really need to just talk to someone.

Many times we get asked why we don’t just Google this. These next two slides…. I won’t go over them in detail, because I know you can read through them. But essentially, this is 100 times better than Google, because we’ve got curated lists that are updated daily. We’ve got someone to refer you to the right resource by connecting with you. Actually, there are a number of people on staff who are librarians. We’ve got catalogued, indexed, professional listings. Folks that do this must go to an eight-week training program just to be able to answer the phone and refer you on to a service.

As I mentioned, as well, there are 13,000 records. That is someone’s full-time job, just to keep checking and making sure that they’re up-to-date and valid.

You can see that slide “211 data assists community.” In addition to helping citizens, we know this can help organizations, governments, other social service agencies in actually planning for service delivery and finding out what gaps exist or what the greatest need or trending needs will be in community. I think that the slide “211 data assists community” is highlighting our affordable housing crisis in B.C. There’s no doubt that the majority, over half of the calls, are about housing and homelessness. People are finding it very hard to find lodging — to find something that’s not only affordable but suitable and appropriate for what they’re looking for.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Danalee, we’ve about 20 seconds left.

D. Baker: The last thing I just want to touch on is the wildfire crisis this summer and how 211 has been an asset in all sorts of different floods and fires by taking calls and being that one point of contact. We only launched in June, but regionally, for the wildfires, we had 4,000 hits a day on bc211.

Also, bc211 will be vital in the recovery and rebuilding. We need people to have a one-stop shop, especially those rural and remote communities, to find out where they can get help as they rebuild after the wildfires.

[7:30 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. I was just checking the website out, and there’s a tab right at the top: wildfires. That’s great.

I also, just for the fun of it, texted my constituency assistant and said: “Do you use it?” She said, “Yes, at least twice every other day.”

D. Baker: Really? That’s fantastic. That’s the benefit — to help the workload go off of you.

J. Brar: Thanks for providing detailed information about 211. But we are a Finance Committee. The role is to make recommendations for the next budget, which is money. So what is your ask?

D. Baker: To have the whole province with telephone and text is close to $1 million. We’ve got the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island taken care of, at the moment. Obviously, in the future, we’d like to build that in. We’re probably looking at about $600,000.

J. Brar: Additional dollars — $600,000 additional?

D. Baker: Above that $1 million, $400,000 is sort of taken care of. So we’re asking for $600,000 to provide equity for the rest of the province.

J. Brar: For one year?

D. Baker: Per year, yes. Don’t quote me on that because it could be $601,000.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine.

T. Redies: Thanks, Danalee, for the presentation. Really interesting.

Actually, one of the things that caught my eye was the data that could be used to inform governments and other departments, etc., to help people. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you’re leveraging that data and how the data could be accessed, I guess, by government to inform decision-making.

D. Baker: You bet. There are relationships already. One of the things that bc211 does is manage the shelter occupancy for Vancouver. Some of the data that they’re pulling on for that, specifically, goes right to government. They get the data — who they’re talking to, what shelter is being used and if there are any beds available. I mean, we have all the data at our disposal. It’s any way that we can slice and dice it.

Because it has really, primarily, been in the Lower Mainland, we haven’t had the breadth of data that could inform the province as a whole. The sophistication of the system and the database is something that is untapped potential.

There are already relationships with local governments, but we are connected to the province through emergency management B.C. as well. I think there’s a real opportunity there.

R. Leonard: Just to follow up with that, that is kind of where I was going. It brings to mind the issue of protection of privacy. I’m just wondering if that has played into the development of the 211.

D. Baker: For the confidentiality of the service, you mean, or the data?

R. Leonard: For the data.

D. Baker: We’re collecting really anonymous data. We’re collecting what people are searching at, what time they’re doing that, where they’re coming from.

It actually is a really big job to just clean the data when you go for the search. That’s really interesting. When we have a majority of spelling mistakes or things that are categorized differently, we can really get a sense of who’s using the service. It’s been really interesting.

We’ve just had our first report from July, August and September. We’re just getting that data together to inform for the entire province. Confidentiality isn’t an issue because we’re not collecting names or anything.

S. Cadieux: I understand what the ask is in terms of providing the phone and text provincewide. That amount is assuming, at the $600,000 level, that the sponsorship on the Island would continue. Is that correct?

D. Baker: Yes. They kind of can’t stop it now, we would hope.

S. Cadieux: So bc211, the web-based project as it is…. Red Book On-line was going to be my first question. But I’ve just seen that now. I’m used to the red book.

The investment by the United Way in the structure as it is on line today — how much is that on an annual basis?

[7:35 p.m.]

D. Baker: That is $1.5 million, at the moment.

Our United Way alone puts in $43,000 of our…. We fundraise for that. Obviously, we’d like to take that out of our budget line item because it’s a provincial service. But what we’re looking for right now is just equity for all citizens in this province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s time. Thank you very much, Danalee. We really appreciate it. A very compelling and amazing program.

Just before we break, I want to thank all of the committee. I’m not going to be here tomorrow. Dan Ashton will be chairing. I want to thank all of you for your amazing attention and obvious passion for all the issues that we’ve heard over the last week in this whirlwind tour we’ve been on. I’d like to thank all of you for participating so well.

The committee adjourned at 7:36 p.m.