The committee met at 3:02 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

We’re very pleased to be here in Dawson Creek and would like to begin by recognizing that our meeting today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Métis, Dene Tha, Cree and Beaver peoples.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to acknowledge everyone who was impacted by wildfires this year and extend our gratitude and appreciation to everyone who came together to support the response.

We’re a committee of the Legislative Assembly, and our members include MLAs from all three parties in the Legislature. Every fall we visit communities across the province to meet with British Columbians and hear their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget.

The consultation is based on the budget consultation paper that was recently released by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available here today, if you’d like to refer to those. In addition to those in-person meetings, British Columbians can also provide their thoughts in writing or fill out an on-line survey. The deadline for this input is 5 p.m. Monday, October 15, 2018. More information is available on the website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

We carefully consider all the input we receive and use it to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly of what should be prioritized in the next provincial budget. The report will be available on November 15, 2018.

To those of you who are here today, thank you for taking the time to participate. This is actually my second time going through this process, and I can truly say that your input is the heart of the work that we do, so thank you for coming.

We have a number of registered speakers today. Each will have five minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions by the committee. There’s also a first-come, first-served open-mike period near the end of the meeting, with five minutes allocated to each speaker. If you’d like to speak, please talk to Stephanie at the information table.

Today’s meeting is being recorded and transcribed. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live via our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted.

I’d now like to ask the members to introduce themselves. Perhaps we can start with the Deputy Chair, Dan Ashton.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. Dan Ashton. I represent the Penticton riding.

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

S. Cadieux: Stephanie Cadieux, Surrey South.

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, Cowichan Valley.

M. Dean: Mitzi Dean, Esquimalt-Metchosin.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard from Courtenay-Comox.

N. Simons: Nicholas Simons from Sunshine Coast.

[3:05 p.m.]

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

Also assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril, right here, and Stephanie Raymond, back here. They’re both from the Parliamentary Committees Office in the Legislature and do an awful lot of work for us. We really appreciate every­thing they do.

Michael and Steve are over with Hansard Services. They will be recording the proceedings. They have to come in and set up every time we do the meetings, so we really appreciate what they do.

First up, we’d like to call Northern Lights College — Anndra Graff.

Our very first presentation. So welcome.

Budget Consultation Presentations

NORTHERN LIGHTS COLLEGE

A. Graff: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I think it’s been a while since you’ve been face to face up in the north, so this is really good.

My name is Anndra Graff. I’m the vice-president of finance and corporate services with Northern Lights College. First of all, I’d like to thank you for your past investment in Northern Lights College. We have just substantially completed our $33 million trades training centre here on the Dawson Creek campus. We received occupancy on Friday, so it’s been very exciting and a busy day around there today trying to get faculty and students moved over. It’s a beautiful, beautiful space. We’d encourage you, next time you’re up, to stop in for a visit. We’d definitely give you a tour around.

For those of you that don’t know, Northern Lights College’s geographic region is approximately 325,000 kilometres. We serve the top third of British Columbia. It’s about a population of 70,000 people. We have campuses in Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd, Tumbler Ridge and access centres in Dease Lake and in Atlin — so a very, very large area.

We serve about 2,300 learners in credentialed programs and about 1,400 learners in community education and workforce training. The credentials awarded are everything from certificates, diplomas, associate degrees and post-baccalaureate diplomas. Through strategic collaboration with indus­try, communities and our school districts, we continue to meet the need for delivering education and that’s career-focused in order to develop a high-skilled workforce for northeastern British Columbia.

Required change for ongoing success. Despite our continued efforts to remain accountable and effective and to use short-term funding envelopes to fill resourcing gaps, our continued reliance has ultimately led to organizational fatigue and reduced capacity. It’s a huge area and a very small population. We are already seeing signs of this across the board. I’m going to speak to three significant changes that we feel are necessary.

First is advancing the Aboriginal post-secondary education in our region. Our population of Aboriginal people is over twice that of British Columbia, and we serve eight different Aboriginal communities. In your handout, there’s a map, and it actually shows the different Aboriginal communities in that area.

We have a strong commitment to true lasting reconciliation with our First Nations of British Columbia. We have significantly increased our investment in human resources and Aboriginal education through the use of small, short-term funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education. This has resulted in some direct student supports, delivery and participation in many cultural events and learning opportunities. First Nation elders have been invited to teach in our classrooms about safety of our Indigenous students, the history and trauma with Indigenous communities and the effects of this on our students. NLC has increased community consultation and engagement, and we have started work on indigenizing all of our curriculum.

The funding support is appreciated. However, there remains so much more to do. In particular, providing a full complement of student supports will be instrumental in increasing retention rates and making sure that their transition into the workforce is seamless.

The second priority that we see is mental health supports for students. At Northern Lights College, we’ve seen an increase in students struggling with mental health issues, in particular anxiety and thoughts and attempts of suicide. Students experiencing mental health crises have become more common on our campuses and have required college-led intervention. As an institution based in B.C.’s north, we are limited in the community resources that our students can access. Some of our smaller northern communities do not have free mental health clinics. They also have limited services and hours.

[3:10 p.m.]

Due to many of the barriers that our students face, and increasing anxiety in mental health, we believe that increased services are needed. It really, ultimately, comes down to that support in order for them to be successful.

The third thing is multi-year funding allotments. I spoke to small pots of money to support mental health and Aboriginal…. But multi-year — three- or four-year — funding allotments are needed. It would be more effective for strategic planning and developing more comprehensive partnerships and collaborations. Like I said, three-year grants would be ultimate in order to have a planning cycle be more effective.

In conclusion, as regional community college, we provide critical access to academic, vocational, trades and apprenticeship, continuing education and workforce training programs. Without this local access, many of our students would be unable to participate in post-secondary education and, by extension, would be unable to access the jobs that keep our economy strong.

That’s the end of my presentation, if anybody has any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Anndra. Appreciate your comments.

Would anyone have any questions for Anndra?

S. Furstenau: In terms of the multi-year funding allotment, currently you’re getting grants that are for one year — is that what’s happening? — so you can’t plan. How often are those typically renewed?

A. Graff: Correct, yearly. For example, the Aboriginal funding. We’ve had allotments of one-year funding that come in March to be used the next following year, but there’s no commitment as to ongoing funding with those supports.

S. Furstenau: I can totally understand that being able to plan for more than one year is so essential to these kinds of programs.

A. Graff: Yeah. It is little projects, so they are one-year projects. We can’t continue on with those projects. Usually they’re pilots, and then lots of them are very successful. We just don’t have ongoing funding to continue them.

N. Simons: Does Northern Lights have residences? How many people are you housing?

A. Graff: There is 210-bed housing in Dawson Creek, and 102 beds in Fort St. John. We’re actually in the process of doing a demand study for Chetwynd and increasing the housing capacity in Fort St. John.

N. Simons: Did our recent regulatory changes allow Northern Lights to build student housing?

A. Graff: We haven’t completed our demand study yet. That will be a big factor, as it a loans program. In northern British Columbia, we are very reliant on the economy when it comes to housing. If the economy is really busy, there are no vacancies. Students are in housing. If it’s a little slower and they can go out and four of them can rent an apartment, we tend to see them out of housing. That will be our biggest challenge with the loans program — ensuring that those beds are full in order to repay that.

N. Simons: One last question, just for clarification. Is Northern Lights eligible for the tuition waivers for young people leaving care or out of care?

A. Graff: Yup, youth in care.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anyone else?

Could you elaborate a little bit more on the Aboriginal programming? Tell me a little bit more about what it is.

A. Graff: Things that we would like to do? Elders in housing. It would be very advantageous to the students to actually have elders living in housing with them.

Life coaches: somebody enabled to phone and make sure they’re getting out of bed, coming in to school, transportation, food, housing, child care.

Lots of times they have parents still living in community — for them to come in to school. Then they are travelling back to their communities for weekends to check on parents and elderly…. That is a challenge for them. All of that costs money, so that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, seeing no more questions, Anndra, thank you very much. Thank you for everything the college does up north — very important for the community. Thanks for your presentation.

All right. Next up we have Northern Brain Injury Association — Ryan Challen.

Hi, Ryan. How are you?

R. Challen: Fine, thank you. Thanks for having me.

[3:15 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Happy to be here. It was great flying in here today.

Go ahead, Ryan, please.

NORTHERN BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION

R. Challen: Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Ryan Challen, and I’m the community coordinator for Northern Brain Injury Association. I’m based out of Prince George. We have an office here in Dawson Creek, and we provide services to two-thirds of the province, from Quesnel all the way up to the Yukon boundary, up to Haida Gwaii, and out to about the Alberta border.

Basically, the reason I’m here today is to spread awareness about the need for continued funding for brain injury and the services that we provide to clients and to citizens of British Columbia. We do a lot of services — such as case management, education, as well as injury prevention — for the citizens of British Columbia that really is underfunded. What we require is ongoing commitment from government to provide funding for us, so we can have individual, steady employment, and also programs that are multi-year-funded, instead of one-year-funded programs.

At the moment, we do receive funding from government and also Northern Health in the form of grants, as well as funding through the B.C. alliance, which is funded through the government — which we sincerely appreciate. However, it is not ongoing funding.

If you look at the handouts, you will see on page 6 that we do serve several dozen communities in the north. We do have case managers and facilitators in several communities, and we do provide remote case management to those communities where you don’t actually have case managers. We do have a case manager in Dawson Creek that serves the northeast, as well as a case manager in the northwest that serves Terrace and Kitimat. But, with added resources, we could do a lot more by providing services to clients in, for example, Fort St. John, Chetwynd and Kitimat as well.

There is a demand for services from the Northern Brain Injury Association. We’ve seen our caseload increase by 50 percent over the past year alone. That is not by really going out there and really advocating; that is by clients coming to us and also having referrals by medical professionals as well. So if were able to get out there with secure funding, we would be able to grow our services that much more and alleviate a lot of issues and alleviate a lot of people’s suffering in the north.

As you can tell, the northern part of the province is remote, and we have to be creative in the way we deliver services to those individuals. Being a non-profit, we have the ability to really get out there and do the work for individuals in a creative way. That is something that we pride ourselves on for at the Northern Brain Injury Association.

One thing we also do for the public, as well, is every year we have a safety count. Basically, what that means is community members — the staff that we have on site — actually go out there and count certain vehicles and vehicle infractions. We do that as a safety program every June. We raise funds for that ourselves, and we do provide reports to ICBC and also local governments that participate in the safety counts. That has been going on since 2002, and that’s a very successful program.

We also run a Happy Helmet Day contest every June, which basically promotes helmet use amongst children and adults alike. That, basically, is a fun program where we get children — and adults. as well — to decorate helmets. We offer prizes too — often donated prizes, or cash prizes in the event that I’m able to get those. That’s a very successful program, and the entrants increase tenfold year over year. So it’s a fun way for us to promote education for individuals and also to promote the fact that we should be wearing helmets while using bikes or snowmobiles, what have you — that kind of stuff.

As you can see, there is a need for the services that we provide. For example, if you have a look on page 3 of your handout…. You’ll see, for example, in the province of Nova Scotia, they have approximately 971,000 people that they provide with approximately $1.25 million per year of funding — for the citizens, for brain injury case management. Then you have Saskatchewan, which has a population of approximately 1.1 million. They provide $4.85 million per year for their brain injury programs.

In Alberta, with a population of 4.2 million — they provide $15 million per year for their brain injury programs. In British Columbia, we have a population of 4.63 million, approximately, and we provide approximately $1 million per year.

[3:20 p.m.]

Now, don’t get me wrong. We’re certainly grateful for the amount that we receive. But I’m here before you today to let you know what we can really do with the money from increased funding. Because we are a non-profit, we do have that ability to really make our dollars stretch.

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

S. Cadieux: Thanks, Ryan. I’ve got a number of questions, and I may have to do this in multiple shots here.

I don’t dispute the services, but I’m curious as to what’s going on in brain injury in British Columbia. Are we seeing increases or decreases, and is it shifting from one type of injury to another type of injury? Are we seeing any improvement from the work around helmets and these sorts of things — the preventative stuff? Is that having an impact? When it comes to funding, what is it that you’re hoping to get, and what is it that government would be buying?

Case management, okay — what’s the impact? Does that reduce rehospitalisation? Does it equate to X number of people employed? What do we buy? What does government buy if they increase the funding?

R. Challen: You have several questions there. Which one would you like answered first?

S. Cadieux: Whatever makes sense.

R. Challen: Okay. Basically, case management, for example. What that buys is an individual’s peace of mind. That buys an individual’s ability to have stable housing, to have ongoing support for food, ongoing support to have medical attention provided to them.

Basically, what a case manager does is…. We consider that their external brain. When an individual is hurt, is injured, they’re unable, a lot of the time, to really formulate how to live their own lives again. They have to relearn how to live with a brain injury.

What case management does…. That provides an opportunity to have one-on-one with a case manager to learn about brain injury, to learn how to live again with their brain injury. It also provides an opportunity for them to work with their family and friends. So their husband, for example, knows: “Okay, I now understand what that trigger is with my wife, because she has an injury.” That’s what the case managers do, in a nutshell.

S. Cadieux: Yeah. No, I understand what case management is, and what I’m asking is: do you keep statistics to show the value of that intervention?

R. Challen: Absolutely, yes.

S. Cadieux: If there’s $1 million being spent now, what are the outcomes? What are the…? It’s nice to do, but is it having an impact?

R. Challen: It’s having a huge impact. I mean, our caseload has grown 50 percent in one year based on the injuries in British Columbia. If you look at the lives that the northerners live, we’re outside snowmobiling. We’re outside on bikes. We’re outside horseback riding.

There’s a huge need, just in our caseload alone. I’m not going to mention the presentation. We haven’t really gone out there to push our services. Clients have come to us based on the fact of their need.

I think we’re a lot more inexpensive than direct government doing the services because, like I said, being a non-profit, we have the creativity and less expense to provide those services to the clients in their communities — versus going down to G.F. Strong, for example.

We can actually help clients in their own communities, and we believe that’s kind of a wraparound effect. We work with doctors. We work with physiotherapists, schools. We work with mental health clinicians. We work with family therapists as well, to really make sure the client is getting the best wraparound service in their community.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. Can you just break down the detail around the funding? All of the brain injury programs across the whole province currently share $1 million, and that’s the arrangement for the next six years?

R. Challen: I believe so, yes.

M. Dean: How is that money apportioned out across the province?

R. Challen: I’m not with the alliance. I can’t answer that definitively. What I can tell you is, from the Northern Brain Injury’s perspective, every year we have to write a proposal to the B.C. alliance, and our proposals are judged based on their merits and based on what we say we’re going to do.

M. Dean: Could you tell me what your annual budget is, usually?

R. Challen: Our annual budget at Northern Brain Injury is approximately $250,000.

M. Dean: How many people do you serve?

R. Challen: We serve, right now, 185 people in the northern two-thirds of the province.

[3:25 p.m.]

M. Dean: Per year.

R. Challen: Yeah, per year.

M. Dean: Thank you for all of your service in supporting people in northern B.C.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve got to wrap it up, actually, but I’ve got one quick question, if that’s okay. Why would you…? You said there’s a 50 percent increase.

R. Challen: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is that in injuries? What do you account for the injuries? I was just curious. Why is it increasing by 50 percent?

R. Challen: It could be a range from anything. It could be the opioid crisis.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay.

R. Challen: It could be someone getting a concussion. It’s also around the education. We’re getting out there, and we’re really advertising the fact that we’re here to help people in the communities. So we think, basically, people are no longer suffering in silence. They’re realizing: “Hey, there’s someone here who can help us.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): The point is it’s not necessarily that there’s been an increase in brain injury. It’s more that there’s a bit more awareness about brain injury.

R. Challen: That’s correct, yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Therefore, there’s more…. Okay.

Time for a very quick question.

R. Leonard: You made mention of the fact that the Brain Injury Alliance is the one who distributes the funding.

R. Challen: Yes.

R. Leonard: Within that framework, do you think that’s the fair way for the distribution of the funds? Is that a challenge for you, or is there another mechanism that you’d like to see in place?

R. Challen: I can’t speak to that specifically. My personal opinion would be if government were to fund brain injury through the Ministry of Health or another ministry, so we have secure, ongoing funding…. One of our big challenges, being a non-profit, is the fact that we don’t know, in a couple of years, whether or not we’ll have funding to continue. If we had secure, ongoing funding, we would be able to then staff and train staff and adequately serve the citizens of British Columbia with better services.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we’re over time. Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate all the work you do.

R. Challen: Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have Save Our Northern Seniors. We have Jim Collins and Mavis Nelson.

SAVE OUR NORTHERN SENIORS

J. Collins: Good afternoon, everybody. First of all, I thank every one of you for participating in this committee, if I can call it that. I appreciate it. It must be a daunting task, looking at millions or billions of dollars.

You have a package. It’s very brief. If you do have any questions, just jot them down. We’re both going to take parts of this presentation.

Mavis, you’re going to….

M. Nelson: I’m going to start. Okay. I’m going to tell you a little bit about the background of Save Our Northern Seniors — SONS, as we are known locally.

In 2002, local health councils were replaced by health authorities. Northern Health’s area is the largest in the province. That’s the one that we belong to.

In August of 2002, a group of concerned citizens met at a church in Fort St. John, and we decided we have a crisis in our community. We have no place for our loved ones, mainly our seniors, to go. In February of 2004, a town hall meeting was held with Northern Health to try and convince our community that there was a desperate need for more facilities. At that time, a group of dedicated people formally created SONS, as we are called, Save Our Northern Seniors.

A couple of things came out of that over the years. Mainly, the one that we are still concerned about today was that in September of 2007, what we refer to as Heritage Manor II, an assisted-living facility, opened with 24 units. Then, down the line, in the summer of 2012, Peace Villa, with 123 beds, was opened, along with the Fort St. John Hospital, which itself had 55 beds. However, not all beds in the hospital are in operation.

Our goals. As a group, we advocate on behalf of seniors, but not only seniors. There are some younger people in our community, as well, that are in Peace Villa.

[3:30 p.m.]

Our aim is to pursue all avenues of health support for our community no matter what the ages, to have seniors live in their community with support and to keep them safe, independent, healthy and happy.

Our main goal is to have a third house built at Peace Villa which would accommodate a minimum of 60 residents, including a daycare to support recruitment and retention of Northern Health employees.

J. Collins: In the back of our presentation, we’ve provided some statistics. We’re always looking at the number of people that are on the waiting list. If they’re in the hospital, they’re called alternate level of care. That figure changes from about ten to 17 people at any given time — which is quite significant for the hospital, because it takes beds out of acute care in the hospital.

That’s not really our issue, but if we had the appropriate number of beds in our care home and in Heritage or assisted living…. I’m sure you probably will hear, or have heard already, that same story in various communities around the province. Ours is no different. Sixty beds more. You may question that. How long will that last? We think that by the time of an approval of a project and construction time, it will be full — exactly the same thing that happened in the existing facility. The day it opened in July…. I was there, and it was full that day. Poor planning is my comment on that. We went right back to the same situation that we had some years before.

So yes, we got a new facility, but there should have been more beds. Now we’re looking at a situation where maybe we’ve got 20 extra beds, which we think will be full within a two- or three-year period. That’s just a guess, but our community is growing fast, about the same as the province — on average, 1.4 percent.

The other factor is that more seniors tend to be staying in our community. Why? They want to stay with their family. That’s their support base. Second, the economics don’t often allow for us to go to Kelowna or Vancouver or Victoria, where the climate’s a little better, because the housing is a lot more than ours. The equity we’ve developed in our homes doesn’t cut it when we want to move, unless you’re fairly well off.

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

Do you have any questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. In my community we had a group called SOS, Support Our Seniors, so I was pleased to see the name of your organization.

Where does the number 60 come from? You expect that those would be filled immediately. How did you come to the number 60?

M. Nelson: At any one time, there can be up to ten people waiting in the hospital. There’s ten. There can be…. I think our latest number was ten waiting in the community. There’s 20. And there are 24 people at this time that have applied for assisted living, so that would be the two together. The way that Peace Villa is set up, what we refer to as pods are built in groups of 60. So to build another pod would be 60 beds, more or less.

R. Leonard: And are they beds, or are they…? Is it housing units, is it complex care, or is it assisted living? What level of care is it?

J. Collins: Well, right now we have two separate facilities. One’s in the downtown area, and the other is on the outskirts, the main one. We would like to see a new facility accommodate both assisted living and primary care.

M. Nelson: Then there would be more of a seamless transition for those that are in assisted living. If that’s 20 or 30 beds there, then if they do need more care, acute care, they don’t have to go anywhere. It’s an easy movement.

[3:35 p.m.]

Another thing that we’re looking for to go with our 60 beds is…. What we’d like to see is a large recreation room. Quite often, we will find a room smaller than this with 30 wheelchairs and beds, and they’re brought there for entertainment. Well, it gets to be just a big racket, and they’re closed in, and that’s not comfortable for a lot of them that are in there as well.

Another thing that we’re looking for is we’d like to see a daycare that’s attached or built in with all this. It would help with the retention of staff. We have a lot of nurses and a great turnover. Young ones come in and start their own families, and then they’re out the door. If we could provide better daycare attached with Peace Villa, with our hospital, it would help. We think it would, anyway. It would give a chance to mix the generations a bit. I know that’s a thing that’s happened in other countries, in other places, and it sure puts a smile on the old folks’ faces when you bring in little kids. That’s another good thing.

N. Simons: I was going to ask: what has been the response from Northern Health when you made these proposals to them?

J. Collins: Well, obviously they can’t be outspoken about the needs, but internally they are supportive. We might get the communication, but that’s not for public….

The other thing I should have mentioned. Our Peace River regional district does pay 40 percent of any costs associated with….

N. Simons: The hospital board?

J. Collins: Yup.

M. Dean: You’re confident in the 40 percent from the regional district?

J. Collins: Yes.

M. Dean: What is the budget for the building? Do you have a budget?

J. Collins: No. I have no idea.

M. Dean: Okay. So it’s very conceptual. Thank you.

M. Nelson: That’s not actually…. That’s to come. We have to convince many people that it’s necessary first — the powers that be.

R. Leonard: Can I just get clarification on that 40 percent? Has your hospital district chosen to include, within their ability to tax, to collect for housing for seniors?

J. Collins: For housing or for…?

M. Dean: The 40 percent that you mentioned.

J. Collins: Oh, the financing? That’s a legal commitment by the regional district. They participated 40 percent in the new hospital, for instance, and the care home.

R. Leonard: But it’s the hospital board.

J. Collins: No, it’s the regional district. We have a tax on our land.

R. Leonard: The clarification I’m seeking is it’s for hospital services, as opposed to housing.

J. Collins: I get your question. It’s a capital expenditure. I don’t believe it’s for operating, but….

R. Leonard: No. My understanding was that regional hospital boards have the authority to collect taxes for the purposes of building hospitals, but you need to do something to extend that service to allow for raising funds through taxation for something like seniors housing. That’s why I was just seeking clarification.

M. Nelson: Well, I guess we’re not exactly speaking about seniors housing. We’re looking for a pod with the long-term care. It would be to the advantage, to put it all in one place.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you very much, Mavis and Jim. I appreciate all the work you’re doing for seniors in the community. We’ll certainly take everything you said into account.

Next up we have the mayor of Dawson Creek, Dale Bumstead.

Thank you for coming. Thanks for the pen. I’m using it right now.

CITY OF DAWSON CREEK

D. Bumstead: You’re welcome. If you give away a pen, give away a good pen, right? Don’t give away a pen that they wouldn’t use. Why would you even spend money on a pen they wouldn’t use?

Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. We were in city council today, and one of the reasons we didn’t register was because we didn’t know if we’d be done in time. But everybody’s in the campaign mode, so they were out of there. They were getting out on the road.

Anyway, I just want to give a really quick, brief overview of Dawson Creek and some of the financial aspects of our community and what’s going on.

[3:40 p.m.]

Dawson Creek is a small agricultural community. It started in the late 1800s, early 1900s — really a Métis settlement in those early days, much more so than…. We’re not directly touched by a First Nations community out of treaty 8. A proud member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia I am, in my family background, back into Manitoba.

Through the early 1900s up to about 1931, it was settled as an agricultural community. In 1931, the railway came into the Peace River country to ship those agricultural products across North America. Dawson Creek was the end of the railway line. November, I think, of 1941 was an iconic time in the world, with the Pearl Harbour bombings. The U.S. needed an overland route to Alaska in a most urgent manner, so into our community came 10,000 troops overnight, in the spring of 1942.

Talk about a boom economy. We went from 700 or 800 people to 10,000 people almost immediately. Those troops and the engineers came in to build the highway to Alaska. It was a nine-month project. We couldn’t do the planning mechanism in place today which it took them to build that highway. It was crazy what they accomplished.

Through the years, we became influenced by transportation, obviously, with the highway infrastructure, railway. Agriculture was still the foundation. Through the years, Tumbler Ridge came into being, so we have been touched by the mining industry, as a service centre. Forestry became a bit of an opportunity for us with Louisiana-Pacific opening a mill here in Dawson Creek, an OSB plant, 30 years ago.

Now we’re going through the transformation of an energy community touched by the Montney asset, which we sit up on top of. It is transforming our community. The opportunities that are created for our community, our region, our province, our country by this Montney asset, as the world-class asset that it is….

For the last five or ten years, as I’ve learned more and more about it, it seems like people have talked about these assets, these gas fields that exist in North America that are transforming the world in terms of being able to produce natural gas, clean energy, across the world. There are five of them in North America: the Montney that we sit on here; the Duvernay in Alberta; the Marcellus in the eastern states — Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York; and then down in the States in Texas, the Permian and the Eagle Ford.

The Montney, as it’s developing, is proving itself to be one of the top assets in the world. It’s that because it’s so prolific in reserves, not only in natural gas. The added benefit of the natural gas fields today is the liquid production. The liquids are what’s really driving the petrochemical industry. It’s those liquids, like condensate, propane, butane. Those are the assets that are worth even more money.

If I could use the example, a barrel of oil today is at $65 or $70 a barrel. A barrel of condensate that’s coming out of the ground within 20 minutes of here is worth $85 a barrel. So when we talk about what this asset provides to us in the country….

LNG Canada, which is close to making their announcement, very shortly, will produce about three billion or four billion cubic feet of gas per day. I think they say about 24 million tonnes per annum — $7 billion in GDP. Where’s the money coming from for you guys for health, education, social programs? It’s coming from this resource sector. It’s coming from this resource development.

It’s incredibly important for us as a community, because we live on resource development. Certainly, we are a resource community. That’s what we now build upon. Without it, we really struggle. Our community has a 13,000 population. We have a budget of about $65 million or $70 million, and $17 million comes from taxation, property taxation. We only get that from residents and business. We have $15 million from the Peace River Fair Share agreement, and certainly that’s incredibly important for us in terms of building a quality of life for our community.

We define quality of life around two segments: health and happiness. That then begins the chain of what we do. The province comes in and provides health, education, social programs. We pick it up from there and build core infrastructure: water, sewer, protective services — fire, police, building inspection.

Then it’s the amenities. It’s the quality of life that allows us to build a community with a strong quality of life so that we can attract those skilled-trades workers that Anndra was talking about — about how they can help, come into our community and build the resource sector for all of us, for the benefit of us. That’s arts, culture, this facility, arenas, swimming pools, transportation, public works.

In our budget of $65 million or $70 million in our community, $10 million of that is going to arts, culture and recreation. So out of $17 million that we collect in property taxation from business and residents, we spend $10 million in arts, culture and recreation. We have to do that in order to build a community with a strong quality of life.

[3:45 p.m.]

In 2014, Cities journal, a national magazine, did a study on communities, small cities, across Canada on their quality of life, and in 2014, Dawson Creek was the No. 1 small city in Canada for it’s quality of life. We’re so proud of the fact that we’ve built a community with a great quality of life, and we do have great amenities.

But it’s tough. For anybody in municipal government and, I know, you guys at the provincial level, it’s just tough. There is only a certain amount of dough to go around, and how do you make sure you make the best use of it?

I was thrilled to hear Anndra talk about the partnership with First Nations. One of the things that we’re really working on right now as a community is to build that partnership with the treaty 8 communities. We’ve reached out to four or five of them. I’ve travelled around and done presentations to Saulteau, Fort Nelson, Prophet River — some of our neighbours. I use that term deliberately. They are our neighbours.

We don’t have a strong relationship with them like we do with our other communities in the region, and I think it’s so important for us. As I’ve travelled around to their communities, their challenges are identical. The common branches of the tree for a community in a First Nations community, as us: health, education and economic opportunities.

We’ve reached out to our treaty 8 communities, and we’re building protocol agreements right now and memorandums of understanding. We’ve got this concept around the urban reserves. We really are passionate about that right now because we see that as an opportunity to build those economic partnerships with our First Nations neighbours. When we build amenities like health and education, we should be working on them together. To me, that’s the focus right now in terms of how we can build strong partnerships with our communities around those common initiatives that we both have around health and education.

The Peace River South guys — Tumbler Ridge, Chetwynd, Pouce Coupe and the electoral areas — we formed a South Peace Health Services Society. We’re going to buy an accommodation, a Ronald McDonald style of house for our community. So those residents that are in our community and the First Nations residents and elders that are coming in for treatment to Dawson Creek, for the Dawson Creek Hospital…. Thank you so much for that announcement in June, of pushing that project across the line for us.

The acute care services for our region are in Dawson Creek, so those residents, when they come here, are staying in a hotel room at 140 or 150 bucks a night. It’s so expensive. So we’ve partnered together, and we’re going to purchase a residence in the community just a block from the hospital. We’re going to utilize that for an opportunity to create that short-term accommodation need for the residents who are coming here for oncology or maternity services or whatever. They can stay in a home and not in a hotel room. That’s an initiative we’ve taken on. We also love the aspect of partnering with our First Nations neighbours in regards to that.

I wish I had more than five minutes, but I appreciate that you guys are locked in to time. I really want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity. A group of seven mayors went to Ottawa in April — five of us from northeast B.C. and Kitimat and Terrace — and talked to the federal government about, at that point, FISC, the fabricated industrial steel components tariff that the federal government was dealing with on those modules to build the LNG industry and the impact of that.

Certainly, the message we got, three components from that discussion we had in Ottawa with everybody that we could get to in Ottawa over two days…. There were three things that we got out of there. They understand how important the LNG industry is to all of us. They understand that the message for Ottawa is they want to demonstrate that the country is open for business, and they want to see that that moves forward.

It was a consistent message we got from that. So I give compliments to all of you in the room, both sides here, about how now the fiscal framework that’s just been announced by the government in terms of moving that taxation and industrial power and all of those things…. I know the previous government had worked hard in getting this across the line. We are very close, and this is a huge opportunity.

I just want to close with this one. The upstream potential of the Montney, if Pacific Northwest Gas was announced today, LNG Canada was announced today and Kitimat LNG…. If we had three facilities moved forward, at three billion to four billion cubic feet of gas per day each, they’d produce about ten billion cubic feet of gas. The Montney has in excess of 100 years’ worth of proven potential today in terms of supplying it. So for us as an area, a region, a province, a country, to be able to provide that clean energy to the world, how amazing would that be?

Everyone, it’s world-class, this asset we have. It is absolutely world-class, and it gives us the opportunity to compete on the world stage.

I did that fast.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That was exactly ten minutes, which to politicians is five minutes.

D. Bumstead: Usually my bio takes longer than that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Unfortunately, we used all your time up, but I did that on purpose, because I wanted you to just be able to speak freely.

[3:50 p.m.]

I appreciate, Mayor, that you came in and gave us a summary of what is important in Dawson Creek. I’m sure we all will echo that. Thank you for spending the time.

Next up we have Woodfibre LNG — Byng Giraud.

WOODFIBRE LNG

B. Giraud: Thanks for having me. It’s hard to follow the mayor of Dodge there — I’m a good friend of Mayor Bumstead — but I’ll try. I’m also pleased to be here in the traditional territories of the Treaty 8 Nations.

We’re based, actually, in Squamish and Vancouver, but I’m up here because of the very things that the mayor talked about. This is where the gas comes from. This is the asset we hope to sell. We are purchasing our gas in this part of the world. That integration of what’s happening in the northeast and the northwest, and with our smaller project on the south coast, is important to know.

I’m not going to get a lot of background about the project. We don’t have a lot of time here. I’m going to get to the guts, but there are two things you need to know about our project that makes us special.

One is that we have the first-ever fully First Nation environmental assessment certificate in Canada. That was awarded to us by the Squamish Nation. It was a separate environmental process, which the feds are now taking in, incorporating into legislation, in Bill C-69. So we like to think we’re precedent-setting.

The second thing is that we’re running on electricity, on B.C. Hydro electricity. We’re fortunate enough to be next to the grid, which will reduce our emissions by 80 percent and make us the lowest-emitting LNG facility in the world.

Why am I here? It’s really the policy context of some announcements that the Premier made on the 22nd of March this past year. We were very pleased to see that. It was an exciting time for us. There were four elements to that package which, again, the mayor alluded to: the general industrial rates for electricity, PST reforms, repeal of the LNG income tax, and the clean growth incentive and carbon tax. I’m here because it’s not clear to us yet how those things will be done by the government — either through legislation or possibly through the budget.

This seemed like a good opportunity for us to talk about those things, to thank the government — and the opposition before them — for the work they’ve done to get to this point. It was a big deal on March 22. I think it’s still on my calendar.

Running through those things — again, I won’t read the slides; you can read them — electricity was a very, very big deal to this. We made the decision to run electric. It was the right environmental decision to do, but we were actually going to be charged a higher rate than a mine or a pulp mill. It didn’t make sense to me that by choosing electricity, you were going to pay a higher rate for doing the right thing.

So we chose electricity. We were glad that the new rate was announced by the previous government but then confirmed — following the competitiveness review by Minister Mungall — by the Premier.

Again, like I said, we are possibly the cleanest LNG facility in the world. Clean Energy Canada — Merran Smith, who’s worked on some B.C. climate action committees — called us the gold standard.

A couple of other things are part of this package, which are critical. The PST reforms. We expected that we would have paid $90 million in PST up front, something other projects around the world wouldn’t have faced. Now, we’re not getting out of that. We still have to pay the PST, but at least we can pay it over a period of time. I’m not sure what the interest rate will be, or the terms. It hasn’t been defined by the government yet. We can pay it over time when we’re actually making a profit. Adding $90 million to a $1½ billion project up front can kill it. So we are really excited about that. That, frankly, was something we didn’t expect. So kudos, again, to the government for that.

The repeal of the LNG income tax was a big issue, I think, to most of the industry — perhaps a little less to us because of the nature of our business, but again, something that wasn’t anywhere else in the world.

The final piece was a clean growth incentive and the carbon tax. Again, I said we run on electricity, so this wasn’t actually a big deal. Moving from $30 to a higher carbon tax would have only added a few million dollars to us a year, but it’s almost a symbolic element. If the best in the world is 0.16 tonnes of GHGs for every tonne of LNG, we’re running at 0.058 — a tenth of a tonne lower than that.

Again, what’s the incentive to do better? What’s the incentive to go above and beyond the standard? It’s things like the idea that with that $2 million we might have paid, we can now invest that into other green technologies. So four very exciting things, very critical.

[3:55 p.m.]

We are thankful to the government for the work that was done on this and the work that was done by the previous government. We see this as something of a bipartisan thing because of the support we’ve received. We wanted to let you know, as members of the Legislature, that the work the Premier did and Minister Mungall did was important to us. It was important to making this industry happen. Whether it’s LNG Canada that goes first or ourselves, it’s critical to both of us.

What does this mean for the budget? Sorry, this slide was sort of stuck in. What does this mean to the province of British Columbia? It means about $84 million in tax revenue per year from our project. That doesn’t include the royalties that the companies that are producing the gas up here will actually pay, which could be another $30 million.

This number would also go up by $5 million, approximately, depending on how the PST is played out. So we’d be paying $90 million a year in taxation, plus this addition $30 million in royalty. This doesn’t talk about induced taxes or those further down the value chain on our project.

We believe it was the right thing to do. We’re pleased with it. We’d like to put in a good word about how it’s going to be rolled out. The sooner we know, the better. It’s important for LNG Canada and for ourselves.

Fundamentally, the reason it was so exciting and the reason we’re excited about it is it does three things. It prevents the exporting of emissions, because if we can’t build an industry here, people are going to buy their gas elsewhere, and they’re not going to meet the 0.58 that I’m achieving or the 0.13 that LNG Canada is going to achieve. So we’re preventing the export of emission leakage.

We’re preventing the export of jobs. There’s a project down in Jordan Cove, it’s called, in Oregon, which is proposing an LNG facility with Canadian gas. It’s almost like exporting raw logs. Why would we send our gas down there so they get the jobs and the revenue, so they can make LNG, when we could do it ourselves? So we’re preventing the exportation of jobs.

We’re preventing the exporting of value. Right now the gas that’s being produced by the people of Mayor Bumstead’s community and in this area is being sold, frankly, at a discount to our only customer. When you only have one customer, they control the price. That’s our friends to the south. If we had maybe another customer or two — Japan, China, Korea — we would probably get the right price.

This package prevents the exporting of emission. It prevents the exporting of jobs. It prevents the exporting of value.

That’s my presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Byng. We have maybe three minutes for questions.

P. Milobar: Thanks for the presentation, Byng.

A quick question around the carbon tax going from $30 to $50. Is it your understanding LNG, in general, will be either exempt from the extra $20 or will qualify to tap into offsetting some technology costs? Or has that been finalized in discussions?

B. Giraud: My understanding — and I guess this will play out in your world, in the parliament — is that if you…. This is not just an LNG thing that the Premier announced. If, let’s say, you are above world standards — you’re below the emissions of world standards — then you won’t have to pay the additional carbon tax.

Luckily, we did that work. Our industry is one of the industries in B.C. that has a standard — 0.16. That’s best in class in the world. We already know, essentially…. It has to be reconfirmed, but if you beat 0.16 tonne of GHGs per tonne of LNG, you’ll get credited back anything above $30. So the $30 you still pay. That goes into the climate fund. Government decides how to spend that. But the other $20 you can get back. So we’ll get a credit back.

It’s not a huge thing to us, because we’re actually not producing a lot of emissions as an electric facility, but it’s the principle. I’m not at 0.16; I’m at 0.058. You can theoretically be disincentivizing people to maintain their equipment or keep things at best value, because I’ve got this extra space I can work with. So getting that money back for us is not huge. It’s symbolic, in many respects, but it means something.

S. Furstenau: There’s been a lot of studies about the upstream methane emissions. Can you speak to that, particularly since they are such a strong driver of climate change?

B. Giraud: I’m not the best person to speak to it. Actually, the gentleman that was just up here can speak to it better, because he knows more about upstream than I do. We don’t actually own any upstream assets. We’re buying gas on the market. So we’re buying gas from producers up here who are already producing.

My understanding is there are considerable issues with this. I’ve read the Pembina Institute materials. One of the recommendations they did say was to try and electrify as much of this as possible. We’ve done our part with our facility. But we need greater electrification on the pipeline process. We need greater electrification upstream.

My understanding — it’s only what I hear; you would know better than I, perhaps — is the government’s climate action plan will take an aggressive look at electrification of the upstream. Frankly, other than transportation in this province, it’s the low-hanging fruit to reduce our carbon emissions — more electrification up here in the Peace River country.

[4:00 p.m.]

I mean, the mayor didn’t talk about his windmills. He’s got those too. He’s got everything.

There are more things we can do with a more vigorous grid, which requires some money, in this part of the world to really tackle upstream emissions. Because it is true: this is a place where there still is a problem here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time, but thanks, Byng. We really appreciate you coming in.

B. Giraud: Thanks for having me.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could call Kelly Lake…. I gather you’re here. It’s early, but if you wouldn’t mind coming up now — from the Cree Nation.

Thank you for coming to us from the Kelly Lake Cree Nation, Chief. We really appreciate your time.

KELLY LAKE CREE NATION

C. Calliou: Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today. My name, in a traditional way, is Chief Kwarakwante, As’in’i’wa’chi Ni’yaw Nation. The English name is Chief Cliff Calliou, Kelly Lake Cree Nation. That’s my capacity.

Today I’m going to speak a little bit about who we are. We are of Cree and Dane-zaa descent and some Mohawk from the early years. But our main language is Cree. We’ve been speaking Cree since time immemorial, and we still speak it today. Of course, like any other language, in our community, our children are losing the language. One of the objectives probably is to try to bring that back into one of the education topics that we will speak briefly to today.

We are here today to basically start a process of reconciliation. I know it’s a topic of federal and provincial issues. And since we are not signatories of treaty 8 but are entitled to sign treaty 8 because of our ancestors being here…. We were missed in the treaty process.

[4:05 p.m.]

One of the reasons that we have never entered into treaty with Canada and agreements with the province of British Columbia is because of the policies and the way it was set up to be towards our people. We were offered that process back in 1990. But because of the Indian Act, the Bill C-31 approach…. We were given an opportunity to sign with other members within the treaty 8 territory, who we are related to because of a lot of the intermarriage that happened through the years. But in my opinion, I thought it was the wrong idea, so we didn’t take that offer. Instead, we tried to negotiate some other term that would be long-term beneficial to the nation.

After those talks didn’t succeed, we sued the government of Canada in 1996, went to court in April of 1997 and were awarded our claim to proceed. We’ve been in court for 22 years — not a court but a case management approach where we produce documents and the government, whatever they find against our nation, will produce that item too.

Our research has been heavily involved for the last 22 years, and our footprint heavily into this territory here — which is both Alberta and British Columbia — has been proven fact by historical records, not by books. Books, sometimes, don’t tell the true story, so we are going back to the biographies of the early explorers like Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, David Thompson — those are the early explorers — and George Dawson, who surveyed this countryside here, throughout Canada, trying to find a passage through to Vancouver for a port.

All of our people have been recorded on there properly. Some of the books that are written on that kind of altered some of our history. But our history in this country has been heavily…. We’re still here and will remain here, and therefore, I think it’s in the best interests of British Columbia to start some kind of process.

We have a consultant and a lawyer working to talk to the minister of…. It’s MARR now. It used to be Aboriginal Affairs, and now it’s Indigenous affairs. Hopefully, that will come to some kind of a resolution. Hopefully, this land grievance, you call it, will somehow be settled earlier because of the commitment of the present Liberal government, which says that they would rather settle out of court than waste taxpayers’ dollars fighting Indigenous rights and title.

Therefore, we hope that we come to some conclusion. We’ve heard just back from Minister Bennett. She had directed us to one of her representatives in British Columbia from INAC to start talking to this gentleman here in British Columbia. We’ve started that process. How we started that process was because of…. There was a modern treaty process in which B.C.’s Treaty Commission…. Lheidli T’enneh somehow came and overlapped treaty 8.

Our position on treaty 8 is that since we’ve never signed treaty 8, our declaration has been we still have title to this territory that we live in, and therefore, it’s not a surrendered land in the eyes of our nation. Therefore, whatever treaty 8 claims to have territory all over British Columbia here, on this side of the mountains, is not a really true fact.

I guess one day the outcome of that will hopefully work out. My approach is that if we can sign a nation-to-nation agreement with all the treaty 8 bands in this area, in treaty 8 here, would be beneficial for everybody. That way we can all share and all benefit from the revenue-sharing agreements that this government has with the treaty 8 bands here.

[4:10 p.m.]

It’s excluding our nation from developing our true, rightful place in this province to be able to be a contributor to the economy and to be able to participate in any development that goes on here. It’s been awfully difficult for the last 22 years, just trying to play in the economic field with oil and gas and the other projects that have gone on in British Columbia here.

Site C was a disaster. We are not involved in Site C. I don’t know why. We went to the public hearing on Site C and presented our case on it. We’re not against development. We are for development. But we want inclusion in the development. That’s our position.

Of course, in the last over 150 years, the Kelly Lake Cree Nation has been a sovereign economic nation. It hasn’t received any funding from Canada or from the province of British Columbia. Therefore, some of the major obstacles that we face today are housing. We had housing in the ’80s, but those houses need to be renovated. Therefore, hopefully, with the announcement of the province of British Columbia on addressing social housing in this province…. One of the issues that we’re facing today is we’re competing with the whole province of British Columbia, which I believe is not right.

I think that allotment of money that’s being allocated of yours should be put aside for my community so we can have affordable homes. We can have energy-efficient homes. Our objective through that is to have a healthy community and, therefore, have a step ahead of what we face today with the drug problem here across British Columbia and Canada. We are trying to bring some kind of health issues to be addressed in our community, because the way it’s set up today it’s only addressing…. Through the B.C. Northern Health, it only addresses the bands on treaty 8, and it really doesn’t address the people who are what they would call off reserve and what they call our nation, non-status.

I call it the non-registered Indian nation, Cree Nation. I don’t call it non-status. It’s a word that I do not like, and therefore, it’s not a proper word to use. Indigenous — you can call me “Indigenous,” but never call me “non-status Indian,” because it does not fit my profile of who I am today.

I’m proud to be able to speak my language and still maintain my culture and still have a high degree of education. Therefore, basically what I do in my life has been awfully successful. In British Columbia, I work for CMHC and B.C. Native Housing Corp. I built a lot of social housing back in the ’80s. Therefore, I had my own business.

The background of my family being in business for many, many years, through guiding and…. First of all, my father took out surveyors and geologists, and then after that, he became a big game outfitter. We hunted big game for many years, till no one was able to live that lifestyle, so therefore, we turned that over to somebody else.

But my presentation here is what we had written about today, and you can certainly, therefore, go through that. We address some of the issues, some of the concerns that we have. It certainly gives you an idea of where Kelly Lake is, because it’s not really on the map. Tumbler Ridge is close to us, and Dawson Creek is close to us, Pouce Coupe and then Grande Prairie on the Alberta side.

[4:15 p.m.]

The other thing I’d like to mention is we’ve been in the works of signing some memoranda of understanding with the city of Dawson Creek — which we haven’t really come to with the mayor — and Pouce Coupe, Tumbler Ridge and, hopefully, Chetwynd.

The surrounding communities — we want to have a working relationship. My only concern is when major projects happen. I was invited to speak on issues of how projects can work for everybody. If you bring the Indigenous people, the government and the project proponent to the table all at once, then that way projects can proceed forward, and all of the concerns can be addressed on it all in one day or two days, whatever. I think that’s the proper solution — if you can bring all the players to the same table on a project.

Right now what’s happening is projects are being proposed, and the government knows about them, and the government says back to the proponent to come and consult us, all the affected stakeholders. Well, that ain’t going to work. I think the main people from the government departments should be there at the table when the project is being proposed. It shouldn’t be proposed and taken to the government. It’s all backwards. It shouldn’t happen that way.

I thank you all, and hopefully I can get my message across to all of you today. I thank you. Kinana’skomitina’wa’w, which means “I thank you.” Kinana’skomitina’wa’w in Cree is “thank you.”

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

All right. Next up we have Canadian Mental Health Association, the Vancouver-Fraser branch, via teleconference.

Michael Anhorn, are you on the line?

M. Anhorn: I am. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. Thank you for spending the time to talk to us today.

CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION,
VANCOUVER-FRASER BRANCH

M. Anhorn: Excellent. There are two things that I want to address today. The first is related to recommendations for investment in mental health. The second is the general investment in not-for-profit capacity or organizational core services.

In terms of the mental health investments, we know globally that it only accounts for about 23 percent of the total disease burden, and it definitely does not receive 23 percent of health funding or funding in health research. A little closer to home, I was able to find that in Ontario, we know that mental illness counts for 1½ times the total disease burden of all cancers combined, yet we certainly don’t receive as much funding.

Now we do want to commend the current government for taking some pretty impressive steps towards treating mental health and substance use on parity with physical health conditions. We want to acknowledge that and just encourage you to continue.

This morning the CMHA national released a paper called Ending the Health Care Disparity in Canada. We have five recommendations for investments in mental health. The first is to fund evidence-based therapies through the primary care settings, so not to be delivered by doctors but by allied health care professionals. Things like cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy and peer support all have a lot of evidence to support them.

[4:20 p.m.]

A 2017 Canadian study found that for every dollar invested in these kinds of therapies, the health care system would save $2. I’ve heard some talk that we can’t afford to provide therapy for people who need it. But I think there’s a growing body of evidence that shows the return on investment is there and would make sense to move toward that.

The second priority for investment for the Canadian Mental Health Association is to invest in a continuum of services. B.C. has, I think, been a leader in this, and clinics like Boundary and the primary care hub planning that’s happening — at least in Vancouver, where I’m familiar with it — are great examples of this. But these need to be scaled up and implemented, I believe, more quickly. We need to make sure that at least for the mental health and substance use services, they include trained peers in the range of professionals that are available, because we know the outcomes that peers get. They’re well documented and are impressive, often a little bit better than we can get with clinicians — because of the relationship that gets built between peers.

Our third area for investment is in promotion, prevention and early intervention. We know that 70 percent of mental illness has its onset before the age of 17. We also know that in terms of the promotion and prevention, in Metro Vancouver only 20 percent of people have seven or more people they can confide in, and over 60 percent of people report a poor connection to community. Yet we know that the same research shows that these are really big predictors of positive mental health and positive physical health. Anything we can do to help people build their social support networks and build a better sense of connection to community will help with mental health and physical health.

That kind of brings me to another point. A lot of mental health interventions don’t necessarily look like mental health on the surface, yet we know they have real benefits. So building a social support network, building a sense of community, doesn’t necessarily appear to be a mental health or a health intervention, yet the evidence would suggest that they very, very much are.

A fourth area we’d like to see investment in is to address stigma. We know that stigma makes it harder for people to ask for help. It also makes it harder for people to get help when they do ask for it, if people perceive that there’s a mental illness concern involved. By addressing stigma, we increase access and, hopefully, also increase people’s ability to talk, to ask for help when they need it — and not just in the health care system [audio interrupted], but a stigma.

Our fifth recommendation is that we invest more in the mental illness and mental health research, both for outcomes and, generally, what’s causing it and what works in terms of treatments and interventions.

Those are our five recommendations for where to invest. Like I said, I did want to thank the provincial government for some of the work that you’ve already done related to these, especially the primary care hubs in Boundary.

The next thing I want to talk about really briefly is the not-for-profit core services, what some people call administration in the not-for-profit sector. These core services are a strong and effective programming. I’m the chair of the board at Vantage Point, which invests in governance and leadership in the not-for-profit sector. One of the things we say there is that good governance and good leadership lead to good outcomes.

For many, many years, the provincial government has, I believe, not invested its fair share into the core services of not-for-profit organizations. In the not-for-profit management literature, they indicate that target spending rates for administration or core cervices should be somewhere between 17 and 35 percent, depending on the size of the organization, but most ministries in the provincial government cap administration funding at 10 percent.

So in many ways, at least from my perspective, government programs aren’t contributing their fair share towards the core services that are needed to ensure a well-run and functioning organization and to make sure that not-for-profits can effectively measure and report on the outcomes that their programs are making. In this sector, I think it’s hard to get a common definition.

[4:25 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just so you know, we’re at over six minutes now. If you could wrap it up, that would be great.

M. Anhorn: Okay.

The last thing I need to say is that I think we need to come to a common understanding or definition of what admin services are, so that it’s applied consistently across government. Thank you very much.

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

Questions for Michael.

P. Milobar: I’m just wondering. When you say there needs to be more consistency, what are some of the gaps between that 10 percent and where you would like to see administrative spending allowable? Maybe it doesn’t fall under the parameters that you think it is, but the government is saying: “No, that doesn’t count as administration, so therefore, it’s not eligible.”

M. Anhorn: It’s more on what counts as programming. We would consider programming expenses to be the staff that deliver the services, the offices that those staff may need to work out of — their reports that they need direct, plus their supervision. That’s how we define administration.

In government right now, it depends on who the funder is. So that authority is different. Actually, each of the two health authorities we deal with are different. B.C. Housing is different. Ministry contracts are different again. To have a common definition, the one that I tend to use is that anything that’s more than one step removed from direct client service would be administration. The direct staff and their supervisor, and all that’s required for them to work, would be program. Then everything else would be administration.

S. Furstenau: I’m just wondering. When you talked about funding evidence-based therapies — the cognitive, the dialectical — currently are patients having to fund those themselves? Is that the situation?

M. Anhorn: For the most part, unless they meet the criteria of accessing an adult mental health team — and that criteria is pretty high; you need to be very severely sick — yes, now it’s either funding it themselves or through an employer’s extended health, if they’re lucky enough to have extended health that covers psychological services.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have a quick question for you in regard to stigma. Can you maybe just elaborate a little bit more as to what you would see the needs are to increase awareness about mental health and to reduce the stigma? Just if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you feel we should be investing in.

M. Anhorn: I think there’s been some good work done around [audio interrupted]. Can you hear me?

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, you’re cutting out. You’re pixellating.

I think we lost him. I guess we’re not going to hear that one.

Great presentation, Michael. Thank you very much. That is ten minutes anyway, so we appreciate that.

If we could take a two- or three-minute recess, grab a coffee and have a stretch, we’ll be back in three minutes.

The committee recessed from 4:28 p.m. to 4:32 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are back on the air with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We’re in Dawson Creek today, which we’re very excited about.

Next up we have Kwantlen Faculty Association, Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, Local 5 — Bob Davis and Suzanne Pearce. This is another teleconference.

I apologize that we’re a little bit behind schedule. We appreciate your patience. We had to get set up. It’s our first day. We’ll get the bugs out, I’m sure, by the end of this thing, but I appreciate you waiting. If you could make your comments five minutes, and then five minutes for questions. So if you would like to proceed.

KWANTLEN FACULTY ASSOCIATION

S. Pearce: We would like to begin by acknowledging that the land that we speak to you from and on which our faculty work is the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen First Nations. We also thank the Kwantlen Nation for allowing us the use of their name.

We are the Kwantlen Faculty Association, Local 5, of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, and we represent over 1,100 full-time, part-time and non-regular faculty. You’ve received our written report, so I’ll be using my time today to highlight our key recommendations.

Our position is that while B.C. has many competing budget priorities, investment in post-secondary education yields more than break-even returns on investment at both the individual and provincial level, in terms of economic and social benefits. As we have outlined in previous budget submissions, post-secondary funding has shifted from majority government or public funding to private funding in the form of tuition and large private donors. In some instances, the post-secondary institutions receive the majority of their funding from domestic and international student tuition.

[4:35 p.m.]

KPU’s 2018-19 budget is just over $200 million. Only 36 percent of that is [audio interrupted] grant. Tuition makes up a whopping 47.7 percent of total revenues, of which [audio interrupted] or 30.5 percent of our overall budget. This shift in funding is placing a great deal of pressure on post [audio interrupted], translating into stress for both educators and students; affordability for students; and fair, sustainable employment for educators. [Audio interrupted] longer to graduate, are having difficulties accessing courses to maintain required course loads, and faculty are feeling pressured to take on more students.

For our recommendations. While our recommendations focus on individual measures intended to address the affordability, accessibility and sustainability of post-secondary education, further consideration and review of post-secondary funding is also recommended.

FPSE encourages the government to form a broad stakeholder group to investigate and discuss all aspects of fairness for international students during the formation of a new strategic approach to international education, to educational and social supports, as well as the impacts of international education on the system, including class composition, educator workloads and costs of attending post-secondary for international and domestic students.

FPSE supports the calls from student unions to look for broad policies that can significantly reduce financial barriers and debt for all B.C. learners through non-repayable grants, further reduced interest rates on student loans and continuing to implement increased availability of open textbooks.

In the area of developmental education, we recommend making all developmental programs tuition-free; extending the adult upgrading grant to all developmental programs, not just the ABE and ELL, or adult basic education and English language training; to work with all stakeholders to reduce institutional reliance on precarious [audio interrupted]; and to assure those faculty are provided with a fair wage and fair working conditions. Within the KSA, fully 43 percent of our faculty are now non-regular, and 32 percent of those work a less than 50 percent workload with no access to benefits.

Finally, we call on the government to implement the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, [audio interrupted] those pertaining to post-secondary education, such as call 63.2 to fund professional development for educators to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms.

We’d be happy to address any questions you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Suzanne. We have questions from the floor.

S. Furstenau: Thanks, Suzanne. Could you elaborate a little bit in terms of the questions around fairness for international students? Could you give me a bit more context to understand what you’re talking about there?

S. Pearce: I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?

S. Furstenau: Just wondering about your discussion about investigating and discussing fairness for international students. Could you elaborate on that for me a little bit?

S. Pearce: We’re seeing our student complement change quite drastically in terms of the number of international students versus domestic students. Our international students have faced a 15 percent tuition fee increase this past year. Prior years our institution has held tuition increases to around 2 percent, the same as the domestic, and this past year, in order to make up their budget, they increased tuition by 15 percent.

We’re seeing international students not being able to access courses that they need in order to maintain their visas. We’re seeing course complements becoming more than 75 percent international, so students aren’t even experiencing a diverse, international education when they come here, because they’re within a class where the majority is the same [audio interrupted] would have had at home.

Bob, did you want to add?

[4:40 p.m.]

B. Davis: Sure. I think that the previous policies [audio interrupted] to increase international tuition has had a couple of negative effects on the student experience here at KPU, in particular. Suzanne mentioned the drastic increase in tuition.

We’re seeing more international students than ever, which has put a huge strain on the services to assist these people when they come and access our campuses and our courses. It was an effect that was really not contemplated with the increase in the amount of international students. Also, the larger number of international students has displaced domestic students. So access to courses across the board…. We’re having great difficulty here meeting those requirements.

When you talk about fairness or you want to know more about fairness to the student experience, I think that the cost is one aspect of it. Accessing services to be successful, course offerings. We’ve noticed, through our faculty…. We’ve heard back from our faculty, who are experiencing huge demographic changes within their courses. It’s creating a lot of angst, and it’s not the best experience for these international or domestic students.

P. Milobar: Can I just get some clarification on what exactly you’re looking for with the fairness, then? If the cost is seen to be punitive to international students yet international students are filling too many spaces at times, how would…? Are you calling for a lower international student cost, which would effectively make it even more attractive for international students? Or are you calling for a cap on the number of spaces for international students, as well as a tuition cap for international students? Do you understand where I’m getting a little confused? It’s almost like both sides of the coin are being pointed out at the same time here.

B. Davis: Well, I think that you want to refer to one of our first recommendations and that we are supported by the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, which is really about the percentage of the grant that public post-secondary institutions are getting and the call on reviewing jointly, with the broad stakeholder groups, to look at how the government is participating in the percentage of grants.

While the number may have stayed the same, our institutions have grown. Our budget has grown. The percentage is of the total budget. The reliance upon international tuition, the reliance on international students, is having a whole bunch of other effects that were probably never conceived, because the whole [audio interrupted] idea when we fund post-secondary education. Where can we get more revenues, whether it’s revenue-generating…? So there are a number of factors in there.

We believe strongly that there should be a consultative, thorough stakeholder group, with those who are in the system and those who are affected by the system, to work with the government and to look at really how much the government should be participating for its grant in order to sustain our institutions.

It’s really not necessarily about capping numbers for international. We still have this real issue of: where is that money going to come from to meet the mandates of our institutions? We’re a polytechnic university. We’ve been this since 2008. We struggle with the naming change that came and the expectations when there was no increase in the grant to do that. Our administrations are doing what they can, and we’re seeing a lot of unanticipated issues — more so in the past couple of years.

I hope that answers your question.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just had a question about this. I believe you said that 43 percent of the faculty are non-regular. I wrote that down quickly. I’m not sure if that was the percentage. I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit more on that in the sense that…. If you’re full-time faculty, I guess, then there has to be a promise to get work. If you stay non-regular, then, I guess, the administration doesn’t necessarily have to give that many classes.

I’m wondering. What do you feel is causing that percentage, and what can we do to make it better?

[4:45 p.m.]

B. Davis: [Audio interrupted] work in the whole sector within the province, and we call it secondary scales. We have a contingent of faculty, and it varies from local to local. As Suzanne indicated, 43 percent of our faculty that teach in any given semester are non-regular faculty, but we have two types of non-regular faculty. The portion…. What that means is the guarantee or the expectation of ongoing work.

Our institution has been in a growth mode for many, many years. We are at capacity or probably over capacity in the delivery that we have. But when you have a contingent of faculty that are going to be paid less than other faculty for doing the same work, that’s concerning to us. The quality is there. The qualifications are there. But really, it’s about the commitment being made to them so that they can do all the other aspects beyond teaching: the service in governance, the service to the community, the service to industry, the service to students. That really is being done at a lesser rate than other faculty that we have here.

While we could break it down further as to our non-regular type 2 versus our non-regular type 1, it’s a concern for us because there’s no guarantee from semester to semester for some of our faculty that they’ll actually be teaching. They could be teaching one course. They could be teaching more courses. It’s the precariousness of that work that’s an issue for us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you very much, Bob and Suzanne, for your presentation. We really appreciate the time you’ve taken to tell us about Kwantlen. We wish you the best of luck.

Next up we have Dawson Creek Literacy Now — Michele Mobley.

Again, Michele, sorry we’re a little bit behind, but we appreciate your patience. You can start any time.

DAWSON CREEK LITERACY NOW

M. Mobley: First of all, thank you for the opportunity to speak here again. I think I’ve met with the committee a number of times over the last few years. It’s always very much appreciated — the extended invitation that we get for us to tell you about what it is that we need in the province. Also, a thank-you to the committee for, last year, recommending to increase the local funding to regional and provincial literacy groups to deliver the community-based programming for all ages.

Decoda Literacy Solutions and the provincial literacy networks, such as myself, are continuing to work to secure multi-year funding, of course, as every year. We’re also grateful to the Ministry of Education for providing us with over $2.1 million at the end of the last fiscal year. Although it’s a little bit less annual funding than we require, it is helping us develop and maintain literacy and learning programs throughout our community and across the province.

The Ministry of Education and the provincial literacy organization Decoda Literacy Solutions are working together to coordinate a plan for community-based literacy work. As well, they’re developing new ways to evaluate the effectiveness of that work.

The positive impact of literacy funding on communities as a whole can’t be denied, as it affects everything from health care to employment and the economy. Increased rates of literacy improve a community’s ability to build a strong, innovative economy that works for everyone.

The funding that we’ve received enables us to reach all parts of the community, whether it be adults, youth, children and families, or seniors, Aboriginals and newcomers to our country. It allows us to deliver the services that people count on.

Here in Dawson Creek, we’ve had a seniors computer club for over seven years that has helped seniors be able to stay in touch with their families and friends. We’ve found a huge need where Grandma or Grandpa was given a tablet or a smartphone and no instruction on how to use it. Seven years later, we’re still teaching seniors how to move forward with technology. We’ve had a seniors game time that we’ve coordinated with the local library just to get people out and active and engaged, meeting new friends.

[4:50 p.m.]

We’ve been collaborating and supporting the early-years community locally for over eight years, as well as working with the local literacy society to help them support newcomers to our country and guide them to any family programs that they may need.

All of our partnerships in the community have allowed us to raise awareness about the importance of literacy and also helped increase access to programs. Because of Decoda, I was fortunate enough to receive special training — train-the-trainer training for family literacy. I’m the only person in the region of the province who is trained to deliver that training. Through Decoda and the funding we receive, I’m able to go throughout our region of the province this year and deliver training to other literacy coordinators and anybody else who is working with family, whether that be school districts or libraries.

To wrap it up, thank you again for the recommendations that we’ve had in previous years, especially last year, to increase funding. We are asking for the same again this year — $2.5 million to Decoda to help us with these programs. Thank you very much.

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

M. Dean: Thank you for all your work in the community. I’m interested in, as we, as government, roll out our investment in early childhood education and reinstating classroom sizes from K to 12 — so having a huge impact on education and, you would hope, therefore, literacy, and lots of different aspects of literacy…. How do you see the partnerships or the long-term future of the literacy programming alongside our investments in formalized areas of education?

M. Mobley: K to 12 are certainly covered fairly well in our community. We still notice shortfalls, though. So that’s where we come in and pick up the slack, as it were, where we have exchange students who can’t get into English-language classes or get the support that they need at the high school level. We kind of work off the side of the desk and help them with that. Also, there’s the huge component of the early learning community, and that’s where we’re trying to start — at our kindergarten preparedness. We’re trying to increase that to, then, lighten the load on the K-to-12 system.

We’ve found that we’ve worked quite well together in this district, supporting each other in early learning as well as providing after-school programs for English-language families and an assortment of activities that are all free.

S. Cadieux: Michele, to my knowledge, as there are large investments in early literacy and in literacy through our education system, the main focus of many of the literacy programs previously was on adults. What percentage of your programs and your time is spent on increasing literacy of adults who may have left the education system early or who had struggles with learning and who are still challenged with literacy?

M. Mobley: My position is a little bit different. I’m a community coordinator, and it’s the literacy society directly who deals with adult education. For myself and the programs that I do with Literacy Now, we are sort of split equally, in three pieces, between seniors, family and early learning. That’s where we’re currently at. We’re hoping to reach a lot more adults, too, through family literacy, and that’s part of the training that I’m going to be delivering — how to identify shortfalls in adult education while you’re working with the family as a whole.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Could you elaborate a little bit on that? When you say seniors, okay, I get that. Early learning. But families. Are you working with the grandparents and the parents and the kids? When you say that, do you go into the family…?

M. Mobley: Well, these would be community-based programs. For example, we had a book-share program that ran…. It was the city of Dawson Creek Literacy Now and Success By 6, I believe, which are also coming to an end. So there goes that part of early learning funding too. We all threw in some money, and we created a book walk program. We have a community trail that goes from one end of town to the other. We posted pages of a book, sort of like real estate signs, along the way, and the idea is that you go with your family and you read as a family.

[4:55 p.m.]

The end point, no matter which way you start, ends at the library, with a craft that’s related to the book. It’s all very interactive between caregiver and child. So whether that’s a parent or a grandparent or a childminder, we’re hoping that they engage one another.

We do a lot more programs like that where they’re not quite so formal. Then the awareness piece, of course, is huge, because there are still an awful lot of folks out there who don’t know that books and book handling in itself are important for the development of children.

B. D’Eith (Chair): There are physical books, and then there’s electronic. Have you found that there’s a lot of transition to more electronic reading, or do you tend to push the physical books? I was just curious.

M. Mobley: Myself, I’m a paper lover, so I tend to go more for the paper books. Definitely, there are apps and things that do have their place in learning, but again, it has to come with that education piece for the parent or the caregiver to make sure that it’s something that’s appropriate.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I only say that because I was doing one of those books that goes A and then all the things with A, and B and all the things with B. I opened it up to the B, and she said, “Oh, that’s an iPad,” instead of “book,” right? I went: “Okay.” This is a two-year-old. I mean, the new generation doesn’t necessarily even know what a book is. It was interesting.

M. Mobley: Well, they learn by example too.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for presenting again. We really appreciate it. And thank you for all the work you do in the community. I love the idea of that walking book, right to the library.

M. Mobley: That’s just one example. We have all sorts of cool things here in Dawson.

Thank you very much, everyone.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Michele. Really appreciate you coming out.

Next up we have school district 60, Peace River North — Erin Evans and Brenda Hooker.

Hello, come on up. The floor is yours.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 60,
PEACE RIVER NORTH

E. Evans: I want to thank you guys for having us here today and allowing us the opportunity to present to you. We’re school district 60, Peace River North, so just across the river. We have a vast, diverse school district. We serve just over 6,000 students in over 22 schools. We have small two-room schools in our rural communities and a large high school in our urban centre, in Fort St. John. Of course, the needs vary where you are, from the city all the way out to Upper Halfway and 101 and Pink Mountain, which is really far north from here.

In our presentation today, we want to focus on the top five challenges that we have identified affecting our ability to support and implement the goals of our school district. We want to look at capital funding, funding formula review, contract negotiations, recruitment and retention, and our staff compensation.

With our capital funding, we provide educational programming utilizing the 22 schools and four district support facilities. However, even with the opening of our brand-new school, Margaret “Ma” Murray Community School, which just opened this year…. I guess the minister is coming on the 27th to officially open it and then, as well, dig in for the sod-turning for another new elementary school that they’re building. We are one of the growing districts in the province. Our urban in-town schools will still be 119 percent over capacity, even with Margaret “Ma” Murray coming on line.

[5:00 p.m.]

Our middle and high schools. We have two middle schools in Fort St. John as well as our high school, and they are, together, 141 percent over capacity. To add to the challenge, the VFA last assessed our FCI index in 2010. At that time, 52 percent of our facilities rated as very poor, 40 percent rated as poor, 4 percent rated as average, and 4 percent rated as good. That’s a challenge for us, because if they don’t have a building, they can’t learn. The definition of “poor” and “very poor” is that it does not meet requirements. So not only are our schools overcrowded, but 20 of them are labelled with significant building challenges and are at the end of their life.

Currently the district is advocating to the capital branch over and over and over again for the advancement of a middle school project. Hopefully, that will come soon, as well as replacement schools, particularly for two of our schools in our town, Charlie Lake as well as École Central, which were built in 1945. My husband’s father graduated high school from Central School when it was the high school. It’s been a high school, converted to an elementary school.

These two facilities have been in our capital plan for several years — actually, almost ten years. Since I was on the board in 2009, when I was first elected, these two schools have been on our capital plan for replacement.

We’re also looking at the funding allocated to the school enhancement program. It’s simply not enough to address our needs when 92 percent of our schools are rated at poor or worse. As well, the AFG for capital maintenance is insufficient for the growing demands of our aging infrastructure. We just can’t have it…. We don’t have it in our budget when we’re trying to just keep kids in the school and keep the heat on and the lights turned on and just the basic facelifts that we have to do to our schools.

For the funding formula review, the Minister of Education is currently undertaking the momentous task of the funding formula review. We were down in Prince George to present to them as well. It’s really great that they’re doing that now.

However, in transportation…. In 2011 when they changed the funding formula, our school district was at a deficit of $541,000 in transportation. Then in 2016, they announced additional student transportation funding. We still are seeing a shortfall of $300,000 per annum in transportation in our school district. If you’re looking at rural schools — there are a number of our schools in the rural areas — the kids only are bused there. We don’t actually do any in-town busing; we only do busing for our rural schools and also for the rural schools that feed into our middle and high schools. They get bused in. None of our in-town kids get bused. So we’re still looking at a shortfall of $300,000 in transportation.

In contract negotiations, we have requested for BCPC to adequately fund our important negotiations on our behalf. Recruitment and retention. Every year we struggle to fill our vacant teaching positions. This September, this month, our schools opened with 22 unfilled teaching positions. That’s part-time and full-time teaching positions.

We’re asking for some kind of incentive, such as forgivable student loans, supplemental housing compensation or something like that to assist in recruitment. That adds into our capital funding, too, as we do have teacherages, which we do offer out in some of these rural schools, that we are responsible for, for maintenance. That also digs into our capital funding budget.

B. Hooker: Actually, they’re not funded through capital.

E. Evans: They’re not funded through capital, but we pay for it.

B. Hooker: But we have to fund the teacherages through operating dollars.

E. Evans: Yeah, through operating. Thank you. Sorry, Brenda.

That’s why we have the secretary-treasurer. She’s the accountant; I’m not. I’m the board chair.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just to be aware, we’re at about six minutes now, so we’re a minute over, if you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up.

E. Evans: Okay, Chair.

Also CUPE. We have the lowest CUPE grid within the province as well, so we would like to have that increased. The district has fully implemented the allowed public sector council increases for exempt staff. However, these increases are not funded — they have to be paid through our general operating grants — and there’s no mechanism to increase for the exempt employee group beyond the current increases.

Anyway, that’s all I have. Thank you very much for listening and for your attention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you.

P. Milobar: Maybe for scope of busing, in terms of…. What would be the average distance or hours that a lot of your kids would be on a bus? So people get the idea. It’s a small district population-wise. They hear $300,000 or $500,000, and they wonder: how could you possibly bus that much?

[5:05 p.m.]

E. Evans: It would probably depend on what school they went to and where. I know that there are some children that are on the bus for an hour and a half one way, so that’s three hours total a day.

B. Hooker: Because some of our rural areas don’t have a high school component, then once they hit a certain age they have to transport right into Fort St. John. So we’re spending over $3 million a year on transportation. Before the change in the funding formula at that time, it wasn’t adequate — the funding we received. But once the formula changed, then there was even less funding, so we had an increase in deficit at that time. So that’s our concern with the funding formula review — to make sure that rural and remote aren’t adversely affected by any changes in the current funding formula.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation. You mentioned that there are 22 unfilled teaching positions. We have some issues like that in many of the rural areas, but it sounds serious here. Are there any efforts to get teachers who are teaching, like, letters of permission, or whatever they call them, to take the PLP program?

E. Evans: Yeah. In partnership with SFU and Northern Lights College and school district 60, we do have the AHCOTE program, which is the Alaska Highway consortium on teacher education. So we do offer that. It used to be a two-year enrolment, and now we’ve bumped it up to a one-year enrolment — increased the number of available seats so that we can get more teachers trained to stay. So we do have that opportunity.

As well, we do have letters of permission. Some of our staff are on letters of permission within our district as well, and our TTOC list too. We’re utilizing that as much as we can, to make sure that we have somebody in front of the students, because that’s important.

N. Simons: Can I just follow up, Mr. Chair?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, go ahead.

N. Simons: Are those teachers able to continue teaching while they get their upgrading, or is it because of geography that they can’t?

E. Evans: No, it’s a full-time program. The AHCOTE program is a full-time program. They wouldn’t be able to teach during the day and then go and take classes during the day.

B. Hooker: We have a fair amount of non-certified instructors and teachers in front of the classes — educational assistants…. In one situation last year, we had a bus driver drive the kids to school and then teach the class and then drive them home. Because we just simply…. Especially in our rural and remote schools, we’ve had a really hard time recruiting, but this year, we had a hard time within Fort St. John as well.

N. Simons: Just to follow up, if I may. If the course was offered in a distance education or remote…. Would that be something that your school district would appreciate?

E. Evans: Well, I think we probably would, but that’s also…. You know, SFU is kind of the grandmother of the AHCOTE program, so that would be a discussion that would have to happen — with Northern Lights College as well as SFU. So I wouldn’t want to…. Yes, it might help if it was delivered maybe in a different way. I work at the college too. That’s my other hat. So I know that we do try to do what we can to accommodate students, but again it’s hard. Yeah.

N. Simons: Thank you for explaining.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just one quick question. You said that high school is 141 percent over capacity?

B. Hooker: Between the high schools and the middle school currently, they’re at 141 percent.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Now, does that mean that they’re in portables? Does that mean that they’re over…?

B. Hooker: We’ve added 16 portables in the last two years, and we’re going to be adding more portables next year to our middle schools. So if we don’t have a middle school project advance, then we’ll be looking at being at 200 percent capacity within a couple of years.

E. Evans: We had over 600 babies born last year in Fort St. John.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Six hundred.

N. Simons: No follow-up. No further questions. [Laughter.]

B. Hooker: We have no multipurpose space. You know, we’ve had classes in the gymnasium, in the library — just to be able to make room for everyone.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Brenda and Erin. We really appreciate you coming and nice to see you in person this year.

B. Hooker: Yes. Thank you very much. We really appreciate the opportunity.

E. Evans: Thanks for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Well, next up we have North Peace rural roads initiative — Jackie Kjos and Karen Goodings.

Welcome.

J. Kjos: Pleased to be here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And thanks for your patience. We ran a bit over time.

[5:10 p.m.]

K. Goodings: That was interesting, always interesting. I’d like to have added in on some of the rural schools.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!”

NORTH PEACE RURAL ROADS INITIATIVE

J. Kjos: Karen is, obviously, the rural director for area B in the North Peace, and she’s the chair of the initiative.

Thank you, hon. Members, for the opportunity to come and speak to you today. I’ll try and keep to the five minutes. I talk pretty fast.

I’m here today to talk about our rural road network in the North Peace. We had a total collapse, back in 1996 — rain, heavy industry. We just completely lost about 2,500 kilometres of road, literally sunk into the mud all at once. We formed this committee back in that period of time. We went to government. The government of the day responded, increased our road funding and began gravelling, but we were 20 years behind at that point. When we have such heavy industry on all our roads, especially oil and gas, their demands are very, very high, very heavy.

Long story short: we did get a program going. We im­proved a lot of roads. It made life a lot easier for some of those rural residents and those school buses that the previous speaker was talking about, but we never got through the program. In 2001, the Ministry of Transportation, with support from Energy and Mines, initiated what was called, at that time, the oil and gas initiative 2, and they injected $103 million into rural roads that the oil and gas industry was heavily impacting.

These roads…. A lot of people think of industry as like forestry: “Well, it’s out on a forestry road, and they come right into the mill, and they really don’t impact.” In the northeast, if you fly over this country and you see where oil and gas is — it’s like somebody took a shotgun and just started shooting at a big map — the wells are everywhere. The industry is all over.

So we have a deficit, a legacy deficit. We never got enough funding. The money that was set aside became…. Things morph as they go through the different governments. It was a rural road, and then a side-road program. Then it just sort of dried up a few years ago. So now the district is doing the best they can with the money that they have, but they’re not able to keep up.

We had a major failure here this summer on what’s called the Farrell Creek hill down towards Hudson’s Hope. We’ve got industry behind there. They will probably not have a suitable road to extract natural gas for at least three to maybe four years. The current detour is 70 kilometres each way, so the cost is tremendous for them. We have a traditional deficit, and we’re looking to get a program going to deal with some of the deficits, but we’re also looking at: what about when LNG comes? In the handouts that we had, there’s a comment that says: “What happens with LNG?”

The North Peace is going to be where the next big push is at. There’s a map in here, and we’re calling it the sweet spot, because that’s what industry calls it. There’s this area in along the Rocky Mountains here. This is where the most liquids are in the natural gas, and that makes it more valuable. Even with depressed gas prices, even without LNG, this is the most valuable oil and gas corridor, and there’s literally no road infrastructure out there. This is where this collapse has happened as well.

LNG. I’m sure you’ve all heard, whether you agree with the program or not, that there is a lot of interest in LNG. Some of the numbers on it are staggering: 46,000 jobs, $2.8 billion in B.C. revenue annually, $5.3 billion in real GDP for B.C., $808 million in B.C. tax revenue annually, $686 million in B.C. royalties annually, and an additional 860 bucks a person in disposable income if the LNG comes forward.

K. Goodings: When, not if. When, because it will come.

J. Kjos: When. I think everybody agrees that it will come — whether it’s this year, with the financial investment decision by the end of the year, which many predict, or when it does come.

There is a huge infrastructure deficit out there to support that. If you’ve been around the oil and gas industry, when they come in and have a boom, the road networks just get destroyed. That impacts the people driving the school buses, like the lady before, the rural residents who have to drive into town to buy groceries, go to social…. Doctors — all of that good stuff. So we really have to get a program together to get ahead of this investment in the North Montney.

The third point that I’d make is that the Ministry of Energy and Mines in the past has had what’s called a royalty credit program for the oil and gas industry to encourage them to invest in B.C., to build good roads in B.C. That program is coming up for renewal, to Treasury Board, in the coming months. I believe that they have to submit to Treasury Board in the fall.

[5:15 p.m.]

We really encourage that program continuing in some format but perhaps with more emphasis on a lasting legacy and more partnerships leaving something behind like a permanent high-grade road as opposed to chunks of little pieces of road that benefit just one company.

So we’re really looking…. We’ve been talking with the Ministry of Energy of Mines. We want to be part of that process. We want to support them. But we really want to see a lasting legacy of infrastructure left behind from that royalty credit program.

I have to think that I’m close to five minutes, so I’ll just shut up.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Over, but that’s fine, thank you.

Questions?

Actually, you pretty well answered my question because I was thinking: “Well, if the industries are causing this huge deficit, then maybe the industries should contribute to that deficit in some way.” If there was a way of building that into the royalty program, then that seems wise.

J. Kjos: I think it would be a win-win-win. If we could get government roads and government investment and industry coming to the table, whether it’s 50-50 and then they get a royalty credit for part of their investment….

I think there are any number of ways that it could work, but I think it’s important that when it does go to Treasury Board, Treasury Board understands how important that program has been. Most jurisdictions who have oil and gas activity offer these types of incentives, so if we want to continue to encourage oil and gas to develop — it’s mostly natural gas; there’s some oil out on the east side of the district, but it’s natural gas — those royalty credit programs are really valuable.

They’re more or less revenue-neutral because government doesn’t have to pay anything out. It does reduce the amount of revenue coming in, but it also encourages the investment — the jobs, the investment and the activity levels from the industry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Maybe you could correct if I’m wrong, but I would assume some roads are part of Transportation and some roads actually might be part of, let’s say, Forests or other ministries.

J. Kjos: Exactly. That’s correct.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So there must be cross-jurisdictional issues here as well.

J. Kjos: I think that’s where the opportunity is, particularly with the royalty program, to think outside of the box now, instead of just going: “That’s a petroleum development road. You can only use your credit program on there.” Some of these roads are government roads that need to be upgraded if the industry is going to come on to them.

I think there’s an opportunity to be more collaborative and to think outside of the box in how, instead of a series of different roads, they can invest in the government road and be part of partners in upgrading that and leave a legacy of good infrastructure for the community. Agriculture uses these roads. Forestry. We have a huge…. This same area that we have this sweet spot out here…. We’ve got 20,000 to 40,000 loads of logs a year coming out of those roads as well.

Some of these roads, if you look at…. There’s a picture on the back. That’s one of them. That’s what it looked like last year with some rain. There’s nothing to them when they…. They’re clay. They have very little gravel.

K. Goodings: Our roads are very different from the southern part of the province or the central part of the province.

J. Kjos: And we have no gravel. Our gravel is only along the rivers, and it’s being rapidly depleted. So if we don’t build proper roads, cover them with pavement or some sort of hard surfacing to protect that gravel…. You can gravel three times a week if the traffic is hitting it that hard, and that gravel just gets punched down into the clay and wasted. It’s a total loss. So we really need a hard-surface program, again, to address some of these high-traffic corridors.

We have 2,500 kilometres of road, so it’s not all of them. There’s actually a map in here in the centre that talks about which ones are the priorities. But we need to have a bit of a grid so that we can actually get into these places. This area out west of the Alaska Highway, the North Montney, there’s a $1.4 billion pipeline going through there as we speak. It’s just got started, and there’s very little infrastructure out there to support it. And this hill that failed. All of that.

They’ve got — what did we figure? — 4,500 loads to go in there, and it’s all got to go around this extra 140 kilometres of detour because the road slid. They’re out of options. Stuff has just been left too long, and these slides have come along. The hills in the Peace want to be flat country. They don’t want to be hills. They start high, but they all want to end up at the bottom.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Have you met at all with the minister?

J. Kjos: Yes. Last week at UBCM we met with both ministries, and we’ve been talking with EMPR. There are quite a few of these handouts floating around, and we just wanted to take the opportunity, while you were here, to help bring the rest of your committee a little bit up to speed on some of the challenges and some of the asks that are going to be in front of government this year as they prepare for Budget 2019.

[5:20 p.m.]

K. Goodings: We’re looking for their support on the royalty program for sure. I think that’s where it’s really critical.

I actually want to quote right out of your…. It says that the government of B.C. has “taken steps to make life more affordable, improve the services you rely on and create a strong, sustainable economy throughout the province.” That strong economy is where we’re coming from on this, because it is our economy. The roads are our economy, and the roads are our economic development.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Karen.

K. Goodings: I want to thank you. We’re stopping you guys from having dinner.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, it’s all good. We’re here to listen to you.

N. Simons: Thank you very much. Karen, are you running again?

K. Goodings: I’m actually in by acclamation again. I am one of those very fortunate…. Nobody wants my job.

N. Simons: You just probably make it look like no one could do it better. There you go.

K. Goodings: I enjoy it.

J. Kjos: Thank you, all. Good luck with the rest of your tour.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If I could call up Robin Gibson.

Have a seat. If you could keep your comments under five minutes, that would be great. Then there are five minutes for questions.

ROBIN GIBSON

R. Gibson: My name is Robin Gibson. The concern I have is that the 911 service is being split all over B.C. I have Parkinson’s and seizures, and the ambulance cannot roll until they get a physical address.

In Comox…. If I say I’m at the Mile Zero hotel or the Mile Zero post, it’s not good enough. Nobody gets that address. Even if city hall needed an ambulance and it came through a cell phone, they don’t have the technology to trace the cell phone call in Comox. So guess what. The ambulance can’t even roll across the street — or the fire department.

To credit the emergency services, when they know where I am, they can act fast. Last week they had to take me to the hospital because I had an obstruction in my throat. The timing isn’t in getting the ambulance or the fire truck to the place. The timing is getting somebody on a computer typing in the address.

That one should be looked at. It seems kind of funny to me. In the olden days, people just phoned up the fire hall, and they said: “We need an address here.” If they needed an ambulance, they’d phone the ambulance station and say: “We need an ambulance here.” Sometimes technology makes things worse, rather than improves on it.

Anyway, I’ll give you another example. Last year I was down in front of the library, and do you know what? It took 20 minutes, because the officer in Comox couldn’t figure out where the library was. I ended up lying on my side with broken ribs for about 15 minutes until the ambulance could actually get to me. That’s an awful long time to be lying with broken ribs.

What I would like to see is…. If the services are split, then perhaps they can find a way of locking in a cell phone, if they need to. It’s not because…. Even with my speech….

[5:25 p.m.]

My speech is really difficult. I really thank you for your patience as well. That is also quite a challenge. I’m even worse when I’m trying to phone for an ambulance for help.

If they can look at bringing those systems either back up here or making it better, it definitely would be a lot safer for people like me and keep me independent for as long as possible. Because our space, with the Parkinson’s, one day I’ll be up the hill, waiting for a bed. I’m not going to open up that door yet.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Robin. Could I ask you a quick question? When you say split services, you mean between fire and ambulance? Is that what you’re talking about, or is that the 911 service?

R. Gibson: The 911 services do not send anybody until they have an actual physical address. Even if you knew where the fire hall was, if somebody in the city hall phoned for an ambulance or a fire or the police, nobody could move until they got the actual address.

N. Simons: I had a situation like that, Robin, where I phoned for an ambulance at a car accident. I said: “Near the golf course.” I was figuring they were local, and everybody on the Sunshine Coast knew where I was talking about, but the people answering the phone didn’t. I think that’s what you’re getting at.

R. Gibson: That’s what I’m getting at.

N. Simons: That’s a good point.

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

R. Gibson: If I was on a rotary phone, they could trace the number in a heartbeat, but they cannot trace a cell phone call. There are enough satellites here that they should be able to figure this out ahead.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s a really, really good point, Robin. Thank you very much for bringing that to our attention. We really appreciate it.

R. Gibson: You’re welcome. Thanks for your patience.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, no problem. Thanks for coming out.

Motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 5:27 p.m.