The committee met at 8 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

We’re very pleased to be here in Prince George. We would like to begin by recognizing that our meeting today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh peoples. On behalf of the committee, I would also like to acknowledge everyone in Prince George and neighbouring communities who were impacted by wildfires this year. We know it’s been a difficult summer, and we extend our gratitude and appreciation to those who supported the response.

We are the committee of the Legislative Assembly, and our membership includes 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.

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

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

Thank you to everyone participating today for taking the time to share your input. Your suggestions and perspectives provide valuable insights into the priorities that we should be looking at.

Now, as far as the format, we have a number of registered speakers today. Each will have five minutes to speak and five minutes for questions from 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, time permitting today. If you would like to speak, please see 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.

Now I’d like to turn it over to the members to introduce themselves. First, I’d like to start with our Deputy Chair, Dan Ashton.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good morning. My name is Dan Ashton. I represent the area of Penticton and Peachland.

S. Cadieux: Hi, it’s Stephanie Cadieux. I am representing Surrey South.

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

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, Cowichan Valley.

M. Dean: Mitzi Dean, Esquimalt-Metchosin.

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

N. Simons: Nicholas Simons, Powell River–Sunshine Coast.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Assisting us today is the wonderful parliamentary Committee Clerk’s office — Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond. Thank you very much for all the work you do. Of course, Michael Baer and Steve Weisgerber from Hansard Services will be recording all of the proceedings.

Without further ado, we are very much looking forward to our speakers today. First up, we have Todd Corrigall, Bill Quinn and Lorna Wendling from the Prince George Chamber of Commerce.

Welcome.

Budget Consultation Presentations

PRINCE GEORGE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

T. Corrigall: Good morning. Thank you very much to the committee for coming to Prince George and providing this opportunity, obviously, to the entire community and, specifically, to the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. I am the CEO. I’ve been in the position for approximately nine months now.

Just to give you a little bit of history before my board members dive into the info, we represent over 750 businesses here in Prince George, which is approximately 70 to 75 percent of the workforce here. Again, we’re very happy that you’re here and providing this opportunity.

Lorna Wendling is the current president of the Chamber of Commerce and a partner with Deloitte. Bill Quinn is the current vice-president with the Chamber of Commerce and the president of NuStride. I’ll hand it over to Lorna.

L. Wendling: Good morning, everybody.

The issue that I wanted to address was the new employer health tax. This is the issue, when we speak to our members, that is of primary concern to them. While we recognize that microbusinesses are going to be exempt, as they fall under the threshold, there are many small to medium-sized businesses that will still easily exceed the current threshold — as well, of course, as our larger business in the community. On average, our member businesses expect to face incremental costs in the range of $150,000.

[8:05 a.m.]

On top of this, we see that the tax is going to be imposed on our local municipality, and that is going to pose a signifi­cant cost to the municipality as well — $1.4 million over two years and $700K on an ongoing basis. These costs are not in their current budget. They’re going to have to be passed on through other taxation means, likely through property taxation.

Our members, while recognizing that the MSP needed to be reviewed and amended, were disappointed that the committee that was appointed to review alternatives to the MSP was not permitted to complete its work and that this tax was rolled out before they were able to deliver their full recommendations.

They’re also concerned about the level of the threshold and the nature of exemptions that are currently proposed under the tax, and they are asking us to urge the government to reconsider the current structure and rollout of this tax. They’re feeling that the responsibility for provincial health care is falling on the backs of businesses, and it’s really im­pact­ing their ability to continue to employ individuals lo­cal­ly. Any additional dollar they’re paying in tax is taking away from their ability to contribute to our economy in that way.

B. Quinn: Thanks, Lorna, and thank you, everybody.

I’m going to speak a little bit focusing on the forest health issue, and that would also tie in to the emergency management services. As everybody is aware, B.C.’s forests continue to be one of the main economic drivers for the province. It’s a renewable resource, and it’s also a draw for our tourism industries and supports much of that.

From a membership perspective, we have many members that are impacted by the forest industry, both directly and indirectly. The challenge that we’re faced with, obviously, is climate change. It’s having a significant impact on the health of the forests. It also impacts our ability to adapt with them as they are challenged and help deal with it, both in a way that enhances their health and also the health of the communities that utilize it.

One of the key things is that many of the agencies that we work with that deal with forest management…. There are many tools that are available to them. Sometimes they’re available to allow effective management. However, also, some of those tools are not popular from a public perspective. One of the key ones would be, let’s say…. Smoke management has been not utilized very well in the past because of some of the issues that are associated with it. However, when we have wildfires, we can’t manage that smoke. I think everybody, right from the Interior to the coast has been significantly impacted over the course of the past few years with the impacts of that.

We also have some present challenges that we’re being faced with. Spruce bark beetle in the Interior is one of them. We also have a few minor ones. Not minor, but they’re not as significant. Something like spruce bark beetle presents its own unique challenges. Being able to provide the adequate attention with resourcing to those industries that are tasked with managing these areas and allow those impacts to be dealt with before they become catastrophic…. Because we are faced, many of you are aware….

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s five minutes, Bill. If you could wrap it up, I’d appreciate it.

B. Quinn: Okay, I will.

With that being said, these also lead to an impact on emer­gency preparedness. While it was good to see the Pre­mier identify that the wildfire budgeting is going to be done differently, I think emergency preparedness also has to be done differently to be able to keep up with that and to pro­vide new tools for how to deal with the systems and the technology. My understanding is that it hasn’t, and it has a significant negative impact to the people who are evacuees, etc.

I think I’d like to wrap it up there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Bill, Todd and Lorna.

Questions?

S. Furstenau: Can you just elaborate about smoke management and why that’s unpopular? Can you just give me a brief explanation of that?

[8:10 a.m.]

B. Quinn: We have done different types of prescribed burning, etc., over the course of many years. Whenever you light up a fire and cause smoke to hit the towns, etc., it has had a negative impact. People don’t like it. But without using fire as a management tool. we now have fire, saying, “We’re going to manage,” and we can’t manage that smoke anymore, once it starts on its own.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Dan.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Mr. Chair, Sonia asked my question. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anyone else?

P. Milobar: Maybe if I could get a little more thoughts around the employer health tax. You mentioned the chamber doesn’t feel it’s fair to put the burden strictly on businesses. Have there been other suggestions? I know the committee didn’t finish off all its work or get a chance to give its recommendations, but has the chamber come up with any other possible scenarios that we should be considering?

L. Wendling: I don’t think there are any recommendations at this point. We would like to see the full work of the committee coming through.

T. Corrigall: If I can just jump in there really quickly. Through the B.C. chamber at the B.C. chamber AGM, there was a resolution that was passed by two-thirds’ majority that indicated we were hoping the government would look back at that work that was done by the committee and take that into account in any process that we’re moving forward.

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

Well, thank you very much for your time and your thoughts. It’s great to be here in Prince George and hear from everybody, so thanks.

Next up we have the College of New Caledonia — Alyson Gourley-Cramer and Henry Reiser.

A. Gourley-Cramer: Thank you for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks for coming. Go ahead.

COLLEGE OF NEW CALEDONIA

A. Gourley-Cramer: My name is Alyson Gourley-Cramer. I’m the executive director of communications at the College of New Caledonia, and I have President Henry Reiser with me here today. We are thrilled to be here to present to you. We knew we only had ten minutes to speak — five minutes to speak to you and then five minutes for questions — so we’re really only focusing on one area that we’re keen to discuss with you today.

Before we do, we wanted to just introduce you to who the College of New Caledonia is. The College of New Caledonia is one of four post-secondaries in the northern B.C. region — the largest. We serve 12 percent of the province, which is quite a massive region. We have six community campuses, and we also serve 21 First Nations communities.

We’ve been very successful in reaching out to some of our most rural and underserved communities through something called DDI, and we’re very proud of that initiative. Last year we spoke quite a lot about DDI and how we’ve really reached out to those underserved students.

This year we wanted to talk to you about health sciences in the region and how we feel that investing in a health sciences centre would be the one area that we would like to see the province really consider this year as part of our presentation. So I’m going to pass it over to our president, and he can speak a little bit more about that.

H. Reiser: Hello, everybody. Good morning. Last year we spoke about our Aboriginal house, and that was well received. We received funding for that, and I want to thank this committee very much for that.

This year we are looking at the development of a new health sciences centre. The current health programs that we have — and they’re listed on the handout — are housed in a building that is 50 years old and has reached its useful end of life. It would better to be converted into classroom space, which we have a critical need for as well.

What we’re proposing is the construction of a new health sciences building that would house our existing programs, and we want to create a centre of excellence in imaging. We current offer radiography, we offer now sonography, and we’re looking at offering MRI tech. There is a desperate need for MRI technicians here in the north, and we know that people who study in the north stay in the north. This would complement the other imaging programs that we have.

[8:15 a.m.]

Also, it would be able to house our nursing programs with our baccalaureate program and practical nursing and all the related ones. We also offer a med lab tech, and we offer the imaging programs.

The difference between this proposal is that we are going to build, in the structure, clinical spaces for sonography as well as MRI. This would help offload the pressures that are existing here in the north for northern residents to access those services. The other part of it that is really unique is that the students, then, would be doing their practicum time in the clinics, and then that would put less pressure on finding practical spaces for them in the north.

The MRI program is national in origin. We are very confident that we will have significant numbers of students in the program, not only from the north but from across Canada.

What we’re asking for is $50.1 million. We have a donor for a 5- to 7-tesla MRI. We also have, potentially, a donor in the community who is prepared to donate a significant amount that is yet to be determined to try and help offset this cost. We have full support with Northern Health. We’ve spoken to them about this project, and they’re fully supportive.

That’s it.

A. Gourley-Cramer: I think the other thing to note is that we also have a very strong partnership with the university in our area, which is UNBC. Our nursing program is a partnership with them, where our nurses can start with us for two years and then move to UNBC. As Henry mentioned, we do have a very strong partnership with Northern Health, who have also identified this as a huge need for our region.

H. Reiser: Further to that, the centre will also serve as a research hub, in partnership with UNBC. We’ve met with their vice-president of research, and this machine, the MRI machine, will be used as a research machine as well. There are local neurologists doing studies on neurotransmitters, and with the high-resolution MRI machine, research can be conducted in community.

There’s a challenge of this group accessing the clinical machines that we have in community and in the north, simply because of demand from patients. This would avail that as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Just a clarification. The $50 million — is that the ask of the provincial government, or is that the total budget? How would you see that split up between various parties?

H. Reiser: How we would see that is that we would have a donor. Then we would also see if Northern Health and the Ministry of Health would participate in that, and then Advanced Ed. That is how we’re seeing that balance working out.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. So it’s really multiple ministries, then — Health and Advanced Education.

H. Reiser: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Questions?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thanks for coming today — very innovative. I know that there is more and more utilization of some of this very expensive machinery on a 24-hour basis. Are you looking…? It’s probably very early for that. But I would plant the seed that that opportunity be made. It does make a difference in accessibility.

Again, I would just congratulate you on really stepping forward with something that seems to be very proactive in a situation that is in need of attention, so thank you.

H. Reiser: Dan, that’s exactly the idea. When the clinic is running after hours, then our students would be working with the existing techs to provide that service to community.

A. Gourley-Cramer: Just to add, we have a dental lab, and we do use our lab for that reason as well. Some marginalized people — we service those people as part of our students’ learning.

The other thing to mention is that we are the only sonography program outside of the Lower Mainland. The other sonography program is at BCIT. We really are serving a need. Then, also, our dental programs are the only dental programs in northern B.C. Many of our programs are already over-subscribed, so we see the investment in a new health sciences centre as really the way to invest in health care in the north.

[8:20 a.m.]

H. Reiser: Further to that point, then, with a centralized facility, patients from the community can come in for that full range of services.

M. Dean: Thank you for the innovation. I understand that you’re trying to achieve different outcomes here. One is the learning — you know, the teaching of students and building capacity in the north, as well as then also serving the community. Just from that perspective, do you have targets? Or can you explain to the committee, maybe, how many people you’re going to reduce from a wait-list or what wait times you’re going to be reducing? What’s the actual impact potentially going to be for people in the community who, at the moment, can’t access these services?

H. Reiser: We’re not quite there yet, Mitzi. We’re having a proposal developed. Northern development trust is helping finance that proposal, and that assessment will come forward with that study.

A. Gourley-Cramer: I think it’s important to note that we are really focusing on the labour market outlook for jobs for these people, for our students, in northern B.C. and, really, all over Canada. We’re really tying this project into the objectives of what the labour market forecast shows, and we think that it will be very successful.

H. Reiser: However, the difference on this is it’s all about experiential, hands-on learning. This is a really good platform for that.

R. Leonard: I really appreciate the innovation you have here. I had learned, this past summer, about the impact of having that close proximity from the teaching to the experiential platform to help with recruitment and retention of people in the industry. Where I had heard about it was more on care aides and that sort of thing. I’m just wondering if the sonography and the different applications that you’re talking about will experience the same kind of…. Does the study extend to that area of interest?

H. Reiser: Yes. The sonography program came about by demand from Northern Health. This was a response to Northern Health’s request and precisely that. We find that the students who study in the north stay in the north.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. We’re out of time. Thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate that.

All right. Next up we have Engage Sport North, Mandi Graham.

Hi, Mandi. How are you?

M. Graham: I’m very nervous.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, don’t be nervous. We don’t bite.

Go ahead.

ENGAGE SPORT NORTH

M. Graham: Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to present today, and thank you to the provincial government for its recognition of the important role sport plays in building connected, safe and healthy communities across the province and for investing in programs offered by Engage Sport North and the regional alliance.

My name is Mandi Graham, and I am here today representing Engage Sport North. We are a multi-sport organization based in northern B.C., with offices in both Prince George and Fort St. John. We believe in the purpose of the regional alliance, as it complements our own vision to be acknowledged as a provincial and national leader in the development and enhancement of sport and physical literacy in communities across northern B.C.

Our mission is to provide high-quality resources and services to athletes, coaches and community leaders through leadership, education and training to support active lifestyles along the Canadian Sport for Life pathway.

Our top priorities are to make physical literacy accessible and affordable for every British Columbian by leveraging the expertise, reach and experience of the B.C. sport sector. Investing in preventative health care measures such as physical literacy and sport will also contribute to a reduction in health care costs to the province and the burden on B.C. taxpayers.

We know that this generation has potentially a life expectancy less than their parents, and this is cause for global action. If this isn’t addressed, our health care system will be even more burdened. In 2018, the ParticipACTION report card on physical activity for children and youth received a D-plus in Canada — again, another statistic that calls for collective action.

[8:25 a.m.]

For people to be physically active for life, physical literacy is a prerequisite. At Engage Sport North, we see sport as a service to address a range of community priorities and public policy in the areas of health, Indigenous and marginalized youth engagement, economic revitalization, newcomer integration and citizen participation.

Saying this, there is an extensive gap in how we deliver sport and recreational programs in our communities. We need to build capacity in our education, recreation, sport and early childhood education at a local level. How are we going to create this change? We believe children who have quality experience, who are competent and confident movers and who see the benefit in being active, will be active for life.

As a regional alliance member, we are uniquely positioned to build local capacity in physical literacy development and delivery. As experts in sport and physical literacy, with relationships in reaching communities in all regions of the province, the regional alliance has launched MOVE, a provincially standardized capacity-building program.

The objective of MOVE is to deliver a portfolio of services for the education, recreation, sport and early childhood educator sectors. Overall, MOVE will provide leaders the skills to deliver quality physical literacy opportunities, which will have impact across British Columbia.

With an investment from the provincial government, the ViaSport Regional Alliance will develop phase 2 of MOVE and expand MOVE to all regions in B.C. Furthermore, MOVE pilot programs will be expanded into sustainable offerings and to more communities in the existing MOVE regions. With this expansion, MOVE will impact 100,000 participants and 10,000 educators, recreation leaders, coaches and early childhood educators by the end of 2020.

Today this service is not accessible to every British Columbian. The participation in sport does not reflect the diversity of our province in age, abilities or culture. Focus should be on providing accessible, equitable access to sport.

What sets sport apart from other areas looking for investment? Research shows that investing in sport has an average return on investment of 2 to 1. These conservative estimates show that sport investment at the very least pays for itself through cost savings in health care, and it begs the question of impact we may be able to have.

As a province, we are investing 1,000 times more into caring for the health of our citizens than we are into cultivating it. Engage Sport North is committed to making physical literacy a priority for all British Columbians.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well done. Good job, Mandi. That wasn’t so hard, right? That’s great.

Mitzi Dean has a question.

M. Dean: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here and presenting to the committee today, and I appreciate your interest in making sure that access to sport is open and accessible and equally and fairly possible for all British Columbians.

I’m interested in a little bit more detail about how the programming will do that, especially if we think about just the difference between boys and girls, for example. It isn’t just about people entering into sport. It’s about keeping them there and keeping them there at particular points in time — like when girls hit puberty, you know, the high rate of them that will drop out of sporting activities.

Would this funding assist with some of that more detailed level of ensuring the diversity of British Columbians engaging in sport?

M. Graham: Definitely it would. The program is really based on increasing education within all community to bring awareness to the importance of keeping girls in sport from a very young age and what it will take to do that. The program is really meant to build education, to create sustainable programming in all corners of B.C., specifically for us in northern B.C., and mentor communities to maintain that knowledge.

M. Dean: Okay. Thank you.

N. Simons: Just to clarify for me. The program is aimed mostly at increasing the capacity of community to encourage sport activity and physical literacy, right?

M. Graham: Correct.

N. Simons: What programs are currently taking place? What programs exist now? Can you describe some of the activities?

[8:30 a.m.]

M. Graham: For Engage Sport North, we offer a lot of coach development in community, grassroots programming just purely based on community need, performance services for athletes that are needing fundamental skills to develop in their sport. As well, we do develop educators to become quality physical literacy leaders.

N. Simons: Okay. Thanks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Mandi, I have a quick question too. Is there a specific ask, a financial ask, from Engage Sport that you have?

M. Graham: There will be a provincial ask. I think some of my partners in the province will also be presenting. I would leave that to them to present that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. It’s just good for us, as the Finance Committee, to know what sort of financial obligation would be attached.

M. Graham: In our discussions, we have discussed and have done a lot of planning around the cost of making this program feasible for the whole province. We have talked about a number, an investment, of $500,000.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. You did very well. It was excellent and on time too. Love that.

Next up we have Child Development Centre of Prince George and District Association — Fabiola Toyata, Joan Beek and Pat Hamilton.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE OF PRINCE
GEORGE AND DISTRICT ASSOCIATION

F. Toyata: Good morning. We’re here to let you know why our community’s children need funding for additional therapists. The therapy section is comprised of occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech-language pathology and family services.

We support children of all ages with mild to profound developmental and neurological challenges. Most of the services are for the early intervention birth-to-kindergarten age. Early intervention therapy wages are funded by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. We work very hard applying for grants and donations to get the physical resources we need.

Outside of Prince George, we also provide services to two Aboriginal communities: Tsay Keh and Kwadacha. We also service Mackenzie, McBride, Valemount and all areas in between. We are the largest provider of early intervention services in the north. Our colleagues at the Sunny Hill Health Centre in Vancouver see us as leaders in the north for therapy services.

Outside agencies such as the child development centres in Quesnel, Smithers and, currently, Fort St. John have relied on us to help them when they have been short-staffed or when they have therapists that need mentoring. We are also a training facility for university students.

As an example of the need for increased staffing, we will focus on physiotherapy specifically. However, this applies to occupational therapy and speech-language pathology as well. Since 2002, we have only increased our physiotherapy services by four hours. Eight years ago we had essentially no wait-list. Today we have a wait-list of 70 children. Our caseload size since 2010 has increased 43 percent. Our referral numbers have gone up 18 percent. To return to the numbers of clients per therapists that we had in 2010, we need an additional three full-time physiotherapists.

A couple of examples for the increase in caseload numbers. The incidences of plagiocephaly and torticollis, two conditions we treat, have increased by 287 percent since 2009. On average, we support children with more complex needs than other child development centres in the north. Families with children that have significant impairments tend to move to larger centres, such as Prince George, to access the additional medical services that are available here.

When I started here 18 years ago, I was able to see clients regularly, twice per week. Higher functioning children I saw then would be discharged today after one or two visits. While those children should still be receiving active services, we have needed to reallocate our services to children with more critical needs. We are unable to provide direct treatment to most children. We must teach the families and caregivers to essentially do the therapy at home.

To make our services stretch farther, we have had to change our service delivery model to consultation and specialized groups. It’s not enough. We need more therapists.

[8:35 a.m.]

The Child Development Centre of Prince George has the contract to provide physiotherapy services to children ages five to 18 in schools, homes and community. Our district has funding for 20 hours of physiotherapy services per week. This school district services 14,000 students. Only 52 students with significant impairments, or 0.03 percent of the student population, qualify for any service.

In a 2006 Canada government report, it was estimated that 0.6 percent of children ages five to 14 in Canada have mobility impairments. We are not able to see most of the students that have some sort of physical impairment — yet another reason to increase funding for physiotherapy services.

J. Beek: An American study indicates that the prevalence of autism, as you all know, has increased from one in 150 in the year 2000 to one in 59 in the year 2014. Similarly, Canada did a comprehensive study, which was just published, indicating a prevalence rate for children with autism of one in 66 in the year 2015.

There have been increases in other diagnoses; however, while funding has increased dramatically to help children with autism, the same support has failed to materialize for children with other special needs. A 2017 study from the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. indicated that from 2014 to 2016 there was an increase from 5.76 percent to 6.9 percent in the prevalence of developmental disabilities for ages three to 17 years. During this time, the prevalence of autism and intellectual disability did not change significantly.

Another factor has been the increase in survival rates of premature infants. A baby born at 23 weeks gestation in the past decade has an increased chance of survival. What we also know is that with prematurity comes a 20 to 50 percent chance of developing a permanent disability such as cerebral palsy, blindness or deafness, which impacts on the child’s development. We need more therapists to provide more direct treatment, not just consultation, to these children and their families.

Speech pathology and occupational therapy are experiencing similar challenges as physiotherapy, with an increase in referrals, an increase in the caseload size and an increase in the complexity of the clients.

We trust that this presentation has provided you with enough reason to justify and see the importance of providing funding to increase the number of pediatric therapists at the Child Development Centre of Prince George and District.

We would be pleased to answer any questions.

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

Before we start, could I just clarify: do you have an idea of what the cost of three full-time therapists would be? Any idea?

J. Beek: Unfortunately, our executive director couldn’t be here, and he does the numbers. We could certainly get those numbers to you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Sure. It would be helpful to us to know when we’re making recommendations. You could always send a supplemental. If you wouldn’t mind, that would be very helpful.

J. Beek: Sure. Okay.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

N. Simons: Thank you very much. In a lot of cases, you’re saying things that we understand to be the problem that’s developed over a period of time. Is there an issue of recruitment? Or because you can’t hire anyone, that’s not an issue? What’s the situation with that?

F. Toyata: Recruitment is an issue when we do have vacancies, especially if it’s speech-language pathology. We’ve had issues with that. We don’t have funding for more bodies. I think if we have the ability to….

J. Beek: A posting that’s permanent and full time.

P. Hamilton: What the problem is, is with our hours. A lot of times we have a 0.5 position or a 0.2 position, and to have someone move to Prince George…. They aren’t going to move here for that. If we had a full one FTE, the chances of filling it are much greater.

J. Beek: I think in the past, the recruitment has been much more significant outside of Prince George. They have often…. We’ve had more success. So that’s why we sometimes have gotten the contracts to fill in for Fort St. John and other places, because they can’t recruit at all. Then we get these short-term contracts over and above what the ministry funds us for because we have staff, actually, that do want more hours. But they’re not servicing Prince George clients because we don’t have the funding for that.

In our ask, we did specifically say about three full-time physiotherapists, but there is also the need for a speech therapist and an occupational therapist in there as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): How many speech…?

J. Beek: I would say at least one full-time speech-language pathologist and probably, for our department, two…. What do you call them?

[8:40 a.m.]

F. Toyata: Therapy assistants.

J. Beek: Therapy assistants and then….

P. Hamilton: Also one full-time OT.

P. Milobar: The three positions you’re asking for…. Do you see, based on that last answer…? In terms of if you have a 0.4 right now, they’ll go to Fort St. John through a contract for a 0.3 or something that you get contracted for. If that 0.4 that you currently have gets bumped to a full, would that have a ripple effect where the smaller communities would feel the impact, where it actually takes services out of those communities? How have you put your minds to that?

F. Toyata: Yeah. So the physiotherapy department…. Right now, for Prince George, we have 4.5 FTEs. We have two people that were willing to increase their hours temporarily to go and help Fort St. John out. So right now we have not quite five FTEs because of that.

If we increase our FTEs…. The problem for Fort St. John is the recruitment. They have the funds. We wouldn’t necessarily have those extra people. They might have to go to Vancouver to get therapists. They’ve gone to Vancouver before to have therapists fly up for a week and service them for a month, kind of thing. It might, but I don’t think that would be a significant difference.

M. Dean: Really quickly, is all your funding from MCFD? Is there no funding from the health authority or health foun­dation?

F. Toyata: We are not part of the health authority at all. I think only our FTEs are funded by the Ministry of Children and Family. We have to look for donations and grants for physical stuff.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate all the work you do.

Next up we have University of Northern British Columbia — Robert Knight.

R. Knight: Welcome to Prince George. Thank you for being here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s good to be here.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN B.C.

R. Knight: This is actually the third time I’ve had an opportunity to visit with this committee. I came to Prince George in 2016 to become the vice-president for finance and business operations at the University of Northern British Columbia.

I try to make sure that each time the theme of my presentation is a little bit different. In the past, I’ve talked about the economic impact of the university and the community colleges to the north. The last time I was here I talked about the northern marketing program, the efforts made by not just UNBC but also the colleges to promote students coming to Prince George or coming to northern B.C.

Today I want to talk to you — you won’t be surprised to hear this — about the employer health tax. You’ve probably been hearing a lot about that as you go around the province.

To put it in context a little bit, I submitted — and, hopefully, you received an electronic copy — a portion of our most recent institutional accountability report. It’s a report that we prepare for the ministry and for government every year. Besides the remarks from president Dan Weeks, there are two pages in there that I wanted to call your attention to.

This came out of the recent report to our board of governors. It says 11 of 62 down there in the bottom right-hand corner.

It’s the chart on the bottom of the page that, I think, is really important and sets the context here. You can see, over a period of a dozen or so years, where our students are coming from who attend UNBC. You’ll note there’s been very little difference in the percentages. Ten, 11, 12 years ago, 72 percent of our students came from northern B.C. Today it’s about 68 percent.

Again, going back ten or 11 years, from the southern portions of the province, 20 percent. Now it’s still at 18 percent. So it hasn’t changed a lot.

We are making some headway in terms of attracting students from outside of the province. That total is 14 percent. Then you’ll see the line below that breaks out the international portion. So that’s grown significantly, from 2 percent to 6 percent.

[8:45 a.m.]

However, when you compare that to the universities in the Lower Mainland — UVic, UBC and Simon Fraser — they have ten times that many international students. And that’s not an exaggeration. They probably have…. Well, maybe it’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but they do have a very high percentage of their students coming from abroad. That provides a big cushion to them. So they’re not just relying on government grants or fundraising to support their activities. They also have this premium paid by international students.

Then I want to call your attention just quickly to the next graph. It was page 16 of the report. In the board of governors’ packet, it was page 18 of 62. This is what I affectionately call the ski slope. You can see that the number of students in K through 12 in northern B.C. peaked back in ’97-98, 20 years ago. Today maybe, we hopefully think, we’re seeing some signs of that curve flattening out, and demographic projections would indicate in the early 2020s decade, we’ll start to see an increase in that. If you walk around Prince George, you’ll see a lot of families with young children. That’s the future for UNBC, so I think that if you go up five or ten years, it’s very bright.

Unfortunately — or fortunately, whatever the case — about halfway down the ski slope, there was a change in government policy. I don’t even know who was in government then. I have only been in B.C. for three years. A number of other institutions were declared to be universities, which created, frankly, a lot of competition for UNBC because families in the north who wanted their children to go to a university no longer were restricted to just UNBC or just those brand-name institutions in the Lower Mainland. So that’s made our job of recruiting more students quite a bit more difficult.

Now I just want to jump ahead and say that the issue I mentioned at the outset, the employer health tax, potentially has a very big impact on our budget. We’re already financially challenged. The university reported a deficit a few years ago, actually right before I arrived. I got here to find out that the university had a deficit of $3.5 million last year.

I’m not going to get into all the accounting stuff related to that. The university actually was doing quite well in terms of its balance sheet. We’re very healthy. We’ve been good stewards of our resources. Our endowment has grown. We’ve taken exceptionally good care of our physical plant, despite the fact that we don’t get large grants every year for routine maintenance.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at five minutes right now. If you wouldn’t mind wrapping up, Robert, I’d appreciate it.

R. Knight: Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. I will wrap it up. The impact of that employer health tax, because of the transition year, could be $1 million next year. It could be half a million the following two years. We hear rumours that maybe post-secondary will be made whole on that, so I’m here to urge you to consider that in your budget deliberations.

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

Questions?

R. Leonard: I guess just one question. You mentioned the employer health tax. Does the faculty…? Has their contract included MSP premiums being paid in the past?

R. Knight: Oh yes. That’s correct. We do pay MSP premiums. Our analysis shows that during the year of overlap, there’ll be a period in which we’re still paying some MSP for at least a quarter if not half the year, and then the EHT would kick in. And then the following year, I think, we would just be responsible for the EHT. But that’s half a million dollars more than what we pay out now in MSP premiums for our employees.

Good question.

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

We have a little bit more time, Robert. If there was anything else you wanted to add, please….

R. Knight: Well, I’ll just revisit some of the things that I talked about last year and the year before — the fact that the economic impact of a university to the city and to the region and to all of northern B.C. is huge. It’s been a decade or more since there was a formal study, but the multiplier effect, if you will, of the $60 million of payroll that we have…. Most of that gets spent by people who live here in Prince George, so that has a huge impact. Councillor Frizzell, in the back, is nodding his head in agreement with that.

[8:50 a.m.]

I want to reiterate that. It’s very important that if we’re able to continue to grow our enrolment and have to hire more employees — and we have the dollars in our budget to be able to do that — then that will have an even greater impact on the city and on the region.

My boss, President Dan Weeks, reminded me…. When he was here four or five years ago, he told this group: “Please continue to take good care of the roads leading to Prince George. You know, we need good highways and good access so that students can get here.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve actually had a presentation yesterday on roads in the north.

R. Knight: Okay. Well, good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you, Robert. We really appreciate you coming in. Thanks for your time.

R. Knight: All right. Thank you very much. It was great to be here. I appreciate your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic.

Next up we have the district of Vanderhoof — Mayor Gerry Thiessen. There he is.

Mayor, thank you for coming.

DISTRICT OF VANDERHOOF

G. Thiessen: Thanks for giving me this opportunity. I really appreciate you taking the time to come. Although it’s not to my town, it’s close to my town, and it certainly makes it an option for me to do.

I want to talk about two things. First of all, we’ve just gone through a wildfire season. I’d like to speak quickly about that and also about policing in rural communities.

First of all, when it comes to wildfires, I guess our concern is that the government, in the past, has changed its policy on a number of things, one of them being broadcast burning. We have a lot of fibre left in the bush that’s there, and it’s very explosive. We’re seeing that when logging happens in the bush, it quickly will spark, and it will get into that debris that wasn’t cleaned up and will just get going and cause a fairly large fire.

The problem with that is the fire rating. The fire rating was done at a time when we had a green forest and not the dry forest we have now. You’re seeing loggers being asked to continue logging even when it’s not safe to do so, and they know it. We’ve seen this last year, where some of the loggers have pulled themselves out of the bush and said, “Lookit, this isn’t a place that we should be,” because of the fire rating.

I guess, to me, as we’ve heard the Premier and others that say that this may be the new norm…. They’ve retracted that, but I would say that there certainly is a mindset, probably in staff and in the ministry, that it may be the new norm. We would ask that if that is the case, the budget reflect that and that there be a quicker response to fires when they first get started. We think the funding is inadequate and crews don’t have the capacity to deal with it in the beginning.

The second thing which is really important to us is policing in rural communities. Because we’re small, and because we’re not in the centre of where the activity is, we don’t get the funding. And where you see, according to reports, that the average caseload for an RCMP is 58 cases in the province of British Columbia, in Vanderhoof, I believe it’s 122 — over half, the normal.

Each time the focus seems to be on gang violence in the Lower Mainland and not in rural communities. I think there’s a lack of understanding that where these young people come from is small communities, and eventually they migrate down to where more activity can happen. I guess my request to you is to encourage the government to have more RCMP funding for rural communities so that this caseload can be brought down.

The other area is in First Nations policing. I understand that there’s close to $20 million that hasn’t been there. We were asked to get our local First Nations to sign a tripartite agreement. We were told that we would have an extra policeman added to our contingent to cover that. Instead, they took one away, because they didn’t have the access.

[8:55 a.m.]

We were promised by the superintendent that there would be one more. Instead, we got one less. So I guess, to us, more funding in the budget for rural policing in rural, resource-based communities is what we would ask for.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. Thank you, Your Worship. We appreciate your coming to present. Certainly, at the beginning of the presentations today, we did talk a bit about the wildfires. We all recognize how important it is to be proactive and also to deal with the crises, when they come, in a timely manner.

I just wanted to ask: could you elaborate a bit more? You say there’s debris, that the debris that’s been left behind from the wildfires has not been cleaned up. Could you just elaborate a little bit more on that, just for my own clarity?

G. Thiessen: When I graduated from high school, I spent one winter in the bush, till I realized I’m not built to be a logger. At that time, you would log for a year. Then, in this time of the year, they would go out at ideal times, and they would do what they called broadcast burning. There would be people that knew how to run a drip torch, and they’d go around the block, and they would light it in a certain way that would burn all that debris off the ground. It did a couple of things. It got rid of the debris. It also forced the cones to pop, and there would be a lot of reseeding.

I think there were two things that concerned the government of the day. One, they got some concern with smoke. Well, I can tell you that smoke at this time of the year is nothing compared to the smoke that we went through in August. I have pictures on my phone, which I can show you, of 3:30 in the afternoon, and you cannot see. The lights are all on in town; it’s awful. We had the fifth-worst air in all of the world, apparently, according to the Vancouver Sun. They called me to do an interview.

Two, I think they put the liability onto the licensee. To me, I think that’s shortsightedness, because it’s way easier to control a fire at these kinds of temperatures, at this kind of moisture rating, than it is in the summer, in July and August.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just really quickly, you said access and the RCMP, where you had a member, and you lost a member, you said, because of access issues. Could you just…?

G. Thiessen: We were told that if we signed the tripartite agreement, if we got our First Nation to do it, we would have access to more funding for another policeman. There would be a First Nations policeman plus ours. Instead, what they did was they took a policeman out of our detachment and put him into First Nations policing. So then we were short.

It used to be, in our community, that policemen were your coaches. They were part of your community. They walked the streets; they went for coffee. Now we have a community of new recruits in our community that come there. We’re very thankful. They work very hard. But we have commanders that come to our community, and they don’t even, necessarily — as the present one and the last one — buy a house. It’s because of the workload. They come there as a short-term thing. They have a lot of recruits, so they’re trying to get out. I think we’re into our sixth commander in six years of a small community.

Then all your young people that are coming in are new recruits. I talked to a young guy the other day. He wants to be a policeman. He really enjoys being a policeman, but he just wants out of town, because the workload gives him no…. He says: “My T4 is incredible — the overtime I’m getting, everything I’m getting. But I’m not getting the chance to have a life.”

I’ve been told — I don’t know who it is — that someone talked to a new married couple that just joined the RCMP. The spouse has said: “Lookit, this isn’t working. Either we have to find a new detachment to go to or this.” In the current budget, as I understand…. I’m not quite sure. We talked to the Premier last week at UBCM. We sense that everybody is pointing at each other, but that it’s a budgetary issue. That’s what we were told in the end.

[9:00 a.m.]

In resource-based communities, because we don’t have the profile that major centres have, we aren’t getting the budget to bring policemen, and there’s a reluctance to shuffle the deck. If some communities are slowly going down and other communities are staying the same, there’s a reluctance to shuffle policemen from one community to the other.

M. Dean: I know we’re short of time. I’m interested in the vulnerability of Indigenous women, especially in rural areas and in resource development areas as well. If there were more funding available, how would that actually reduce the vulnerability of Indigenous women in the local community?

G. Thiessen: We have a number of female police officers in our community, and some of them have been the First Nations policing. I think what it does is it allows more time to build relationships and build trust. When I go to our First Nations communities for dinners and for celebrations, it’s good if you can have a policeman there.

Right now what they’re having is that everybody is doing cross jobs. For instance, we have a four-person highway police team from Kluskus Hills to Burns Lake. They’ve taken two off there and put them into Vanderhoof policing, so your highway isn’t covered at this present time. That same kind of coverage goes into the First Nations communities, because they’re going to wherever the greatest fire is.

Until you build relationships, especially in First Nations communities, you know…. I served on a committee with a real estate association. We worked on First Nations housing. You build relationships first before you get to the issues.

N. Simons: I understand that policing is determined through complicated formulas. What makes Vanderhoof’s issues so unique? Why is there such a high workload for RCMP when the population would determine the detachment’s makeup?

G. Thiessen: I think our population has continued to stay steady and to grow a wee bit. Our greatest asset is probably one of our bigger challenges. We live very close to a major centre, Prince George, and we also are kind of a sub-hub. Between us, there are two other smaller communities, Fraser Lake and Fort St. James, and seven First Nations.

The thing is that people find that easy access to issues. We’re working with those very diligently through our business licences and our bylaws, but we need help when it comes to our policing. We are told, by the deputy commissioner, that we’re the No. 1 under-resourced community in all of British Columbia. It’s a budgetary issue for a community that doesn’t have a great public presence on the provincial scale.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Your Worship. We really appreciate your coming in and telling us about all this. Fantastic.

N. Simons: Maybe we’ll come to Vanderhoof next time.

G. Thiessen: Please. We understand that our sturgeon hatchery is the most modern hatchery in North America, for sure — and possibly the world. It was a species that was down to almost extinction after the reservoir was put in. If you come there, we will host you and tour you through it. I hope you do.

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

I’d like to take a two-minute recess, just to get some water, some coffee.

The committee recessed from 9:04 a.m. to 9:08 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re back with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in wonderful Prince George. Next up we have the Prince George Backcountry Recreation Society — Dave King.

PRINCE GEORGE BACKCOUNTRY
RECREATION SOCIETY

D. King: Good morning, everybody. I made a presentation last year on funding for B.C. Parks on behalf of the Prince George Backcountry Recreation Society and the Caledonia Ramblers Hiking Club. The Backcountry Recreation Society is made up of non-motorized clubs through the central Interior here. We’ve been active for quite a number of years.

As part of that role or activity that we have here, we’ve been maintaining trails and facilities in the back country for hikers, snowshoers, etc., for all of these years — developed new trails and this sort of thing. In recent years, we’ve done a tremendous amount with B.C. Parks. It has become very clear — I made a presentation last year — that they really are short of staff and resources in order to carry out their mandate and look after trails and facilities. Both in parks and…. Well, they’re responsible for what’s within parks.

[9:10 a.m.]

The presentation I’ve got here I’m not going to read. It’s just sufficient to say that this year they did receive a small increase in funding. One part-time person was made full-time, and they were able to hire one additional person — I think in planning. But nonetheless, they’re still, I would say, desperately short of staff.

This year the Caledonia Ramblers alone put in nearly 700 hours of volunteer time out in the Ancient Forest, and we’ve put in a tremendous amount of other time on trails and facilities in other parks scattered around the area. Even this past week, or the last ten days or so, we’ve been out twice, clearing blowdown from recent storms in two of the parks right close to town here — Eskers and Crooked River just up near Bear Lake. It’s just ongoing. They contact us and say: “Can you help us out?” It’s still there.

The Giscome Portage trail just north of town — they wanted work done on it. It’s got some muddy sections, and we wanted to put some plankway in there. We approached Enbridge. They’ve offered some money, so they bought the lumber. They lifted in the lumber using their helicopter, and tomorrow we’ve got a big work party going out there to do some construction — installing some of the plankway on the Giscome Portage trail. So it’s just ongoing. The situation is still there.

Another thing relative to parks. Over the last three years, Darwyn Coxson, one of the profs at UNBC…. Under his guidance, inventory has been done on plant species in the Ancient Forest, the new park just east of Prince George, that some of you probably have seen. Also, as part of the inven­tory, they looked at three other parks — Purden Lake, the Sugarbowl–Grizzly Den and a little bit in the George Evanoff Park — looked at all sorts of areas there and found, inventoried, over 2,400 species of plants, including many that were new to science. Some new to B.C. Some new to Canada.

They’re just absolutely amazed by the number of species found. In the lichen groups of plants that they found…. There’s no place in the world that has more plants in such a small area as has been found in this little area just east of Prince George encompassing these parks. We’d looked at trying to get a world heritage site for it. We didn’t have all this information, but now that we’ve got it, I think we’d be in a far better situation to go after world heritage site for it, because of the uniqueness of the plant complex that’s there. Anyway, I’ve said a few more words about that in here.

I would also like to just go on from B.C. parks to recreation sites and trails. The division of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources — I would say they’re also very short of staff to manage trails on forest lands. There are two staff here that look after both trails and rec sites in the Mackenzie and Prince George districts. Again, there’s no way that they can do the work. They’re very dependent on us as volunteers to look after trails and so on. So we’re out putting in a tremendous amount of time in that. The Mackenzie Heritage trail, which is under their jurisdiction — we had seven trips down there this year, just clearing blowdown, doing about a 65-kilometre section.

This has been ongoing for quite a number of years. It’s not just this year. Just every year, it’s…. The corridor that the trail goes through has not been logged — a lot of dead pine. Every year it keeps on coming down. So, I mean, the animals probably really like us, because we’re keeping a trail open for them as much as people.

That’s just one example. There are many, many other trails around that we’re working on for them, but only trails…. They do compensate us in terms of moneys for travel and, say, chainsaw use. They’ve even bought us a new chainsaw. It only applies to section 56 designated trails, that have been, you know, so rated under the Forest Act. But there are many, many other trails out on forest lands. Some of them have been out there for 40 years and heavily used by the public but are not gazetted legal trails, so we just do that anyway. We cover those costs out of club funds, and other clubs within the Backcountry Recreation Society do the same thing.

[9:15 a.m.]

That’s kind of the message I want to get across. With both organizations, they’re still…. Even though Parks got a small increase in staffing this year, both parks and recreation sites and trails really need more staff to look after trails and recreational facilities on Crown lands.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dave. Just a quick question. How have the wildfires impacted what you do in terms of trails and trail management? Have you been impacted by that?

D. King: In reality, the greater Prince George area here, for the last two years, has largely escaped wildfires. In fact, directly….

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m just wondering how big your territory is. How far do you…?

D. King: Well, we do work out in the Vanderhoof area, the Fraser Mountain Trail, Pope Mountain up at Fort St. James and so on. We do work on those and some up into the Mackenzie, right up into the Pine Pass and so on. But for the most part, it really hasn’t affected trails that we’re responsible for, but it certainly has affected the staff that are looking after the trails — the parks staff and the recreation and the site staff. They’ve been stretched to the limit because their jurisdictions…. They’ve been reassigned to issues elsewhere, or the pressures have gone elsewhere.

Things that were going to happen this year that had originally been planned for this year by both offices just didn’t happen. They were stretched and had to put their efforts into fires down in the Quesnel area or fires out to the west that demanded the ministry’s time. It didn’t affect us directly, but it sure affected them. There were things going on.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right. Thanks, Dave.

Anyone with questions?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just a comment. Sir, thank you for what you do. At home, we have the Naramata Woodwackers that do an incredible job on the Trans Canada Trail and other trails, much like yourself. It’s individuals like yourself that really make a difference. I just want to thank you for the work that you do.

D. King: I grew up in Penticton. I’m very familiar with the Trans Canada Trail from when it was a railroad still.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Rod King?

D. King: That’s my brother.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I saw it in your face.

B. D’Eith (Chair): There you go. Small world, right?

Great. Well, thank you, absolutely, Dave, for all the work you do. We really appreciate your words.

Okay. Next up we have the Physiotherapists for Northern Communities — Hilary Crowley, Terry Fedorkiw and Elizabeth MacRitchie.

The floor is yours. Welcome.

PHYSIOTHERAPISTS FOR
NORTHERN COMMUNITIES

E. MacRitchie: Good morning. My name is Elizabeth MacRitchie. I’m here with Hilary Crowley and Terry Fedor­kiw, and we are representing Physiotherapists for Northern Communities.

Our goal is to improve access to rehabilitation services for residents of northern, rural and remote communities. We would like to thank this committee for the past recommendations to fund an increase in physiotherapy seats, and today we ask for your continued support in securing funds for a physiotherapy training program in the north, situated at UNBC.

Our situation is even more critical since our last presentation to this committee. The shortage of physiotherapists is outlined in last year’s Conference Board of Canada report Stretched Too Thin, the market profile of physiotherapists in Canada.

B.C. graduates only 80 therapists a year, which provincially is the lowest training seats per capita across Canada. Combined with an increasing number of physiotherapists retiring, this does not address the 267 vacancies last year alone. The Ministry of Health projected a need for 169 physiotherapists per year to fill the need by 2018. They were out by 100 positions or seats. One in three physiotherapists was over the age of 50, demonstrating the need for speedy action. In Northern Health, 50 percent of the physios are approaching retirement, so a solution is long overdue.

With our aging workforce — our expertise and commitment to training — the future workforce is diminishing.

[9:20 a.m.]

H. Crowley: The need for physiotherapy. The shortfall of physios is greatest in northern B.C. The rest of the province has three times more physios per capita than the north. Rural areas have the least access to physio while having some of the highest prevalence of chronic disease. Geographically we’re particularly challenged to provide services to a sparsely distributed population. The aging population and high rate of chronic disease prevalence in the north increase the acuity of the need.

The shortage of physios in northern and rural communities makes it impossible to offer rehab programs that urban centres enjoy. Northern B.C. is the industrial hub of the province. As such, with its financial contribution to the provincial budget, it surely deserves equitable educational opportunities as well as equitable access to services. Several of our high school graduates had to move to other provinces or even overseas to obtain their degrees in physiotherapy.

On a local level here, it’s been really difficult to recruit a physio to the student-led cardiopulmonary program at the Y, yet patients found this program invaluable. The program has been closed since Christmas due to lack of a physiotherapist. A similar situation has recently occurred at the Indigenous health clinic. We believe these positions will be impossible to fill until we get the academic program up here at UNBC.

Cost-effectiveness of physio is well documented. Physios reduce the length of stay in hospitals and prevent readmission. Physiotherapy has been shown to reduce health care costs in so many fields, including our ability to reduce acute and chronic pain, which, in turn, reduces dependency on medications, including opioids, and emergency room visits.

T. Fedorkiw: We’ve tremendous support for the program up here in the north. Doctors, pharmacists, other health care professionals, employers, patients and families, students, our MLAs, our local mayors and councillors all agree and fully support a northern physiotherapy program. A resolution to this effect was presented at UBCM and endorsed in 2015.

We now have a strong foundation on which to build a program at UNBC. The northern and rural cohort has provided us the ability to start researching local health issues affecting our communities and has provided us the ability to attract physiotherapists to rural areas. Fifty percent of our students now work in areas which were underserviced.

A training program in the north that targets rural entrants is a well-proven strategy. In fact, it’s the number one strategy to assist with recruitment and the supply of physiotherapists in northern and rural regions. Living in a community for a full program would enable the students to form bonds and networks which would enhance their professional career and encourage them to stay in the north where they are most needed.

Today we are optimistic that the Ministries of Health and Advanced Education are currently working collaboratively with UBC and UNBC, as well as with Northern Health, to develop sustainable solutions to address the critical need for rehab services in the north. We ask that this committee recommend allocation of funds for the implementation of a full academic and clinical northern physiotherapy program at UNBC.

Thank you for listening to our request.

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

Any questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you again for coming. I remember your presentation last year.

Interjections.

R. Leonard: I think it’s really important that you do that because it does reinforce it, again and again, until we actually get it right. There’s a real commitment to the diversity of health care professionals to make sure that British Columbians can get and stay in the workforce and have a good quality of life, and it’s keeping them here. It’s important that we get it right, so thank you.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for presenting. I think that the issue you raise is one that many rural communities have, with the recruitment issue. I’d point out that studies show that where people study, they end up practising. It think it also…. When people study in a more rural or remote area, they’re more likely to find other placements. So it’s not just this area that would benefit from a training centre here. It’s other rural areas that would as well.

T. Fedorkiw: Yeah. The 50 percent of our students that have ended up in…. They’ve ended up in rural communities, not necessarily the north. But that’s good.

N. Simons: Right. Yes, it’s very good.

[9:25 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Was there a cost attached to this in the presentation?

H. Crowley: We don’t know the cost. The universities have to work that out.

E. MacRitchie: Our major problem is that their submission is for an expansion of the program to Fraser Health. That means the resources go south, to UBCO, which is a direct part of UBC, UVic and, finally, us. We need the support for the north. We lose the resources to the south as well as provide resources to finance the province through our natural resources.

T. Fedorkiw: We already have the infrastructure here. We have a lab at the university. We have the faculty. We have the clinical. We have 160 clinical practitioners who are willing to take the students. We have developed the infrastructure here already.

E. MacRitchie: We’ve proven it can be done.

H. Crowley: We’ve got one plinth lab. Apparently, we need another one and one more faculty. That’s basically the ask.

T. Fedorkiw: And we’re connected to UBC. We have it all in place. It’s just the funds.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We get that a lot.

H. Crowley: I think it’s peanuts, you know, compared to some asks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Again, wonderful seeing you again. Keep going. Keep fighting the good fight.

H. Crowley: Well, we hope you’ll make it that we don’t need to come back. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the city of Prince George — Garth Frizzell and Mayor Lyn Hall.

CITY OF PRINCE GEORGE

G. Frizzell: As we meet today on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh, the city of Prince George appreciates the committee coming out for regional consultations on the forthcoming province of B.C. budget. We look forward to seeing our submission reflected in your decisions today.

Today I’ll address the impact of the new employer health tax and what that will have on the residents of Prince George. I’ll talk about the redirecting of tourism budgets to housing and the impact that would have on residents of Prince George. Mayor Hall will address opportunities for stream­lining and improving provincial mechanisms and funding for wildfire mitigation and evacuation relief.

The employer health tax. On August 9, our council noted to Minister James that we support all local governments, regional districts and school boards being exempt from implementation of the employer health tax. Upon further study of the requirements since then, there’s no doubt that the new EHT will have a significant negative impact on the people of Prince George. We forecast that the EHT is going to cost the city of Prince George more than $700,000. That means the B.C. EHT increase in Prince George will be an additional 0.69 percent on property tax bills.

As you know, like all municipal governments, Prince George derives the majority of our revenues from property tax. We’re a city of 75,000 people and also the centre of an enormous region indirectly serving as a hub to all northern communities.

On July 4, Minister James noted that most municipalities will be able to absorb EHT costs. The city of Prince George has spent expert time and effort looking closely at EHT implementation because we cannot absorb this cost. We already face extraordinary challenges. In addition to the cost of meeting the regular demands of running a city, key issues that require more funds include adapting to climate change; increasing needs for housing, particularly for seniors, students and the disadvantaged; aging roads, bridges, water, sewer, storm infrastructure and aging facilities.

There are only 28,000 residential properties paying property tax in our city. That means 28,000 homes stepping up and paying higher expenses through local tax to pay for a reduction to a hitherto provincial tax. The consequence of government’s choice to impose the EHT is that residential property taxpayers, a large and growing number of whom are on fixed or modest incomes, are going to be unfairly and negatively impacted. Suggesting we absorb this new significant cost isn’t possible unless we downgrade other pressing priorities, and that’ll be detrimental to the people of Prince George and our region.

[9:30 a.m.]

We commend the government of B.C. While significantly boosting spending by $3 billion in programs and covering significant expenses during another wildfire season, government still achieved a $300 million surplus for 2017-2018, the third surplus year in a row. Well done.

By off-loading the health funding to employers like us while the government of B.C. is in a budget surplus position without considering that it may hurt rather than help people, particularly the disadvantaged, this action is going to result in an unnecessarily higher financial burden to our taxpayers. We emphatically ask again that Prince George and all B.C. local governments be exempt from B.C. EHT.

Redirecting the tourism budgets to housing. Tourism is a very important sector to Prince George. Annually, it generates revenue, supports jobs and significantly contributes to our economy, directly and indirectly. Because of the natural beauty of our region and invested assets like the Prince George international airport, we know this sector can become even more significant with incremental investment. Undermining it makes no economic sense for Prince George or for B.C.

Last night in Prince George council chambers, council voted overwhelmingly to direct staff not to pursue using tourism dollars to fund housing initiatives. It’s an understatement to state that efforts invested by hoteliers here, working together to implement the original additional hotel room tax, was very significant. That’s what our tourism team did, and they’ve seen success after success with the funds generated. They’ve built an impressive infrastructure for promoting tourism, sharing our part of the world with the rest of the world.

As mentioned previously, the province has been running surplus budgets despite boosting much-needed spending in programs. It seems more timely and cost-effective to use some of that surplus to address the housing issue, because that’s so important, rather than invite municipalities to undermine tourism, undermine working capabilities upon which our regional economies depend, by moving hotel room tax funds to this other cause, however important.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Garth, just so you’re aware, five minutes now, if you wouldn’t mind.

G. Frizzell: Thanks. Perfect timing.

I’ll turn now to Mayor Hall.

L. Hall: I’ll take one minute and 30 seconds. Thanks very much, Bob.

I want to talk about the wildfire evacuation process. Remember, MLA Milobar is familiar with this, because Kamloops was in the same position in 2017. In 2017, we had 10,000 evacuees in our city. This year we had 3,000 evacuees — predominantly, this year, First Nations from Highway 16 west.

We have two points to make, and I’ve made this with a number of ministries at UBCM and throughout the last 24 months. Prince George, because of our geographical location, is ideal for a regional emergency response centre, which would encompass wildfire fighters and water bombers to utilize our airport. Rocky Mountain Rangers are here, so we do have army access. We have all of the amenities that we can provide to the province as a regional response centre for emergencies such as wildfires.

We view this as not being a one-off. We view this as being an annual event. We prepare for this every winter. We’re starting to prepare for 2019.

The other piece is that we had an opportunity to be part of a pilot project with emergency management B.C. on the registration system. I cannot stress too strongly how much that system needs to be changed. It’s antiquated. It’s been in place for 30-plus years. It’s a manual system that registers evacuees. It takes us 25 to 35 minutes per evacuee to register those folks, keeping in mind that these folks are the most vulnerable. They don’t know if they’ve left anything behind when they evacuate their communities. They don’t know if their homes have been burnt to the ground. They don’t know what’s left. When they come to see us, they’re in a terrible state.

This system needs to be automated. It needs to give us the opportunity to register quickly and renew quickly. The important piece to understand is that if we continue to run a manual system, we will continue to have to tap in to some 2,000 volunteers and staff people if we are expecting to provide the service that we really need to provide these folks.

I leave you with those two things. What does it mean to a finance committee? I think it’s evident. We want the province to fund this. We want to get emergency management B.C. to a position where they can say to us: “We have an automated system.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Your Worship.

[9:35 a.m.]

N. Simons: I find it interesting that one of you says, “We shouldn’t be taxing,” and the other one says: “We need more money.” Where’s the money going to come from? I’ll point out that a 0.69 percent increase…. Tell that to someone who’s not paying $1,800 in MSP. Tell that to some individual who’s not paying $900 in MSP. I don’t really buy that argument, but I understand the position you’re in.

I just think that as the only province left with the most regressive form of taxation for medical services, we’ve done a really good thing to say: “It’s the lowest EHT in the country as well.” So that’s just pointing out that with the employer health tax, other provinces have that as well. Ours being low, I think it actually puts British Columbia in a good position.

The decision that the city council made not to put the hotel tax towards residential accommodation is a choice that they have. So it’s not being imposed. You’re not being told to use it that way. What’s the issue with that? Just curious.

G. Frizzell: Thanks. If we were to redirect the tourism dollars, the first step is that the work that went into getting hoteliers to sign on to the original additional hotel room tax was strenuous. We’ve built trust. And to abrogate that…. I know there’s a system that would have to be gone through to go through redirecting. That would be one step in undermining some of the trust.

The challenge is that, whether we have the access or don’t have the access, the next step would be when we come back asking for housing without taking it away from tourism, I think next year it would be: “Well, you’ve had the opportunity to use your money to do it, and you didn’t take it.”

N. Simons: Well, I think evidence suggests that the province is completely dedicated to addressing the issue around housing. And I don’t think they’re planning to do that through taking off the hotel tax. That’s totally up to the municipality to do that.

I understand the difficulty on the Sunshine Coast, which you know. Different municipalities, and they’ve all had to agree because they have one tourism association. So I can see where it’s a little bit more complicated in some places.

I would just remind people that that was not universally appreciated. I respect the fact that you don’t like it. But I point out that it is up to…. You can ensure that that trust is maintained by not undermining it, by not taking that percentage and putting it towards housing.

I would also point out that in many parts of this province, it’s very difficult to find employees due to the lack of housing. That includes, in fact, primarily tourism and related industries. So I understand that point. I just wanted to make sure that was clear, that it was a choice.

L. Hall: Bob, if I…. I’m sorry. I absolutely need to respond to your comment about the wildfires. I would invite you….

N. Simons: Did I say anything about the wildfires? What did I say?

L. Hall: Yeah, you did, in your initial response about us asking for dollars around the wildfire piece.

N. Simons: I’m not saying specifically the wildfires. I just say the cost to administer government programs is paid for by revenue through taxation as well as resource industries. I represent a community, a number of communities, that are resource-based, so I understand that. I’m not specifically talking about wildfires.

L. Hall: Well, let me make this final point. This is not just a Prince George, northern central B.C. issue when it comes to wildfires. It’s a provincial issue. So our ask about an automated system to reduce the person power…. It’s a provincial issue. It’s not a Prince George issue.

N. Simons: Yeah, I get that. Understood.

R. Leonard: Nice to see you again. I was here in June and got to participate in the opening of that pavilion. Beautiful, beautiful centrepiece in your city. It’s good to see you again, and I thank you for your presentation.

I appreciate particularly the impacts to Prince George and your generosity opening up the whole town to bring in evacuees. I really appreciate, too, the specifics that you brought up around what we can do to improve the situation, because we certainly can expect it to happen again.

I’m really proud of the work that Jennifer Rice has done. She’s our Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Preparedness, and she’s on it 24-7. I’m sure that the comments that we will be, I’m sure, seeing in the report will hearten her to get on with the job of making British Columbia safer for everybody. I just wanted to thank you very much for that.

[9:40 a.m.]

One last question. I wanted to ask you what kinds of issues you have around short-term rentals in the city, just because you brought up the hotel tax. I thought that this is a balancing act that I’m seeing in communities throughout British Columbia.

G. Frizzell: Well, thanks for the question. Prince George has been really successful, as you heard from the college and from the university, at attracting particularly international students. Our vacancy rate is very low. As well, every summer now we have guests who sometimes don’t want to be here — 10,000 evacuees or 3,000 evacuees.

As for our short-term rental, we are seeing, in the last four years, an enormous increase in the amount of construction that’s going on for housing, but it’s not quite accommodating all of our needs yet.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re actually out of time, gentlemen, but thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate all your comments.

Next up we have Spruce City Wildlife Association — Dustin Snyder.

All right, Dustin. The floor is yours.

SPRUCE CITY WILDLIFE ASSOCIATION

D. Snyder: Awesome. Thank you. I’ll try to stick to my notes here because I don’t want to go overboard.

Good morning, committee members. My name is Dustin Snyder, and I’m the vice-president for the Spruce City Wildlife Association. Firstly, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you all for travelling up to Prince George to hear all of our concerns regarding the budget.

A bit of background. Spruce City Wildlife Association was formed in 1970 with the purpose of conservation and enhancement of fish, wildlife and habitat in the area. Spruce City runs a salmon hatchery and has since 1986. We have approximately 100 members, but our hatchery and stewardship centre sees as many as 5,000 visitors annually.

Did you know that more than half the world’s trumpeter swan population spends time in B.C.’s estuaries? And given the amount of steep rock habitat B.C. holds, it’s no surprise that 60 percent of the world’s mountain goat population resides here. Other impressive tallies include the fact that B.C. holds 30 percent of the world’s bald eagles and 25 percent of this planet’s grizzlies.

Having told you these amazing facts, I regret to inform you that throughout its history and under various names, B.C.’s fish and wildlife management agency has been the most understaffed and underfunded in North America. From 1974 to 2010, B.C.’s population nearly doubled. While the provincial budget increased close to five times, the budget for natural resource management has barely moved.

When we bring this up with our elected officials, we are often told that the money goes to the big three — health, education and social services. Yet if we remove those big three from the budget, we find that everything else has close to tripled. It isn’t that the big three are taking up the entire budget, it’s that everything other than natural resource management is taking up the entire budget.

Caribou are in decline in most of the province. Some populations are so low that they will disappear over the next decade. Steelhead, once with many iconic runs in B.C., have gone from thousands of fish returning annually to less than 100 in some areas. Moose populations have experienced 50 to 70 percent declines in the last decade. B.C. is failing to protect its natural resources.

While most jurisdictions in North America have dedicated funding models, B.C. does not. Currently 100 percent of freshwater fishing licence fees are dedicated between the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. Yet only $2.6 million of the $14.5 million in hunting licence fees was put back into the resource in 2016.

HCTF, for those of you that may not be aware, was advocated for and created for hunters and anglers who wanted to see their dollars go directly back into projects to protect and enhance the outdoors for all. Yet this year, of the $6.7 million given out by HCTF, over half of it — $3.6 million to be exact — went back into the government pocket to accomplish things like the inventory of elk, grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, cougars and mountain goats, as well as multiple stock assessments for steelhead.

That’s right. Even with an emergency COSEWIC evaluation and with steelhead now a species at risk in some areas, the province isn’t even taking it upon itself to monitor these populations without applying for grant money. Knowing how our fish and wildlife populations are doing is paramount to managing them, yet the province relies on this grant money to gain this seemingly basic management tool.

[9:45 a.m.]

Hunting and fishing are a fundamental part of Canadian society, and a growing body of research links our mental, physical and spiritual health directly with our association with nature. Meanwhile, the number of people taking up hunting has skyrocketed, increasing from 86,000 in 2005 to 112,000 in 2015. It is now a family activity where people go out together to look for sustainably and organically grown wild game. It’s no longer the old boys’ club.

I would like to make three recommendations to this committee:

(1) Dedicate all hunting and angling licence revenue to fish and wildlife. It’s critically important to the overall health of fish, wildlife and their habit to ensure adequate funding is in place for wildlife inventories, harvest monitoring and those supporting services.

(2) Natural resource users need to contribute. Natural resource use and extraction has an impact on B.C.’s shared natural capital. In my opinion, government should be collecting rent and dedicating a portion of it to fish and wildlife conservation. Activities such as ecotourism, wildlife viewing, mining, heli-skiing, oil and gas, and logging should all contribute to this natural resource conservation.

(3) B.C. needs to take action in the world of salmon. In our region alone, salmon stocks are disappearing at a rate faster than we can track. DFO has failed and all but vacated the Upper Fraser. The Bowron River, just east of here, which used to hold runs of 10,000-plus sockeye, now sits as an endangered run identified by COSEWIC. Habitat assessments show that it could still sustain over 50,000 returning spawners, yet last year only 36 returned. That’s 36 individual sockeye.

Every British Columbian citizen should have the opportunity to put salmon in their freezer if they choose, without having to visit a grocery store. Yet instead, Spruce City Wildlife has spent over 355 volunteer hours in the last month to find two female and two male chinook for the only hatchery program in the Fraser watershed north of Kamloops. To date, I’m exhausted and saddened to tell you we may not have a hatchery program this year.

In summary, B.C. is fortunate to have a rich diversity of fish and wildlife resources, but it is disappearing. We’re adding more people to B.C.’s population and putting more stress on our natural resources, but at the same time, the funding is not there to steward these resources.

I would like to invite the government to join us in maintaining and improving the province’s wealth through sound strategy in conserving our diverse fish and wildlife resources and providing education and awareness in conservation of the outdoors. I would happily contribute further to my recommendations made today and look forward to seeing government action on these items before it is too late.

Thank you very much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Dustin.

S. Furstenau: Thanks, Dustin. Great to see you.

I’ve actually been to that hatchery. Dustin gave me a tour in July, I think it was. I’m really sad to hear that it might not be going forward.

When we were there, you talked about the link to orca — with the salmon. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?

D. Snyder: I’m sure all of you guys have heard about the orca whale situation, the southern resident killer whales. Looking at the discussion paper for the southern resident killer whales that DFO put out, a big food source for those killer whales is chinook salmon; 90 percent of their diet is made up of chinook salmon.

If you look at the migration patterns for certain species…. Up here we have what’s called a 5-2 chinook, meaning that it is five years old when it returns and two years old in the freshwater. Those 5-2 Upper Fraser chinook are easily a primary food source for when those southern resident killer whales are foraging in the Victoria and Sooke areas. It is mostly those 5-2 chinook that are coming through.

When we look at our populations up here, last year the Nechako River, a massive river, saw only about 400 chinook return. You can’t feed very many killer whales on 400 chinook.

I guess to elaborate on that a little bit more, the reason the Upper Fraser chinook are more valuable to the killer whales is because the Lower Fraser fish don’t have to eat as much. They don’t have to withhold as much fat. Having those energy reserves to make the 1,300-kilometre trip up here, as opposed to only having to travel a hop, skip and a jump to be able to do their spawning, they’ve got to have that much more energy and that much more power. In the ocean, that makes them that much more valuable nutritionally to other species.

S. Furstenau: Dustin, can you tell us why the hatchery might not be going forward? Is it just because there’s a lack of fish?

D. Snyder: We can’t catch fish. We’ve tried Kenneth Creek. We’ve tried the Holmes River. We’ve tried the Nechako River. We’ve tried four different spots on the Nechako River.

[9:50 a.m.]

DFO isn’t technically allowed to be giving out their aerial survey information immediately. We’ve talked with them from the moment that that helicopter lands to try to find where these fish are and how many fish are there. In some cases, they’re just not there. So when we go out and we set a net, we end up with nothing or too few, or timing is sometimes off. That can be a bit tricky as well.

As well, this year we’ve also found that we are catching males at a rate of sometimes 40 to 1 for females. That’s some­thing we brought up with Fisheries and Oceans that they don’t even really pay attention to. They count how many fish. They don’t identify male or female.

Again, obviously, in the entire province, salmon is a big deal. Salmon is an economic value. All kinds of things — tourism, that sort of stuff. But up here, I think we are kind of an indicator of how things can go. If they can’t make it up here, it’s only a matter of time before they can’t make it just into the Fraser either.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Dustin, for your time and everything you do for wildlife. We appreciate it.

Next up we have school district 57, Prince George — Tim Bennett and Bruce Wiebe.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 57,
PRINCE GEORGE

T. Bennett: Good morning, everyone. My name is Tim Bennett. I am the chair of the board of education for school district 57. I’m joined by Bruce Wiebe, who is a member of our management and finance committee and a trustee on the board as well.

First off, I want to say thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to present today and, to this committee, for over the years putting a focus back on public education as part of the recommendations. While we’re happy to see some of the recommendations that have been implemented, our presentation today will focus on really four areas that we as a district still believe need to be a priority when forming the next budget.

School district 57 is unique, as we are really, we believe, a microcosm of the province. Our district is 52,000 square kilometres. We have both urban and rural. We have elementary schools of 20, and we have elementary schools of 550. We have urban, we have rural, and that urban-rural divide is really one of the challenges that we face as a school district.

Ninety-two percent of our student population is here within the Prince George centre. But we have Mackenzie, which is two hours north of us. We have Valemount-McBride, which stretches east of us. While those communi­ties are still facing declining enrolment, it causes real challenges in the current funding model to provide equal opportunities to all of our students who live in rural communities.

While our district, I believe, does a fantastic job ensuring that students in those rural communities have the requirements that they need for graduation, they’re quite often facing three or four split grades, getting kind of minimum requirements needed to meet graduation and not necessarily always able to get that full range of course offerings at the high school level, where they’re going to be able to compete on a national or international stage for college or university admissions.

We do recognize that the funding formula is currently being reviewed, but we hope that there’s influence from this committee to ensure that we look at how our rural education is funded, to ensure that there are opportunities for our schools in the rural and remote communities to really succeed and meet the equitable requirements that we want for a public education system.

Again, when we look at those schools, regardless of if there are 75 kids or 1,000 kids at a high school here in Prince George, we want to ensure that those kids are receiving a high-quality public education. Our recommendation with regards to the rural and urban is really just to ensure that there is appropriate government consultation and processes in place to ensure an equitable access to quality public education for students in our rural communities.

[9:55 a.m.]

We recognize the funding formula is currently being reviewed, and we hope that that funding formula will reflect opportunities for our rural communities. That really ties into our next one: predictable and sustainable funding. This has been a concern that our district has brought forward over the years.

Again, as we talk about the funding formula review, we recognize that that is outside of the scope in which this committee is to provide recommendations. We really hope that there’s some influence from this committee to really just provide an opportunity for districts to look at what is being proposed by the independent panel and allow districts the opportunity to provide feedback on the recommendations.

We know that the new funding formula is to be introduced in March and implemented for the next school year. We as a district have asked, through our association, to delay the implementation for a year. Recognizing that that may not be possible, we want time to be able to provide feedback for government to ensure that there are not winners and losers and to ensure that our students have the opportunity and are not disadvantaged because of a new funding formula.

One of the concerns we’ve brought forward in the past is around supporting what we refer to as venturing but also our vulnerable students. We recognize that steps have been made to implement a poverty reduction strategy, and we applaud those efforts made by government. However, we recognize that there’s still work to do and there still appear to be barriers set up between ministries to support our venturing and vulnerable students. We have advocated….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Tim, just so you know, we’re at five minutes right now. So if you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up.

T. Bennett: Perfect. Thank you. That five minutes went very quickly.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?

T. Bennett: Again, we just applaud those efforts and really just thank you for the opportunity to present today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem. Thank you, Tim.

Did you want to add anything, Bruce, before we…?

B. Wiebe: Thank you very much. No, I think Tim has covered what we’re looking at. We appreciate government teamwork and support in helping the school districts of B.C. Certainly, Prince George school district benefits from that teamwork. We have really been pleased with the way the government has provided us with service and funding. We’re thrilled to be having a new Kelly Road Secondary School being built and being able to reopen Springwood Elementary. Those have been real positives for us.

As Tim has mentioned, it’s not just us but many places in the province were concerned about rural, remote opportunities for students, vulnerable children and accessibility to services. For us to bring specialists into Prince George and attract specialists — that’s always a challenge as well. So thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a quick question. With the in­crease in the number of teachers that are able to…. Have you found it difficult to find the teachers? I know there’s been quite a bit of competition between different districts. I’m just curious about your experience with that.

T. Bennett: I think recruitment of teachers is a challenge that, of course, all districts are facing. I have to applaud our staff. They have done a great job of recruiting and bringing teachers to the Prince George area. I think right now…. We opened this year with only ten vacancies. Compared to some of our other districts, that’s a really good news story. But we recognize that we still have work to do with returns of recruiting teachers to the Prince George area.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation. You mentioned just very briefly — you didn’t get quite into it — the barriers between ministries. I’d like just some examples. It would be helpful.

T. Bennett: Absolutely. We find that especially…. We have the new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, which is doing a great job, especially locally. We have the Foundry, which is offered through the YMCA and which is doing a great job of presenting mental health for youth. Mental Health — there are still aspects in Health. Education is required for a sector.

One of the biggest concerns we’re facing right now is around freedom of information and protection of privacy, where you can’t always share what is coming out of Health with Education, and you can’t necessarily share what’s happening at Foundry with Education. So families are getting support from one and then coming back into the education system, and information cannot be shared. So it’s: how do we create that wraparound support for all students?

[10:00 a.m.]

Freedom of information is probably the most prevalent and easiest place to start. But also, then, ensuring that any funding that’s available in the Mental Health Ministry but services are provided in Education, that that funding can move between ministries a little bit easier.

N. Simons: That’s very helpful. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s great. Well, thank you very much for everything you do with the district. We appreciate your comments. We’ll definitely take all of that into account, in regards to the challenges that many of our districts have, in terms of the urban versus the rural.

Even in Maple Ridge and Mission, Maple Ridge is part of the Lower Mainland, and Mission is semi-rural. We have a small school with 50 students, so I understand the challenges of trying to provide the same quality of education to your rural students as you do in the cities.

Thank you for your comments, Tim and Bruce, and I really appreciate you coming.

Next up we have Tourism Prince George — Erica Hummel, if she’s here.

TOURISM PRINCE GEORGE

E. Hummel: I’m Erica Hummel, CEO at Tourism Prince George. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you. I’m going to be covering four topics very briefly: the MRDT has been mentioned a few times today, but I’m going to talk about that again; the formula funding for Destination British Columbia; tourism infrastructure; and transportation.

Just a little bit about the tourism industry, in case you’re not fully aware of the economic impacts on the province. This is the “Value of Tourism” study in 2016, so it’s a little bit outdated, but it’s the most recent study that’s been done on economic impact.

In 2016, tourism exports generated revenue of $4.9 billion, an increase of 18 percent over 2015. GDP for the provincial economy as a whole grew 3.6 percent over 2015. The tourism industry contributed $7.9 billion of value-added to the B.C. economy as measured through GDP. This represents a 5.6 percent growth over 2015 and a 30.6 percent growth since 2006.

In 2016, tourism contributed more to GDP than any other primary resource industry with the exception of oil and gas, so it’s a significant industry. We’ve built it based on some fundamental marketing models and some funding models that are a little bit at risk at the moment. I just want to set the stage for the importance and the growth and the potential for future growth.

Formula funding. Legislated formula funding for Destination British Columbia is long overdue. Formula funding is necessary for long-term investments in tourism marketing initiatives, programs and partnerships to ensure the growth and prosperity of the tourism industry and B.C. economy. We cannot rely on annual appropriations based on government directives.

One option is a base level of funding equivalent to DBC’s current allocation of $52 million plus a percentage increase based on specific industry performance measures, such as hotel tax revenue, instead of the current interim formula, which allocates a 1 percent increase to DBC on the condition that tourism-related PST revenues increase by a minimum of 5 percent year over year. This provides both a measure of incentive to achieve targets as well as accountability for the usage of the funds.

Another option is to return to the previous system of allocating 3 percent of the PST on all accommodation to DBC. While recognizing that an economic downturn can impact industry performance and thus influence this funding source, it is nonetheless manageable, predictable and accountable.

Second point, the MRDT, the municipal and regional district tax. MRDT really should revert back to its original intended purpose of tourism marketing, projects and programs. For decades, the MRDT or its equivalent has funded community-based tourism marketing with a high measure of results and accountability.

[10:05 a.m.]

Using MRDT for anything outside of tourism marketing is putting B.C.’s visitor economy at risk, particularly over the long term. All MRDT revenues collected by on-line booking platforms for short-term vacation rentals should be remitted to the eligible entity and not be considered for use toward affordable housing initiatives by the designated recipient.

Three, tourism infrastructure. Investment in highway improvements, bridges, tunnels, airport expansion, meeting or recreational venues is paramount for the growth of B.C.’s visitor economy and benefits both residents and visitors alike.

Finally, transportation. The loss of Greyhound bus service will affect travel by B.C. residents within the province and will also discourage tourists from visiting other parts of B.C. Government needs to consider a subsidized bus service to ensure that B.C. residents are able to travel within the province to receive services that may otherwise be unavailable in their own communities.

Similarly, allowing visitors to access smaller communities reasonably, safely and efficiently is essential to sustaining our visitor economy. Seasonal workers require affordable and accessible transportation to resort communities to fulfil their job commitments, and bus service is often the only option.

Thank you very much. I’d be happy to answer some questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Erica. I appreciate the comments.

Just one comment. I know that Minister Trevena has been working quite a bit on the Greyhound issue and meeting with other provinces as well, because this is not just B.C. It’s affecting the whole of western Canada. I know that’s been sort of an urgent job that the minister’s been working on, just to give you a bit of feedback. We know how important that is to this region.

Questions? No.

It was such a great presentation. It was wonderful. That was fantastic.

Is there anything else you wanted to add before you go?

E. Hummel: Just that when it comes to the MRDT, I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think they both have to exist simultaneously, both the marketing and promotion. It’s a very long game to be involved in the tourism engine of bringing international visitors over. If a city has a problem with accommodation….

They’re very tourism dependent. That’s a busy community. They have a lot of international visitors and a lot of visitors. They’re going to need their DMO, their destination marketing organization, to stay intact. If those dollars get repositioned to affordable housing, they’re going to lose that tourism leadership in the community. That’s going to be what brings those people through. I think it’ll lose a lot of the management of the destination.

I think both of them need to be simultaneous, especially in those communities that are struggling with finding workers for tourism employees, finding housing for tourism employees. It’s critical in those areas.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Nicholas, I think you pointed out in one of the conversations that it’s not a mandatory move.

N. Simons: No, but I understand that people in tourism see that as opening a door they didn’t want opened. I totally understand that. It’s not up to the tourism marketing agencies to decide whether or not…. It’s up to….

E. Hummel: It becomes a political issue in a municipal office with voter…. Yeah.

N. Simons: Your point is well made. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Erica. I really appreciate that.

Just a little break.

The committee recessed from 10:08 a.m. to 10:13 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

Five minutes would be great, and then we have five minutes for questions. The floor is yours, Kris.

CANADIAN TAXPAYERS FEDERATION

K. Sims: First off, thank you so much for agreeing to listen to us this morning and for making your way up to Prince George. It’s absolutely beautiful. I drove up from the Fraser Valley yesterday, and we’re blessed to live in such a beautiful province. So I truly appreciate all of your time and your effort.

[10:15 a.m.]

For those of you who don’t know, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been around for around 20 years or so. We started as a ratepayers group across the western Prairies — basically, average, commonsense people who were tired of being overtaxed. They wanted to keep more of their own hard-earned money.

We are a not-for-profit advocacy group who tries to speak up for taxpayers and ratepayers across Canada. Last we counted, I think we have something around 120,000 or 130,000 supporters across Canada, and here in the province of British Columbia, we have around 14,000 or 15,000 supporters.

Thank you very much for hearing me out. I’ve got a taxpayer top five. We like to try to keep them nice and easy to understand because we know that you guys have a lot of work to plow through during these prebudget consultations.

At a lot of these consultations, you’ll often hear from people who are well-meaning, who are asking in many ways for funding, and our role with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is to politely remind everybody that every nickel, every dollar comes from somebody else’s wallet, somebody else’s bank account. That’s why, during these sessions, we always urge everybody to really think: does this money need to be spent? Is there a better way of doing it? Is there more restraint that we could be showing here rather than just going for it?

One, balance the budget. Our supporters want balanced budgets in British Columbia. They know that keeping a household or a small business budget balanced is important, and they expect the same of their government. As you build the budget for this year, Finance department officials and politicians need to ask: is this truly necessary? Does the province need this, and does it need it right now? Can we do this in another way?

Right now the provincial debt of British Columbia is more than $66 billion, and it goes up by about $100 per second. By the time I’m finished this five-minute presentation, the debt will be up another $30,000. So before you agree to spend taxpayers’ money, ask yourself if it’s fundamentally necessary.

Two, cancel the B.C. carbon tax. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation opposed the imposition of the carbon tax when it was first dreamed up, and we still want it cancelled now.

Since we met last year, the tide has changed across Canada. We see more and more people are rejecting the carbon tax at the voting booth and in government. The carbon tax is a cash grab. It’s a tax on everything. It’s imposed on families, households and businesses under the banner of stopping climate change. The carbon tax punishes British Columbians for driving their vehicles, heating their homes and running their businesses.

By creating and expanding taxes like the carbon tax, you are taking away people’s money that could be used for groceries, renting a better home, paying for after-school care and putting their kids in sports. Whatever they would have chosen to do with that money of theirs, that choice has been taken away. By the time we have a $50-per-tonne carbon tax in B.C., one year ahead of the federally imposed schedule, B.C. families could be paying more than $700 per year just for this one tax. Imagine paying at least 15 cents more per litre for gasoline or 13 cents more per litre for diesel forever.

Using the federal formula at $35 per tonne, it costs British Columbians a lot of money every time they fill up. To give you a real-world example, an average Dodge Ram pickup truck — you see them everywhere, especially up here, up north — costs more than $10 to fill up that gas tank just in the carbon tax. On a Ford diesel SuperDuty that you see tradespeople using quite often, it costs $17 per fill-up, again just for the carbon tax. That doesn’t touch any other taxes.

When you take a look at trucking, just one of those cylinders of diesel — one of them — costs around $45 in the carbon tax. Considering that each truck usually has about two of them, 90 bucks, closing in on $100, just to fill those up. And keep in mind that we rely on trucking for everything that we use, that we eat, that we need delivered. That is why we say we really do need to cancel this carbon tax.

Eliminate the employer health tax. The CTF and our supporters agreed with the elimination of the Medical Services Premium, the MSP, and we were very pleased to see it reduced by 50 percent, with a promise to get rid of it altogether. But what employers and municipalities didn’t know was that the employer health tax would be imposed on them instead. Businesses can easily get over the $500,000 mark for payroll. To punish them with a brand-new health care tax that they didn’t otherwise pay is unfair, and it penalizes them for creating jobs and employing people.

The CTF toured the southern part of this province, from Courtenay to Cranbrook, this past summer. Municipal leaders are deeply upset that cities and towns are being hit with this employer health tax. As you know, municipal governments cannot run deficits, yet they have a brand-new health care tax responsibility being downloaded onto them by Victoria.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Kris, you’re at five minutes.

[10:20 a.m.]

K. Sims: Okay. I’ll run right through the rest of these here. I’m so verbose.

Once again, the EHT was put in without consultation. We did hear from every community leader where we stopped in, and they raised it directly.

Four, and you’ve heard me say this before, so I’ll be very brief. Please turn ICBC into a co-op and open it up for competition. You don’t need to scrap it altogether if you like it. Turn it into a co-op. Make it owned by B.C. drivers who want to choose it, so that it’s like a credit union. Then open it up to competition. That way, we have the best of both worlds.

Five, please stop blocking the Kinder Morgan pipeline — the Trans Mountain pipeline, as it is now known — because it’s owned by Canadian taxpayers. We think this is fundamental to the economy, and if we don’t have a good economy, we don’t have a good tax base.

Thank you very much for your time.

S. Furstenau: I just wanted to point out that the price on carbon, which is a price on the pollution that actually is the driver for climate change, is something that economists identified as an approach to incentivizing the changes that we need to see to switch to a low-carbon economy.

Taxes are important, and how much things cost is important, but nothing is going to cost more than not addressing climate change. There’s the $1 billion in the last two years that the provincial government has had to spend on wildfires. Scientists agree that these are driven by climate change. We’ve seen the storms that are now pummelling…. Well, there are ten megastorms in the world right now. Scientists agree that these are climate change–driven.

The idea of a price on carbon pollution, just like the price on putting our garbage out on our curbside, is to say: you can’t just pollute for free. Yes, every time you fill up your truck and pollution comes into the atmosphere, which impacts and drives climate change, there has to be a price attached to that. Otherwise, who pays for it are actually all of the taxpayers, paying for all of the impacts.

I think there’s an economic…. I really encourage you to look at the economic case for a price on carbon pollution, because it has been studied at length and is identified as a necessary piece to change our behaviours.

K. Sims: With great respect, we’re going to have to fundamentally agree to disagree on this. For example, if you take a look at Saskatchewan farmers, Saskatchewan farmers were able to reduce their CO₂ emissions without a carbon tax. How did they do this? Through technology, through innovation and through striving for excellence. That is, frankly, what we often try to do in our technological, modern, industrial world. We have seen it time and time again. What happened there is that they reduced their CO₂, but they didn’t have a carbon tax. Do they get an exemption from the carbon tax? They reduced their CO₂. They’re not polluting, in your language. They don’t get….

S. Furstenau: The exemption is actually the reduction in the cost of the carbon they use.

K. Sims: Actually, no. The federal Environment Minister, who’s responsible for this, insisted on imposing a carbon tax against their will, even though they had reduced their CO₂. So if this is not about revenue-raising and if it’s about saving the world, we believe that you won’t fix the world by making people poorer.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re here to listen, but we’re not going to have a debate.

N. Simons: I’m just wondering. You imply that decisions made by government on where to spend money are not thought through, are not contemplated or determined after deliberate consultation, discussion and debate. What do you think government is paying for now that they shouldn’t pay for?

K. Sims: Off the very top of my head, spending millions of dollars on studying the basic income idea. We know that that fundamentally does not work. We have examples in the western world to show that that does not work. Even places as progressive and forward-thinking as Finland have abandoned this. But at the drop of a hat, it’s blowing millions of dollars on it.

Again, I do realize that you’re up here to do good work. That’s why I tried to stress that at the beginning of my speech. I realize that people do work very hard, and I just want to leave a penny in the shoe, a reminder that this isn’t just a budget, that this isn’t just columns and numbers, that every dollar comes out of somebody else’s pocket.

N. Simons: Let me just add something to there. Our province is rich in natural resources, and those resources belong to all of us. Some of the resources that government has to spend on important programs — like basic income, for example — come from the resource, not from other people’s pockets. I don’t know why you would simplify things so much. Can you explain that?

K. Sims: What part of it don’t you understand?

N. Simons: Well, the idea that all of government revenue comes from taxation on individuals and that individuals’ pockets are emptier because of that, when in fact, we get money from the resource sector. We share the resources of our province with each other. I just think that’s a fundamental flaw in your entire approach.

[10:25 a.m.]

K. Sims: Well, to be clear, a gold mine does not just give us money. That is a corporation that is run by people, that employs people, that puts people to work and that is then taxed. The resource sector is made up of people. We don’t just get tax dollars from resources.

N. Simons: Can I just…? I know. It’s just so simplistic. I think that’s typical. I think that when you realize that…. Roads go to gold mines. Who pays for the roads? Electricity goes to gold mines. Who pays for that? You know, the infrastructure.

We have important responsibilities, as government, to spend money responsibly and to ensure that our economies can succeed. I just wanted to make that point.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, Kris. I did notice that of your five, you said balance the budget.

K. Sims: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You must be happy that we’ve actually balanced the budget and maintained our triple-A credit rating.

K. Sims: I gave you kudos the last time you did.

B. D’Eith (Chair): At least we got one out of five for you there.

Thank you very much, Kris. Appreciate your time.

K. Sims: Thank you. Likewise.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have the College of New Caledonia Students Union — Harman Dandiwal and Michelle Frechette.

M. Frechette: Good morning, everyone.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hello. How are you?

M. Frechette: I’m well. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Welcome. The floor is yours. Go ahead.

COLLEGE OF NEW CALEDONIA
STUDENTS UNION

M. Frechette: I’d like to start by saying thank you for having us here today. We’re happy to represent the College of New Caledonia Students Union. We’re proud members, and we are continuously pushing our boundaries to create better situations for students moving forward. We believe it’s not just your typical “hope of the future” sort of situation but really using practical responses, rather than reaction-based decisions, for funding our education system moving forward.

There are a few points I would like to make note of today. First, we’d like to address the campaign promises of no interest on student loans. We believe very strongly that the people that access these loans are the people that already can’t afford their education up front. An educated society is a society that we want to live in. An educated society is an inspired society, not just in their worklife but in their daily life — inspired to make better decisions for their families, inspired to make better decisions for their communities. We want to be part of those communities.

We want to be able to make the idea of education not such a far-fetched, grand scheme idea anymore. I, myself, took an additional ten years after I graduated before I felt confident enough to take on the student debt I would need to take on in order to advance my own education. I’m the youngest of four children, and both of my parents make just enough money to be up to their eyeballs in debt. My post-secondary education landed on my shoulders solely.

The idea of seeing multiple people before me — friends, family, other students — go and drop out or go because they felt like they should or they needed to but found that…. The pressures of school, the balancing act that it all came down to, crumpled them. They came out of it maybe with a degree and aren’t happy moving forward. They went for a stable, steady job rather than something they were passionate about — that that passion would drive their motivation moving forward in their lives, creating better communities.

We want to see zero interest on student loan debt moving forward. These are the people that can’t pay for it already. In addition to that, supplementing it, we’d like to see an increase in non-repayable student financial assistance options for students from low- and middle-income backgrounds through the creation of a comprehensive, upfront, needs-based grants program. This has been identified not just in our society but in many other western-thinking communities and regions.

[10:30 a.m.]

The current system of a loans program is ineffective. The qualification and eligibility requirements in order to apply for these loans are out of date. They require that you work no more than X amount of hours but don’t take into consideration that the average person in this area, working that amount of hours, is well under the $42,000 mark in a year.

Those who have to pay for school aren’t just students living at home anymore. I own my own home. I have a car. I have a life. Those are all things that cost more than living at my parents’ home and eating their groceries. Those aren’t taken into consideration when loans applications are taken into consideration.

In addition to that….

H. Dandiwal: Recently I applied for a student loan, and I got refused. The reason for that was because I worked more than 32 hours.

As you go through the application…. It’s step 3 or step 4. I think it’s unfair because before I was asked how much I make per hour. It just said: “You no longer qualify.” So I could be working 32 hours at minimum wage and not getting a loan, but I could be working 30 hours at $30 an hour and still get a loan.

The criteria for applying for student aid is not as progressive or just as proportional to what we think. The policies that were made are so outdated. I think a little review into changing student policies would be one step forward.

M. Frechette: We were happy to see the government instil the prime interest rate rather than the prime plus. We believe that is a great step in the right direction, and we’d like to see that continue forward.

On a more positive note, we are excited to be part of this event, and we’re excited to hear what you guys have to say.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. I’m happy to have heard the examples that you’ve brought up around the loan application. That was something that…. I don’t know if you saw my head kind of twist back in shock. I really appreciate the level of detail that you’ve brought to the discussion today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation: no interest on loans; increased grants — make them more needs-based for low-income and middle-income people; and review the guidelines, right?

M. Frechette: The last point that I didn’t have time to address is that the government has already identified open education resources as a solution to the textbook dilemma. Since 2002 to 2012, 82 percent of books’ cost have increased. We believe that open education resources are the key to making it even more of an attractive solution — going to school rather than taking a minimum-wage job.

My professors agree. Those solutions would be created by the professors themselves, more applicable to our criteria and wouldn’t end up with hundreds and hundreds of dollars of paperweights sitting in my house.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, they are good for keeping the couches up.

M. Frechette: I’ve got a good couch. I don’t need some­thing to keep it up.

N. Simons: We heard that the College of New Caledonia is interested in a health sciences facility. Does the students union have a position on that? I guess you support that idea.

H. Dandiwal: We haven’t been involved actively in the conversation. But I think, moving forward, we would be interested in listening to it. If that improves more health sciences programs, more facilities, I think it’s a bonus for Prince George.

P. Milobar: It just came to mind. You referenced that the zero interest student loan still hasn’t been instituted yet. Last year we heard from a great many student unions around tuition increases. Those have not been changed too. Is there more comfort now that there hasn’t been a change, or would the student unions still expect…?

M. Frechette: It’s a step in the right direction.

P. Milobar: Well, they haven’t changed anything. So I’m just wondering: is that no longer a priority of the student unions to have the tuition rules changed, in terms of increases, or is that still an expectation that would happen?

H. Dandiwal: I mean, we’re always going to advocate for a tuition-free education down the road. Countries like Germany have managed to adopt those fully funded post-secondary models. I met a student last summer, and all she paid was $200 for her books. The rest was all funded. But that’s a long road ahead.

[10:35 a.m.]

For the time being, we’re focusing on smaller steps such as having a better loans program, where you pay back what you borrow, and better funding through grants. Textbooks and stuff would be another thing. Those little steps would make post-secondary more accessible.

P. Milobar: I understand that. I was specifically asking about…. There’s a cap on how much tuition rates can go up.

Some Voices: It’s 2 percent.

P. Milobar: Student unions last year were advocating that student tuitions be frozen. I’m asking: do student unions no longer worry if tuitions go up 2 or 3 percent a year, or is it still…?

M. Frechette: We believe it’s more of a complex issue than just domestic student increases. When you take into consideration the gaps in their budget because of provincial and federal funding, they’re increasing tuition exponentially for international students, in which case it’s multiple things feeding into the same question.

Yes, it is still a priority. As of right now, we’re happy with the freeze, and we are interested in moving forward with the OERs, the needs-based grants, as well as interest-free tuition loans.

H. Dandiwal: We would support the idea of a tuition freeze if that happens, because it’s just that fees go up each year. With the exponential rise in tuition for international…. There’s no cap on the international student tuition fee increase. That’s another issue we’ve been advocating for. But for domestic students? Yeah. A tuition fee freeze would be highly welcome, if that’s a possibility.

M. Frechette: It’s just as much our domestic students that are concerned about the international students’ increases as our own. It’s not like they are getting more services for the amount of money that they’re paying more for. The boost that they’re bringing into our schools to create better facilities, more class times available, more programs, more open education resources because of the funding they’re able to provide as well as our economy in our communities….

When and if students start realizing that they’re sick of paying more and more and more coming in for a four-year degree program and having their rates jacked up mid-program and not being able to afford to continue and going home — more and more of these stories are accumulating. And it doesn’t just affect them. It affects the domestic students as well. As soon as their funding is gone, then that money is coming from somewhere else. And that money is coming from teachers. That money is coming from students. That money is coming from facilities, you know. It’s a complex issue.

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

Next up we have CUPE Local 4990. We have Denice Bardua and Laurie Spooner.

The floor is yours.

CANADIAN UNION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES
LOCAL 4990

D. Bardua: Good morning. My name is Denice Bardua, and I’m the president of CUPE Local 4990 from the Quesnel support staff in the K-to-12 sector. We represent education assistants, custodial, maintenance, transportation, StrongStart, secretarial, IT, youth care workers and Aboriginal support workers.

I guess what I’m here to say today is our current funding formula doesn’t work. We need stable, predictable funding for K to 12, and the funding needs to fit our education system.

On behalf of my colleague Dawn Rodger from the QDTA — she was sorry she was unable to make it today — we’re finding that we’re unable to attract teachers that we need, and we’ve started yet another year in crisis.

Both the QDTA and CUPE are going to be putting forward a written submission with our recommendations. However, with a limited amount of time to present here today, I’m going to focus on our CUPE struggles.

[10:40 a.m.]

In order to support accessible, quality education, we need resources and support. Our EAs are working less than full-time, bell to bell, some less than three hours a day. And there’s little opportunity for any collaborative meetings with teachers, with resource teachers to fully support our children.

We need full-time hours for our staff. We’re facing, for the first time ever in Quesnel, a two-week spring break. Our jobs are going from 12 months down to 10 months — and now another school closure, and now we’re down to 9½ months. Our custodians are totally understaffed and overworked.

Our job is to keep our schools clean and safe and supportive for our students. So we’re asking you to really look at the funding formula. We know that there are committees that have been established, but maybe we need to look at the education system as a whole and then figure out how to fund it, instead of applying a pot of money to fund, and not looking at how that’s going to support our staff, our students, our teachers, our community, our children and our future.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Laurie, did you want to add anything?

L. Spooner: I’m just here to listen today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Any questions?

P. Milobar: I guess last year we had about 119 or 120 recommendations that went forward. There were probably another 100 — same amount, if not more — that didn’t advance. What would be, in order of priority, your top three areas that you think increased funding should target, within the members that you represent, in terms of shortcomings in the school system? Be it custodial or, you know….

D. Bardua: Custodial, EAs, and health and safety. Again, reflective of…. There’s a lot of violence in our workplace now, which we’ve never seen before, and it’s our EAs that are bearing the brunt of it. So some funding towards recognizing the violence in the workplace and how we deal with it, in health and safety.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anybody else?

Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate the presentation.

D. Bardua: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Northern Rockies Aboriginal Women Society. We have, on the phone, Viña Behn and Wanita Nelson.

NORTHERN ROCKIES
ABORIGINAL WOMEN SOCIETY

V. Behn: My name is Viña Behn. I’m the executive direc­tor for the Northern Rockies Aboriginal Women Society.

I live in a rural, very remote community, far from Fort Nelson, Fort St. John or anywhere near those areas. There are about 4,500 people who reside there. Recently, we had an economic downfall that has happened, so many of the people have moved away. There are still some people who are there that need support.

The areas that we fund that are really important for the community are…. A lot of our women who are pregnant have to leave the community to go down to Fort St. John to have their child.

[10:45 a.m.]

They have to leave three weeks ahead of time, I guess, and have their child in Fort St. John. For a lot of the women, they don’t have the support or anything when they come down to Fort St. John, so they have to really fend for themselves, and their family aren’t able to attend as well.

That’s one of the things that we are concerned about. Another thing that we’re really concerned about is transportation. We have a lot of women who don’t have…. It gets really cold here, but they have a lot children, so transportation is a real issue. One of the things that we were thinking about, maybe, is putting in a B.C. Transit system, as in bigger towns like Fort St. John or something like that, because whenever anybody has to go anywhere, they take a local taxi, and it costs about $17 to the place they go and $17 back. If they’re going five kilometres out of town and then five kilometres back into town, that’s $17 right there.

Another area that we’re concerned about is the lack of support in the justice system. We have a lot of people who don’t have the means to…. I know they’re going through criminal problems and things are happening, but still there’s no support. It’s a backup within the court system, probably backed up maybe one or two years, and we don’t have a lot of people. The aboriginal court liaison isn’t here enough because she covers Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson and then other parts, the smaller communities. There’s only one person covering these places, and we’re just really isolated, with a lack of resources.

The other thing that our community is really concerned about is pediatricians. We have a lot of kids that are sick, or they have disabilities. For a lot of families, a lot of mothers, that we are serving, we don’t have those resources here, so they have to be sent out, say to Vancouver. We did have a pediatrician, but because of lack of funding, that pediatrician is no longer available to come to Fort Nelson.

I think those are the main ones that are…. The other thing, too, is the family court system for the Attorney General. I think it’s called the B.C. family justice centre. It would be really good if we could have something like that for the families up here in Fort Nelson. We can be able to get something, some sort of support, but the problem is we don’t have the lawyers. Through legal aid, the lawyers cannot come up to Fort Nelson because of the cost factor.

Any way that we can be able to rely on some of the society for some of the needs out there. There’s really nothing to do. To bring people in, it’s going to cost more money.

Then the other biggest part of it, I think, is that lack of education. It means that some people can get their ECE, but they have to leave the community. A lot of the people that want to work with families and want to be here in Fort Nelson have children. They have families.

I don’t know. We have a college here in Fort Nelson, but I don’t know how that’s going to…. Obviously, we’ve got to try to work something, but that’s about it, sorry, all in a nutshell.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for bringing these issues to our attention.

Ronna-Rae Leonard has a question for you.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for presenting to us. You’re on a teleconference. I’m wondering what kind of access you have to other technologies in Fort Nelson, looking at solutions for your remoteness — you know, if there’s access for lawyers to be remotely serving your community, for instance, or access to justice systems through that kind of technology.

[10:50 a.m.]

V. Behn: Through video teleconferencing?

R. Leonard: Yes, for example. What is your connectivity in the world?

V. Behn: Well, I believe that they do have video teleconferencing within the justice area in Fort Nelson, but it’s mainly for people who are incarcerated. We do have 30 minutes of pro bono where people can sit down, through Skype. But when it comes down to actually sitting down in a court system, there’s no representation for the criminal or the families. They obviously have to fly up, and we don’t have…. We don’t know how to set that up, in other words.

We do have technology up here. We have Internet and all those other things, but the situation is that it’s so high and expensive. Like 30 gigabytes is $100, and 30 gigabytes isn’t very much. The telephone system…. It’s because it’s like there are so many people…. There’s a lack of people, but Northwestel are the ones that are in charge of the communication part of it, the technology. They don’t have to compete with anybody, any other businesses, so it’s really high.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sonia Furstenau has a question for you.

S. Furstenau: You were mentioning that pregnant mothers are having to go to Fort St. James three weeks ahead of time to deliver their babies. Are they paying for the costs of being down in Fort St. James on their own, in that case?

V. Behn: It would be Fort St. John, but yes, the families have to be the ones that have to provide and get support outside of the community to go down and have their child. We work with some mothers who were waiting and waiting up until their birth time. The hospital still had them medevacked, but they took them in an ambulance. They had to travel down to Fort St. John, 4½ hours while they were in labour, to have their child.

S. Furstenau: So there’s no facility whatsoever in your community for…?

V. Behn: We do have facilities. We have a perfect maternity ward, but the problem is we don’t have any doctors, a gynecologist, to be able to deliver a child. Fort Nelson has a good hospital. We have everything, but we don’t have the people there that can be able to deliver children.

Another thing, too, is, for example, pediatricians. We used to have a pediatrician, but that resource ran out, so now families who have children with disabilities or anything like that have to leave the community to go down and get help.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we’re out of time, but thank you very much for your presentation and bringing these issues to our attention. We really appreciate you taking the time.

V. Behn: Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t know if I need to ask this question, but is there anybody else from Fort Nelson that is coming before the Finance Committee?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Not today, I don’t think.

V. Behn: Yeah, because there’s a lot more that I have. Like, early childhood development, daycares — we don’t have any of that stuff. It’s so frustrating. I’m a worker. I’m a front-line worker. I’m an executive director. I believe in families, but there’s nothing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just so you’re aware, if there’s yourself or other people that would like to make further presentations, there’s certainly time to do that. I’d encourage anyone, yourself or other people, who might want to bring other issues to our attention, please, you can make those in writing, or just contact the Parliamentary Committees Office, and they can help you with that.

V. Behn: Okay, cool. That’s really great. Thank you so much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem. Thanks for presenting. Have a great day.

Next up we have YMCA of Northern B.C. — Amanda Alexander.

[10:55 a.m.]

YMCA OF NORTHERN B.C.

A. Alexander: Good morning. Thank you so much for the opportunity. My name is Amanda Alexander. I’m the CEO of YMCA of Northern B.C.

Throughout our 132-year history of services, the YMCAs of British Columbia have had a progressive and valued partnership with the provincial government in support of a wide range of mutual interests.

The mission of the YMCA is aligned with the government’s vision to increase affordability and support the health and well-being of British Columbians. In fact, the YMCA has a long history of delivering programs and services that directly address many of the community outcomes so clearly outlined in Budget 2018. We were very pleased to see the investments in child care and early learning, affordable housing and health care. We were especially encouraged by the priorities outlined to support the most vulnerable individuals and families in our province.

On behalf of the YMCAs of British Columbia, I am pleased to outline our key recommendations for Budget 2019, and we thank you for the opportunity. We will also be submitting a written response which will provide additional background information to what I’ll be presenting here today.

Today I share with you the importance not only of acknowledging the service of not-for-profits and the charitable sector in the province but of reforming the way government partners with and enables charities to play a central role in addressing complex problems that no government organization can do alone.

To the parliamentary committee, we have the following two recommendations for Budget 2019: that charities and not-for-profits be recognized, directly funded and engaged as key strategic partners in the development and implementation of policy and practice that address complex social issues; and secondly, that not-for-profits and charities be eligible for the same infrastructure funding that is available to schools, municipalities or health authorities, for social infrastructure.

Our first recommendation is that government should engage charities and not-for-profits as key strategic partners in the development of policy and practice, particularly when it comes to solving complex social issues. Not-for-profits and charities with a provincewide scope, like the YMCA, are effective about taking action on priorities shared by government — priorities like child care, chronic disease prevention, youth mental health, health aging, training and employment.

The charitable sectors embedded in the communities that we serve, allow not only for deep trust and understanding of the needs of the community but the ability to nimble and responsive to address these needs in creative, sustainable and cost-effective ways. We would be even more effective if our contributions are fully recognized through sufficient and direct funding to what we do best.

The YMCA is the largest on-the-ground delivery agency in the province. Due to our significant volunteer resources and our expertise in program development and implementation, we have the ability more than any government institution to effectively roll out programs and services quickly across the province in a very cost-effective manner.

As an example, the YMCA received a government investment in youth mental health and wellness last year. In less than a year, we were able to scale up one local program that had demonstrated excellent outcomes, Y Mind, to all parts of the province. It is now running in northern B.C., on Vancouver Island, in Kelowna and Kamloops, as well as in the greater Vancouver region. It is continuing to expand as a result of partnerships with other community-based organizations in smaller communities, such as Kitimat, across B.C.

So have us at the table when shaping policy that impacts the social issue and recognizes us as a valuable partner at implementing provincewide programs and services to address the important issues of today.

Our second recommendation flows from the first point. In order to recognize the important role not-for-profits and charities have in solving complex social issues, we should be eligible for the same infrastructure and funding that is available to schools, municipalities or health authorities.

When government makes direct contributions to not-for-profits and charities, those funds have the capacity of making a significant, quick and sustainable impact over long term. We’ve seen excellent and welcomed provincial investments in affordable, accessible and high-quality child care this past year. However, when it comes to creating new spaces for families and building the infrastructure, not-for-profit organizations don’t have the same access as municipalities and school districts.

I’ll give you a local example of this. Two years ago we built our Lac Des Bois early learning and care centre, which provides child care for infant, toddler, three to fives, after-school programs, and so on and so forth. We were very grateful to receive half a million dollars’ worth of funding to support this initiative.

[11:00 a.m.]

YMCA of Northern B.C. had to invest an additional $250,000 to make that project a reality, which, as I’m sure you all know, is a huge impact to the stretch and reach of our organization. If we were able to be eligible for the same amounts up to $1 million that school districts and municipalities are, we could further extend this reach.

The YMCAs across B.C. are the largest provider of child care across the province. It’s obviously a key priority for this government, and we welcome and appreciate the support. We would like to see that not-for-profits have the same access to these infrastructure dollars, as we have a proven track record in being able to deliver on high-quality, affordable child care for our families in B.C.

It is clear that government is serious about investing in child care. We and the families we serve could not be more pleased. Adequate and equitable funding for organizations like the YMCA could help your investment move further and be more sustainable and see more families finding accessible, high-quality child care more quickly.

Over the past two years, the YMCA of Northern B.C. has been able to provide child care services, or open child care services, in the community of Vanderhoof, which is approximately 100 kilometres west of us, and in the community of Fort St. James, which is about 150 kilometres west. Then north of that, as well, we just opened up in Fort St. John, which is about four hours northeast of us.

We have a proven track record of really meeting communities’ needs around child care, so we really want the supports to be able to leverage this work. We’re hearing loud and clear from communities — similar to what we heard in Fort Nelson earlier, before — that they’re looking for our support in being able to provide smaller communities these resources.

Again, given the ability of the not-for-profit sector to provide and operate facilities efficiently and cost-effectively, we recommend that not-for-profits have access to the same amount of funding for social infrastructure as other stakeholders — similar to child care investments. We reviewed the recent investing in Canada’s infrastructure program for B.C. These are welcomed investments in B.C.’s infrastructure. However, the funding allocation provides a larger proportion to municipal applicants than to not-for-profit applicants for social infrastructure projects.

We are all dealing with having aging facilities. Our health and fitness and aquatic facilities are 30 or 40 years old, and we’re grappling, as not-for-profits, to have the significant dollars that we can to reinvest. These are important centres of community that proactively help with the health and well-being of our communities — to be able to get connected, to be healthy — and support early intervention.

In summary, we call on government to truly recognize the impact charities and not-for-profits make in addressing complex social issues, and we recommend that government provide equitable, direct funding that can make a real difference in our shared priorities.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you today and provide recommendations from the YMCAs in B.C. to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Amanda.

Questions?

M. Dean: Thank you for all the contributions that all of the YMCAs make across the province.

In terms of policy development and creating those solutions to shared objectives, what provincial networks and bodies is the YMCA a member of? How do you come to any of those other tables that represent those sectors across the province?

A. Alexander: I’m not sure that I’m completely clear on your question. Are you talking about how we come together to be able to derive solutions or where we’re connecting to other…?

M. Dean: Other networks. There are ECE networks. There are community and social services networks. There are other provincial bodies where your experience and your voice and your ideas would have validity to be shared with other service providers across the province.

A. Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. In every community that the YMCA exists in, we connect with all those bodies, from early childhood education to the health and fitness provincial bodies. Where we see that we can connect to that, we try and interlay in government locally and provincially, wherever we can, to be able to learn from others and to be able to provide our support.

M. Dean: How about your partnerships with municipalities? There are different grants and funding streams, and there are more being announced. Are there ways to be able to actually partner, for example, to repair some of the aging recreation facilities that would be in the interest of the municipality and the community as well as your organization?

A. Alexander: Sure. It really depends on what is on the municipality’s agenda themselves, whether they have a significant need themselves. That may take priority over our infrastructure needs. Definitely, we try to work as collaboratively as we can, but it really depends on what’s on their agenda as well.

With respect to schools, the challenge is…. It’s different district to district, whether there’s even capacity within a local school to actually house child care. It isn’t necessarily always the issue of: do we want to? Depending on what approach the local school district has taken, there may not be the capacity.

[11:05 a.m.]

In this one particular project that we had, it happened to be an annex. It used to be an industrial education annex. It was not being used for classroom facilitation. But there’s no other space within schools that we could actually leverage a partnership.

Part of it may be what the municipality has on the go, and part of it may be, with respect to schools, what capacity they actually have to partner with us. Communities like Fort St. John that are building actively are able to incorporate those into the proposals they’re doing or into the developments they’re doing, but that wouldn’t be the case, say, in a community like Prince George or Chetwynd or Fort St. James.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation, Amanda. We appreciate the time you took to make the presentation, and we’ll take everything you said into account. Thank you very much.

A. Alexander: Great. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. That was our last presentation for this morning. Can I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 11:06 a.m.