The committee met at 4 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

We’re pleased to be here in Trail, British Columbia, and would like to begin by recognizing that our meeting today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Sinixt, Okanagan and Ktunaxa people. This is one of 14 cities and towns that we’re visiting over the four-week period, and we’re really pleased to be here in Trail.

On behalf of the committee, I’d also like to acknowledge everyone affected and impacted by the wildfires and floods this year and extend our gratitude and appreciation to the first responders, volunteers and many others who supported the evacuees and the response.

We’re a 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 to hear about their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget.

This consultation is based on the budget consultation paper that was recently given to us by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available for you here today to reference. 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. on Monday, October 15, 2018. More information is available on 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.

For those of you who are here today, thank you for taking the time to participate. We really appreciate it. We’ve received a lot of great input so far, and we’re looking forward to hearing some of your ideas about the priorities for the next budget.

As far as the format for today’s meetings, we have a number of registered guests 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 allotted to each speaker. We ask people to register at the beginning of this meeting to make sure that they can get a slot. If you would like to speak, please see Mariana at the back, at the table.

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

Right now I’d like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. We’ll start with the Deputy Chair, Dan Ashton.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. It’s nice to be back in Trail. My name is Dan Ashton. I’m the MLA for Penticton to Peachland.

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

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

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

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox, on Vancouver Island.

N. Simons: Nicholas Simons. I represent Powell River–​Sunshine Coast.

B. D’Eith (Chair): To my left, I have Jennifer Arril, and in the back, we have Mariana Novis, from the Parliamentary Committees Office. They do a great deal of work for us to make sure we’re on time and at the meetings and work very hard. We thank them every day. We also have the amazing team from Hansard, Steve Weisgerber and Amanda Heffelfinger. Thank you very much for all the work that you do behind the scenes. We really appreciate it.

First, we are here in the McIntyre Room at the Trail Memorial Centre, and I would like to bring up B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association — David DeRosa.

Hello, David. How are you?

D. DeRosa: Good. Thanks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Nice to see you.

D. DeRosa: Nice to see you again.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Before you start, I love the fact that you can hear the Zamboni in the background. That’s fantastic. I love it.

Budget Consultation Presentations

B.C. PRINCIPALS AND
VICE-PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION

D. DeRosa: It’s bringing back memories.

My thanks to you for taking the time and energy to travel across B.C. and hear the diverse voices of our citizens and different organizations of British Columbia. Thank you for that. As a frequent traveller myself these days in my new role, I have to share my admiration for your ambitious schedule. Stephanie and I were talking about that.

[4:05 p.m.]

Welcome to my hometown, Trail, B.C., but not my current home. I’m living in Vancouver, with my new role. But in this building, I spent many, many days as a little guy playing hockey, a junior Smoke Eater. I returned as a parent, a parent-coach and then, as principal of the high school, was part of 11 graduation ceremonies in the arena, so it brings back lots of memories. In this room, we would always host a tea for our different graduation groups.

B. D’Eith (Chair): There seems to be a disproportionate number of championship banners up there. I don’t know. What is that?

D. DeRosa: We’re super proud of that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Congratulations.

D. DeRosa: Well, again, thank you for today and the opportunity.

Our association has prepared an in-depth submission, a written submission, that speaks to the vital role of quality leadership in B.C.’s education system and, specifically, the roles of principals and vice-principals in that context. The five recommendations before you are a reflection of trending challenges related to the roles and responsibilities of principals and vice-principals. Each recommendation addresses a challenge that has the potential to negatively impact our capacity to support the critical work that we do and, specifically, to ensure that British Columbia’s students have safe, structured and innovative learning environments.

It’s somewhat counterintuitive for me to be here to speak about me or my role or use that terminology. Our focus is kids and the students in our system and the support of our teachers and our support staff to ensure that those safe, structured environments are in place for all of our students. In terms of my role as one of an advocate and support for principals specifically, I’ll run through the recommendations just briefly.

Recommendation 1 addresses the growing reality that despite the increasing complexity of the work that we do, the roles and responsibilities of principals across B.C. continue to be very similar, yet the management of our personal services contracts continues to detract and interfere with our ability to support education and instructional leadership.

In recommendation No. 2, the implementation of the memorandum of agreement last year was truly a good-news story. Having another 4,000 professionals in the system was a welcome addition, but unfortunately, the early 2000 contract language limited just over 350 principals and vice-principals from continuing in their non-enrolling teaching positions.

The most dramatic impact was the one on special education. The system continues to struggle with the lack of expertise and qualified special education instructors. In that context, we are also seeing a recruitment challenge around that. A significant number of our P/VPs across the province come from a special education background. Very similar professional experiences and paths and passion. So we’re seeing a number of our potential recruits not carrying on a path of leadership because of that circumstance.

No. 3 acknowledges the fact that when teachers receive a compensation enhancement or increase, school district budgets are increased accordingly. When principals and vice-principals and exempt staff are afforded the opportunity of a compensation increase, many districts are challenged to find the dollars in their block funding budgets. So in very simple terms, raises for teachers and support staff are funded. Raises for exempt staff are not, and then it comes out of the block funding — or not.

No. 4. My wife is a teacher. In 58 of 60 school districts in British Columbia, a number of my colleagues face the same circumstance. The teacher benefits plans are roughly double those of the principals and vice-principals and exempt staff that actually supervise and provide the support in their roles.

Leadership recruitment is an ongoing challenge, in rural and northern districts especially so. It’s just a small example of a very challenging situation. When I explain to a veteran teacher that the move from that teacher-leader position into a principal or vice-principal role will result in losing three-quarters of their braces benefits plan, it doesn’t go over well.

The last item. The K-to-12 sector partners recently received good news — that we will be receiving funding over the next three years for a leadership development program. We’re very appreciative and request that the support continues to provide necessary leadership growth and development for our world-class system.

[4:10 p.m.]

In closing, B.C. is one of the highest-performing and equit­able education systems in the world. Principals and vice-principals play a pivotal role in supporting, influencing and leading the schools across our province. We also require new support structures as we continue to lead and support innovative learning environments in B.C. for our citizens, for our parents and for our children.

Thank you for considering our five recommendations. We feel that with your support, the teacher-leaders of today and tomorrow will continue to grow and develop, enhancing our safe, innovative and world-class schools.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, David. Appreciate that. Can I just clarify a couple of things? Right now the BCPVPA is not recognized as a negotiating agent, so you’re asking for that recognition as the negotiating agent.

D. DeRosa: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just wanted to clarify that.

D. DeRosa: Currently it’s personal services contracts, individual….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right. So it’s individual. I see. I just wanted to clarify that.

Then secondly, could you just…? I remember this from last year, of course, this discussion of the separation from the agreement, the Supreme Court decision, and how principals and vice-principals are separated from teachers. Could you just explain that and, again, just maybe emphasize what resolution you’d like to see to that?

D. DeRosa: Sure. Thirty years ago, basically, to the day…. Or do you mean the MOA?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was talking about the MOA and the Supreme Court. And then how does this…

D. DeRosa: …impact?

The memorandum of agreement is a good thing. The challenge is, in one specific example…. I should know exactly how many school districts, but in a significant number of school districts, the contract limits principals and vice-principals from holding non-enrolling teaching positions.

In a very simple explanation of that, we have a significant number — 350 — of people who are trained as special education teachers and resource support teachers who also have a principal or vice-principal role. They have to make a choice. We had a number choose special education and leave their role as a principal.

When you look at 350, it doesn’t sound like a lot when we’re talking 40,000, but it typically equates to about 350 schools, and typically, it’s in our rural, northern, smaller communities where the principal is wearing a few different hats and arrives at that principal role through their professional growth in special education.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thanks for clarifying that for me. Questions?

You also mentioned the benefits. You were saying that the teachers have a better benefits package than principals and vice-principals. Is that also kind of because of this separation?

D. DeRosa: No. I think over time…. If I go back to roughly 2008, there was, essentially, a compensation freeze for exempt staff and management across all the sectors in B.C. So specifically in the K-to-12 education sector, we were part of that freeze. From 2008 to 2014, my salary was static, and my benefits remained the same.

In that same time frame, the BCTF negotiated, on behalf of teachers, enhancements to their benefits and salary packages. On several occasions and in several different districts, there were teachers actually not only with better benefits packages but making more than a vice-principal. So very, very challenging for us to recruit teacher-leaders into the role of principal or vice-principal, and that continues.

In 2014, BCPSEA presented a significant body of information through the Realities, Risks and Rewards document which outlined a growing trend and significant concern for leadership across the sector.

I’m here to represent principals and vice-principals, but we are the sort of recruiting pool for district roles — assistant superintendents and superintendents. BCPSEA’s document addressed significant concerns about how we will be recruiting leaders across the K-to-12 sector. The trends are consistent with what their concerns were.

[4:15 p.m.]

T. Redies: David, you must have had conversations with the ministry with respect to this situation. Can you give us any sort of sense of what those conversations were and where they are?

D. DeRosa: In 2014, the ministry, through PSAC and BCPSEA, implemented the actual regional salary grid, which is the first step to a provincial structure. There were three levels on the grid, and the specifics related to how one would move from A to B and B to C.

The initial work was to bring, across the system, principals and vice-principals to A. In the interim, as that process has played out over the last 4½ years, teachers have been receiving incremental salary increases, so in fact, the compression challenge was happening again.

I guess to answer your question, yes, we have a great work­ing relationship with the Ministry of Education and BCPSEA. The challenges that were outlined three or four years ago unfortunately remain, and that’s why I’m here today: to present those concerns respectfully.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, we’re out of time, but thank you very much, David, for presenting. We really appreciate it.

D. DeRosa: Thank you. Good luck with the rest of your travels.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Selkirk College Students Union — David Blackwell and Santanna Hernandez.

Hello. How are you?

S. Hernandez: Good. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. Just a reminder that we try to keep the initial presentation to around five minutes, if you can. Then that allows us five minutes of time to ask questions.

SELKIRK COLLEGE STUDENTS UNION

S. Hernandez: Good afternoon, standing committee members. My name is Santanna Hernandez, and I’m the chairperson of the Selkirk College Students Union. I have with me David Blackwell, who is a staff member and resource person for our organization.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional territories of the Sinixt Syilx, the Ktunaxa people for whose traditional territory I am a guest.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You said that way better than me. Way better.

S. Hernandez: I’ve had a lot of practice.

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

The students union exists to provide member services to students in West Kootenay and to advocate for a high-quality system of publicly funded and administered post-secondary education. To this end, we are privileged and happy to be able to speak to you today about our college.

We want to ensure that you hear Selkirk College student perspectives on a number of topics, including tuition fees and the regulation of international fees, student financial assistance and funding for post-secondary education.

We also want to note our support for the recommendations you’ll be hearing from the B.C. Federation of Students. These would be too exhaustive to cover in our short time together, so a more fulsome report will be delivered to you. Today we hope to highlight two recommendations: implementing a tuition freeze and implementing an upfront student grant program.

It’s our recommendation that the government freeze tuition. I know that this will be slightly different than some of the messaging that you have heard across the province, but we still think it is an important issue for students across this province.

Tuition fees are the single largest barrier to attending post-secondary education. I grew up in Mission, B.C., and I was taught in post-secondary that it was something that I wouldn’t be able to afford or obtain as an Indigenous student in a lower-class family. According to Stats Canada, last year, B.C. had an average undergraduate student pay between $4,933 and $5,298 in tuition fees, depending on their program. As a science student with lab fees, my tuition was over $6,000 a year.

In the past, the various governments have made claims that because B.C.’s tuitions were about average compared to other provinces, there was no problem, without considering the vast living cost differences we see across this country or the objective problems of high fees in all provinces. Frankly, I do not want a government that strives to be average.

[4:20 p.m.]

Most newly created jobs require some level of post-secondary education, meaning that this level of education can no longer be considered a choice. It is non-optional in the same way a high school graduation would have been in the past.

I personally returned to school in 2014 after having my four children, recognizing that if I planned on joining the workforce in a meaningful way, I could not do that with the level of education that I had. I began in adult basic education, which I would not have been able to do had it not had free tuition. I then struggled to come up with the funding to continue my education after upgrading, with thanks to the En’owkin Centre who got me started in Penticton. I then held my breath all summer — and I do this every summer — to make sure that the scholarships and loans come in to support each continual year.

Essentially, tuition fees have turned into a tax the government is using in order for us to fund post-secondary institutions. About 50 percent of post-secondary students take out a loan from the government in order to pay for education taxes. I am currently $40,000 in student loan debt. I’m not finished my degree and still plan on attending medical school, so that number is only going to grow. Clearly, when citizens are forced to take out loans to pay their taxes, the tax scheme is deserving some overhaul.

Student debt has never been higher than it is right now both in B.C. and across this country. It’s extremely frustrating to know that my same degree will cost my peers substantially less because they have the means to pay the tuition outright, while I am taxed by interest rates, making my degree cost thousands of dollars more. High student debt burdens young people from purchasing homes, starting families, and when paying off student debts, investments that would normally stimulate local economies get put off or forgone entirely.

Post-secondary institutions are increasingly turning to underhanded and exploitive techniques to maximize the revenue in the face of a lack of funding from the province. Some of these practices are unsustainable and risky for the health of the education system.

The clearest example of this is the rising dependence on international students as a funding source. International students pay many times the rate of domestic students, and some institutions actually call them revenue-generating units in their budget lines. This is poor practice, and it also represents an economic risk for the province because international students contribute $1.77 billion to the provincial GDP.

In response to the matter of increasing education taxes, we recommend that the government implement a freeze on tuition fees for domestic students and provide a multi-year schedule for international students. Freezing tuition fees is not a new concept. Alberta is going into its fourth year of a tuition freeze, and in B.C. we saw tuition freezes as recently as 2001.

Given the time that we have, I’ll stop there and then allow for….

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, you can finish. Go ahead.

S. Hernandez: Okay. As a complementary policy to a tuition fee freeze, students at Selkirk are calling for a reintroduction of an upfront student grants program. Student debt continues to be an increasing problem in British Columbia. In 2018, B.C. graduates survey found that one in two students graduated with a debt and nearly 65 percent of those graduates owed more than $20,000. On top of this, the average student loan debt is over $30,000.

As bad as they are, those numbers are not even telling you the truth because they do not account for students who have dropped out of school, who are still in school or have personal debt such as lines of credit or family borrowing. This forces students to delay very important milestones. A 2018 RBC report shows that 50 percent of recent graduates report not saving enough for emergencies, 45 percent delay home purchases and 25 percent delay having children.

Grant programs are not unique. We see this in Newfoundland as well as Ontario, which offer upfront needs-based grant programs for students. Recent public polling shows that the public agrees with a grant program. Sixty-eight percent of British Columbians support the idea of a needs-based upfront grants program.

The current mandated completion grant program would actually take away from grants that I have personally received. The current government mandated a $1,000 completion grant for students which would replace the current model in which I received a $7,000 completion grant after my two-year diploma, meaning I would lose out on $6,000 toward my debt.

I’ll finish with a statement, saying again that our organization appreciates the time that we’ve had to present to the committee today. The 2019 budget is an opportunity for the government to show that it hears the concerns of students, and we will work to ensure that anyone who needs an education will be able to have a fair shake. Post-secondary education is a complex and expensive government service, but its success is critical for our province’s future and the economic plans of the people in our province.

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

Before we go to questions, I just wanted…. You’re from Mission?

[4:25 p.m.]

S. Hernandez: I grew up in Mission. I graduated from MSS.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s my riding. I represent Mission. I just wanted to say how impressed I am to have someone of your eloquence coming from our riding. Also the fact that you have so much passion for this. Thank you so much for that. Also, it takes a lot of courage to go back after you’ve had your children. It’s a tough, tough thing. You’ve shown courage going back and doing this. So good for you. We really appreciate that. It’s also great that you’re coming out and advocating on behalf of the students. So thank you.

S. Hernandez: I definitely do not want students in high school to have the same experience that I did moving forward. I try to work really hard to make it so that no student thinks that they can’t access post-secondary education.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fantastic. That’s a very good goal.

Any questions?

N. Simons: I had a question. Thank you very much for your presentation. You mentioned something about the $1,000 completion grant. Can you just elaborate on what you meant with the $7,000 and you’d miss out on…?

S. Hernandez: Currently, in the mandate letter to Minister Mark, it says that they want her to implement a $1,000 completion grant. That was part of what Premier Horgan said that she should be doing. But I don’t know if it was that she didn’t realize there was already a grants program in place for completion grants, because I received a completion grant after my second year, when I finished my liberal arts and science diploma, for $7,000.

If they’re going to replace the current model to give me $1,000, my debt would have been $6,000 higher than what it is right now because I would have only gotten that $1,000, and it’s not going to reduce. When I finish my degree this time, if that model changes, am I going to get the $7,000? Or are they going to change it, and I’m only going to get $1,000, which means my debt amount would increase substantially? Then I’m paying interest on top of that over and over.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is that potentially, possibly, a different program than the one that is in the letter?

S. Hernandez: I couldn’t give a specific…. It said…. I was awarded a completion grant. I don’t know that they’re going to create another completion grant. You guys have restraints with money, so I can’t imagine that there’s money for them to create a second completion grant program. That just doesn’t seem possible.

T. Redies: Thanks, Santanna. I remember you from last year. I really commend you and what you’ve been able to achieve and what you’re trying to do with your life. Well done.

The current government had indicated that they were going to look at the interest on student loans. You’re talking about needs-based grants. Of course, government has to fund multiple things, so they can’t give everything. Which would be more beneficial from your perspective, zero interest on loans or the needs-based grants?

S. Hernandez: I am not a math person. I don’t know if David can pull that number off the top of his head, but to me, it’s going to take me a long time to pay off that $40,000 plus whatever I incur from medical school given that my tuition is going to be $20,000 to $50,000 a year depending on what school I get into.

I imagine that the interest on that over the amount of time that I’m going to take to pay off would be higher. Elimination on interest is part of our report, and it’s been something we haven’t given up on. I was speaking to Andrew Weaver about this a few weeks ago because it is still something that we care about and something that we want to see because it was promised from that government.

Without being able to calculate the math, I couldn’t tell which….

D. Blackwell: As a bit of a math person, I can tell you that any substantial interest is going to produce an exponential growth curve. Beyond that, speaking more from memory, what comes to my mind faster than the numbers is actually a recent conversation with a Selkirk College employee who has already paid off her principal on her tuition more than once and still owes it because of the interest.

Unless you’re going to have a grant, in her case, equal to her tuition, then the interest….

B. D’Eith (Chair): So right now it’s at prime. It was prime plus. Now it’s prime. The government is looking at more things.

N. Simons: I just wanted to clarify again on the completion grant. My understanding is that not everybody gets that — the $7,000. It’s specific to certain programs and individuals. I don’t know if you know more about that or if I’ll just have to do some research.

[4:30 p.m.]

S. Hernandez: I’ve personally tried to look to see how they decide that. I haven’t been able to find anywhere. If you do find that out, I would love that information, to know.

Student debt. We talk about how much we have, but we don’t go: “How much have you paid off?” I couldn’t tell you from conversations…. I know a lot of people haven’t gotten a completion grant. I know a lot of people do not complete their education because they can’t get to that point. The fear of going another $15,000 or $20,000 in debt for another year of education is a risk a lot of people aren’t willing to take. We aren’t even getting people to the end of their degrees, which means we’re not getting people into the workforce who could contribute to our economy in the final spot, right?

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time. Thank you very much, again, for your presentation. We appreciate all the passion that you put into this. Obviously, post-secondary is very, very important to all of us on this committee. It doesn’t matter what party you’re from. We will go back and talk at length about all this.

Next up we have Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy. We have Carolyn Amantea and Kyoko Smith.

Welcome.

COLUMBIA BASIN
ALLIANCE FOR LITERACY

C. Amantea: My name is Carolyn Amantea, and I am the literacy outreach coordinator for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy in Trail and area. This is Kyoko Smith. She is actually one of my colleagues from Castlegar but does have a story to tell you about her experience with CBAL.

CBAL, as we are affectionately known, is the Columbia Basin and Boundary region’s not-for-profit literacy organization. We employ 16 literacy outreach coordinators. Within that, we serve 77 communities, from Valemount west to the Boundary and east to the Elk Valley.

We’d like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you again about the importance of literacy. We’re grateful that people in our communities are invited to tell you more about what’s needed to support the work of the LOCs. I believe our executive director, Desneiges Profili, will be providing a more comprehensive electronic submission on our behalf, but I will send along our presentation after, electronically.

Thank you, as well, for your recommendation last year to increase funding to local, regional and provincial literacy organizations to support the delivery, development and evaluation of community-based literacy programming. We serve all age groups and all demographics, from the littlest citizens right up to our seniors, Indigenous peoples and immigrants. All of our programming is free, which is a pretty wonderful thing to be able to offer in this day and age.

Continued support from the province reflects the understanding of the importance of literacy and the key roles it plays in helping ensure that all British Columbians have the ability to communicate effectively, to acquire essential workplace skills and financial skills and to give their children a strong literacy foundation early in life. We know that literacy skills are linked to strong and resilient communities. There is a lot of talk of that in Trail and area with the local poverty reduction initiative, at which I sit at the table to make recommendations for them.

I would like to tell you about Together to Learn. It’s a snapshot of a regional program offered in partnership with Selkirk College and, in Castlegar, with Kootenay Family Place. Parents working in adult basic education or upgrading are supported in a tutorial setting with a Selkirk College instructor once a week, while the CBAL staff provide a family literacy program, complete with a healthy snack, songs, stories, crafts and things. We invite guest speakers monthly from our community to help present on community programs, as well as services, offered to them.

I’m going to tell you a story about a young mother of four who completed her adult basic education. She was successful in upgrading in order to enter her rural pre-medicine program. She’s now working on her bachelor of social work with the intention of entering medical school.

[4:35 p.m.]

She’s a strong advocate for our program and asked me just the other day, in the coffee shop, how many students we had and how she could help us to promote this. She firmly believes that without the support of this program, and this kind of programming in our community, she wouldn’t be successful in realizing her dreams.

Literacy programs provide an opportunity for people to learn, to challenge themselves and to make important connections with others. Kyoko would like to share her story of success with you.

K. Smith: Hi, I’m Kyoko. I’m very appreciative of you giving me an opportunity to share my experience with CBAL. I moved to Canada almost eight years ago from Japan. I was a new immigrant and a new mom. I stayed at home with two young children. I was away from home, family, friends and society. I felt isolated and needed to find a way to connect to people and society.

I researched children’s programs in the area and found ESL Family Time, Mother Goose and StrongStart, run by CBAL. Those programs changed my life for the better. I still remember the CBAL staff were kind and warm. They welcomed us when we first joined the program. They asked me, “How old are your kids?” and “Where are you from?” and at the end said: “We are glad you came today.” Those conversations seem quite normal, but for me as a new, isolated immigrant, it was very important. I felt connected and relieved.

This family literacy program had many benefits. I met other parents, learned English and received support for my children. Learning at home enriched my children’s lives and enabled me to meet immigrants from all over the world who were also learning to adjust to life in Canada. We all had similar situations, so we connected well, shared our feelings and learned how to build our own life in Canada.

CBAL provided us with lots of information and constant support. I was able to make many valuable friendships through the CBAL programs. We participated in the family literacy program from when my children were infants. We received so many benefits. We had an opportunity to interact in a fun, safe and creative place. Those experiences made us stronger, and it created healthy relationships.

The family literacy program built up a great routine of reading at home, improved emotional and social skills for the entire family and helped my children develop their self-esteem, confidence and positive attitude towards learning. My children are enrolled in school now, but we are continuing to participate in CBAL programs at the school, such as PALS, Parents as Literacy Supporters, for kindergarten and Come Read with Me for grade 1s. I am always happy to see my children’s brighter smiles when I show up and participate in programs at their school.

In conclusion, there is one other point I would like to add. Often, new immigrants or new parents feel isolated from society. If it were not for the support I received from CBAL, it’s very likely that I would not have survived in Canada. The social and family support programs in this country are the main reason why I am a happy and prosperous new immigrant and why my children are well adjusted and thriving. Those programs have made a tremendous difference and are what makes Canada the great country that it is. I cannot express my appreciation enough.

Thank you for the time today so that I actually had the opportunity to be heard. Thank you so much.

C. Amantea: We see many stories like this from immigrant families to just local isolated families, isolated seniors. Senior citizens in our society do find themselves isolated. We offer digital literacy programs for them, writing programs and things that help them to feel really well in their communities.

[4:40 p.m.]

We’re encouraged for the future. We see commitment happening locally, provincially and federally from our governments. Decoda Literacy Solutions, businesses and other key stakeholders are all talking about literacy.

This September we’ve seen communities embrace Decoda Literacy Solutions’ Literacy Is Life campaign, and municipalities, including Trail, have declared September as Literacy Month.

Coming up in October, CBAL’s Reach a Reader campaign — the focus again this year is books for kids — will keep that topic front and centre in our communities.

In closing, we would like to emphasize that a strong commitment from local government and provincial government significantly impacts our ability to leverage other federal, provincial, regional and local funding that we rely on to deliver the vast array of programs that we do. Within CBAL, over half of our annual budget comes from these additional sources.

We ask that the government of British Columbia provide increased funding again this year for the coordination of literacy work annually, as was recommended last year. It’s estimated by Decoda Literacy Solutions that approximately $2.5 million is required to support literacy outreach coordinators in all the communities in British Columbia.

Thank you very much for your time today.

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

C. Amantea: You’re welcome.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

N. Simons: I just want to say it was a very good presentation. It was really nice to hear the first-hand experience. I think that adds a lot to making the case. It was a beautifully told story of your arrival and success here. Thank you for sharing that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s important to know that literacy is not just about reading and writing and speaking. There’s so much more to that in terms of, as you mentioned, poverty reduction or new Canadians — new people coming in — con­fidence, isolation. There are so many components to literacy.

Thank you for putting it in context, because that actually helps us as a committee. Often you get asks, but there’s no context and there’s no depth to the reason why we should support things.

We really appreciate you spending the time coming in. It helped. I’m glad that you had a positive experience from that.

I agree. Canada is wonderful.

C. Amantea: We are pretty lucky, for sure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): My family immigrated here from Hong Kong when I was young too — from Asia. They chose this country, and I’m glad they did.

Okay. Any other questions?

Well, thank you so much for your presentation. Really nice seeing you.

Next up we have the AMS, the Alma Mater Society, from University of British Columbia, via teleconference. We have Jason Tockman and Cristina Ilnitchi.

Welcome. The format is…. If you wouldn’t mind, we’d like about five minutes for your initial comments and then give the committee about five minutes of time to ask some questions.

If you wanted to go ahead, that would be great.

ALMA MATER SOCIETY OF UBC

C. Ilnitchi: Wonderful. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Cristina Ilnitchi, and I serve as the executive vice-president responsible for government relations. I’m presenting on behalf of the 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students that comprise the Alma Mater Society of UBC.

The AMS brings to the committee two funding issues that we see as crucial to the success of post-secondary education in B.C. First, I will comment on the province’s system of student financial assistance, which we believe needs to be expanded to serve the low- to middle-income families that require the most support. Second, I will propose that funding is needed to meaningfully implement the Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act, which the Legislative Assembly passed in 2016.

The AMS doesn’t need to inform members of the committee that the cost of living in the province is high or that many in Vancouver are struggling to cover their expenses. The ever-increasing costs of post-secondary education, including tuition, fees and textbooks, not to mention other necessary expenses like housing and food, means that many students experience financial hardship during their studies and are saddled with onerous debt upon graduation.

According to research that the AMS has contracted with the polling firm Insights West, 43 percent of UBC undergraduate students and 48 percent of graduate students report financial hardship related to tuition and other expenses, and 16 percent of undergraduates and 23 percent of graduate students say they may need to drop out of UBC for financial reasons.

[4:45 p.m.]

Meanwhile, of the 37 percent of UBC students that anticipate debt upon graduation, 62 percent expect to owe more than $25,000, and of those, 35 percent expect a debt of more than $50,000.

It is urgent that the province take seriously the growing affordability and accessibility crisis in B.C.’s post-secondary education system. Towards that end, the AMS believes that it is time for the provincial government to undertake a substantial reform of the student financial assistance program. Student grants are an effective way to support low- to middle-income students who would otherwise have difficulty covering the costs of tuition, fees and other education-related expenses.

Such a system already is in place in other provinces, such as Ontario. We hope B.C. will consider a model based on the Ontario student assistance program, OSAP, which consolidated all existing grants into the Ontario student grant. This system provides support equal to or higher than the average cost of tuition for students with family incomes under $50,000 and independent students who earn less than $30,000, although many students and families with incomes beyond these thresholds also benefit from the grants.

Complementary to the expansion of the student grant program, the AMS enthusiastically supports the current government’s pledge to make post-secondary loans interest-free. These two measures will ensure that higher education in B.C. is affordable and accessible and will contribute to a more fair and equitable society overall.

Lastly, with regard to the province’s related promise to institute a $1,000 completion grant, the AMS believes that such a program is not the most effective way to address the needs of students. While we support the intent behind the completion grant, we hope that there will be an opportunity for students in B.C. to be involved in the discussion about when and how new financial assistance is made available.

Now to speak on support for sexual violence services. Since the sexual violence and misconduct policy came into force in 2017, all post-secondary institutions have been required to adopt policies to address sexual violence on campus.

For the last few years, the AMS has been working to hold UBC accountable in the university’s creation and implementation of its stand-alone sexual violence policy. Being involved throughout this process, we recognize how fortunate UBC is to be a large institution with many resources to direct to this important issue. However, the degree to which policies have been enacted varies widely from one school to another, largely as a consequence of available resources.

Larger schools have been able to do far more, including establishing dedicated offices and staff. For example, at UBC, we not only have the sexual violence prevention and re­sponse office but also an independent investigations office. Both employ full-time staff. These services are not a “nice to have”; they are vital, considering 10 percent of UBC students report that they have experienced sexualized violence or misconduct from another member of the university community.

While we are absolutely thrilled to support UBC as it establishes these necessary services in support of survivors, we understand from speaking with our colleagues at other schools that such services are inconsistently adopted across the province. Many lack dedicated offices that are equipped to handle disclosures, support, reporting and investigations. Out of 25 post-secondary institutions in B.C., only five have dedicated offices to support survivors of sexual violence.

One of our major concerns is that a lack of visibility for this issue on campuses may continue to discourage students from seeking support or reporting their assault. Without the proper infrastructure to support survivors in a trauma-centred manner, they are also more likely to experience emotional difficulties, which can lead to things like poor academic performance, as well as withdrawal from the university.

The AMS, therefore, encourages the province to reinforce the importance of the gains from the Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act by pairing policy with financial support. We would like to see B.C. conduct an assessment of universities’ and colleges’ financial needs to determine where additional funding should be directed to ensure that the act is being effectively implemented.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wow. Exactly five minutes — amazing. Well done.

C. Ilnitchi: I timed that one.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good job. We have actually had presentations from a number of student organizations in British Columbia. This is actually the first time, I think, we’ve heard about the sexual violence piece, but we’ve heard quite a bit about the cost of living, affordability and that side of the equation. Certainly, that has to all be taken into account, we understand.

Just to reiterate, your position is that the $1,000 completion grant is not something that you support, that you’re more interested in a grant program that is similar to what’s happening in Ontario. Is that correct?

[4:50 p.m.]

C. Ilnitchi: Yes, that’s what we’re saying. What we hope is that this funding could go towards grants that support low- to middle-income students, who probably need that funding more towards the beginning of their studies or throughout, rather than at the very end when they’ve completed.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was just curious, too, because you mentioned other costs like textbooks and housing and things like that. Has the AMS looked into the housing needs?

You’re 56,000 UBC students. It’s a lot; it’s a city. I’m wondering if the AMS has looked at the needs and steps that are being taken to address those needs for, let’s say, on-campus housing or other types of housing.

C. Ilnitchi: Yeah. With the NDP’s commitment to the millions of dollars towards student housing…. We have been following up with that. The student housing working group is kind of dealing with what the implementation of that looks like and how that’s going to be allocated across the province. We’ve been following up with them.

It’s really exciting for us to see that go forward. Student housing is something that we always ask for an investment in, from the AMS’s side. We recognize that investing in student housing also alleviates pressure off the Vancouver housing market, in general, so it is something that we’ve been following up on and something that we continuously do work on as well.

J. Tockman: This is Jason Tockman, policy adviser here at the AMS. I just wanted to add that UBC is investing in new student housing. They are currently doing the advance work for the design of the Pacific residences, which are supposed to supply 1,000 additional beds for university housing. We think that that’s really important.

Also, I was just at a meeting of the board of governors of UBC last week, and they emphasized that they are around 6,000 beds short of the demand that they’re getting each fall. So while there are advances in student housing, there’s quite a long way to go.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Some students have also talked about textbooks and the idea of some open textbooks. Could you just talk a little bit to that? One of the things that….

I’ve actually written a textbook for college, and if somebody is going to create a textbook, they want to be able to make some money from that or be incentivized, actually, to do the ridiculous amount of work it is to put a textbook together.

I’m just curious how that works. Maybe you could explain that to me.

C. Ilnitchi: Open educational resources are something that the AMS has been advocating for, for the past four years. UBC has generally been a school that’s been willing to have these conversations about open ed.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve had some policy wins at the institution, especially when they name open educational resources as a way to get recognition through the education stream for tenure promotion. But it’s things like barriers to the fact that a lot of the professors who write open textbooks are not getting the recognition for it as they would if they were to publish in another academic paper, or they’re not getting compensated for many, many hours of work and labour that goes into creating these textbooks.

On our end, of course, we would support more funding towards BCcampus and supporting institutions to incentivize their faculty members to write these resources and be compensated fairly for it. At the same time, we also recognize that there’s a lot of policy work that needs to go into promoting open educational resources and limiting the cost of digital assessment materials, for example, which are basically course access codes that publishers attach to new editions of textbooks that drives the cost up every single year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. I mean, in a sense, it’s a bit of paradigm shift in terms of learning and textbooks. I’m very interested in this. We heard about it last year, and I’m pleased to hear that more dialogue is being had on this. So thank you very much.

Sorry, I have totally dominated this question period. Is there anyone else who would like to ask any questions at all? I think maybe I asked them all.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate all the passion you put in. I served on the UVic AMS, and I know how much work it is in addition to your studies. I really appreciate all the time and effort you’re putting in, so thanks again for your presentation.

C. Ilnitchi: Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate it. It was a pleasure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to have a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:55 p.m.