The committee met at 8:28 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

We are very thankful today to be on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people, today known as the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. I would like to acknowledge their traditions, values and enduring wisdom and also say how beautiful this building is and also the area we’re in. It’s amazing.

Just to say that part of what we’re doing as part of the Finance Committee, now, is trying to get out into the communities so we’re not always under the dome over there. We’re very pleased to be in Esquimalt. Thank you for having us.

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

We are 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 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, and there are copies over there if you would like to have one.

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 this is 5 p.m., Monday, October 15, 2018. Or for more information, you can go to our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance.

[8:30 a.m.]

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 written report will be available on November 15, 2018.

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

As far as the format today, we have a number of registered speakers today. Each speaker will have five minutes, followed by five minutes of questions. There is also a first-come, first-served open-mike period near the end, time permitting, with five minutes allotted to each speaker. If you’d like to speak, please see Stephanie at the information table. Today’s meeting is being recorded and transcribed by Hansard, behind me here. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live via our website, and a complete transcript is also posted.

Now it’s with great pleasure that I turn the mike over to my Deputy Chair, Dan Ashton, to introduce himself, and we can allow all the members to introduce themselves.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Dan Ashton. I represent the area of Penticton to Peachland. I hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving.

P. Milobar: Good morning. Peter Milobar, MLA, Kamloops–​North Thompson.

T. Redies: Good morning. MLA Tracy Redies for White Rock–Surrey.

S. Cadieux: Stephanie Cadieux, South Surrey.

S. Furstenau: Sonia Furstenau, Cowichan Valley.

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

M. Dean: I’m Mitzi Dean. I’m the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin. I’m very proud that we’re actually having this session here today in my constituency.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d like to thank the Parliamentary Committees Office — Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond, who’s over there — and also Mike Baer and Steve Weisgerber from Hansard Services, who are here to record the proceedings.

First up we have the National Elevator and Escalator Association — Michael Hutchison and Christian von Donat.

Hello. How are you? Welcome. We’re trying to keep the opening comments to five minutes, if we can, to give us a chance to ask questions, all right? Go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations

NATIONAL ELEVATOR
AND ESCALATOR ASSOCIATION

C. von Donat: Thank you, Chair. Hon. Members of the Standing Committee on Finance, good morning.

I’d like to begin today by expressing our thanks for the invitation to appear before you. My name is Christian von Donat. I’m joined by my colleague Michael Hutchison. Together we represent the National Elevator and Escalator Association, or NEEA.

NEEA proudly represents the four largest manufacturers of elevating devices and escalating devices globally and in Canada. Those four are Kone, Otis, Schindler and Thyssen­krupp.

NEEA has been an association in Canada since the early 1970s. In that time, our industry has undergone tremendous advances in both innovation and modernization. Our members continue to drive innovation and technological ad­vances within the elevating industry, aimed at delivering the best possible experience to the riding public. For example, with the implementation of modern systems like destination control, and the incorporation of smart computing, our members strive to better understand traffic patterns and use available sensors to develop individualized operating systems unique to each elevator.

The industry is constantly adapting to meet the new demands of our buildings and from the public. I’d be remiss if I did not mention safety as the number one principle in our industry, safety for both the riding public and those who install and service elevators and escalators. Each member takes safety very seriously and is proud of the safety record in British Columbia.

NEEA and its members have been an integral part of B.C. over the last number of decades. The growth and continued success of this province is tied to the innovative and reliable products our members offer, as well as the high level of professionalism and expertise of our workforce, to meet the needs of buildings across the province. As B.C. grows more and more vertical, our members and their teams have been meeting the needs of builders, residents, building owners, businesses and the general riding public. We look forward to continuing to be a part of the province’s growth. By building a sustainable economy, the success and growth of our communities will lead to continued success in our industry.

[8:35 a.m.]

Our members are proud of the services they offer and advocate for policies that incentivize new sustainable development, attract businesses to the region and continue to strengthen the conditions that make B.C. a supportive place for business.

We support policies that address the need for more housing in the province, in particular the Vancouver area. We believe that as taller and taller buildings continue to be developed in the region, appropriate consideration must be given to ensure that the adequate number of elevators are installed to service these buildings, understanding that elevators are routinely held out of service to the public in order to provide service to the building, to facilitate a move or for recurring preventative and routine maintenance to ensure continued safe operation.

We also support capital improvement funds for government-owned buildings where transportation system modernization is deemed necessary and to the benefit of residents. There have been instances where government funding announcements for modernization have not included transportation systems. These are vital assets owned by the building owner and should be included to ensure they are meeting present needs and volume levels while operating with 21st-century technologies.

With this in mind, we recommend the government also ensure it has ongoing plans in place to ensure the transportation systems of public buildings are modernized and meeting the needs of those they serve. This includes hospitals, schools and universities, and public offices that deliver services. As an association, we ask this government to ensure that as it develops programs and policies targeted towards B.C.’s vertical communities, that NEEA and its members are consulted in those developments. We have strong working relationships with regulators and officials across Canada, and B.C. should be no exception.

The National Elevator and Escalator Association is looking forward to working with British Columbians to continue to bring innovative transportation solutions to this province, creating the infrastructure and systems for residents to feel safe and comfortable and ensuring businesses have the tools they need to succeed. There is no limit to what we can accomplish together, and we look forward to those exciting possibilities.

Thank you for your time today. We’d be happy to answer any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. I’m just wondering. Do you have a different relationship with B.C., compared to other jurisdictions? You’re a national organization. Is there another province, for example, that B.C. could be aspiring to follow their lead in this area?

C. von Donat: It’s a very good question. Thank you for it. Unlike several other associations, we don’t really have provincial counterparts. As a national association, we do represent our members across Canada in every jurisdiction. The regulators are set up at a provincial level across Canada, so we interact mostly on a province-by-province basis.

We recommend, wherever possible, that within the framework structure for policies and regulatory framework, every province look at best practices of other regulators in the country. Now, there are jurisdictions, like Quebec, that are almost completely deregulated within our industry. They are a bit unique. But I wouldn’t say that British Columbia, as a whole, is different from most of the other jurisdictions within Canada.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have a question. Could you tell me, specifically, the types of things that you’re asking for? You said, generally, that we should consult, but are there any specific recommendations or specific issues that you’re interested in us looking at?

C. von Donat: Sure. I’ll give you a couple of quick pieces. When we talk about making sure we’re modernizing systems…. I touched on the point that there have been an­nouncements in the past where government will announce funds for government-owned buildings to be modernized but will specifically not include transportation systems. Sometimes you have elevators that would be 40 years old, using circuit boards that are serviced by computers that haven’t been built in 30 years.

Contractors have to go out and service these kinds of units using computers from the early ’90s to try and plug in and update these circuit boards. It’s really quite something to see if you ever go to one of these sites where they’re maintaining the older equipment like that. When you look at those kinds of factors and you look at the factor that there are more people using those elevators, more use on a daily basis in terms of the number of overall trips….

What we’ve been asking the government is to ensure, when they are looking at modernization for government-owned buildings, that the transportation systems are part of that. Unfortunately, there are situations where there are buildings that have elevators and it is more cost-effective to continue maintaining an elevator over many, many years, instead of saying: “Well, this is a 30-year-old asset. We should be looking at replacing it in the next couple of years.”

[8:40 a.m.]

One of the things, as we’ve been trying to get the message out — ideally with building owners as well — is there should be more of a conversation about ensuring that they have a framework in place, in due course, to replace their assets as needed, instead of just continuing to try and maintain something that’s older and older. That would be one big one, for sure.

The other big piece, I would say, is…. For us, it’s very important that buildings have the right number of elevators. Oftentimes a lot of frustration comes out of the fact that you might have a 30-storey building with two elevators and no framework in place to say: this is how many people will be using the elevator. We should have…. There’s an actual mathematical formula that’s in place in other jurisdictions. You can look at calculating how many elevators we should have, the size of the elevator, the capacities of those elevators.

Inevitably, if you’re in a residential building, there will always be moves, there will be ongoing yearly maintenance, and there will be other reasons to remove a unit from service. We would hate for a 30-storey building to have two elevators and one always be sort of taken out of service for moves and whatnot. If it’s a high-turnover area — for example, near a university — it’s going to be a frustrating experience for the other people who live there. So we’re setting ourselves up to encounter those kinds of problems.

You see this, more and more, not just in residences but, for example, in new hotels. They used to have separate service elevators for staff to go between the floors. Now they’re getting rid of those because the square footage is just so expensive. If you take another shaft through every single floor, it just becomes a cost-decision factor for building owners and developers. They decide: “Well, we can just have people use the main elevator.” But we’re also cutting those down simultaneously.

There are many different applications where we’re seeing that it’s getting to be more and more of a deciding factor, based on just the cost of building and the benefits to having more space available.

S. Cadieux: Can you comment, briefly, on the technical side of the trade, related to elevators? I know that there has been a move recently with technology. Certainly, in residential elevators, there are a lot more options available. One of the big challenges is that with all the pneumatics and things that are starting to come to market, nobody knows how to service them. Do you have a labour challenge in your industry?

C. von Donat: It’s a good question, and it’s a question that has come up before. In our opinion, Canada and B.C. have some of the best-trained people. Our four members do training on site in Canada, where they train their own contractors and maintenance contractors and those who build new elevators. So I wouldn’t say that there’s a labour issue, per se.

I think that it’s definitely an industry where innovation is a big aspect. It serves to help the riding public better when you look at destination control, where you press a button and it tells you which elevator to go to. That tries to pool individuals so that it becomes more efficient with process time.

These are elevators that are established around the world, and the technicians who service them are trained to the same standard that they would be in the United States or Germany or Hong Kong or wherever. I mean, there are complex manuals and training that are provided to the individuals that service these units. They definitely have the skills and the equipment to service them.

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

Next up we have Destination Greater Victoria — Darlene Hollstein and Graham Wallace.

How are you doing, Graham? Good to see you.

Just a reminder. We’re trying to keep the comments to five minutes so we have time for questions.

Darlene, all yours.

DESTINATION GREATER VICTORIA

D. Hollstein: Thank you so much for having us on your agenda today. Graham Wallace is our manager of governance, as well as special initiatives, and I’m a vice-chair on the Destination Greater Victoria board.

Who are we? We’re the official not-for-profit destination marketing organization, working in partnership with the 950 businesses that are members, as well as the municipalities in greater Victoria, governed by a board of 16 members that are made up of private industry, as well as not-for-profit. We have representatives from the city of Victoria and the district of Saanich sitting on the board.

[8:45 a.m.]

Our responsibilities have greatly grown over the past 12 months. We have added sports tourism to our portfolio, as well as special events that we’ve created in-house to complement our 12 months of the year to add in new programs, such as the Impact Sustainability Travel and Tourism conference and the Capital City Comic Con. And of course, we’re an advocate on major public policy files for our members. That is why we’re here today.

We have three items that we would like to briefly brief you on: the municipal and regional district tax, otherwise known as the MRDT; Ogden Point master plan and preclearance; and Belleville terminal.

MRDT. I’m picking it up because I only have five minutes. The MRDT is an up-to-3-percent tax applied to sales of short-term accommodation provided in participating areas. The MRDT funds are to be used to help grow B.C. revenues, visitation and jobs and to amplify B.C.’s tourism marketing efforts in an increasingly competitive marketplace through­out the world. As this is MRDT, it will be collected on Airbnb, with moneys collected from Airbnb potentially going to affordable housing projects.

There’s also the potential possibility that our traditional MRDT model will be used for affordable housing, as well, in future years. Destination Greater Victoria has eligible-entity status in Victoria and receives a large portion of the revenue to execute its mission through the MRDT fund, which is collected by the hotels in Victoria and Saanich.

This is our issue. The accommodation sector already pays 8 percent PST, so a full percentage more. This new tax regime creates conflict between our local government and the tourism industry and, in fact, puts us in a really bad position even currently, today, because our program only goes to 2021. We’re already bidding on projects in 2022, so we’re starting to have some challenges to actually operate the way we’ve been created to operate.

Ogden Point master plan and home-porting is our second item. Ogden Point cruise ship terminal is the busiest cruise port of call in Canada and is strategically positioned to become a secondary home port to the Alaska cruise region, as both Seattle and Vancouver face capacity issues and constraints. The economic benefit of a ship home-porting in Victoria over making a port-of-call stop is three to four times more, which is in the range of around $2 million per call.

Ogden Point master plan is fully developed and headed to rezoning, so we’re in a really good place there. There’s no conflict with Vancouver, as it sits on the outside passage and is spillover business from Seattle.

Our ask for the provincial government is to be briefed on this portfolio, as well as support this project at all levels of government. Noted: it’s already actually in the B.C. strategy development plan. It’s already on that docket. It’s a very im­portant piece of our business to stabilize the entire industry.

I also wanted to note that this U.S. CBP preclearance is critical to cruise ship home-porting operations in Victoria. There is commercial opportunity to be a home port now. It will spread economic impacts, of course, right across Vancouver Island.

Our third topic is Belleville terminal. These two kind of go hand in hand. Belleville terminal is located in the Inner Harbour and is the base for the ferry services between Victoria and the United States, by Clipper Navigation, to Seattle. Then the Black Ball ferry to Port Angeles — it handles passengers and vehicle traffic, as well as freight traffic. It’s very important to our businesses in the core of Victoria. It sits, of course, on provincial government–owned lands.

The three-phase approach to the terminal redevelopment has been adopted, and we’ve already completed two of those three phases, with the help of the provincial government, which we’re very thankful for. The first phase was comprised of a $17.4 million investment by the provincial government, Black Ball and Clipper to repair and upgrade the docks, which look fantastic.

Phase 2 completed the improvements around the public space and streetscape, as well as the David Foster pathway on the Inner Harbour, which Tourism Victoria supported with a $5 million donation over five years.

Phase 3 is probably the most critical and most complicated of the three phases, and that’s what we’re here for today. It involves upgrading the terminal building and establishing the preclearance facilities critical to growing, obviously, greater Victoria’s economy and helping us with the home-porting over at Ogden Point.

The issue is that phase 3 is with Minister Fleming, but the CBSA has not provided the plans that are required and information on the design and costing process. I know that Minister Fleming is working very hard to come up with a model that will make sense and will be palatable, and we totally support him and support all of you in making sure this hits the budget and pushes through.

[8:50 a.m.]

M. Dean: I have two questions, Chair. Is that okay?

I’m sorry. I didn’t understand your reference to Minister Fleming. What’s the relationship there?

D. Hollstein: We have been in conversation with him. He has the docket. I know he is working on it. He’s the Transportation Minister.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, he’s the Minister of Education.

D. Hollstein: Oh, sorry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Claire Trevena, maybe?

M. Dean: Minister Trevena?

D. Hollstein: Maybe — yes.

M. Dean: All right. So it’s with her.

D. Hollstein: Sorry. This is information that Paul had given me. My apologies.

Interjections.

D. Hollstein: Interesting. I’m not sure if there was a conflict or what, but I know that Minister Fleming has the file and has been reviewing it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, interesting. Good to know.

G. Wallace: Carole James, I think, is…. The place in James Bay?

Interjections.

G. Wallace: I think it could have been seen as a potential conflict with her, so the file moved to Rob Fleming.

D. Hollstein: I believe that was why he had the file.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Good to know.

M. Dean: Thank you for that.

My question is to you as Destination Greater Victoria. You mentioned Saanich and Victoria. How does your organization serve West Shore communities?

D. Hollstein: You know what? Actually, with the sports host tourism being added on, they contribute to the organization, and we work fairly closely with them, with anything to do with sports tourism.

I believe the new hotel out there has actually joined as a member as well. So we do have member hotels participating in it — the organization — on multiple levels.

B. D’Eith (Chair): A quick question just about the tax that you brought up.

Let’s say some places like Whistler or somewhere like that where…. I know during the Olympics, the people who work in tourism had nowhere to live. It’s my understanding that this is voluntary from municipality to municipality. Could you see not the benefit in certain municipalities for being able to provide housing for the people that work in the industry? That’s maybe part of it.

D. Hollstein: Yeah, we understand that. But the MRDT was created specifically for marketing the region that you are in. When you start taking moneys out of that fund to put into something else, it starts to dilute our ability to market the region as a whole. It will actually impact our entire region.

We’re aware of other organizations that have done that, and it’s been very detrimental to them. We support the pol­icy of affordable housing, but this is not the avenue to pay it.

R. Leonard: A quick question on: what do you know, and have you been tracking anything around short-term rentals? How proliferating are they in your constituency, which is greater Victoria? That’s really, in the end, part of the issue. It’s beds for tourists and the impact on housing.

D. Hollstein: We were a huge supporter of Airbnb coming in and starting to, obviously, donate to our organization. We pushed that file forward to make sure that either they started contributing to the organization and the marketing fund and/or they stepped out, and those beds then became available for long-term housing.

We’ve definitely seen a shift in this marketplace because of those changes.

R. Leonard: So they are contributing.

G. Wallace: They’re not directly contributing to tourism revenue. They are now required to pay MRDT, but that money is being diverted to affordable housing, and therefore, they are not actually contributing to the tourism sector. But they are deriving all the benefits from it.

They have grown exponentially, to answer your first question, over the past five to ten years, from a few hundred to many thousands now — probably up around 3,500, we believe, in the greater Victoria area.

T. Redies: A follow-up question on the short-term rentals. Do you actually cover the destination short-term rentals, and have you got any feedback from your members in terms of the impact of the coming speculation tax?

G. Wallace: We don’t have any data yet on views about the speculation tax and how that is going to affect things. We try to track Airbnb — or, I should say, more broadly, short-term vacation rentals. That includes VRBO and other platforms as well. They are notoriously difficult because they won’t provide that information to anybody. But I believe, now that they are required to pay MRDT, they will paying that tax. A platform should be trackable, and that information should be available to the government. We don’t get it directly.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We’re out of time. Thank you very much to both of you. Appreciate the presentation.

D. Hollstein: Thank you. Appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have South Island Prosperity Project — Emilie de Rosenroll and Bruce Williams.

[8:55 a.m.]

Good morning. Just a reminder that we’re trying to keep the initial comments to five minutes, if we can, so we have time for questions.

SOUTH ISLAND PROSPERITY PROJECT

E. de Rosenroll: Good morning, everyone. A pleasure to be here. My name is Emilie de Rosenroll, and I’m the CEO of the South Island Prosperity Project. This is my colleague Bruce Williams. He’s our director of engagement.

We’re here this morning to tell you just a little bit about our organization, first of all. Some of you might have heard of us, but it’s probably safe to say that most of you probably haven’t. I’ll just give you a little bit of background and then tell you about some of our most important initiatives that have really important significance for the whole of B.C. So I’d like to tell you about that and then, finally, just sort of why we’re here and how we want to work more with the province and how we’re looking for your insight and guidance on how we can do that.

First of all, we’re a unique model. We’re a grassroots-based economic development organization. We have 45 members. It’s a public and private partnership model. We have ten municipal members. We have five First Nation governments; three post-secondary institutions; seven non-profits, in­dus­try and business associations; and 20 large private-sector employers — so some of the largest employers from our region. They’re all partners in this model to help us develop and stimulate and diversify the economy. That’s the first thing.

Our model is quite unique. It’s the first — at that level of collaboration, that regional model — of it’s kind in B.C., and certainly, we’re getting a lot of attention across Canada for the model and globally as well. Recently, last week, we were invited to the International Economic Development Council conference in Columbus, Ohio, and we won an award. For an organization that’s 2½ years old, we won an award for the model, for our regional collaboration.

The other items to maybe highlight are: a couple of weeks ago now invited to Shanghai to talk to them about our Smart Cities Challenge — so how we’re developing a proposal to become a much smarter and more sustainable community or region in B.C. We were invited to that. That was an international artificial intelligence and smart cities conference. We were the only Canadian city invited, so that was pretty remarkable.

Next week I’m also going to the Toronto Board of Trade to, again, among the sort of leaders in Canada, talk about what we’re doing here in greater Victoria. So I think it’s a real success story and something to be proud of in B.C.

We’re also very proud to be incorporating a very strong First Nations component. Songhees, where we are, is a member of ours, a founding member. Also, I’m not sure if you’ve had a chance to take a look at the Songhees Innovation Centre, but that’s a project that we helped spearhead. We put together the application that got the grant funding, through western diversification, to be able to spearhead that.

We also host a monthly IndigenousConnect forum to try to help leadership, at all levels of organizations and different types of sectors, to build that sort of local resilience and entrepreneurship thinking into all of our First Nation communities here. In the south Island, we have ten First Nation communities. We have five now as members, and we’re hoping to grow that to the ten.

That’s a little bit about the South Island Prosperity Project. I’d like to just highlight…. You have a copy of our impact report. Again, we’re a 2½-year-old organization. That was our second impact report. There’s a lot of different variety you can see about our organization, the types of projects we’re involved in.

I want to highlight, at this moment, our Smart Cities Chal­lenge, because that’s a project that essentially is the spi­nal cord, our strategy for everything else we do. It in­forms all of our other activities.

Our Smart South Island strategy is built around some­thing called our Vision 2040. You also have a copy of that. That’s the second document there. Vision 2040 is a document that guides our region: where do we want to be over the next 22 years? By 2040, we would like to be…. We have targets in different areas such as transportation and mobility, economic resilience and inclusion, affordability and housing, environmental health and human health.

[9:00 a.m.]

We actually worked with our local leadership — our municipal leaders and First Nation and some non-profit. We used Victoria’s Vital Signs, the Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs, as a point of departure and did quite a lot of citizen engagement. We had them out — 300 people, all ages — on a Saturday looking at: how do we really set these targets, and how do we understand our challenges?

Then from there, we said: “Okay, now that we have the leadership saying, ‘This is where we want be,’ we want to ask innovators and business people how we are going to get there.” So how can we actually make this into an economic development strategy? That was our big objective.

Last year we had things like the Open Innovation Challenge, which is something quite common in the technology sector, less common in a sort of mass civic engagement way — something unique and different. We asked the community at large: how would you solve some of these problems using innovative ideas and solutions? We had 70 applications, which led to ten finalists and three winners, and we did a Dragons’ Den symposium. That was something that we were pretty proud of. We have some of those people showcased in just a minute.

I just want to highlight that the challenge we’re in right now is Canada Smart Cities Challenge.

Am I out of time?

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re at six minutes. So if you could wrap it up, that’d be great.

E. de Rosenroll: Okay, apologies.

We’re actually shortlisted right now in the Canadian competition to receive $10 million to accelerate our smart mobility and smart transportation challenges. That will be some­thing that we’ll wrap up in March, and by June we’ll find out. This will put us…. Transportation is at once a social issue, an environmental issue and an economic issue. So by using certain future trends in mobility as a service and smart mobility, we’re able to accelerate our plans here.

We’ve asked the provincial government for a match for the grant, which is for $250,000. But I think what I would like to highlight or leave you with right now is that it’s not the money that’s important. What’s important to us is really the engagement with the provincial government. The alignment is really critical. There needs to be a mechanism for seeking this sort of funding or support that doesn’t currently exist.

The federal government consistently looks for provincial engagement to see that you’re matching, that you’re involved in some way. It doesn’t have to be matching. There is a reduced risk inherent to the federal government seeing that the provincial government is committed, because that shows capacity and endorsement and support.

That’s what we’d like to leave you with today. How do we ensure that there is a mechanism for grassroots civic innovation and economic development?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’ll start, and then I’ve got two speakers on the list here.

I’m just a little bit confused about…. When I see these, I often see these developed by municipalities, it seems. The municipalities tend to drive this type of development. I’m just wondering…. This seems to have not come from the municipality. It’s coming from the private sector, right? Or am I wrong?

E. de Rosenroll: A consortium of the two together — a blended model, a public-private model.

B. Williams: Ten municipalities are involved.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, good. I’m just trying to get my head around it. That’s all.

B. Williams: It’s a unique model.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s why. I just wasn’t sure.

S. Furstenau: Great presentation — really interesting. Having joined the many thousands of commuters coming over the Malahat this morning, who are very much part of the south Island economy and a main part of the transportation challenges, are you reaching out to the Cowichan Valley regional district and the municipalities out there?

E. de Rosenroll: Our region is south of the Malahat region. So all the western communities would be included. There’d be benefits, and over time, we can look at how we extend this concept over the Malahat, for sure.

Certainly, right now, looking at our growth rates, you know that it’s just not possible to add more cars. But the population is coming, and it’s going predominantly to the western communities. This is just a microcosm of a problem that exists right across the board, across the whole country.

B. Williams: I’ll mention that all of the economic develop­ment organizations on the Island are also members of something called the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance, so there’s a combined dynamic there too.

If I may quickly invite you all, a week from today, to something that we’re doing here called the Smart Mobility Expo, which is going to be at Centennial Square, where all of these multimodal…. We’re sort of articulating what it is we’re talking about in multimodal transportation.

We can talk about it, but we’re going to actually invite people down to participate in things like riding an electric scooter or a hover board or walk on board an electric bus. We’re going to deal with some mobility issues for people who face physical barriers to their mobility, be it their sight or other mobility issues. That will all be happening.

[9:05 a.m.]

On this site, at Songhees, we’re going to be doing an Indigenous Innovation Summit with all of the First Nations in the region. That’s coming up in February.

The Future Innovators is next after the Open Innovation Challenge, and that’s students of secondary and post-secondary level who will be submitting to us too. We expect a couple of hundred applications into that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at ten minutes, but we have two more questions. So Mitzi and Tracy, if we could keep it short, that would be great.

M. Dean: Thank you so much, Bruce — for your time last week as well. I’m really interested in how West Shore communities are served through the project and through the different initiatives, especially knowing that many of the West Shore First Nations aren’t yet members on board as well. With transportation being such a big issue, as you were saying, you know, the growth on the West Shore is contributing to that. So what are the solutions, and how are you engaging people?

E. de Rosenroll: A really big part of our project proposal is going to be a project in partnership with B.C. Transit and Camosun university and some First Nation communities. We’re looking at something called a smart Indigenous mobility pilot, so looking at how we actually create a solution that can be scaled to remote and rural communities across B.C., but we start off with areas that are not populated enough and are not getting a regular transportation line. So you can’t afford to put a bus there. But how can you do it on demand? So something like an Uber of buses, but a microbus.

It’s called a microtransit solution. There are a few places in the world where these are starting, but it’s a real way of creating a technology-based solution that allows us to really, and measurably, improve some huge outcomes in health and education — and labour, of course.

T. Redies: I’m just wondering if you could speak a little bit more to the funding mechanism issue that you raised at the end.

E. de Rosenroll: Yeah, absolutely. My career has been spent in economic development across the country. Typically, provincial governments are often convening, at the different levels of government, and particularly for projects that are looking for funding to come from federal governments. So one of our first mandates as an organization was: “How do we start putting greater Victoria on the map and creating a collective voice that is big enough to be able to be heard by the federal government?” So that’s been a major objective.

What we found is that, just generally, we have all of the stakeholders of the economy present and engaged in what we’re doing, and the provincial government. Although, you know, we try to align as much as possible…. We work at lot with groups like the Ministry of International Trade, jobs, trade and tech. We’re sort of well known, in terms of collaborating with the bureaucratic side. We don’t have that sort of mechanism that allows us to show: “Hey, look. We’re all here. We’re all rowing in the same direction.” That just has an enormous impact for competitiveness of communities across the whole province.

Certainly, I think that B.C.’s communities should be doing a lot better than they are. The assets and strengths that we have in this province are pretty remarkable. The levels of entrepreneurship are here. We have great IP. We’ve got great commercialization. So we work a lot with Alan Winter, B.C.’s innovation commissioner, and have shared a lot of the same observations that he is also seeing as well. It’s that consistency and that voice that’s able to really have a huge impact on B.C.’s competitiveness.

B. Williams: If I may…?

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, Bruce. We’re really out of time, by about four minutes. Thank you very much, both of you.

E. de Rosenroll: Thank you so much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Victoria Residential Builders Association — Casey Edge.

Casey, how are you?

VICTORIA RESIDENTIAL
BUILDERS ASSOCIATION

C. Edge: Fine, thanks. Good morning, Chair and committee members. My name is Casey Edge. I’m the executive director of the Victoria Residential Builders Association. I represent about 200 members, over 100 builders, building the majority of single-family and townhomes in greater Victoria. Our members also build some condos.

I want to start off by basically saying this. If builders could build anything, anywhere, there would be no housing affordability crisis. Of course, they can’t. But it’s important to understand that it’s how regulation is managed that creates shortages and high cost.

I have delivered a package here that provides an overview of housing. If you’re going to regulate housing, you should have a good understanding of where we are at today and how we got there.

[9:10 a.m.]

I’ll start off by saying the average price of a home in the core — which is Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Victoria and Saanich — is about $880,000. According to the B.C. Assessment Authority, a 1963 Saanich home, 16,000-square-foot lot is $775,000 land and $112,000 house. It’s a land issue. Over 100 years ago, 2,000-square-foot lots in James Bay were allowed, but not today in most CRD municipalities.

If you’re looking for a cheap home, go to the Atlantic provinces — $184,000 in New Brunswick, average price. The problem is there are no jobs, and young people, millennials, are leaving the Atlantic provinces in droves.

People still need jobs to buy even affordable homes. What drives housing is demographics, a strong economy, employment and interest rates. That’s what drives demand.

How did we get where we are right now? David Foot wrote a book called Boom, Bust and Echo over 20 years ago. What he did is he predicted exactly the situation we’re in today. So 64 percent of the population is engaged in the market right now, and we’re not even talking about Generation Z, which is under 25. If you look at seniors, boomers, Generation X and millennials, they’re all in the market. That’s an anomaly. It hasn’t happened in Canada before, having that kind of a demographic engaged in the housing market.

We built 3,800 homes last year in Victoria, almost twice our normal average, but it’s still not enough due to the demographics. Cameron Muir from the B.C. Real Estate Association says the speculation tax, foreign buyer’s tax, will do nothing to improve housing affordability because the numbers are not significant. The demand is demographics.

B.C. launched the worst possible policy to address housing demand from a demographic tsunami. They created a policy of municipal self-governance, leaving it up to 13 CRD municipalities and community associations to address density. The ALR and urban containment boundaries restrict housing growth. The result is obstruction, inadequate zoning, battles, long timelines and rising costs for housing in the urban containment area intended for housing. Under these conditions, how could we not have a housing affordability crisis? It’s a recipe for it.

The C.D. Howe Institute came out with a study: $264,000 is the cost of regulation and fees for new housing in greater Victoria, more than the average price of a home in New Brunswick. A local developer says the Victoria approval process adds $85,000 per condo unit. Community demands for low-density affordable housing, green space and mature trees plus amenities is not financially viable. The business model doesn’t work.

The GST and property transfer tax did not exist 30 years ago. And $2 billion from property transfer tax is more than the revenue from mining, energy, forestry, Crown land tenures and natural gas combined. Municipalities boost permit fees and demand affordable housing fees and amenities. Saanich double-dips, demanding green space, plus 46 percent of their DCCs are allocated to create parks.

Building permit fees are a tax, not a fee-for-service, because they’re based on the value of construction. According to Canadian common law, it should be a fee-for-service, meaning your costs should represent what you’re charging. That’s not the way it’s done.

They charge permit fees like a property transfer tax. It’s based on the value of construction. So when there are wildfires in British Columbia and there’s a shortage of lumber, the municipalities profit from the high cost of lumber. They are presently generating a $2 million surplus in Saanich because of the way they wrongly charge the fees.

Let’s talk about energy-efficient homes. The real cost of the B.C. energy step code is going to be anywhere from $55,000 to $110,000. In this market, count it on the higher side. It only saves one or two air changes per hour. Most greenhouse gases come from older homes — 150,000 of them in greater Victoria with ten to 40 air changes per hour. The step code undermines a code-standard consumer protection. Asbestos insulation, urea-formaldehyde and leaky condos all came from fast-tracking energy efficiency.

The next disaster up is radon. The new B.C. building code may create a toxic radon trap in step code homes in moisture trapped in walls. You have to understand that when you build a highly energy-efficient home, it becomes a vacuum and draws in radon gas. It’s not true for an older home because you have ten to 40 air changes per hour and the toxicity is nowhere near what it will be if you build a very energy-efficient home in a radon gas area.

The number crunching right here…. An affordable green home costs $800 annually to heat. At the end of the day, the real cost coming out of your pocket in terms of mortgage is going to be $100,000.

[9:15 a.m.]

Building today is physics and carpentry. Beware of municipal liabilities. Step code is a bylaw. It’s not provincial code. Mike Holmes talks about radon in this particular area. You have to understand about radon. It’s up to the municipalities, mostly, to decide if they have a radon risk or not. They have no idea. The radon map is changing. An SFU scientist has established high toxicity in radon areas where they didn’t think it was a problem.

Paths to affordability. Plan regionally. In the city of Calgary, the Minister of Municipal Affairs in Alberta amalgamated Calgary. That enabled them to start their LRT in 1980 with virtually the same population we have in greater Victoria today. If you do not have regional planning, you cannot plan for the demographics, and we have the housing affordability crisis that we have today.

Thanks very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Casey.

Any questions at all?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just real quick. Last year you were here.

C. Edge: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you. You made some points that really stuck home with me, and I really appreciate you coming back.

C. Edge: Thank you very much.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I’m glad you passed them along.

C. Edge: Fabulous. I appreciate that.

P. Milobar: We just had a presentation right before you about regional planning. Do you feel that…? In this regional context, is that along with what you’re saying as well, that there needs to be more of that?

C. Edge: Absolutely. The CRD’s regional plan is meaningless. And it’s meaningless because they can’t override the municipal plans. Right now, if you look at CMHC’s housing starts for the year to date, which just came out this morning, Langford is building almost 1,500 new homes, almost 50 percent of the new homes in greater Victoria. Highlands has built 13. Metchosin has built eight. North Saanich has built 82. We’re not talking about protecting ALR land. We’re talking about municipalities that are protecting their zoning — that they perceive themselves as being a rural community.

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation and your passion for this area. I think it’s very interesting.

I have a question. If government was to modify the taxes, which I agree with you are way too high…. They’re contributing to the price of houses and the unaffordability problem. But if government was able to lower those taxes, can you see a way where the developers would actually build affordable housing and not keep the profit for themselves?

C. Edge: Well, if you talk to my builders council, they’re happy to build affordable units, but the problem is we have multilevels of government all impacting the price of housing. The B.C. government can charge three property transfer taxes on the development of a single home. The developer buys the land from the landowner and pays property transfer tax, subdivides, sells a lot to a builder and pays property trans­fer tax. The builder builds the house, sells the house, and the consumer pays the property transfer tax and actually pays three property transfer taxes all embedded in the price of that home. Then you have the value of construction tax being paid to the building permit.

You would have to look at the multiple ways that the three levels of government use housing as a cash machine, and you’d have to address that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Casey. We appreciate the presentation.

C. Edge: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the office of the seniors advocate — Isobel Mackenzie.

Hi. Go ahead.

OFFICE OF THE SENIORS ADVOCATE

I. Mackenzie: Okay. Good morning. I’m happy to be back. I think most of you were here last time I was here.

I’m going to focus my presentation on one issue. As you can appreciate, when it comes to seniors and it comes to the impact of the budget, there could be many issues that I could bring to the committee, but I’ve chosen to focus on one, and that is around the home support client contribution.

In your handout…. It just highlights for you, which I’m sure you already know, that home support is a program that assists seniors to remain living independently in their home.

[9:20 a.m.]

British Columbia is one of the few provinces in Canada that charges what we call a client rate or a client contribution for the provision of home support services. One of the questions that I have and that I would hope the government would also have is whether the client contribution requirement for home support is actually deterring some seniors from accessing the service and opting instead to go into long-term care.

Now, my training tells me I can’t give you a causal link; we can only look at potential correlation. But when we examine a series of different and independent data, we do find that there is some compelling evidence that this substitution effect is taking place. One of the pieces of evidence that we examine in my office is the people who are living in long-term care, whose level of physical and cognitive functioning is sufficiently high enough that they could be living in the community.

In very technical terms, we use something called an ADL, activities of daily living, and a CPS, cognitive performance score. Somebody who has a 2 or less in either or both of those categories is somebody who could live independently in the community — not even with full home support but with some limited home support.

When we look at the data for British Columbia, we find that there are 15 percent of our residents in long-term care who fit those criteria, and it’s a higher percentage than in other provinces. So at any given time in this province, there are approximately 30,000 active home support clients, and 70 percent of them pay no client contribution because they receive the GIS, the guaranteed income supplement. If you receive it, you’re exempt from the client rate. But 70 percent of seniors don’t receive the GIS; 30 percent of seniors receive the GIS.

You can see that there is clearly a gap in the population between who is receiving home support and who is potentially able to receive home support. One of the questions is: how much is what I would call the co-payment, the client rate, affecting that? To put it in perspective, we collect approximately $38 million a year through the client co-payment system in the province. If we were able to transition the 15 percent of the population to the community or, more likely, defer admission of that population in the future, we would save approximately $238 million a year.

There are two case studies that I’ve attached. One is a homeowner, and one is a renter. I’ve used a net income of $26,000 for a couple of reasons. First of all, that’s above the GIS threshold cutoff. Depending on your various deductions — because we go on net income for assessing a client co-payment, both for long-term care and for home support — you’re getting at somebody who’s at or maybe a little above the median income for a 65-and-over person living in British Columbia.

Case one would be somebody living in their own home. At a net income of $26,000, their daily rate for home support is $22, or $8,000 a year. We’ve estimated a cost of about $8.22 a day, or about $3,000 a year, for their food. We’ve used the Fair PharmaCare calculation to estimate what their drugs would cost, assuming that they are on a number of medications, as somebody in this situation likely would be. They’re going to spend about $780 a year on their medications, with their co-payment.

Their supplies. The most common supply you will see is an incontinence supply in the community, about $360 a year. That’s difficult to really estimate; we’ve been very conservative in these estimates.

Transportation — either using handyDART, which you’re paying about $6 a round trip for, or buying a monthly seniors pass. You’re going to spend about $50 a month. Now, a senior on GIS gets the annual pass for $45, but a senior not on GIS doesn’t get that.

Recreation. They want to go to their local centre and take a couple of tai chi classes or maybe go out to a lunch once a month. We have estimated that at $30 a month, or $360 a year. Then we’ve estimated their household expenses, I think very conservatively, at property tax, utilities and home insurance — we’ve allowed nothing for maintenance and repairs, those kinds of things — at $7,800. So that senior is spending $21,000 a year, at a very basic existence, to live at home.

[9:25 a.m.]

That same senior, at that same income, living in long-term care would be spending $20,796. However, under home support, without the client rate — so if we eliminated the co-payment — it would cost the system $14,600 a year. That same person in long-term care, at the average per diem, which is $212 a day, is costing the system $56,000 a year. So you can see how the economics weigh favourably for the citizen to go to long-term care and unfavourably for the taxpayer for that person to go to long-term care.

Now, when you’re a renter….

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at 6:23, so if you could wrap it up, that would be great.

I. Mackenzie: Okay. The next case study is the renter, where the argument is even more compelling. At $26,000 a year, using rent of $1,000 a month and deducting the SAFER allocation, that person is paying $24,410 a year. Their cost in long-term care would be $20,796. Again, the cost to the government is significantly higher for them to be into long-term care.

My office will be doing a report on home support that will be coming out later this year. This will be one of the issues that we address. One of the questions I think we need to be asking ourselves is: if we were able to free up, at a minimum, 15 percent capacity in our long-term care system…. The reality is we’re not going to move out the people who are there. What we’re going to be doing is that the people who will be going in will be the higher-needs people, because we’re able to care for, in the community, the people who are otherwise going in.

I don’t think this is the only reason why we’re seeing the ADL-2, CPS-2s in long-term care, but I think it’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing them. I think there’s a very compelling economic case to be made for waiving the co-payment in exchange for maintaining their independence in the community at a lower cost than how much we are subsidizing in long-term care.

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

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thanks for doing this. It’s an issue that we’re all going to be facing, I guess, at some point in our lives.

Just on your long-term care, for home ownership, this must be taken from what I call facilities. Those are provided by a health authority, like Interior Health or Vancouver Island. Some of these things — and I’m speaking from practical experiences with my mom — are not covered when they go to a facility that is run by a not-for-profit, etc.

I. Mackenzie: They should be covered. When you go into a facility…. Now, there’s a difference between whether it’s pub­licly subsidized or privately paid for. These are related to the publicly subsidized, so they could be contracted to a private provider, or they could be provided by a health authority.

The other thing that can happen in facilities is — a lot of things are covered — that families choose to buy what I would call the upgraded version of incontinence supplies, the upgraded version of something, but in fact, a basic version is supplied.

The same with the drugs. When you go into a care facility, your drugs are covered under the formulary. If you are choosing non-formulary drugs that you can’t get a special authority for, you will pay for those, but that’s a whole other story.

R. Leonard: Thanks, Isobel. I appreciate you setting this all out in terms of the numbers and the potential cost savings.

What I’ve experienced in my community is a number of people who are past the point of home care but aren’t being assessed so that they can get onto lists, and then they have trouble accessing the home care supports that they need. I’ve also heard from folks who are reluctant to buy the home care supports that they need because they have buy in certain increments.

I was wondering if you could speak to the whole issue around assessment, because people get more and more precarious when they’re home and they’re not being assessed for the kind of care they need — plus the impact of how the payments are required.

[9:30 a.m.]

I. Mackenzie: The assessments are done by the health authorities, and that is a function of waiting times and human resource allocation on the part of the case managers, who are the ones that go into the community and do the assessment.

In terms of the cost, as a British Columbian, you have two choices. You are entitled to publicly subsidized home support based on this formula that will have you co-pay. Health authorities may require you to take a minimum of an hour.

A lot of the private agencies…. Some people will look at their daily rate, and their daily rate might be $100 or $150. The rate the health authority is going to charge is $40 an hour, and they can get a local agency to do it for $30 an hour, so they go to the local agency. But the local agency says, “We only do a minimum of two hours,” as an example. And they say: “Well, I don’t need two hours. I only need an hour,” and it can lead to that.

I think that MLA Leonard circles back to the basic issue here, which is: how many potential admissions to residential care could be avoided if we waived the cost requirement of home support? It’s only one of the things. Waiving that in and of itself…. There are other issues with home support that would also need to be resolved for some people.

For a group of people, when you look at these numbers, it’s not unreasonable to draw an inference that some people — or probably, more precisely, their family members — are making a financial assessment that it’s a better situation in long-term care. That is easier to remedy, to some extent, than some of the other endemic issues in home support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at 12 minutes. We have two more questions. If we could keep it short, that would be great.

T. Redies: Hi, Isobel. Nice to see you. Just wondering…. You mentioned that B.C. is one of the few provinces that charges for the client co-pay. Have you seen other situations where provinces have a charge and then they have stopped charging? What has been the empirical result of that?

I. Mackenzie: No. There are some provinces looking at implementing the co-pay actually, Winnipeg Health Authority being one. But no, we are one of the few. I think there’s one in the Maritimes that has a client rate. In the Maritimes, some of those are too small a setting to really have an impact. The biggest comparators would be Alberta and Ontario, and there’s no co-pay there.

M. Dean: Thank you for your presentation. Is this trend impacting senior women any differently than senior men in your estimation?

I. Mackenzie: The only data we have shows what you would already know, which is women are living longer. There are more older women. The caseload in home support and the caseload in long-term care are both disproportionately female, relative to the population at large, simply because that’s who lives longer at the moment.

The only other caveat I would give, MLA Dean, is that if women are disproportionately poorer at older age, which they are if they’re accessing GIS — and they disproportionately are — they aren’t paying co-pay. Remember that the really low-income senior isn’t paying. This is about the….

There’s what we call this cliff. So you go from nothing — I pay nothing — to I pay about $4,000 a year. Because you’re either on the GIS, or if your income is a dollar over, you’re off the GIS. That’s another big problem.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. We’re out of time. I apologize, but thank you very much.

I. Mackenzie: All right. My pleasure. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Seniors Games Society — Gordon Oates.

We’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions.

B.C. SENIORS GAMES SOCIETY

G. Oates: I understand.

I don’t know if you’re all familiar with the B.C. Seniors Games Society, but just to give you a background, we were originally founded in 1987 as a registered charitable organization. The primary focus of the society is the staging of the annual 55-Plus B.C. Games. The society is comprised of the 12 zones throughout the province, which are all run by volunteers. We have a total of two employees, and I’ll get into that a little bit later on.

The BCSGS is an important member of the provincial sports sector. It’s supporting the Active For Life stage of the Canadian Sport for Life model in B.C. by championing lifelong participation in sports. The mission is to improve the health, lifestyle and image of B.C.’s 55-plus population.

[9:35 a.m.]

The B.C. Seniors Games Society is committed to and actively promotes the following fundamentals, which are the championing of the idea of long-life activity and friendly competition, celebrating British Columbians who are 55-plus as valuable role models. And we believe in the health and social benefits of participation.

Following the Langley 2014 games, an economic impact study was performed by Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and the study indicated a direct economic benefit to the host communities in the amount of $3.1 million and local and provincial tax revenues of $778,000.

The mission of the B.C. Seniors Games Society is to improve the health, lifestyle and image of B.C.’s 55-plus population. Physical activity brings multiple benefits and significantly contributes to healthy aging. Physical inactivity is associated with premature death, chronic diseases, illness, disability, as well as reduced quality of life and independence.

When compared with younger age groups, seniors are more likely not to engage in sufficient levels of physical activity to gain health benefits. Physical activity greatly contributes to health by producing numerous physical and psychological benefits at any age. A large body of evidence shows that physical activity provides numerous health-related benefits. It maintains functional ability, enhances psychological health and prevents and manages chronic diseases.

Our participants come from all across B.C., and they compete in the 55-Plus B.C. Games, and many return year after year, building strong bonds of friendship with the people that they meet. Those who get involved often express great pleasure in the entire experience of the games, which goes well beyond the competitive playing field. In particular, participants view the 55-Plus B.C. Games as an opportunity to explore new parts of the province and to experience local attractions before and after the games. They appreciate the friendly, small-town feel of the games, regardless of the size of the host community, and the intergenerational connections between participants and volunteers.

Host societies also report on the immensely positive impact the games have on their entire community — often transforming the image of it — and attitudes towards the 55-plus population among residents of all ages.

The 55-plus population is showing interest in new sports that have not previously been included in our games, such as women’s hockey and triathlon. These growth sports present an opportunity for us as a society to attract new participants. However, rural communities often have limited sports facilities and smaller populations from which to draw volunteers. That means that for every new sport that is added to the games roster offers, others may need to be dropped.

In the latest bid proposals, which just came back in, we received three bids covering the next three years, ’20 to ’22, with the bids in 2020 going to Richmond, in 2021 to Victoria, and in 2022 to Abbotsford.

In addition to that, we officially, during the Canada 55+ Games in 2015…. To provide our membership with further opportunities to become physically engaged in their choice of sports and remain active for life, B.C. will be the host province in 2020 when the games are being held in Kamloops, B.C.

A little bit of background. In October 2016, we made a submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, recommending three considerations for ongoing financing. On page 45 of that report…. I’ll just read it to you. “In their presentation to the committee, the B.C. Seniors Games Society spoke about plans already underway for host communities for the 55-Plus B.C. Games events in 2017. The committee heard about the significant positive socioeconomic benefits that the 55-Plus B.C. Games will provide to a number of communities, visitors, and seniors around the province who will participate in various sporting events.”

Then on page 46, the recommendation of the committee said: “Consider additional funding for multisport and senior sport organizations to promote and increase professional performance and recreational participation in sports, as well as coaching services, education and development.” None of that happened.

The B.C. Seniors Games Society currently receives funding from the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture. We receive $85,000 per annum for payment to the host community to assist them in putting on the games. We also receive $85,000 for event management services, to assist the host in preparing for the games, and a further $5,000 for operations.

The level of funding for the host society has not changed since I became involved with the society back in 2009, and the funding under the transfer agreement was $85,000. The consumer price index has increased by 21 percent over that same period, which would represent about $18,000 in increased funding. The society’s total funding of $85,000 per annum has not increased since prior to 2007.

[9:40 a.m.]

Host societies receive $60,000 in direct funding from the municipalities in which they operate, along with $55,000 of in-kind support, and the funding has increased by $30,000 from that sector over the last seven years. During the past two years, the B.C. Seniors Games Society has provided increased funding to the host communities in the amount of $51,000 annually. I guess what I’m saying is that everybody else is stepping up to the plate and putting more money towards this, but we’re not getting any support from the provincial government.

Event management. Back in July of 2016, the ministry engaged the services of KPMG to determine the costs associated with providing event management services, as a result of the B.C. Games cancelling the service agreement we had with them. KPMG concluded that the direct operating costs for the services provided to B.C. Seniors Games Society were $122,934. In the current year, the ministry provided $85,000 for these services — a shortfall of $37,000 from the KPMG report.

In the past, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, dating back prior to 2007, provided the society with $175,000 in funding, which in 2009 was reduced to $120,000, with the difference of $55,000 being transferred directly to B.C. Games for event management. A further reduction of $30,000 was made in 2014, with that money also being forwarded directly to B.C. Games for event management.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Gordon, we’re at about seven minutes and 15 seconds. If you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up, that’d be wonderful.

G. Oates: Okay. I’ll wrap it up pretty quickly here. On to the summary.

What we’re looking for are four things. One is that the direct funding to the B.C. Seniors Games Society for operations be restored to the $35,000 that it was prior to them reducing it and giving the money to B.C. Games. Increase funding to the host society by $18,000, which is simply the increase in the consumer price index over the past nine years. Increase funding to the B.C. Seniors Games Society by $40,000, from the current $85,000, to cover the shortfall in the KPMG-audited costs of $122,000. The last one is to provide B.C. Seniors Games with $10,000 to cover the cost of Team B.C. shirts, provincial pins and provincial flags for the team that goes on to the Canada 55+ as ambassadors for B.C.

We’ll stop there.

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

I just want to clarify one thing, just in terms of the role of the Finance Committee. I appreciate that last year there were certain recommendations. We make recommendations. So it’s still very important to talk to the minister, talk to the Finance Minister and all that.

G. Oates: I understand that, and we do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. I just want to make sure. We really appreciate all you do. Obviously, keeping seniors active is critical to keeping people healthy in our province. We really appreciate everything you do.

Sonia would like to ask a question.

S. Furstenau: Could you just…? I might have missed it in the presentation or in the booklet, but do you also get corporate and private sponsorships?

G. Oates: Yes. We get about $25,000 in corporate sponsorships every year. That’s what we’re running right now, and they’re becoming harder and harder to come by.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation. I can still picture my daughter wearing the bright turquoise-blue down jacket with the choir, and they were all singing to welcome the B.C. Games to Courtenay. It was definitely a community-building exercise and also a great way of looking at our perceptions around seniors. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing.

The question that I have is around the host. I didn’t quite catch…. There are a lot of benefits that come to communities that host the B.C. Seniors Games, and I was wondering if you could repeat the amount of contributions you get.

G. Oates: The last economic study showed that there was $3.1 million, which is a spinoff to the whole society. In addition to that, they also have the benefit of building a volunteer base for future events, no matter what it be, right? They go out and bring those in, which would then further increase that economic spinoff and benefit to them.

The host community receives from the government, through us, $85,000. They receive from the municipality $60,000 plus $55,000 in kind, and they receive from us, B.C. Seniors Games, through registration moneys, etc. about $150,000.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, Gordon. Thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate all the work you do.

Next up we have Bruce McGuigan.

We’re just trying to keep our comments to five minutes, so we have time for questions.

[9:45 a.m.]

BRUCE MCGUIGAN

B. McGuigan: Okay. I’ll be very brief.

I thank the Songhees people for letting us meet in these fabulous facilities. It’s the first time I’ve been in here. I want to let you know that you don’t have anything to read from me today. We’ll give it to you at the end of the week.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So we can pay attention. Is that right?

B. McGuigan: So that you can pay attention. I know what this is like.

My name is Bruce McGuigan. I’m currently a professor of sociology at Vancouver Island University and, just recently, former executive director of Family Services of Greater Victoria. I’m a resident of Victoria, and I’m here as a participant in democracy, not in my capacity as a former ED of family services or a professor at Vancouver Island University.

I’m here to talk about the problem of homelessness, which I know you’re all aware of. But I wonder how aware people are at this table today of the extent to which our homelessness problem originates in decisions made at a similar table some time ago. We made decisions around deinstitutionalization of mentally ill, mentally challenged, substance-addicted and alcohol-addicted people in the ’80s that still have consequences today. In a real sense, you broke it. You need to fix it, and you’re dealing with people who can.

We could not have done this process of deinstitutionalization any worse. It resulted, largely, in the homeless crisis that we have today. Up until 1983, there had been a process of therapeutic deinstitutionalization that was part of a coherent and medical case management plan. Beginning in 1983, we had an aggressive process of deinstitutionalization motivated by saving government funds.

In 1983, the British Columbia government tabled a restraint budget, which was the context of deinstitutionalization, led by Grace McCarthy at the time. She called it “the most aggressive year of deinstitutionalization that probably this province has ever seen or will see, and we should be proud of the fact that we can do this at this time.” It was motivated out of budget. The literature on homelessness, mental illness and addictions points to this process that B.C. undertook as a worst-case scenario. You could not have done it — we could not have done it — any worse.

I was there, working with street kids in the 1980s. I saw this flood of mentally ill, mentally challenged and addicted people into the street very, very suddenly, as we closed down institutional and residential resources for them. Part of this, as we all know, was an effort to save money by transferring the costs into community agencies that were not unionized, that were non-profits rather than government organizations. It was thought that this would be a more efficient service delivery model. It was not.

Interestingly enough, today the number of entrenched homeless in the province of British Columbia still roughly corresponds to the number of people that we deinstitutionalized in the 1980s. Experts say the problems that these people face, in terms of untreated mental illness, in terms of untreated addictions, are the same kinds of problems that we used to institutionalize people for as well. The mentally disabled are a little bit better off in this process. We did work a little bit harder to ensure that there were resources for them.

It’s worth noting that this was a very popular movement for people in conservative politics at the time, because it saved money on the part of the province. But the people on the left were also interested in having a more humane approach, fairly — both of them.

It’s critical to note that all of the government reports that followed, throughout the 1990s and later, made it clear that there was a requirement to properly fund services and deinstitutionalization, and we never came close to the budget numbers that were suggested in that. It’s also important to note that this is a multiparty problem, that NDP governments, twice in the 1990s, continued in this process of inadequately funded deinstitutionalization of services. Budgets were never completely allocated. They never turned into services.

Academic paper after academic paper has outlined this failure. This failure is a failure of British Columbians and our government, and it has happened with every government over the last 40 years. That’s why this is your problem to fix. It is a textbook failure in deinstitutionalization. It is literally used in textbooks as a discussion of deinstitutionalization failure in mental health and addictions treatment. The irony has been that there have been no real cost savings to British Columbians.

[9:50 a.m.]

We have dumped these services downward onto municipal governments, which has changed services away from the areas that they have a statutory responsibility to deal with into areas that you have a statutory responsibility to deal with. We have downloaded these problems onto community health organizations, onto VIHA and other health organizations that had to reallocate resources away from other British Columbians and still cannot meet this need. You have transferred these costs from ledger to ledger without actually solving any budget problems but, in the process, significantly harming a large number of helpless British Columbians.

I’m trying to keep up to time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, we’re at 5-30 right now.

B. McGuigan: I’ll just finish up by saying that we literally destroyed lives to save money, and we don’t seem to have a plan.

We have a new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, but people working within government — I’m a former government worker, so I have connections — say that it’s not working, that this process of separating off another bureaucracy has not yet even come close to coming up with a plan for improving service delivery.

On top of that, for example, in the city of Victoria, we have literally a dozen organizations that exist to provide services to this population, plus VIHA itself. The problem is that in the course of the last 40 years, we have developed a dysfunctional industry of homelessness without providing an adequate service framework to help these people.

I’ll take questions.

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

I appreciate what you’re saying. I have a brother who’s been suffering with schizophrenia for the last 35 years.

B. McGuigan: Then you know better than anybody else.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, no. I appreciate the challenges. He did spend some time in Riverview, and it saved his life. I appreciate the value of institution-type settings in terms of people getting the help they need.

I have a question for you in regards…. Sorry, are you advocating for reinstitutionalizing, or are you more advocating for giving proper funding to the community organizations to…? I’m curious, because I wasn’t sure what you’re actually advocating for.

B. McGuigan: That’s the question I was looking for. What I’m advocating for is, at the very least, the province has to develop a treatment plan for dealing with people who are homeless.

We actually have to develop a service model, because right now, we are literally doing surveys to find out who’s homeless. We don’t do surveys to find out who’s in grade 1. We don’t do surveys to find out who’s getting cardiac care. We don’t do surveys to find out who’s getting a hip replacement. We have those records, and we used to have those records when your brother was in residential care, when he was in a treatment program. We have records.

We have this huge…. Well, not huge. We don’t know how big the population of people is who are on the street in British Columbia, receiving a wide range of services from a mind-boggling number of non-profits and government agencies. We don’t even know who they are, what services they’re receiving, what services they need and what a treatment plan is for any of these people.

At the very least, I think one of the things that the provincial government can do to begin to repair this is to begin to track these individuals who access services and come up with a treatment plan to give them the assistance they need.

It’s like doing budgeting, which is the exercise you’re engaging in right now. You have to know what you’re spending money on. You don’t know what you’re spending money on, who you’re serving and what their needs are. And that would be the first, best and, actually, cheapest immediate solution that the province of British Columbia could engage in.

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

All right. Next up we have the Research Universities Council of British Columbia — Blair Littler and Robin Ciceri.

We’re trying to keep our comments to five minutes so we have time for questions.

R. Ciceri: I’m just wondering whether you have the handout that we provided.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think it’s coming around. Thanks so much.

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
COUNCIL OF B.C.

R. Ciceri: We have some slides that I’ll speak to, and we’ll be brief so there’s time for questions.

We’re here from RUCBC representing UBC, SFU, UVic, UNBC, Royal Roads and Thompson Rivers University. We thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you.

One of the first things that we would want to acknowledge is the recommendations that the committee has made in the past and how learners around the province are actually benefiting from those recommendations.

In particular, we’d like to highlight the recent funding in the last budget, Budget 2018, for 2,900 technology spaces for students, for enhanced flexibility to self-finance and create 5,000 new student housing units and for one-time scholarship funding for grad students.

[9:55 a.m.]

I’d also like to point out that we are also joining in a separate submission with all 25 public institutions in the province to talk about three things with the committee. Those will be new pathways for Indigenous learners, mental health supports and work-integrated learning.

We’ve spoken before about the incredibly complex needs of learners today in these areas, and the institutions are under a great amount of pressure. That is one of the areas where we’d like the committee to consider investment.

Over the page, the title of our submission is “Skills, talent and innovation for a prosperous British Columbia.” We’re going to speak about three things: develop and retain talent in B.C., attract and retain outstanding students and enhance research and innovation impact.

On slide 4, you’ll see, from the latest labour market outlook survey which was published just in September, the areas of high demand that are still there in the STEM areas — science, technology, engineering and math. These are also being referred to as STEAMD areas, with the addition of arts and design, the kind of occupations that the labour market in B.C. is increasingly looking to.

We’re recommending that the committee consider a recommendation for both undergraduates and also for graduate students. I’m going to focus a little bit more on graduate students. On page 5, the chart that you’ll see there shows the number of STEM graduate degrees granted by year and by province, and you’ll see that B.C. is significantly behind other provinces. This creates challenges because, as you know, the shift in the digital economy is changing the whole dynamic of the workforce, so the advanced skills of graduate students are really critical to B.C.’s economy, and that’s one of the things that we would like to focus on.

In the past, the universities have received funding for 11,000 grad students. They’ve actually redirected other sources of revenue to add another 5,000 graduate spaces. That’s included in that figure which still shows that B.C. is really behind Alberta, Quebec and the Canadian average, including Ontario. Our recommendation is to consider 1,900 new graduate student spaces in these STEM areas and to phase that in over a five-year time frame so that it’s not an immediate big impact to the budget but one that can be staged in and implemented.

Over to the next slide, provincially funded graduate scholarships. The government made a terrific investment this past year in 800 graduate scholarships in the B.C. graduate program, and that is very well recognized and very much appreciated. Universities are going to be able to stack those with their own prizes and scholarships and awards.

The problem is that we are being out-competed, or other provinces are really actively competing and recruiting B.C. students because they offer much higher scholarship levels. Ontario, for example, offers 3,000 scholarships a year. Our new program will offer 800 scholarships over three years. So with an emphasis on retaining and recruiting talent in B.C. so that they don’t go outside of the province, we’re recommending that this one-time funding be turned into ongoing stable funding for graduate scholarships.

Over the page, you’ll see a slide that shows that the six research universities bring into the province from outside the province about $750 million revenue each year in research revenue that would have otherwise gone to other provinces. That’s an incredible boost in terms of measuring impact on GDP and job creation. So that’s one of the things that we’d like to highlight for you.

You can see that the provincial contribution to that research revenue is about 11 percent, but that’s incredibly important and crucial. When the provincial government demonstrates its commitment to funding research, we’re actually able to leverage a lot more external funding. So areas such as B.C. Knowledge Development Fund, etc., we would like to recognize and to have continue.

What we are showing, though, on slide 8 is that we’re actually falling behind in terms of provincial investment in research and innovation in the province compared to our big comparators, which are Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. Over the five years of 2011 to 2015, the average for B.C. in terms of contribution to investing in research, which is very welcome, is $93 million.

[10:00 a.m.]

We’re recommending that there be a staged implementation to take this up to the Canadian national average of $53 million in research. This would contribute to start-ups, creating more stable small business. It would also contribute to digital research infrastructure in the province and really start to heighten the kind of catalytic opportunity that’s emerging with both the Digital Technology Supercluster and also the Cascadia corridor and some of the partnerships that are starting to evolve. We feel that it’s a really important foundation for the innovation economy in B.C., which is key to B.C. being competitive and continuing to be extremely competitive with other jurisdictions, recognizing also that B.C. has been world-leading in many areas.

The last slide, just to quote from the Conference Board, cites the last report card they did in terms of Canada. Canada ranks 12th of 16 peer countries, and B.C. has fallen from a B to a D, below the Canadian average in its innovation ranking, with the quote: “B.C. needs to turn its performance around quickly before a low-innovation equilibrium becomes the norm.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you, Robin.

Well, we’re at seven minutes. We have time for a few questions.

M. Dean: Thank you. This is useful information. If we were to invest in STEM or STEAMD programs, how would we make sure that that also reflected the need to increase women and girls taking part in those streams?

R. Ciceri: Right. What the provincial government has done is targeted the funding into specific program areas. As I understand it, there’s also an equity-diversity-inclusivity lens that will be applied in the future. That’s one mechanism that the government could use. On the other hand, UBC, for example, has committed to gender equity in their engineering program, as has UVic. Lots of institutions are taking their own initiatives to really create that balance, which is significant.

B. D’Eith (Chair): How about Indigenous workers as well, or Indigenous students. Is there the same kind of process as for women as well, or different?

R. Ciceri: Absolutely. Yes, there is targeted programming, as well, for Aboriginal students, Indigenous students. I would say all of the institutions, all 25 institutions, are taking significant steps to try to increase the number of pathways. They’re also very mindful of respectful dialogue and partnerships with Indigenous learners as the way to talk about the kinds of programming that should be introduced. It is a high priority.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I mean, I remember when I was at law school, there were some spots available for Indigenous students. The problem is they didn’t always get filled, and that was a challenge.

Part of it is…. I think what Mitzi’s talking about, too, is that it’s all great and well to have it at a post-secondary level, but how do we also make sure that girls and Indigenous people and other people who wouldn’t normally go towards the STEM or STEAMD programs actually move in that direction?

R. Ciceri: There are scholarships and bursaries that can be targeted that way. I should also say that UVic has just received funding for an Indigenous law program. That’s significant as well, those kinds of targeting programs.

R. Leonard: My daughter got an NSERC grant when she was doing her master’s program, and, my understanding is that it was one of the last ones that was ever issued, when she was graduating, or working for many years for her master’s.

My question is: in terms of federal funding and provincial, what kinds of proportions are we talking about, and what do they look like?

R. Ciceri: Well, on one of the slides, you’ll see that provincial funding is about 11 percent, and federal funding is by far the most significant proportion. I should say that in terms of the federal granting agencies, the researchers in B.C. attract more per capita to the province than from outside of the province, so NSERC, CIHR — Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Yes, it’s slide 7. You can see it’s 53 percent for NSERC and others.

R. Leonard: So the more provincial funding that can be applied, will that bring in more federal dollars?

R. Ciceri: It absolutely helps leverage, yes.

R. Leonard: That’s where I’m going with this question.

R. Ciceri: Yes, it definitely helps leverage it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you very much, Robin. Thanks, Blair. We appreciate you coming in.

Next up we have ASPECT, Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training — Janet Morris-Reade.

ASSOCIATION OF SERVICE
PROVIDERS FOR EMPLOYABILITY
AND CAREER TRAINING

J. Morris-Reade: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank you and the committee, on behalf of ASPECT, for giving me this opportunity to speak to you on behalf of our 115 member organizations from 120 communities throughout B.C.

[10:05 a.m.]

ASPECT members play an essential role in upskilling individuals and providing them with the best opportunity to find and maintain success in the workplace. They also work with employers within their communities to provide a bridge to a trained workforce and to provide training in response to their business needs.

Let me first introduce you to some of our ASPECT members and a sampling of the work they are doing this week, to give you a better understanding of who we are.

The Mission Community Skills Centre is offering their Express to Success workshop, which is an agricultural food and beverage processing program to help build economic capacity in their community.

The Penticton and District Multicultural Society is helping their clients identify transferable skills and coaching them through career path planning.

The Powell River Employment Program is running the very effective BladeRunners youth employment program, providing inspiration and motivation to young job seekers in their search for employment.

Avia Employment Services in Langley is presenting their “Working well with other people and treating people kindly” workshop this week. It gives clients the tools and strategies for being part of an effective work team.

WorkLink Employment Society in Colwood is offering an introduction to LinkedIn workshop today, and on Thursday, they’re offering a skills identification workshop and further supports through individual employment coaching.

Global Vocational Services in Duncan is partnering with Amber Education and holding its biweekly information session about self-employment programs this morning.

Creative Employment Access Society, also known as the Job Shop, is getting ready for the Employment Expo Job Fair in Courtenay on October 12.

Kamloops Cariboo Regional Immigrant Society is helping new arrivals to Canada with resumés, cover letters and application forms, and helping them to identify job leads in the hidden labour market.

At this moment, Sources Work B.C. Employment Centre in White Rock is running a workshop designed to give clients both interview preparation and practice so that they can gain the confidence needed for their next interview.

You’ve probably noticed that some of these names are from your local ridings. I’ve done that on purpose to demonstrate to you the expanse of our members and the work that we are doing. I find that sometimes employment programs is a hard concept to grasp, and it’s very diverse.

Our sector currently serves clients through four federal-provincial labour market transfer agreements and through provincial funding under the Ministries of Social Development and Poverty Reduction; and Advanced Education, Skills and Training; through the Ministries of Education, Health and even Agriculture, as well as others. We work with government and stakeholders to ensure that the needs of those seeking a meaningful, sustainable livelihood are met.

If the province wants to meet employment needs of the workforce for now and in the future, more investment must be made in wraparound services that support employment. This means more investment must be made into mental health and addiction challenges, housing, transportation and child care.

Although we are encouraged by the government’s recent efforts to expand supports for those with mental health and addiction challenges, we recommend that the province invest still more into making these supports and services available in all communities. The lack of facilities and long waiting lists are a significant barrier to employment in the province.

A lack of housing and transportation continues to confront many workers who must either live in town and pay unaffordable rents or live outside of town and have difficulty getting to work. In some communities, public transit is spotty or nonexistent. Winter conditions mean that walking or cycling sometimes vast distances year-round is impossible or out of the question. Those who cannot find a home near their work must resort to couch-surfing and shelters.

Daycare. Recent announcements have been very encouraging for daycare spaces, early childhood education training and supports. However, still more public investment is needed to support daycare and early childhood education so that those workers at all levels of income have access.

[10:10 a.m.]

ASPECT believes that a lack of mental health and addiction facilities, housing, transportation challenges and a lack of access for safe and affordable daycare pose a significant risk and a significant barrier to employment in nearly all areas of the province.

We recommend that the provincial government increase its funding in all these areas, over and above what has already been committed. Because ASPECT members are located in almost every community, delivering crucial employment supports and services, quickly responding to market conditions and employing experts in their fields, the provincial government can depend on us to help you attain the goal for a healthy and growing provincial economy.

Thank you for your time and the opportunity that you’ve given ASPECT today.

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

S. Furstenau: Thanks for the presentation — very interesting. I’m just wondering. A lot of economists and academics are really pointing to the impact of automation on the workforce. Are you seeing impacts from that happening already in the realm that you’re working in?

J. Morris-Reade: Yes, it is. I think the province is doing a really good job at trying to target what areas are going to be most affected in the way that they’re designing their programs and products through the funding and grants. I think that that’s one thing to be concerned about. However, we’ve got challenges in all areas. There are still a lot of jobs out there that are not automated, that still require people to fill those positions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

Oh boy, here we go. Next up we have Music B.C. Industry Association — Nick Blasko, Alex Grigg and Scott Johnson.

Hello, gentlemen. Okay, five minutes.

A. Grigg: Yeah, that’s why we didn’t bring Patrick.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, you didn’t bring Patrick — smart move. You know that’s in Hansard now, right? He can read it.

A. Grigg: That’s okay. He’ll appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right, guys.

MUSIC B.C. INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

A. Grigg: Good morning. Thanks for having us. My name is Alex Grigg. I’m the executive director of Music B.C. We are the voice of the music industry throughout British Columbia, with over 1,200-plus members.

Joining me today are our board president, Scott Johnson, and Music B.C. member, all-round good guy and music advocate Nick Blasko, from Victoria.

First off, we’d really like to thank Minister Beare and her team as well as Creative B.C. for the last couple of years for their support of the B.C. music fund, now called Amplify. We appear before you today to advocate for the continuation of the investment in the music sector. This is not a want; this is a much-needed investment into one of the largest contributors of the creative economy.

Renewing Amplify B.C. for two years, at 7.5 per year, will allow the industry and our partners to plan ahead to maximize programs, leverage private and public funding and continue momentum. The industry will struggle with uncertainty, which will impact every facet of the industry, including expanding jobs, programs and an overall sense of falling behind yet again to our counterparts, domestically and internationally.

Having said that, I’ll allow Nick to provide you with some more information and context.

N. Blasko: Thank you, everyone, for this opportunity.

My name is Nick Blasko. I have owned and operated music companies in B.C. for the past 20 years. I sit on the boards of Radio Starmaker Fund as well as Music Canada Live.

I’m here today to speak to the vital importance of the Amplify B.C. fund. Over the past two years, with the support of the B.C. music fund and now Amplify B.C., artists and music companies in B.C. have regained lost ground and, in many cases, their competitive edge, allowing them to grow forward with confidence.

Specifically, hundreds more recordings have been made and released in B.C., and our province’s festivals and music companies have been given opportunities to grow vertically and horizontally within their specialties. But beyond the traditional economic measures of job creation, ROI and contributions to GDP, there is something wonderful happening when our province’s artists and music entrepreneurs can more confidently embark on lifelong careers or scale up their ventures with the support they require without leaving our province.

The B.C. music fund and Amplify have helped to shine a light on all corners of our diverse province, whether through their calls to support gender equality in the sector or to support a wide cultural diversity of genres and styles, including our incredible First Nations musicians and music entrepreneurs.

[10:15 a.m.]

These two programs have opened people’s eyes to what’s possible and what should be celebrated and supported.

Just this past September, with the support of Amplify B.C., one of the festivals that I produce was able to achieve gender parity in its billing, featuring over 85 percent B.C. artists and also embarking on the second year of an important industry conference right here in the capital.

We are here today to ask that the Amplify fund be continued and, at minimum, given the green light for two more years at current funding levels before being made permanent.

With that, I’ll pass it to Scott to talk about Music B.C.’s wins with the fund.

S. Johnson: Hi, everyone. I’m here as chair of Music B.C. Thank you for having us.

Through the Amplify fund, we’ve been able to leverage a lot of dollars. And I think that’s the important thing to state with this fund — that we were able to leverage dollars, both from other federal organizations but mostly from the private sector, which has been, I think, an important part of the ROI that we’re going to see from this investment.

Locally, we were able to do it in four ways: through training and professional development, we invest in domestic and international export trade initiatives, we invest in touring and business travel grants for musicians and industry professionals, and we do local showcasing. Through the various studies, you’ll see that there are approximately 5,800 musicians and singers, 280 businesses that directly contribute approximately $400 million to the provincial economy.

On the live side, we’re seeing an investment of about $619 million in labour income and $815 million in GDP to the province. Not small numbers. In Vancouver alone, the live side contributes approximately 14,540 direct jobs as a part of various festivals and showcases.

Some of the wins we’ve had in the past year have been the Junos in 2018, which is Canada’s widely recognized awards show and festival. It’s important to note that they essentially would not have come here without the Amplify funds. So that was a very sound investment and one that contributed $10.9 million directly to our economy in B.C. and $9.9 million in Vancouver alone.

We’re able to invest in various projects, including in the South Asian community, where we took six businesses — and this year we’re taking ten businesses and two artists — to Mumbai, which is the biggest festival in Mumbai. It’s the first time that a Canadian business such as ourselves has invested in an initiative like that. Through various festivals, some of which Nick talked about, we are able to invest through Skookum — BreakOut West, which is in Kelowna this weekend, and Rifflandia, which I think you’re familiar with, that was here in September.

I think the biggest win is for the artists. Putting Vancouver, and keeping it, on the map of being a creative and vibrant community culturally and financially for artists to come, to live, to breathe, to showcase this beautiful province — what it’s about — to showcase the heritage of the various peoples of this province and to allow it to shine is really important.

I think, for us, we’re really excited. We’ve always been excited about the investment and thankful for what this government has contributed for Amplify. We’re really hopeful that it recognizes the importance of that investment and hope that it continues.

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

Any questions?

I just want to clarify something. In the ask, right now it’s my understanding that the Amplify funding is coming from discretionary funding as opposed to being in the budget.

A. Grigg: Correct.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are you actually asking for this to be in the budget for two years?

A. Grigg: That’s obviously the golden ticket which would put us on par with BCAC and other funding envelopes as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess part of the thing is if it’s two years, it’d probably have to be, because if it’s discretionary, it’s on a year-to-year basis. Maybe that was implied.

A. Grigg: Correct. I think one of the big things…. Obviously, for the industry to continue the momentum, it’s very, very…. People get on edge if they know it’s not there. So people are sort of like: “Well, should I invest more into this or not, if we do not know this is coming?”

It’s also being able to plan. Even when you look at labels, the cycles are a year, a year and half, down the road, so a lot of those things come into play. It will put everyone a little bit at ease and be able to preplan, including what we do at Music B.C.

[10:20 a.m.]

P. Milobar: Further to that, I guess that’s where I’m just trying to…. The front end of the presentation was how everyone is happy because they have this long-term stability, and you talked about a two-year pilot funding that you hope turns into permanent funding. Do you see the disconnect I’m seeing there with that?

A. Grigg: Yeah, it initially started with a two year. The BCMF went 15 over two years, and then under this government, it was changed to Amplify, and it was 7½ over one year. I mean, obviously, if it’s fixed and not discretionary, it would put the industry at ease. But like I said, at some point, we’ll take as much as we can get, when we can get it. It’s more looking at it from a planning standpoint and the urgency to be able to have people continue with the work they’ve already started, right?

P. Milobar: But you’d prefer to have it permanent this year than three years from now.

A. Grigg: Sure.

S. Johnson: Absolutely. If we can speak to some of the…. There are other provinces that make investment ongoing. That creates…. For various companies, some of the bigger companies want to have…. They have longer planning cycles, for instance. Some of the feedback that’s been a challenge with Amplify has been not being able to have a long-cycle plan, right?

If it’s an ongoing fund, we’re able to plan. An album cycle, typically, is a year and half out, or at least a year. Having ongoing funding would enable us to plan that much better and have proper investment from the private sector, that typically plan that way.

A. Grigg: And the leverage. I mean, obviously the federal government has chipped in significantly into a lot of our efforts as well. Even some of the numbers in my report…. We’ve seen our numbers go…. Our matching funds from the federal government increased by 130-plus percent.

We’re able to do that, and that’s just Music B.C.’s numbers. Now you’re taking all the artists and producers and writers and festivals — all doing the same thing, whether it’s private or other additional funding. With $7½ million, the ROI is there. A lot of it is obviously coming from the first two years, which is wrapping up now. You can see it already happening.

The same thing with our educational programs. Some of those results…. We could have already trained the next Drake. I’m just not going to know that until a few years down the road. But it still means the investment issue can be made, because those programs are vital to nurturing not just artists but industry people and professionals as well.

R. Leonard: You just started to talk about the question that I had. In terms of training, bringing up new creative forces in B.C., what do you do in terms of trying to access some of the more fringe ones who are not so mainstream — like First Nations, and just the different culture? You mentioned going to Mumbai. What about the South Asian community? What about Farsi?

A. Grigg: It’s a valid question. Obviously, this funding has helped our organization. We are the voice of the music industry. It has helped us tap into brand-new markets that we didn’t have the capacity to do for. Again, a lot of those take time to build. There are relationships that we need to continue to make with the Indigenous community to bring them into the fold.

Yes, we represent people, musicians, whether you’re a DJ in your basement, a guy or girl doing that; or an Indigenous artist; whether it’s a songwriter or folk artist; or this, that and the other. Everyone is at different stages. Through our educational and showcasing programs, we tier them up. When you hit the point where there’s international exposure, which is a huge pillar of ours, those are what we call export-ready artists. They’re ready to take on the rest of the world.

Our whole infrastructure starts even at kindergarten level, because we know those are your future musicians, your future…. We build our programs based on that.

N. Blasko: Specifically to your point about how we are accessing and supporting these things, I think it’s being done on two fronts. One is through Creative B.C., who administers the fund.

They have very specific mandates on how these dollars are spent. I think it’s been a wonderful thing for the whole industry to experience. They have given a lot of priority and emphasis to a lot of their goals of reaching, as I spoke to, gender parity, exposing underexposed genres of music, styles, preference to visible minorities.

They’ve baked in a lot of rules into the program, which I think are actually changing the culture of funding in music in this province. You’ve seen it. I’ve certainly seen it. It’s been a wonderful thing.

S. Johnson: You actually score higher on an application if you can add a diversity piece or a gender-parity piece or that kind of thing.

N. Blasko: Well, everything down to their mandates for respectful workplace. It has exposed a lot of magic that was happening in this province that was underexposed.

[10:25 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re just about out of time. I guess the distinction, too, with Creative B.C. is that a lot of the other creative industries get tax credits. There is no tax credit for music, so this it. This is the funding, so I guess that’s part of….

S. Johnson: This is the sole avenue that the government funds our sector, really. Obviously, there’s British Columbia Arts Council funding, but we’re not able to access that. So Amplify is the fund that we rely on as a sector.

A. Grigg: I think it’s been really interesting to watch over the last few years. I mean, I’ve been around 20-plus years in this industry, in and out of the for-profit/non-profit sector. You’re watching the galvanization between government, private sector and even non-profits, all starting to communicate a lot more, and they’re all starting to intertwine.

We’re also seeing a huge amount of cross-sector work being done. Even some of the stuff we do, we’re now crossing in. We do a lot of work in film and television. We do a lot of work in the tech world. We do a lot of work in the video game world. We’re seeing this great influx of everyone coming down to the table. It’s not just music as an isolated thing, because it virtually touches every part of the creative sector. It’s been really inspiring to watch the engagement level of that. But, of course, it takes an investment in time and this, that and the other to pull those pieces together.

B. D’Eith (Chair): As you know, I would love to talk about this all day, but we are out of time. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have B.C. Provincial Network of Child and Youth Advocacy Centres. I think we have three people. We have Sandra Bryce, Leah Zille and Brooke McLardy.

Hello, welcome. We’re going to try to keep, if we can, the initial comments to five minutes so we have time for questions.

B.C. PROVINCIAL NETWORK
OF CHILD AND YOUTH ADVOCACY CENTRES

B. McLardy: Thank you for having us. I’m Brooke McLardy, from Vernon. Beside me are Sandra Bryce, from Victoria, and Leah Zille, from Vancouver. We’re here representing the B.C. Provincial Network of Child and Youth Advocacy Centres, made up of six operational and three in-development child abuse response centres in the province. There’s a full list of those centres in your package.

We’re here to highlight how we’re making a difference in children’s lives through a collaborative response to child abuse, sexual assault and neglect, and our vision for implementing this model as a standard service across the province. What we are doing works, and we will ask you to consider how the province can implement a multiministry funding platform to provide core funding and sustainability to this important service.

As a network of responders to child abuse, we believe that children should not have to step foot inside a police station to tell someone what happened to them. Over the past five years, we have established child and youth advocacy centres in different areas of the province to provide child-friendly and trauma-informed locations for children and youth to be interviewed by police and social workers.

In addition, these locations provide advocacy and victim service support from the time a child is identified as having experienced abuse, throughout the process of telling their story to authorities, throughout any court processes and until long-term supports are in place.

Services such as policing, child protection, child and youth mental health and victim services all work together in a formal, agreed-upon way to support a child or youth affected by abuse. This is a new say of responding to child abuse and sexual assault in our province, and we currently have over 100 professionals working together in this manner through our established child and youth advocacy centres.

The impact of child abuse leads to many of the key social issues affecting our communities. Studies show that one in every three children in our province will experience abuse during their youth. Long-term outcomes of child abuse, sexual abuse and other childhood traumas include higher incidences of alcohol and illegal drug use, mental ill health and poor physical health.

In addition to survivors living a life that is full of ongoing health problems, all these serious issues create a burden on our communities as we struggle to provide reactive services to meet the demands of mental health, addiction, anti-social behaviours and homelessness.

We believe that child and youth advocacy centres form part of the long-term solution for our province. We know that if we can help children deal effectively with the trauma they have experienced while they are still children, they will have a much healthier future. We will see reductions in the cycle of violence, better mental health, less addiction, better physical health and, over time, more citizens that are better able to contribute positively in our communities.

It will also assist the province in meeting part of its commitment to truth and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples through the provision of a service that operates with cultural humility and safety.

[10:30 a.m.]

Today we are asking for your assistance in promoting a multiministry platform of funding for child and youth advocacy centres. Each centre has a multi-agency partnership that includes leadership and local service commitments from the Ministry of Children and Family Development, Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Ministry of Attorney General, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Justice. Each of the service partners collaborates to investigate the allegations of abuse and implement timely supports for the child, youth and their family.

In addition to the considerable advantages to the children who use our services, studies show that bringing these service partners together to respond to child abuse means that there are significant resource savings for each of the ministries involved. A Canadian child and youth advocacy centre completed a social return on investment study and found that there are key benefits in providing this model of service.

Across partner agencies, the study found productivity improvements, including time saved in several areas of service. This time is then reinvested into the delivery of care. The study also found improved effectiveness and quality of service delivery in the business end of providing service to children who are abused and that it does so without introducing new costs. Overall, the model’s primary benefit is improving the effectiveness of delivering services to victims of child abuse, and these efficacy improvements are realized across health, safety and justice outcomes for children.

Our provincial network recognizes that it should not fall to any one ministry to support this initiative. We envision a funding model that shares costs of operating child and youth advocacy centres between the ministries that most benefit from this response service.

In closing, our network has a vision for the province that every child has access to this proven model of best practice service, and once we have stable funding, we’ll be able to provide this through educating other professionals and collaborating between communities. We strongly believe that every child in British Columbia has a right to a service to make their journey through our systems easier and less traumatic and has the right to a future that includes health and wellness. With the province’s multiministry support, we will be able to produce visible, positive and lasting change in our province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. I just want a clarification. I was curious whether or not Foundry could play any part in what you’re doing.

B. McLardy: Foundry is involved in one of the child and youth advocacy centres, to my knowledge.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m just saying that maybe there are some synergies there, seeing as it’s trying to create every­thing under one roof. I’m just curious about that.

P. Milobar: Thanks for the presentation. Is it really the overall funding envelope you’re after, and you’re hoping that if you have three or four ministries each putting some money into the pot, it’s easier to get to that total dollar figure? I’m just wondering, because you’re one of the first groups I’ve ever heard that wants more government overlapping each other in jurisdictions. Usually, groups are saying: “Can we just get to one minister and deal with one ministry and one way forward?” Is it the actual lump dollars you’re looking for? And this is an ask that might get that, or…?

Do you not see where you could have some more frustrations by having three or four ministries involved, versus only one with a big pot of…? Would one ministry with a big pot of money be easier to actually navigate and even make things better than trying to navigate with your three or four with the same amount of money?

S. Bryce: The concept is built on a multidisciplinary team, right? We do that at the top. We have a steering committee that has representations of all of the players.

We believe that when each ministry has an investment for their own staff, their own workers, their own outcomes, they’re going to see that helping their own department is going to be a huge benefit. It’s not easy getting all the players together in Victoria alone.

I work with six different police agencies. But I’ll tell you that I’ve never seen anything come together so well when you put the child and the family in the centre. The prosecutors are telling us that they are getting really excellent interviews. It’s in a child-friendly setting. The families are feeling supported no matter what the outcome is at the end of the day in court. We are seeing some real positives.

M. Dean: Thank you so much. The collaborative approach is the best way for serving children and families. I’m interested in what you would guide us in terms of priorities, because we don’t have these advocacy centres everywhere in the province. I don’t know, at the same time, how precarious the existing ones are. Is it the existing centres that need to be given priority, or is it actually to offer equal and fair access to all British Columbian children — that we should be thinking about the whole province?

S. Bryce: Right now, you could please add that SKY, in the Kootenays, is establishing a number of satellite offices based on the need in their own communities. Here on the Island, we are working really hard to pull together Duncan, West Shore and Victoria. I think it’s next week that we are having meetings in Duncan.

[10:35 a.m.]

We think that these satellite offices could still offer the same level of service without having bricks and mortar attached to them. It’s about the process. It’s about the training and the education. I don’t think we need to have large centres everywhere. I think that’s unrealistic.

I think we need to work within our Indigenous communities to get them to invite us to be a part of it and to build that trust. I do think there’s a way around it. Certainly, other countries, like…. New Zealand has done a very good job of what I would call mini-advocacy centres, where they have the same process — the child treated in the same way. They may, in other places, fly in justices, that come in to prosecute, but the process is the same.

L. Zille: Can I just add to that, Sandy?

We currently have six that are operating in the province. These centres operate extremely lean. Each of the centres has one person that’s overseeing it, and then maybe one or two other people that are supporting that from an administrative standpoint.

From a priority perspective…. We do a lot as the leaders of the organizations, and we work very collaboratively with all of our partners within the sector as well. So being able to reduce some of the challenges that we face every day — having to go out and worry about whether or not we’re going to be keeping the doors open…. If there was some core funding, that would allow us to work with the communities around us.

What we don’t need is more infrastructure. We have a lot of infrastructure already, and we’ve got the expertise. We just need the support in order to make that happen.

S. Cadieux: Well, I have some knowledge of this area.

Interjection.

S. Cadieux: Just a little bit. I’ve spent some time — actually a significant amount of time — at Sophie’s Place.

From my perspective on this, the bigger challenge is that…. Everybody understands that this is the best way to work with children who are experiencing trauma, and that the folks involved in the sector really want to do this. But in every aspect of service related to children and abuse, it is an “off the side of somebody’s desk” piece. There is no core funding stream for this work, and it’s always sort of done by somebody else in their work.

The complexity is that these centres, which pull together and provide the right kind of environment for this work to be done in, are done almost exclusively through charitable dollars. And it’s not sustainable. While there is support from the professionals in their lines of work to come and do work here, the overarching need is some stable money to keep the centres operational so that the right environment is in place for the children to be served.

I’m very supportive of the ask and of the work. I know that the work is done extremely leanly and that, as Sandra said, there isn’t a need to have this in every community. It wouldn’t be realistic. But, in fact, to support the ones that exist would be valuable.

Thank you very much for presenting, and thank you for the work you do for kids.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thank you very much. We appreciate it.

A five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 10:38 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have BCEdAccess — Tracy Humphreys.

Hi. How are you, Tracy?

BCEDACCESS

T. Humphreys: I’m good. Thank you for having me here.

I wanted to just note…. I know you already acknowledged the land earlier today but just to remark on this beautiful space, because it’s really incredible. Also, I want to further acknowledge that our members and volunteers live, work, play and advocate all over the province on hundreds of unceded Indigenous territories.

Sorry. I’m going to be reading from my computer. I have not had time to memorize it. I ran an advocacy conference in Surrey last weekend, so I’ve been pretty busy.

The advantage of being part of the third-to-last consultation is we can endorse some who spoke before — Inclusion B.C., First Call B.C., Public Education Network Society and Speech and Hearing B.C. in their entirety, as well as all school district BCPVPA and BCSTA comments on funding for special education.

I understand Cynthia Lockrey will also be speaking to SLP services funding this afternoon, and I’m sure we’ll be in agreement as well.

I’m here to represent students with disabilities and their families. BCEdAccess is currently a grassroots, all-volunteer-run organization that provides peer-to-peer support and connection for over 1,500 parents and guardians of kids with special needs around B.C. We also provide education and training around school, district and provincial policies in inclusive education and around the human rights of students with disabilities and special needs.

We work to assert the right to equitable access to education for these students on both the individual and the systemic level. Inclusive education is inadequately funded, in ways that are varied and complex. I’m here to make five points, although I could probably speak to dozens.

Having read through the last ten years of committee reports, we’re calling on the government to implement, with some additions, the recommendations of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services made in 2017. The first of those was to ensure that teachers are well supported to implement inclusion, equity and quality learning opportunities for all students, including diverse learners, by increasing funding to allow schools to hire more trained educational assistants and specialists. This recommendation was also made by the committee in 2016.

With limited time, I’m going to mostly address EAs here, because I feel they’re most neglected in these conversations. EAs should be paraprofessionals, and school districts need to ensure that they and all other professionals have the training and education needed to work with our kids. Currently, working EAs need more hours. Your average EA only works five hours a day. Last year that average was six. Some EAs work fewer than three hours a day.

The MOA, being limited mainly to teachers, created more classrooms, spreading the EA workforce more thinly, while continued budget cuts reduced hours in many districts. There’s an urgent need to create full-time positions, hire more and educate more new EAs. The same message of recruitment and retention around teaching, especially but not limited to rural districts, applies equally to EAs. This absolutely critical role must be made more attractive.

The second recommendation from last year was to provide funding to enable early identification of students with special needs and to provide appropriate support programs as required. This recommendation was made, and strongly worded, back in the 2008 committee report. Current wait time for autism assessment is over one year. Dyslexia has no early screening process in schools, despite the need for early interventions as a critical support.

[10:55 a.m.]

Psychoeducational assessments are extremely difficult to access unless you pay privately, ranging from $1,500 to $4,000, because of lack of psychologists, both hiring and availability. I’m hearing several districts are only doing one to two of these psychoeducational tests per school per year. That is not equitable. We need to educate and hire more psychologists urgently.

Early identification of students with special needs has proven benefits to the student and economic benefit to the province, as early intervention lessens the needs of these individuals later in life.

The third thing we request is that an audit of the education of students with special needs in the B.C. public and independent school systems be undertaken as soon as possible, similar to the audit of the education of Aboriginal students in the B.C. public school system which was completed in 2015.

Fourth, we request that the government establish a royal commission on education to comprehensively review and produce a vision, guiding principles and action plan for early learning, K-to-12 and post-secondary schooling, remembering to begin with inclusion of all students.

Fifth, similarly, we request a commission or some mechanism to examine the delivery of all services in the province for people with disabilities and special needs — from early childhood to K to 12, transitioning to adulthood and adult supports. Working in silos, as was referenced in the last presentation, actually creates a lot of issues, some of which were highlighted clearly in the Representative for Children and Youth’s report Room for Improvement. We need to connect these ministries and have them working together.

In the ten years of reports I have read, the committee has recommended action again and again on inclusive education. Precious few recommendations have been implemented. Haven’t these students waited long enough? Education spending is a cost-effective, proactive and preventative use of our tax dollars.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tracy.

Questions?

T. Redies: Thank you for your presentation. As a parent of a child that had those designated special needs, I know the value of early intervention and diagnostics. I’m hearing from constituents in my riding of issues where there are some challenges once you have somebody supporting your child in the classroom, of them potentially being moved because they’re not senior enough in the union. In terms of your analysis, can you give us some sense of the quantum of funding that is required to properly address…?

T. Humphreys: I actually was going to attempt that, but I had such a limited time to put together this presentation. As I mentioned, we are a volunteer, grassroots, unfunded organization with very few people working. So I wouldn’t even have an inkling of an idea.

I could probably figure out some psychologist dollars, out of all of the things that I’ve suggested, because it’s pretty easy to figure out. It takes about eight hours to do a psychoeducational assessment, so times the number of psychologists required to do it for the number of students. I mean, one to two a school, per year, is not cutting it.

Most of the psycho-eds being done now are being done as kids are leaving school, because it’s required so they can get into post-secondary and have accommodations. Nobody is getting it at the early end. They’re only getting it because it’s absolutely essential at the other end.

S. Furstenau: Thank you for your presentation. I can only reinforce the things you’ve said, as a classroom teacher — these impacts. I think it’s interesting. If we start connecting the dots between the other presentations we’re hearing, about mental health issues, homelessness issues, post-secondary, they’re all connected.

Also, it’s also sort of the implications of…. It’s not just the kids with special needs being impacted; it’s the whole classroom, the entire environment. I think this is a very worthy and important emphasis to be highlighting. I just want to thank you and reinforce that what you’re saying is very important.

T. Humphreys: Thanks. I know they’re really big asks. I’m well aware of that. But go big or go home.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We did hear, too, that sometimes there are some systemic issues. For example, the vice-principals and principals will often be specially trained, let’s say, as a special ed, but they can’t cross over. There might be some things that don’t necessarily cost more, or incremental costs as opposed to big costs, but there are some systemic issues.

[11:00 a.m.]

T. Humphreys: Yeah. I didn’t bring it up, but you have the learning support teachers, for example, constantly teaching classes. They’re rarely ever providing actual service to those kids. Principals are acting as EAs on a daily basis, right?

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. I guess I need to be a little clearer about who your organization is.

T. Humphreys: Oh sure, of course. I kind of had to run through it quickly.

R. Leonard: There’s that, and then the question around the EAs. You make reference to them needing to have the training and education needed to work with our kids. I’m wondering if you can describe the qualifications that are required provincially, just how that system works.

The last thing is that you make reference to 1,500 kids. I’m assuming that that number comes before the unassessed kids who have not yet been designated.

T. Humphreys: Okay. The 1,500 is actually the number of our current membership, of our organization. I think that the number is vastly higher than that, in terms of who’s being underserved. It’s just who’s found us. Our organization started as a little Facebook group 4½ years ago, during the teachers’ strike, and has grown from ten people to over 1,500. We’ve grown to do education and advocacy, helping and supporting each other but also working, like I am today, at the systemic level.

You had a question about the EAs. I’m trying to remember what it was.

R. Leonard: It concerns their educational qualifications.

T. Humphreys: Oh, right. The positive side of things is that the organizations that do train and qualify EAs are starting to talk together to try and streamline that. Right now, first, every district has a different set of required qualifications. Some are not requiring a whole lot, and others are requiring almost too much.

Second, they’re not training the same in every place. If you go to Douglas College or you go to Camosun College…. I guess it’s not Douglas College. It’s Kwantlen now, isn’t it? I don’t know.

Interjection.

T. Humphreys: It is Douglas. There’s Douglas; there’s Kwantlen; there’s Camosun. They’re all training them slightly differently. The length of time they’re training for is a little different. It’s very inconsistent — like many things in the education system around the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, we’re out of time. Thank you very much, Tracy. I appreciate the presentation.

Next up we have the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence — Stacey Lund, Lindsay Player, Alethea Wilson and Robert Bettauer.

Just a reminder that we’re trying to keep our initial comments to five minutes, if we can, so that there’s time for questions. Then we have five minutes for questions.

PACIFIC INSTITUTE
FOR SPORT EXCELLENCE

R. Bettauer: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you again. I’d like to begin the presentation by acknowledging that we’re meeting on the territory of the Lekwungen people, including the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, with whom we enjoy a strong and growing relationship.

My name is Robert Bettauer, and I’m the CEO of PISE, the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence. Joining me are my colleagues Alethea Wilson, communications manager, and Lindsay Player, our program manager.

PISE is a not-for-profit organization opened in 2008 in Victoria, in large part through a major capital contribution from the B.C. government. We’re celebrating our ten-year anniversary this fall, and I’m proud to say that we’re delivering successfully on the vision and goals established for PISE, while also becoming a financially self-sustaining organization. For the past year, we’re now also a charitable organization in health and education.

We continue to enjoy a collaborative model of successful partnerships with Camosun College and Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, contributing to the enhancement of post-secondary sport and exercise wellness education, a world-class training environment for Olympic and Paralympic athletes and the overall health and well-being of citizens in our community.

PISE’s purpose statement is to “transform lives through healthy activity and sport.” We provide this through the community and across the province with our highly qualified and passionate team. We’ve been able to develop a successful business model through multiple partnerships with the public and private sectors, allowing us to help make a significant impact in the lives of thousands of our citizens.

Your investment in PISE and your ongoing support to sport and physical activity is being levered multiple times, not only in our region but across the province, through our partnership with viaSport and the membership in the regional alliance, whom we know you are hearing from in other presentations.

I am the co-chair of the B.C. physical literacy activation plan, developed through viaSport and leaders from the sectors of health, education, recreation and sport — all with a vested interest in the health and development of our children.

[11:05 a.m.]

PISE plays a physical literacy leadership role in the training of practitioners and the delivery of programs directly reaching approximately 5,000 youth, annually, including many marginalized children. We believe that we are contributing to health in our province through our preventative, proactive approach that links daily physical activity with physical, mental and emotional health. We want to reinforce the importance of and our support for the ask that viaSport has put forward to the provincial government to invest in the expansion of the physical literacy MOVE program with $500,000 over two years.

The benefits to children will be profound throughout the province and will be leveraged multiple times through the new sectoral partnerships that have already been initiated, impacting teachers, recreation leaders, coaches and early childhood educators.

A. Wilson: Robert mentioned our cross-sectoral collaboration on a provincial level in the area of physical literacy. PISE continues this collaborative approach on a regional level, working with three school districts, Island Health, recreation centres and other community organizations to improve the health and development of children.

PISE has played an integral role in forming three collective impact groups: OneAbility, which helps people with a disability access physical activities and two Physical Literacy and You groups.

Through comprehensive teacher mentorship and leader training, we increase the capacity to deliver more physical literacy–enriched programming. PISE mentored 106 teachers last year, trained 408 early childhood educators and provided embedded professional development for six early childhood education centres.

Our approach to developing physical literacy is much more than skill development. We inspire creative movement exploration that develops confidence, respect, inclusivity, fun, cooperation and fundamental skills. In the words of a parent whose child has a disability: “PISE’s ability to have all of the kids together, playing and laughing, was fabulous. It did not matter what walk of life you came from. They found a way to bring integration for everyone.”

L. Player: PISE has been actively working with Indigenous communities for a number of years to provide affordable access to physical literacy–enriched programs, including work with the Songhees Nation and the WSÁNEĆ school board.

Last year we delivered a federally funded program in the Lau Welnew Tribal School, designed to improve overall school effectiveness through quality physical education and physical literacy. This program incorporated traditional and physical games and included a research component.

Since the spring of 2017, PISE has been offering Fuelling Youth Performance for Indigenous athletes ages 13 to 17. The creation of this program stemmed from the realization that many local Indigenous athletes training for the 2017 North American Indigenous Games did not have the opportunity for quality performance strength conditioning training that other Canadian athletes receive.

After running a successful pro bono program with the support of local elders and leaders, including the Indigenous Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation Council, PISE has now secured sponsorship for this program and has been running it consistently for over one year. It has become a model program that is now beginning to be implemented throughout B.C. We continue to look for ways to make this program sustainable and have it become a constant resource for the Indigenous youth athletes.

Through the strong relations that PISE has developed with Indigenous communities, Robert and I were fortunate to be on the Lekwungen bid committee for NAIG 2020. Halifax was awarded the games, but the relationships and support cultivated during the process will further strengthen, and we’ll continue to do great things together as a community.

A. Wilson: We are moving into our annual Gift of PLAY campaign. All proceeds from this campaign go to providing access to PISE-led programs for underprivileged children through our Play Your Way grant or by funding programs like the nine we run for children with a cognitive or physical disability. In addition to this wonderful community program, PISE’s beautiful facility provides access to physical fitness education and sport performance training.

To build on the momentum of our successful capital campaign that resulted in a world-class four-lane accessible training track, we’re moving into the Field of Dreams, a $1.5 million capital campaign. We have already anchored some support for this project, which will include the necessary replacement of our turf field with a new environmentally friendly and non-toxic surface. The project also includes equipment and facility enhancements that will continue to ensure that PISE is fully accessible and inclusive.

An estimated 30,000 children, athletes, students and community members have used the field and facility over the past ten years. These upgrades and enhancements will ensure our continued support of these individuals and increase our capacity to reach an additional 1,000 people per year.

[11:10 a.m.]

R. Bettauer: We have demonstrated the ability to effectively fundraise and complete a project this size on budget with the track, which we completed in 2016 for $1.2 million. Similar to the support we received for the track, we are requesting $500,000, or one-third of the total cost, from the B.C. government for our new Field of Dreams project, to again leverage the rest and provide another major benefit to our region and all the various members of the community whom we serve.

Thank you again for providing us the opportunity to speak to you today and share our work and vision. We look forward to continuing to build on our work here in our region and with our partners across the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. We’re at about eight minutes. So we only have time for a couple of short questions, if that’s all right.

I have a question. Just to be clear, the $1.5 million is primarily for one project.

R. Bettauer: The Field of Dreams capital project, which will include replacing our field with the environmentally non-toxic, all-year-round turf; redoing the gym and doubling our seating, so there’ll be more community events that we can hold there; and redoing the front entrance to PISE, similar to what we did to the south side a couple of years ago — taking concrete and turning it into a sport surface, a soft surface, for a variety of programs. Like the track, our facility is fully open to the community.

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

Next up we have Camosun College Student Society — Michel Turcotte.

CAMOSUN COLLEGE STUDENT SOCIETY

M. Turcotte: I’m Michel Turcotte. I’m the executive director of the Camosun College Student Society. With me in the audience today — she’s got a cold, so she wanted me to do this — is Fillette Umilisa. She’s our external executive.

We appreciate and acknowledge that this session is literally taking place on the territory of the Songhees people, and we appreciate the opportunity to speak to the committee today.

You have heard from many of our student colleagues across the province. We want you to know that we agree with much of what they have said and are not going to use all our time repeating most of that. That being said, we do feel that there is a need for us to give our two cents on the issue of international students.

The university up the road from our Lansdowne campus, UVic, was one of the ones that brought in substantial tuition fee increases for new international students this year, with a 20 percent increase that occurred this fall and, it looks like, another 15 percent that’s going to kick in, in September of next year. Other institutions, such as Kwantlen and UBC, also had significant increases over this time for new and returning international students. Frankly, we do not want this trend to continue.

We understand that international students are not subsidized by the provincial government, like the domestic students, but institutions are increasing those international tuition fees not just to cover the full cost of those students but to fund infrastructure, services and, in some cases, simply because they can.

Camosun students lived through the dramatic domestic tuition increases of the early 2000s, watched what that did in terms of accessibility and diversity of the student body and feel that we are going to see this again, in terms of international students. We urge you to recommend a cap on international student tuition fees in your report.

International students add to our campuses. They increase diversity, and it should not be only the very rich of the world that can afford to study in British Columbia.

It is important to remember that many international students become permanent residents after they graduate. They contribute significantly to our economy and to our tax base, both while they’re studying and, like I said, after they graduate. Is it really fair that the first experience that many of these potential immigrants have is feeling exploited at their post-secondary institutions? International and domestic students alike need predictability in their education costs, especially considering the very high cost of living in most parts of this province.

On the issue of tuition and funding, while we appreciate the existence of a domestic tuition fee policy, we also urge and recommend that institutions receive full inflation-plus increases to their operational grants and that all new collective agreements — there are a number being negotiated right now — are fully funded by the province. That should be in the budget.

[11:15 a.m.]

The tuition fee policy of the ministry also needs to be tightened up so that institutions like ours are no longer seeking to change their programming just primarily to increase revenue and to get around the tuition fee policy but are doing so in response to the needs of the community, employers and advances in technology.

You have heard, or are likely to hear, from our friends at the Thompson Rivers University student society, who have been arguing very loudly that their university is underfunded compared to other universities. That is true, and we think that funding for all post-secondary education should be looked at to address those issues.

In doing that, we also urge you to look carefully at the funding colleges received, as it is colleges that do a lot of the heavy lifting in this province but are the poor second cousins and are not funded to the same level as other aspects of post-secondary education. Consequently, colleges like Camosun have been forced, like I mentioned earlier, to play revenue-generating games as a direct result of inadequate government funding over many years.

Colleges are the access point to post-secondary education for many of the economically and socially disadvantaged. While we know there are some recent provincial initiatives, colleges like Camosun need to receive more designated — like, very specific — funding to provide support services so that all students can succeed.

My colleague in the audience likes to tell me that I’m old, and I am. But many of you, like me, went to university when there was much more substantial funding provided by governments. Many students could pay their year’s worth of tuition from the proceeds of their summer jobs. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case anymore.

Cutting taxes or funding huge infrastructure projects may be appealing to you — to some — now. But remember that the students of the day are the future, and they deserve the same benefits as we received in our youth. In closing, we call on you to urge your colleagues to support fairness in the funding of post-secondary education in British Columbia.

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

Any questions at all?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just really quickly, thank you for your presentation. We have heard from many associations across the province. Those associations have brought to our attention some of the differences in some of our questions. We have colleges and universities from one and a half times to four plus times. It’s an issue that I really think not only ourselves, but also colleges and universities, have to look at, because at some point in time, they will kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg for them at this point in time. My opinion.

M. Turcotte: Yes, I fully agree. I think the provincial government needs to be a smart steward in relation to those issues, because destroying…. The path we’re on now does not…. It will essentially destroy the market for international students, more than likely, and will be highly disadvantageous for us in the long term.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you again for your presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Michel. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have Clean Energy Canada — Dan Woynillowicz.

CLEAN ENERGY CANADA

D. Woynillowicz: Thanks to all of you and good morning. I’m really happy to be here today to share our recommendations with you. My name is Dan Woynillowicz. I’m the policy director at Clean Energy Canada, which is a think tank based at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University.

I’d like to share three recommendations with you which would contribute towards achieving the overarching goal of building a clean economy as well as enhancing affordability for British Columbians. I’ll introduce the recommendations briefly and then speak to each of them with a little bit more detail.

First, we believe that the 2019 budget must match the forthcoming climate solutions and clean economy strategy in its ambition — the depth and breadth of support. Second, it should target investment and support toward solutions that achieve multiple objectives. Third, it should leverage government procurement to support B.C. clean technology solutions providers. Before I get into the details, I want to put a fine point on what exactly it looks like to have a clean economy.

[11:20 a.m.]

It looks like clean power, which we have in abundance, and then using that power to fuel clean cars, clean manufacturing and resource production and more energy-efficient buildings and businesses. The benefits of achieving these things include less pollution, healthier communities, lower health care costs and lower energy bills that enhance affordability, all delivered through world-leading innovation, more and better jobs and globally competitive businesses and industries.

Our first recommendation is that Budget 2019 be a climate solutions and clean economy budget. It’s a defining opportunity for the government to, as the saying goes, put its money where its mouth is. To be successful, an all-of-government approach is needed. This will require providing new resources towards implementation across the public service. It also requires a significant commitment of resources to support the implementation of new programs and policies, with a focus on ensuring that these have clear objectives and sufficient support and that they provide certainty for citizens and businesses.

Second, government investment and support should prioritize solutions that achieve multiple objectives. We can do more than one thing at a time. By applying a progressive framework for program delivery, we can serve to enhance equity. For example, with the clean energy vehicle purchase incentive…. That program could be retooled so that the scale of the incentive is correlated with income level. So those who would benefit most from the significant fuel cost savings associated with owning an electric vehicle would have enhanced ability to actually buy one.

We also encourage a focus on delivering programs that enhance energy efficiency. By reducing energy use, we can reduce energy bills, and British Columbians can keep more money in their pockets. By focusing not just on building more efficient homes and buildings when we’re building new, we can also focus on retrofitting our existing building stock. In doing so, the government can support the creation of long-term, well-paying jobs across the province.

If we’re successful in spurring new technological innovation in our industries, the government can further support B.C. businesses by marketing their products to the world as made clean in B.C. We think that mining, in particular, is an interesting opportunity for this, given that B.C. is home to so many of the metals and minerals needed for clean energy solutions like solar panels and electric cars. It’s also a sector that could benefit by cutting its pollution through electrification and capitalizing on B.C.’s abundance of clean power.

Third, the government, as a significant consumer in the B.C. economy, should leverage the power of procurement and align it with its climate change objectives. By adopting a low-carbon procurement approach that factors in carbon pollution, it can prioritize clean technologies and services. In addition, it can support B.C.’s growing number of clean tech companies by reserving a portion of procurement efforts by using set-asides for small and medium-sized enterprises. The government should also work with its various agencies and Crown corporations to do the same, from B.C. Transit to B.C. Ferries to the B.C. Housing corporation.

In conclusion, B.C.’s ambition to build a clean economy is a defining opportunity. We have so many opportunities and advantages to harness. We believe Budget 2019 can and should be a historic budget for the province. It can play a key role in delivering climate solutions and building a clean economy for British Columbians.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dan. I really appreciate those comments.

T. Redies: Thanks very much for your presentation. Can you give some specific examples where you think government could, through procurement, support the clean energy and the climate change plans?

D. Woynillowicz: A significant one is actually on the transportation side — around procurement of vehicles for government operations. Obviously, the government uses a diversity of vehicles ranging from passenger vehicles through to snowplows. So you always need to focus on the type of use.

We only have, I believe, two electric vehicles in the entire provincial government fleet. The reason for that is that when the procurement of the vehicle happens, they only look at the sticker price. They don’t factor in the operating costs because the operating costs are the responsibility of the ministry that receives the car.

In that kind of an analysis…. What’s missed in that is that by driving that electric vehicle, your fuel costs will only be 25 percent of a gasoline equivalent. So the payback on it, particularly if it’s used quite frequently, is relatively quick, and the economics actually pencil out. But within the way that procurement currently happens, those types of opportunities aren’t seen.

There are some relatively minor changes that can be made to the way that procurement is done — apply it to vehicles, apply it to the building stock of government-owned and -operated buildings, look at energy-efficiency retrofits. There are a lot of opportunities across government.

M. Dean: You’re talking about lots of different opportunities. Have you done costings on each of those kinds of programs that you might recommend?

D. Woynillowicz: We haven’t done specific costings for these, and we haven’t put forward specific recommendations for these different policies or what that would be.

[11:25 a.m.]

We have previously done economic modelling looking across the B.C. economy and a range of different policy types and the costing. The payback and the benefits of it always exceed the actual cost, but I don’t have specific figures that we’re putting forward today.

S. Furstenau: I’m just wondering, from Clean Energy Canada’s point of view, about squaring these laudable goals with the recent announcement of the LNG Canada plant. How do you see that as a challenge to achieving these outcomes that you’re putting forward?

D. Woynillowicz: I think everybody can agree that the challenge for the province, from a greenhouse gas pollution perspective, is made much bigger in light of this addition of pollution that will accompany LNG Canada. We’re still confident that the government can deliver a plan to still hit our 2030 and 2050 targets. It’s going to make it more challenging. It’s going to require heavier lifting across the economy by other sectors and by British Columbians. We think it’s imperative that the forthcoming strategy acknowledge that. The modelling they’re doing does factor in that LNG Canada is proceeding, so it’s going to require a heavier lift.

LNG Canada is also going to bring a lot of jobs and economic benefits as well. We’re going to have to make sure that when it comes to government revenue that’s coming in from that project, we look at that as an opportunity to reinvest in mitigating emissions across the economy and really try to focus on retooling our economy so that we aren’t as drawn to these significant fossil fuel projects that create a lot of jobs for construction but don’t create a lot of long-term jobs.

We think it’s an opportunity to actually pivot now and say…. You know, this big debate about whether that one project was proceeding is now behind us. It’s proceeding. Now what do we do, both to still hit our emission targets but also to make sure that we’re building a more diverse economy across the province?

S. Furstenau: Can I just quickly follow up?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, of course, Sonia. Go ahead.

S. Furstenau: Just in terms of…. There’s a lot of discussion about subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Do you have a specific position on that as well?

D. Woynillowicz: Generally speaking, we see the fossil fuel industry as being sufficiently mature that it doesn’t require a lot of extra help from the public purse. That said, I think where sometimes it gets a little bit fuzzy is around mitigating some of the additional greenhouse gas emissions coming. If B.C. does want to be a leading jurisdiction in terms of mitigating some of those emissions…. If we look at upstream gas production in the northeast, there are some innovative new technologies that are not being deployed right now because the economics don’t quite pencil out for those companies, and they’re not required to.

We do think that a mix of carrots and sticks is required in that type of situation, where you need to have more robust regulations than we have today — for example, on methane emissions. But then you may need to couple that with some support for innovation, for piloting some of these technologies and demonstrating them. We have B.C.-based businesses that are producing some of those solutions for the oil and gas sector. If they can get them deployed and demonstrated, they’re also going to be able to sell them to Alberta and Texas and elsewhere around the world.

It’s a little bit fuzzy in terms of…. Is that a subsidy of the fossil fuel industry? Well, in a sense it is, yes, but it is serving a bigger purpose in terms of reducing emissions and then also supporting those companies that are developing those solutions. We’ll be able to export them abroad, recognizing that we are going to continue to use oil and gas for several decades yet to come, even if we’re on a trajectory of meeting our climate change objectives.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a quick question in regards to how you see the Indigenous communities playing into this whole plan for clean energy.

D. Woynillowicz: I certainly can’t pretend to speak for them in any way.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, just in terms of…. We’ve already seen quite an uptake in some Indigenous communities with clean energies.

D. Woynillowicz: Absolutely. I think that one of the things…. If we look on the energy supply side, we do have this abundance of renewable electricity across the province, in pretty much every community. So where we do still have communities that are off the grid, that are currently burning diesel, there are tremendous opportunities for them to tap into local, renewable energy resources. That’s made much easier if we also couple it with investing in energy efficiency for their housing stock and their building stock, as well, so that they can actually be reducing the amount of energy they require and then tapping into those local sources.

I think we actually have some tremendous examples in B.C. of Indigenous communities developing or co-developing renewable energy projects, taking equity stakes, undertaking training so that their community members can actually become members of that industry. I think we have a good story to tell and one that we can achieve a lot more on, and we’re certainly supportive of dedicated and targeted programs towards engaging and enabling Indigenous communities across the province to participate in that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We were up in Haida Gwaii as a com­mit­tee, and actually, it was…. They’re still burning diesel.

[11:30 a.m.]

It was really cool that the high school is putting solar on their roof with a Tesla battery for their backup generation. This is a school that teaches hunting. It’s really great to see that sort of innovation and embracing that new technology in a remote area. As you said, there are a lot of opportunities.

Ronna-Rae, last question.

R. Leonard: I really appreciate hearing your forward-looking at how we get to our targets. It’s very reassuring to hear someone like you saying that we can achieve our targets if we put our noses to the grindstone. I really appreciate that. That’s kind of how I live my life, lived through decades of challenges of not getting my way on some environmental fronts but always looking for the way forward to really reach our goals. So I really appreciate that. I think that’s the kind of thinking we have to apply.

I particularly like your comments around the multisectoral application, sort of the whole cost accounting, looking at mining, looking at all the different opportunities that we do have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and opening up the door for technological innovation.

Having said all that, the question that I have is around the procurement and the ability for us to do that within our world trade question.

D. Woynillowicz: We’ve definitely taken a look at that, and we’ve been working with the federal government’s centre for greening government. We were working with the previous government in Ontario, as well, trying to get into that.

The good news is that setting environmental objectives associated with procurement is fully permissible under the WTO, under NAFTA. As far as we understand, under the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, I think it’s called, similarly it’s still permissible, as are the set-asides for small and medium enterprises. A lot of people first, when they hear that, say, “Well, that must somehow conflict with trade law,” if you’re kind of creating a set-aside for your own small companies, but that also is permissible under trade law.

There is actually quite a bit that can still be done to focus on reducing greenhouse gas pollution at the same time, as well as supporting B.C.-based small and medium enterprises, which really are the companies that are developing so many of the innovative technologies, both on the hardware side but also increasingly on the software side. So there’s an opportunity to support those businesses, improve government operations, which is going to help both on the cost side as well as on the carbon pollution side.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fascinating discussion. I’d love to go on, but we’re well out of time. Thank you very much, Dan. We really appreciate the presentation.

Next up we have VIU Students Union — Avery Bonner.

Hello, Avery. How are you?

A. Bonner: Good. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. Just a reminder. We’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions. Then we have five minutes of questions.

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

A. Bonner: Good morning, members of the committee. My name is Avery Bonner, and I am the director of external relations for the Vancouver Island University Students Union. I’d like to thank the committee for their hard work and dedication to the improvement of British Columbia for all and, most of all, thank you for the opportunity to provide comment for the preparation of next year’s budget.

Our students union is member Local 13 of the B.C. Federation of Students, and we represent over 9,000 students from Powell River to the Cowichan Valley. Our mandate is to advocate for a high-quality, publicly funded and accessible post-secondary education system in British Columbia.

There are two asks in this presentation that we would like to bring for consideration for this year’s budget, number one being the elimination of interest on student loans and the second one being an increase in funding to our colleges and universities.

The interest rate on the provincial portion of student loans in B.C. is currently prime, so right now about 3.6 percent — 3.62 exactly. Now let’s take the average cost of a four-year degree in B.C., which is currently $30,000, and then let’s apply that 3.62 percent interest rate for a repayment period of about ten years, which is the maximum. That initial $30,000 turns into a total of $38,000, an extra $8,000.

This means that a student who can afford to pay the upfront costs pays only the costs of that education, but a low-income student who needs access to student loans will pay thousands of dollars more in interest. Tuition and other costs associated with going to school remain a significant barrier for many British Columbians who strive to attain the post-secondary education necessary to compete in today’s job market.

[11:35 a.m.]

While student loans help many who cannot afford the upfront costs of post-secondary initially to attend those colleges and universities, the interest charged on those loans continues to be an unnecessary tax on lower-income students who had the audacity to seek an education.

We have been pleased to see this committee again and again recommend the elimination of interest charged on student loans. We ask, for your consideration, to finally eliminate the interest on student loans, as such a move would make a significant difference in student access and affordability and would provide new opportunities to low- and middle-class families in British Columbia.

Further to this, I’d like to bring forward the issue of the funding for post-secondary institutions. For this academic year, government funding accounts for just 40.1 percent of VIU’s total operating budget. Vancouver Island University’s 2018-19 consolidated resource plan succinctly outlines what our student members and the wider VIU community have been feeling for years — that continued stagnation in provincial-based operating grants, inflation, unfunded capital maintenance and social innovation leave our institution with no choice but to pursue supplemental revenue-generating strategies, including further leveraging income from ancillary operations and relying on revenue from international student tuition fees to make up the difference.

The sale of education at a profit to international students has become a major component of the funding model for B.C.’s public post-secondary education system. It is common for institutions to use international fees as the final piece of that budget puzzle, and this year’s VIU board of governors has voted to increase international fees by 9.45 percent. This signals both a significant gap in the operating budget of our institution as well as an increased reliance on international fees.

The direct economic dependence on international students puts our institutions at a great risk to even small changes in the market for international students and could potentially leave our institutions with significant deficits that would directly impact the education of B.C. citizens. This fall we saw 93 VIU students from Saudi Arabia given only three weeks’ notice to return home. Aside from the obvious void felt by the loss of these students in our VIU community, the loss of more than $650,000 in fees in this semester alone acutely demonstrates the risk that we take as a society in relying on international tuition fees to fund our institutions.

Universities play an important role in the creation of a strong, sustainable and innovative economy that works for all British Columbians. The stagnant funding of our institutions harms our society, puts our economy at risk and directly affects the social well-being of our province. We strongly urge the government to meaningfully increase funding for post-secondary institutions. For this year’s budget, we are asking that the province keep its promise to eliminate the interest charged on student loans and to introduce more funding for post-secondary institutions that are struggling to provide accessible education to all British Columbians.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Avery. We really appreciate it.

Questions?

Just so you’re aware, we have had a number of presentations from student unions and from universities and colleges. There definitely seems to be a theme in regards to international students, but some institutions are also asking for needs-based grants. Is that something that your union’s advocating for, or is it a combination of getting rid of interest rates? Or is this more of a priority for you?

I’m just curious to see, because there seems to be some differences between different presentations. I just wanted to see what you’re thinking.

A. Bonner: It would be both. Both would be imperative. I think in the past we’ve realized that although it’s important to reiterate important points, it’s also important that we all, as individual student unions, touch on different topics and different priorities. So I think that both of those things are definitely important, but I wanted to focus on something that’s a bit more digestible.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fair enough. It’s not that you’re not advocating for that, but you’re just focusing on these things and allowing some of the other student bodies to….

A. Bonner: Exactly. Both of those things are super, super important.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, I understand.

S. Furstenau: I just want to thank you for your presentation. Really well done — in particular, your explanation of the interest and the impacts on, typically, what are going to be lower-income students, as compared to those who can afford to pay it up front. That’s a very effective way of demonstrating an inequality built into the system and makes the case, in my view, very effective for the reduction or the removal of the interest. Thanks very much for that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Avery. We appreciate the presentation.

A. Bonner: Thank you for your time.

[11:40 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Common Ground Alliance.

D. Baspaly: Thanks for the opportunity, members of the committee.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And then we have another person?

D. Baspaly: M.J. is with our organization.

M. Whitemarsh: M.J. Whitemarsh.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re trying to keep the initial comments to five minutes, if we can, so we have time for questions.

Dave, take it away.

B.C. COMMON GROUND ALLIANCE

D. Baspaly: We appreciate the opportunity. The B.C. Common Ground Alliance has been around since the late ’90s. Are most people familiar with the organization? That’s one of the reasons why we’re here. That’s an easy one maybe to get to cross the table.

We’re a non-profit organization, and our members represent everybody from people who have underground infrastructure, meaning large plant holders, down to the excavators. Again, it’s all drawn from membership from these organizations. It’s how the lifeblood of the organization funds.

Our mission is to protect the underground infrastructure, worker safety and the environment. We do that, I think, exceptionally well with a paltry budget of about $180,000 — again, all derived from the private sector in terms of how it comes together in this non-profit organization.

What we’re looking for today — we’ve been at this table a number of times — is a contribution by the provincial government to support the work. Right now the Oil and Gas Commission provides a small contribution, a couple of thousand dollars. We think, given the responsibility of being a vanguard to protect the underground infrastructure of the province, it would make sense if the province was an equal partner in that mission to protect everything that’s there.

I’m just going to go over a few things that we do and, I think, do well — really quickly, understanding the time.

Best practices for excavators are created. A lot of the big primes ensure that their subtrades and so on use these best practices to make sure things don’t get hit. When we’re talking about damages, we’re talking everything from large oil and gas pipelines all the way down to telecommunications, fibre optics, 811 service and everything that’s in the ground, including traffic lights.

You can imagine that that’s hundreds of millions of dollars every year, if taxpayers money goes into repairing these systems, and that’s why I think our members take it very seriously. We need to stand together. We call it “Damage pre­ven­tion is a shared responsibility,” and we all work together to develop a range of initiatives.

We also do education, prevention. We do our statistic gathering. We’re working federally to get a federal bill passed that would ensure mandatory enrolment in the One Call system: call or click before you dig. The other piece it would do is ensure that everybody calls before they dig, whether you’re digging a garden, putting in a fencepost, or whether you’re doing some large capital project.

The ask for the committee today is very simple. It’s just that we want to see the province step up and be part of our team in making the province of British Columbia a safer place to work and live. You can do that by encouraging your members in the Oil and Gas Commission to maybe increase their membership and join us at the table with solutions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dave.

Any questions at all? I do have a question, just in regards to how this interacts with other organizations. I know that with Terasen, with Hydro and with all these others, they have their own kind of programs about digging and all that kind of stuff. How do you interface with some of the other companies?

D. Baspaly: You’d be surprised at the power of a small organization. All of those organizations are members, and they run their programs through us. There’s a pronounced balance when you, for example, get the Landscape and Nursery Association working with Fortis to try to protect the underground infrastructure. That’s what we do. We’re the kind of hub of the wheel. But we are struggling to meet a need that is astronomical when you think of how big this province is — rural remote, etc.

T. Redies: Did you speak to the numbers of incidents annually? Can I just get you to repeat that?

D. Baspaly: A lot of these collateral materials…. I know you’re going to take your lunch and pore over them, because they’re so fascinating. We’ll talk about 11,000 hits in B.C. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars just in B.C. alone, in things that are just sort of absorbed by various services, etc., that the taxpayers are paying for indirectly.

T. Redies: When you’re saying 11,000 hits, do you mean people actually calling or actual accidents or issues?

D. Baspaly: Accidents. I would suggest that that’s the conservative figure. If we actually probed into it, it would get a lot more pronounced. It’s huge. We all know it. Hospitals shut down, and different things, from time to time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much for the presentation. We really appreciate it.

[11:45 a.m.]

D. Baspaly: See, we follow the rules. In, out, see you next year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dave. We like it. You get Brownie points for that one. Good stuff.

Anastasia Butcher, hello. How are you? Welcome. We’re trying to keep the initial comments to five minutes, if we can.

ANASTASIA BUTCHER

A. Butcher: Thank you for the opportunity to present my recommendations. My name is Anastasia Butcher. I am a single parent of an 18½-year-old daughter who has autism, developmental disability and complex mental health challenges. The number 18½ is significant for the purpose of my presentation because in about six months, she will transition into adulthood, with autism, with developmental disability and with complex mental health challenges.

During all these years, I have been advocating. It has been a constant advocacy to make sure that her rights and her needs are met. Let me tell you, it has not been an easy process to push forward, to advocate and, at the same time, to deal with the complexity of her needs on a daily basis.

I want you to imagine a family like mine connected by invisible strings to supports and services that keep us connected and keep us going. Now imagine this family, just like mine, for these strings to be cut off one by one. At the age of 18, no more speech therapy, no more occupational therapy or physiotherapy. At the age of 19, no more counselling, no more autism funding, respite funding, supported child development, etc., etc.

Instead of these supports and services and those strings, the family now has just a big huge cloud over its head with the big word “uncertainty” on it. The time of transition is a time of panic, stress and uncertainty for my family and for many families in British Columbia.

I am really thankful to Community Living British Columbia for consistent communication. However, the messages I receive from them are consistent with what they tell other families in British Columbia.

(a) There is not enough funding to go around to support everybody.

(b) There is no guarantee of any kind of funding. The only guarantee is $233 per month of respite care, and there is no guarantee and no confirmation until the youth’s month of transition to adulthood. In our case, nothing can be confirmed until April, when she’s 19.

(c) There is a wait list for everything. If you’re lucky and you get some kinds of services, they will be limited, and there are also really limited options of living arrangements.

These are the different options that are offered.

Another issue here is that when my daughter is 19, she is going to be standing at the gate of adulthood and adult services, but she’s not going to be the only one there. There are people there standing in line waiting for services, and they have already transitioned. They’re already adults, and they still do not have what they need to get their needs met.

I want my daughter to enter adulthood with dignity and support that will ensure that she has enough services. During all these years, I’ve been told by many professionals that she’s a complex case. She’s a complex individual who does not really fit the options that are considered by CLBC due to their funding limitations.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The true measure of any society can be found in the way it treats its most vulnerable members.” My daughter is part of that population. If she’s not well supported, it will increase the likelihood of abuse.

My recommendation is to increase Community Living B.C.’s annual budget to support adult services, with specific focus on youth with developmental disabilities and complex mental health challenges entering adulthood, to ensure that there are many creative, flexible options considered in the planning process so that their complex needs are met.

I want to know that our government considers my daughter and youth like her to be worthy of funding. If she receives support now, in these important years, it will impact her future trajectory of life and for her becoming a contributing member of community and society.

[11:50 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Anastasia. I really appreciate that. I know how difficult it is. A number of us have had to deal with these types of situations in our families, like my brother has suffered from mental illness for 35 years. She’s very lucky to have an advocate in you, because I know without that advocacy, it’s very difficult to get the services.

She’s very lucky to have you, and I appreciate your comments. I certainly empathize with how difficult it is to access services. Thank you for your statement, and thank you for being there — really wonderful.

Any comments, thoughts?

M. Dean: Just to reiterate what the Chair was saying, thank you so much for coming and advocating on behalf of your daughter. What that story does is it speaks volumes for so many other British Columbians as well. It’s actually really important for us. It’s one of the reasons why we come out and why we do this work. It’s to hear about what things are needed to make improvements.

We really appreciate it. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much. All the best.

Next up we have Regional Child Care Council — Dr. Enid Elliot and Danielle Davis.

I hope that’s bribes. [Laughter.]

E. Elliot: It is.

Interjections.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sonia is like: “You know you’re on Hansard, right?” Cookies.

REGIONAL CHILD CARE COUNCIL

E. Elliot: I’m Enid Elliot. I’m an early childhood educator, and I work at Camosun College as faculty there.

D. Davis: Hi. I’m Danielle Davis. I’m an early childhood educator. I’m the early-years coordinator at Fairfield-Gonzales Community Association, and from time to time, I’m a term instructor at Camosun College with Dr. Elliot.

E. Elliot: We want to acknowledge that we are on traditional territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples in this beautiful, new Songhees Wellness Centre, where children and land have been loved and honoured for thousands of years.

I’ve been a visitor in this area for 40 years and have been working in the early childhood field for even longer.

Anyway, I have come to these meetings for at least six years now, and at the first meeting, I handed out cookies. It was a bribe then, but this time, it’s a thank you.

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

Well, I’ll take those.

Interjections.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry. We haven’t had lunch. We’re getting a bit loopy now.

E. Elliot: I know. I can imagine.

I just thought because we have finally embarked on the process of which I kept encouraging us to embark on six years ago…. Anyway, the first step. Really, it’s a courageous journey. Thank you for taking this journey.

The first step was really making child care affordable to parents, and it opens up possibilities for parents. My daughter and her husband did not qualify for subsidy and could not afford to put their children into child care. So to make ends meet and augment Kevin’s salary, he taught at the Saanich continuing education program at Lau Welnew. Mairi waitressed. Kevin came home, and she headed off for several nights a week.

Knowing that fees have been reduced and will be further reduced has been a factor in her entering the nursing program. So many young parents can now breathe a sigh of relief thinking that child care might be within their reach and not threaten to take away any savings that they might have.

That financial support goes to regulated child care, which ensures that parents can access regulated care, and it’s a step towards a system of quality, accessible and affordable care.

Danielle has a story.

D. Davis: Yes. I want to say thank you, because you’ve made my job nicer. I actually got to tell families that they no longer had a parent portion, and I can’t tell you how much that meant to them. Parents talked about…. This was between buying decent groceries for their children and sub-par groceries for their children.

[11:55 a.m.]

This was: never, ever taking a family vacation for their whole children’s lives and maybe, possibly, being able to go away for a weekend — little tiny things that some of us just take for granted. This made a huge impact.

For myself, I don’t qualify for the affordable child care benefit. But that fee reduction? It made a very big difference in my partner’s and my life. We have a good income, but we live in Victoria. We live in a two-bedroom, with three children. That fee reduction made it so that it was affordable for me to work and continue working. I thank you, because I need to work to be a good mom.

E. Elliot: Providing money to increase spaces is also helpful. We do not have enough regulated spaces in Victoria. I’m sure that you have seen the Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs, and child care, once again, is one of their top issues. For children zero to 12, there are only spaces for 23 percent of the children who need them.

Right now there are also not enough qualified educators to work in child care. This will take time. It’s probably not really a good idea to rush that. Offering bursaries to students will encourage more students and provide help to the current students to finish the program. I was with the students when the announcement was made, and they were very excited and relieved.

The other thing it does is it provides a symbol of validation to the field, which is really very important, because we have been overlooked for so long. Educators in the field currently were happy to hear about the $1-an-hour raise, with another raise slated. If nothing else, it’s a symbol of recognition. That is important in a field where educators are not recognized for their skills and education. This may well encourage other educators back into the field.

Many graduates of our program leave within the first five years. Provincewide it stands at about 50 percent. My local Pharmasave has one of our graduates working at it. She makes more money and has better benefits.

So thank you for the increase to wages. Perhaps a little more would not be amiss. That way we can keep the good educators and acknowledge the complexity of the work that they do.

At present, our field is in different ministries — Health, MCFD, Education, Advanced Ed — and some consolidation would be useful. In many countries, child care and early childhood education come under the Ministry of Education. That helps with planning and collaboration.

Most of the research points to non-profit child care as being of better quality than private — and certainly better than big-box child care. Why corporate child care should receive my tax dollars is beyond me.

Creating a sensible system of child care that is of good quality is complex. Wages, fees, programs and education are layers that interact in multiple ways, and the general public does not realize all the layers. Another suggestion would be a public education campaign about the value of caring for all our young children in regulated child care with educated and well-paid staff. It benefits all of us to understand that providing good care for children and families is the mark of a decent community.

While these are all just suggestions to be made, we’re mainly here to say thank you and to applaud the steps that you have taken, as well as to offer our support for any further steps that we could help you with to build a comprehensive system and care of support for children and families.

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

S. Furstenau: Thank you so much for your presentation. This is a really important field.

The one thing I wanted to just clarify: it’s not just other countries that have early childhood education under Education. Alberta, for example, has it, and it leads to the professionalization of the work, which is very important. I’m a strong advocate for this, and I will continue to be so. And the support you can give on the…. Keep pushing for that as well.

A Voice: Great, thank you.

[12:00 p.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks so much. It’s really important. It has a really big impact on the economy and for gender equity, for example.

I’m interested in whether you had any other ideas or suggestions about how we do that incremental increase of the capacity in the profession because, actually, people fighting over ECEs in the community is holding us back from increasing spaces.

E. Elliot: It is.

M. Dean: I’m also interested, as we increase the capacity of the profession and, hopefully, the value of the profession, in how we can increase its diversity as well. It seems to be that a certain demographic has so far been the most interested in taking part. How can we broaden that out?

E. Elliot: You mean people who are actually doing the work — educators?

M. Dean: Yes.

E. Elliot: I think there are some moves in that area. I think there are proposals out right now for ways that that can possibly be done so that people, new Canadians coming from other countries who maybe come with experience, have ways that we can facilitate them coming into the field.

The one tricky part…. We want to recognize people who come bringing credentials. The difficult part, I think, is that to do this work does take a certain amount of education. I actually don’t like using the word “training” because I think it’s much more than training. I think it’s about education.

I do think that people need education to do this job well, but I do think we have to look at some creative solutions right now, because it is pretty desperate. Programs can’t open up because they can’t hire qualified people. So we’re a bit stuck, because it does take some time. But I know that at Camosun, we are looking at some different ways that are possible. I have met with ICA a couple of times to talk to them about what the possibilities are to work in partnership with them to bring in women who come, perhaps being qualified in their own countries, and working with them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation and the cookies. We really appreciate it — a wonderful touch.

Next up we have Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce — Catherine Holt.

GREATER VICTORIA
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

C. Holt: Thanks for the opportunity, committee members. I’m just going to pick up where the previous presenter left off. I’m going to talk about things that are affecting business and economic success in Victoria. We’re the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, so we try to speak for the whole region.

We sent a presentation electronically; you don’t need it. I’ll try to just blast through this, and then you can look at it afterwards. It starts with our pillars here. We have our priorities that we advocate on, and the number one thing we advocate for, on behalf of our members, is attracting and retaining workers. We have a very robust relationship with larger employers who are members of the chamber. The single theme that cuts across all sectors, public and private, among larger employers is the difficulty with attracting and retaining employees.

The other way to say that, I would say, is affordability. That aligns very much with the government’s theme. We’ve been very happy with a number of things that the government has done, and we have a couple of requests.

I would like to start out just by reinforcing the messages of the previous presenter. Child care is very high on our list as an economic issue, so we very much stress the importance of child care as an economic issue, a fundamental aspect of making work affordable for parents.

[12:05 p.m.]

I’ve been on a committee that was put together by Mayor Lisa Helps, and it’s been a robust and active committee. We have the health officer for the CRD. We have school district 61. We have a whole bunch of not-for-profit child care providers, the provincial licensing people, the chamber and a number of people from the city.

One thing that we’re very excited about is that school district 61 is making a submission asking for 300 spaces in their portable, modular classroom buildings that they have built and that they’re placing throughout the district. They have been very supportive. We think we’re going to be able to make some serious progress on spaces over the next three years, thanks to school district 61.

To reiterate the previous presenter, workers are the bottleneck. She was from Camosun College. Camosun does the majority of the training in this region, but — I didn’t hear her say it — they graduate 70 people a year. We need hundreds, if not thousands, of child care workers in the province — certainly hundreds in this district. Again, to support what she was saying, Camosun is looking creatively for sources.

We’ve got a demographic problem facing us. We’ve got employers who can’t find workers in almost every aspect of their employment. So to think we’re going to be able to attract enough early child care educators with just a couple more dollars an hour is completely unrealistic. It’s not just about the wages; it’s about actual bodies available in the province, of working age, to do the work.

One thing that Camosun is trying to promote to the provincial government is the concept of running a program in the Philippines, where they educate people in their home country. Then they need the provincial government and the federal government to align to allow them to arrive as workers with a work visa. It’s cooperation between those two levels of government. It’s their creative solution to literally getting the number of people that we need to provide child care. I’m very supportive of what the province has done so far and very supportive of anything that brings in more immigrant help with regard to providing child care. That’s, I think, where we’re going to have to go for a solution.

To go back to what I was going to talk about first of all, one thing that we think is going to be a big impact on affordability is the employer health tax. We’ve been advocating for changes to the employer health tax since it arrived on the scene with the last budget. It is a significant cost for small businesses.

The government has been describing it as exempting small business, but it only exempts microbusinesses, where $500,000 or less is the size of the payroll exempted. That is maybe five to seven employees — certainly no more than ten. The federal definition of “small business” is 100 employees or less. That’s about a $10 million payroll. That would be a realistic exemption for small business as it actually is defined in this country.

We’ve got an enormous proportion of our small businesses that are going to be impacted by the employer health tax. What we’ve been hearing ever since the last budget is all of the means that they are going to be deploying to try to manage that increased cost.

We’re going to start seeing that happening next year. Some of the things they’re talking about…. Certainly, they have a restricted ability to increase wages, which is the exact opposite of what we need in this current economic situation, where we’re having difficulty attracting employees. They’re going to be laying people off or avoiding hiring. They’re going to move to contractors rather than employees. They’re going to cut other benefits that are considered part of payroll in order to keep their payroll under the various kinds of cliffs that occur at $500,000, $1 million and $1½ million.

I think that’s going to be another big factor that comes into effect next year. We’ve been asking the provincial government to increase that small business exemption and, certainly, to remove the double hit in 2019 of paying both MSP premiums and the EHT at the same time.

That was number one for us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just so you know, we’re at six minutes and 30 seconds.

C. Holt: Am I? Okay. I’m going to say two more things that aren’t going to be surprising to you, and then I’m done.

Workforce housing. We are very focused on non-market solutions. We’re trying to divide the real estate industry and speculation investment in real estate from housing needs, and start to get that dialogue going.

[12:10 p.m.]

Yes, real estate is an investment. It’s an industry. It’s not going away in our province. People from around the world are going to invest in B.C. real estate. That needs to be separated from housing and the housing that we need for our workforce. Non-market housing solutions of every kind are what we are encouraging. There has been greater investment — federally, provincially, locally — in that. Every kind of non-profit solution is what we desperately need.

Finally, transportation. We are cursed with 13 communities. We need a regional transportation commission that can deliver better transportation throughout this region, including our bus lanes, which have suffered mightily from being held up by various jurisdictions having to be part of the solution. So we need a regional transportation commission. We have had a good investment in gas tax, which has helped expand our transit, though.

So that’s it. Sorry about going over.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you. We have time for a couple of quick questions.

M. Dean: Thanks, Catherine. Back to child care as an example, but transportation plays into this as well. The fastest-growing communities in the region are on the West Shore. Families commute for child care before they’re even then commuting for work.

C. Holt: Oh god, yeah. We heard a horror story about people who were using a Victoria-based child care centre that got shut down because of lack of employees. A Langford centre stepped up and had spaces, so these parents were driving from Victoria to Langford and then back to Victoria for work every morning, because that was the only space they could find.

M. Dean: That’s my question, really. How is there a pulling together of actually looking at the regional needs and finding solutions regionally?

C. Holt: Well, it’s the curse that we’ve got in every single file, every single issue. Lisa Helps doesn’t have the authority to run a regional child care strategy. The CRD is not running a regional child care strategy. So we are participating in the Victoria one and making as much progress as we can. It’s a Victoria strategy.

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

Thank you very much, Catherine. We really appreciate it.

That’s it till the lunch break. We’ll recess and be back at one o’clock.

The committee recessed from 12:12 p.m. to 12:59 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, we’re back on the air with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. First up I’d like to call Patrick Jadan.

PATRICK JADAN

P. Jadan: Thank you very much for having me here. I’m Patrick Jadan. I’m presenting to you guys today as a physiotherapist.

[1:00 p.m.]

I own two physiotherapy clinics up in the Cowichan Valley, in Sonia’s riding. I also am the president of the Physiotherapy Association of B.C. I know you guys have heard from them before. I’m not here on their behalf, although I think that does give me a broad perspective on the issues facing our profession provincially. I’m here more at the grassroots level to put some context to some of the stats that you guys have in my information handout that I’ve sent you.

My main reason for being here is to bring attention to the issue of a massive shortage of physiotherapists in the province of B.C. This is not something that has just sort of happened recently. It’s been an issue for quite a while, and the issue has grown and grown into a massive problem.

Our association has put forth a proposal to the Ministry of Health, and we’re working with the Ministry of Advanced Education. We’re looking for 240 seats. We currently have 80. Those seats are funded through the ministry. A bit of background…. That seems like a huge ask. We’re basically asking to triple the number of seats. You guys are probably asking yourselves: “How is that even possible? Where are those numbers coming from?”

In 2017, we had 294 physios enter the profession in B.C. Of those, only 80 were locally trained, out of UBC, and 170 were foreign-trained. The remainder, the other 44, came from other parts of Canada. So even with 240, we would still be in a deficit situation, but it would at least bring us back up to a more reasonable level.

Compared to other provinces in Canada, we have the biggest discrepancy, the largest ratio in terms of the number of physiotherapists per population — one physiotherapist for about 60,000, compared with a lot of other places in Canada where it’s as low as one in 20,000.

When we look at the issues that creates, it creates not only a shortage but has a direct impact on people’s health. Physiotherapists practise in a wide range of settings. I, myself, am a private practice owner, but there are many physios in the public setting as well, and a lot of our health authorities are struggling to fill vacancies for some of these positions.

I was just chatting with one of my colleagues in the Fraser Health Authority, which is a health authority that’s really on top of their recruitment. She was telling me that there’s something like 50 vacancies currently that they’re struggling to fill.

Where this comes in to the individual patient levels…. Imagine that you’ve just had an operation. Imagine you’re just coming out of the ICU. You need to be able to get up and walk. That’s one of the things they want you to be able to do. They want you to get up and walk to be fit to be cleared to go home. There are several other tests they have to do. These are, as commonplace, administered by the physiotherapists in the hospital.

There have been such shortages, and the current physiotherapists that are working in a variety of the hospitals across the province are so overburdened that in a lot of cases the wait time to see a physio is several days, so these patients are having to spend several more days in an ICU bed or in other parts of the hospital not being able to be discharged. This is having, obviously, a very direct impact on quality of life but also health care spending.

There are going to be a lot of other changes coming to our health care system as well. We’ve been working with Doctors of B.C. and the Ministry of Health, and we know that there’s going to be a shift towards team-based health care. With physiotherapists likely being part of that team, that’s going to further increase the demand for our services.

At the private practice level, in my world, ICBC, as of this April 1, is going to be putting in a massive new change to their coverage where they’re going to be starting to cover both the at-fault and the not-at-fault party in a motor vehicle accident. That’s potentially going to double the number of ICBC patients receiving physiotherapy in the private practice setting.

[1:05 p.m.]

I know myself, being a clinic owner, we have to hire continuously. I can never take my job ads down from our provincial job board because I never know when I’m going to get someone who’s going to bite. If, God forbid, one of my staff leaves, it takes me several months to sometimes even a year or more to fill that position. And that’s, once again, from someone who’s being pretty aggressive with my recruitment.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Patrick, just so you know, we’re at about five minutes now. So if you could wrap it up, that’d be great.

P. Jadan: Sure. I mean, I think I’ve made my case. You guys have my pitch, so I really have nothing further to say.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have one comment. I was just reading through your material. You had said that there are changes to ICBC. Is it that they’re going to allow more physio? Is that what it is? Or they’re going to allow those expenses to be covered? Or are they increasing the amount?

P. Jadan: They’re going to provide funding for…. How it works right now is only the party that’s not at fault gets funding for physiotherapy coverage. As of the new model they’re proposing, that will include both parties — the at-fault and the not-at-fault member.

B. D’Eith (Chair): In the number you had, you’ve sort of taken into account the move to team-based medicine? Or is this a different…?

P. Jadan: In terms of the numbers that we’re requesting for seats?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, yeah, the three times the number of seats.

P. Jadan: Yeah. I mean that three times number is actually just even to deal with our current health care climate.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s what I was wondering, if it takes….

P. Jadan: That does not really take into account team-based health care. I mean, if we look at that, that’s 240 locally trained physios; we’re currently at 80. There are ways to hire physios beyond that. We can recruit internationally, but internationally recruiting physiotherapists is a very difficult process. I know; I’ve done it at my own clinic.

There are several certification exams that they have to write, practical and written exams, and they’re very challenging even for domestically trained applicants. So that process of hiring an international therapist takes two to three years. We’re not likely to see a large change in the number of physiotherapists coming from out of province. Those numbers that I’ve quoted are from 2017, but they are pretty much constant over the last several years.

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation. I am curious about the hiring of international physiotherapists. Are the standards — say, for example, in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, countries like that — significantly different to Canada, that they require these extensive roadblocks for people?

P. Jadan: The standards, in some cases, can be quite varied. In a lot of western countries, they’re pretty close, pretty similar. The issue is that those exams are mandatory, even for all Canadian physiotherapists to enter the profession. When you graduate from a Canadian university, you have to pass a practical and a written exam, so internationally educated therapists have to pass the same exam. That system will never change. That’s what makes us a regulated health profession.

T. Redies: So they’re passing exams in other countries, but what we do is we require them to write another exam here before they can practice?

P. Jadan: Correct, yeah. Which is the same in virtually every other health profession.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Patrick. We appreciate it.

Next up we have the Law Society of British Columbia — Don Avison and Dean Lawton, QC.

Very nice to see you both. We’re trying to, if we can, keep the initial comments to five minutes, so we have time for questions.

LAW SOCIETY OF B.C.

D. Lawton: Yes, thank you. I’ll appreciate it if you let me know if I’m going on too long.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to speak and meet with you today. I’d also like to say this is the first time I’ve been in this lovely building, and I want to thank the hospitality of the Songhees people for having us here. It’s really quite an extraordinary place.

I know, sir, that you are a lawyer. I’m not sure about the other members of the committee. I wanted to let you know little bit about the history of the Law Society.

The Law Society of British Columbia is the entity that governs lawyers in the province. We’re not the Canadian Bar Association; we are a governance entity. We get our authority from the Legal Profession Act. Our fundamental obligation is to protect the public interest in the administration of justice. We do that in a number of ways: through training lawyers; through educating lawyers; through educating and credentialing law students, who are article students; and then once people become lawyers, carrying on with the important functions of legal education and governance.

[1:10 p.m.]

I’d like to present four ideas, four separate subjects, to the attention of the committee for your consideration. They’re in the materials. First, alternate legal services providers; second, the new and contemplated land owner transparency act; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action for lawyers and law students; and the issue of legal aid.

Dealing first with alternate legal services providers, everyone in our society has probably heard about the crisis that we face with an insufficient availability of people to access justice. The courts have spoken about it on many occasions. Most recently Chief Justice Wagner last week spoke about it in Vancouver, the Chief Justice of Canada. The Law Society is very concerned about moving forward to try and change this. We are exploring the idea of licensing, credentialing and training alternate legal services providers.

In Ontario and in the United States, in Washington state, there are alternate legal services providers who provide legal services. They are not lawyers, but they are adjunctive to lawyers; they support the system. For example, in Ontario, there are over 7,000 privately licensed paralegals. In our neighbour to the south, they have limited, trained but licensed, legal technicians who assist. We’re hoping, with a consultation process, to perhaps provide alternate legal services, particularly in areas that are struggling — family law, for example — where people cannot afford legal services.

The other thing I wanted to mention very briefly is the land owner transparency act. We’re very interested in this new legislation, because it’s designed to deal with tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. There’s one element, however, that I respectfully bring to your attention. Section 53 of the act talks about protecting lawyer-client privilege, which is a fundamental element of our justice system. We simply request that that be dealt with in the body of the legislation, as opposed to regulations. At the moment, the section contemplates an exception if it’s in the regulations.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with its very important report. There were 92 calls to action in that document, two of them specifically directed toward lawyers and to law students. We have taken those very seriously.

The Law Society of British Columbia has created a new permanent standing committee called the truth and reconciliation advisory committee. It is composed of at least eight members — four lawyers who are benchers, four Indigenous people — and is co-chaired by Grand Chief Ed John. Deliberately, one of the senior members of the Law Society must also be a co-chair. We have worked and striven hard to make amends and to address the impact of colonialism in our country.

We have had significant success in collaborating with the Continuing Legal Education Society of B.C. I invite you, when you have some spare time, to go on line and check out a program, a mini-documentary called But I Was Wearing a Suit. Those are personal statements by B.C. lawyers about the racism they’ve experienced in court and in court facilities. It’s really moving, shocking and enlightening.

I also wanted to speak about legal aid. Of course, this has been a touchstone, a very important element that the Legislative Assembly, the Legislature, has dealt with for many years. I realize that there are very significant pressures on our economy and for available funds throughout the province, but we’re facing a situation where, as a result of inadequate funding for legal aid, in my respectful submission, younger folk are not going into the area of criminal law. Younger folk are not necessarily able to help people in distress in family environments.

In my submission, this does need to change. Lawyers and the Law Society are working hard in this area, and we simply would like to see funding arrangements go back to where they were in 2002 and move forward with that. We’re very interested in working with government; we’re very interested in collaborating with other entities to try and make positive change.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I just had a quick question about the alternative legal aspect, which is really very interesting. I was reading through the materials. Maybe I missed it, and maybe you could enlighten me. Are we also talking about some sort of limited access to appear in court, for example, or maybe for chambers or for other types of activities?

[1:15 p.m.]

D. Lawton: That’s certainly a possibility, and there would have to be coordination with the courts. For example, in some jurisdictions, these alternate legal services providers — however they’re called and trained — do have access to the court and have limited opportunities to speak and be heard.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I was just curious.

R. Leonard: I was actually trained as a paralegal way back in what I think was the second cohort out of Capilano College at the time.

D. Lawton: I know it well.

R. Leonard: What springs to mind is that there’s a lot of accent now on quasi-judicial proceedings to replace the courts. I know that there’s more and more of a role for the civil resolution tribunal. I wanted to hear from you. What do you think about that as an avenue of trying to address the inadequacies that we have?

D. Lawton: In the civil context, I think it can be very useful. We’ve already seen a high resolution of small claims court matters before the tribunal. There are, however, some complexities when you start dealing with family law situations of human dynamics, monetary issues, social challenges. So there may need to be a nuanced approach if there’s a desire to expand the jurisdiction of the tribunal in that way, in my submission.

M. Dean: I’m really concerned about the family law situation and, in particular, how women are increasingly struggling to have access to justice. So I’m interested in both of your ideas about increasing legal aid and also alternatives. How long will it take to actually get some of these plans up and running, that we can actually clear the backlog and offer equal and fast access to justice?

D. Lawton: Well, at the moment, right now, the Law Society is canvassing members, lawyers in British Columbia, seeking their views on alternate legal service providers within the family law context. There is a consultation paper that’s been released in the last month. We have asked lawyers in British Columbia to provide feedback to the Law Society by the middle of November. From that, we’ll move forward with suggestions and recommendations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dean. I just had one question about funding legal aid. As far as I know, legal services is still the only service under PST. Maybe I’m wrong. I know, for many years, there was a hue and cry about the fact that that was originally created to finance legal aid. I’m just wondering: does the Law Society still have a position, or has it got a position, in regards to how we fund this? Should it come from that PST or not? Just wondering whether you had any thoughts on that.

D. Lawton: Well, I certainly have personal thoughts about it. I’m corrected, on occasion, about the history of that entire development of the tax. Ideally, if the tax on legal services could be channeled toward legal aid, it would be very helpful. It is not, however, in my view, the only possible way of dealing with it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I understand. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have Cynthia Lockrey. Very nice to have you here. What we’re trying to do is to keep it to about five minutes for the initial comments. Then we have time for questions.

CYNTHIA LOCKREY

C. Lockrey: Thank you for having me. I am here today as a mother of a child with special needs and also somebody who works in patient advocacy. I’m here to talk about speech-language therapy funding in the province for preschool and elementary-age children.

Speech-language is the foundation for learning. Without speech, you’re going to have behavioural issues. Without speech, you’re going to have learning difficulties. Without speech, you’re also going to have a lot of bullying issues that result in emotional and mental health issues.

I think that we are failing our children right now in the province of B.C. with a lack of publicly funded speech-language therapy. We do not have enough therapists. You can talk to any SLP, speech-language pathologist, and they will tell you they have huge wait-lists.

In the Cowichan Valley, it’s one to two years for a preschooler to get an assessment, and they’re often aging out of the system before they’re even seen and assessed, which means they’re entering kindergarten…. Forty percent of kids in kindergarten right now do not have the basic language skills. It’s a snowball effect.

[1:20 p.m.]

I want to talk to you about what success looks like, from my son. My son started kindergarten last year in the Cowichan, and he had a severe speech delay, something we’ve been working on for a while. He was one of the lucky ones who actually got speech-language therapy. We have one day a week for 500 kids in our school. That means she can see about seven kids on her caseload. There are obviously more than seven kids in our school that need speech therapy.

After two months of therapy, she took me aside and said: “Nobody understands your son. His teacher doesn’t understand him. No peers understand him.” As a result, he had no friends. He was not participating in class. He withdrew into himself, and he was labelled by his teacher as having an intellectual delay, which we knew was not true.

We hired a private therapist who took us on, even though she had an extensive wait-list, because we’d previously worked with her and she knew we would do the work that was needed.

After four months of having a private therapist and a school therapist, our son could speak in a way that people could understand. He all of a sudden engaged in class. He made friendships. He participated, and most importantly, his teacher said that he was one of the brightest students in his class. He went from, in September, intellectual disability to, in April, brightest kid in the class. We saw huge results, at a cost of thousands of dollars that went on our line of credit. We didn’t have the money, but we also knew we had to do it.

I know that we are in the very, very minority, because we have access to the finances. We have access to somebody who believed in us, even though she had a huge wait-list. In school, right now, those kids are getting six months of therapy, because right now — September and October — every kindergarten has to be assessed. That takes time. Add in your breaks. Those kids, the lucky six in our school, get six months of therapy. Think of all the other kids that are not.

The facts are that the SLPs in B.C. have huge caseloads. They’re only allowed to have 25 to 40 kids on their caseloads, so do the math on how many kids we have speaking with a speech-language pathologist. We are short about 300 speech-language pathologists just for preschoolers in the province of B.C.

The funding goes into a giant pool of money, and it is not earmarked specifically for speech-language. So if you have an opioid crisis or another crisis, that money can be reallocated. Within the school system, it’s the same thing — my understanding.

We are not recognizing that this can lead to emotional and mental health issues, and it’s going to get compounded. So my request, in the last few seconds is…. The funding is not keeping pace with the needs of our children. If we doubled the funding in the province of B.C. today, we would just meet the minimum needs. So you can see how far we are behind. Unfortunately, the longer we go without addressing it, the bigger the issue is going to be because of the snowball effects.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Cynthia. I really appreciate that. My youngest daughter had inner-ear issues, so when she went into kindergarten, she couldn’t speak properly. No question, speech therapy changed her life, so I get it. And we understand. We’ve heard from a number of presenters who experienced similar types of issues, so we’ve heard this.

Any questions at all?

Okay. Like I said, we’ve heard this. We hear you. We appreciate you coming forward. These personal stories are so important and impactful, so we really appreciate it.

C. Lockrey: That’s what I want you to know — that it can make a difference…

B. D’Eith (Chair): It does make a difference.

C. Lockrey: …and at a financial cost to families. I’m hoping that the parents that can’t afford it will actually get support. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for coming.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re going to do something a little bit different, because one of our witnesses has to leave and can’t make it to the open mike.

Finn Canadensis, if you wouldn’t mind, come and have a seat. What we’re going to do, Finn, is…. Normally, there’s a question period, but because this is…. We’re actually going to open mike for a sec, so if you could just spend five minutes. Unfortunately, we won’t have time for questions, but then at least you get in here before you have to leave.

F. Canadensis: I appreciate that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, no problem. The floor is yours.

FINN CANADENSIS

F. Canadensis: I have PTSD…

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine. Take your time.

F. Canadensis: …so it’s hard to make eye contact.

[1:25 p.m.]

Thank you for coming out of your offices to engage us on this.

I’m homeless. I’m 56 years old. I have a post-graduate education from Canadian and international universities and have been a competitive athlete most of my life. I shouldn’t be homeless. I’ve taught at universities, been an administrator, founded sports programs and started two businesses. I shouldn’t be homeless.

I don’t drink, smoke or use drugs. I don’t have a criminal record. And though none of these things should preclude anyone from affordable housing, they do. Whether we are defined by them or not, we shouldn’t be homeless. But I am.

Your 2019 budget statement that I’ve read refers to housing affordability. I’m here to speak from my experience and ask some questions and offer suggestions.

Six years ago my life began to unravel. I was intermittently homeless because despite my education and eagerness to find employment, I fell through the cracks. I sat out employment programs, did many odd jobs, diversified my skills, yet I fell below the poverty line. I kept thinking that it was me, that I was doing something wrong, and that’s why no one wanted to hire me. But as I continued to fall, the cost of housing and living continued to skyrocket.

Others were profiting from real estate greed and, in so doing, were squeezing me and others out of the ability to afford simple rentals. They did this while the province maintained policies like lack of rent control to ensure we would lose ground. The feds stopped funding cooperative housing projects, as I’m sure you know.

This province has experienced a runaway real estate market and did nothing to prevent what was so obvious to us on the margins: people would be priced out of housing.

This province is most responsible for fixing the damage by first recognizing that this isn’t business as usual. It’s a crisis that requires not shallow, disingenuous policies but radical transformation, courage to lead and intelligence to speak about the whole economic equation of homelessness, rather than the cost of services to taxpayers or vague news bites. I’ll come back to that.

Six years ago I refused to apply for welfare because, for any of you who haven’t had to go that route, it’s brutal. It’s unconscionable. It’s traumatizing. It’s miserly, and it’s a bureaucratized fortress of hatred. It’s simply not worth the loss of dignity to get a begrudging $600 a month maximum to cover everything, including housing, food, health, transportation, clothing, utilities.

I struggled alone. Then I became unable to look after myself regarding eating, cleaning, finding even casual work. My body stopped being able to do simple things like running, swimming and riding. I isolated from friends due to shame and poverty and bewilderment over how this was happening.

It took three years for me to be diagnosed with PTSD complex, and only after I found a therapist willing to help me at no cost. She alone carried the burden of this province’s policies of not covering a wide range of mental health care under the MSP.

It took another year to discover that there was something called a disability benefit. This province makes it inconceivably brutal for someone in need of critical health care, social care, housing care or any care to find information on programs and services buried in the bureaucracies of this government.

It consumed and continues to consume years of my life because no one person along my journey so far has been able to draw me a comprehensive, current and accurate map of where to go and who can help. To apply for the benefit, I was required to first go on welfare — something I vehemently resented, as I’ve mentioned.

For those of us with PTSD, I can’t underscore strongly enough the traumatization that that fortress of hate creates. You may think this is language out of proportion, but it isn’t.

Why on earth was a disability pension ever built on top of a welfare structure? How are these two related?

To access any staff in today’s…. I mean, the last ministry name was bizarre. This one, the Ministry of Poverty Reduction, is a 1-800 number. That’s it. That’s literally it. No office, no directory of staff — nothing. That’s intentional.

[1:30 p.m.]

I’m going to skip over that because it’s just too upsetting. I just want you to note that that ministry has to open its heart, because to have a 1-800 number as the only way to access information or services, or to even talk to a human being, is not enough.

It took six months on welfare to get the designation of a person with a disability. I had to survive on the $600 on a month. Then, as a person with a disability, I began to receive $1,000 a month, still not enough to cover rent, food and utilities. So I lost my apartment and became homeless. The ministry then decided that since I was homeless, I no longer needed the $375 shelter allowance, so it took it away — down to $525 a month, less than welfare.

I just want to know if you guys have a clue about what these policies are doing to us. As a person with a mental disability, the first thing your government does is push you into deep poverty, homelessness and isolation — doesn’t provide a caseworker or social worker or health worker and doesn’t do the most basic and humane thing, which is to make sure I’m safe, sheltered and fed so I can begin to heal.

Instead, it escalates my illness and kicks the healing tools even further from my reach. This is the British Columbia I’m living in. Understanding that this isn’t rocket science. It doesn’t require money thrown at surveys, studies or salaries. It takes empathy and compassion. It takes human decency and the obvious comprehension that we become a burden on society when we are denied the basic human rights to thrive amongst you.

It takes knowing the obvious — that housing is the first priority for being productive members of society and the cheapest solution for taxpayers’ dollars. This government, like the previous one, has demonstrably maintained a brutal, cold heart and an unconscionable one.

You’ve had power for over a year, and you’ve done next to nothing constructive about any of this. No excuses. You either don’t get it or don’t care. Regardless, you remain inured to the poverty creation of the government’s policies. My NDP MLA’s office turned down my request to meet with her.

You probably think I’m being rhetorical. Let me illustrate this with your budget consultation text. “Affordable housing benefits people, businesses and our economy, but many British Columbians still can’t find an affordable place to call home.” Blatantly true. But for the past year, you’ve done nothing meaningful to back it up or change it.

“That’s why the government of B.C. is taking strong action to tackle the housing crisis.” Seriously? It’s not impressive to see you use the terms “strong action” when you’ve had over a year to strongly act and haven’t. There’s nothing that has come from this yet. I am still homeless.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Ten.

F. Canadensis: Yeah. Wrap up?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes. Please do. Thanks.

F. Canadensis: I get it. I’m sorry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, no. That’s fine.

F. Canadensis: I can leave this text. I have suggestions in there for you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Please do.

Thank you very much for your presentation. I know that was difficult for you. I know that you’re having a hard time. I promise you people on this committee do have a heart and do care.

I appreciate that things aren’t happening fast enough to help you at this minute. I just want you to know that we hear you, okay? We hear you, Finn.

F. Canadensis: Please read my solutions, because they do offer some concrete examples. Plus, I want you to know that I had to come here in order to be able to talk to anyone in this government.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, that’s fine. That’s why we’re here.

F. Canadensis: That shouldn’t happen. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for coming, sir.

F. Canadensis: I appreciate your time.

T. Redies: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Wildlife Federation — Alan Martin.

B.C. WILDLIFE FEDERATION

A. Martin: I must say it’s nice to meet on the unceded lands of Songhees Nation. This is a beautiful facility, compared to some of the committee rooms in the Legislature. I think really relaxing.

[1:35 p.m.]

What I’d like to do today is provide a brief summary of the three priorities that the B.C. Wildlife Federation has for the select standing committee, highlight the third one, particularly, and then use that to pivot to what we think is a fundamental problem in sustainability and that there’s a tremendous opportunity to deal with this. It’s for the sustainability of natural resources, particularly aquatic resources, and, I think, it’s critical in terms of dealing with fisheries and reconciliation between both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

In terms of the priorities of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, I think many of you heard, and I’ve spoken to many of you…. It’s about the dedicated funding model in dedicating licence fees and revenue and surcharges and other sources of revenue to fish and wildlife management and their habitat management. Without sustainable funding, we won’t have sustainable habitats or sustainable populations and the benefits and the uses that it provides.

I think that in terms of dealing with landscape sustainability…. There’s environmental sustainability, there’s economic sustainability, and there’s also social sustainability. That can only be done through some round-table processes that include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and there are areas of the province where there are higher priorities for this to go on, depending on the levels of development.

The No. 3 recommendation follows up from a number of recommendations around the Water Sustainability Act, and that’s to establish a $75 million B.C. watershed sustainability fund. There’s been lots of talk around fisheries. Fisheries are a federal responsibility; water is a provincial responsibility. And I think by collaborating on interests, provincially and federally, the whole will be much greater than the sum of the parts. As everybody knows, you need to pay to play.

One of the key areas where we think this could be applied is in the heart of the Fraser. That’s the stretch from Hope to Mission, and that’s critical habitat. There are a number of islands there that are not diked. They represent very rare ecosystems. They haven’t been protected through past land use planning processes. They are subject to development, in terms of bridges to them, agricultural development, gravel removal, and there is very little protection afforded these islands through regulations. Riparian-area regulations don’t apply.

Certainly, we’ve seen tremendous development of it and seen changes over the last little while. The federation has engaged the landowners to say: “Look, would you like to sell these islands?” One of these islands would cost the equivalent of a house in West Vancouver. The $17 million that they put into Laurel Point could probably buy two of these islands and protect them in perpetuity.

The problem with a lot of the fisheries in B.C. is that we’re dealing with the symptoms, not the fundamentals. The abundance of chinook salmon is going down. These islands are critically important for maintaining the sustainability of a wide range of stocks up and down the Fraser. The food supply of southern resident killer whales and the controversy about cutting back on fishing, watching, whatever — really, that’s dealing with a symptom, not the fundamental, which is the sustainability of fish.

I think these, Herrling and Carey and the other islands in the heart of the Fraser…. If you want a functioning ecosystem and you want a functioning hydraulic system in the face of climate change and in the face of declining salmon populations, I think here is an area where an investment by the province, in cooperation with the federal government and First Nations, could go a long way to changing the needle in terms of salmon sustainability — not in the heart of the Fraser, because that’s the centre of production, but in all the other areas that the Fraser River is dependent upon.

[1:40 p.m.]

That’s my take-home message. There’s lots more information in the presentation in terms of how diking these islands would affect not only their hydrometric performance but their ecological performance. We are at a crossroads now in terms of we have an opportunity to protect and preserve. If not, we’re going to be in restore mode, and (a) the costs are much greater, and (b) the likelihoods of success are severely diminished. That’s my take-home message.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Al.

Can I clarify a couple of things on points 1 and 3? On the first point, you’ve underlined that the users should pay as well. You had thought that all the licensing money should go into management. I get that. But then you’re also saying that natural resource users should pay.

A. Martin: That’s right.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m wondering if you could just elaborate on what you mean by that so I’m very clear.

A. Martin: Yes. If you’ve got a licence and tenure on a landscape that negatively impacts landscape or watershed productivity, there should be a mechanism to make sure that those impacts are adequately either avoided, mitigated or offset. Once you’re into mitigation and offset, you’re into contributing to landscape sustainability.

Currently the mitigation policy, as I understand it, is just policy direction. It’s not obligatory in terms of putting into any authorizations. Nor is mitigation and offsetting funding obligatory, but it’s entered in, in terms of agreements.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Al. The second clarification was just in regards to your proposed $75 million B.C. watershed sustainability fund, and then you immediately go into the heart of the Fraser proposal. How much of that fund are you proposing for the heart of the Fraser? All of it or part of it or…?

A. Martin: No. What we’re saying is that if you had a fund, you would be able to leverage financial, technical and community support. Certainly, there’s federal funding for conservation lands. There’s private sector funding. If you look at the letter at the back of the package, we’re certainly asking for federal participation, and we’ve got broad-based support by NGOs. So I think that if you have money and you have a focus and an outcome, then you’re able to leverage that. And if the need goes up, well, you can fund a lot more.

We’ve seen a recent announcement of tremendous economic developments in terms that will certainly provide taxation revenue. We would like to see a portion of that go back into watershed sustainability.

T. Redies: Can you tell us who owns the islands right now?

A. Martin: Right now they’re privately owned. They’re in the agricultural land reserve. We have met with the land­owners. They’re willing to sell. It’s basically a willing seller, a willing purchaser. And then, basically, the federation has no interest in holding title. Title could be held by a conservation organization or jointly with the First Nations, such as they did with the lands at the north end of Haida Gwaii.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Well, thank you so much for your presentation. My constituency is in Mission, so I particularly liked hearing your ideas around my area of the world. So thank you so much, Al. Appreciate it.

Next up we have Board Voice Society of B.C. — Jody Paterson.

Hello, Jody. How are you? We’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have time for another five minutes of questions.

J. Paterson: Well, I timed this right out, read it out loud to make sure I didn’t miss any points.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh well, there you go. Thanks, Jody.

BOARD VOICE SOCIETY OF B.C.

J. Paterson: Good afternoon. I’m Jody Paterson, the executive director of the Board Voice Society of B.C. We’re a non-profit started in 2010 to bring together the voices of the community boards and the senior staff of B.C. non-profits whose work addresses the social determinants of health.

So much of Budget 2019 is about these determinants. Government has an ambitious and welcome series of plans to reduce poverty, improve response to mental health and substance use, address wage inequities, increase child care access and affordability, and address the housing crisis. All are social determinants of health. We’re excited to work with you as vital and long-standing community partners in this work.

[1:45 p.m.]

I speak to you today not as members of the select standing committee but as fellow British Columbians with a history of actively giving your time to improve social health in your communities. I read all of your bios and saw in yours the same thing you’d see in mine or in any Board Voice member’s — long histories of volunteering, of being part of initiatives to improve our communities and strengthen well-being. We’re the kind of people who stand up.

The community non-profit sector is essentially the mechanism that channels this volunteerism, community concern and goodwill into a kind of system. Our sector is the passionate engine of that system, which we know from decades of research and evidence is as important as medical health care and education for ensuring British Columbians thrive.

This social care system, knit out of the individual efforts of people stepping up, is remarkably good and breathtakingly efficient in how far it can stretch a buck, but it could do so much more if viewed as the vital and essential system that it is. What will it actually take to cut child poverty in half over the next five years and reduce adult poverty by a quarter? How can we take apart the vast and messy stack of factors that create a housing crisis and translate them into community services that exactly fit each factor and, taken together, solve the problem? How can we reimagine child care in B.C. so that people flock to the career, there are no shortages of quality spaces, and families can afford it?

Board Voice members and community non-profits overall are your feet on the ground. They always have been. All that’s needed is to develop the provincewide plan to plug into and address the gaps that will be clearly identifiable when we do that. We have most of the parts but lack the strategy to unite and sustain them to ensure B.C. achieves its social health goals. Our province needs a strategy for social health that places it above political ideology and on equal footing with our well-planned and sustained health care and education systems.

Board Voice has three core recommendations for Budget 2019: waiving of the employer health tax for the community social service sector or funding it in contracts; wage parity with health care services across unionized and non-unionized social service contracts; and the creation of a provincial social policy to guide, measure and sustain our social health system.

Few essential services are funded as ridiculously and precariously as our social health care system. Surely nobody anywhere wanted to see Abbotsford Community Services lose its highly effective anti-gang program, but the service was lost nonetheless after the patchwork of funding that maintained the program fell apart when one funding partner stepped away. This year — this is the Me Too year — we’ve also seen the Victoria sexual assault centre lose its crisis line after 35 years for a similar reason.

Funding vital services in a patchwork, uneven fashion undermines everyone’s efforts to strengthen social health. We need a plan — something specific, realistic, achievable and responsive to community needs. We need funding that recognizes this work is not a fad, not a flavour, not a charitable undertaking. It’s essential. We need a stable workforce earning a living wage.

We are your team in addressing social health, but community non-profits are beset by challenges, from the uncertainties of finding money from nowhere for the employer health tax to the chronic exhaustion of scouring the planet for funding to sustain programs that are doing exactly the kinds of things that government wants to do much more of.

Community non-profits are your poverty reduction plan, your child care solution, your mental health and addiction strategy. We’re your low-income housing providers, your seniors care team. We can work with you to lift tens of thousands of children out of poverty by 2023, as you’ve pledged, because we know that work. We’re the support in those 2,000 supported modular homes government is building.

The social determinants of health are all over Budget 2019’s consultation guidelines, but actions to address them must be part of an overarching and strategic plan for social health. You have legions of committed community non-profits ready and able to carry out this work. Please invite us to the table, and we’ll take on these challenges together.

Did I make it, five minutes?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh yeah, you were right on. Fantastic.

Questions.

M. Dean: Thanks, Jody. Coming from that world and that sector, I know how important it all is, and the health of that sector is really important.

I’m just wondering. How much of this sector does Board Voice represent in terms of your membership? Can you give us a bit of an idea?

J. Paterson: We have just over 60 organizations in B.C. as members. They’re from all over B.C., but I wouldn’t say that we represent the entire community non-profit sector, by a stretch. The thing that our members are really focused on is the social determinants of health. That’s where our work is.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know that there’s a poverty reduction plan being developed right now. I’m wondering how you see a social health plan interfacing with a poverty reduction plan in terms of how this all works or whether or not parts of the plan you’re talking about are maybe taken care of in what Minister Simpson is doing.

[1:50 p.m.]

J. Paterson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, poverty reduction would be a key piece of social health. To me, social health is like when we say we have a health system, and then underneath that health system, we have a plan to prevent cancer, get somebody’s broken arm fixed. We have different categories underneath the overarching health system.

To me, a social health system is that. It’s the overarching thing. Poverty reduction plan is part of that. Mental health and addiction strategy is part of that. Housing. All of the 12 social determinants of health would be represented underneath that.

In many of the presentations that I’ve been hearing just sitting here, you can hear…. They fit right under that social determinants of health too. The person who has the child who struggled to find publicly funded speech therapies — obviously, if a child can’t speak well, then their schooling is going to suffer from the outset. Then that sets them up for many things in adulthood — right? — from poverty to marginalization to isolation to mental health issues and on and on. The key is always to catch it before it’s….

When I think about how you would actually orchestrate it…. Who wants someone who just comes without a plan for how you solve it? To me, it’s almost like we need to do a mapping, starting at the problem end. What’s the problem? People can’t afford to live in B.C. Then look at all the ways that we do everything. Put all the things under there that we do right now and start to map where those services are. What is the research and effectiveness? Again, outcomes. We want to see evidence-based solutions, not flavours that move through and seem kind of cool.

To me, you could end up with a map that would show where we’re at in B.C. right now actually, where we’re actually delivering the services that hit the problems that concern government and are a part of the social determinants of health. From there, a plan starts to emerge for how to make that happen.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We really appreciate your presentation and your thoughts on this. Thank you.

J. Paterson: Thanks for having us.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Elders Society for B.C. Parks — Nancy Wilkin.

Hi, Nancy. How are you? Nice to see you. Just a reminder: we’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions.

ELDERS COUNCIL FOR B.C. PARKS

N. Wilkin: I wanted to recognize the Songhees people, as Al did. HÍSW̱ḴE. What a fabulous place.

Normally, this would be Colin Campbell, but he seems to be in Mexico. So you’ve got Nancy Wilkin.

I am Nancy Wilkin. I’m here today representing the Elders Council for Parks in British Columbia. We are a non-partisan group of retirees who have worked for national, regional or provincial parks in B.C., or we’ve had long-term members of non-government organizations who support the magnificent park system that we have. Our members helped build the system, and we’re dedicated to making sure it remains healthy and well managed.

We applaud the fact that governments have continued to expand the system — it is one of the best in the world — and that two years ago there were funds added. It had been decades since there had been funds added. A Parks future strategy was launched, and the Parks Foundation was created, which brings the private and public sectors together to contribute to the well-being of parks.

I’m sure you know that that’s not enough. We have a ways to go. The elders council would like to make five recommendations, and I think you know that we haven’t kept pace with inflation.

The five recommendations. We’re saying add $50 million to the current budget, but the reason we’re saying that is that we’ve analyzed the budget. We’ve looked at it, and to create a sustainable parks system, the budget needs to be at least $100 million. We are not comparable by a stretch with national parks or with Alberta Parks.

We don’t expect this to happen in one year. It could stretch out over five years. I think Andrew Day came in September, made a presentation and challenged the government to say: create a five-year strategy and match the funds that the Parks Foundation comes up with each year.

[1:55 p.m.]

The second recommendation is about the funding model in B.C. Parks: create a B.C. Parks financing authority, just like the transportation authority. Why do we fund highways that way, but we don’t do the capital development in parks the same way? They have to pay for their amortization out of their operational dollars. This model needs to be fixed.

The third recommendation is to sustain the ecological integrity of B.C. parks. The 2010 Auditor General’s report was accurate. Right now, even with increased staff, they can’t get to the parks. This is a huge province. I am always reminded that Prince George is the centre. It is not the north.

Ecological representation is essential, and this will require an infusion of land acquisition funds. In my day, this was $5 million. It got cut to zero. Given the cost of land in B.C., this needs to be $15 million and matched by our partners — the foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Nature Trust and others.

In the days of the B.C. Trust for Public Lands, the match was five to one, which is amazing. The need for ecological monitoring, mapping, restoration, especially fire restoration, keeps increasing, and some of this is funded out of the licence plate revenue.

Now, we’re thrilled with the licence plate program. It took ten years of arguing to get the program. There was overwhelming support from the citizens of British Columbia for that licence plate program. But ecological monitoring needs to be base budget. One item is base budget. It’s for invasive species — $100,000. It sounds like a lot, but that’s $97 a park. It won’t buy you a broom puller.

The fourth recommendation is about recreation facilities. We’ve had a 20 percent increase in visits to B.C. parks. Listening to Jody…. Camping is the most affordable family vacation in British Columbia, and it comes with added benefits of getting outside and into nature for people’s health and well-being.

Dollars need to be added to the system to ensure educational programs are consistent and held to the highest standard. The other piece is that the government, ourselves…. We need to step up to industry standards. We need to have at least $20 million added just to keep up the maintenance on the capital development and on the trails. This is a wonderful opportunity for youth crews, and it’s where many of us started our careers. A dollar invested in a park generates $8.42 in visitor spending. That’s a great return on your dollar.

The fifth is to look at the delivery system in parks. It’s time to reach out and engage communities in British Columbia and, in particular, Indigenous communities, providing more support for watchmen programs, Friends of Parks groups, ecological wardens. The new outreach staff and community engagement unit is a start, but to seriously engage these communities, they need to see themselves in the staff. Diversity is key. We need a major expansion program to have that happen.

Create an office of a parks advocate, monitor progress in revitalizing our park delivery system and report annually on the state of our parks, both the ecological and recreational health of these majestic lands.

Thank you for your time and attention. I invite you to give us a progress report on how you’ve done with these recommendations at our planned 2020 parks conference. Our outstanding new Lieutenant-Governor, Her Honour Janet Austin, will be in attendance, as she is the patron for the Elders Council for Parks in British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Nancy. We appreciate it.

Questions?

That was very, very clear, very well said. We really appreciate your presentation. Thank you very much.

We’re just going to take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 1:59 p.m. to 2:02 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re back with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

If I could call the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, that would be great. That’s Chris Montgomery and Geoff Morrison.

All right. We’re trying to keep the initial comments to five minutes, if we can, just so we have time for questions. That would be great.

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION
OF PETROLEUM PRODUCERS

G. Morrison: Absolutely. I’ve got a presentation, which I’ve supplied. I’ll just flip through the pertinent pages.

First of all, thank you for allowing us to speak. Obviously, we want to recognize the Songhees First Nation.

A quick overview of CAPP. Upstream oil and gas industry. We’re an advocacy group promoting the industry in a safe, competitive atmosphere. We represent 80 percent of the production — not all of the production in Canada but most of it.

Also, just a quick opportunity for what our goal is: to make B.C. the supplier of choice for the world for natural gas. In my final slide, I’ll talk about the three things I think we could use some help with.

The first is EITE. This is intensive trade-exposed industries. We’ll talk about that a little bit.

Efforts to promote electrification in the upstream. That is likely the single greatest thing we can do in the upstream industry to address GHG intensities.

The last is continued support for innovation through in­cen­tives for adopting new technologies for things like methane management.

I’ll flip ahead to page 4, just a quick overview of who we are and what we are in British Columbia. Even before LNG…. Of course, we should recognize the important announcement of about a week ago.

[2:05 p.m.]

LNG Canada was a very big investment, I’m told the largest single private investment in Canadian history. It represents an opportunity for Canada to participate in that decarbonization of world energy, but much work and much opportunity still remains for us in that space. This is to talk about that.

Notwithstanding that opportunity, within the North American context we are still in a cost-competitive-challenged environment. We are oversupplied in North America. We’ve seen new production come on in North America which is challenging our production. I’ll get to that in a second. I also just want to identify too that natural gas is an important fuel for British Columbians. According to Fortis, about a million homes and businesses use natural gas. That’s about three million people who use it, so about three-quarters of the population. It’s clean, it’s affordable, and it’s reliable.

I want to flip to the next page. It makes the case a little bit about what the world growth for energy will look like in 2040. A couple of trends I’d like to point out. Obviously, we use a lot of energy in the world, which is not a bad thing. Quality of life goes hand in hand with energy consumption. We’ve seen that time and again. A few trends I’ll notice here.

The first is renewables. You’ll see that renewables come on very strong. They increase about 400 percent in the decades to come. Also, when you look out to 2040, the fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — remain a predominant energy type. While we are trying to decarbonize the planet, there is only so much energy that is available, and we will need all forms of energy produced reliably and responsibly going forward.

What I will point out, in the yellow bars, is the very steep incline of natural gas demand worldwide and the levelling off of coal. So some very strong evidence that we are moving toward decarbonization.

Where will that gas come from in the future? This is the case that we’d like to point out. Canada is well positioned. The top ten global natural gas producers are United States, Russia, Iran, Qatar, and No. 5 is Canada. Of all of those producers, Canada has, we would say, the lowest greenhouse gas–intensive production on the planet. With the exception of Norway on that list, we are the only country that has a carbon policy. With that demand coming for energy, we would like to see the Canadian supply be available to the world, because it is the lowest or amongst the lowest GHG intensity on the planet.

The next page, quickly, shows what’s happened in the United States and Canada. To 2017, you will see that Canadian production is quite flat and actually declining in some years, while U.S. production is growing very steeply. This is there to share both the story of the oversupply of North America and the opportunity for Canadian gas.

There’s an abundance of it. We have more than 300 years of natural gas available in reserves in Canada, but we are competing for investment dollars. Those investment dollars are now going to other places in the world, including the United States. So that opportunity for that global market…. While we are very happy about LNG Canada, we continue to be competing in North America and the globe.

The last slide, really, of significance is what we’re asking for you to think about. It’s support for a robust clean growth program, this idea of protecting carbon-intensive export industries. We’re having, actually, very good conversations with the government now. That was outlined in the last budget. We want to encourage that. Benchmarking is a challenge in this space in the upstream. It’s more difficult than other industries. It’s difficult to find the upstream. That’s a challenge that we’re trying to overcome.

The second is enabling upstream electrification. That is the single largest thing we could do to address intensity in northeastern B.C. Certainly, we would like this government to help advocate for clean infrastructure dollars in the federal government. We are still challenged with transmission in many places. Interconnections are sometimes expensive, and there’s still a price differential between gas and electricity, which is a challenge for many producers.

The last ask we would have is continued government support for incentives like the clean infrastructure royalty credit program, a very good way to help this industry adopt new technologies and change out old technologies in a way that keeps the industry competitive. The resource owner participates in that changeover, so we’re reducing GHG emissions in the upstream.

Those are our big asks. The last is one is also just a supportive ask of targeted FISC support in Ottawa. This is the steel components piece for those pieces that cannot be produced in Canada — only those pieces. Not a general blanket exemption is being asked.

[2:10 p.m.]

That’s the end of my remarks. If you have any others….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

Questions?

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation. I wonder if you could give a little bit more colour around your first point with respect to protecting emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries. What does that look like in your mind?

G. Morrison: The government’s got a program. The easier way to do it is to stop carbon leakage. The worst-case scenario for us would be that world demand for energy continues to grow, and natural gas gets supplied by these other places, only because we can’t protect the interests of the resource owner here.

We’re looking at programs to recycle back some of that carbon tax. The government has outlined some of that. That would be for dollars above $30 a tonne. There are two programs — a fund that you can apply for and also a benchmarking exercise, for which if you come in under the benchmark, you would receive back some of that money.

T. Redies: These are existing programs.

G. Morrison: They’re under development. They were outlined in the last budget. We’re working on them. It’s actually quite difficult to benchmark an industry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Chris. Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have the Private Forest Landowners Association.

How are you doing, Megan?

M. Hanacek: Good. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Welcome. Very well. We’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, so we have time for questions.

PRIVATE FOREST
LANDOWNERS ASSOCIATION

M. Hanacek: Sure, okay. Sounds good. Thanks for having me here today. There is a handout that I’ve passed around.

Today there are four points that I wanted to cover. I just wanted to give an overview of our association and our membership in British Columbia; to give an overview, as well, of the distinction between private forest land and other forest land in B.C.; to talk a little bit about the competitive regulatory framework in our business regime and how we operate and touch on a few of the recent initiatives that are happening in British Columbia; and to also touch on the significance to our membership of global markets and log exports.

As you’re probably aware, the Private Forest Landowners Association is a non-profit organization. We’ve been around since 1995, and we’re dedicated to the responsible stewardship of B.C.’s private forest lands. In British Columbia, it’s about 95 percent Crown-designated land. The rest, 5 percent, is private land, and about half of that, 2 percent, is private managed forest land. We are very good at what we do in B.C. Of that 2 percent of managed forest land, we produce about 10 percent of the timber within British Columbia annually.

We’re governed by 30 acts and regulations, and our business model is very simple. We grow and harvest trees on privately owned fee simple land, meaning that we do pay taxes — a significant amount of taxes — every year. We are a sustainable, renewable resource that provides economic, cultural and social well-being to the citizens of B.C.

One thing about private land owners is that we are leaders in forest research and innovation, and many of today’s forestry innovation foundational elements were based on activities that did happen on private land in terms of enhanced silviculture, fertilizing, pruning, commercial thinning, helicopter logging to protect sensitive sites. Just even today, one of our larger members, TimberWest, announced that they’re going to work towards carbon neutrality over the next decade — the next ten years — which is really leading edge for forestry anywhere in the world.

In terms of the distinction between Crown and private forest land, one of our main goals today is to talk about that. Our land, as mentioned before, is fee simple, so it is purchased land for long-term investment. Our members do pay a significant amount of taxes. It’s about $150 million every year. That also spins off to about $1 billion in economic activity and close to 5,000 well-paying, stable, local jobs.

There are significant risks associated with private investment, especially around forestry investment. As you’ve probably heard, over the last couple of years we’ve had mountain pine beetle, climate change, drought, precipitation events. So for our members, having stable regimes, in terms of regulation and legislation, is very important.

[2:15 p.m.]

Also, our members have other significant stakeholder commitments due to the vicinity of our communities to the communities within British Columbia. Even on Vancouver Island here, about 1.9 hectares, when you do net-downs, is forested Crown land, and about 823,000 is private land. So it’s very significant to Vancouver Island — the private forest land management.

In terms of what we’re looking for today, one thing that’s very important for us is a competitive regulatory framework. Whether that’s taxation, looking at bare land versus cut-timber taxation, a property transfer tax more in line with agriculture, we’re working on those files right now, looking at class 7 versus class 9. Also, other initiatives are currently happening: forestry, coastal revitalization — just maintaining that distinction between Crown and private land in those initiatives, and also the mandated provincial legislation around species at risk and wildlife habitat.

One of the bigger ones…. I’d love to get into a lot of detail here. There are some publications that do go into the price discrepancy between our international and export markets, but one big one for us, which is under both provincial and federal jurisdiction, is the global markets and log export restrictions. In British Columbia, it’s very significant for us. About 60 percent last year were exported off private land. In the last five years, Crown has also exported significantly. That has kind of decreased in recent years.

When you look at the prices, some of the price differential is 30 to 50 percent different. We can get 30 to 50 percent more for exporting to other markets offshore. In terms of looking at the mandate letters and looking at processing jobs locally, it’d be nice to also consider the bigger picture in terms of jobs, from terminals, harvesting, processing — and having that export market to kind of buoy us through the cyclical nature of forestry.

With that, I’ll leave it for questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a point of clarification. Are you putting in a more fulsome written submission?

M. Hanacek: Yeah, we have some more details.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I was just going to see if there was anything that was presented. You’re planning to, or you have?

M. Hanacek: We will put it in by the 15th.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The only reason…. Because the actual asks are bullet points on this presentation, I just wanted to make sure we actually had a fulsome ask for each of those bits. So you’re going to do that?

M. Hanacek: We will do that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fantastic. Thank you.

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation. I wonder if you could just clarify the export issue. I’m not sure if I understood what it was that you were talking about in terms of the problem that needs to be resolved.

M. Hanacek: It’s a complicated system in forestry, as many of us know, and there is a lot of tie-in to social well-being and processing jobs on the coast. There’s a long history on the coast. One thing, though…. The export prices offshore. If you look at Douglas fir and hemlock, all of these are really…. We’ll submit something that’s easier to read, but sometimes it’s 30 to 50 percent different. So we can get 30 to 50 percent more offshore. For us to be able to export, it has to go to the local market first, to meet the surplus test. Only then can we export our wood.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was just curious, too, because I know I’m getting…. Around my area, a lot of the people are having a hard time getting fibre for operations like cedar shingles and that kind of thing. How does all of that play into this pricing? I know they’re upset because they can’t get fibre, and then you’re producing fibre. I’m just wondering how that all lines up.

M. Hanacek: Well, we’ve been involved with the fibre recovery process on the coast. There are many pilot projects going on with it as well. We do have dedicated processors that we do sell to as well. It is definitely something that’s being worked on, and I know there’s a lot of focus on the Crown tenure right now, as well, on how they can meet some of that fibre supply. It is something that is ongoing. It’s probably one of the top three issues on the coast.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, definitely.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you so much for coming in. I really appreciate that.

Next up we have Simon Fraser Student Society — Jasdeep Gill and Amrita Mohar.

[2:20 p.m.]

Just to reiterate, we’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have a chance for questions.

J. Gill: Would you let us know when we’ve kind of reached the time?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I will do that.

SIMON FRASER STUDENT SOCIETY

J. Gill: Good afternoon, hon. Chair and respected committee. My name is Jasdeep Gill. I am a student at Simon Fraser University and the elected vice-president, external relations, for the Simon Fraser Student Society.

A. Mohar: My name is Amrita Mohar, and I’m currently serving as the communications, art and technology faculty representative for the Simon Fraser Student Society. Both of us are here to represent the 25,000 undergraduate students who attend Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver.

J. Gill: We would like to begin by thanking the government of British Columbia for the following investments: $2.15 billion for advanced education; $2 million for the new tuition waiver program for youth formerly in care; and $259 million, over the next three years, as a part of the $450 million student housing program that will create 5,000 units of student housing.

The economic value of investments made into post-secondary education cannot be discounted. By 2024, it is predicted that there will be one million job openings, with more than three-quarters of new job openings requiring more post-secondary education. Now that the province has an estimated $219 million surplus for the fiscal year of 2018-2019, we propose that the committee take the following recommendations into consideration.

A. Mohar: Our first recommendation is to cap residence fees under market value. Housing costs in Vancouver are some of the least affordable in Canada and constitute the major portion of living costs for students.

For students living outside of their parents’ home, annual costs for living are, on average, 50 percent higher than for those that live with their parents. When it comes to international students, whose population at SFU is six times larger than it was in 2001, they’re even more likely to bear higher housing costs. So increasing housing costs would be one of the main factors to increase student debt. According to Statistics Canada, more than half of undergraduate students complete their studies with about $26,000 in debt at graduation, compared to debts of half the amount, $13,000, in 2005.

The Province, as well as student advocacy groups, has argued that the provision of more on-campus residences and affordable housing for students would have many benefits. They would be helping students to graduate with less debt and complete their studies, contributing to freeing off-campus places, easing the existing pressure on the rental market, allowing students to live closer to where they study, reducing congestion on the overcrowded transit routes that service post-secondary institutions, encouraging students to work fewer hours while they’re in school, as well as helping to build a campus culture, which is always important.

J. Gill: Our second recommendation is to provide students living off campus a housing allowance proportional to average rental costs of the neighbourhood that they’re living in. Budget 2018 includes a commitment to building more affordable housing by investing over $1.6 million over three years to build and maintain affordable rental housing in British Columbia.

Rental costs in neighbourhoods where Simon Fraser University campuses are located vary widely. The average monthly rent for a purpose-built one-bedroom apartment in 2017 in downtown Vancouver was $1,500. It was about $1,100 in North Burnaby and $900 in Surrey. On-campus rents on UBC and SFU Burnaby campuses are priced, on average, 25 percent below the rental market rate for those areas.

StudentAid B.C. uses $1,600 as the minimum monthly living allowance for single B.C. students with no dependents for the 2018-2019 year to assess need when providing loans. This allowance is intended to cover most living expenses, including rent, and is not adjusted for neighbourhoods or area of residence.

In the U.S., the basic allowance for housing is offered to military officers and is calculated based on income and the area of residence that they live in, determined by their zip code. The purpose of this program is to provide enough funding for affordable housing at the average rental market rate. The program example could be applied to the B.C. context, where the postal code of the permanent or current address could be used to determine the housing allowance for the school year.

A. Mohar: We would like to thank you all for your time today and giving us the opportunity to present our recommendations on behalf of the Simon Fraser Student Society.

[2:25 p.m.]

We would also like to emphasize that being able to voice student concerns to the committee is greatly valued by the student society, and providing us with your time and attention really demonstrates your commitment to student success. If there’s anything we can do to be of service to you throughout the budget consultation process, please don’t hesitate to ask.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks. I just wanted to clarify one thing before we go to questions. The only thing I could say, just off the top of my head, with the student aid issue is that in certain areas…. Don’t you think all the funding could be sucked up by, like, Vancouver? I’m thinking about rural and other areas. If you scale it, then the predominant money is going to go to the high-rent areas. Then is there going to be anything left for the lower-rent areas? Wouldn’t that be used up a lot quicker? Had you thought about that? I’m just wondering how that impacts on the overall funding.

J. Gill: For most of the student housing that we do have in the province, it’s usually concentrated in the Vancouver area, with UBC and SFU. We do have more student housing compared to other schools, so more students of ours have access to affordable housing.

When it comes to rural areas, they would need funding as well. But with us, we can alleviate some of that stress, because students can live on campus, where it is largely subsidized, or they can live in UniverCity, which is the on-school campus area that we have right beside for apartments, which are also a little bit more subsidized. So I don’t know if they would necessarily need the entire amount that it would cost for a normal rental price in Vancouver, just because they are largely still a bit subsidized as well.

There are students that don’t get placed in residence or in these on-campus cities that are then pushed into the housing market. Those students are the ones most at risk for having to work multiple part-time jobs or just not being able to afford a living situation that’s even meeting the minimum standards.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I just wanted to clarify that.

Questions?

All right. Well, thank you very much. Now, just so you know, we’ve had a number of presentations from different student societies. Actually, this is the first time…. Have we heard this before, or is this the first time? It’s just interesting. Last year we kind of heard pretty much the same. I could read it verbatim. But this year there seem to be different issues coming up. Very interesting, and we really appreciate your presentation.

Next up we have the Mining Association of B.C. — Bryan Cox.

Good to see you. We’re just trying to remind our presenters that we’re trying to keep it at five minutes so we have time for questions if we can. The floor is yours.

MINING ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

B. Cox: Great, thank you. I think you have materials that have been passed out. I appreciate that. Again, I’m Bryan Cox. I’m president and CEO of the Mining Association of B.C. I’ll try to do our $12 billion industry justice in the five minutes I have to talk to you today. I really wanted to quickly talk about who we are as the Mining Association of B.C. as these presentations are coming around.

We are the industry association that represents the operating coal, metal and mineral operations here in British Columbia as well as advanced development projects. We have 37 members, including 15 major mines, two smelters — an incredible economic contribution to the province of British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We were up in Trail, and we had a big tour. Pretty exciting.

B. Cox: Wonderful. You saw the smelter.

Our vision is a strong and vibrant mining industry that helps to contribute to prosperity and wealth for all British Columbians. B.C. is a world-class mining jurisdiction. Our steelmaking coal, copper, zinc, precious metals and molybdenum are in demand across the world. We are the Pacific gateway.

We have some of the least carbon-intensive mining operations in the world because of our clean, green electricity grid as well as our innovation. We are leaders in sharing resources and benefits with First Nations communities, and we have a world-class talent pool. We have a lot going for us in this province that we need to celebrate when it comes to the mining industry.

All communities are mining communities. Many of you at UBCM saw the data that we released on the impact, economically, of our mining operations in B.C. You have some information in front of you. All of you can find your communities on that list. Look at the member from Kamloops. You look at that $218 million. You look at the members from Surrey, Maple Ridge, the entire province. You can see the incredible contribution that this foundational industry makes to this province. It’s really quite an amazing story we have to tell.

We are one province, one economy. That is the message of this association. It’s the message of this industry, and it’s one I bring to you today at the Finance Committee.

[2:30 p.m.]

Mining is building our lower-carbon future. We truly are. When you look at electric vehicles, clean energy vehicles…. I encourage the committee, if you’re on break, we do have our clean energy vehicle outside today, and you can see a clean energy vehicle that we’ve branded with mining messages to engage with British Columbians about what this industry is, the contribution that we’re making to our lower-carbon economy.

For instance, it takes up to four times more copper to build an electric motor than it does a combustion engine. You look at solar panels, wind turbines. All of those require silver, gold, steel-making coal, copper and other commodities that we produce here in British Columbia. We are Canada’s largest producer of copper and steel-making coal. It is our opportunity to continue to provide this benefit to the world and do it in the most responsible way moving forward.

We’re a high-tech industry. We’re doing amazing things from an innovation perspective. I call your attention to one company called LlamaZOO that’s here in Victoria. It’s doing work around AR and VR and actually helping to plan mines and engage with communities in a way that we never have before. You think about the ability to engage with Indigenous communities and local communities with this technology. It provides for a whole new conversation on how we develop and plan mines in partnership with communities.

We are a global industry, and as you can see, miners are price-takers. You can see by that one chart on copper, as we go along…. Just to show you where we’re at, we’re an industry that takes our price globally. We need to be mindful of that, when you look at a province and the levers that you have as a province to be able to pull, from an economic point of view.

Please do take a look. You’ll see that we did go through a very, very tough time — I know most of you know that — back in 2012 to 2016. You can see that just from the copper graph and where we were at. It makes it ever more important…. The opportunities that you have as a committee to bring economic solutions to this budgeting process are incredibly important.

I bring you to the recommendations that we have for you today. First and foremost is ensuring that B.C.’s trade-exposed industries remain competitive with a mechanism that addresses the entire amount of the carbon tax. We appreciate the $30 to $35 portion of the carbon tax to address that. We think that’s really important. We’re engaged very, very closely in that work.

When you look at the global context that we operate amongst right now — especially if you look at Chile for copper, Australia for steel-making coal — and look at the realities that are occurring in Canada right now with certain provinces pulling out of the climate plans, it’s a very, very fluid environment. We’re strong believers in the plan that we have here in British Columbia, but we do need to ensure that we have our trade-exposed industries being as competitive as possible.

We encourage the ability to look at that zero-to-30 quantum of the carbon tax, as well, and be able to find those innovative ways to ensure that our mining operations can continue to provide the benefit that we know we can in the province of British Columbia. That’s a very, very important one for us. That’s our main priority.

There’s also the opportunity to address competitiveness challenges of the PST application on machinery and equipment at mining operations. Of course, we appreciate the PST on electricity removal that’s currently ongoing right now. There are other parts of the PST system that need to be addressed. This is a very material one. It’s very complicated. I’m happy to address questions on it. We’ll follow up in our written submission on it, but it has huge costs to industry and, more importantly, huge costs to government to administer this particular part of the process. There are huge efficiencies that can be made on that.

B.C. Hydro. We know that, going into rate plans for the upcoming years, we need that predictable and fair rate plan for our industrial users. Hydro is the No. 2 cost at our mine sites. So we need to ensure that we have hydro rates that are competitive in Canada but, importantly, against the rest of the world.

Really, really importantly: sufficient resources and expertise allocated to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and all natural resource ministries to ensure that we have the consistent, clear, coordinated process that leads to timely decisions. So very important in a province like B.C., where we have a huge regulatory continuum that covers several ministries.

Again, I’ll leave it there. I appreciate the time of the committee to be able to have this conversation today. I’m happy to address any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just wanted to clarify something in regards to the carbon tax mechanism you talked about. Could you explain how that would work and how you see that working? Presumably if competitive, which would bring the price up or down, you’d want some…. I don’t understand, so maybe you could explain it to me.

B. Cox: That’s actually being developed right now. There’s work ongoing with the government as to how that mechanism will look.

Right now the mechanism being developed is looking at the $30 to $35 portion of the carbon tax, which is great. This is something that we encourage and is very important to do. We encourage government, though, to look at the full quantum of the carbon tax and create mechanisms, whether it be an ability for the operations to recoup some of that money or ways for them to innovate on their sites.

[2:35 p.m.]

What I will say is that each operation is different. Each operation can innovate in the ways that they see fit across their operations in the province. Many of our operations are global companies that are looking to innovate across their operations. So we need to be able to provide that flexibility within the system that’s created so that we can allow for companies to do what they do best, which is innovate and do what’s best.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

Any questions at all?

T. Redies: Bryan, how are you? Nice to see you. Can you talk a little bit about or provide some context around how long it takes to get a mine approved? How many mines are currently before government waiting for approval, and were any mines approved in the last 12 months?

B. Cox: Yeah, absolutely. There was, actually, an environmental assessment certificate granted on Friday for the Red Mountain project. That’s very good news for our industry.

In our submission to the environmental assessment revitalization, we have some really good stats around the environmental assessment process. Essentially, what it shows is that less than 10 percent of the mines that have gone into the environmental assessment process have turned into actual mines, even those that have been approved. So when you look at certificates that have been granted — I believe it’s about 31 mines that have come out of a certificate approval — I think there are about five. I will put that in our written submission.

Just because projects get an environmental assessment certificate doesn’t mean they’re actually going to be built. You go into that really robust permitting process afterwards, and there are a whole bunch of economics and other factors that go into whether a mine can actually be economic.

That’s why we really, really advocate looking at that entire continuum of the regulatory process, all the way from staking through to reclamation, and looking at it through that lens so that we’re not just focusing on particular parts of the regulatory process. We need to look at the whole thing in order to ensure that we get that consistency, coordination and timely decision-making process.

T. Redies: If I could ask a follow-up question. In terms of the rest of Canada, is our regulatory process more complicated or more thorough? How would you describe it?

B. Cox: It’s kind of difficult. It’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison. We have an incredibly rigorous regulatory process here in British Columbia, one that we should be really, really proud of, one that we can always continue to build on. But we do need to find timely ways to decision. That’s what investors are looking for, and I think there’s lots of work that’s undergoing right now on the regulatory process.

That’s really key. We need to see the entire continuum for what it is. From a staking through to a reclamation of a mine site, it could be upwards of 40 to 60 years when you look at that. During that whole time, companies and operations and proponents are having to go back to the capital markets. That’s why you need that consistency and coordination in the regulatory process. You need to be able to see the process evolve over time and be able to get that investment in the province. It’s sort of the unique part of mining. It’s a very fluid and long-term process.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I had one last question in regards to PST. PST is being phased out on electricity in April 2019. So you’re asking…. To me, that seems to deal with points 2 and 3 in the sense that it’s bringing hydro rates down for businesses, but it’s also a PST cut. You’re actually asking for deeper cuts so that there’s actually no PST on machinery and equipment — and then also dealing with the rates. I’m just wondering if you could comment on that.

B. Cox: Absolutely. I’m very pleased that the PST on electricity is being phased out. It’s very important to contextualize that. British Columbia was the only jurisdiction in North America that was charging a sales tax on electricity. By eliminating that, we’re only just coming up on a competitiveness level with the rest of North America. So it’s important to say that.

The machinery and equipment. Not to get too into it, but it’s around how the tax is applied on mine sites. Certain parts of a mine site are charged PST, while other parts of a mine site are not. So it’s really an administrative thing. Audits need to be done. Companies themselves need to keep log books. In some cases, they’re getting two fleets of trucks.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You mean it’s inconsistent? Okay.

B. Cox: Yeah, it’s inconsistent. They’re getting two fleets of trucks because they just want to drive the truck onto a certain part of the mine site. You have to get PST for gas on one and machinery for it. So it’s really administrative. We’re happy to flesh that out in our written submission so that you can see….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. I’d appreciate that.

B. Cox: It’s really a burden on government and industry because of government’s need to actually administer that system.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time, but thank you so much, Bryan. Nice to see you again. Appreciate the presentation.

B. Cox: I appreciate it. Thank you.

[2:40 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have WISE Math B.C. — Tara Houle.

Come on up. We’re trying, if we can, to keep to five minutes. I don’t mean to be a broken record, but I wasn’t sure if you were in the room.

WISE MATH B.C.

T. Houle: No, I understand that.

Good afternoon. My name is Tara Houle. The report is self-explanatory in terms of who I am and what the report’s about. Basically, I’m here today to talk about why I’d like to have a standardized measure of assessment of student performance, given that the recent changes to our education system have been rather radical and rather revolutionary. We don’t really have anything outside of the FSAs, which are very watered down. They’re not really exactly assessing what student performance looks like anymore.

Right now I’d just like to talk about three points that are providing evidence of a disturbing trend towards populism in the classroom. We’re seeing now a very popular thing where we’re having education leaders and politicians clamouring to promote populist agendas, such as SOGI, in the classroom. We’re not seeing very much in terms of reading, writing and arithmetic.

There are some recent tweets by Ms. Furstenau here that are sort of evidence of that. Even though myself, on behalf of over…. Thousands of teachers and parents in the province have sent multiple emails to Ms. Furstenau’s office. We’ve been ignored. Our concerns are very straightforward. It’s very simplistic in terms of just trying to have our concerns about declining math performance in this province…. None of this has been taken seriously by anybody in terms of the provincial leaders or our education system.

The second example I just want to show quickly is with respect to some of the changes that have happened in the B.C. ed plan. We now have eradication of our provincial exams; they’re no longer mandatory. We no longer have our grades; up until grade 10, they’re no longer mandatory. And we have an emphasis on teacher autonomy in the classroom as well. From the assignment here…. I’m sure maybe some of you saw this last week. It was an assignment that a teacher gave in Kamloops last week. She asked, from a resource that she created: which person is racist? The correct answer, according to the teacher, was right-wing people.

The third example I just want to talk about is that at my daughter’s school last week, there was a one-sided debate on electoral reform — all pro for proportional representation. When the presenter was challenged by the students, the answer that she gave the students was: “Well, we’re not quite sure what it will look like in the end or what the downsides are, but we basically just want you to trust us because we’re the experts.”

We’re seeing a curricular shift away from knowledge-based facts and discussion, and it’s leading to bad science in the classroom. It’s a further erosion of the responsibility of the education system. We still need to have mandatory measures in place for reading, writing and arithmetic, and they’re not being done with these changes.

The other thing I’d just like to note is that in 2015, Mary Turpel-Lafond wrote a report where it indicated that not one child in foster care had written the Math 12 exam. They were not able to do that, based on the skill that they were at with their arithmetic. I’d just like to ask committee members today: who is speaking for those children?

I’m here today because I want the proof that these changes are going to work. Our education system is a public service. It’s therefore like any other publicly funded service: it must be held accountable to those that it serves.

To allow only those within the system to speak is fundamentally undemocratic. We must insist on proof of success where these reforms have been implemented elsewhere. In the report, you’ll see where it’s failed miserably — through Sweden, most damningly, as well as in Quebec, in the U.K. In pretty much every other country where reforms have been implemented similar to the ones in British Columbia, it’s failed not only students but the teachers themselves.

Experimenting on our children and our teachers must not be tolerated. The public demands that standardized measures must exist outside of the system to ensure that objectivity and reliable tracking of these reforms are noted and reviewed accordingly. “Trust us. We’re the experts” shall not be an option for us.

[2:45 p.m.]

Today I’m here to serve in the public’s best interest. I submit a request to all your committee members insisting funding be provided to establish objective, standardized measures of the impact that these reforms will have on our students from today over the next ten years minimum.

It would be negligent not to have any of these measures in place, given the radical nature of these reforms. As I’ve said before, we have overwhelming proof that similar reforms have failed in every single jurisdiction where they have been implemented.

Given the utmost support of all of our provincial education partners in creating this curriculum, this is a shared responsibility that must be assumed by all of our education leaders.

Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tara. I appreciate it. I just want to clarify….

I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes here, so you can tell me if I’m out of line, Sonia.

I wanted to clarify, because you mentioned Sonia, but Sonia is in the Third Party, in opposition. I’m wondering…. I didn’t understand why you singled Sonia out for acting on anything, in that respect, because she’s not government.

T. Houle: Well, regardless, she’s an MLA.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, no. I just wanted to clarify, because I was a bit confused. I mean, she’s not in government.

T. Houle: All I’m saying is that if the priorities have shifted now…. Our initiative is a provincewide initiative. I take the time to submit my requests to speak with leaders. I’ve met with Adam Olsen. I’ve met with Leonard Krog. I’ve met with a few others to discuss concerns that people in their own constituency have about the decline of math.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So it’s a constituency…. Okay, I get it. I understand. Sorry, I just misunderstood. I thought it was a failure to act in terms of….

Sorry, Sonia.

T. Houle: It’s just basically showing how some things are being prioritized over others.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine. I just…. It’s your issue, not mine. I apologize.

Any questions at all?

Thank you very much for your presentation, Tara. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you coming out.

Next up we have Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. — Sébastien Charbonneau.

All right, Sébastien. I don’t know if you were here, but we’re trying to keep the initial comments to five minutes so that we can have five minutes of questions if we have time. The floor is yours.

IMPERIAL TOBACCO CANADA

S. Charbonneau: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is Sébastien Charbonneau, and I’m the director of government and regulatory affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada, the wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco, a leading tobacco company and the world’s largest vapour product business.

I will return to the topic of vapour products shortly, because they represent an opportunity for the province to encourage adult smokers to switch to a potentially less harmful alternative. However, I first want to address the risks related to traditional cigarettes and their associated tax revenues due to Canada’s thriving illegal tobacco trade.

Briefly by way of background: the RCMP reports that there are 50 illegal factories in Canada manufacturing and selling tobacco outside the existing legal and tax frameworks. The illegal tobacco is then smuggled across Canada by organized crime groups. The national illegal tobacco rate is more than 20 percent, costing the federal and provincial governments upwards of $2 billion in tax revenue annually. Here in B.C., the rate has been measured at 15 percent for the last two years, with estimated tax losses of $120 million annually.

Unfortunately, there is a big risk. The problem is about to get worse due to three factors.

First, some very poorly drafted federal regulations to implement plain and standardized packaging of tobacco products would result in the legal supply being cut off for an extended period of time. We are hopeful that the federal government will fix this before publishing final regulations for implementation in 2019, but it is a risk and one that you need to be aware of here in B.C.

Second, even if those regulations are fixed, plain and standardized packaging is a gift to illegal traffickers, since it will make it virtually impossible for consumers, retailers and law enforcement to tell a legal from an illegal product. As a result, Canada’s thriving illegal tobacco market is now likely to face a major surge in counterfeits.

Third, recent tobacco tax increases come with a very real risk of stimulating the illegal tobacco market.

[2:50 p.m.]

In the first quarter of 2018, provincial taxes were raised by $7.20 per carton, plus another $2.29 taken by the federal government. The last time B.C. increased taxes in a similar manner, it was in 2013-14 when there were three increases worth more than $9 per carton over six months. The result was stark. The illegal tobacco rate in the province quadrupled from 4 to 17 percent.

Ontario offers another lesson where taxes were increased by 33 percent over the last three years, resulting in a 66 percent increase in the illegal tobacco rate in the province. That now sits at 40 percent.

Therefore, we have three recommendations to address the illegal tobacco risk. First, hold the line on tobacco taxes to allow the market to adjust to the recent increases and the pending implementation of plain packaging. Secondly, intervene with the federal government to ensure the legal supply of cigarettes is not interrupted due to poorly drafted regulations. Third, while we understand B.C. may already have resources in place to deal with illegal tobacco enforcement, efforts should be reassessed within the context of plain packaging coming next year.

Now let’s move on to the opportunity for the province which lies in reduced-harm products like vapour products. That’s the topic of the brochure you received. Vapour products offer adult smokers a less harmful alternative to combustible cigarettes, and there is a growing body of evidence from the medical and scientific communities to support that — including detailed studies from Public Health England, the U.K.’s Royal College of Physicians and, just down the road from here, the University of Victoria.

These studies have reached a general conclusion that vapour products are at least 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes. However, to get adult smokers to switch, these products need to be accessible and affordable. With that in mind, we strongly recommend that no additional taxes be imposed on vapour products beyond the current PST and GST applicable. To do so would be counterproductive.

In conclusion, any policy or tax decisions around reduced-harm products should be viewed through the lens of whether they encourage adult smokers to switch to a reduced-risk alternative. Harm reduction is a concept that has been embraced by governments in other contexts, and it should be for tobacco as well.

Our recommendations on both of these issues are covered in more detail in our written submission that we left with you. I thank you for your time. I now look forward to any questions you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was just looking through here, Sébastien. Do you feel that there’s enough empirical evidence in terms of vaping to say that it’s as safe as you say it is? I mean, I’m not an expert on it, but you hear anecdotally about the potential harms of vaping. I’m just wondering if you feel that there’s been enough studies on this yet or there needs to be more.

S. Charbonneau: There are a lot of studies out there. When we say…. In fact, I cited very credible groups — such as Public Health England, the U.K.’s Royal College of Physicians or the University of Victoria — that have actually done a review of many studies, and they came to the conclusion that vapour products are up to 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes.

Should there be more studies over, for instance, the longer-term impacts of those products? Absolutely. But for the time being, there are a lot of very credible groups that are saying that if you have to choose between combustible cigarettes or vapour products, the choice is clear.

S. Cadieux: I have a question. If, indeed, the industry is moving towards vaping products, as it suggests it is doing, for adults, why the need for flavours?

S. Charbonneau: Well, flavour. That’s a very good question.

Why the need for flavour? It is the consumers, the smokers that actually say it is the flavours in those products that brought them to this category to try something different than combustible cigarettes. So while flavours are essential for the adult consumers to have a reason to want to use those products and, therefore, potentially reduce their exposure and risk, not all flavours should be allowed in those products.

[2:55 p.m.]

We support the ban on some types of flavours, such as flavours that would be clearly marketed towards or geared towards a younger group of consumers. It is something that actually is in federal legislation. Bill S-5 has put some restrictions on flavours, and we support that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, it’s tough, because I know that on the one side, it helps people get off cigarettes. On the other side, my son started vaping when he was 13 or 14, and now he’s smoking cigarettes. So it was actually an entry for him to get into smoking cigarettes.

I appreciate that for adult smokers, vape is a way out of that habit. I worry about the effect on youth. I mean, I saw that. That’s anecdotal. That’s my personal experience. But I saw that happen.

T. Redies: Just a follow-up question on the vaping versus cigarettes. We know cigarettes are very dangerous. You say that vaping is up to 95 percent safer, but does that actually mean that vaping is safe?

S. Charbonneau: No. Zero risk? No.

T. Redies: What is the risk?

S. Charbonneau: Well, that’s why there needs to be…. Well, the risk is reduced because you clearly don’t have all the toxins and the toxicants that are found in combustion. The smoke is the problem.

T. Redies: In cigarettes, it’s one in two people that have a chance of dying. In vaping, is it one in four? One in ten?

S. Charbonneau: There are no studies yet, at this point. I don’t have those studies. I don’t know.

The longer-term impacts of vaping…. Yeah, we acknowledge — I answered this earlier — we need to see more studies over the longer period of time.

Now, this being said…. Again, it’s not the tobacco industry saying that those products are 95 percent less harmful. It’s very credible scientific and academic groups that are saying that between a combustible cigarette and vapour, a smoker should migrate towards the least harmful. It’s that simple.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming in.

S. Charbonneau: Thank you very much for your time today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Gina Huylenbroeck. Thank you for coming in.

GINA HUYLENBROECK

G. Huylenbroeck: Thank you for having me today. I’m here to talk about what is currently available for the blind in training in British Columbia. I’m here to talk about my experiences that have personally affected me. I’m here to talk about what I hope our future could be.

I’m going to start with…. Two years ago, I ended up venturing down to the southern United States, actually to Louis­iana, to attend a full-time residential training program. Here in British Columbia, we have no full-time training at all.

I attended in Louisiana. While I was there, we learned everything non-visually. What that means is I wore a blindfold for the entire training. I was taught by blind instructors. There were 30 to 35 students on a rotating schedule coming through the centre.

By attending this and learning the techniques and skills that I need to know as a blind person moving forward, the only way to truly maximize all of your senses is to take away your weakest. Because so much energy is focused on my bad eyesight to see what it is that I might be looking at, I’m not actually utilizing all of my other senses.

Being taught by blind instructors also prepared me even more for the future, because there is more than one way of doing a task. One way doesn’t always work for everybody. So if the instructor couldn’t figure something out with me, there were peers, there were other instructors, and we figured it out. We worked it out.

The confidence that I gained from attending a full-time residential training program is incredible. There is no way I’d be sitting here two years ago, talking to you, saying how important it is to have the peers come together, learn from each other, work with each other.

Everyone, if you want to succeed and master anything, you need to immerse yourself in it full-time. You need to be surrounded by people who support you. It’s so important.

[3:00 p.m.]

We do not have that here. We do not have the peer support. Our instructors are sighted. They come to our home. They teach us whatever it is that we’re needing to know, whether it’s: “I want to learn to cook or clean….” They spend an hour or two with us. It’s by appointment. We don’t come to a centre. We don’t integrate with each other. It’s not inclusive; it’s actually quite isolating.

We want to be productive human beings. We are very capable, but we are not capable if we don’t learn the skills in a timely manner. Anything that you want to learn — a second language, an instrument — you have to commit to that. You have to be involved with that, and you need support being blind. It’s a hands-on. It’s not an over-the-phone kind of thing that can be helped and supported.

Non-visual structured discovery training has changed my life. I so feel prepared going totally blind. I never felt that way before. I’m super excited about the future. Canada does not have structured discovery training here at all. That is non-visual training taught by blind instructors. And who better to teach you than somebody who lives it daily? That’s what they do. That’s how they do it.

You know, people are concerned. “Well, what about travelling, having a blind person teach you how to travel with a cane, and you’re wearing blindfolds?” People who are sighted kind of go: “Aah!” I’m not judging any of you, but it’s just that way. That’s what I get. But people who are blind know how to listen for traffic. They know how to prepare you.

I’m going to just give a little demonstration of what we have here and what I learned. Here, if I want to learn to go someplace, the instructor will come with me. We will go together. We will learn a route from my home to the grocery store, my home to the bus stop, whatever it is that I’m needing to do on a regular basis. I have an instructor here in Victoria. There’s one cane travel instructor for all of the South Island, just so that you know — one — and they travel to us. So there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity to get a lot of instruction.

I’ll go back to our training. We will walk down the street. My cane will tap the garbage can. The instructor will say: “That’s a garbage can. That’s a pole.” I veer off into a parking lot, and the instructor will kind of say, “Oh, well, you’ve veered off,” and redirect me back to the sidewalk to get me back on path. That’s how I learn here.

What I learned when I was away is I walked. I touched a garbage can. I touched a pole. My instructor didn’t say anything. It was up to me to figure out what it was. When I veered off into a parking lot, which I was lost in for two hours — two hours, I’m walking around a parking lot — she didn’t say anything. She stood there. She said: “Where’s your sun? Where’s your traffic?” She made me problem-solve it out myself. She didn’t give me the instruction as to where to go and how to do it. She taught me how to use my cardinal directions, how to use my sun, how to use my traffic.

She taught me just how to have confidence within myself and rely on myself, because there isn’t always going to be somebody around to tell me that “this is that” and “this is that” and “cross here” and “do that.” There isn’t. There isn’t going to always be somebody around that I can ask a question to. Being stuck in the parking lot, there isn’t always somebody around. Now I have the tools to problem-solve that out for myself.

Moving forward, if I want to go to college or university, I have the tools and skills now to problem-solve my own way through that university. I don’t need to get an instructor from here to come with me to show me around there. Then I move. I move to a different town. Then I need an instructor to come and show me. Now I am prepared to manage all of that independently. When I go totally blind, I already know the skills now. I’ve done it. I know how to do it. I don’t have to go back for more training.

What I’m really hoping is that we can have a full-time structured discovery centre here so that us Canadians don’t have to leave our country to go get training, that if it’s a residential training centre, anybody in Canada can come to our training centre. You live. You have roommates. You learn how to be independent, immersed in full-time training.

I’m just hoping that we can recognize what structured discovery non-visual training is by blind professionals in order to help us become independent, productive, working blind people.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you, Gina. Just a couple of quick questions. Is there anyone who’s actually qualified to teach that in Canada, or would that have to be something that’s developed from the ground up?

[3:05 p.m.]

G. Huylenbroeck: It would have to be developed from the ground up. My intention is to go down next year to either Colorado or New Mexico — I’m looking at both of those centres — to get my NOMC, which is independent cane travel. I have other people that are looking into getting their certification in braille and daily living skills, so getting a centre together is totally doable.

S. Cadieux: Thanks for sharing. Full disclosure: in my previous life, I actually developed a peer support program for people with disabilities. So I am in full support of the importance of peer support in folks actually finding their way in as many ways as you can define that.

A couple of questions. I know we don’t have something like this in Canada at this stage. Can you tell me two things? In travelling to the States, I assume you had to self-fund that?

G. Huylenbroeck: Yes.

S. Cadieux: How many people in Canada are there that would self-fund this if it was available here on an annual basis? Do you have any idea?

G. Huylenbroeck: No, I don’t. But I do know a gentleman from Vancouver just came back from the same training that I did. There are more people heading down there to learn the skills in a timely manner. I want to be prepared.

S. Cadieux: Absolutely. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

All right. Next up we have the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition — Corey Burger.

All right, Corey. If you wouldn’t mind trying to keep your initial comments to about five minutes, then we’ll have time. I noticed you came in with your bicycle helmet. I think that was a prelude to what you’re talking about, right?

GREATER VICTORIA CYCLING COALITION

C. Burger: Absolutely. Thanks very much. My name is Corey Burger. I’m speaking today on behalf of the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition. We’ve been around for about 28 years here in the region. Our mission is to get more people biking more places more often.

We work with the municipalities and the CRD to do a couple of things. One of the biggest pieces is to get more bikeways built, because we know one of the easiest ways to get more people on a bike is to provide them with a place to bike.

We also celebrate biking by organizing rides. For those of you who are here in October we have a Spooks n’ Spokes Ride on the 28th. It’s lots of fun. We go around and see Halloween decorations the way they were meant to be seen, from a bike saddle. And we work on bike parking at events. Things like that.

The reason I’m here today is because I’m asking you to increase the funding for bikeways, bike lanes and trails throughout this region and throughout this great province.

To give you a little bit of history, provincial funding is absolutely crucial to getting good bike lanes built. In fact, what I rode here today and what I ride every day to work is the E&N Rail Trail. It runs right behind this building. It is partially funded with provincial money. It connects to the Pandora protected bike lane, which takes me directly to work, also partially funded with provincial money.

The network of bike lanes throughout this region that started in ’92 has provincial money all over it. Almost every major project has had provincial money in it. This trail would not have happened without that provincial money. That’s one of the crucial parts.

I could talk about: why biking? I’m sure many of you have already heard all of the reasons why. It tackles climate change. It deals with the health crisis. It allows me to eat an extra doughnut when I feel like it. Things like that. But it also gets people out biking, which is economically vibrant, especially in the rural areas. Places like the Cowichan Valley have seen the benefits of people biking to those places.

This is not a partisan issue. I should be really clear. Support for biking has remained relatively steady — at least the region has been building bikeways — through both governments. It’s also not a rural-urban issue. What we build may vary by where we’re at, but it’s not “the rural needs it and the urban doesn’t” or vice versa.

What also hasn’t changed is that people want to bike. In study after study — the province’s own Move B.C., which was done under the last government — people wanted to bike. In recent studies by SFU here in the region, people want to bike.

[3:10 p.m.]

What has changed is what we’re building. That’s really why the funding can’t stay the same. What we’re building are better bikeways. We’re building trails. We’re building protected bike lanes. These are getting more people out riding. I see it every day. I happened to be lucky enough to work on the Pandora bike lane. I see kids every single day. I never saw kids riding on Pandora before this.

The trail behind us — kids riding on the weekends. The trail behind us also connects the fastest-growing part of our region, the West Shore, to one of the largest employers of our region — CFB Esquimalt and the Seaspan dockyard. Those people who are choosing to bike from the West Shore to here are getting out of a car and reducing the impact on provincially owned and funded highways. You are spending $85 million trying to solve the West Shore congestion issue. I guarantee it won’t work. But it might help with the safety issues.

We need that better level of funding. What we’re also seeing is that it’s challenging for municipalities to apply. Bike B.C. funding — although it and its previous incarnations have stayed relatively stable, what we see in the region is that only the largest municipalities actually bother applying: Victoria, Saanich, Langford, Oak Bay.

Why do the others not apply? Well, it’s because when you talk to them, it’s not worth their time. The likelihood of them getting any money is quite low. In fact, under the last government, the CRD got no money. If I wanted to be honest and non-partisan, I would mention that under the current government, the amount of money that Bike B.C. gave out actually decreased by about $3 million.

That’s the challenge. Is it municipalities? One of them came to me after the last round of funding, and we talked. They said: “Why didn’t we get money? I thought we met the criteria. We had letters of support. What happened?” There’s an arbitrariness and a frustration amongst municipal engineers about being able to build these, because if you’re a small municipality, you don’t have a lot of staff time. Why should you waste it on a grant that’s never going to come?

I have a couple of solutions. The first and easiest one is to simply increase the funding. One thing the last Ontario government did is that they gave money to everybody that applied. “If you applied, and you met the criteria, we funded you,” which was an amazing change. Suddenly, all of that arbitrariness was gone.

The other option you can do, which is what a lot of funding programs do, is that you split out the large from the small. Why is Surrey competing against Oak Bay and Metchosin and the far northern reaches of B.C.? They shouldn’t be. Surrey, Victoria — those areas have large amounts of funding resources, have staff time. The small places don’t. Honour their time that they have spent submitting to you, and give them money in deference to Victoria and Saanich. Most of the projects that have gone ahead have been funded regardless of whether or not they would get Bike B.C., which is an unfortunate problem.

How much are we looking at? Well, currently we fund at $1.25 per person in this province as of the last…. Most places in the world, if you want to have high levels of biking, are looking at anywhere between $10 to $50 a person. Now, that’s not all provincial money. That can come from a variety of sources. Victoria is using gas tax money; so does Saanich. There are federal sources, and there are, of course, other municipal sources as well.

Somewhere between $10 and $15 a person is probably where you should aim at. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. It shouldn’t be next year, because you have to let the municipalities ramp up. I know that if you dumped $100 million on them tomorrow, they’d go, “Aah,” and wonder. But if you increased it to 20 next year, you’d probably get a good uptake. That’s my understanding of what it was.

Just to sum up and in conclusion, this is about getting more people out there active, getting our economic engines moving and getting people out into the rural areas where they can spend that urban money out in those rural areas. Quite frankly, I would love to bike to my parents’ place, who live near Merritt, but I can’t. The KVR is not a bikeway that I can use.

The last time I went for a recreational bike ride, I went to the States, where they have a beautiful KVR equivalent. It’s a state park, they funded it as such, and it’s beautiful to ride on. Imagine, with the KVR, how many tourism dollars we could bring in from those kinds of people — people who ride on the E&N as well.

I’m really hoping that next year you’ll be able to increase the funding for biking. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Corey.

Questions?

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. I love the E&N. I’ve cycled it down to the Leg. It’s a great resource, a great asset for the community.

I’m interested in whether you can tell us, per capita, where we sit in terms of having kilometres of bike lanes in the region. Would you give us a grade?

[3:15 p.m.]

C. Burger: That’s pretty decent. The South Island Prosperity Project — one of the challenges is with data. It’s hard to know. In my past life, I used to work with the regional district and actually developed, collected, a lot of that data. We prefer to measure by the outcomes rather than the inputs. The outcome is how many people are biking and who’s biking. When you look at those outcomes, what you see is an increase.

For example, when they built the Pandora bike lane — and the Fort Street and the Johnson Street Bridge — the Galloping Goose increased in traffic. Suddenly, we have traffic increasing on an existing provincially funded bikeway because of all of the network that got attached to it.

As the network grows, we’ll see even more of that, and the CRD, when they count, which is next week, will count numbers of women and numbers of children riding. We’ve certainly seen it preliminarily here, but we’ll definitely see, as we go on, the success factor there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Corey. We appreciate your presentation.

I think that’s it. I’d like to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 3:16 p.m.