The committee met at 9 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 pleased to be here in Surrey today and would like to begin by recognizing that our meeting is taking place on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people — in particular, the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Kwikwetlem and the Qayqayt people.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to acknowledge everyone impacted by the wildfires and floods this year and thank the first responders, volunteers and many others who supported the response.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly, and our members include MLAs from all three parties in the Legislature. It’s hard to believe, but today is our last public hearing for the Budget 2019 consultation. This consultation, which is held every fall, is based on the budget consultation paper that was released by the Minister of Finance in September. There are copies of this paper available here today if you’d like to refer to it.

Over the last month, we travelled to 14 communities: Dawson Creek, Prince George, Smithers, Masset, Campbell River, Vancouver, Cranbrook, Trail, Nelson, Kamloops, Kelowna, Esquimalt and Mission — and, last but not least, today in Surrey. We also heard from individuals and organizations in communities via teleconference.

As well, this year many of our hearings were held in community spaces such as Old Massett Community Hall on Haida Gwaii, Thunderbird Hall in Campbell River and the Songhees Wellness Centre in Esquimalt, along with many other recreation and arts centres, curling rinks and universities. Using these community-based spaces for our hearings really provided us with an opportunity to learn a bit more about the communities that we were visiting during our travels. So far, we’ve heard over 220 presentations covering a broad range of issues.

To those of you here today: thank you for joining many other British Columbians in taking the time to participate. We’re looking forward to a great last day of presentations in Surrey. And our many thanks to everyone who has shared their ideas and priorities for the next provincial budget. We’re looking forward to discussing all the input we received, as we work to develop our recommendations for the Budget 2019 in the coming weeks.

While today is our last meeting, there’s still time to send us your thoughts in writing or fill out our on-line survey. The deadline is Monday, October 15, 2018, at 5 p.m. More information is available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance. Our report and recommendations will be available by November 15, 2018.

As far as the format, we have a number of registered guests today. Each will have five minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. There’s also a first-come, first-served open-mike period near the end of the meeting with five minutes allotted to each speaker. We would ask that you apply for those very quickly at the beginning of the meeting because they fill up quickly. If you’d like to speak, please see Stephanie at the information table.

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

Right now I’d like to have our members introduce themselves. First, I’d like to turn the table over to our Deputy Chair, Dan Ashton.

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

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

T. Redies: Tracy Redies, Surrey–White Rock.

S. Cadieux: Stephanie Cadieux, Surrey South.

M. Dean: I’m Mitzi Dean. I’m the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

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

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right, and Sonia Furstenau will be joining us later.

I’d also like to take the opportunity, on behalf of the committee, to recognize the wonderful staff at the Parliamentary Committees Office and Hansard Services, who have been assisting us over the past month.

[9:05 a.m.]

Here today from the Parliamentary Committees Office are Jennifer Arril, the Clerk to the committee, and Stephanie Raymond in the back. Many thanks to the two of them and Mariana Novis and Mary Newell for making arrangements for our public hearings. I’d also like to thank Karan Riarh, our lead committee research analyst, and Nicki Simpson and Willi Fahning, committee researchers, for all the work they do behind the scenes to support the work of the committee.

Finally, from Hansard Services, I’d like to thank Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat for making everything sound great, who are recording today’s proceedings; as well as Mike Baer and Steve Weisgerber, who are not with us but did tour with us; and the entire Hansard team back in Victoria for all the work they do in broadcasting, transcribing and publishing all our meetings.

Without further ado, I would like to call up the B.C. Association of Farmers Markets — Heather O’Hara.

Hi, Heather.

Budget Consultation Presentations

B.C. ASSOCIATION OF FARMERS MARKETS

H. O’Hara: Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to present this morning. This is my third time, and I’m getting a little better every year. Last year I had the hook because I went over the five minutes, so that’s why I’m really conscious of time this year.

The B.C. Association of Farmers Markets is an organization that represents 145-plus member markets across the province of all shapes and sizes, from communities of all kinds. We support, strengthen, promote and develop those market members to make sure that they’re viable and thriving. We adhere to a common philosophy of 100 percent B.C. grow, make, bake, raise and wild harvest as a membership. Together, collectively, we generate about $170 million in economic activity — quite meaningful in terms of local entrepreneurs, and so forth.

I’d like to take the time to highlight some 2018 achievements and recommendations moving forward. One of the biggest and most awesome things we did this year was the launch of the B.C. Farmers Market Trail.

The BCAFM developed and launched this trail, website and campaign — the bcfarmersmarkettrail.com — with financial support from the Destination B.C. cooperative marketing program. This is the first time that we’ve worked with the DBC, and we’re absolutely thrilled with the results and what it’s allowed us to achieve in just our first year.

The B.C. farmers market trail and this DBC cooperative marketing program have enabled the BCAFM to create an anchor — a world-class, consumer-facing identity and hub, with imagery and narrative to promote farmers markets to both tourists and locals alike. It’s given us a platform to animate and activate, a tool to activate and animate new campaigns and activities at the markets — at the local level, regional and provincial level and beyond. It’s enabling us to connect and collaborate as a sector. Within each region, the individual farmers markets now have this tool to work together to promote their markets in and among their regions.

In 2018, we created a deep regional focus on the Kootenay Rockies, Columbia Basin region, with support from CBT and Kootenay Rockies Tourism. In 2019 and 2020, we’ll expand to other regions. Ultimately, we’re elevating the B.C. farmers market brand, an existing tourism asset and local economy driver, to the next level, better positioning our markets as an agritourism and culinary destination, increasing direct sales for agrifood businesses at farmers markets and increasing tourism revenues in the communities where farmers markets operate.

In 2019, pending funding, we plan to expand to northern B.C., Cariboo-Chilcotin, Vancouver and Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast. In 2020, pending funding, we will go to Thompson-Okanagan, Sea to Sky, Fraser Valley, Metro Van and the city of Vancouver to round out our membership.

The second big thing we’ve been working on is a B.C. farmers market brand refresh. So we will have a new logo, a new look, a new bcfarmersmarket.org website in service of our membership in 2019. We’re really uniquely positioned as an organization to connect to that small-scale food processor and small-scale ag kind of farmer in our province. That new website will enable us to speak, connect, share information, workshops, business supports a little bit more effectively than we have in the past. So we’re pretty excited about that. Any support we could get to do a better job of communicating to that really unique niche would be fantastic.

[9:10 a.m.]

Third, Buy B.C. We, by nature and by design, are home to 3,000-plus B.C. grow-make-bake vendors, do we’re uniquely positioned to support and promote the provincial Buy B.C. campaigns and initiatives. As such, we encourage and welcome new financial support to our organization and our members to support this valuable work across the province.

Finally, the B.C. farmers market nutrition coupon program. In 2018, the BCAFM has been busy delivering the B.C. farmers market nutrition coupon program to 60-plus individual communities and farmers markets, engaging 100-plus community partners and benefiting over 4,000 households, equivalent to about 10,000 people and about 800 farmers across the province. We are extremely proud to manage and deliver this program on behalf of the Ministry of Health and the province of B.C.

With new investment from the Ministry of Health in March of this year, we would like to thank the province for enabling us to expand this program in the following ways. We increased the weekly coupon value from $15 to $21 per week, which represents an increase of about $240 to $336 over the 16-week program. It’s fantastic.

Similarly, we’ve been able to increase the number of pregnant women participating in the program as well. That’s been fantastic.

We were also able to leverage our reputation with this program and bring in the Columbia Basin Trust to have a deeper reach into the Kootenays–Columbia Basin region. So that’s been fantastic as well.

We would love, if we could, to double the impact of this program. If we could hit every community where our markets operate — double the markets, double that — and if we could also secure multi-year program funding, that would be great as well.

In closing, I thank you very much for your time and for supporting B.C. farmers markets and all the work we do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Thank you for all the work you do. I’m a particular fan of the coupon program and a proud sponsor. I challenge all MLAs to sponsor their local markets and the coupon program. When you go out there on the weekends, you can see the impact it has on local people. It’s quite moving, actually. It’s also engaging. It engages people, and they’re also eating healthy food. Win-win-win. I love it.

Any questions?

One quick question. Could you be very specific in what you’re asking for financially? If we’re asked to put that in our report….

H. O’Hara: Let’s talk about the coupon program. That program right now, with this expansion this spring, is about $1.4 million per year. Just as a back-of-the-napkin calculation, if we doubled that and reached all of our markets and all of the communities where operate, let’s just say that it’s a $2½ million to $3 million request to reach into everywhere we operate. I would say $2 million to $3 million, to be safe.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are you sure?

H. O’Hara: Yeah. It’s $3 million.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It seems to be going up as we talk. That’s fine, Heather.

Any other questions for Heather?

Thank you very much for all you do. Farmers markets are wonderful.

Next up we have the Association for Mineral Exploration — Edie Thome and Dr. Robert Stevens.

We have a little timer here. We’re trying to keep the initial comments, if we can, to five minutes. Thank you.

ASSOCIATION FOR MINERAL EXPLORATION

R. Stevens: Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Rob Stevens, and I’m the vice-president, regulatory and technical policy, at the Association for Mineral Exploration, or AME for short. On behalf of AME’s 350 corporate members and almost 5,000 individual members, we’re pleased to have this opportunity to present.

We recognize that we’re meeting this morning on the territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen peoples.

Mineral exploration is the necessary first step in the mining life cycle. Mines have a finite life, and new discoveries are needed to ensure the continuation of mining jobs and revenue to the province. Without mineral exploration, there would be no mining. Without mining, we will not produce the minerals and metals needed for a modern, technology-based, low-carbon society.

[9:15 a.m.]

Mineral exploration expenditures in B.C. were close to $250 million in 2017, down from a peak of $680 million in 2012. These dollars were spent in more than 150 communities across the province. Mineral exploration and mining are also the largest private employers of Indigenous people in Canada, and AME supports the positive steps that the B.C. government is taking towards reconciliation with Indigenous people. We are working with our members to advance reconciliation with industry.

British Columbia is a well-known jurisdiction for mineral exploration and mining. Vancouver, in particular, is the world’s largest centre of expertise for the mineral exploration industry, with more than 800 companies based here — almost three times second-place Toronto, which is always a nice claim to make. Yet many of these companies based in Vancouver do not explore at home, as B.C. is perceived by some to be a difficult jurisdiction to work in. Our recommendations are aimed at making B.C. the most attractive jurisdiction in Canada for mineral exploration that will encourage all of our members to explore here in B.C.

We have two recommendations. The first one is to position B.C. as the most attractive jurisdiction in Canada for mineral exploration investment through increases in the mining exploration tax credit and the mining flow-through share credit. So specifically, increase the existing B.C. mining exploration tax credit for companies from 20 to 30 percent over the entire province. Currently it’s set at 30 percent in the pine beetle–affected areas, which is about 85 percent of the province.

The second is to increase the existing B.C. mining flow-through share tax credit for B.C. investors from 20 percent to 35 percent. This will place B.C. at the top in Canada, ahead of Manitoba and Quebec.

Third is to make both of those tax credits permanent.

What would be the budgetary impact? For the mining exploration tax credit, from 2010 to 2017, the total tax credit was approximately $42 million per year. Given that a significant portion of these mineral exploration expenditures are in the pine beetle–affected area, where the 30 percent credit already applies, AME estimates that increasing the rate to 30 percent over the entire province will have a relatively small tax implication.

In terms of the flow-through shares, increasing the rate from 20 percent to 35 percent will result in an increased tax benefit to investors of about $60,000 for every $1 million in additional flow-through investment.

For recommendation 2, increase staffing within the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources to ensure it has sufficient capacity to review and issue permits in a timely manner, as outlined in Minister Mungall’s mandate letter, and separate compliance and enforcement from permitting and promotion to address the findings of the Auditor General from 2016.

Current permitting timelines for mineral exploration through the notice-of-work process are not competitive and are not meeting the ministry standard. Industry is redirecting its exploration investment dollars elsewhere due to delays and reputation. Minister Mungall’s mandate letter includes the priority to develop an improved and properly resourced approvals process. We appreciate that permitting has become a complex and involved process over the past many years, and we support the Ministry of Energy and Mines in its effort to keep up. However, more staffing is required.

The Auditor General’s report entitled An Audit of Compliance and Enforcement of the Mining Sector released in 2016, identified the need to separate the roles of permitting and promotion from compliance and enforcement. We support the Ministry of Energy and Mines’ proposed solution to this issue, as outlined in their submission through the budget process this fall. However, we would like to see more emphasis on a sufficiently resourced permitting process, not just compliance and enforcement.

In terms of the cost, consistent with the submission by the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources through the budget process, this recommendation will require between 34 and 75 new FTEs with the total cost of $5.5 million to $11 million per year. Then, specifically to ensure a sufficiently resourced permitting process, the higher budget request would be required.

What would be the benefits by implementing these recommendations to B.C.? The first is to increase mineral exploration investment in B.C. and to increase B.C.’s share of Canadian mineral exploration expenditures. The second would be to increase employment, including Indigenous employment — and an increase in expenditures to the service and supply sector across all regions of the province. Third is to address priorities outlined in Minister Mungall’s mandate letter, including a properly resourced approval process, and address the findings of the Auditor General to separate the roles of permitting and promotion from compliance and enforcement.

Finally, the investment community will know that B.C. is open for business with a streamlined review process and the most attractive permanent tax incentives for mineral exploration in Canada. Thank you.

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

Can I just clarify one thing? Could you just explain briefly the difference between, obviously, the exploration tax credit and the flow-through and why you want to see it go up to 35? We have one going up to 30 and one 35. Maybe you could just flesh that out a bit more for me.

[9:20 a.m.]

R. Stevens: Sure. The difference is that the mineral exploration tax credit, METC, is a credit for companies. If they spend exploration dollars in the province, they get a credit back for those expenditures. The flow-through share is to investors. If a B.C. resident invests in exploration in the province, they get a deduction on the cost, basically a tax credit, for that investment they make. They’re different forms of incentives.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but having an increase on the investment side is sort of a way to stimulate more investment. Is that the idea — why the percentage is higher for that tax credit?

R. Stevens: Exactly. Natural Resources Canada is estimating that for every dollar in flow-through financing, it results in about 2.6 additional dollars of investment coming in. It’s a very positive way of stimulating additional investment into the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there other provincial examples that you can compare?

R. Stevens: Yeah. Our key focus here is to place B.C. as the top in Canada. A number of the provinces do have both these types of incentives. Right now both Manitoba and Quebec have higher incentives than B.C. That’s where, particularly, increasing the flow-through to 35 percent will place B.C. at the top within all provinces in Canada.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Then maybe we can get to four times Toronto, Ontario, right?

R. Stevens: That’s right, exactly.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I like that.

R. Stevens: We’ll really outdo Toronto.

T. Redies: Thank you for your presentation. I just wonder if you could provide us a little bit of insight as to what mineral exploration opportunities there are in B.C., particularly in the context of some of the new industries, etc.

E. Thome: You go ahead.

Rob is our geologist. I’ll let him speak to that.

R. Stevens: B.C. has excellent mineral potential. The opportunity to discover many new and large mineral deposits is certainly there. You can think of exploration sort of like the research part of research and development. You need to go out and research and search for new deposits. Some of those, not many, will become mines.

B.C. has a wide endowment of mineral resources, including, for example, copper, which is our biggest product — copper and coal. If I focus on copper, that’s a mineral that’s needed for electricity transmission, for batteries. It’s an important commodity for a low-carbon future. People are increasingly exploring for minerals other than copper and gold that are increasing in demand now because of shifts in economic technologies and those sorts of things. I think B.C. is well recognized as a great jurisdiction from a geological point of view.

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

R. Stevens: Okay. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Before we start, I just wanted to recognize that we have local MLA Marvin Hunt.

Welcome to our meeting. We appreciate you coming out.

Next up we have the Surrey Board of Trade — Anita Huberman.

A. Huberman: Good morning.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good morning. Anita, I have a little timer here. We’re trying to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, if we can. Thank you very much.

SURREY BOARD OF TRADE

A. Huberman: Good morning, members of the committee. I’m Anita Huberman, as mentioned, CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade. I’m very pleased to be here this morning. We have an immense amount of respect for the work that this committee does to prepare for B.C.’s budget for next year. The Surrey Board of Trade is a not-for-profit organization, a business organization. We have 6,000 business contacts representing just over 2,600 businesses. That, in itself, represents 60,000 employees.

In terms of population, you can fit Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby into the city limits of Surrey. Surrey is positioned to be the largest city in British Columbia, and we need investments. The rapid and unsustainable growth of Surrey and the South Fraser region is really unique in B.C., as many of you know. It brings a number of challenges and a number of opportunities.

[9:25 a.m.]

On the topic of, first of all, education — I’m just going to go through these topics very quickly; more detail is provided in our specific position papers in your folder — I want you to imagine a classroom in Surrey where a four-year-old is getting ready for storytime. Then cross the globe to an office in Bangalore, the capital of India’s burgeoning high-tech industry, where engineers are designing a gas turbine system. These two sites are literally half a world apart, but a growing number of business leaders think there’s a direct connection. We have global competition.

We need to nurture our youth. A third of our population is under the age of 19 right here in Surrey. This is where the human capital is, and the Surrey Board of Trade is asking for continued investments in early childhood education and child care.

In Surrey and the Surrey Board of Trade, we believe and know that education drives local economic development. As it relates to Kwantlen Polytechnic University, we need innovative approaches for all of their campuses in the region. More specifically for Surrey, the request is student mental health and wellness programs, programs to support education awareness and prevention programs focused on sexualized violence, Indigenous programming. We have the highest urban Aboriginal youth population right here in Surrey.

We need work-integrated learning, especially incentives for businesses to provide this extremely important hands-on component to education, which allows students to be as job-ready as possible. We have the most number of manufacturers in British Columbia right here in Surrey. It is Manufacturing Month this month.

KPU is tapped out. They are delivering all of the seats that the provincial funding allows, and they still have wait-lists which are growing. There’s an incredible opportunity for KPU, especially as it relates to the recent B.C. Labour Market Outlook report, which indicated that there will be 900,000 jobs in the tech and health care sector. KPU’s breadth of programming can certainly be leveraged.

For SFU, Simon Fraser University, I sit on their advisory council for the president of the university and the SFU-India Advisory Council, also for SFU. Post-secondary capacity in Surrey and this side of the river is absolutely needed. There was an MOU in 2006. Since then, the population has increased by 35 percent. We appreciate the commitment by the B.C. government in the energy building that SFU is currently building, but we need the province to recommit to its 2006 goal to expand SFU Surrey’s campus to 5,000 student seats.

On the topic of health care, we definitely needed that second hospital.

For transportation, again, we’re facing a Surrey election, with different perspectives on light rail transit. The Surrey Board of Trade is very supportive of light rail, and I hope the province will continue to be so, despite who the mayor is within our respective Metro cities.

Investments in arts and affordable housing are absolutely needed in this city.

As it relates to cannabis legalization, there’s going to be a lot of downloading of services to our local cities, and the government does need to focus on that.

We are the highest refugee destination within British Columbia. I’m the chair of Surrey’s local immigration partnership committee. We need to work together to ensure the best outcomes for refugees and for businesses and their human capital needs.

One other thing I wanted to mention was the employer health tax. We’re waiting for the details of this. We did advocate for the removal of the MSP; that’s a good sign. But the employer health tax, as it is currently positioned, needs to be reviewed.

That’s my presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much. Lots of very interesting things. I was just curious. When you talk about arts and culture, what are you asking for, specifically, there? I see that in some of the other things there are asks.

A. Huberman: Well, just a focus in this next B.C. budget on more investment in arts and culture. In Surrey, more specifically, we need arts and culture infrastructure investment. We need to be able to collaborate with the B.C. government to get those infrastructure dollars in here.

[9:30 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Would that be through B.C. Arts Council or otherwise?

A. Huberman: Otherwise. We’re trying to make Surrey a music city destination, leveraging transportation hubs, town centres, working with musicians and the like, nurturing them as entrepreneurs. We’re working with Creative B.C., Music B.C. and Music Canada. But we need infrastructure — a performing arts centre, that type of thing.

T. Redies: Hi, Anita. Good to see you. You mentioned in your presentation, although in the written presentation, that you think the speculation tax needs to be revisited. Can you give us some insight as to what you are seeing happening on the ground here in Surrey, in terms of the housing market and the development market?

A. Huberman: Well, the development community is being very cautious as a result of the speculation tax. We have a development and land use committee at the Surrey Board of Trade, and investments within our communities are being compromised. There’s uncertainty on the ground. That’s what we’re hearing from our development and our construction members within the board of trade.

I think the tax itself needs to be revisited. The purpose of it needs to be revisited. I know why it was put in place, and I certainly respect the why. But we don’t want to compromise development and real estate as well as investment decisions to build our city.

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

Was there anything else you wanted to add? Okay.

Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate your presentation.

Next up we have B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils — Andrea Sinclair.

Hi, how are you? We have a timer here. If we can try to keep the comments to five minutes so there’s time for questions, that’d be wonderful.

B.C. CONFEDERATION OF
PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS

A. Sinclair: That’s my goal.

Good morning. I’m Andrea Sinclair. I’m the president of BCCPAC. On behalf of BCCPAC, we are once again pleased to have the opportunity to present recommendations on public education priorities to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

The B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils is a non-partisan registered non-profit charity representing parents and guardians of over 565,000 children attending provincial public schools. We are recognized by the provincial government and education partners. We are the collective voice of parents on educational issues within the public system. We advocate both for systemic change and individual parent advocacy.

This select standing committee affirmed that public education is not adequately supported by public funds. This committee has recommended the importance of equity and fairness within the K-to-12 system in order to ensure that the diverse needs of communities across the province are met and that all students, including those with special needs, receive a high-quality public education. We, and parents, fully support the K-to-12 funding recommendations made in the previous four reports of this committee.

The B.C. School Act sets out the purpose of the provincial education system — that is, to enable all learners, regardless of race, gender, ability or economic means, “to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.” The government’s own policy on diversity clearly articulates their responsibility “to ensure that differences among learners do not impede their participation in school, their mastery of learning outcomes or their ability to become contributing members of society.”

We have identified four key recommendations that are critical for every student to have equitable access to public education with the supports and services they need to succeed, according to the School Act.

One, provide stable funding. We ask that the government act now on the recommendations from the past four years of this committee that have called for adequate, stable and predictable funding.

Two, create a student-centred funding model. The provincial government, with the Ministry of Education, continues the process of the funding model review, and we ask that they develop a new needs-based, stable, sustainable and transparent model for the K-to-12 public system for Budget 2019.

[9:35 a.m.]

Changes to the funding formula need to be student-centric and be consistent with changes to the special education policy, reflect the diverse challenges of individual school districts, have equitable funding across the regions, provide the supports and resources needed to meet the diversity of all students’ educational needs, and meet the real costs of delivering public ed across the province.

Three, increase operational funding: that the provincial government increase K-to-12 public education operational funding to reflect the actual fixed operating costs of operating school facilities, and cover all the downloaded costs to school districts, as well as inflationary costs, including funding for high-incidence, special needs and gifted students; that funding for special needs categories 1, 2 and 3 be increased to meet the actual costs of delivering necessary service and supports; implementation of a classroom resource fund to address unique classroom needs; unique geographic factors funding, including the transportation of buses to reflect those actual costs; funding and resources provided to address the huge backlog of students waiting for formal assessment; that the supplemental grant for implementation of the education plan be extended to provide the resources and technology necessary to implement the new curriculum.

Four, increase capital funding. We ask that the treasury fund portables where necessary for temporary accommodation during seismic upgrades, which could be creating special bridge funding to cover the cost of portables until the reliance is eliminated; that the Ministry of Education develop a plan and timelines to replace old schools where existing schools are close to or exceeding their life expectancy to address the soaring deferred maintenance costs; that the Ministry of Education and the government develop a strategy to proactively fund new school construction in areas of current or anticipated growth, based on census data and municipal plans; and, last but not least, that the Ministry of Education revise the current ministry area standards, as it is the basis for all upgrades and new school builds.

The current area standards document is centred on the classroom as a self-contained unit for whole-group, teacher-driven content delivery. By contrast, the 21st Century Learning in the new curriculum requires a range of flexible spaces in and beyond the classroom to support personalized learning, collaboration, and experiential, hands-on learning.

Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Very good. We should have little prizes for who hits five minutes exactly. Well done.

A little bit of work to do here, it sounds like. Could you talk a little bit more about the funding model and just how you see things rolling out? I know you had a lot of things to talk about, but that seems to be something that’s topical right now.

A. Sinclair: Yeah, it is, and it is in the longer brief that you will have. Certainly, we made a presentation on behalf of parents to the funding model independent review panel. What we’re looking for…. We’re in no position to tell you what it should look like, but what we can tell you is that it needs to be more student-centric.

When you look at the Ministry of Education’s student policy, everything that they’re doing speaks to students being at the centre and how we want students to be successful. If that is the case, then when you look at the model with that lens, it becomes very clear that there are some students that are just falling through the cracks because the model doesn’t address what is needed for them.

It could be because the child has special needs and the supports aren’t there. There’s a special needs child that hasn’t even made it through the system, doesn’t have the resources. It could be a non–special needs child that doesn’t have the things that are required in their classroom, so the curriculum is not coming to life for them. It’s looking at it with that lens, and I think if we do that collectively, it will put us in a different place.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That makes a lot of sense.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you very much. There’s a lot to digest there, and we really appreciate your thoughtful comments and presentation. Thank you so much.

A. Sinclair: Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the B.C. Dental Association — Jocelyn Johnston and Raymon Grewal.

Hello, how are you?

R. Grewal: Hi. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re trying to keep it to five if we can. That would be great. Please go ahead.

B.C. DENTAL ASSOCIATION

R. Grewal: Thank you. My name is Ray Grewal. I’m the president of the B.C. Dental Association. In addition to being a full-time, private-practice, oral-maxillofacial surgeon, I’m also the head of oral-maxillofacial surgery at B.C. Children’s Hospital as well as an assistant clinical professor at UBC’s school of dentistry.

[9:40 a.m.]

Joining me is Jocelyn Johnston. She’s our executive director. I’d like to thank you all for allowing us to appear in front of the committee.

Representing over 3,500 dentists within the province, the BCDA is committed to the oral health of all British Columbians. We thank the government for its significant investments in oral health. Recently, Minister Dix added an additional 900 hospital-based surgeries, which have now decreased the wait times, particularly for patients with disabilities, as well as children. In addition to that, the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction provided approximately $50,000 in funding for clients requiring dental treatment before necessary medical treatment.

Working in partnership with government and dentistry, we can raise the bar, especially for vulnerable groups such as patients with disabilities and seniors. The poverty reduction strategy is an important initiative. Access to dental care was frequently raised during the consultative process. Addressing oral health needs as a part of this initiative requires collaboration between government, dentistry and other stakeholders.

However, we have concerns with the Ministry of Social Development dental plans. Twenty years ago, approximately 12 percent of ministry clients were patients with disabilities; today that figure has increased to approximately 71 percent, yet the dental coverage remains unchanged. Persons with disabilities are often medically complex patients, requiring co-management with other physicians and their caregivers, and are frequently requiring a hospital setting for their dental care.

Last year patients were wait-listed up to one year, relying on antibiotics and pain medications in order to address and manage their infections and pain. This directly contradicts the Centre for Disease Control’s efforts to reduce antibiotic and narcotic prescriptions.

The recent reduction in wait times, however, has directly improved the health and quality of life for these patients. But the clients who exceed their treatment limits will only receive emergency dental care, not preventative care. To us as dentists, this does not make any sense. Prevention, with early diagnosis and treatment, should be the focus, not arbitrary limits. A well-structured program will improve oral health and reduce the demands on operating rooms and emergency room services.

We recommend that the Ministry of Social Development restructure their dental programs to meet the needs of their clients. While dentists have tried to meet this need, we are frustrated with the program. Furthermore, the fees have not increased since 2006. Despite this, the dentists of the province continue to treat ministry clients, even though the fees are about 50 percent lower than the current fees. While some dentists absorb this difference, others may ask the patients to cover part of the cost. We recommend that any restructuring of the ministry dental programs include addressing the level of fees.

Operating with minimal financial support, British Columbia has approximately 20 not-for-profit clinics, which rely on volunteer dentists and staff and provide care to approximately 45,000 ministry clients and low-income patients. The British Columbia Dental Association recommends that the government develop a long-term funding arrangement to assist these not-for-profit clinics and to support the care for these vulnerable patients.

In regards to seniors, B.C.’s seniors advocate noted that 65 percent of seniors in our province are without health benefits, including dental care. The lack of dental care has been repeatedly identified as an issue for low-income seniors. In fact, Statistics Canada estimates that 35 percent of British Columbia seniors are disabled. Yet they do not qualify for dental coverage, because this disability occurred after the age of 65.

Unfortunately, as you age, the teeth become more brittle and, along with age-related impairments, put these seniors at increased risk for severe infection and tooth loss.

We continue to recommend that the government create a dental plan for low-income seniors. In fact, this committee, in the 2017 and 2018 budgets, endorsed such a measure. A first step could be providing coverage for seniors in long-term-care facilities.

Dentistry also needs government support to provide the best care for our patients. We recommend that the PharmaNet program be expanded to include dentists and dental specialists. The information that we receive from PharmaNet is critical to managing our patients in terms of their medical histories and their medications that are used.

We thank you again for the opportunity to build this relationship further and to improve on the successes that we’ve had together as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. Can you just expand a bit on the PharmaNet issue, just so I understand what the issue is there?

[9:45 a.m.]

R. Grewal: Currently dentists in British Columbia do not have access to PharmaNet. As you know, PharmaNet allows clinicians to gain access to the medications that a patient is currently receiving. Dentists in this province are the second-largest prescribers yet don’t have access to that information.

It’s important to us so that if a patient presents themselves to our office and is not sure what medications they’re taking, we can be much more efficient and obtain that information right away in order to manage them appropriately. In addition to that, when we prescribe, we also need to know what they’re taking because there are some drug interactions that are important to their overall health.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Secondly, did you have an idea of, let’s say, a quantum of what low-income seniors would cost, in terms of ballpark, so that we have at least a number?

R. Grewal: I’ll pass it over to Jocelyn.

J. Johnston: Based on the current ministry fees — it would be an extension of the current income assistance program, similar to the healthy kids program, which provides dental and optical care — we estimate it would be about $30 million to $35 million. We did the estimate based on seniors eligible for guaranteed income supplements, so that’s about the number.

A long-term care program would be well within $5 million, and that’s because it would be limited to palliative care. You wouldn’t be doing full dentures, for example, or more expensive treatments.

S. Furstenau: With respect to the PharmaNet, could you give some insight into why dentists and dental surgeons…? What is the justification for not granting access to PharmaNet?

J. Johnston: I don’t think it’s a question of not. I think the problem is that dentistry, as you know, is primarily in the private system, not the public system. Most of our members, for example, don’t bill MSP. We don’t have that structure yet that the physicians do. You have to deal with confidentiality issues. Our regulatory body would have to be set up for doing audits and such.

It’s not that the Ministry of Health is against that. I think it’s just the inertia of getting over that investment of including dentistry. I think the PharmaNet system right now is still struggling at times even to grasp the physicians. We saw, last year, that there was some release of confidential data. That’s probably the largest hurdle. We and our regulatory body, the College of Dental Surgeons, are both committed to this. We’re prepared to work with government to implement it.

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

Okay. Next up we have Take a Hike Foundation — Deb Abma-Sluggett and Gordon Matchett.

Hi. If we can try to keep the comments to five minutes, then there’s time for questions. Thank you.

TAKE A HIKE FOUNDATION

G. Matchett: Can you imagine your life without a high school diploma? You wouldn’t have access to most of the jobs in the market. You’d be amongst the lowest income earners, and you would be more likely to be on social assistance. Now tie in an untreated mental health issue, substance use or past trauma. This is the recipe for a life of hardship.

Unfortunately, this reality is far too true for far too many British Columbians. Approximately one in seven young people experiences a mental health issue at some point in their life, and a full third of students with diverse abilities will fail to graduate from high school. This number only increases for Indigenous learners and youth in care.

There is hope, however. Studies have shown that society saves $37 for every dollar spent on mental health supports. If today’s youth are to have a better future and the ability to participate in tomorrow’s sustainable economy, mental health and education services must recognize and address these gaps. Committee members, Take a Hike’s recommendation today is to increase funding for public education programs that integrate early intervention and early prevention mental health support for vulnerable youth — programs like Take a Hike.

Amanda grew up in foster care. She ran away at the age of 13 and hitchhiked across Canada while doing drugs. She told me that she wasn’t intentionally trying to destroy herself. She just felt like nobody cared. Amanda graduated from Take a Hike in 2002, and a few years later, she graduated from the Sauder School of Business. She now works helping single moms get the support they need. Reflecting on her time with Take a Hike, Amanda says that getting the very focused care and unconditional positive regard from our staff was monumental in her emotional health and well-being.

[9:50 a.m.]

Take a Hike is a full-time alternate program that uses the outdoors and adventure to engage students in school, in community and in mental health supports. Over the last 18 years, we have developed a unique and impactful program model that is supported by academic research and practice-based evidence. We are one of the few programs in the province with full-time mental clinicians embedded in the classroom. For many youth, our program is their first encounter with mental health supports.

While our program is designed to impact students’ educational and mental health outcomes, Take a Hike has seen noted successes in areas such as Indigenous youth and Aboriginal education; children and youth in care; crime and gang prevention; substance use and harm reduction; sport, physical activity and healthy living; preparing students for higher education and post-secondary transition; preparing our students for the modern workforce; and decreasing the downstream effect on social services, for students to become positive, productive members of their community.

Since the year 2000, Take a Hike has helped meet the needs of hundreds of vulnerable youth and their families in Burnaby, the West Kootenays and Vancouver. Over the last five years, 88 percent of our students have graduated — 88 percent. And when we surveyed the class of 2017, 80 percent of those students were in post-secondary education within a year.

These are phenomenal numbers, considering that these are kids that were once flunking out of high school, and traditional graduation rates for high school are around 84 percent. For kids with special needs, they’re around 66 percent. We also have anecdotal evidence that’s showing that our alumni have the social and emotional skills, resiliency, mental health and well-being they require to navigate the challenges of early adulthood.

Because of the success of our students, we are constantly approached by school districts asking us to partner to offer the program. We have successfully scaled the program three times, and we currently serve 80 students in four classrooms. We’ve spoken with about half the school districts in the province who are interested in the Take a Hike program, and nine of them have formally expressed interest in the program.

We’re currently working with Surrey schools and Delta schools to open up programs in February 2018. Last year we formally partnered with the Ministry of Education for the first time ever, and we’re engaged in conversations about how to scale this life-changing model so that every community with youth in need has access to this program.

Committee members, we’re asking for an initial investment of $1.5 million a year with a four-year commitment to allow us to increase our reach by 150 percent within the next 12 months. With that, we’d be able to reach 200 students in ten classrooms with provincial reach. The investment would provide about 25 percent of the total cost of this project. We’re also developing plans to lift our reach to serve 600 vulnerable youth in 30 classrooms across the province within the next five years.

We know that the province of B.C. wants youth to have access to the services that they need to succeed in high school and beyond. Take a Hike is a proven model for engaging some of the most vulnerable youth in our province and helping them to become resilient young adults who contribute to the province’s society and economy. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I’m just curious in regards to…. You mentioned vulnerable youth and youth coming in and the success of the program. Do you work with special needs kids as well — or not? I’m just curious how that works with Take a Hike.

G. Matchett: Generally, the students that we see in Take a Hike have been identified by their school district as having severe mental health or behavioural concerns, past trauma, substance use concerns, or they are at risk of becoming involved in activity that will prevent them from graduating from high school.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it, okay. Thank you very much.

You said you’d talked to Minister Fleming about expanding the program. What is the ministry saying at this point?

G. Matchett: Minister Fleming was able to give us $150,000 last year. They were able to help us with expanding into Surrey. We now have enough money to last for one year in Surrey, but beyond that, we don’t have guaranteed funding. We’re looking to the community right now to raise that money, but we’re also looking to the government to play a part of the role.

We don’t want the government to fund all of the program. The school districts will fund about half of the program; Take a Hike, through private donations, will fund about a quarter of the program; and we’re asking the government to fund a quarter of the program.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Mitzi.

M. Dean: That was my question. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry. I’ll stop pre-empting questions.

T. Redies: Not a question but just an observation. I really appreciate the work that you do. I’m really glad that you’re here in Surrey now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation and all the work you do with the kids. Very impressive graduation statistics. Excellent work.

A five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 9:54 a.m. to 10:02 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, we’re back with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. If I could call Parent Advocacy Network for Public Education — Galen Hutcheson and Maggie Milne Martens. Hello. Good morning. If we can try and keep the comments to about five minutes, we have time for questions. That’d be great.

PARENT ADVOCACY NETWORK
FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

M. Martens: Hi. The Parent Advocacy Network is a grassroots collective of parents from diverse schools across greater Vancouver and Victoria. We work together to advocate for and defend the rights of all children to a high-quality public education.

With respect to operational funding, B.C. public education continues to be underfunded. While we applaud the work of the funding formula review committee, no formula, no matter how attentive to diverse needs of students, can address the current deficiencies in the system if funding is not increased to match the real costs of addressing those needs.

The forecast budget for 2019 does not even keep pace with inflation. Therefore, it is insufficient to maintain current programming, let alone address the cumulative depletion of resources and programming.

We recommend that the government raise per-pupil operational funding to ensure there are no downloaded costs resulting in further cuts to educational services. In addition, we would like to see increased supplemental funding in the following areas.

Special needs. Special needs students continue to be underserved. We know that funding does not match needs or costs. Only half the number of children designated with special needs that require support receive additional funding.

[10:05 a.m.]

This does not include the children that are still on wait-lists for assessment, nor vulnerable students that also have complex learning needs and require supports. We recommend an increase in the supplemental funding to meet the needs of all special needs, complex learners and vulnerable students.

Secondly, implementation of the B.C. curriculum. We have a world-leading curriculum. Successful implementation requires increased financial investment for professional development for teachers and also to acquire, update and restore necessary technology, equipment and material resources. Schools operate from a scarcity of resources. The reliance on parent fundraising to buy anything from classroom supplies to art supplies to technology, even to furniture in schools, creates unacceptable inequities.

We recommend that government provide additional supplemental funding to support teacher development for the implementation of the new curriculum and also the acquisition of educational resources. We also recommend that the government develop and commit to funding a minimum standard for access to resources that are expensive, such as technology, to address cumulated inequities.

Third, education and the arts. Education and the arts have been decimated across the province from years of underfunding. If we acknowledge that we live in a world with multimedia communication and that creativity, critical thinking and cultural understanding are key for student success, then the arts are crucial.

We recommend that the government provide additional targeted and protected funding to school districts to support equitable access to quality K-to-12 arts education.

With respect to capital funding, we recommend an increase, an acceleration, of capital funding to address the needs of 140 schools still awaiting seismic upgrade, the construction of new schools in areas with rapid population growth and the upgrade and repair of aging infrastructure across the province.

In addition, with government allocating billions of taxpayer dollars over the next ten years in new school infrastructure, it is imperative that we invest in schools that are not only safe but also effective.

Current B.C. area standards that define the spatial limits for new schools is inadequate. It does not provide sufficient space to support 21st-century learning, as in the new curriculum. It eliminates essential non-enrolling educational space from elementary schools. It does not reflect increased space needs due to the restored language on class size and composition, and it severely limits circulation space, which is key to psychological well-being for both students and teachers. B.C. has the lowest space allowance for new schools across Canada.

We recommend that the government conduct an area standards review to align space allocations with the new curriculum and for student success and, secondly, that they institute an immediate increase of at least 10 percent to current B.C. area standards to allow schools that are in current project definition or design phases to include these vital extra spaces for students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Firstly, I would like to thank you very much for your presentation, and also, showing my bias, I wanted to thank you for bringing up the arts in schools. I spent many years fighting for that very thing. I appreciate you recognizing that. And also how important it is when we’re looking at STEM or STEAMD education and the importance of creativity. So I wanted to thank you for that.

Questions from the committee?

Well, it was a very thorough and to-the-point presentation. Thank you very much for your thoughts on education and your commitment to our children.

Next up we have Simon Fraser University — Joanne Curry and former minister and MLA Andrew Petter, my old constitutional law professor from UVic.

A. Petter: How can I overcome those two things?

[10:10 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know. You set me loose on the world, Andrew. It’s all your fault.

Go ahead, please.

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

A. Petter: Well, thank you very much for providing us this opportunity. I’m really pleased to be here among people who understand the importance of post-secondary education to B.C.’s prosperity and future, especially at a time when B.C. is suffering from a serious educational deficit.

It’s a deficit that is denying young people the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their potential. It’s denying employers the talent they need to grow, and it’s denying the province the human capital it needs to thrive in a competitive global economy.

In fact, it’s an educational deficit that’s also costing government in monetary terms. The Conference Board of Canada, in a recent study, held that B.C.’s economy was suffering $7.9 billion in lost GDP, and governments were losing $1.8 billion in tax revenues due to a lack of investment in post-secondary education and the income and opportunity that would create.

With this in mind, I would urge you to react positively and urgently to the submissions you heard recently from the Research Universities Council of B.C., of which SFU is a member. But in my presentation, I want to focus on some pressing issues and transformative opportunities that relate to our own institution.

B.C.’s labour market outlook, which recently came out renewed, estimates that this province needs more than 900,000 new workers over the next decade and that 77 percent of those workers require some form of post-secondary education. The greatest areas of demand include health care and technical services. Where are we going to get the skilled workers to address this demand?

Well, I’m happy to say that a large part of the answer is right here in Surrey and in other communities south of the Fraser. These communities have the youngest and fastest-growing populations in Canada. They also have fewer post-secondary spaces and lower levels of educational attainment per capita than other regions.

Recognizing this, back in 2006, the province signed an MOU with Simon Fraser University committing at that time to double the size of our Surrey campus from 2,500 student spaces to 5,000 domestic student spaces by 2015. Unfortunately, 2015 came and went, and there was no such expansion.

In the meantime, SFU has developed a three-phase expansion plan to prepare students for careers in high-demand areas. In that time, the GPAs of high school graduates in this area required to get into SFU have risen to close to 90 percent overall and over 90 percent in high-demand areas.

Last year, I’m happy to say, some progress finally was made, when the province announced funding for the first phase of our expansion plan — a cutting-edge program that’s going to advance B.C.’s leadership in clean tech and sustainable energy. Some of you may have had a chance to see the new building that’s going up at City Centre to accommodate that program.

It’s an important step, creating 440 of the promised 2,500 new seats, but it’s only a first step. SFU remains ready to follow through on the next two phases. First, leveraging the strength of our faculty of health sciences, we’re prepared to offer programs that equip students to enhance the quality, efficiency and sustainability of B.C.’s health care system and to meet the very growing demands and needs here in the Fraser Health region.

Second, we’re set to deliver new programs in creative technologies to prepare students to answer the growing needs for technological advancements in all sectors of the economy.

At the same time, our plans include a proposal to increase seats, generally, at the entry level, so over 1,000 students will gain entry not only to those programs but to other programs offered across the university, including exposure to work experience and entrepreneurship training, which is a characteristic of our overall educational program.

Our request to this committee, therefore, is to recommend that the province recommit to the 2006 goal: to grow the Surrey campus to 5,000 student seats as soon as is possible, and in particular, of course, we would see that as an opportunity to move forward in the programs I’ve identified.

If Surrey expansion represents our best opportunity, aging infrastructure and our 53-year-old Burnaby campus represents our most pressing need. While we value the province’s support for routine maintenance, regrettably, some buildings are beyond repair. Our most urgent need on the Burnaby campus — and, indeed, overall for new capital — is a life sciences building to replace our crumbling biology facility.

We’re also looking forward to participating in the province’s student housing initiative and have sought support for a Burnaby residence to accommodate 360 undergraduate students.

[10:15 a.m.]

Finally, our three-campus university faces serious transportation challenges, especially getting students, faculty and staff up and down Burnaby Mountain. Recognizing this, TransLink recently updated its feasibility study for an urban gondola system — I call it sky bus — to liberate the 25,000 commuters who are currently trapped in one of the worst-performing bus routes in the region.

Seventy-five percent of the commuters to Burnaby come from outside of Burnaby, many from Surrey. In fact, Surrey is the number one feeder to our overall programs.

TransLink calculates the gondola’s benefit-cost ratio to be 1.8. That’s an extraordinarily positive ratio for a public transit project. It will provide alternative access to and from the mountain in the event of emergencies, which is a serious issue because we have one point where there’s only one point of road access should there be a disruption due to weather or due to accidents, such as at the Kinder Morgan tank farm.

It would also provide residents of the growing university community with transportation alternatives. It would support the mayor’s plan by providing 26 articulated buses to be repurposed for use elsewhere in the region, and it would reduce carbon emissions significantly.

With federal green infrastructure funding now available, this would be the most cost-effective and innovative transit investment in the country. We’re therefore requesting the province to commit to this program and this project in 2019.

In conclusion, we at SFU are very proud of what we’ve accomplished as Canada’s engaged university. In fact, just today Maclean’s magazine confirmed our rating as Canada’s leading comprehensive university, nationally. But even more, we look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead and what we can accomplish together in the years ahead in the areas that I’ve mentioned and other areas.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Just a couple of clarifications. The gondola — is that a TransLink issue? I’m just wondering if there are multi-jurisdictions on that.

A. Petter: Well, there are multi-jurisdictions because of the opportunity of federal infrastructure funding for green infrastructure and the province, as I understand it. We’ve met with senior officials, and the province is also expected to match that funding. So there is an opportunity to bring in green infrastructure funding from the federal government and to bring in infrastructure funding from the province. It is, by transportation standards, a relatively modest project compared to, say, the Broadway corridor or even LRT.

J. Curry: I’ll just add to that. It is TransLink, and it will be integrated with the system. It is a TransLink-led initiative.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Pardon my ignorance on this, but as for the Mayors Council, is this something that’s supported by the Mayors Council?

A. Petter: It was supported insofar as it was put in the mayors plan as a high priority as a planning project. It was given priority over the other project, which was a planning project which was the further extension of the Broadway corridor out to UBC. That has led to the feasibility study, which was just released, which indicates that this is not only feasible but the cost-benefit ratio is amongst the highest of any transportation initiatives. It hasn’t been included for funding at this stage, but the hope is that with additional funding envelopes available, it might be included for that purpose.

T. Redies: Thanks for your presentation, Andrew. Have you got a sense of how much money SFU needs in order to actually meet the original buildout?

A. Petter: Yeah. Now, buildouts take time, so it’s over a number of years. We probably wouldn’t reach the full buildout until something like 2022 at the earliest. At that point, in terms of capital, we’re probably talking about three to four capital facilities that would total about $200 million. In terms of operating, once we’ve reached steady state in the final year, it would be an increment of about $32 million in operating funding.

As I say, just as with the current program, you admit students into the first year, and they go through the snake, and the snake builds up. Those amounts would not be fully required until four or five years out.

S. Furstenau: Thanks, Andrew. We’ve heard a lot from all over the province about the need for more — more classrooms, more post-secondary opportunities — but we’ve also heard a lot from students saying that the challenge they have is with affordability. From your perspective, how do we square that particular circle? Yes, if we invest in the infrastructure and the classroom spaces but more and more students can’t access it because of affordability, how are we solving the problem that you identify, which is the need for 90,000 more…?

A. Petter: Well, there are initiatives. First of all, I agree that affordability is an issue.

[10:20 a.m.]

Certainly, there is support both within the university but also from the province and commitments that the province has made to further address that at both the graduate level, with fellowships, and at the undergraduate level, with loan forgiveness, for example, or interest forgiveness.

What I would say is our GPAs wouldn’t have risen to almost 90 percent overall, and in excess of 90 percent, if there wasn’t demand by students who could afford to come and participate in these programs. What I’d also say is that because we are so deeply committed to work-integrated learning and co-op experiences, a lot of our students earn money while they are being educated.

We work very hard to ensure that affordability is not a barrier for any individual student, not only with bursary and scholarship funds at our disposal and provincial and federal support in terms of loans but also using work-integrated learning opportunities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

J. Curry: I would add that one of the biggest cost drivers is accommodation. With three SFU campuses within 50 percent of B.C.’s population, a lot of our students live at home. That really is a big boost.

A. Petter: And the new residence won’t hurt, either.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. Another thing we’ve been hearing around the province, last year and this year, is that the business model of universities is increasingly reliant upon international students and the fees that they bring in. Can you just explain to us a little bit about your business model moving forward, your ratio of international students and the increasing operating costs?

A. Petter: Well, B.C. is one of only two provinces in the country that actually reduced its post-secondary education funding over the last decade. But B.C., I think, is in an advantaged position on international students, because we’re seen as a very desirable location on the Pacific Rim, and we do have a very strong post-secondary system, not only amongst research universities.

How have universities made up the difference in cut funding? We had a $50 million cut systemwide a few years ago. We’ve made it up by admitting more international students or increasing the tuition paid by those students.

In our case, when I became president, I think the international student population was probably close to half of what it is now. We’ve capped it at around 20 percent, because we feel 20 percent is sustainable, and we’ve increased the tuition every year, to some extent, because it has been the only way that we can bring in sufficient revenue to meet the program needs of domestic students and of the university and provide a quality education.

Having said that, I would say the international students are really paying not only the tuition equivalent of domestic students, but the additional cost they’re paying is covering the fact that we do not get a grant from the province for those students. The infrastructure that we build comes at a cost in relation to those students. So while they’re paying a higher tuition, I think they’re getting good value for money — certainly, great value for money compared to our U.S. counterparts.

B. D’Eith (Chair): To follow up on that, do you feel that that reliance does make our universities and colleges more vulnerable? I mean, look what happened with Saudi pulling all their students out, for example — those types of things.

A. Petter: Yeah, I think it has made us more vulnerable for sure. It has made us more vulnerable for two reasons, I guess I’d say.

One is: should China, in particular, change its policy, you’ll find that particularly in B.C. but also nationwide, universities will be in budgetary difficulty. We’re trying very hard to diversify our international student population, but it’s easier said than done.

I think it has also made us more vulnerable in another way, and that is we have not expanded opportunities for domestic students. We know there’s a huge talent shortage. I’ve spoken about it. We know in some regions of the province — and the south of Fraser is different than the rest of the province — there are young people who are not getting access to education they’re well qualified for and who could fill those positions.

I think the focus on international students and the ability of international students to help budgetarily may have masked, to some extent, the need we have to also attend to admitting more and supporting more domestic students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we are over time, but thank you so much for coming and for everything you do for post-secondary.

A. Petter: Thank you very much. I know the kind of work you do. Thank you for doing it. It’s very important.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You got us on the last day too.

A. Petter: You’re in a good mood for the last day.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh yes, we are.

Next we have — oh, this is awesome; the nerd in me gets to celebrate — TRIUMF Innovations — Kathryn Hayashi.

If you can try to keep it to five minutes, that would be wonderful.

TRIUMF INNOVATIONS

K. Hayashi: I will do my best.

Good morning, everyone. My name’s Kathryn Hayashi. I’m the CEO at TRIUMF Innovations, the commercialization arm for TRIUMF. Thank you for inviting me here to participate in the 2019 consultation process. I’m here today to talk about the importance of shared infrastructure and talent development in creating a strong digital technology ecosystem in British Columbia.

[10:25 a.m.]

First I’d like to start by providing a brief background on TRIUMF, though some people apparently already know about it. We’re located on the south campus of the University of British Columbia. We are Canada’s national particle accelerator centre. TRIUMF Innovations is a commercialization arm for TRIUMF.

With core capabilities in particle, nuclear and accelerator physics, our multidisciplinary laboratory supports a range of applications in quantum materials, nuclear medicine and data science. TRIUMF also serves as Canada’s portal to the global network of big-science laboratories like CERN.

Although national in reach, TRIUMF is deeply rooted in British Columbia. The lab was founded in 1968 by UBC, UVic and SFU. Now in our 50th year, we are owned and operated by a consortium of 20 universities, spanning from Victoria to Halifax, and we employ over 500 science, engineering, technical and administrative personnel on our site. Last year we attracted nearly 900 scientific collaborators and visitors from all over the globe to B.C.

I’m proud to say that TRIUMF is an engine for innovation and training. Leveraging world-class infrastructure and expertise, we push the boundaries of technology to benefit all British Columbians.

From training more than 200 highly qualified personnel per year, to supporting research breakthroughs that lead to new products and services, TRIUMF demonstrates the full spectrum of innovation, from discovery all the way through commercialization.

TRIUMF has a well-established track record of commercialization and innovation excellence in British Columbia. We have had a successful 40-year partnership with BWXT, formerly known as Nordion, which has produced over 50 million patient doses of isotopes for patients in B.C. and around the world.

TRIUMF has also nurtured five successful spinoff companies since 2010. These B.C.-based businesses are translating technology developed for fundamental research into areas as diverse as oil and gas, mining and health.

As many of our initiatives require working with highly advanced data science problems in collaboration with our global collaborators, we see the importance of a digital technology ecosystem that has strengths not just in R and D and commercialization but also in innovative training programs and technology platforms. These further dimensions are essential in connecting the best and brightest researchers and trainees to cutting-edge technology platforms that will aid in the acceleration and advancement of innovation.

We already know that the types of problems we study and the types of researchers we work with at TRIUMF are well suited to successfully apply quantum computing tools to address real-world problems.

This summer TRIUMF hosted a quantum computing workshop that leveraged B.C.’s emerging cluster of quantum computing and data science expertise, in partnership with Burnaby’s D-Wave Systems, the world’s first commercially available quantum computer; Vancouver’s 1QBit, the world’s first quantum software company; and Germany’s Helmholtz Association centres, DESY and Jülich.

Working together, we brought researchers from TRIUMF’s national-global network to Vancouver and worked with industry partners to explore how to work together to create global quantum computing and machine-learning platforms and networks. It was a great success, and now follow-up committees, workshops and initiatives are underway, fostering more collaborations between academic and industry partners.

The workshop underlined the importance of creating a quantum computing platform that would provide quantum computing resources and application expertise to high-priority projects and accelerate the development of new technologies using quantum computing tools. We urge the province of B.C. to support these efforts in Budget 2019.

We are also seeking support to bring the Silicon Valley–based Insight Data Science Fellows training program to Canada, hosted by TRIUMF. This would provide a proven, successful seven-week intensive program focused on transforming and transitioning highly skilled, advanced academic scientists into job-ready candidates in the high-demand field of data science in a free program that is complementary to those programs offered at our universities.

TRIUMF’s national network of university partners and global network of big-science collaborators make us an ideal partner for applied data science training and platform initiatives. We are working to ensure that B.C. has a robust digital technology ecosystem that includes opportunities to partner with world-class training organizations, as well as global collaborations to advance applied technology development.

TRIUMF has worked for 50 years to develop a global reputation for scientific excellence, collaboration and successful application of technologies to solve problems from medical isotope shortages to the search for the Higgs boson particle.

[10:30 a.m.]

Our doors are open, and we stand ready to work with our partners to grow a strong Digital Technology Supercluster.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. I invite you all to tour TRIUMF.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much. Wow, very exciting stuff. I did have a question for you. You are asking for funding. I’m just wondering if you could give us an idea of quantum. What are you looking for in terms of…?

K. Hayashi: There is a quantum competing platform proposal that’s being led by D-Wave.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I meant the amount. I’m sorry. I should have been more…. I know you did say quantum computers, but I just was wondering about….

K. Hayashi: Oh, the amount. We don’t have a specific amount in the ask for TRIUMF. We just want to show our support for the proposal that’s being put forward by D-Wave and the other partners.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, okay. Could you just elaborate a little bit more on the quantum computer side? I know that there’s sort of a race on to see who can make it work. Is there a possibility that B.C. could be in the running for that, or is this part of a global team? Maybe you could just enlighten me a bit.

K. Hayashi: I think there are multiple competing quantum computing technologies out there. One of the really most interesting parts of the workshop was that we actually had a presentation about how the different technology platforms compare — what are the pros and cons of the different technologies? — and how some of them might be useful for some research problems and others might be useful for other types of research problems, which I think was a great start to really understanding those tools and applying them to research problems.

I do believe that D-WAVE, who was our local quantum computing company…. I think, because they’ve been around for so long and have been local for so long, we almost underappreciate how much progress they’ve made in this area. With companies like D-Wave and 1QBit here in Vancouver and in Burnaby, we do have an advantage. I think there is a window where we can capitalize on that advantage and really try to make B.C. a leader in the quantum computing area. I think we do have an opportunity to do so.

Some of the other players are very big players, but it is true that D-Wave has the world’s first commercially available quantum computer. They have installs with many who we consider our sister labs in the U.S., the national labs related to the Department of Energy, NASA. These are sort of our research peers. We’re seeing their scientists and researchers having access to these technologies, and the Canadian researchers don’t.

We would really like to be able to bring that platform to Canadian researchers along with the funding to help them rethink their research problems into quantum computing problems. Just because you’re a brilliant researcher in medicine or in quantum materials or in financial applications doesn’t mean that you’re a quantum computing expert.

What we are trying to do is create a platform that would provide the expertise and resources to identify which of the technology ideas are the most interesting and the most promising and then devote resources to accelerate providing a quantum solution for those problems.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Brilliant.

T. Redies: Lots of questions but probably not for today. I am curious about the data fellows training program. Do you see that as a one-time thing, or is it something that would be incorporated into a program up here to be able to support ongoing students?

K. Hayashi: Yes. It is a program that has been running since 2012. It was actually started by a University of Toronto PhD physicist named Jake Klamka. He had to leave Canada to find a job in the Silicon Valley but really has wanted to bring more opportunities to Canada. Just like Helmholtz, they came to TRIUMF and were very attracted by the fact that we are connected to this national network of universities, connected to a national network of people that have PhDs in physics and other advanced degrees. These are the people that they are targeting for this program.

It would be an ongoing program. What we would like to do is seek funding to have it headquartered in B.C. They are open to having it headquartered in B.C. They’re open to having TRIUMF as their Canadian partner. We’re headquartered in B.C., and we’re not going anywhere.

[10:35 a.m.]

I think the important part of why we’re seeking support is…. There is so much activity that the gravitational pull will otherwise pull it to Ontario or Quebec. I think that when we have our Digital Technology Supercluster, we have this opportunity on the quantum side. I think adding in this talent development piece is really important, and we think it’s a relatively low-cost program.

It’s scalable. They actually have started their first cohort in Toronto, with 25 fellows that they are hoping will secure positions. They have an annual or semi-annual cohort in multiple locations in North America. We hope to bring that to Vancouver and to Canada.

T. Redies: How much funding do you need?

K. Hayashi: We had requested $1 million over five years. But again, it is a scalable request. That included things like not only resources to set up the location but also to attract more people from other parts of the world and other parts of Canada to B.C. Again, these things are sort of scalable.

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

Next up we have the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives — Iglika Ivanova.

CANADIAN CENTRE FOR
POLICY ALTERNATIVES

I. Ivanova: My name is Iglika Ivanova, and I am a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives here in Vancouver. I’m here to share some of CCPA’s recommendations for B.C. Budget 2019. I do appreciate this opportunity, so thanks for hosting these public consultations. I think they’re a great opportunity for people to share their recommendations.

As you probably know, our organization has a long track record of research and policy development on social and economic policy issues in the province. This is what I’m drawing on today in these recommendations. As time is very short today, we’ll also be making a written submission that’s more detailed, which you will receive before the deadline.

To begin with, I want to say that we were very pleased to see that Budget 2018 introduced ambitious measures to tackle the housing crisis and set the foundation of a new, universal, affordable, quality child care system in B.C. We were very supportive of the new taxation measures that were introduced, which go a significant way towards restoring tax fairness in our province. We believe that Budget 2019 should build on this strong start for the new government and introduce its own set of ambitious new investments in two key areas: poverty reduction and climate action.

We commend the B.C. government for formally committing to legislated poverty reduction targets very recently. However, we do believe that the targets themselves — to reduce overall poverty by 25 percent and child poverty by 50 percent in five years — should have been more ambitious. Having been laggard on this file for years, B.C. now has a chance to lead and to deliver a plan that is effective and ambitious and that will stand the test of time.

We believe B.C. has the capacity, both economically and fiscally, to not just meet but to exceed the legislated targets for poverty reduction. To do so, Budget 2019 must introduce significant new measures in all seven core pillars of a comprehensive poverty reduction plan as outlined by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition.

For those who haven’t read their plan, the seven core pillars that require action together are: adequate income support for the unemployed; higher earnings and better working conditions for low-wage workers and the working poor; addressing the needs of groups and communities that are more likely to be living in poverty; ending homelessness and the affordable housing crisis; investing in high-quality, affordable child care; making training and education more accessible to low-income British Columbians; and addressing the gaps in health services for vulnerable populations, which include gaps in mental health and addiction services, seniors care and primary care.

Among our top priorities for this year is increasing social assistance rates so that they reach 75 percent of the poverty line within two years. This will essentially end deep poverty in B.C. We have calculated that achieving this goal would cost $365 million a year, or less than 1 percent of the provincial budget. While reducing the depth of poverty was not one of the legislated targets embedded in the new act, deep poverty can and should be eliminated in our wealthy province.

[10:40 a.m.]

Our other top priority area in poverty reduction is housing, where we recommend a large investment in low-income housing stock and bold action to control rental costs. While the government has introduced some important measures to cool the housing market and some investment in new low-income housing, more is urgently needed. In fact, skyrocketing rent costs arguably represent the greatest threat not only to the poverty reduction plan but to the overall government agenda.

There is the very serious risk that all the affordability improvements and gains made by minimum wage increases, welfare rate increases, child care fee reductions and more good programs…. All these gains will be wiped out by higher rents, and people won’t actually feel like they’re any better off.

We have specific recommendations for what you can do to tighten rent control and build more housing. You can read them in our full submission on Monday. We also strongly encourage the government to consider the Manitoba rent assist program, which is a model for structuring rental subsidies that applies both to people receiving social assistance and people who are not receiving social assistance — i.e., the working poor. It makes it easier to move between social assistance and work without losing some of your benefits.

Equally important, we believe, is climate action. In the wake of the latest alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, B.C. Budget 2019 must get serious about climate leadership. The decision to support LNG Canada’s investment on the north coast is troubling to us, and it will make it harder for B.C. to meet its new emission reduction targets. Indeed, UBC climate scientist Simon Donner had said that reconciling the two is pretty much impossible.

Instead of pursuing LNG expansion further, what we recommend is facilitating new public investment that drives a complementary action in climate change mitigation and adaptation in the private sector. We are looking at expanding the B.C. carbon tax and reasserting B.C.’s leadership on carbon pricing with new annual increases of $10 a tonne starting in 2019 instead of the previously announced $5 a tonne.

While we all have talked a lot about the potential of the carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, less attention has been given to the carbon tax’s revenue potential. We do see the revenues from the carbon tax as a very important source of investment to support an alternative plan in a green and capital infrastructure buildout for B.C. This would include things like energy retrofits for commercial and residential buildings, large new investments in public transit, measures to shift the province to 100 percent renewable energy and to become a zero-waste province by better processing and recycling of materials, and sustainable forestry management initiatives.

In general, our assessment of the fiscal and economic situation of B.C. is that B.C. is in a great position to make strategic public investments this year to rebalance our economy from its unhealthy reliance on real estate and fossil fuels to a more socially and environmentally sustainable economy in which the benefits of growth are broadly shared with all British Columbians across the province. You can read more details in our submission, or you can ask me questions in the next few minutes.

Thank you very much.

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

We’re at about seven minutes. If there are any questions….

Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

I. Ivanova: Thank you. Good luck in your deliberations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next we have the BC SPCA — Craig Daniell.

Hey, Craig. How are you? Nice to see you.

BC SPCA

C. Daniell: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present again. I think this is five or six years. So thanks very much again. I believe you do have a presentation. I’m basically going to just, really, talk through that presentation this morning.

[10:45 a.m.]

What I’d like to start out with, first of all, is just an overview of our mission statement as an organization. From that, you can see that we’re really one of the very few organizations in the province and, in fact, all of Canada that actually has a role with respect to companion animals, wildlife as well as farm animals. Our mission is to protect and enhance the quality of life for domestic, farm and wild animals in British Columbia.

We are actually one of the oldest charities in British Columbia. In two years’ time, we’ll be celebrating our 125th anniversary. Of course, we are, as an organization, somewhat unique in that unlike other charities, we’re actually established by an act of the Legislature. We have 44 locations across the province of British Columbia, ranging from veterinary hospitals to wildlife rehabilitation centres to the traditional animal shelters, which I think many of you have visited. We also have large-animal barns at a number of locations across the province. We provide direct care for almost 50,000 animals every single year.

Sorry. I should’ve mentioned that my colleague Marcie Moriarty is with me this morning. My apologies for that.

One of the things we’re seeing that I thought I’d just quickly mention as well…. Some emerging animal issues that we’re seeing, not uncommon of course, is our whole disaster response issue, which is an increasing issue and an area that our organization is working in, whether it’s through providing animal evacuation centres, as we’ve done in the last two years in Prince George, or, also, through our special constables actually behind the lines, support for animals that have been left behind.

In the area of our actual cruelty investigations, again, a couple of issues that we’re seeing. We’re increasingly seeing some very high-intake animal seizures. You’ve just seen, probably, recently where we had over 100 animals come into our care. We’re dealing with a lot more animal hoarding cases, and of course, that’s a multidisciplinary issue for us. Then as an organization, we’re also trying to make sure that we can provide additional services such as compassionate board for individuals fleeing interpersonal violence.

We have an operating budget of about $36 million that is funded entirely by our very generous donors. Just quickly, most of our service, obviously, is devoted towards the sheltering of animals. Cruelty investigations take up about $3.4 million of our budget. Hospitals and clinics are about $4.7 million. And if you layer on that, the approximately $3 million we spend annually on external veterinary care, you’ll see we’re spending about $8 million a year on veterinary services right across the province.

Over the last few years, I’ve presented to the committee on our facilities development and services plan. That is our capital project to replace facilities in 12 communities across British Columbia. We’re very pleased with the progress that we’ve made, thanks to the support of the government of British Columbia. We’ve actually made tremendous progress in Nanaimo, Surrey, Kelowna, Castlegar, Kamloops and Dawson Creek.

I’ve included a photograph of a facility we’ve just opened in Castlegar, our West Kootenay Community Animal Centre, adjacent to the Castlegar Airport, which really would not exist without the support that we received from the provincial government, which allowed us, in turn, to leverage support from local government and, in turn, from the Columbia Basin Trust.

You’ll see that our phase 1 projects were built, and almost all of them are complete. In fact, the last one will be completed in that phase 1 project in March of 2019. They’ll be built at a total cost of $19.1 million. We received $5 million of provincial government funding, so we were able to take that $5 million and really leverage it right across the province.

We are moving forward with our phase 2 projects. These are projects in Vancouver, Prince George, the Shuswap, Campbell River and an additional large-animal recovery barn in Nanaimo, where we built a community animal centre a few years ago. That particular phase, our phase 2, is a much more ambitious project. In particular, it’s because we plan to redevelop our Vancouver facility, which I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about. We’ve included a rendering of that new facility.

[10:50 a.m.]

One of the unique things we’re doing there due to the location of that particular facility…. It’s immediately adjacent to SkyTrain. We’re proposing, and have had discussions with the city of Vancouver around it, including a 200-unit student housing complex on that particular facility, which we think dovetails beautifully with the government’s priorities in this particular area. So we’re looking at constructing about a 50,000-square-foot facility of our own to replace our community animal centre. That will, in turn, give us opportunities to increase our support for individuals fleeing interpersonal violence.

We plan to replace our veterinary hospital. We do own and operate a full-service veterinary hospital in Vancouver. Its primary work is to deal with low-income, no-income clients. But unfortunately, it’s a 60-year-old hospital, so we need to replace that.

We also believe very passionately in education, so we’ll have an opportunity to expand our education footprint going forward. Then, because we’re a provincial organization, we also want to make sure that we can provide our provincial support out of our new provincial office.

Just in a nutshell, then, our funding request to the province of British Columbia is a $10 million request. A $10 million contribution, coupled with the $5 million that we received previously, would provide about one-third of the funding that would be needed for us to complete phase 2.

I want to thank you again for the opportunity to present to you, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just want a clarification before we move to general questions. I remember that last year, we were talking to you. Is this the property that’s right beside VCC? Is that the one?

C. Daniell: That’s correct, yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): There was some talk, I remember, last year about seniors housing, wasn’t there? The idea was that one of the problems that a lot of seniors have is they have animals and they can’t find housing because they don’t let people in with animals, and they end up on the streets with their animals in their car. Maybe I’m forgetting.

C. Daniell: That’s right. No, you’re absolutely correct. One of the options we were looking at was either the student housing option or the seniors housing option.

B. D’Eith (Chair): But now that the government has opened up the student housing possibility, that seems to be more realistic.

C. Daniell: Yeah, and we just feel that given the location of where we are, with Emily Carr and VCC, the student housing option probably makes more sense. Obviously, I can’t speak for the city of Vancouver, but it might be an option that they would favour above a seniors housing issue.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I did remember right. I just wanted to clarify that. Then, would those students be able to have animals in their units?

C. Daniell: Absolutely. That would be our plan. It would be pet-friendly student housing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I thought so. I know that was probably a silly question.

M. Dean: Thank you so much for the presentation and for all the work across the province of your staff, and all the volunteers, I know, as well.

My constituency office is underneath the help line, so we visited there. Wild ARC is two minutes away from where I live, so I often see them out clipping their hedgerows on our lane.

I’m interested in your ask and what your contingency plan is. What will you do if the province isn’t able to respond to your request or if, you know, the province says: “Well, we’re able to provide $2 million, not $10 million”?

C. Daniell: Basically, it really means that we slow down our capital projects. The reality for us is that whilst we hopefully will find other avenues of revenue, the truth of the matter is we’ll have to slow down the number of facilities that we build at any one time. So during 2018, for instance, we had three facilities under construction at the same time. If we weren’t to receive funding, or a reduced funding level, it probably just means we have to extend the horizon out in terms of replacing all of those facilities.

M. Dean: Do you have the other two-thirds of the funding?

C. Daniell: In some cases, we have commitments. Like in Vancouver, we have some verbal commitments from major donors to support the particular program. What we’ve done as an organization is we’ve made a commitment, though, that if necessary, we’ll seek mortgage financing and use reserves that we do have to make sure that the remaining two-thirds of the capital requirements are, in fact, taken into account.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Maybe you can clarify for me. The phase 2 provincial funding…. You’ve set out the received funding. That’s $5 million. So what you’re saying is you need an additional $10 million because the Vancouver projected cost is $33 million. Is that sort of an allocation between the two projects? Is that the idea?

[10:55 a.m.]

C. Daniell: Yes. We received funding previously to address both Vancouver and Prince George, or partially address those particular areas. Originally we hadn’t included Campbell River and the Shuswap in our phase 2, but we’ve actually had to accelerate those two projects because the state of the facilities and the demand on the services in those communities has pushed us to wanting to accelerate those two projects as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, so when it says zero there, this is what you’ve been committed so far. But you’re actually…. The $45 million includes the $5 million that’s already been in, plus another $10 million that you’re asking for.

C. Daniell: That’s correct. Then we will allocate the remaining $10 million amongst those projects.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. I just wanted to get that in my head.

Okay. Thank you very much. I think that’s it. Thanks for your presentation.

Ending Violence Association of B.C. — Tracy Porteous, please.

Hi, Tracy.

ENDING VIOLENCE ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

T. Porteous: Good morning. It’s nice to see some familiar, friendly faces. Thank you so much for entertaining what I have to share with you today.

Just in case you don’t know, the Ending Violence Association of B.C. is a provincial umbrella that works on behalf of about 300 programs that respond to sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and criminal and sexual harassment. We’re the provincial body that provides the people on the front line with support and training. We also do a significant amount of work to help government understand what women and children in particular, but also other people, need who have been hurt by this kind of violence.

Our programs, specifically, are community-based victim assistance programs — Stopping the Violence counselling programs; Stopping the Violence outreach and multicultural outreach programs; sexual assault, women’s assault centres; inter-agency case assessment teams; and our Be More than a Bystander program, which does significant prevention work across the province.

These are the programs that take care of your daughters and your moms and your sisters and your aunts and your friends and family that have been hurt by sexual assaults and domestic violence. Like we just saw unfold south of the border, we know how difficult it is for survivors to come forward to disclose and seek help if they’ve been sexually assaulted or abused in their relationship, or those that were abused as children, either raped as teenage girls or sexually abused as smaller children.

I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I know that the reason why women and other survivors come forward is usually because they’re concerned about someone else’s safety. They’re not seeking retribution. They’re not seeking revenge. They’re seeking to make the world a safer and a better place, as I think we saw from Dr. Ford in the United States.

I can say that in British Columbia, we are seeing and have been seeing for years an unprecedented number of increases in women coming forward. There’s a massive awareness that started before Me Too, but since Me Too, it’s gone quite crazy.

As many of you know, the trauma from being abused in this way can last a lifetime, and it also causes further problems for those that don’t get help or don’t have any place to go to disclose and seek psychological counselling or support. That turns into offenders raping and abusing others throughout their lives. I’ve read reports of sex offenders having 400 to 1,000 victims in their lives. For people that have been hurt — serious psychological and mental health issues like depression and suicide attempts and use of alcohol and drugs, so therefore increased costs…. It’s connected to the opioid crisis, and it’s connected to the costs of health care and addiction services.

That’s why we set up the programs that we have, the 300 programs under our umbrella. It’s so we can try to provide early intervention, not just to save costs down the road, but, very much so, that early intervention saves these costs.

Over the past 17 years in our province, our program’s ability to respond to the ever-increasing demand has been handcuffed. In 2001, many of these programs were partially cut or fully cut, and they haven’t recovered, not even in the last couple of years.

[11:00 a.m.]

I think it’s also troubling — the fact that in 2001, all the sexual assault centres in our province lost their funding. We haven’t seen that come back yet, and this is one of the desperate needs. I have about three or four things I want to focus on today.

Equally troubling is the fact that domestic violence deaths in our province are increasing, and that can’t be said for the rest of Canada. Violent crime is decreasing across the country. The violent crime index and police reports help us understand that violent crime is decreasing but sexual and domestic violence is increasing.

We are watching very carefully in terms of the focus on child care, the focus on the opioid crisis, the focus on housing. I want to just say — and I’ve said to this committee year after year after year — our programs are not transition houses. They’re not shelters. They’re an incredibly important part of the continuum. But the services that our programs provide are safety planning, risk assessment, helping women navigate really complex systems — like family law and criminal law — and trying to find housing and those kinds of things.

All of the programs need to be funded, but there seems to have been a…. I don’t know. For some reason, I don’t understand — and I would love your advice at any point — how it is that year after year after year our programs are left behind. Therefore, sexual assault survivors are left behind. Kids who have been sexually abused are left behind.

The focus that I want to suggest today is that we need to focus on sexual assault. When the NDP was in power last, I was on a committee. For 5½ years, we developed a sexual assault policy that never got implemented. Because we didn’t have a sexual assault policy, when the government changed, all the sexual assault centres lost their funding. We desperately need to have a sexual assault policy, because sexual assault survivors are the ones that are being left behind.

The safety of Indigenous women across our province is of urgent importance. The Cindy Gladue case is being heard in the Supreme Court this week. I can testify to the fact — and I’m sorry to be using language that’s hard to hear — that gang rapes for young Indigenous girls are common today on reserves across our province. We’ve been asking for years, saying we need to have victim services, community anti-violence programs — whatever they’re called — that are run by Indigenous women for Indigenous women on our reserves or close to reserves.

Our programs, the community-based victim assistance programs, the Stopping the Violence counselling programs that provide life-saving counselling supports, the outreach programs, the sexual assault and women assault centres — which have almost been wiped out — need funding support. There was a tiny little bump of $5 million in the last budget. But when you compare to $1 billion for child care — not to say that child care isn’t needed…. I think our programs are really feeling the effects of not being heard, when year after year we’re talking about the increase in demand.

One of the innovative programs that we invented after we were dealing with more and more domestic violence deaths in our province is these teams called interagency case assessment teams. They’re highly effective, functional teams where you don’t have to have funding for a fully embedded program and have police and child protection and other people embedded in an office. Interagency case assessment teams are people who work in their own offices but gather when there’s a high-risk domestic violence case. Stephanie Cadieux supported these when she was the minister of MCFD.

We have received a one-term grant to help support the operational running of these teams, but we need more than that. We need to be able to tell communities that these initiatives are going to be supported, because they are saving lives.

We asked the RCMP to do a snapshot for us to tell us, at any given time, how many women there are in the province that are dealing with lethal levels of domestic violence. They literally went detachment to detachment, and they came back with the answer that it was 400. So 400 women, at any given time, are dealing with lethal levels of domestic violence. Not all of them are on our radar screen, but certainly, when somebody potentially can be on our radar screen, we can’t fail them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Tracy, we’re at about eight minutes, and there won’t be any time left for questions.

T. Porteous: Oh, okay. I just have two more quick things.

I really appreciate the support for the bystander program. I think that needs to be an ongoing level of support. There was a comment made by the Minister of Finance that she wanted to see bystander education throughout the whole public service. That’s going to cost money. Hopefully, that might be something that you would support going forward.

[11:05 a.m.]

All the training for all of the anti-violence programs has been cut. So the only way we can train people to do this work is through begging and borrowing and accessing one-time funding.

We remain committed to do whatever we can to help you manage your way through to understanding what’s needed. For the last couple of years, I’ve submitted a very lengthy report articulating a whole bunch of other things that are needed, but I would say these are the priority areas.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tracy. We have a very short period of time.

T. Redies: Thanks very much for what you do. It’s really important work.

Can you talk a little bit about the sexual assault policy and what would be the, you know, advantage of having that? Maybe just give us a little colour about what you’ve worked on before.

T. Porteous: Sure.

There was a decision made years ago to have a suite of policies to help protect British Columbians. One of them was a child abuse policy, the other one was a domestic violence policy, and the other one was a sexual assault policy.

The first had been done years ago, decades ago, but the sexual assault policy hasn’t been done. It, basically, is a document that outlines and mandates a responsibility for police, prosecutors, community-based victim assistance programs, health care, mental health — all of the players that have a responsibility to respond.

Without a policy, when something doesn’t happen…. When a woman goes forward in Chilliwack, let’s say, and reports a sexual assault to the police, they don’t necessarily have a mandate by the province, which funds their role as policing, to do anything.

We saw the huge crisis exposed in the Globe and Mail over the last couple of years about inaction or women not being believed. A policy helps direct and mandate all of the different sectors to take it seriously and to provide supports and services, investigations and prosecutions.

M. Dean: Tracy, I just want to say thank you for all of your work and all the support for the sector and for continuing to keep coming to this committee as well. It’s really important to have these matters on the record and to encourage the committee to talk about them. I look forward to continuing working with you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just before you go, is there an amount of money that you’re looking for, for some of these programs? Is there a number, or could you please send us, maybe in a written thing, just some specificity as to what the financial needs are? That would be very helpful.

T. Porteous: I have provided a very detailed financial overview of what the programs have needed for the last couple of years, and I will again. I’ll attach those figures to this presentation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Perfect. Thank you for all you do. Thanks very much.

Next up we have BC SCI Community Services Network — Sian Blyth and Gail Hamamoto.

Hello, how are you? Nice to see you. We just try to keep the comments to five minutes if we can, so we have time for questions. That would be great.

B.C. SPINAL CORD INJURY
COMMUNITY SERVICES NETWORK

S. Blyth: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here in Surrey to present to the Standing Committee on Finance.

My name is Sian Blyth, and I’m the executive director of the B.C. Wheelchair Basketball Society. To my left is my colleague, Gail Hamamoto, executive director of the B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association. We are here today representing the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Community Services Network, known as the BC SCI Network, whose goal is to help make B.C. the best place for people with disabilities to live, work and play.

The network is comprised of the B.C. Wheelchair Basketball Society, the B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association, the Disability Foundation, the Neil Squire Society and Spinal Cord Injury B.C. Together, our five provincial organizations represent over 200 years of service delivery excellence in supporting British Columbians with physical disabilities.

So why did we form this network? The simple answer is that helping people with spinal cord injuries and other physical disabilities to adjust, adapt and thrive in their lives is complex work. We all recognized that working together was a better approach than trying to do it all on our own.

Through the complementary services that we each provide, the network is helping people with physical disabilities to overcome key challenges in their lives, including social isolation and the physical and mental health issues that they face.

[11:10 a.m.]

It helps connect them to accessible housing and other information and directs supports for daily living to gain the confidence and skills to ready their return to labour market participation; to engage in active, healthy lifestyles through sports and recreation; and to become active and productive members of communities throughout B.C.

Our strength is that we connect an individual living with a physical disability to each other’s services, even when they might not know they need them. If we start to provide services at an early age that are easy to navigate, the potential to improve the long-term quality of life for people living with a physical disability is truly impactful.

Our organizations have a long history of working together collaboratively as a network. In recognition of the value of the network and the work we have achieved, the provincial government provided a grant of $5 million over five years in 2017. The network is extremely grateful for this financial support and its impact on thousands of British Columbians living with disabilities.

G. Hamamoto: We are pleased to say that we have successfully fulfilled our funding responsibilities this year and expanded our collective service reach to new areas of the province, particularly in chronically underserved regions such as the Kootenays. This included new services and activities involving Indigenous communities, and we were able to reach all of the health authority regions in B.C.

Over the past year, we have shared information about each other’s programs and services. Collectively, the network has seen over half a million website visits and reached over 12,000 Facebook followers and 15,000 through Twitter. This year’s annual network conference focus was to foster a culture of collaboration amongst all staff within the network. Over 60 participants had the opportunity to collaborate and connect with colleagues from across B.C.

Engagement by the network’s executive directors has supported increased efficiencies and efficacy of operations and services — such as shared office space by three of the five network organizations, shared staff positions and leveraging the presence of network staff, in different regions of the province, who are key connectors to partner services. Network organizations also collaborated on funding opportunities, including co-application for grants and partnership in funding projects.

The network funding has also provided opportunities to develop external partnerships, such as SCIBC’s MOUs with the province’s regional tourism associations, to advance access and inclusion principles and priorities. B.C. Wheelchair Sports created new partnerships with the B.C. Cancer Society’s Camp Good Times program. B.C. Wheelchair Basketball has been working in partnership with the Indigenous Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation Council.

SCIBC, the Neil Squire Society and the Disability Foundation are community partners on the Canadian Disability Participation Project. The Disability Foundation’s Tetra Society is developing university partnerships to increase student volunteer interest in custom assisted devices.

Success stories from the past year include Have a Go Day, hosted in Prince George by B.C. Wheelchair Sports in partnership with SCIBC, coordinated by shared staff and coached by an individual with a disability, funded by the Neil Squire Society’s Working Together program. This event highlights the synergies and partnerships that are benefiting regional delivery in B.C., enhancing employability and introducing new participants to sport and physical activity. Overall, as a network, we served 33,000 people in 2017.

We thank the provincial government for your support and the opportunity to share the impact of your funding here today. We hope that you will continue to see this as a funding priority and look forward to continuing to work together to support people with physical disabilities throughout our province and to make B.C. the best place for individuals with spinal cord injury to live, work and play.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Gail. Thanks, Sian.

Questions?

T. Redies: What monetary needs do you have in terms of coming before this Finance Committee? What exactly are you looking for in terms of monetary support?

G. Hamamoto: Our key focus is to ensure that there is a maintenance of funding to the network organizations — each of us receives provincial funding from various sources that are critical to our ongoing operations — but also that collectively, it is in the minds of this committee to look at long-term, sustainable funding for the network.

We are very, very grateful for our one-time grant that we received last year. That has made a huge impact and will make a huge impact for a few years to come, but we are very cognizant of the fact that this is long-term work and want to ensure that we continue to communicate with the province with respect to the importance of funding for the network.

T. Redies: What does that look like in terms of dollars? What does long-term funding…? We have to deal with multiple asks here, so the greater the clarity on what it is that you’re asking for, the better we are able to make a recommendation.

[11:15 a.m.]

G. Hamamoto: I understand. We don’t have a specific funding ask at this time, because we were provided with the five-year grants last year. We’re not looking for you to find us some new money at this point — simply to share with you the impact and the value of the investments that the committee has made.

T. Redies: Perfect. Thank you.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation. I think the collaboration that you’ve demonstrated is pretty key.

I wanted to share that last week I had an opportunity to meet one of the Invictus Games participants. She was just bubbling over with enthusiasm and talked about the impact of the physical activity to her rehabilitation, to her ability to have the confidence to go forward and participate in the workforce, even from somebody in the military who may not be in the military forever. It is more than just an issue of sport.

G. Hamamoto: Yes. I think the unique thing about our network is that you don’t often see sport organizations partnering outside of the sports system, but we recognize in our organizations the incredible value of sport to change lives and to increase all of the other qualities of life with respect to employability, with respect to education, relationships — all of those good things — physical and mental health. That’s why we see the value of partnering with the other organizations that we do.

S. Blyth: We see many people come through who would end up like one of the Invictus athletes but that have started through sports and then, because of our network and because of the collaboration, have discovered other avenues — going back to school, for example, and then from school, on to long-term employment.

G. Hamamoto: As an example, in our GO Time program for girls with physical disabilities, we’ve partnered with our other organizations so that they’re not just trying a sport. That might be the catalyst to bring them all together. We bring them in from around the province, but then we give them life skills.

We bring in mentors, and we connect them with other services that they need and that their families need. It’s because families of children with disabilities are often isolated. We try to ensure that we have a holistic approach to making fulfilling experiences for those kids so that in the long term, they live healthy, active lifestyles.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your important work in our province, and we appreciate you coming in and presenting to us.

Next up we have Kwantlen Polytechnic University — Dr. Alan Davis, Marlyn Graziano and Jon Harding.

Good morning. If we could try and keep the initial comments to five minutes, we’d really appreciate that. The floor is yours.

KWANTLEN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

A. Davis: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, KPU, I’d like to express my appreciation to the committee for the work that you do and for the opportunity to address you this morning about public post-secondary education in general and about KPU specifically.

Access to lifelong and meaningful education for all is our foundation at KPU, and we strive to meet our mission and mandate in a context that is increasingly complex. The complexity includes, for instance, more services for our students to support their mental well-being, support and education around issues of sexualized violence on campus, more progress in the Indigenization of education in all its manifestations and more and better opportunities for our learners to develop the new skills needed for a changing labour market.

The good news is that KPU is committed to being innovative in our delivery of educational support services and to being nimble and responsive to the needs of our communities and the industries and businesses that support them. We embrace the government’s commitment to access to affordable education and training.

Our breadth of programming — which ranges from certificates, apprenticeship training and diplomas to bachelor’s degrees and postgraduate diplomas — and our multi-campus reach ensures that we can be immediately responsive to the varied types of education and training required by British Columbians over the next decade, specifically in this region south of the Fraser.

One area of focus is to offer more work-integrated learning opportunities for our students. We’re Canada’s only polytechnic university. We focus on experiential learning. It’s so ingrained in KPU that we’ve adopted it as our tag line. We’re proud to say that KPU is an institution where thought truly does meet action through co-op placements, internships, service learning, and so on.

[11:20 a.m.]

We have an incredible opportunity in front of us, over the next few decades, to build a highly educated and highly competent workforce that will be aligned with the future needs not just of British Columbia but of Canada and the world. We know that nearly one million job openings will be created by 2028 in B.C., and the vast proportion, 77 percent, will require some form of post-secondary education.

A further area of significant importance to us at KPU and to the province, of course, is to live up to our commitment to the implementation of the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action.

Indigenous learners continue to be underrepresented in the public post-secondary system, and we are committed to providing the supports needed for Indigenous learners in this region. We have a gathering space at KPU Surrey, a department of Indigenous services for students, and an elder in residence.

We’re in the planning stages of a third Open Doors, Open Minds event, a day-long program for Indigenous high school students who come to campus to meet current students and some of our faculty members. They attend classes, hear from engaging keynote speakers and get to see, firsthand, the opportunities that post-secondary studies can offer them. But we need to do so much more, and we hope this committee will see to recommend significant investment in this area.

Let me speak specifically of KPU South Fraser region. This is particularly relevant, given that we’re here today in Surrey, one of the fastest-growing communities in B.C. and Canada. As this region grows, our capacity to offer more post-secondary seats must grow as well.

I will be blunt. At KPU, we are tapped out. We are full. We are delivering all the seats our provincial funding allows, and we still have wait-lists which are growing. We have tried to grow organically in various ways and, quite simply, have stretched our resources as far as we can go.

Our five-year vision and strategic plan for 2023, approved by the board and the senate in June, is for KPU to provide exceptional experiences for our students, to excel in creativity and scholarship and to be a sustainable institution in every way — environmentally, culturally and financially.

We’ll be challenged to absorb significant growth in our communities without funding for additional seats to support the workforce needs as anticipated in the latest edition of the B.C. Labour Market Outlook and, of course, to address the diverse cultural and social needs of our citizens and communities in this region.

We hope the committee will agree that further investment in KPU would address the gap between expectations of service delivery and available resources in student support, expand work-integrated learning opportunities that will benefit students and our economy alike, fulfil the promises we’ve made to our Indigenous communities, and match the growth and needs of the communities we serve in this region.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I’ll conclude my comments.

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

T. Redies: Hi, Dr. Davis and Marlyn. It’s nice to see you. First off, I’m a big fan. What you guys do in our community is fantastic — your programs. I’ve had the benefit of hiring people from KPU, and again, really outstanding.

I’d like to know what you need. What’s the dollar number of the support that you need?

A. Davis: Well, we actually worked with SFU Surrey a few years ago and identified a kind of growth plan over about five years of about 2,500 FTEs each. That is about 500 a year. That would allow us….

These are kind of ballpark numbers. Currently our level of funding is something around $7,000 to $8,000 per FTE. So you can do the math. But that kind of five-year rollout over a period of time would allow us to adjust and be ready and have the right offerings open.

We’re quite well off with respect to space, particularly if we innovate around the methodology of delivery. But we just can’t afford to open more sections to meet the wait-lists and the demand that’s here in our community and is growing every year.

[11:25 a.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. I’m interested in your first points. You talked about dealing with sexualized violence on campus. I’m interested in what you’ve actually done. Also, with the new campaign that the ministry supported all institutions with, how effective was that? Has that had much of an impact?

A. Davis: Well, I’ll start. Perhaps I’ll ask Marlyn to pick it up.

There has been great alignment between what the minister, Minister Mark, put forward and what I think institutions across the province were already thinking. So there’s been a good kind of synergy between the two processes, and we’ve certainly collaborated. There have been provincial committees. There have been provincial campaigns that have tied in with what we’ve done locally.

Do you want to speak a bit more about what’s going on?

M. Graziano: Certainly. While the minister’s focus has been a lot about students, we, of course, have embraced it from a holistic approach — employees and contractors and everybody. Now we’re into the education phase. We’ve hired one additional staff member to deal with student reports and incidents and concerns, and then we’re building that capacity across our human resources department as well.

We’re in that building phase, but we are most focused on education. What is sexualized violence? How do you identify it? How do you report it? And then how do we act on it? Those things will become part of our culture, we hope, over time. It’s a long game.

S. Cadieux: Now I know, unlike some of the other institutions in the province, you have land. With the government’s announcement last year that there would be debt room made available for student housing, has Kwantlen acted on that at all in terms of putting forward a proposal?

A. Davis: Jon Harding is our vice-president of finance and admin.

J. Harding: Yes, we’re exploring opportunities in consultation with government on addressing student housing needs. The government’s kind offer to provide debt, however, impacts our operating statements negatively. Because of the balanced-budget requirements of post-secondary institutions, we have very little flexibility, so taking on debt actually is a significant negative for the organization. But we are exploring other opportunities as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have a quick question about indigenization and just the challenges. Obviously, there have been some wonderful strides made by the institution, which is wonderful, but I’m just…. You need more support. Can you be more specific about some of the initiatives or some of the activities you feel that will pull more people in, more Indigenous students?

A. Davis: Well, we basically need more staff who can work with the students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s a staffing issue. Okay.

A. Davis: To some degree, it’s undirected. We have a very prominent Indigenous scholar with us. We’d like to add to her area. Yes, we’d like to hire more faculty and staff specifically focused on the needs of Indigenous learners.

We have a very complex Indigenous environment. We have five nations and several overlapping. We work with the Squamish First Nation in terms of trades training on the North Shore as well. So we have a complex and overlapping relationship with the First Nations, and we have a different relationship with each of them.

Then we have…. I think one of the largest urban Aboriginal populations in B.C. is actually right here in Surrey — so working a lot with the school district, for instance, in trying to…. That’s what the Open Doors, Open Minds project is. It’s to try and show younger students what their options are and that KP was a friendly place to come, and there are a diverse number of programs that they can take.

But just sheer more support, legs on the ground who can work closely with Indigenous students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s part of the whole being tapped out. There’s just not enough resources generally?

A. Davis: It’s going to be across five campuses. It’s just very difficult. You can have a couple of people, and where are they going to be at any one time? You’re having to duplicate services across many campuses. In some cases, that’s impossible.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation. Fantastic.

All right, next up we have Robin Tavender.

[11:30 a.m.]

How are you, Robin?

R. Tavender: Good, good. Yourself?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Very well. This year, we’re trying to keep the initial comments down to about five minutes so that we have time for questions. Fantastic. Thanks, Robin.

ROBIN TAVENDER

R. Tavender: Good morning. My name is Robin. Bonjour. Je m’appelle Robin.

To begin, rather than acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional and ancestral territory of one or more groups, I’m going to begin by stating that, as I stated in 2016 and 2017, I am a non-status Indian, though I prefer the term native American. My father’s side of the family, through his mother, has lived in America time out of mind. Our traditional and ancestral territory would not be some mere region of the Lower Mainland. It would be all of America.

As I said in 2016 to a previous incarnation of this committee, according to our oral law, we have never made any treaty with the Crown, nor have we disposed of our Aboriginal right to hunt, to fish and to camp as we like in Canada, including the building of fires and the taking of wood for fuel and dwellings, as well as the use of waters, flora and minerals.

Prior to contact, we moved freely throughout America without tax, toll or custom. So, as a First Nation, we have Aboriginal right to hunt, to fish, to camp and to use waters, plants and minerals in all of Canada. We have the right to fish in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Pacific Ocean. We have the right to fish in the Fraser River and in the St. Lawrence River. We have the right to take timber in British Columbia and in Ontario. This is how we lived, according to our ancient oral law.

We are now in a position where we have lost our traditional language. Our heritage is passed on in English, with a scattering of French, because our Aboriginal ancestors interbred with French and spoke a French Aboriginal dialect, which my father was not taught by his grandmother. His mother forbade her to teach him because she did not want him to experience the prejudice that she felt would come along with speaking that language. But our right is not in the sounds; rights are in our souls. As Aristotle says in On Interpretation: “Spoken sounds are symbols of the affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds.” That’s 16a1 in the Bekker numbers for Aristotle.

Aristotle, in fact, says that: “A name is a spoken sound significant by treaty.” That’s 16a19. So all naming — that is, the use of names — is a part of the treaty process. The use of the English language and the interruption and loss of our historical language does not at all impact our right or law because our right — that is, law — is an affection in our soul. It is not the sounds we use to express that affection. Whether I say “I love you” or “je t’aime,” the meaning is the same, because these sounds are used to refer not to other sounds or written marks, but to affection.

When we talk about defending our Aboriginal right to hunt, we might mistake this for defending something to do with land and moose and so forth. In fact, what we are defending is our souls from deformation by a colonial government that uses falsehoods to modify our souls, to make us forget our Aboriginal law, to convince us that we were mistaken about our law.

Aristotle’s student Plato is very concerned about how rulers need to lie to people. In the Republic, he says that falsehood, though of no use to the gods, is useful to people as a form of drug. That’s 389b in the typical citation of Plato.

Plato restricts the drugging of the people with lies to a class of guardians who are given the power to administer these drugs to people. What Plato means by drugs is not injections or pills. He means words. So words are drugs, and we can see the Crown’s compulsory education system, much like the one conceived of by Plato in the Republic, as a system of compulsory pharmacotherapy.

We are making strides in dealing with what I will call Plato’s legacy in Canada. We have truth and reconciliation. But that is, like my speech today, a bunch of words. Words alone aren’t going to solve the problems. We need resources. I’d say that the lawyers are Plato’s guardian class in our society, or maybe one of them. So how can Aboriginals learn about this platonic system if they’re not allowed into law school, or there are difficulties, as the previous speaker said, with resourcing? The expenses associated with law school are a systemic, discriminatory barrier to truth and reconciliation.

[11:35 a.m.]

I cannot afford to go to law school. I simply could not afford the expenses for food and shelter and tuition. My budget ask this year, if you turn to the sheet I had the Clerk give you, is for $70,000 in the Supply Act over three years, which, using figures taken from UBC’s website, is an approximate cost for tuition in the faculty of law, along with food, shelter and necessities, so I can dedicate myself full-time to my studies.

There is an urgent need to fund legal education for non-status Indians so that we can catch up to the treaty-making prowess of our status Indian peers.

My second piece today, many of you will have heard before. Briefly, I’m going to continue my comment from the last five years that the disability rate is unconstitutionally low. It must be raised.

I also want to touch on a comment of A.J. Brown, whom you may remember from the Vancouver sitting of this committee. She spoke with her mother, Barbara Brown. Under examination, I took A.J. to say that the earnings exemption should be $50,000. I think that is too low. I would peg it at the basic compensation for an MLA, which is, as of April 1, 2018, $108,105.35.

Another option is the persons-with-disability assistance as simply a continual subsidy for disabled individuals. I have had conversations with many able-bodied working members of the community who would be quite happy to see disabled people keep 100 percent of their assistance as well as whatever they are able to earn. Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Robin. Appreciate that. I do appreciate how difficult it is to get into and to go through law school and the costs of tuition. We’ve heard from many students as well.

I am pleased by your point about language, which I think is so important. I was very pleased there was a $50 million announcement to develop Indigenous language in the last budget.

But, I mean, we can’t…. You’ve opened up a whole can of worms there with your talk.

Are there any questions at all?

Well, thank you so much, Robin. We appreciate you coming in again. It’s nice seeing you again. Keep fighting the good fight.

R. Tavender: Thank you very much, sir.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Robin, thanks for coming. I enjoy when you come. I really do, so thank you. You’re always an eye-opener.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Nicole Kaler.

Hi, Nicole. We’ll try, if we can, to keep the comments to five minutes so we have time for questions.

NICOLE KALER

N. Kaler: Yeah, I was prepared for that.

Thanks for having me. I’m going to start off by saying that I’m really nervous, because I think that’ll help everyone be a little extra forgiving.

I am a resident of Surrey. I’m a mother of three children — 13, 15 and 17. My 17-year-old daughter is severely impacted with autism, and that’s why I’m here today. I want to speak to our experiences with the public school system.

I read through the presentation that was given to you a few days ago by BCEdAccess, by Tracy Humphreys. I want to say that I absolutely support all of her recommendations. I’m glad that she did such a thorough job in presenting to you, because that gives me the room in this five-minute presentation to maybe give more of a personal feel for what it’s like to have kids in school when they have special needs, and their challenges.

Being part of BCEdAccess…. I think Tracy told you there are over 1,500 members. It is a grassroots organization of parents of kids with special needs. What I know from that group is whether our kids have learning disabilities, autism, sensory processing disorder, Down syndrome, trauma, mental health issues — I’m trying to think of everything I’ve ever seen on that group, because I want you to understand that this is a lot of children — if our kids belong to that group, they do not receive the same care and access to learning, and therefore access to an education, as a child that does not have those challenges.

My daughter is severely impacted by autism. She has no language. She needs a lot of care. She has done incredibly well in the school system. She’s learned there, and it has been an amazing experience, from her perspective.

What I really wanted to come here today and express is that that has been an incredible amount of work, and I wanted to give you a sense of what that means. My daughter has a board-certified behaviour analyst that works with her, and throughout her time in the school system, she’s had SLPs and OTs. We always have contact with her a couple of times a month. That person provides all of my daughter’s curriculum, as well as her behaviour plans. That is at the expense of my family. We are very fortunate that we have been able to provide that for her.

[11:40 a.m.]

In addition to that, the people that we pay to support my daughter — they are the ones that make sure that her education assistant, the person that is with her all day at school, is trained and able to take care of her in the public school system. Again, we are very privileged that we have been able to provide that for her.

Finally, I want to say that my daughter also has a lawyer, who we engaged last year when we filed a human rights complaint against the Surrey school district and CUPE 728. Again, I really want to emphasize how extreme it is to be able to say that my daughter did very well in public school but also to tell you that we have had a very thorough staff and had to provide that for her, including legal representation, so that I can say that.

I’m going to finish up by saying that in September, I put together a petition on Change.org. The petition was, basically, your recommendations from the last time you sat, last year. I won’t go into it because I know Tracy reiterated it, and you are well aware of the recommendations you made as it pertains to special education. But it was more funding for education assistance and specialists and assessments and specialty programs, all of which I can tell you right now would have made a huge difference for our families and a huge difference for families who cannot afford what we did for my daughter.

I’m wondering. What does it take to get it off the list of recommendations and put it on the actual “this is what’s going to happen now” sphere? I also want to tell you that last night when I was preparing for this, I put a call out on social media for everybody to look at the petition again because it has been a month and it slows down and we were about 100 votes shy of 5,000. What I said was: “Wouldn’t it be so cool if I could come in and say: ‘We’ve got 5,000 supporters’?” Honestly, I was going to round up to 5,000, so it didn’t really matter. We were 100 short, and we more than surpassed that. When I was preparing for this — and I printed out the petition — we were at 5,100.

My point being, though, that last night my notifications were going constantly. The reason they were going is that people were really excited, again, to see that number rise. That’s what the last month has been for me: people reaching out to me from across the province, saying, “Oh, look, we hit 2,000,” and: “Look, we hit 2,500.”

What I want you to leave with is this is a petition…. I know that it means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of the Legislature or what it means to politicians and that it holds no actual weight. But for us it means so much. Why does it mean so much? Because we have been working within this system for so long, where our children disproportionately do not get serviced in the public education system, that we have begun to believe or lose the idea that it is a core value and that inclusion and diversity actually do mean our kids as well.

This petition that literally means nothing in the grand scheme of what anybody has to do…. Rob Fleming is not losing sleep over the 5,000 members that have supported it. Even that means a lot to us because what that tells us is that yes, it is a core value of our society that our children are supposed to be included.

I’m thanking you for your time, because I am over.

A Voice: It’s 5,166 now.

T. Redies: Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for coming in. I wonder if you could just give the panel a little bit more colour around the human rights exercise that you went through with the tribunal with respect to Maya.

N. Kaler: We filed a human rights complaint because a child like Maya absolutely cannot function in the public school system without qualified, adequate support. We put a lot of time and money into training her education assistant. Unfortunately, our system is…. The collective agreement says that in order to work with my daughter, seniority is a predominate factor that weighs into who is qualified to be with her. We know that she cannot equally access an education if that is the way we move forward with that. So we filed the human rights complaint.

We were given the accommodation without going to a hearing or anything because I did effectively make the argument that it was a human rights violation to not give her the accommodation. There was no undue hardship. As well, our human rights code, section 4, says that there is no contract that supersedes the human rights of our kids. In addition to that, CUPE did drop the grievance. There has been another human rights case filed in Surrey over the same issue. They did drop the grievance for us. However, they are still pressuring the Surrey school district to staff according to seniority.

T. Redies: If I can ask a follow-up question. Nicole, could you give us a sense…? This additional funding that you’re putting out as a family — can you kind of give us a sense of what that looks like?

N. Kaler: In dollars and cents? I guess I won’t say what people’s hourly rate is because that’s not the point. But it is, on average, another $800 a month.

[11:45 a.m.]

M. Dean: Thank you so much for coming here and sharing your story. We really appreciate it. It is really important for us to hear from British Columbians so that we understand how the systems impact people. And I just wanted to reassure you that your petition is really important. I think everybody sitting on this committee is really interested in that, so maybe this is an opportunity for you to read it. Can you tell us exactly what the petition is?

N. Kaler: Okay, sure. It’s Change.org, like I said. “Help B.C. Students with Special Needs Receive the Support Needed to Access an Education.” I’m just going to read it.

“Parents were hopeful in 2018 when the budget consultation process produced recommendations to the B.C. government that directly addressed improving education for students with special needs.

“We call on the government to implement the following recommendations of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services:

“(1) 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.

“(2) Provide funding to enable early identification of students with special needs and to provide appropriate support programs as required.

“In spite of the committee recommendations, inadequate special education services still exist. The media, in recent months, have highlighted some of the issues:

“(1) exclusion of students in various ways, such as reduced school hours, exclusion from field trips and isolation or seclusion in ‘calming’ rooms;

“(2) prevention of continuity of support by child-specific trained and qualified workers;

“(3) support hours for special needs students being reduced or never allocated, regardless of need and without meaningful consultation;

“(4) lack of specialized training for teachers, educational assistants and other staff to provide support for complex students; and

“(5) shared workers amongst high-needs students.”

It continues.

“The Ministry of Education policy for students with special needs states: ‘All students should have equitable access to learning, opportunities for achievement and the pursuit of excellence in all aspects of their educational programs.’

“This policy echoes the Charter protections provided to our children as well as provincial case law, such as Hewko v. B.C. ‘Reasonable accommodation is an integral part of the duty to consult. Reasonable accommodation in this case involves providing the best available teaching staff for Darren Hewko in the school. In Darren’s case, as in that of all children, special needs or not, the best teaching staff are persons who can demonstrate instructional control of him.’”

The other case that I cited was Moore v. British Columbia, 2012.

“‘Adequate special education, or an accommodation, is not a dispensable luxury but a “ramp” to access the statutory commitment to education made to all children….’ When denying accommodation, the ‘service provider must show that it could not have done anything else reasonable or practical to avoid the negative impact on that individual.’”

Then it finishes:

“We are asking for equitable access to education for children who have disabilities or special needs in the province of British Columbia. Please support this petition.”

As of this morning, we had 5,119.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you for reading that. It’s very important, and we really appreciate you coming out, because we do get presentations from associations, from different groups, but when parents or people who are fighting for their children come out and talk to us, it does have an impact. So I really, really appreciate you coming out and telling us your story and, obviously, the work that you’re doing for special needs kids, not just for your own but for others. Thank you very much.

Before you leave, though, I just wanted to talk to you about expectations and what the Finance Committee is. We are an all-party committee. We make recommendations. But we’re not Treasury; we’re not the Minister of Education; we’re not the Ministry of Finance. They are looking at the whole province and all the various things. So we will make recommendations, as we did last year in this regard, but just keep in mind that we’re one place. If you do want to do this, there are other places that you need to go to in terms of getting decisions made. I just wanted to make sure.

N. Kaler: No, I know it’s not one stop.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Some people mistake the Finance Committee with Treasury Board or with other decision-making bodies within government. But thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

Okay. Let’s recess for lunch.

The committee recessed from 11:50 a.m. to 1 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): First up we have the Canadian Home Builders Association of British Columbia — Alycia Coulter and Neil Moody.

We have a timer here. We’re aiming for about five minutes, if we can, for initial comments so we have time for questions.

CANADIAN HOME BUILDERS
ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

N. Moody: Thank you for allowing us to speak today for Budget 2019.

A little bit about the Canadian Home Builders Association, first of all. We are 2,000 members, companies, who work as homebuilders, renovators, tradespeople, service professionals and others through our nine locals throughout the province of B.C. Our members are small and medium-sized businesses creating jobs and economic benefits in all areas of the province. For example, the average homebuilder in B.C. builds 4.7 homes per year. The residential construction industry represents over 200,000 on-site and off-site jobs, creating $11.9 billion in wages with an investment value of $25 billion.

On market affordability, there’s no doubt that housing is a critical issue in British Columbia. New policies must address and support all aspects of the housing system, from homelessness to market ownership.

We were pleased with Minister Robinson’s announcement this year at UBCM that the government will be taking on a review of the development approvals process. CHBA members across the province will be eager to contribute to this review and share their expertise. We understand that increasing the housing supply is not the solution to the affordability issue, but it is a prerequisite. Our presentation today will focus on some of the market housing tools available for the provincial government to consider.

One, tax credit incentives for proper material disposal. A recurring problem across British Columbia is the illegal dumping of construction materials. Two factors that contribute to illegal dumping are cost and inconvenience of proper disposal, especially when facilities are located on the outskirts of cities or, in some cases, outside of the province, and lack of education.

We should note that the vast majority of proper contractors do take care to properly dispose of materials and maintain safe workplaces. However, some landfills require that the resident drop off the materials, or situations arise where homeowners hire underground economy or unscrupulous contractors.

It is clear the penalties do not dissuade these activities alone. In the same study, there are millions of dollars spent by cities to deal with this illegal dumping. We need to look at better solutions for this core issue, especially when used drywall that may contain asbestos is involved.

The recommendation is to create a tax credit incentive tied to proper disposal of construction materials. This approach helps to mitigate the cost of proper disposal and is an educational opportunity to inform homeowners about proper disposal and their requirements. In order to receive the incentive, proper paperwork from the disposal site should be required and a receipt of the work performed. The paperwork also encourages homeowners to work with professional contractors that will provide receipts, a key aspect to dissuade underground economy activity.

Not all renovations or construction materials come from cosmetic upgrades either. For example, this incentive could also benefit landlords or homeowners making needed upgrades or emergency repairs.

Two, introduce a retrofit tax credit for energy efficiency. The new and recently announced energy efficiency program will allow homeowners to access funding for renovation projects. All partners involved should be commended for this voluntary initiative.

The provincial government can further incent energy efficiency in existing housing with a renovation tax credit for energy efficiency. The policy structure for a tax credit is already in place, as British Columbians already deduct the cost of renovating for seniors or individuals with disabilities. Adding energy efficiency to the existing policy is a logical next step and may help to cover additional limited costs from the retrofits not included with the new and expanded grant program. It also creates consistency for homeowners when looking at renovation tax incentives.

[1:05 p.m.]

Recommendation: introduce an additional renovation tax credit for energy efficiency upgrades using the existing renovation tax credit system in B.C.

Three, provide an exemption for annual taxes on new housing projects. There is a minimum cost to take a project from dirt to door. Several new housing taxes introduced in Budget 2018 impact the cost of new construction and, ultimately, the price paid by new homebuyers. For example, the property transfer tax and school tax were increased for properties over $3 million. While the average person may correlate that with a luxury home, it can also be the price for a very average sized piece of property used to build multiple family-sized units in all parts of the province.

Homebuilders are required to purchase land in advance, as their inventory. However, this land is also subjected to several taxes for the time it takes to move it through the development process, and the time window is largely out of the developers control. It is very possible to identify properties for development, such as through the municipal permitting system. If we want to impact housing affordability, this is a tool available to the provincial government. We cannot ignore the reality that these new taxes are adding to each unit cost of housing.

Recommendation: exempt properties in the development process from the additional school tax and speculation tax on an annual basis. Please note that the speculation tax impact on properties under development is being included, as the legislation details are unknown.

We do have some other recommendations in our longer submission, and these are detailed in front of you. In the interests of time, I won’t go into them. They tie to our core message that there are many factors that have contributed to the rising cost of construction and home prices, by extension. These include but are not limited to the following: building code changes, local government fees, tariffs and trade disputes, trade shortages, product costs and availability, bylaw changes, lengthy processes and new municipal requirements.

These are tools available to the provincial government to impact on the taxes and fees paid by new homebuyers for new housing projects. We can’t make housing cheaper without reviewing the cost of construction.

Lastly, CHBABC also recommends industry consultation in advance of new housing measures. Homebuilders can contribute valuable insight in any provincial discussion, with firsthand experience on the ground.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide input. Please let us know if you need further information.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you.

T. Redies: Thanks, Neil, for your presentation. Perhaps you can give some recommendations to the committee in terms of how to speed up the permitting process and the whole development process. That obviously factors into the cost. The longer it takes for you to get building permits, the more taxes you’re paying in the interim before you can build and sell out.

Can you talk a little bit about what maybe some of your members have seen and how these permitting processes could be improved?

A. Coulter: We actually just did a round table with our members last month. We brought together members from across the region. The fees are a very obvious example. Another one that they’ve mentioned is…. Some municipalities will have professional reliance. They’ll require an architect or an engineer, especially when you get into part 9 housing, where traditionally, those engineering reports weren’t required. When you start adding $5,000 for this report….

What our members say is that they’ll go out, they’ll get the report, they’ll have the professional review, and then the municipality will second-guess the recommendations that come from the professional. If we’re going to use this opportunity to go out and get that expertise, and then we’re second-guessing it at a secondary layer, we’re sort of doubling and tripling the process.

One of our members from Whistler gave us a good example. They had a client that wanted to build sort of a laneway house, no laneway but a coach house. By the time they started adding up all the requirements of the engineer and all that, what was going to be an affordable option for them for their parents to live in became no longer feasible. That’s an example of where the extra reliance and barriers on what’s not traditionally seen in part 9 housing can take a project cost through the roof.

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

Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have the Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society — Martha Rans, and in person this year.

[1:10 p.m.]

PACIFIC LEGAL EDUCATION
AND OUTREACH SOCIETY

M. Rans: Yes, thanks to the fine people of this province.

Hon. members of the Finance Committee, we are back this year, along with colleagues at Vantage Point, to raise with you the needs of the sector of the economy that ensures a safe and sustainable future for citizens of the province — the 27,000 non-profit societies, of which the Canadian Home Builders are one, that are the providers of services to every citizen of B.C.

This sector supports all the priority areas set out in the consultation paper, among them housing, child care, mental health supports, First Nations reconciliation and climate change.

You’ve heard this week from the former executive director of Victoria Family Services, Music B.C. and the B.C. network of child and youth advocacy centres. Each of them spoke to the role the sector plays in a sustainable economy, yet it is a sector without dedicated support and funding. We lack the coordinated approach to service delivery advocated by each of those groups to this committee.

If I may paraphrase a comment made by the hon. member Stephanie Cadieux this week: “We are expecting societies to manage complex legal and administrative capacity issues off the side of their desk.” I could not agree more, as I’m literally here, doing this off the side of my desk. So when I saw Mme. Cadieux, I thought: “You’re speaking my language.”

The non-profit sector needs the dedicated infrastructure support that would enable it to contribute to public policy discussions and avoid the legal and administrative pitfalls that tip societies — some of which some of you have been involved with — into crisis and impede their ability to deliver services. One example might be something like Non-Profit B.C. — like Small Business B.C. or Creative B.C. — that would enable us to provide some infrastructure to the sector.

My present concern is twofold. Societies are contacting us every day for help with the transition that ends on November 28, 2018. Some of you may know that 40 percent of societies have yet to transition. That’s a lot. That’s a high number.

We’ve learned through the transition process that even the most sophisticated societies, with many millions of dollars, struggle with some basic concepts. Many have made mistakes on transition that are only now coming to light. With the mistakes in transition, when those mistakes come to light is going to be when there’s a dispute within the society.

So what’s happening? Well, Bill C-22 is coming with a dispute resolution for us under the Societies Act, without any consultation with the sector, where societies disputes will go to the civil resolution tribunal.

Among the issues that we’ve identified in our work to date, we know that societies do not know who their members are. They don’t know how to keep records in accordance with the act. And they don’t know how to handle member disputes and conflicts. These are the areas that we’ve identified that we need education, information and resources to address, in order to make the CRT transition effective and successful.

In July, I met with Attorney General David Eby to discuss the need for resources to be allocated to societies to ensure that they can comply with their obligations to their members under the Societies Act. I did so with the executive director of the Fairfield-Gonzales Community Association, a society that has already spent considerable resources managing a member dispute around access to records.

Most societies don’t have the resources of Fairfield-Gonzales, and I should mention that the resources they are using are public resources. So we’re effectively spending money to solve a dispute in the absence of the kind of support and infrastructure that strata councils actually have in this province — and those are disputes that are currently resolved by the CRT.

We know from our interim evaluation of the transition project in the Columbia Basin — that I spoke about last year — that a modest amount of legal information, education and advice can lead to better outcomes. I will be providing a copy of that evaluation with the written submission tomorrow.

Access to a dispute resolution mechanism like the CRT makes sense where there’s a compliance infrastructure to support it. Investing in the non-profit sector through a central hub like PLEO would support the success of the CRT.

[1:15 p.m.]

There are three ministries to whom allocations could be made to support the needs of the sector. Societies come under the rubric of the Ministry of Finance’s remit, citizen services through the B.C. registry and last, the civil resolution tribunal is under the Ministry of the Attorney-General.

I’m sure you will all agree with me that the better allocation of limited resources is in the public interest. It’s also in the public interest to ensure that the non-profit sector, which is a considerably large part of the economy, has the information, education and advice it needs to manage the new dispute resolution mechanisms and be full participants in the public policy conversations in this province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Martha. That’s very intriguing, the idea of Non-Profit B.C. Would you see that as providing legal services like this or would that be a broader mandate? How would you see that?

M. Rans: I think it’s got to be broader. I think we need to be thinking along the lines of the Ontario Nonprofit Network — ways that we can enhance coordinated capacity services. Because legal is only one side of it. I see a looming crisis with access to justice and dispute resolution provisions. This Bill C-22…. I see a real issue here, because I’m seeing conflicts every week. I’m concerned about the implications of proceeding in the absence of resources in that area.

That being said, I think there are a lot of other areas that need support. I think it was the hon. member Tracy Redies who asked me last year about governance issues. Those are areas where Vantage Point, the volunteer centres, are very active. We have a lot of needs. Also financial management. There are a lot of areas that we could be dedicating resources to.

Actually, a little will go a long way. In the context of the Columbia Basin, we’ve assisted over 3,000 societies with less than $50,000. That’s a pretty good number, I think. So we’re not actually looking for millions. We’re talking about creating, actually, something like an innovation network, which we already have, or other examples that we’ve created over the years here and simply looking at the sector more broadly, developing supports and allocating funds from all the ministries, actually. Because every ministry is implicated — housing.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation, Martha. Is there any federal funding that would support this kind of work as well? Would there not be any coming up because of some of the work that’s going on federally?

M. Rans: No. Federally, we’re looking at charities. There is a major undertaking at the Senate level with respect to charities. But one, the vast majority of non-profit societies are not charities. Two, I think the feds are very busy trying to figure out how they’re going to address political purposes and public policy involvement of charities. They’ve got a very full plate. They’re not looking to expand that into the broader non-profit sector.

I think this is a provincial responsibility. What I’ve been hearing from funders is that we need the provincial government to get involved. There’s a certain unwillingness on the part…. I don’t want to overstate this. Not an unwillingness. Demands are great on funders, and they’re looking to the province to be supporting the sector and indicating some support provincially before they’re prepared to come in and start….

We could leverage that support. Usually it’s the other way around, but I’ve been surprised at how many funders have said: “We actually think this is a provincial responsibility. We don’t want to be making…. The city of Vancouver shouldn’t be making up for the lack of engagement provincially.” Not wishing to overstate the point or to be criticizing anyone.

R. Leonard: Can you just outline a little bit about what your society does? You talk about getting a lot of calls and supporting people.

[1:20 p.m.]

M. Rans: The Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society is the only pro bono program that provides legal information, legal education and legal advice to the non-profit sector. We have two clinics. One is the Artists Legal Outreach, and the other is the Law for Non-profits project. We got funding from the Columbia Basin Trust to create transition hubs to support the societies in the Columbia Basin to transition to the new Societies Act. We also got funding from the city of Kelowna, and we’ve had funding from the city of Vancouver in a very limited capacity to do some work, again, to assist societies.

We have law students who provide legal information. Groups that come to workshops are then able to access the website and put their questions, all of which is legally supervised by me. Then there is limited capacity to provide actual legal advice, which we can’t do without resources.

We’ve also had Law Foundation of B.C. funding to create webinars. The webinar that we developed in November of 2016 has been viewed thousands of times.

As with anything, we’re struggling to reach the 27,000 non-profits, because the only entity that has a list is the B.C. registry, and they don’t have the resources to necessarily pull the kind of data that we might need to be able to do targeted pushes in areas where we would see needs, like child care.

In my private practice, I’m seeing a lot of child care groups, daycares that are actually struggling with their capacity to manage the administrative issues, and a few have closed. So while you’re creating new child care spaces, I’m seeing that child care is under crisis.

I think that we don’t take into account the impact of expanding in areas where people are not set up to do it, and we’re asking a lot. I’m sure everybody at this table has been on a volunteer board — no? We’re asking everybody to do more and more with less and less.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Martha. I appreciate your presentation. Thanks for coming in, in person this time.

M. Rans: Thank you. There are a lot of words there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Canadian Cancer Society for B.C. and Yukon — Jenny Byford.

CANADIAN CANCER SOCIETY,
B.C. AND YUKON

J. Byford: Hello. Thank you very much for having the Canadian Cancer Society here today. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, the Canadian Cancer Society is a national, community-based organization with the most impact against the most cancers in communities across Canada. We’re dedicated to fighting cancer on multiple fronts through prevention, advocacy, research and supporting those living with cancer.

We’re here today to speak to the committee about responsible tobacco retail licensing. In B.C., tobacco retailers must obtain a permit to sell tobacco, but this permit is free, and it’s easily accessible. There are no limits on permits or a fee, contributing to the wide accessibility of tobacco products. We are asking the committee to consider adding a fee to the existing permit process to encourage retail responsibility for distributors selling one of the most addictive and deadly consumer products.

The current accessibility of tobacco harms the province by adding to the belief that smoking is a social norm and that products are easily obtained, which are associated with youth smoking initiation and progression from experimentation to regular use. It also harms the province by harming quitting success — ex-smokers who are living less than 500 metres from a tobacco retailer are less likely to maintain a continued abstinence — and encouraging tobacco use. There are correlations between greater retail availability and youth smoking, and the distance between the nearest retailer and individual smoking patterns.

A strong licensing system that would include a fee would benefit the province by increasing provincial revenue as part of a cost recovery program, as well as ensuring there is that responsibility for retailers for an addictive and deadly consumer product. B.C. has licence fees for alcohol, and there is growing Canadian precedent for tobacco licensing fees, with two provinces and at least 25 municipalities implementing fees as part of their tobacco control strategy.

The products warrant a special accountability for sales. Tobacco kills one of every two regular users. It remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the province. It costs $2.3 billion in health care costs for tobacco-related illness.

[1:25 p.m.]

Without action, continuing to offer our free, unlimited licences only encourages continued tobacco sales and consumer use, and the government will have to look to other revenue sources to offset costs. Responsible retail licensing, first and foremost, will benefit the health of British Columbians by supporting the province’s existing tobacco tax policy, as well as the Ministry of Health goal to support users to quit.

Now, our secondary ask is just to once again consider increasing tobacco taxes. We thank the committee so much for the recommendation in Budget 2018, which saw a meaningful increase in tobacco taxes. We note it again just because tobacco taxes are the single most effective way to impact consumer use. B.C. still falls $13 per carton behind the leading tax rate in Canada, so there is room to move forward.

Just to conclude, as well, about some of the impacts of cancer, we know that one in two Canadians will be diagnosed in their lifetime, that rates are expected to increase dramatically by 2030 and that the demand for treatment programs and support services will grow. In the committee’s planning ahead for future financial pressures, the government will need to plan for providing services and how to prevent incidents by reducing cancer risk.

The part about addressing retail and distribution is part of a holistic and coordinated policy approach that uses financial tools to encourage healthy behaviour and recover health care costs.

I’ll end short there in time for questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the ideas around adding a licence fee to licensing and increasing taxes on cigarettes.

We had a couple of interesting presentations. One was by Imperial Tobacco. One of the things they were talking about was they are heavily involved in the whole vape side of things. I’m just wondering about the Canadian Cancer Society point of view. They were presenting it as 95 percent less dangerous than smoking cigarettes. But when asked, “Is it safe?” they did say: “Well, no.” I’m just wondering if the Cancer Society is looking at the prevalence of vaping.

In my own personal experience, my youngest son started vaping, and there was nicotine in it, and then he moved to cigarettes from vaping. I know that originally it was to get people off of cigarettes. I’m wondering if you have any position on this whole phenomenon that’s happening.

J. Byford: We do, and your personal experience is also what is statistically shown as well. Youth who start with e-cigarettes actually then later turn to tobacco products, while if you were using vaping products instead of tobacco, that is a risk-reduction tool. But that’s not how those products are being used, typically. They might help some people to quit, and that is great from a risk-reduction standpoint. But what we’ve been seeing is it’s quite the inverse, with youth starting with vaping products and then moving later to using tobacco products.

We were quite happy with the province in regulating vaping products the same where tobacco can be used so that there are restrictions on where you can publicly use vaping products, as well as purchase limits. But our vision would be not to use them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Have you been able to show statistically that increasing taxes on cigarettes clearly leads to a lower use of cigarettes?

J. Byford: Yes, and that is a recommendation from the World Health Organization as well. We find that an increase in…. I have the stats in here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess — sorry to interrupt — one of the dangers, of course, is pushing it into the black market. If you push it too high, then you lose control of the market. I’m just wondering how you balance that with the statistics.

J. Byford: Yeah. There’s a thorough body of evidence on that as well. We’re finding that contraband is more linked to access across the border and other controls and not towards…. We haven’t had a problem with it in western Canada because of tax rates. If you increase taxes by about 10 percent, you’re going to see a 4 percent reduction in consumer use. That was, similarly, what the increase was last year in the provincial budget.

Especially, too, with higher taxes across the province, B.C. still has room to grow. Other provinces haven’t met that threshold yet that is challenging any kind of black market or contraband sales. There’s still room there.

I’m happy to send it. It’s thoroughly documented on tobacco taxes. We can follow up with more information.

[1:30 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s helpful. If you can send that in, that’s always very helpful if we have to look at this again when we’re deliberating.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you for all your work you do and saving lives. We appreciate it. And thanks for your presentation.

Next up we have Urban Development Institute, Pacific Region — Jeff Fisher and Anne McMullin.

Hi, Anne. We have the distinction of both having gone to a high school that no longer exists because of condos. Nice to see you.

URBAN DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE,
PACIFIC REGION

A. McMullin: Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee. As you said, I’m here with my colleague Jeff Fisher, who’s vice-president of policy at the Urban Development Institute. I’d very much like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present our recommendations for Budget 2019.

This year our focus is on two key priorities. First is to ensure that development lands are not captured by the new taxation measures that were introduced in Budget 2018. These include the school tax, the increased luxury property transfer tax and the speculation tax. Secondly is for government to provide incentives for purpose-built rental to assist in achieving the goal of constructing 114,000 affordable homes in a decade.

Before I speak to these two priorities, just a little bit about UDI and our members. We are a not-for-profit, non-partisan association of the development industry and its related professions in B.C. The real estate and development industry that we represent annually contributes almost $23 billion to the provincial GDP, employs more than 230,000 British Columbians and generates $6.6 billion in revenue to governments at all levels.

As we look ahead to Budget 2019, our industry has two key priorities that I’d like to highlight this afternoon. As I said at the outset, our first priority relates to improving the housing tax measures introduced in Budget 2018 to ensure the new tax measures don’t inadvertently increase the cost of housing. These are in line with our colleagues at CHBABC, who presented just before us today.

These new tax measures included the increased school tax, the luxury property transfer tax — both applied to residential properties of more than $3 million — and potentially, the speculation tax, when it is introduced in the coming weeks. These three tax measures were positioned as capturing luxury or secondary homes. However, we have made it clear that, as it stands, they may also apply to development sites, as most of these sites are valued well above the $3 million threshold and could be potentially considered unoccupied second residential properties, under the speculation tax.

The impacts of these measures on the cost of new housing is substantial. Based on a five-year development and construction timeline, homebuyers of a 700-square-foot apartment in Burnaby, for example, could see an increase as high as $20,000 to $25,000 due to the higher taxes on development sites. These taxes also apply to new rental projects. One of our rental members, who builds in Coquitlam, calculated that the additional tax was equivalent to $850 per unit of rent per year to cover these new tax measures. This is on top of the taxes and fees our members already pay, including the regular property transfer tax, the federal GST and municipal fees.

We have had several positive discussions with Ministry of Finance officials regarding our concern that the speculation tax will apply to development lands, and we are hopeful that they will be accommodated when the legislation is introduced.

UDI has also recommended that development sites with a pre-application or application before a municipality be exempt from this tax. We also recommend the inclusion of an exemption period for any unsold inventory after occupancy has been granted. Because the school tax is similar to the speculation tax, we recommend that the same approach be adopted for the school tax.

One point that we remain concerned over is the application of the speculation tax to British Columbians and Canadians. These taxpayers contribute to local economies, and we believe it is vitally important to provide municipalities the autonomy to opt out of this tax. As the luxury PTT is a one-time charge, we also recommend that this tax paid by proponents be rebated to them when homebuyers occupy the units and have paid the PTT.

Eliminating these taxes on development lands ensures the government’s actions don’t have the unintended consequences of making new housing even more expensive.

Moving on to our second priority. UDI continues to support the government’s target and interest in incentivizing the construction of more purpose-built rental housing. However, the disincentives for new rental housing which have been introduced — such as Budget 2018 tax measures, as mentioned — and the recent change to restrict the annual allowable rent increase formula are disincentivizing rental.

[1:35 p.m.]

As a result, substantial incentives will need to be implemented to construct new purpose-built rental housing. We do identify several potential incentives in our prebudget submission which we will formally submit to the committee, but I’ll highlight a couple today.

Beyond exempting the Budget 2018 luxury PTT on development lands, the government could take a bold step by exempting the entire PTT for new purpose-built rental housing projects. Another incentive we’d like to recommend is a PST rebate for materials used in the construction of purpose-built rental buildings. By taking these decisive actions, rental projects will be more attractive to invest in, rather than in other real estate asset classes. An exemption of the PTT paid on land used to develop new purpose-built rentals would help significantly reduce costs.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the committee very much for our opportunity to speak today. If you have any questions?

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

That’s actually quite intriguing. I guess the idea is, in regard to incentivizing development of rental, it would be to exempt the PTT on that. I hadn’t heard that proposal before, so that’s interesting. I mean, the idea is: how are we going to get that number of rental units that we need?

I know the ministry is allowing municipalities to create a rental-only zoning, which might be helpful in terms of stopping the speculation on condos, on those kinds of developments. But maybe there needs to be something more to get developers to start building rental as opposed to condo.

A. McMullin: Yes, absolutely. We’re seeing that now — that some projects that were slated originally for rental, with the taxes and fees and charges, are just not worth it. Just in the last little while, we’ve seen the conversion of that land being sold to be condos. Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with market condos, but if what we’re trying to do is build more….

B. D’Eith (Chair): But the gap is in rental.

A. McMullin: Yes, and to create more rental and create a diversity of housing options and more choice for people, we should be looking at ways to incentivize, not be adding more cost. You know, we’ve got rising interest rates, as we’ve seen. We’ve had a bit of a short window recently, to make rental viable, and that is closing very quickly. If we start to add more and more costs…. We’re starting to see rental projects leave.

Somebody asked me: “What are the key priorities of UDI?” It’s certainly around process times, fees and charges and getting rental built, but we’re starting to wonder if that’s even a priority of ours if it’s making it more and more impossible.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting.

T. Redies: Anne, great to see you.

The rental housing, again, obviously, some real issues…. I was reading just the other day that the costs for rental landlords are about 8 percent a year. They’ve been going up about 8 percent a year. So this reduction of the amount that they can increase rents by is going be pretty difficult, right?

A. McMullin: That’s right. It makes it difficult to build new rental. Yes. And you know, that 8 percent increase is construction cost. We’ve seen construction costs go up — what is it? — 8 or 9 percent over the last year, property taxes going up. Again, we’re seeing the property transfer tax going up on lands over $3 million. Of course, any land that you’re going to build a rental building on is more than $3 million. Again, we’re seeing this escalating cost. I don’t think those are the intended consequences, but that’s what’s been the result.

T. Redies: Can you speak to…? The other day, we obviously heard some bad news — that the housing starts are down substantially in B.C., in Metro Vancouver especially. So it is your thought that the combination of these various issues, including, probably, the federal legislation, is causing this uncertainty?

A. McMullin: It is. There’s no one silver bullet to solve the problem, and there’s no one issue that’s compounding it to make the problem. But yes, a combination of the mortgage stress tests, which I think — you can debate that one way or the other — does affect the lower end of the market. That doesn’t affect people who are already in the market. The rising interest rates, the long processing times and the overall increase in cost of doing business…. And yeah, we’re starting to see our industry look to Seattle, San Diego, Austin, Calgary, Toronto, starting to move that money out.

[1:40 p.m.]

That’s the thing. Money can move. It’s fluid. If it becomes too difficult…. That means reduction of supply, yet we still have 35,000 or 40,000 people moving here every year, hopefully. You can bring in tax measures, but it’s got to be with what we call an increase in supply measures as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess the problem, of course, is that when incomes aren’t rising to the same degree as housing costs, whether that’s purchase or rental, you have a crisis. That’s what we’re living in right now in most of British Columbia.

A. McMullin: That’s right.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess the 30 points that the government had done in regard to the housing crisis is in reaction to that. I guess that’s always the balance — to try to not affect the market to the point where it crashes, but to bring it to a point where people can afford. It’s a delicate balance. I understand that, and I know the Minister of Finance understands that balance. I know you’ve met with her.

Thank you for all your work on this. We really appreciate your presentation. It’s very nice seeing you again, too.

A. McMullin: Thank you, and good to see you — yes indeed.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Time for a reunion, right?

Next up we have the British Columbia Anesthesiologists Society — Roland Orfaly.

If you could try to keep the comments to five minutes so that we have time for questions, that’d be great.

B.C. ANESTHESIOLOGISTS SOCIETY

R. Orfaly: I’m here today to suggest a way that government can save over $100 million in the next fiscal year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right.

R. Orfaly: Done.

Good afternoon. My name is Roland Orfaly. I’m a member and a representative of the B.C. Anesthesiologists Society, which is a representative group for about 400 specialist doctors who work around the clock at every major hospital in this province. I will be submitting a more detailed summary of our input to the committee, but I just wanted to summarize a little bit of our input today.

B.C.’s health care budget, as you know, currently consumes $19.75 billion a year. Within that total, an estimated $2 billion is spent on surgery, on the surgical program alone. What does that $2 billion deliver? Well, every year in B.C., we do perform over 300,000 surgeries and anaesthetics. While that sounds like a lot, there are also 85,000 British Columbians who are currently on the waiting list for surgery and anaesthesia. The reality is that we’re facing record patient wait times across the province.

To the credit of the government, in its fiscal plan this year, there’s a targeted amount of $75 million in new funding to increase surgical capacity — that’s in the current fiscal year — and an additional $100 million in the next fiscal year to increase surgical capacity. That’s already in the budget. Unfortunately, the number of major surgeries that are actually being performed in this province is dropping. In a minute, I’ll try to explain about how that’s happening.

Instead of just focusing on how much we’re spending on surgery, I’d like to take a moment to focus on how we’re spending money. Operating rooms are the most expensive resource in the system. Running an OR costs about $1,500 an hour. That’s about $25 a minute. That’s for the space, the equipment, the nurses and the other employees.

If you take, hypothetically, the possibility that we can become less efficient in the operating rooms of the province, even just by 5 percent, that’s an extra $100 million a year that we’re going to have to spend, just to deliver the same number of surgeries that we do now. Efficiency is critical, and we know that.

Looking at it the other way, as an opportunity, if we can improve the efficiency of every operating room in this province by even 5 percent — which is doable — we can save taxpayers $100 million a year. That’s $100 million that we can reinvest to do thousands of extra surgeries or that you can take and spend on all the other great ideas that you’ve been hearing about for the last month. I’m not going to tell you which way to go, but it’s a real savings.

B.C.’s anaesthesiologists have a strong and proud history of innovations to the way that we deliver care before, during and after surgery. Not only do the innovations save money, but they deliver a better patient experience, with higher quality care and safer results.

[1:45 p.m.]

Just last week CTV News reported on a new way that hip replacement patients are having surgery and being discharged all on the same day, instead of staying in hospital for three or more nights. Here’s a direct quote from the story. “‘The biggest difference,’ surgeons say, ‘is the anaesthetic technique.’”

When I started my medical training, every surgical patient was admitted at least one night before the surgery to be assessed and optimized before surgery. Now that’s almost unheard of. This one change has already saved British Columbia hundreds of millions of dollars every year. To do this safely, we’ve had to design new ways to meet with patients to assess and optimize them to prepare them for the anaesthetic — doing that all without ever admitting them to hospital. We’ve done that. Patients also prefer not being in hospital that extra night.

While OR efficiency is critical, we also need to consider whether B.C.’s funding model — not the amount of money, but how we spend it — is driving efficiencies or perhaps driving inefficiencies in the way that anaesthetic care is delivered. The B.C. Ministry of Health has already concluded — this is a direct quote: “The MSP fee-for-service payment model most effectively promotes productivity and efficiency in the delivery of most anaesthesiology services.” In my written submission, I’ll provide you with the documentation for that.

If we want efficiency, we should structure funding to achieve that result. Later this afternoon in Vancouver, the Ministry of Health will be meeting with representatives of my society. At that meeting, the ministry’s proposal is to move all anaesthesiologists in the province away from that MSP fee-for-service model, away from the funding model that the ministry itself recognizes as most effective to promote efficiency and productivity in the operating rooms of this province.

This is not a proposal that we have asked for. We’ve been asking for solutions to our recruitment challenges. As the Assistant Deputy Minister of Health reported this past July, and this is another direct quote: “All health authorities are identifying shortages of anaesthesiologists and the related risk that it presents in achieving surgical volumes.”

Anaesthesiologists have also been identified as a priority profession in the provincial health workforce strategy. In fact, former Health Minister Terry Lake publicly acknowledged the provincial shortage of anaesthesiologists as early as February of 2015.

Right here in the hospital in Surrey, right now, there’s a shortage of anaesthesiologists that’s resulting in a 20 percent closure of operating rooms. Those are hundreds of surgeries that are cancelled every month. This situation is playing out across the province. If the solution to the staffing shortage, though, leads to further inefficiencies in the operating rooms of the province, that will actually be an even more expensive outcome for the taxpayers.

We have two recommendations for you. As a preface to that: around this room and around the province, we all want the same things, in terms of surgery. We want increased capacity to reduce wait times, and we want services to be delivered as safely, as efficiently and as cost-effectively as possible. These two recommendations are as follows.

First, because surgical capacity requires the availability of many interdependent resources — including not just funding but human resources, specialized equipment and space — all new budgetary investments in surgical capacity should be based on a comprehensive plan that addresses all of the necessary resources, including health human resources. That’s the first recommendation.

Secondly, because of the critical nature of efficiency in the operating room, all new budgetary investments in surgical capacity should be structured to promote efficiency and productivity and should be transparently tied to the volume of services actually delivered.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thanks. I didn’t stop you at five minutes because you were on a roll. I appreciate that.

There were a few issues in there. I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. First, you said that there’s going to be a meeting about moving anaesthesiologists…. Is that to a salary? I didn’t quite get that.

[1:50 p.m.]

R. Orfaly: Yeah. Technically it’s a service contract, which a lot of people refer to as a salary. It’s not the employee model, but it’s still a set amount per year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, okay, but that was sort of different than the issue around efficiencies that you were talking about — or is it related?

R. Orfaly: Well, for any amount of money that you use for compensation, if you structure it on a fee-for-service model, even the ministry acknowledges that it promotes efficiency and productivity. If you take away that incentive, if you just say…. It’s like hiring a painter to paint your home. You can either pay them by the hour, or you can pay them to get the job done. What do you think is going to happen if you pay them by the hour?

B. D’Eith (Chair): They’re going to be there a lot longer.

R. Orfaly: Yeah. We’re actually saying, “Pay us for the results. If you want efficiency, pay us for the results,” but the province seems to be going in the opposite direction right now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, I get it.

Questions?

T. Redies: Further to your question, Bob, what’s driving the province to move in that direction that you’re talking about?

R. Orfaly: To be honest, I don’t understand what it is.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Now, you’d mentioned the $100 million in savings with efficiencies. I was just wondering: were there specific efficiencies that you felt are worth telling us about, so that we know about those?

R. Orfaly: I think the efficiencies have to come from the team at each site, because each site is going to have its own barriers to doing things more efficiently.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So the efficiencies are baked into the idea of having a holistic approach.

R. Orfaly: Correct. We actually feel that if you engage the front-line workers — that’s everyone from the surgeons, anaesthesiologists and nurses to the housekeeping staff and porters — they all see different parts of what’s going on. If you put them together in a room, they will find ways of doing it better. Every hospital is going to have its own issues that could be dealt with and could improve efficiency. We want to drive that.

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

Next up we have the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia — Dr. Michael Conlon.

If we can try to keep the comments to five minutes, we’d appreciate it. I know the last one went a bit over, but we managed to get it all in under ten, and it all worked.

CONFEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY FACULTY
ASSOCIATIONS OF B.C.

M. Conlon: Absolutely, fair enough. I’ll keep an eye….

Good afternoon. First of all, I’d like to send regrets on behalf of our president, Dr. Jacqueline Holler. Jacqueline was called away at the last minute to a family emergency in the Okanagan, so I’ll be presenting on behalf of the confederation today.

My name is Michael Conlon. I’m the executive director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia. We’re the provincial umbrella organization representing university faculty, librarians and archivists at B.C.’s research universities — UBC, SFU, UVic, UNBC and Royal Roads.

I’m delighted to be with you this afternoon to offer our priorities for the 2019-20 budget. We have three core areas we’d like to outline for you today. The good news is that only one of them involves new money.

Our first and most pressing priority is the implementation of the graduate scholarship program. As you all know, Premier Horgan made the historic announcement of the first-ever B.C. graduate scholarship program on May 16 at the B.C. Tech Summit.

Though we were delighted to see years of our lobbying for graduate scholarships end in success, I must say that our enthusiasm was tempered by the design of the program. The scholarships are limited to students studying in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM disciplines. To be candid, this policy repeats the error of previous governments by focusing on STEM programs to the exclusion of all other programs at B.C.’s research universities.

The policy rationale for this approach is thin. There is little to no evidence to suggest that these particular programs require special attention and funding, and governments of all stripes, in our view, are not particularly adept at picking winners in the labour market and directing funding to those specific disciplines based on short-term labour trends. It is our view that research universities, through their collegial governance processes, are best situated to outline areas of need, based on pedagogic and research needs of the institution.

I want to be clear here that we’re not saying that we’re opposed to funding for STEM programs per se; far from it. Rather, our position is that funding for B.C.’s research universities should be proportionate to the needs of disciplines rather than to the political trends of the day. I would also like to be clear that we do support the funding set aside in the graduate scholarship program for Indigenous and women graduate students in STEM programs. Unlike the block funding decision, there is ample evidence of the underrepresentation of women and Indigenous graduate students in these programs.

[1:55 p.m.]

In addition to suggesting a redesign for the eligibility of the program, we’re also calling for the government to honour its campaign commitment for a $50 million graduate program, set out in its costed platform. While we are grateful for the $12 million allocated in the Premier’s announcement, our understanding is that this money is not ongoing, and it is $38 million short of the commitment made during the campaign. It is our view that a graduate program costed at $50 million extended to all programs would make a remarkable difference in British Columbia’s attempt to attract and retain the very best graduate students.

Our second priority is a bold redesign of the knowledge development program. At the same tech summit that the Premier announced the graduate scholarships, he announced $125 million in new funding for the knowledge development program. We were, personally, quite surprised at how little media coverage this got. The graduate scholarships got substantial media coverage. An announcement of nearly ten times the amount got virtually no media coverage.

This is a remarkable investment, given the mounting fiscal pressures on the government. However, again, while we applaud the gesture, the execution of the program is wanting. As with the graduate scholarships, almost all the new funding went to vaguely defined tech programs. In addition, the knowledge development fund requires an external sponsor. In our view, many of the projects end up being indirect subsidies to industry.

Again, our point is not that such programs shouldn’t be funded, but there is virtually no evidence supporting the position that they should be funded exclusively. We were left disappointed at a missed opportunity for a bolder, more comprehensive approach to research in British Columbia. To that end, we would propose a radical redesign of the knowledge development program along the lines of the three federal granting agencies that fund research in the humanities, social sciences, engineering, natural sciences and medicine.

Our proposal would call for the entire budget of the KDF to be dedicated to a peer review system of grants for research that addresses the most pressing social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges facing British Columbians today. We feel that this would be far better value for British Columbians than the current KDF model, which only funds institutions and infrastructure, not actual research. We would be happy to discuss the details of our proposal with you further, but for now, I would point you to Quebec’s research funding agencies as the gold standard for a provincially funded research program.

Our final priority is the issue of free and fair collective bargaining in British Columbia. While I don’t have time to set out the full background, it is our position that the Public Sector Employers Council of British Columbia is an affront to both free and fair collective bargaining and the autonomy of research universities in British Columbia.

PSEC controls and manipulates all aspects of bargaining in the province. While we’ve had an opportunity to meet with PSEC, we would urge you in your advice to the Minister of Finance to support free and fair collective bargaining for British Columbia’s universities and ensure that whatever role PSEC does play in the upcoming round of bargaining, it is transparent, accountable and not merely an agent of employers in the province.

Thank you for your time this afternoon. I look forward to your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments in regards to keeping an open mind in terms of funding and STEM. I’m not sure that the drive is necessarily a trend so much as a demand from industry and companies saying: “We’re going to need, over the next ten years, tens of thousands of people working in those kinds of fields.” I wanted to allow you to comment on that. To me, it’s not like it’s just in a void. It’s not like the government is just pulling it out of a hat and saying: “We need to go for STEM.” It’s because, I think, a lot of industries are asking for that.

I’m just wondering if you wouldn’t mind commenting on that bit.

M. Conlon: Absolutely. That’s a fair point. What our analysis shows, and we’d be happy to share with you in a larger format, is that…. What we’ve done is look at various provinces, where other provinces have gone down this particular road. What we notice is that labour trends are notoriously difficult to predict. For example, we looked at Ontario as an example that poured a ton of money into computer science programs, only to see those programs under-enrolled at about a five-year cycle.

What we’re saying is that there are professional institutions that monitor labour trends, that monitor student demand for particular programs — which I think, at the end of the day, is what we’re talking about — that are a much more reliable gauge of where the labour market may be going than a particular government of the day. I think the current government and the previous government share a focus on tech. I understand that, but looking out and projecting over five to ten years….

If you actually do an analysis of how governments do at picking labour trends and where those labour trends end up and whether it was the best expenditure of public funding, governments don’t have a particularly good record in that regard because labour markets are unpredictable. It’s very difficult to predict the kinds of needs in industries. For some industries, it’s easier than others. Industries like tech are particularly difficult to predict.

[2:00 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Fair enough.

Questions?

Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it.

All right. Next up we have the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia — Maria Howard and Barbara Lindsay.

ALZHEIMER SOCIETY OF B.C.

M. Howard: Good afternoon. Thank you for having us come and share some ideas that we have with you today. We’d like to talk about dementia education for all British Columbians.

The mission of the Alzheimer Society of B.C. is a dementia-friendly community. That is a place where people who are living with dementia, who are impacted by dementia, can feel safe, acknowledged and not live in a world of fear. Whether that’s their family support, whether that’s support through other community care agencies or other community agencies that aren’t focused on care — such as transportation, libraries, the police, etc., or the general public — we all need to be educated on how to support people living with dementia.

We know that in B.C. over 70,000 people have a diagnosis of dementia. We know, through other data, that over 60 percent of people with a diagnosis of dementia live in the community. We also know, from a recent survey, that around 60 percent of British Columbians say they do not know how to help someone with dementia.

It reminds me of a story one of our families shared with me, whose mother lives on her own, in an apartment in the community, who has Alzheimer’s. She’s an older person but able to be in her community and still have a great quality of life.

One day she had to go to her doctor, and when she saw her doctor, he suggested that she have an adjustment of her medications and gave her a prescription for this. She headed out of the doctor’s office and headed off home, and as she was walking down the street, she looked at the piece of paper in her hand and wasn’t actually quite sure what that was. Because it had some numbers on it, she felt that perhaps she should go to the bank and deal with this transaction. When she went into the bank and gave the piece of paper to the teller, the teller sort of had a kind of a quizzical look on her face and said to her: “This is not a bank piece of paper. This is a prescription.”

What is wonderful about this story is at this point this story could go a number of different directions. The teller could’ve said, “The pharmacy is across the street,” or: “You need to phone your doctor.” But instead, the teller said: “Can I go phone your doctor and ask what this is?” The teller went. She phoned the doctor. The doctor said: “Yes, that is a prescription.” The teller said: “I will help her across the street to the pharmacy if you can phone her daughter and let her know what has happened.”

That’s exactly what happened. That teller went back to the client and said to her: “You know what? This is actually a script. You need to get it filled. The pharmacy is across the street. Let’s walk over there together. I’ve talked to your physician. He’s going to phone your daughter, and she’ll come help you.” That is what a dementia-friendly community is.

When I share that story with you…. That may seem like a really commonsense story, but if we go back to the data that I shared earlier, many people don’t know to do that at that moment in time.

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. already provides dementia education. We provide that to families through our First Link program. We train health care professionals in a dementia care program that we offer with SafeCare B.C., and we do a lot of general public training.

What we do need is a much more formalized on-line dementia care education platform that recognizes that people can’t just get to education at nine o’clock. They might want to go at five o’clock. They might come home in the evening and suddenly think they need to go somewhere to get some education. They need the support, whether it’s in their language, whether it’s in their cultural way, whether it’s specific to their issue. If they are 40 or if they’re 80, they need to have that access.

We know in B.C. there are some models that already work really well. We have FoodSafe. We have Serving It Right. We know there are models that people can go to for on-line education and have that basic level. Certainly, the support for an on-line education program has been advocated through the seniors advocate and through the continuing care agencies like B.C. Care Providers as well as the Ministry of Health. We have that model. We are rolling that model out, and it is getting great uptake, but it needs to be more formalized.

[2:05 p.m.]

I think it’s a partnership with the Alzheimer Society of B.C. and, certainly, the ministry — whether that’s Health or other ministries such as Education and a number of elements who actually fit into education — that can really make a difference for people living with dementia in the province.

It’s the right thing to do. When I hear that 60 percent of British Columbians don’t know how to help someone with dementia, I feel some urgency in this too.

I really appreciate, again, the time to bring up the conversations. We’ve been very appreciative of our partnership with the government. We look forward to continuing that and making a difference for people in B.C. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks. I’m just curious. Is this something that would also be helpful in K to 12 as part of the education system? Have you talked to the Ministry of Education about that at all? It’s only that I usually learn most of the things I know from my kids. When it comes to recycling or it comes to…. They often get really great information. They’ll come home with something on the fridge, and all of sudden, we’re all talking about it. I’m just wondering if that’s something that you’re looking at as well.

M. Howard: It’s a great question. I think the beauty of dementia education is that, at its basic, it really is basic education that can be applied for someone who’s five or someone who’s 85. The model really is to have standard documentation that can be, again, accessed on-line or turned into education sessions for high school or primary students.

Again, it also has to have a cultural bent, recognizing the diverse multiculturalism of B.C., so that the concept can also be translated into languages and cultures. Whether that’s for kids or for adults, it’s still very key.

T. Redies: Thanks, Maria and Barbara, for all the work that you do. This is, obviously, a very big issue for our society and likely to be one that’s increasing. That was actually my question. You mention in your materials that 70,000 people are currently living with dementia. What’s that expected to go to in, say, the next 20 years?

M. Howard: You know, it is growing, whether it’s provincially, globally or even nationally. The 70,000 is predicted, in the next 20 years, to probably double, with challenges around that. As other disease states are better managed, people are living longer.

We do certainly know, through research, that your risk of acquiring Alzheimer’s or another dementia doubles after the age of 80. By the time you are in your 90s, you have a one-in-two chance of having dementia. It’s a real issue, but we’re never too old to learn.

M. Dean: Thanks for all of your work and for coming here today. Can you just clarify for me…? So the Ministry of Health funds First Link. Does it cover all of the costs of that program? Is it secure for the upcoming years?

M. Howard: Thank you for that question. The First Link program is a cost-share program with the ministry and Alzheimer B.C. We do about a 50-50 split of the program, which has always been the model that we’ve followed. It’s the model that we continue to request of the ministry.

We have been having discussions with them about turning that annual funding request into a longer-term commitment, partnership, between the two entities. At this point in time, that has not yet been secured, but there certainly are promising discussions with the ministry as well as the minister.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I had a question about research. Maybe if you could just enlighten me. With the numbers of people with dementia increasing, how is the research in Alzheimer’s and dementia going in terms of treatments or cures or those types of things? Maybe if you could update that and whether or not your society is involved with research as well.

M. Howard: Certainly. Research is really important. It is what is going to move us forward. The Alzheimer Society of B.C. does support research. We have a national research program that we put funding into. We also have a professorship at UBC, Dr. Robin Hsuing, who we support.

You know, research is moving. The interesting thing about the brain — it’s complicated. The more we know, sometimes the less we know. I think what is, wonderfully, beginning to show in research is that, perhaps because Alzheimer’s…. There’s evidence of Alzheimer’s in the brain long before symptoms are actually demonstrated. We know that the two proteins that are part of Alzheimer’s can actually be in the brain in your 30s and 40s, although you may not show any symptoms until you’re in your 50s, 60s or 70s.

[2:10 p.m.]

The idea of setting up some type of a diagnostic is really important. They’re certainly working on that. We all are used to the concept of a mammogram or a colonoscopy. Maybe what they are trying to work on is a type of diagnostic that we would all take when we’re 40 or 50.

The other idea that’s beginning to take hold is some type of vaccination. Perhaps that is the concept. So maybe the world of research into Alzheimer’s…. While, again, a cure would be wonderful, maybe the idea is that people could still have Alzheimer’s but symptomology is controlled through vaccinations or special treatment. I think that is moving forward.

The one real challenge of research in Alzheimer’s is that they cannot get enough people to participate in clinical trials. Because of the stigma of the disease, there are still not enough people who are volunteering to come and participate. Without clinical trials, we cannot move research further. So the average wait time between research being ready to go to clinical trials and a number of people being identified is about a four- to five-year gap.

That’s why education, helping people understand about dementia, having people care, is so essential, even to move research forward. It really is tied together.

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

Next up we have Family Services of the North Shore — Laurie Kohl and Julia Staub-French.

Hi. How are you?

FAMILY SERVICES OF THE NORTH SHORE

J. Staub-French: Good afternoon. My name is Julia Staub-French, and I’m the executive director of Family Services of the North Shore. This is Laurie Kohl, our director of community and provincial programs.

A little bit about the agency. For over 60 years, Family Services of the North Shore has provided counselling support, education and volunteer engagement to over 9,000 individuals and families annually. Our low- or no-fee services are available to all residents of the city and district of North Vancouver, district of West Vancouver, Bowen Island and Lions Bay. We have 50 staff and 300 volunteers who work together to achieve our mission of a community where everyone can live full and meaningful lives.

We have provided you or are in the process of providing you with copies of our annual report and strategic plan, which reflects both the significant depth and breadth of services, which I could not tell you in five minutes — what we do. You have it there. As well in our strategic plan — the ambitious goals we set for ourselves over the next five years and beyond.

Our long-term vision for significant impact in our community and province is supported by a $1.9 million investment of the provincial government through contracted services with MCFD, Public Safety and Solicitor General, PHSA and community gaming grants. Thank you, first, for all of that long-standing support. Together with our funders, supporters and generous donors on the North Shore, we’re delivering $4.3 million of critical services to children and families each year.

Today we’re here to discuss and amplify the provincial government’s interest and commitment to early-years programming, to highlight the critical role that community-based organizations can play within the early years framework that you’ve created and to discuss a potential opportunity for increased partnership with our organization, which will actually demonstrate the critical focus of early-years programming.

Why Family Services of the North Shore? We currently operate three award-winning family resource programs across the North Shore. These are our I hope family centres, which are free drop-in programs where parents and caregivers can play, learn and connect with their children, ages zero to six, in a safe, welcoming environment. We support over 2,400 moms, dads, caregivers each year and have 24,000 visits to these centres. So the impact is significant.

Each of our programs is designed to nurture positive parent attachment, support healthy child development, provide social peer connection and ensure that the most vulnerable parents and children have access to the supports and services they need. Programs provide support for a variety of issues, including post-partum depression, parental stress and anxiety, domestic violence, substance misuse and childhood developmental delays, among many other things. You only have to be a parent to understand how very, very hard it is. I know many of you are.

[2:15 p.m.]

Trained staff, experienced childhood educators, clinical counsellors and health consultants are on site to provide critical screening and linkages to the health system, community supports and mental health services. Our I hope family centre in Maplewood provides supports and resources for families of the Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations through our Takaya program.

Total annual costs for part-time operating hours — part-time meaning 24,000 visits are still happening, but not opening full-time all day — are over $300,000 annually. We fundraise $150,000 of these costs, so our donors are true partners with government and with our organization to support these families.

In the spring of 2018, we conducted a comprehensive research-based needs assessment as part of our strategic plan, with the goal to increase access to 50 percent of all parents in our community. We estimate that we would need an additional investment of at least $300,000 per year to meet this goal. So we’d have to double what we’re already doing right now.

We must ensure that all vulnerable families and our communities have no barriers to access to support — so at no cost. We know that the provincial government, through leadership at MCFD, has created a new early years framework with these important goals: supporting the well-being of children and families, barrier-free access and clear pathways to enhance supports.

These goals have been embedded in our programming at our I hope family centres and other programs for decades. We appreciate the focus on a whole family and community approach. We believe it is important for government and a community-based organization like ours to work closely together to achieve these goals.

As you are aware, a new provincial government RFP process is launching this fall to support 13 geographic service delivery regions. We feel that with our clearly aligned goals and our well-formulated strategic plan, we can play a role in helping the government achieve its objectives. With $300,000 in additional annual sustained funding, we would already be able to scale our successful family resource programs and pilot a new government framework to test or refine the delivery model.

We look to enhance and leverage other funding and donor support as part of this effort. Just to give you a sense — the money that we get, just for early-years services, is from MCFD, through that stream, and is about $12,000. So we have to put all that together, from very creative ways, to create the $300,000 of funding — which we do, because we prioritized it. So we’re unique. I just want to say we’re very unique in that way. We’d love to have you out for a visit, anyone who’d like to come.

As you contemplate funding for early-years services within the 2019 budget, we would encourage you to put a gender equity lens on the funding formula for staffing these services that are primarily delivered by women. If we are truly to create change for these vulnerable families, we need to attract qualified staff who are able to stay and grow in positions over many years. We’d be willing to provide more information on this — wages, recruitment, retention and staff feedback — as needed.

We’re committed to making deep and lasting impacts in our community. Together, Family Services North Shore and the province of British Columbia have the potential to create more positive connections and supports for vulnerable parents during this very critical time of their lives.

Thank you for the opportunity. Any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. I didn’t push. We’re over about two minutes. We’re at about six minutes and 30. But that’s okay.

J. Staub-French: Thank you for that, at the beginning.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

M. Dean: Just a quick question. Are you member of any of the provincial associations? Your range of services would mean that you could have like a dozen.

J. Staub-French: I actually sit on the board of the Federation of Community Social Services, so you know, some of this is part of that larger strategy.

I think what I wanted to make sure that we highlighted was the unique way that organizations, even despite not having specific funding for family resource programs that are as much as we need in the community…. We’re already doing some of those things. So as, you know, you begin to put money in through this RFP process, we want to make sure you can look to our experience and say: “How are you doing it? What are the parents…?”

It’s really successful, but it’s taken years of developing that. And it’s going to take people a long time to start that up in early-years centres.

The other thing I just want to get in is that I really appreciate the focus in the framework on mental health, violence, addictions — these things. You can talk to our….

[2:20 p.m.]

We have wonderful leads for MCFD in our community with Sarah James and Diane Livingstone, who really get the fact that substance abuse, domestic violence and mental health issues are critical issues. We don’t need apps for parents to get to appointments on time; we need real supports for parents who are struggling. Parenting in itself is stressful enough, and then you add on other factors — poverty, and all these other issues. Those families have significant barriers to raising healthy children.

So prevention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. Just in terms of the Finance Committee in our role and RFP processes and things like that, it would probably be difficult for us to weigh in on an RFP process because that’s already under a ministerial purview. But certainly some of the recommendations around the strategic plan, generally, and how you can interface, I just wanted to…. If you don’t see anything in the report, it may well be just because we can’t really step on those toes, so to speak.

J. Staub-French: I totally understand. That’s why we put the ask in that context, knowing that the RFP will be coming out. What I think is critical is that the RFP not be $50,000 per community but it be significant, a significant investment.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Thank you for clarifying.

J. Staub-French: Just with us, we already have a program. We’re willing to put money into it. We’re looking at, like, $300,000. Yeah, it should be $1 million per community if we’re really going to do something.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I understand. Thank you for the clarification.

J. Staub-French: I had to get that in the record. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, good. You did.

Next up I’m going to do a little break, a recess — just a short one.

The committee recessed from 2:21 p.m. to 2:27 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Teachers Federation — Teri Mooring and Michal Rozworski.

Thank you so much. The floor is yours.

B.C. TEACHERS FEDERATION

T. Mooring: I’m Teri Mooring, and I’m the first vice-president of the B.C. Teachers Federation. I’m very pleased to be here today to present to you our priorities regarding the 2019 provincial budget.

The BCTF represents 43,000 teachers and associated professionals in public schools across B.C. Our brief to this committee is focused on recommendations that would make the necessary and pressing improvements to the public education that have been denied for far too long. You have the entire brief before you, so I’m just going to highlight priority areas.

Firstly, we’ve long advocated for the need for adequate, stable and predictable systemwide funding. After 15 years of neglect, B.C. has an opportunity to make the necessary investments that will put our public education system on a stable footing. Unfortunately, today’s K-to-12 system remains chronically underfunded.

While teachers have been pleased to see several important announcements on capital funding, there has been little change to the long-term austerity pattern in operating funds for public education. Nearly all increases in funding over the past two years have been driven by pre-existing commitments, enrolment growth, the Supreme Court settlement or contractual obligations. The Premier’s mandate letter made clear that substantial increases in funding were necessary.

[2:30 p.m.]

Secondly, education funding must be responsive and proportional to the real identified needs of classrooms, schools and school districts. Tying funding to the actual costs and resource needs of running schools gets districts away from the excessive cost control enforced by the current formula, one too reliant on abstract per-pupil funding.

We’re also calling for an investment in classroom resources. While the redesigned curriculum is already in use in most classrooms, the implementation process has been dramatically under-resourced. For too many years, public schools around the province have been making do with broken equipment, incomplete sets of books, outdated textbooks and antiquated equipment in shops and lab classes. Teachers cannot be left on their own to develop new resources, nor should parents be fundraising for resources or equipment or, worse still, teachers paying out of pocket.

Recent discussions with the Ministry of Education about both classroom resources and support for curriculum implementation have been positive but need to be backed by sustained, multi-year funding commitments to ensure success. Here, we see three priorities informed by our recent BCTF survey of members.

The first is to procure and develop a wide range of accurate, up-to-date and culturally appropriate teaching resources that reflect the diversity of the First Nations of B.C. and Indigenous peoples across Canada. The Premier’s mandate letter also highlights this priority.

The second is accurate, up-to-date, LGBTQ-inclusive teaching resources for the revised sexual health curriculum. Not only is the need significant, but the availability of such materials is potentially of great consequence for youth. Their lack has the potential to put students at significant risk.

Thirdly, there is a particular need for resources for French education, especially that align with the new curriculum. There should be no inequity between the quality of education in either of Canada’s official languages.

Success in implementing a new curriculum, however, goes beyond the availability of resources. Professional learning time for teachers is equally important. Given the scale of the curriculum change in B.C., professional learning should be taken very broadly and include additional non-instructional days, a wide variety of teacher-led professional development and employer-provided in-service in all regions of the province. There must be dedicated funds for this.

Another area I’d like to highlight is support for full, meaningful inclusion. B.C.’s public education system has a commitment to inclusion based on the principle that all students — including those with diverse physical, cognitive, cultural and linguistic needs — are fully participating members of a community of learners. Currently, B.C.’s school districts receive, in special education supplemental grants, an average of just 58 percent of what they spend on special education. This mismatch creates either pressures to ration special education services or the need to redirect funds from other areas with their own pressing needs.

The legacy of chronic underfunding inherited from the previous government needs to be durably rectified. Otherwise, we risk continuing to see the exodus of students with special needs from the public education system.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Teri, I can see from where we’re going that it’s going to be very difficult to get through your presentation in five minutes.

T. Mooring: I’m on my last point. I’m just highlighting a few things. I’m not going through everything.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are you? Because I saw a lot of recommends…. Okay, I just wanted to have time for questions. That’s all. Thank you.

T. Mooring: Lastly, another pressure on B.C.’s public education system is an increasing demand for teachers and critical personnel shortages. According to provincial labour market projections, B.C. schools will require more than 17,000 new teaching staff over the next decade. Numerous school districts are already reporting significant chronic shortages of teachers teaching on call, as well as general and specialist teachers. Some districts, particularly in the Interior and northern regions, have significant numbers of retired teachers working as TTOCs, and provincewide there is currently a record number of uncertified instructors employed on letters of permission — four times the usual amount.

As of this week, there are 400 teaching jobs listed on the Make a Future website, and this does not take into account the acute TTOC shortage. It’s concerning to be short of so many teachers in mid-October.

There are a number of ways to address these needs. In December 2017, the Education Minister’s Task Force on Immediate Recruitment and Retention Challenges released an extensive set of recommendations. Only a handful have been implemented to date.

I’ve highlighted just a few areas of the report. There is a lot more there, as you can see. We also have included footnotes of evidence that kind of backs up what our positions are. I look forward to your questions.

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

Questions from the committee?

[2:35 p.m.]

We’ve been getting…. I appreciate all the work that’s been done. I’m not trying to take away from that, but when we’re talking about curriculum…. Post-secondary has presented to us a lot. A number of the students, faculty and universities have talked about open textbooks or open learning and trying to get away from…. It’s because of the cost and also for the students.

Now, I know that’s different in the public school system because textbooks…. But I’m just wondering: has there been any discussion about a similar type of movement within the public school system?

T. Mooring: Yes, absolutely. There need to be a variety of resources. Some of them are on line. Sometimes we also actually need textbooks. One of the issues is access to the Internet in different regions of the province. If you are too reliant on line…. Quite frankly, we just don’t have the infrastructure in place right now for that to be really accessible everywhere in the province. But absolutely, we’re having those….

B. D’Eith (Chair): I thought it was an accessibility issue, but it just…. I know my kids, for the first two months, didn’t have textbooks, and they were having to share. Like: “How are you going to learn this course?” “I don’t know” — that’s what I get from them.

T. Mooring: Or really outdated textbooks, but it’s also science equipment. It’s also PE equipment. It’s just the basic necessities of a public education system that are really needed.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The other big thing we’ve seen — this is a theme — this year, of course, is special needs — special needs kids and the lack of resources for special needs.

We also met with principals and vice-principals. Some of them are not able to have their expertise used because they can’t teach, because there’s sort of a line between teachers and vice-principals and principals.

T. Mooring: Well, a lot of principals do teach. They have a percentage of their job that they teach at.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, I appreciate that. But just the way that the…. There are two different ways that they’re compensated. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that it seems to me that the special needs situation is critical — at least, certainly from what we’re hearing. I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the federation and what you see as the needs there.

T. Mooring: Absolutely. What we saw when our contract language was stripped was a real reduction in specialty teachers that were working with students with special needs, in particular, and larger classes. With the restoration of our language, we’re starting to see some positives happening in the system, but we still need to see a lot more. We’re in the situation where we’re going to need….

What’s happening right now, basically, is that many students have left the public education system. We’re seeing a real increase…. You’re going to see in your brief an increase in DL courses, where students with special needs access these DL courses instead of remaining in the public system.

There are a variety of reasons why that happens, but ultimately, it’s because their needs aren’t being met in the public education system. We’re seeing, with our contract language coming back, an improvement, but we’re still seeing that not being complete, just with the shortage of teachers. We’re so short of teachers right now that what’s happening is resource teachers and other non-enrolling teachers who would provide services to students with special needs are being pulled from their jobs to go into a classroom because the needs of a classroom are really significant.

We’ve talked to parents. In some cases, their students are being asked to stay home rather than attend school on a particular day if there’s an absence. That’s not okay. We don’t see grade 3 students being asked to stay home because there isn’t a teacher there in place to teach their class that day.

The impact of the underfunding…. Well, not underfunding but just, right now, the lack of teachers — and underfunding — is having a more dramatic impact on special needs education than it is in other areas.

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

S. Cadieux: I just have a question from that, Teri. Can you explain to me how you can say that? In my office, what I’m hearing from parents of kids with special needs is that in fact, as a result of the changes, their students are receiving less services than they previously received in terms of support in the classroom.

[2:40 p.m.]

Most kids with special needs get support in the classroom. Some require special teaching and/or…. Some will be pulled out for a period of time to get some special assistance with teaching or special classes or whatever. But a lot of their work is done in the classroom with all the other kids. What’s lacking is student support, like SEAs, who are not teachers. Can you explain how you see that coming to be fixed through this process?

T. Mooring: Yeah, there is a shortage of EAs as well. You’re absolutely right about that. Specialty teachers often do provide support for students and teachers in classrooms. You’re absolutely right. Inclusion means that students are in classes with their peers whenever possible, and there are a variety of things that happen there.

What we’re seeing is the lack of availability of the specialty teachers, so not every teacher is specialized in the various needs of the students in their classrooms. So there is a real need for specialty teachers still. We saw a reduction of specialty teachers over the last number of years, and now they are starting to be hired again, because the ratios are back in place.

There is a real pressing need for that specialty still, to support teachers in programming, to support parents and to support students directly in classrooms, and sometimes it’s to pull students out and support them that way as well. There are a variety of things that happen in a school. Having a resource teacher and your learning specialist teacher is critical.

R. Leonard: My question is around the issue of pulling kids out of the classroom. Is the priority of the BCTF to include them in the classroom?

T. Mooring: Yeah, absolutely. There are various things that happen. Our position is full inclusion, fully supported inclusion, which means that sometimes classes have to be smaller in order for all students to get the attention that they need.

There are a variety of issues that happen, as you can imagine, in schools where students might need to be out for a certain period of time. But I would say that’s more rare. Your typical situation is that students are in classes receiving support in their classrooms from their teacher, from the specialist teacher, from a speech pathologist — various professionals that are there to support them.

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

Next up we have SHARE Family and Community Services Society — Claire MacLean.

If we could try and keep your comments to about five minutes, I’d appreciate it.

SHARE FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
SERVICES SOCIETY

C. MacLean: Thank you so much for having me here today. My name’s Claire MacLean. I’m the CEO of SHARE Family and Community Services Society. I do have a handout that summarizes who we are as SHARE and our 40 years’ experience in the Tri-Cities and the long list of services we provide.

What I really wanted to do today was tell you a little bit of a story that hopefully illustrates some of the things that we’re advocating for. I wanted to tell you about Maya and Sami. Maya and Sami — Sami is her two year old son — are refugees who recently arrived in the Tri-Cities and showed up at the door of our food bank.

From there, we introduced them to one of our parent-child playgroups that we run, one of our family-parent resource programs. At the playgroup, Sami really struggled to get along with other kids. He was really crying quite a bit, hitting and crying out, and Maya really struggled to let him even out of arms reach. Yet at the same time, she seemed quite detached from him — rarely speaking with our staff, rarely chatting with the other parents or even Sami himself.

As the weeks went by, Maya and Sami kept coming to our playgroup, which was really encouraging, but they also began to look less well cared for. Sami’s frustration really seemed to be growing at the same time that Maya’s apathy really seemed to be increasing as well.

As part of our approach, SHARE really strives to employ people that reflect the diversity of the community that we serve, so we were really lucky that one of our staff at that playgroup is a refugee herself. She took the opportunity to talk with Maya about her experience fleeing violence and having to start from scratch in a new community. For that very first time, Maya started to share her deep-seated fear and anxiety with our team.

[2:45 p.m.]

We started small, and we asked how we could help. Much to our staff’s surprise, Maya suggested that we throw a birthday party for Sami. We said sure. We really didn’t want to lose that opportunity. We asked when, and she said tomorrow. As you can imagine, with most refugee children, they’ve never celebrated their own birthdays. They often don’t know when their birthdays are, so this was really a golden opportunity.

Staff threw things together. They got decorations. They got treats for the kids. They got a gift for Sami. The next day Maya and Sami showed up, and for the first time, they were in fresh clothes. Their hair was freshly washed. Maya started chatting with some of the other parents as we set up for the party. It was a hit, as anything with potato chips is for kids.

At the next playgroup, we were able to introduce Maya to our speech-language pathologist, who also drops in on that program. Maya consented for Sami to join our early intervention therapy program so we could start to work on his language delay. Some weeks later, Maya also got hooked up with our counselling services so that she could start to work on her own anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress, really.

My point is that at SHARE Society, we don’t see Maya and Sami as a food bank client. We don’t see them as a client of our early intervention therapy program or of our counselling program or a refugee family or a delayed child. We see them as all of those things and more. We also know that there are many aspects of them that we haven’t seen yet.

When we can see that strength and that uniqueness in everyone that we serve and we can match that with a service model that really is tailored to the needs of each individual in their community, that’s when we see that true progress. That’s when we see that trust and that progress really move forward for some of these most complex folks to serve. Support for social service agencies like SHARE is really critical to making sure that these folks are successful in our communities.

I know that you also need something concrete. What I am suggesting today is a few things. One is that you allow for more community-based contract deliverables. What I mean by that is that…. Absolutely, we need to have transparent and efficient use of public funds. That’s paramount. But we can do that without insisting on contracts that dictate the type of professionals that need to be hired or the exact service model that needs to be delivered, be it group or individual or those kinds of things. We need to really respect the expertise of the local agency and allow for that individualized approach to service so that we can get the kinds of outcomes that we’re talking about and that we’re seeing with folks like Maya and Sami.

The second thing that I would ask for is to resource social service agencies appropriately so that we can provide these services. This means things like an IT budget that reflects 2018 costs of cybersecurity and equipment and electronic client records. It means supporting staff beyond the front lines. So we have HR and quality assurance and management and finance staff so that we can run an efficient and high-quality organization. It means providing us with sufficient operating budgets so that we can really match the rental and the occupancy costs in our region.

Finally, I would just say that we really appreciate the partnership that government has shown to social service agencies like us over the years, and we would really welcome that partnership to continue. I think there are lots of opportunities, for the really complex problems that are facing the province, to look at piloting things in agencies like our own so that we can get you the data you need to then roll things out on a more provincial scale.

That’s what I would ask for. I appreciate your time very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Claire. We appreciate that.

In regards to the contracts…. This is just more a thought. I know that sometimes, on the other side, when it comes to service agreements and things like that, we get push-back in regards to qualifications and things like that. I know, at least…. Let’s say in child care. I hear that all the time from people coming into my constituency office. “How do we know how qualified people are, and what are the qualifications, and all that?”

I’m wondering. How could the government balance the flexibility that you need with the ability for the public to be confident that the people that are serving them have the qualifications?

C. MacLean: I’d say two things. One is that if you take an outcome-based approach, then it matters less, I would suggest, what the name and the title are on a piece of paper. If instead you allow us to demonstrate to you not just that we saw X number of kids or that we decreased wait times but that we achieved better developmental outcomes for this many number of kids, then I think…. That allows us to hold that accountability.

[2:50 p.m.]

You look at someone like a Maya and Sami family. They might connect a lot more with that staff person who’s not a regulated health professional. They might actually be the conduit for a lot of therapy — with the supervision of the speech-language pathologist, certainly, but maybe not directly because they don’t have that relationship. Allowing for a team approach could be really vital for families like that.

Again, part of it is about focusing on an outcome-based deliverable versus just the set pieces. For some of it, it is a balance. I mean, I think there are certain professions that you need a regulated health professional for, for example. But you don’t necessarily need to dictate the FTE numbers for it or things like that. That’s certainly something we see and experience.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Questions?

Well, thank you very much for your presentation and everything you do for the community. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have the Business Council of British Columbia — Ken Peacock.

BUSINESS COUNCIL OF B.C.

K. Peacock: As usual, I’ve got lots of material, so I’ll jump in. Today I just want to give you a high-level overview of our written commentary. I encourage the committee to go through our written submission, because I won’t be able to cover all the points in there.

I just want to start off and talk a little bit about the economic backdrop, as we see it. The B.C. economy is on a solid growth footing, looking pretty good. But I would like to underscore and draw attention to the fact that we are going to see a slowdown in 2019. There’s already evidence of that, evidence of it slowing down this year. We expect slower growth in 2018 compared to 2017. The economy in B.C. expanded by 3.9 percent last year. We think it’s going to grow by around 2.3 percent this year and maybe a little bit of an uptick next year as a result of LNG.

The U.S. economy is still in good shape. The global economy is helping underpin that growth story. The main reason that we expect a slowdown — and, like I was mentioning, there is some evidence of it already — is because of the pullback in this sort of residential housing complex, which has been a major, major economic engine in British Columbia and, more specifically, in the Lower Mainland region. As interest rates go up, some of the tax measures that have been put in place take effect and some clamping down of capital outflows from China. All are adding up to dampen the real estate sector. We think that’s going to have a pullback.

There’s already some evidence of a slowdown in consumer spending, automobiles in particular, but you do see a drop-off in sales activity in housing-related segments of consumer expenditures.

Another thing I would like to draw attention to is the labour market. Very, very strong job growth in B.C. for a couple of years. But now we’ve seen employment growth level off. A lot of the reason for that is there simply aren’t enough people to hire. The unemployment rate in B.C. is now below 5 percent. It actually came in at 4.2 percent in the most recent reading. Employers are having a terrible, terrible time finding enough people. This is really becoming an issue. We anticipate that it’s going to get more intense and that these skill shortages are going to become more of an issue as we move forward. It’s something just to draw attention to. It’s going to be increasingly complicated finding enough people to complete large projects, etc.

Some of the priorities I’d like to highlight, from our perspective, for Budget 2019. First and foremost, we think it’s important to be mindful of the cumulative impact of some of the tax and policy changes that have been put in place over the last year, over the last two years and even over the last five years.

If you look back at the tax increases that have taken place over those past five years, there have been two corporate income tax increases. The government, in its 2017 budget, introduced the employer health tax. That kicks in at the beginning of next year. The carbon tax is going up. Back in 2013, we did return to the PST, which was the biggest increase in business taxes in provincial history. If you add all these up, there’s about an additional $5 billion that businesses will pay in fiscal 2019-20 relative to what they would have paid if these taxes had not been increased.

[2:55 p.m.]

On top of that, there’s a fairly significant increase in the regulatory world. Regulations have been increased. There’s complexity if you’re operating on a land base related to First Nations issues. It is becoming increasingly complex to do business and, in particular, build large projects in the province. We think it’s important to draw attention to that.

As I said, we recommend refraining from further tax increases. We do have a recommendation in there that talks about the PST and easing the burden on businesses from PST that is applied on business inputs, particularly machinery and equipment. It’s currently the case that machinery and equipment used in manufacturing and the resource sector are exempt from the PST. We think that should be broadened out.

One possible candidate that we encourage the committee to take a look at would be heavy-duty trucks, the trucking industry. If we could get that fleet rolled over, it would be more efficient. It would reduce carbon emissions and help keep costs down in the trucking sector. We think that’s a place that the committee could look to in terms of broadening out PST exemptions.

We think it’s also important to develop a framework to shield our exporters from the carbon tax. B.C. has the highest carbon tax in North America, and other jurisdictions that have put carbon taxes or carbon-pricing frameworks in place have developed mechanisms to protect their exporters from the burden of higher carbon taxes. This is a significant issue for our large exporters, who are largely in the resource and the resource-processing space, with many, many millions of dollars — hundreds of millions of dollars — spent on the carbon tax. Competitors in other jurisdictions do not face that burden.

I see I’m up against my five minutes, so I’ll just hit upon a couple of other recommendations.

Human capital. We draw attention to the personal income tax rate. The top marginal rate in B.C. is now pushing up to 50 percent. It’s significantly lower in Washington state, a little bit lower in Alberta. We encourage the committee to recommend no further increases in personal income tax rates.

Infrastructure. The Business Council is fully supportive of additional infrastructure projects. In particular, the Massey crossing needs to get done. Just thinking about all the congestion in the Lower Mainland, that’s an important project.

A final note before I will take questions. It relates to the sequencing of large infrastructure projects. Yes, we are in favour of infrastructure. We think it needs to be built — schools, hospitals and the like. But with this shortage of skills and the availability of labour, it might be time for the government to look seriously at sequencing out some of these larger projects, staging them out, prioritizing and really taking a hard look at where the source of labour for building these construction projects might be, with the economy basically operating at full capacity.

Just two quick final thoughts. We recommend continuing to balance the budget — the province has a solid fiscal framework; the books are in good shape — as long as the economy continues to grow at a real pace, and keeping the debt-to-GDP ratio low, which it currently is, at 15.3 percent. We have a recommendation to keep it below 20 percent. So there is some wriggle room there if there were some additional capital projects or other spending that the government wanted to embark on. That’s about it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your comments and thoughts on everything. It’s nice to get a good summary of that. We have had presentations in regards to PST on equipment, heavy equipment and things like that.

Talking about the infrastructure and phasing, I can understand it from the labour point of view, but there are a lot of projects that communities are screaming for. I could see that that would be a difficult thing to do in some respects. I appreciate the thought around labour and this labour shortage, but I think that’s partially remedied by ramping up our post-secondary and trying to get to that labour pool. There are a lot of challenges. We appreciate you articulating those.

Any questions?

T. Redies: Ken, you kind of alluded to it, but I wonder if you could speak to the most recent round of tax changes in the United States and how that’s impacting the B.C. economy — in particular, your members.

K. Peacock: Sure. We hear this a fair bit around our table and with members. The tax cuts in the U.S. are a big move, obviously. It’s less so at the personal level, but in terms of corporate income taxes, it’s a big move. Essentially, what it did was eliminate the Canadian advantage. For many, many years, Canada could play the card that we had lower statutory tax rates. There’s a bunch of other factors with respect to competitiveness, but at least that printed statutory rate was lower. That has now been eliminated.

[3:00 p.m.]

What we are particularly hearing a lot from members, and what concerns us most, is the ability for companies in the U.S. to fully expense capital investment in one year. Up here, it’s depreciated over a number of years. If you’re allowed to depreciate it all in one year, that really provides a big incentive to invest in machinery and equipment. Machinery and equipment are what, at the end of the day, drive productivity and wage growth over time. We think that’s important.

Labour shortage environment. Businesses are going to have to substitute towards capital, so again, you would encourage that process to be more efficient if you eliminated or reduced the tax burden for investing in capital. The landscape has shifted. More and more, we’re hearing that companies looking to deploy large amounts of capital are going to do so south of the border. The free trade negotiations and fiasco didn’t help. That was a little bit of a temporary hiccup, but it just creates additional uncertainty.

If you look at the aggregate data at the national level — it’s more difficult to get provincial data — it is clear that foreign direct investment is dropping steadily each year, and you’ve heard CEOs of big companies articulate that in the media. It’s definitely something to pay attention to.

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

K. Peacock: I’ve got six seconds left.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well done. Thanks so much.

Next up we have Tsawwassen First Nation — Chief Bryce Williams.

TSAWWASSEN FIRST NATION

B. Williams: Haychka. [hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ was spoken.] Good afternoon. My name is Chief Bryce Williams from Tsawwassen First Nation. I’m honoured to be here this afternoon to say a few words about Tsawwassen’s experience as a modern treaty nation and about our efforts to gain access to pooled borrowing under the First Nations Fiscal Management Act.

As many of you know, Tsawwassen is a leading example of the progress that is possible when First Nations reclaim their inherent right of self-government and use it to achieve growth and development on their own terms. In our case, once our treaty came into effect in 2009, we began pursuing an ambitious economic development agenda. Using our law-making authority, we implemented a rigorous, municipal-style regulatory system. We designed land use rules that are familiar to developers, and we registered our lands in the provincial land title system. These decisions were made to provide certainty and attract investment, and we’re proud of the results.

In 2014, we signed an agreement with Ivanhoé Cambridge for development of the Tsawwassen Mills retail mall. It was the largest real estate deal in the province that year, and we believe it was the largest non-resource agreement ever signed by a First Nation in Canada. We also have leased over 100 acres of industrial land for warehousing and logistics, leveraging our proximity to the Roberts Bank superport, one of the busiest ports in our country. Also, you may have heard the exciting announcement two weeks ago that Amazon is opening a new fulfilment centre on Tsawwassen lands. Many of our members are also pursuing residential development opportunities, partnering with world-class developers to build thousands of new housing units on Tsawwassen lands.

Together these projects are generating thousands of new jobs — far more than can be filled by Tsawwassen members alone — and new tax revenue for Tsawwassen, B.C. and Canada. To facilitate all of this development, we have invested at least $60 million in infrastructure. This translates into nearly $14,000 per member per year since the treaty. B.C., by comparison, spends $961 per capita on infrastructure per year.

Unlike Indian Act bands, which can borrow under the Fiscal Management Act, and local governments, which have access to the Municipal Finance Authority, Tsawwassen and other modern treaty nations have no way of accessing low-cost borrowing to finance our infrastructure. As a result, our infrastructure investments are financed through loans from a commercial bank. Although we have a strong relationship with our lender, we still face higher rates and greater risk — risk that we bear alone, as a self-governing nation.

We’re a strong and ambitious nation, and we have been able to pursue the path of private lending, but the risk is unsustainable and, frankly speaking, inequitable, given the type of borrowing other public governments are able to embark upon. Being able to access low-cost pooled borrowing is critical to Tsawwassen First Nation’s vision to make further investments in our community. We badly need affordable housing for our members, new facilities for our youth and elders and space for our growing government. We continue to overcome the infrastructure deficit we inherited from decades of underinvestment while we were governed under the Indian Act.

[3:05 p.m.]

We know that our treaty partners, B.C. and Canada, are committed to the vision enshrined in the treaty to build a strong, self-sufficient community where our members can flourish and pursue the same opportunities as other Canadians. As such, we continue to work with Canada, B.C. and the financial institutions here this evening to bring about the legislative amendments that will allow us to borrow in the same way that Indian Act bands and municipalities can.

I’m optimistic that we are close to the finish line. With your support, I am confident that we can implement a solution that will enable modern treaty nations and all British Columbians to continue realizing the benefits that can be unlocked through the treaty process.

Haychka. Thank you.

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

P. Milobar: Thank you for the presentation. Correct me if I’m wrong; I could have a misunderstanding here. My understanding was that your nation does participate, partially, with the regional district, and all MFA borrowing goes through regional districts.

They’re also saying that you can’t access with the borrowing of MFA through the regional district, if I’m understanding correctly. So is it a regulatory change that needs to happen provincially or federally to get you to the borrowing areas within MFA or within the province? Do you know?

B. Williams: I believe both, but more so provincially, I think.

Interjection.

B. D’Eith (Chair): He’s got to go. Okay.

B. Williams: I’ll take a couple of quick questions, and then I’ve got to go.

T. Redies: Thanks, Chief Williams. Nice to see you again.

We were also speaking up at UBCM about the George Massey Tunnel situation. I just wondered, with the Amazon location, etc., is that going to exacerbate the situation there for you to be able to make sure that you can realize the full potential of the industrial buildout of the Tsawwassen First Nation?

B. Williams: Yeah, I would think so, definitely. With all of our development on the go, there would definitely be a need for a solution at the crossing there. I’m definitely looking forward to when that solution comes to the table and when everybody is made aware of that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do you have time for one more question?

B. Williams: Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just in regard to housing, is there anything with the new policy on provincial housing that might help the people on your lands in terms of social housing or housing needs at all?

B. Williams: I’m not too sure on that question at the moment. I’d have to get back to you on that one.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming in.

B. Williams: Excellent. Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia — Theresa McCurry.

APPLIED SCIENCE TECHNOLOGISTS
AND TECHNICIANS OF B.C.

T. McCurry: My name is Theresa McCurry. I’m the CEO of Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of B.C. We are celebrating 60 years in business here. We were given the right to govern in 1985, with the ASTT Act. Our mission is to serve the public by regulating and supporting technology professionals; commitment to a safe, healthy and sustainable society and environment. We’re made up of over 10,000 members that work in 18 disciplines and nine technical areas. This makes us one of the largest professional associations in British Columbia.

With the growing provincial focus on jobs, responsiveness to careers — for First Nations, people with diverse abilities, youth, women and new immigrants — in technology is a key component to the future success of technology professionals in B.C. I’m sure you probably don’t know much about technologists. I’m just going to make the ask real quick, and then hopefully, there are a couple of questions. I’ve got three asks. We’re currently doing a research study right now in diverse abilities, and I will come back with regard to some asks on that.

[3:10 p.m.]

We’ve got some really interesting research coming out where we’re developing a framework that looks at a variety of disabilities and which firms can do what type of work in engineering and applied science. I’ll be happy to share that — hopefully, a preview next year.

My first ask is focusing on increasing the number of technologists and technicians to improve innovation. Right now we’re seeing an increase in degrees in post-secondary schools. The associate degrees, or the one-to-two-year degrees, are diminishing. The coursework is diminishing. This is difficult for those who are not in the Lower Mainland because, of course, we’re having to come down here because of the lack of opportunities in the Kootenays, on the Island and up north.

It’s also impacting those immigrants who come, who are actually going through our website and doing their competency assessment before they land. A lot of times they need one or two bits of coursework, and we’re finding that that coursework is just not there right now. Either we’re having to develop it — which is not what we’re here for, but we are, because this is important — or we’re trying to find some newer types of partnerships with post-secondary schools.

What I’m asking for is to ensure financial and manpower changes at post-secondary institutions throughout B.C. to ensure growth, to support internationally trained technologists and new graduates in accessing experiential learning and to support the creation and funding of an awareness campaign that will support the findings of our research project into appropriate positions, as I said, for those with diverse abilities.

My second request is to consider enhancing math, science and reading skills for First Nations children who are home-schooled. ASTTBC has created the First Nations Career Council, with a focus to empower First Nations, Métis and Inuit people to achieving rewarding careers in applied science. What we found is that 57 percent of Indigenous children who live on reserve are home-schooled up until grade 7.

At present, there are no metrics available to ensure that students are receiving adequate instruction in math, science and reading. So we’re asking that the government support the creation of on-reserve virtual classrooms staffed with education assistants for all home-school classes. This will be a lower-cost alternative for those reserves with Internet access and promote a rapid response for those who are still waiting.

Third request. As I said, we have technical specialists. One of them is underground utility locators. We’re asking that the government make it a legal requirement that people seek to identify underground utilities. Right now, we are seeing that there are approximately 2,000 documented hits to underground infrastructure here in B.C. every year.

It is a cost. It’s a small industry, but I think if we start requiring that this work is done, not just advertising for it on the radio and the news and whatnot, we’ll make some real headway that way and save not only the infrastructure costs but the frustrations to those people in B.C.

That’s it.

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

I’m wondering, in terms of the underground infrastructure. If you make it a statutory obligation, how far would you want to go with it in terms of…? Look, if someone’s digging a hole in their backyard versus a development, how far do you see that going?

T. McCurry: I think at the minimum, a development should absolutely be required.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And right now they’re not.

T. McCurry: They’re not. That’s right, as I understand it. Eventually, I would like to be able to see easy access for homes to be able to access these individuals. It is not costly, and I’d be happy to try to get some numbers to you, if you’re interested in that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah. I was just curious, because I could see…. We’ve had a number of presentations in regards to increased costs for construction and things like that. So this might be another increased cost to construction. If there are going to be new costs, then they need to be warranted and justified. Obviously, this is a safety issue and a damage issue. I’m not saying it isn’t, but I just wanted to get a handle on it.

T. Redies: Nice to see you, Theresa. In the news recently, we’ve heard that we’re going to be having a shortage of almost a million workers by 2030, I think it is. How many of those are in your category? Do you know what the shortage is going to be from retiring workers in your professions?

[3:15 p.m.]

T. McCurry: There was a study done by ourselves, the engineers and Pacific Foundation. I did not get a number. I don’t have a number offhand. But I know the skills gap is going to be till 2034 for us, so it’s going to be significant. Because of the number of retirees that we’re seeing, we’re thinking, probably, that we’re going to be losing a minimum of 35 to 40 percent of our workforce between now and then.

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

Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate it. Nice to see you.

Next up we have Emily Carr Students Union — Lori MacDonald and Joshua Ralph.

If you wouldn’t mind trying to keep your initial comments to five minutes, that would be awesome.

EMILY CARR STUDENTS UNION

J. Ralph: Good afternoon. My name is Joshua Ralph. I’m a second-year student studying 2D animation at Emily Carr University. The Emily Carr Students Union is Local 10 of the B.C. Federation of Students and represents students at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Metro Vancouver. This is my first year as a board member of the students union in the B.C. Federation of Students.

The majority of our 1,900 members are undergraduate students in art, design and media, with 85 graduate students in master of fine arts and master of design programs. We work to ensure that members have access to an environment that supports excellence in teaching, learning and research. We’re happy to report that we’re settling into our new campus at Great Northern Way as of September last year.

I want to thank you for this opportunity to share what I think are important priorities for the 2019 B.C. budget. I expect you have heard from other students about their recommendations for the upcoming budget, and I expect mine will be similar to what others have said. The B.C. Federation of Students will also be following up with a written submission to this.

I think of utmost importance is the need to address the financial challenges of attaining a post-secondary education. Two recommendations that could address these challenges are the implementation of a comprehensive, upfront, needs-based grant system and the removal of interest rates on student loans.

As someone who has had the privilege of receiving monetary assistance in the form of non-repayable financial aid from the province of Alberta, I know firsthand how important this support is. At the same time, I’m already $11,000 in debt from student loans and will most likely need to apply for another loan for the coming school year.

I know classmates who are trying to juggle their studies while working part-time jobs. My field is incredibly time intensive. While my peers make sacrifices to work more hours to make ends meet, it is at the expense of their own education. For those students who are residents of B.C., if they were able to apply for financial aid and receive some of that funding in the form of non-repayable grants, it would go a long way to supporting them, allowing them to focus solely on learning.

I feel lucky to be a student at Emily Carr University, which has a great reputation for producing leaders in B.C.’s creative industries. I envision a B.C. where my peers can contribute to the creative economy, excelling in their fields instead of being held back by the realities of financial challenges.

This brings me to my second recommendation: that the B.C. government invest in the removal of interest rates from the student loan debt. I believe this action could have an incredibly positive impact for students in British Columbia.

I have peers who have expressed concerns about entering the post-secondary system due to their already apparent financial difficulties. My recommendations could assist in encouraging B.C.’s youth to seek the education that will help them secure high-skill jobs. Reducing the fear of debt that comes with an education can make a large difference in making this a reality.

I have a few high school classmates of mine from back in Alberta who have also chosen to get their post-secondary education from a B.C. institution. They were seeking degrees in film that are not attainable in Alberta or any other western Canadian provinces and, much like me, had to take years off their education after graduating to work full-time to allow them to live and study in British Columbia.

I look forward to continuing my education in B.C. and working in the province’s film and television industry in the coming years. I’d like to thank you again for this opportunity to bring these recommendations forward, and I hope to see these changes occur during my time as a student at Emily Carr University. I welcome any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. And yes, we’ve had a number of presentations from students and from universities and from faculty, and many have got the same issues around affordability. Some have also brought up housing as a big issue, especially in places like Vancouver, and have some issues around student housing. Anyway — appreciate your comments.

Are there any questions?

The fact that there are no questions is primarily because we’ve probably exhausted all the questions on this issue. But we appreciate everything that you’re saying.

[3:20 p.m.]

I have children and many of us have children who are going to college or have gone to college. Many of us have gone to college and know how expensive it is, so we certainly empathize with what you’re going through, and affordability is a big issue that we’re looking at.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Good luck with your studies. I expect to see you guys win an Academy Award.

Next up we have Mortgage Sandbox — David Stroud.

Hi, David. How are you?

MORTGAGE SANDBOX

D. Stroud: Good afternoon. I’m David. I’m in the industry involved in real estate. I’ve noticed some issues with data. I’m here to make some recommendations that you look into some measures to improve the accuracy and completeness of the data that’s being reported about the real estate market. Really because it’s for the public interest, because they’re using this for their own decisions, but also because it informs policy and priorities for government.

The challenge is, we’ll say, completeness and accuracy. Sales and active listings are somewhat erroneously low because they exclude presales. New listings are off because of what I would say are recycled listings. I’ll show you some data later about dropped listings, but the overuse of re-listing.

What that means is that, when you change those core data points, ratios like the sales-to-new-listings ratio, which is used to determine whether we’re in a balanced buyer’s or seller’s market, or the sales-to-active-listing ratio, also used for the same purpose, average days on market…. All of these give you an idea of whether you should drive a hard bargain or whether you should give away a bit more. All of those ratios are thrown off if the data that’s used to calculate them is not accurate.

The causes are a combination of things that cause what I call recycled listings and presales not being included. What I’ll do you is show you…. If you go to slide 4, it’s showing you dropped listings, which are an indication of recycled listings. There’s no published data on what is a re-list that is not necessary.

What you’ll see is that, around December, usually there’s a bit of spike because no one wants to have open houses in the middle of the holidays. Generally, it flows around 10 to 15 percent, but recently it’s been trending upwards. That’s an indication there’s been a bit of abuse of this re-listing.

There are good reasons for re-listing, and then there are some poor reasons. Good reasons for re-listing are: “My house isn’t selling. I’ve made some material improvements to the property. I’m re-listing this, and there’s a material change to the actual property.” “There’s a slow season. This isn’t a really good time to sell, and I’m intending to sell again in the future.” Or: “I see that there are some very similar homes to mine on the same block that are selling, and I don’t want to compete against them.”

Poor reasons for dropping or re-listing are things like: a seller agent agrees to re-list at a lower price rather than just reducing the price on the existing listing. They kind of just reset the clock and make it look like a new listing. Or they just simply reset the clock because they believe that buyers focus on new listings. A listing is expiring soon, and instead of extending that listing, they’ll just let it expire and re-list. Or a seller takes on a new agent, and they re-list in that case.

Now, the behaviour in and of itself is not intended to change the statistics that the government and people are relying upon. I get it. People want to get eyes on their property. That makes sense. The challenge is that there’s no material change to the property, and there’s no material change to the seller’s intent to sell the property, yet we’re restarting the clock, presenting this as a new property on the market and skewing the average days on market. I’ll show you an example of that later.

The other side of it…. I was talking about presales. Presales, if I look at last year and use housing starts as a proxy for presales, are 30 percent of the market. If you take into account that there are reassignments of presales before they actually complete, it’s probably bigger than 30 percent of the market. Do we have the data for that? No, because it’s not included. So what I’m saying is that we should include presales in this data. Whether it’s in MLS or in another way, we’re not getting a complete picture of the market when we post these statistics.

[3:25 p.m.]

Next I’ll go into some examples. If you were to look at slide 10, you’ll see that the Real Estate Board publishes these average days on market. Royal Bank has a report, and it’s talking about these ratios — sales to new listings, new listings year over year. But if you recall, in the past those drop listings were lower in the past to higher now. So comparing year over year in new listings is not really that accurate a comparison, and that’s a concern.

If you look at slide 11, what I’ve done is taken the sales-to-new-listing ratio. I don’t know what the exact number of re-listings that are unnecessary are in, but what I’ve done is I’ve just taken out the drop listings. So if you look at listings at the beginning of the month, number of sales, add the new listings and what’s left over, it should all balance. But MLS is a listing system; it’s not an inventory management system. It’s not like it’s going to balance like an accounting ledger would. There’s this 20 percent off.

When you look at this chart, towards the end, the last six months, we could have been in a balanced market. But if you use another, the outside bound, no, we’re still in a sellers market. Right now it looks like we might be going to a buyers market. But if you look at the other end of it, we could be in a balanced market. What kinds of signals is that sending to the ministry, to banks and credit unions that are relying on this information, and to the public.

Finally, average days on market, slide 12. You can see average days on market, the orange line, stays pretty steady. Over the last few months, the months of supply has increased fivefold, but average days on market is the same. It’s an indication that something’s amiss.

I’ll move forward. The challenge here is for the public. I believe that inaccurate and incomplete data erodes the public trust. When the market behaviour, what people see on the street, does not match the reported data, that inaccurate data erodes British Columbians’ trust in industry, in the regulators and in government.

What that does is it misinforms folks on the other side of it when they’re making decisions. If a seller is selling and they believe that it’s a buyers market, the buyer has more leverage, they miss out at a lower price than they really should have. And this may be their retirement nest egg. If a buyer believes that it’s a sellers market, they may overpay, and it’s their biggest purchase in their lifetime — buying a home. For government and industry, of course, there are risk considerations, policy and priority implications.

My recommendation is that similar to some U.S. jurisdictions, we put in some guidelines and controls that ensure that we’re not overusing re-listing. There are good reasons for re-listing — and it generally should be a material change — but not to overuse it. And put in some measures that reduce incentives to do so. As well, include the presales.

I know I’m over time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have a…. So are you talking about a legislative change of some kind, or is it a regulatory change? What exactly are you…? Is it something that the ministry could recommend to the industry? I mean, what’s the mechanism?

D. Stroud: I think it would be the ministry through the regulator providing guidance on what’s expected in terms of what is reported to the public. I think this does not need to be legislative. I think it could be done through policy and guidance, bearing in mind that there’s no ill intent there, right? The system is a listing service; it’s not a housing inventory management service. But it’s being used for economic reporting, and that’s a challenge.

T. Redies: Thanks, David. Have you talked to the B.C. Real Estate Association about this? What is their…?

D. Stroud: I have reached out to them. They weren’t too interested in speaking to me at the time.

T. Redies: If you stick around long enough, the ones from greater Vancouver are going to be here.

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

Next up we have Douglas Students Union — Andrew Dalton and McKenzie Hutchison.

[3:30 p.m.]

If you could try to keep the comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that.

DOUGLAS STUDENTS UNION

M. Hutchison: Good afternoon. My name is McKenzie Hutchison. I’m the director of finance with Douglas Students Union. I’m also a science student at Douglas. I’m joined by my colleague, Andrew Dalton, our executive director. Douglas is Local 6 of the B.C. Federation of Students.

We are pleased to have the opportunity today to comment on the preparation of next year’s budget. Before we start, we would like to acknowledge that today’s hearing is on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

Over the past weeks, I’m sure you’ve heard from many students unions from around the province. You will have heard many different personal stories about the struggles that students in our communities are facing during their time at post-secondary institutions. Although the stories may be different, the main point is the same: B.C. students are struggling when they start their education, during their education and when they finish their education.

Thankfully, up until this point, I am not one of those students. I have been lucky enough to live at home with my parents and avoid the endless financial burden of living on your own in Vancouver.

I am a student who pays their own tuition in a family of five. I am thankful every day that tuition and textbooks are my biggest costs. If it were not for the support of my parents, I would not be in school. If I were forced to move out, I would have to drop out of school and get a second job — all just to afford being able to live in Vancouver.

It’s upsetting to me that a province like B.C., which is a very wealthy province, does not have the systems in place to allow a 21-year-old to move out of her home. It’s upsetting that my poor parents have to plan on having three of their daughters live in their home way past high school. And it’s frustrating to hear endless comments about how youth today are babied or overly supported by their parents, when your only other option could lead to potential homelessness.

For our presentation today, we would like to focus on two recommendations. First, we are asking for one-time additional funding of $5 million to BCcampus to facilitate the creation and expansion of open educational resources. Second, we are asking the government to follow through on their commitment to eliminate interest on all B.C. student loans.

First, we’ll talk about open educational resources. As I’m sure you guys have heard over the past few weeks, the prices of textbooks are ridiculous. Currently at Douglas, I’m in a two-year program. Each semester my tuition at Douglas is roughly $1,700, so my two-year degree will cost me maybe around $11,000. For these two years, though, my textbooks are $5,000. This is nearly half of my education.

For those students who are living away from home, the $1,250 that it costs per semester for textbooks really makes the difference between paying rent or not. I have seen numerous students take courses without having access to course material, entirely based on their inability to afford it. I’ve had numerous students struggle with how they can barely afford the tuition at Douglas — just the cost of Vancouver and living in Vancouver. It’s difficult to do both.

We ask that you help put an end to these costs. A $5 million donation to BCcampus would help thousands of students across B.C., students who cannot currently afford the materials to succeed.

A. Dalton: Hello, everyone. I want to start by recognizing the steps that have been made so far in the reduction of interest charges on student loans last August. It was a great first step, and we are thankful for it.

Now we’re asking the government to follow through on their commitment to remove all interest on provincial student loans. Interest on student loans is a tax on the poor, people who cannot afford the upfront expense of their education.

I am one of those people. I have a family. I was working multiple part-time jobs, well over 40 hours per week. I had jobs that paid basically minimum wage or barely over — just to pay my bills. My wife was in the same boat. It was time for a change. With not being well off or coming from a wealthy family, student loans were the answer, or so I thought. Being young and in need, I don’t think I ever considered the repercussions of what a student loan meant. I knew I had to repay it, but I did not realize the long-lasting effects it would have on my pocket. I’ll come back to that.

In 2007, I started my education at VIU. I went to school full-time, year-round. I went to classes, did my homework, raised my family with my wife and continued to work part-time jobs to supplement my loans and keep a roof over our heads. In 2008, my wife did the same, also taking on student loans, because we had no other options.

I graduated in 2010 with distinction. Knowing that a bachelor’s degree is not always enough, I enrolled in a master’s degree, completing that in the spring of 2012, the same year that my wife graduated. That is when reality sunk in. I had two degrees and $85,000 in debt. My wife had one degree and about $50,000 in debt. When my first payment came due, it was about $980, and my wife’s was about $500. There was no way we could pay $1,500 a month and still cover our bills. We applied for the repayment assistance plan, and our payments were reduced while we looked for better jobs.

Fast forward to today. We both have reasonably good jobs and are no longer eligible for the assistance plan. Right now I owe about $75,000, which has to be paid off in the next 8½ years, and my payments are about $950.

I have no problem paying back what I borrowed. Student loans provided me with the opportunity to get an education. The problem with student loans is that they come at a cost.

[3:35 p.m.]

That cost is why I’m here today: to ask you to follow through with your commitment to remove them. On the $85,000 loan, it’s integrated, Canada and B.C. together. Right now, it’s a 6.2 interest rate, floating between the two. That’s $10 a day and roughly $29,000 that I’ll pay in interest on my loan.

That’s the definition of a poor tax. My education will cost me almost $30,000 more than a student who had the resources to pay up front or who was fortunate enough to be born into a family that has money. That doesn’t include my wife’s debt, either.

M. Hutchison: Today we’re asking for one-time additional funding of $5 million to BCcampus to facilitate the creation and expansion of open education resources and for our B.C. government to follow through on their commitment to remove interest on student loans. Thank you for taking the time to hear our asks and for helping make education accessible for all students around the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Just to echo something I said earlier, we’ve had a number of students come to us with very similar requests, so don’t take it the wrong way if there aren’t questions. You’re reinforcing what has been said a number of times. But it is very helpful to get personal stories because it definitely has an impact on the committee. And we really appreciate you coming forward to share that with us, because those are probably some of the most impactful ways to get your point across. It’s a very personal experience, and we appreciate you sharing that with us.

Any questions at all?

Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

Next up we have Peerless Engineering via teleconference — Jeff Magnolo.

Jeff, you have five minutes. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you wanted to present. Go ahead.

PEERLESS ENGINEERING

J. Magnolo: Thank you for allowing me the time to speak to the committee this afternoon. My subject concerns the proposed EHT, the employer health payroll tax on small business. I submitted my written recommendations already, but I’ll just review them in my time allotted.

My recommendations are as follows. I’d like the committee to review and change the upcoming 2019 EHT payroll tax proposal on small business. What I’d like to do is have you look at spreading the cost across a broader tax base than is currently proposed. I read the MSP Task Force recommendations, and I consider that a very fair proposal — the combination of a personal income tax surcharge with a smaller payroll tax. And I guess the big question I have is why that wasn’t followed. That’s one of my questions, the main one.

Another option would be to base the EHT tax on an annual business net income, not on head count. This is more progressive and fairer. Base it on the ability to pay. I do not believe head count correlates to net income. In fact, it doesn’t with my company. Peerless Engineering — we’ve been in business since 1947. We employ 34 people; 25 are in British Columbia. Now, our payroll is about $1.7 million, and when you look at that, it’s not a lot of people for our company. In fact, when you look at the definition of small business, federally the small business definition is 100 employees and in B.C. it’s 50.

The other point I want to make is our company protects our employees. In good years, we keep them. In bad years, we lose money. We have lost money over the last number of years because manufacturing has been slow. This is a fixed tax on small business. This is regressive to us, because it is not based on the ability to pay. It’s based on head count, and to me, that’s not fair.

Compounding what I’ve been saying is that businesses in Burnaby, where I’m located, have a higher cost of living, so we have to pay our people more salary to keep them here. That escalates our payroll, and the cut-off…. To start EHT, I think it’s at $1.5 million. But that is not a lot of money. So another option I would like the committee to consider would be to start the EHT at a $1.5 million payroll and below this, zero EHT, or at least reduce the percent payroll tax proposed.

Now, in my letter, I’ve gone on to speak more of this, but my main comment I want to make is that I believe this has to be re-thought, and it has to be spread across a broader base.

[3:40 p.m.]

When you look at the fact that we also provide our employees with group benefits — prescription and dental — we were able to do that because it’s spread across a pool of various companies, so it brings the cost down for us. This payroll tax, EHT — when you look at it as 1.9 percent, that isn’t 1.9 percent on income. Most incomes, it’s going to be between a 10 to 20 percent income tax hit, when you look at that payroll tax. There were comments made that you reduced our small business tax, 2½ to 2 percent. Well, that doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t make it up.

The final thing I want to say is that we all benefit from health insurance. I believe the only problem that you were faced with was the lower-income people having a regressive tax. Okay, you could have fixed that easily. Just tax people’s pay across the province based on their ability to pay. That’s based on net income of people, personally, and net income of businesses.

But do not — and please, reconsider — dump all of this $1.3 billion onto a few businesses, of which many are still defined as small business. We are not big. That’s what I want to bring to the committee. My letter is more detailed, but I don’t want to take up any more of my time. That’s it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Jeff. Any questions from the committee?

Appreciate that. We have heard, in regards to the employment health tax, from a number of witnesses, so we appreciate your thoughts and wish you the best. Thanks for phoning in.

J. Magnolo: Okay. Thank you very much for listening to me.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have school district 38, Richmond — Dr. Eric Yung, Donna Sargent and Debbie Tablotney. I gather there’s more, but we only have room for three.

All right. If you wouldn’t mind, we’re trying to keep the comments to about five minutes so that we have time for questions.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 38, RICHMOND

E. Yung: Dear committee members, thank you, once again, for giving us the opportunity to participate in the Budget 2019 consultation and share with you our views and priorities for the upcoming provincial budget.

As we have in previous years, this brief is presented to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services jointly by the board of education of school district 38, Richmond, represented by myself and Trustees Sargent and Tablotney, who are here with us; the Richmond District Parents Association, whose president unfortunately could not be here; the Richmond Teachers Association, whose president and second vice-chair, Liz Baverstock and Steve Wenglowski, are in the back; CUPE Local 716, whose president Ian Hillman is with us today; the Richmond Association of School Administrators, whose president unfortunately could not be here today; and the Richmond management and professional staff, whose representative also could not be here today.

We are proud of our collective commitment to Richmond to cooperate and collaborate with all of our stakeholders to cultivate a safe, accepting and engaging in community that inspires a passion for lifelong learning.

Our joint presentation advocates for the needs of the K-to-12 public education system and the needs of our students in Richmond. Our recommendations that we are presenting are focused on four key messages: increased funding to support vulnerable students, increased funding to support new education curriculum changes, a fair and equitable funding formula and continued support and investment in safe schools.

Our recommendations. One is increased funding to support vulnerable students. Significant demands are being placed on school districts to provide adequate services to support vulnerable students. Enrolment of students with special needs continues to grow, and increased funding is needed to support recruitment and retention of associated professionals, such as psychologists, speech-language pathologists and community mental health professionals.

In addition, a significant portion of students with special needs are dependent on education assistants to ensure that they can attend school, are safe and have front-line support. School districts across the province are experiencing shortages as demand for EAs far exceeds the current supply.

[3:45 p.m.]

There are significant recruitment challenges in attracting qualified EAs due to the current compensation levels and the conditions of work. Funding is needed to support growth in EAs — EA training and resources — and supporting increased compensation levels.

In Richmond, we have created our own training program, called the Richmond education assistant program, or REAP, that provides a certification training program for individuals wanting to become EAs, with opportunities to be hired by our school district on program completion. This is one example of the innovative ways we are currently addressing the shortages of EAs and the challenges we are facing in recruitment and retention.

Our second point is increased funding to support new education curriculum changes. The Ministry of Education introduced the new K-to-12 education curriculum, with the implementation of grades 11 and 12 in this new curriculum to be fully completed by the 2019-2020 school year. Richmond is committed to delivering education programs that result in student success and achieving the highest possible outcomes. We have one of the highest graduation rates amongst B.C. school districts.

Increased funding is needed, however, to ensure that new curriculum will result in continued student success. Targeted funding is required to support the curriculum implementation, assessment changes and instructional delivery through increased teacher professional development, mentoring and training. Targeted funding to assist school districts in recruitment and retention of new teachers is required, particularly for non-enrolling and specialized teachers, where school districts are all experiencing significant shortages. Additional funding to provide new learning resources and technology in the classroom is also needed.

Our third point is a fair and equitable funding formula. The Ministry of Education has undertaken a K-to-12 funding model review, including the appointment of an independent review panel to receive input from education stakeholders and to deliver a report and recommendation to the Minister of Education, with a new funding allocation model to be implemented for the 2019-2020 school year.

Richmond supports a funding allocation model that aims to provide funding that is responsive, equitable, stable, predictable, flexible, transparent and accountable. Provincial funding for K to 12 accounts for 90 percent of total school district budgeted revenues. Richmond believes that the new funding model for public education should cover all costs of delivering educational services, including meeting all requirements under the memorandum of agreement that restored classroom learning conditions.

The new funding model should also fully fund all costs related to negotiated collective agreements and exempt compensation increases, which are not currently funded. Stable, predictable funding should cover all inflationary cost increases, rather than downloading these costs to school districts.

Our last point is continued support and investment in safe schools. The provincial government has supported the need and investment in ensuring that schools are seismically safe. In Richmond, due to the unstable soil conditions, 34 of our 48 schools have been evaluated to be of high seismic risk. The Ministry of Education has established a Richmond project office to facilitate the acceleration of seismic upgrading approval and funding for high-risk schools in Richmond, which we fully support and welcome.

Additional funding targeted to accelerate the timeline will ensure that our schools are seismically safe as soon as possible, which is our number one priority. In addition to creating safe learning spaces for students, we are requesting that the provincial government support school districts through targeted funding for emergency preparedness planning, training and resources that focus on response to critical incidents, natural disasters and emergency situations.

To conclude, we would like to thank the select standing committee for the opportunity to present our joint brief today. We appreciate the committee hearing our views and hope that the information provided will be given consideration as part of the 2019 provincial budget. Trustees, our staff, our parents and all of our stakeholders in Richmond are committed to ensuring that we continue to have a strong public education system and that the Richmond school district is the best place to learn and lead.

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

Questions?

M. Dean: Thanks for your collaboration and the presentation. Provincial funding, you said, accounts for 90 percent of total school district budgeted revenues. Can you explain where the other 10 percent comes from and where you fit on a continuum across the province?

E. Yung: We fit pretty squarely in the middle. There are maybe a few outlying school districts that have additional sources of revenue, but almost all school districts depend on greater than 90 percent of their budget from the provincial government. Most of the rest of the income comes from small sources like interest, rental incomes, that sort of thing.

[3:50 p.m.]

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

Well, thank you very much for your presentation. There were a lot of words: “responsive, equitable, stable, predictable, flexible, transparent and accountable.” You’ve given the minister a challenge.

E. Yung: If you could pass that to the minister, please.

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

Okay. Next up we have FarmWatch Richmond — Laura Gillanders.

FARMWATCH RICHMOND

L. Gillanders: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Laura Gillanders. I’m with Richmond FarmWatch. I’ll just read the presentation that you have.

In Richmond, where the province’s highest-capacity class 1 farmland is found, we continue to see rampant development of 10,764-square-foot, or 1,000-square-metre, mega-mansions on farms just over half an acre in the agricultural land reserve. The mansions are often fenced and hedged with low-maintenance perennial crops planted in previously productive fields. There are 1,274 farm parcels in Richmond with development potential. Between 2010 and 2016, Richmond lost approximately 40 acres of farmland to residential footprints, as per the Ministry of Agriculture 2016-17 land use inventory.

Sixty-one permits for mega-mansions have been received since the city of Richmond adopted a bylaw allowing the 1,000-square-metre houses in 2017. Richmond is especially susceptible to speculative development because 75 percent of its farms are under five acres in size. As these properties come up for sale, they’re being marketed as sites for mansions — “build your dream mansion” — instead of as farmland. The land is often purchased and then listed for sale as soon as the mansion permit is received.

Mansions often take many years to build, and the speculative development is driving up the price of farmland while also leaving the farmland inaccessible to farmers who are looking to secure farm leases. This continues to cause widespread concern among Metro Vancouver residents and farmers, who understand the value of growing our own food.

Richmond FarmWatch is a grassroots group of farmers and residents who have stood up for farmland for the past five years. After a rush to build mega-mansions in the first quarter of 2017, Richmond FarmWatch urged Richmond council to act.

Richard Wozny of Site Economics is an expert hired by the city. He calculated the house size that would effectively curb speculation while protecting farmers’ equity as approximately 390 square metres, around 4,200 square feet. This size is in compliance with the province’s guide for bylaw development in farming areas. Unfortunately, council chose to adopt a size limit of 1,000 square metres, which is nearly triple the recommended size and double the Ministry of Agriculture maximum size of 500 square metres.

Richmond farmland is currently priced from 200 to 260 percent higher than Delta farmland, which has adopted a house size limit in compliance with the guidelines. Wozny identified that it was solely the ability to build a mansion that was driving Richmond farmland up to $1.5 million per acre.

FarmWatch has some recommendations. We also submitted them to the ALC-ALR revitalization committee last spring.

Richmond FarmWatch recommends that we have additional staff at the Agricultural Land Commission to focus on investigating whether farmland is being farmed and to review applications for variances or for removal from the ALR, additional staff in B.C. Assessment to review if someone is really farming before classifying their farmland with farm status, additional officers and better pay for ALC officers to inspect complaints such as illegal dumping on farmland.

House size and farm home plate. Hire additional ALC staff to update ALR regulations to specify that a residence must be for farm use. Make the current recommended farmhouse size limit of 500 square metres compulsory. Limit the entire home plate, including the septic field, to 1,000 square metres, and require the septic field to be on the home plate. Ensure farm infrastructure is sufficient, including drainage, water meter and hookups, water backflow so that leasers are able to farm.

Beneficial ownership. Require a permit from the ALC for the transfer of beneficial ownership of farmland.

[3:55 p.m.]

Protect farmland from misuse. The ALC’s enforcement action should be strengthened for non-farm uses, such as illegal fill and unauthorized uses of farmland and farm buildings. Additional effort should be made to raise public awareness regarding the goals of the ALC and the permitted uses on ALR farmland. Provide legal support for investigating proceeds of crime and money laundering in farmland real estate.

Support new farmers. Support new farmers by providing incentives, mentoring and facilitated access to local markets. Fund the mentoring of new and small farmers in agricultural techniques, organic certification and development of business plans. Assist in the formation of cooperatives and joint marketing of produce to local markets. Provide matching funds for small-scale infrastructure, storage, water conservation, season extension.

Taxation. If the 20 percent foreign buyer tax is inapplicable to farmland, ensure that a speculation tax or other tax measure is adopted that will curb farmland speculation. Provide tiered tax breaks for leased farmland. For example, grant full-term status if the lease is a minimum of five years and lesser tax breaks for fewer years.

Richmond FarmWatch believes that these recommendations, if implemented, could go a long way to protecting farmland and ending speculation and enhancing farming viability. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. I’m just wondering, Laura. Have you talked to Minister Lana Popham about these recommendations, and have you had feedback from her in regards to this at all?

L. Gillanders: We have, yes. We met with Minister Popham last October, and she was very sympathetic and acknowledges this is a big issue. We met with the Minister of Finance about the foreign buyer tax, and we were told that that wasn’t possible to apply to farmland. We also met with the Green Party. Then we were invited to participate in the vitalization strategy in the spring.

Minister Popham has recently announced that they are going to address the house size on a provincial level. We’re just waiting, with bated breath, to see if that’s going to happen or not. To bring that consistency among the Lower Mainland would really stop developers from going from one region to the next. Whoever has the biggest house size limit is where the development is happening, and it’s really hard to stop it at the municipal level. So we are hoping for some action.

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

Any questions?

S. Cadieux: Now, I understand the challenge you’re trying to get at. Certainly, I think, for lots of reasons, we want to see farmland used for farming.

I live in an area where there are lots of very large homes on farmland, but those are all still being farmed. Do you have an idea of how many working farms, or farmland being farmed, also have these large homes on them? I understand the challenge. I certainly also see, in my constituency, a situation where there are large homes, but that’s enabling the land to be farmed. What are the numbers there? You’re only comparing to Delta.

L. Gillanders: Yes. In East Richmond, there are larger farms. Some farmers have frequently built large houses, and they have large families. Richmond, specifically, has…. Seventy-five percent of the farms are under five acres. Small two- to three-acre farms are being seen as useless. That is the impression I get from the developing community. They say: “Well, it’s small anyway.” This huge house is being built, and it’s just being hedged. Nothing is being farmed, or a very minimal amount is being farmed. We have small-scale farmers that are trying to secure leases on these lands, and they’re frequently being flipped.

Yes, there’s a whole host of issues. I mean, a 500 metre compulsory limit — that’s 5,382 square feet — is still a mansion. Municipalities are encouraged to find a house size that’s lower than that, especially when it’s so close to residential areas, right? Right in the centre of Richmond…. If you can build a house that’s three times larger right across the street, then a developer is going to want to do that instead of building in the residential area.

A house size limit is going to stop that speculation but still allow real farmers to build to suit their needs, and there’s always an option for a variance if they need larger…. There’s always that option. But the majority of the parcels are being flipped for real estate.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess one of the problems, too, is building right in the middle of the land instead of…. I mean, if you have the intention to farm, it should be as much contained in a corner or something as possible. If you build right in the middle with a big giant house, then it makes it so you can’t really farm the land. There are issues like that, I would imagine.

[4:00 p.m.]

L. Gillanders: The setback is 50 metres. Traditionally, on the smaller farms, especially in West Richmond, the houses were right up near the front, at 25 metres, and the fields started right away to maximize the growing space. Every new house is going at 50 metres, and then their home plate can go to 75 metres. So it’s literally taking up half of the farm.

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

L. Gillanders: Thank you so much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Realistic Success Recovery Society — Susan Sanderson.

Hello, how are you?

S. Sanderson: Hi, I’m good. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good.

S. Sanderson: I just want to say before I start that I wrote this to try and minimize my time, so I just leaped in. I’m assuming you know what I’m talking about, so when I get to the end of my minutes, if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I’ll go back and sort of do the background first.

B. D’Eith (Chair): They’re very good at asking questions, so don’t worry. All good.

REALISTIC SUCCESS RECOVERY SOCIETY

S. Sanderson: Okay, awesome.

My name is Susan Sanderson. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you. I have made written submissions to the select standing committee since 2014. I applaud the current government for the many and significant investments that you’ve made for the people and the communities of B.C. in the last year and a half. But there’s one area that awaits new thinking, direction and funding increases.

The recommendations in my 2018 submission are similar to those of prior years. My first recommendation is that you immediately increase the per-diem rate to $33.40. That’s for supportive recovery facilities paid by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and registered by the Ministry of Health.

This increase is a portion of the $100 social assistance rate increase applied in September of 2017 to those eligible for basic assistance. The per diem of $30.90 is paid to registered assisted-living-certified facilities, with $95 per month comfort for each client eligible for social assistance benefits. In January of 2018, there were 1,572 ALR beds in the province: 1,175 in Fraser Health and 670 in Surrey.

The rate of $30.90 has not increased since 2009. In 2009, receiving $30.90 per client, per day, based on the costs of the day, was sufficient to meet the obligations of operating a supportive recovery facility. The $30.90 per-diem rate no longer covers the cost to operate an ALR registered facility. The per-diem rate must be increased immediately.

In September of 2018, basic social assistance rates increased by $100, to $710 per month, and I applaud you for that increase. Clients of social assistance living in a per-diem facility do not benefit from the $100 increase. Recommendation 1 proposes that that $100 increase should be applied to ALR facilities. So $75 of that $100 is approximately $2.50 per day applied to the per-diem facility, and then $25 a month to the individual to raise their comfort to $120. My assumption is that you don’t need legislation. The minister could say that next month that increase should be applied.

The funding for the recovery sector is treated in the same manner society treats people with the health issue of addiction — a patchwork of solutions that vary around the province and no central source of information on where to find recovery or treatment. This government has gone a long way to address the social aspects of addiction — creating the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and in their numerous statements regarding stigma.

Those of us operating community-based organizations that change the trajectory of people’s lives have been waiting patiently to receive funding increases that are so desperately needed. You can immediately help to increase positive outcomes for the clients of room-and-board special care facilities and assisted-living substance use facilities, including registered supportive recovery homes. That sentence that the Richmond school board gave you — you could’ve just plunked that right in here too. That was a really nice sentence.

Increasing the per diem is an economic investment in the people of B.C. in the same way that investments in schools, affordable housing, bridges and roads pay dividends for years to come. To the concern that some ALRs are providing substandard service, if they are good enough to receive $30.90 per day per eligible client, they are good enough to receive an increase to $33.40 per day. The outcomes of their clients might just improve. And if the facility is not good enough, then shut the bloody thing down.

[4:05 p.m.]

Recommendation 2 is simply to increase the comfort allowance of the clients to $120. That comfort rate for clients receiving basic social assistance has remained stagnant at $95 since 2009. With that, they need to pay for their cell phones, their razors, their shampoo, their bus fare to get to their PO offices and all that stuff.

Recommendation 3 is to increase the per diem for ALR facilities to $60 in the February 2019 budget. It’s the right thing to do. The B.C. Recovery Council — whose members include Turning Point, Our Place, Chrysalis, Pacifica, Last Door, Salvation Army, Westminster House, Orchard, Cedars and us — have called for the government to…. In the draft, it was to immediately increase the per diem, but in the final document of The Path Forward, it was to examine the per-diem rates for treatment and recovery services and mechanisms of funding to support improved outcomes in underserved and vulnerable populations.

Myself, Lookout Society and Hope for Freedom are drafting a letter also. So there’s a number of us coordinating and requesting that the per diem be increased.

To the concern that some ALR facilities are providing substandard service, there are a number of ways that an increase can be tiered to the service level of an organization. I’m sure the government has all kinds of people who can think up way better systems than I’ve just provided here. But there’s got to be a way to do this.

For example, you could do a basic level of $40 per day per person and then a two- or three-tier payment, similar to the way that schools pay for special needs students. There’s a tiered system for special needs, so you could do the same thing. So if you have addictions staff on staff, you get $55. If you offer a family program where you bring family members in and they do a weekend with the clients, then you offer $60 a day — whatever it is. If previous governments had made inflationary increases each year since 2009, the per diem would be $36.17 today.

To the issue that this sector requires more regulation, I agree. An increase to the per diem can’t wait until the regulations are changed. This sector requires an immediate increase in funding.

I sat on the Ministry of Health’s 2006 subcommittee that made significant improvements to the ALR regulations, which Minister Dix says he’s redoing. I understand there’s a committee of people in the government, with no stakeholders on it, looking at all of this, but I don’t know who they are or what they’re doing. I’m concerned that they’re going to say, “We’re going to wait till we figure out where you’re going to go,” because the Ministry of Social Development may not be the place where it needs to land. Whether it goes to Minister Darcy’s ministry…. Anyway. There’s all of that, but I don’t think an increase to the per diem can wait till all that gets sorted out.

Recommendation 4 is just strictly to increase welfare rates. All of you know from all of your communities what that would do to the people on the street and all of the people in the communities. You don’t need me to tell you that.

Then I gave you all my background of my organization. The co-founder, who was my late husband, Gary, always talked about shameless self-promotion, so that’s what I do. That’s my recommendations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Susan. I’m just curious if you have any idea what the total, if the per diem was increased, might look like.

S. Sanderson: No. I started to figure that out, and I thought you’ve got staff who can do that in a second. You can call them now. They’ll do it for you in a second. No, I don’t know what it would be. I’m sorry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I don’t have staff to do that.

S. Sanderson: No, but somebody…. There is staff. I mean, somebody can figure it out. I don’t know. I went and looked at the CCPA and the Fraser Institute and all their stuff on welfare, and it’s $370 million to increase everybody — not the per diem but everybody — a year.

In the scheme of things, compared to the daily rate of a person in jail or using emergency services in your hospitals, it’s minuscule, right?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right. Got it. I was just curious if you knew.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. The question I have…. The original question was…. The recovery house in my community had talked to me about the whole funding formula, with the per diems, and how it actually impacts their ability to recruit and retain decent staff. The numbers can fluctuate in their recovery home. And if they’re only getting per bed, they can’t….

S. Sanderson: No, it’s per person, not per bed. So when the person walks out that door, the funding stops.

R. Leonard: The funding stops — exactly. And there are different ways people leave the recovery houses too.

[4:10 p.m.]

S. Sanderson: Oh well, they leave in the middle of the night and take somebody’s new sneakers. Yeah, there are tons of stories.

R. Leonard: My question is…. I mean, you’ve asked for recommending an increase which doesn’t match the inflation rate. It’s less. So I’m wondering how you got to that number and what you think about having a different funding model altogether for recovery houses.

S. Sanderson: Well, it depends what the model looks like — so yes. But again, what I’m saying is…. I’ve been doing this for four years, and then when the government got re-elected and there was…. There’s money for all kinds of things. You’re putting investments in communities in ways that it wasn’t done before, with all due respect. So I thought: “Okay. This is our chance.”

Minister Simpson has been to our facility. I met with him in Victoria. I’ve done all that kind of work — and getting glazed eyes. “Yes, we know about the problem. It’s on our radar, but….”

I’ve been struggling with: what is the simplest way to get an immediate increase? There was this $100 increase. I thought: “Well, okay.” Then I was waiting for some announcement about how they were going to apply that to per-diem facilities. It seemed natural to me that if the basic welfare rate goes up — because that’s what it’s tied to — then the per-diem rate should have also gone up, and it didn’t. I thought: “Okay. Why don’t we just take that $100 and use that, apply it. Just apply it across the board. They should all receive it.”

The other way is if you look at it in terms of an inflationary increase every year, if you did 2 percent every year since 2009, I calculated…. I’m sure an accountant would come up with a different number, but anyway…. I mean, it’s something. It’s some increase that would account for…. And you’re right about the staffing. I fundraise like crazy.

The other issue, if I may, is that there is not a level playing field with gaming grants. So some per-diem facilities get up to the $100,000 mark. I don’t know how. Other facilities like mine get $16,000 because we have provincial funding, and therefore they won’t backfill. There’s all this complicated…. So I’m working with them on that too.

A gaming grant is great, but we really need…. To your point about the staffing, you’re right. You can’t hire good staff. You can’t keep them because you don’t know what your budget’s going to look like day to day.

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

Next up we have Surrey Teachers Association — Julia McRae.

SURREY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

J. McRae: Thanks. I’m a secondary teacher. I’ve taught in Surrey 25 years. Welcome to Surrey. It’s an absolutely beautiful, wonderful place to teach. It is extremely interesting to be a teacher in such a dynamic district. We have motivated immigrants, let me say. Those kids are going places. It’s a very exciting place to teach.

Before I start with my list of demands, I just want to tell you that it’s such an honour to be a teacher and such a great way to contribute to the future of B.C. and Canada — to help kids reach their potential. That’s my overall feeling. But we have some things about: time to invest in Surrey.

We have an ongoing crisis of growth and overcrowding. I’m sure you’re fully aware of it, but I’d just like to tell you, from the teacher’s point of view, what it’s like.

The schools are packed to the gills. We have lots of portables, as you know, and when we have a lot of portables on a school, that doesn’t solve the problem of cafeteria, bathrooms, gym space, library space and whatnot in the school, which then become very overused. That’s just a feature of it.

It seems to us that we’ve had a lack of investment over many years when we can say that we could have 20 schools built right now and they would be full right away — something along those lines. It just shows a lack of investment, which demands investment now.

Now, portables are not all bad, from the teacher’s point of view, because at least it’s a classroom. The problem is it creates a crisis within the funding because they’re funded under operating funds instead of capital funds. But they are classrooms, and they don’t feel temporary to us. So that problem needs to be solved.

[4:15 p.m.]

Then, you know, it seems crazy for teachers to be worrying about zoning and funding and building portables when we need to be concerned about curriculum implementation, all of the special needs of the kids, how to teach great lessons and how to improve our teaching all the time. That’s what we actually want to be thinking about.

That’s just the context, and I’ll go to our concerns.

I gave you these little cards that we made to show the situation of some individual example kids. Now, these are stock photos. These aren’t their real names. I’m not telling you private information, except that the cases are real.

From our point of view, it is about the individual kids and what they need. Those are examples from different ages of kids that have different layers of issues that may or may not be met by the way the system runs, but overall, when we go…. We’ve gone to every school to visit within the last ten months, and the teachers are bringing up the issue of not being able to meet the needs of the kids. There are just so many layers of that statement. Almost every teacher in every school feels bad about not being able to do the job that they want to be able to do.

There used to be more adults before we experienced the cuts and the attacks on our contract and the decline in staffing. In my notes there, you might see “grey-area kids.” Those kids used to be able to access some help from special education teachers who had designated kids but then had also more space available for kids to come and access them. We call it grey area because they’re not designated yet. It doesn’t mean they’re not needy, and it’s obvious to the practising teachers that many of them are very needy.

We need investment in people resources. We need special education teachers. According to our calculations, when the contract that we won back in the Supreme Court was reimplemented, we were short-staffed at least 250 special ed teachers in Surrey. That’s only about one or two per school, but it would make a significant difference to the service to the kids.

I would echo what the Richmond board presented. That was interesting to hear, and I’m glad to hear that they got to work together. That would be great for us, too, but I’m here alone representing the teachers.

We’d like to draw your attention to the crisis in adult education. There’s night school and day school for adults in Surrey, but it’s been drastically cut back, and drastically, it does not meet the potential or the demand for what adult learners need in Surrey.

Funding decreased under the last government, and they made the list of funded courses…. Only the basic courses that led to graduation were funded, and other courses that used to be offered in adult education were no longer offered.

This impacts the students greatly because they’re not able to get what they need to go to post-secondary. They may be able to take social studies 12, which is a requirement for graduation, but they couldn’t take social studies 11 because there was no funding for it. Then there’s not a big enough group…. It’s a complicated thing, but it drastically impacts people’s potential.

Many kids who age out of 8-to-12 high schools don’t graduate because they have learning disabilities or undiagnosed learning problems. Therefore, they need some special education services and adult ed, and that is not funded at all.

Another issue is that adult education funding doesn’t include any funding for facilities. In some districts, they have unused schools, so it might cost to run the building, but they don’t have to build the building for adult education. Here, as I mentioned earlier, we don’t have any extra space, pretty much none. So the day school for adult education is at Invergarry Learning Centre, which is an old elementary school. It’s been fixed up a little to be used, but it’s not enough, and really there should be about four adult learning schools around the district to serve the need.

I mean, the potential of people, recent immigrants who need English…. I’ve put down here: “Learning English takes time. We need more English available for people — women who may be sort of past the baby-care phase and need to get into the workforce, recent immigrants. People need more English. They need to upgrade themselves. They need to improve their families.”

It’s an economic engine that’s just languishing for lack of basic ELL provision for adult education, so I would really like you to turn your attention to the situation of adult education in Surrey.

Receiving immigrant refugee learners — children, youth and adults…. We don’t come to this question from a point of critique, as if we don’t want refugee learners here or something. There’s a lot of that kind of horrible, hate-filled reaction in the news these days. No, we love working with refugee students, but the problem is there’s no more funding for them. There’s no funding for trauma-informed counselling. There’s not professional development provided enough for teachers to understand what multiply traumatized kids might bring. They’re really stretched already, trying to meet the needs of special education kids.

[4:20 p.m.]

Last year we went to Prince Charles Elementary, and the teacher said to us: “We can’t even deal with our LST kids,” which are the kids that need special assistance, “because we’re just in triage with these 35 refugee kids who are obviously much more needy.” So they’re having to make these terrible choices, and on both sides, the kids are falling through the gaps.

There’s a welcome centre — this is will be my last point; I see the time — that is wonderful. But it could be tripled to a welcome centre providing services for people who are first coming, linking in with the systems here, finding out how things work.

There is federal funding for refugee and immigrant settlement, but the welcome centre staff has to handle the application for this money, and they’re already, of course, fully busy. We think that should be handled by the province, streamlined by the province. Apparently 41 districts received funding for refugee settlement within the schools, and now only six receive it because of the onerousness of applying for the grants from the federal funding. I’ve done a bunch of lobbying, talking to MPs, but I would like to bring it to you, here, to find a way to get that funding flowing through the province so that it’s better able to be used.

I see the time. Thanks. I’m happy to answer any questions.

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

In terms of adult education, obviously there has been new funding for that, but you’re saying there isn’t the facility. So even though someone might be funded to go to it, you’re saying there isn’t a place for them to go. Is that what you’re saying?

J. McRae: Yeah. The district doesn’t receive funding for facilities for adult education.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No. It’s for the people who want to attend adult education. But you’re saying that there is nowhere for them to go. That’s what you’re saying?

J. McRae: Well, there is a school, but I’m saying that the district can’t open another centre, for example, because there is no funding for facilities. We just don’t have the space, as well, as I understand it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. Okay. I was just trying to understand that.

S. Furstenau: Thanks, Julia. That was great. You’re a great advocate. How long have you been a teacher?

J. McRae: Twenty-five years.

S. Furstenau: I’m going to ask you for a bit of historical perspective. You’ve talked about an increase in needs in kids. You’ve talked about the overlaying of that with the refugees. And you’ve talked about a widening of the gaps. If those gaps hadn’t widened as much as they had, do you think that the needs could be met, or is there also an increase that is separate from those gaps widening? Like I’m trying to….

J. McRae: Yeah, I think there is an increase — and also in mental health problems. I think kids are more anxious, generally. There are more stress-based illnesses. I don’t know. I’m obviously not a doctor; I’m an English 10 teacher. It seems like more kids are unable to just be in school, be comfortable, but then it’s really hard to know. It’s very difficult to know at the school level: if we had two more teachers working on that full-time, would the needs be able to be met? Probably. We at least want to see that, because that’s guaranteed in our contract and it isn’t being implemented.

We at least want to enforce our contract and then, hopefully, bargain some improvements to the service levels in the next round of bargaining. That’s where we would like to be.

B. D’Eith (Chair): One quick question. Thanks, Tracy.

T. Redies: Hi, nice to see you, Julia. I agree with Sonia that you have a real passion for this, and it comes through. So thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah. We appreciate it, because we needed the pick-me-up too. That’s good.

T. Redies: You’re almost our last presenter.

The 250 more special ed teachers — that’s just for Surrey. Is that what you were saying?

J. McRae: Yeah, just for Surrey. If our contract had been restored to what it…. Can I explain it a little bit, or no?

T. Redies: I’m happy to hear it if the Chair is.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay.

J. McRae: We understood that there was a memorandum of agreement about the restoration of the contract. But in between when the contract was stripped and when it was restored, there was a change in program delivery in Surrey. It went from…. There were separate programs that were called tutorial room, resource rooms, career education for the learning disabled. These things were kind of mashed together into LST — learning support team — and it included English language learning in that basket as well.

When the MOA came out, it said: “You don’t have to restore old programs if a new program exists, as long as the staffing is installed.” The staffing that would have been demanded by the previous designations — let that be restored. And it wasn’t. That’s where the 250 gap is.

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

Next up we have the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver — Harriet Permut.

[4:25 p.m.]

All right. The floor is yours.

REAL ESTATE BOARD
OF GREATER VANCOUVER

H. Permut: I’m Harriet Permut, the government relations manager for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. I’m here today to talk to you about several issues, including the vital role that home sales play in our communities; how the property transfer tax, the PTT, makes home ownership less affordable; and how thoughtful application of the property transfer tax revenue could make homes more affordable.

First, I’ll give you some background, briefly, about the real estate board. I know you heard from our provincial association yesterday in Mission. The board represents more than 14,000 licensed residential and commercial realtors and their clients in greater Vancouver. Our board boundaries extend from Pemberton in the north to Tsawwassen in the south, from the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast in the west to Maple Ridge in the east — a lot of territory.

Real estate and construction together produced 26.7 percent of the province’s GDP and more than 256,000 jobs, making these sectors the largest job creators in the B.C. economy. In the handout we gave you, that’s the wheel here. You can see the sectors. It’s a bit scary to think of the number of jobs at stake in our industry.

We worry a little bit about efforts to bring down the prices, the number of homes being built, whatever. There are a lot of people who make a very good living from building homes and supporting the home sale and home-building industries. On the housing side alone, close to 36,000 homes were sold on the Multiple Listing Service, the MLS, in greater Vancouver in 2017, generating $2.4 billion in spinoff economic activity and 17,600 related jobs.

I’ve come to talk to your committee today, as I have for many years, about a number of ways to make home ownership more affordable using revenue from the property transfer tax. In fiscal 2017-18, the PTT generated $2.1 billion in revenue. For this fiscal year, 2018-19, the PTT is forecast to generate $2.2 billion. Since 1987, when the tax was brought in, the cumulative total revenue collected from homebuyers is $22.6 billion. That’s what this table is here. It shows the increase over the years.

At the same time, the PTT continues to be one of the factors that contribute to making home ownership unaffordable. In greater Vancouver, where the benchmark price of a townhome is just over $846,000, a homebuyer will pay a PTT of almost $15,000. Benchmark price means the typical home in the market that you’re looking at. That’s for the overall greater Vancouver area.

If a homebuyer is fortunate enough to find a very modest townhome in Maple Ridge, the location of the region’s lowest-priced townhomes, the buyer of this benchmark-priced townhome would pay $566,300, and they will pay a PTT of just over $9,300. Finding such a property is like winning the lottery. Supply is so low that only a few lucky folks can get into the market.

The numbers that follow that are on the back. You can see that we’ve broken down the neighbourhoods that we represent. You can check the income levels against the cost to service a mortgage for a typical home.

Metro Vancouver’s current population is 2.5 million. This number is forecast to grow by 35,000 new residents each year, reaching 3.4 million by 2040. This means housing supply problems will continue to escalate. This brings me to our recommendations.

One of the ways to improve affordability is to increase the supply of affordable homes. In our first recommendation, we’re asking the government to ensure that the PTT reflects the dynamic state of the real estate market. You can do this by increasing the first-time-homebuyers program PTT exemption threshold to $750,000 from $500,000 and increasing the 1 percent PTT threshold, the low end of the tax, to $525,000 from $200,000 for all homebuyers and not just first-time buyers.

[4:30 p.m.]

The government can also index the PTT thresholds using the consumer price index and make adjustments annually for the 2 and 3 percent thresholds, first-time-homebuyers program exemption threshold and newly built home exemption threshold. It’s a very complicated tax. It’s just grown like Topsy over the years.

The government can expand the exemption for the additional 20 percent foreign buyer PTT to include everyone with a work permit in B.C. And don’t increase the tax or expand it beyond its current geographical scope.

In our second recommendation, we’re asking the government to ensure fairness and effectiveness in taxation. For the speculation tax, we recommend the government exempt some homeowners who pay income tax in Canada, regardless of the number of homes they own. If they pay tax in Canada, they’re Canadians, they’re already contributing to the economy.

The government should also exempt property buyers in Vancouver already paying the empty homes tax, as well as development properties. Vancouverites will be taxed twice under the city’s tax that was enabled and also under the spec tax — pretty much the same tax. It’s a bit disturbing.

We also think the government should create incentives for homeowners making their homes available as long-term rentals, instead of penalizing those owners who do not rent out their properties. Reverse the onus. We would also like the government to exempt vacant lands held for development for the school tax. Taxing vacant lands that are going to be built on just increases the price of those homes. It’s not affordable.

In our third recommendation, we’re asking the government to use PTT revenue to encourage density by providing financial incentives to municipalities to do several things. One would be to increase supply by rezoning land for the missing middle market housing. That would be townhomes, smaller homes on smaller lots and low-rise apartments.

Green-light gentle density, such as stratifying laneway and infill homes and secondary suites. Increase the supply of affordable-market, ground-oriented family homes, like three-bedroom homes along transit-oriented corridors in low-density neighbourhoods.

Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity. Do you have any questions?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just had a couple of things. I was looking at your interesting graph here. One of the things I noticed immediately was that the annual income required for someone to buy a detached home in Vancouver is $325,000 a year. Obviously, there are some people who make that, but I don’t know too many of them.

H. Permut: This is the household income — double. It would have to be.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah. At least with child care, you could have two people working now. But the real question is: quite honestly, is PTT really going to make a difference when the income is just not there to be able to afford the house in the first place? Part of the whole reason for the measures that are being taken is just the fact that incomes haven’t kept up with the real estate market.

H. Permut: Well, that’s to buy a single-family home.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that.

H. Permut: It’s a bit easier if you’re buying a condo or something.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s still, let’s say, $175,000 or whatever that family income is. But the point is that incomes in Vancouver, especially, or in the Lower Mainland haven’t kept up with the cost of housing. So then the question is: are we going to get the incomes higher? Are we going to get some sort of adjustment on housing? It has just sort of run away. I think that’s why there is an over-80 percent approval of something like the speculation tax just to help.

I understand what you’re saying, and I understand that PTT hasn’t really changed in terms of thresholds in many years. I understand that as well. I guess we’ve got a crisis, and we all have to work together to try to fix that.

H. Permut: We do. That’s why we’re recommending things other than just tax measures. There are some planning and land use measures in here. They have to go together. You can’t just do it on one side.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, fair enough. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): You have a perfect opportunity. There’s an election coming up. Has your organization been out talking to those other levels of government that actually have a large control in the costs?

H. Permut: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): So you’re out there getting pledges.

H. Permut: We had a big session today, a mayoral forum in Vancouver, which we haven’t done in a long time.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good. Did you get pledges from them on the direction they’re going to take?

H. Permut: Yeah, actually. They were quite specific on what they plan to do, on their platforms.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Then hold their feet to the fire.

H. Permut: We will. We haven’t done a Vancouver forum in a while, and we had the top seven.

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

H. Permut: Thank you for the opportunity.

[4:35 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it, and you have the distinction of being our very last presenter.

H. Permut: I’m okay with that. It let me get here from Vancouver.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Last but not least. So thank you very much — and on time perfectly.

I just wanted to say thank you to all the members for over 200 meetings, 14 cities and how many days. It’s hard to even know now. I really appreciate all the great questions and the attention that the members had during this entire process. I’m really looking forward to the deliberations. It’ll be fun. It’ll be interesting. We have a lot to talk about.

You can still provide written input until October 15, so please do so. Go to the website.

A motion to adjourn? Oh, wait. Before we adjourn.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Mr. Chair, just before you do….

I just want to re-emphasize what our Chair has said. I want to thank everybody. Great job. I also want to thank the Chair. He’s done an incredible job. I know how hard it is, but Bob, you’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.

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

Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:36 p.m.