The committee met at 8:30 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’re very happy to be here in Kimberley. I’d like to recognize that our public hearings today are taking place on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa and the Kinbasket people.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Every fall, normally, we hold a public consultation and visit different communities and regions of the province to hear directly from British Columbians about their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget. This year, however, we moved our consultation up to June to enable the committee to deliver a final report to the Legislative Assembly earlier in the budget process. We’ll be reviewing this new timeline and welcome feedback from anyone in the public on the change at the end of the consultation.

Our consultation is based on the budget consultation paper that’s presented by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available here today for anyone who’s interested in reading it.

Today is the second day of our public hearings. We’ll be visiting many other communities over the next two weeks, and there are still some spots available for anyone who would like to share their ideas with us in person or over the phone. We also invite British Columbians to share their ideas in writing or to fill out the on-line survey. Details are available at our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance. The deadline for input is 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2019.

All of the input we receive is considered carefully and used to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be featured in the next provincial budget. A report will be available in late July or early August. To those of you who are here today, thank you for taking the time to meet with us and share your ideas.

Now, as far as the meeting format, to ensure that we can hear from everyone who took the time to speak with us today, I’d kindly ask everyone if they could respect the following time limits. Each presenter has five minutes to share their input followed by five minutes for questions by the committee. We welcome you to provide any information that you were not able to share in your presentation in writing.

If there’s anyone who hasn’t registered in advance and who would like to speak to the committee, please see Stephanie, in the back at the information table, and we will do our best to accommodate you.

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

If we could, I’d like the members to introduce themselves. Let’s start with our local MLA, Doug Clovechok.

D. Clovechok: Thank you very much. I’m Doug Clove­chok, MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke, and Kimberley is in my riding. I’m absolutely thrilled, always, to be here in Kimberley and with the group.

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

R. Coleman: I’m Rich Coleman. I’m the MLA for Langley East.

N. Simons: I’m Nicholas Simons. I’m the MLA for Powell River–Sunshine Coast.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good morning. My name is Dan Ashton. I’m the MLA for Penticton to Peachland.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Once again, I’m Bob D’Eith, the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission.

Assisting us today in the committee are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond, who’s in the back, from the Parliamentary Committees Office. We also have Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard, who set up all of the wonderful electronics back there and will be recording all the proceedings.

First up we have the city of Kimberley.

Don McCormick, if you wouldn’t mind coming up.

Budget Consultation Presentations

CITY OF KIMBERLEY

D. McCormick: Thank you to the committee members for being here today and listening to the number of people that will be presenting to you this morning. My topic for presentation is the Residential Tenancy Act. My hypothesis, after hearing overwhelming anecdotal evidence from all over not only our city but our region, is this.

[8:35 a.m.]

Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on housing subsidies, a $1 pen judiciously applied to the Resi­dential Tenancy Act can have a meaningful effect on housing availability and, in doing so, reduce the amount of money applied to housing issues.

Current rents for available homes in Kimberley are between $1,400 and $2,300 a month. This is a tourism-driven economy where the majority of jobs pay less then $20 an hour. Our assessment is that this is a supply-and-demand issue and should be treated accordingly. Our population has risen by 26 percent since the 2006 census, making us one of the fastest-growing municipalities in British Columbia. People want to live in Kimberley, and we need more supply of housing, particularly rental.

Why the focus on rental? With increased regulation — things like mortgage qualifications, higher down payments, stress tests, etc. — the goal of cooling down the housing market everywhere in the province, and really, across the country, is achieved. Fewer people are able to purchase, so demand for rental is going up.

I’ve been talking to developers and builders in our community here for about three years now about the rental crunch and how it’s an opportunity that they should want to take advantage of. Builders don’t want any part of property management. They want to invest, sell, get their money and basically get out and move on to the next project.

I’m having some success promoting multi-unit residential as an answer to affordability issues. Smaller footprints, smaller lots mean lower costs because the cost of construction is the cost of construction. However, the cost of new construction makes renting new dwellings more expensive, which in turn drives up the rent for older homes. Affordable rent is best addressed with existing inventory, not new building that is subsidized. Construction cost, as I mentioned, is construction cost.

It is the secondary home owners who hold the answer to affordable rents. They’re pretty much universal in wanting to do nothing or to have nothing to do with long-term rentals. It’s not one specific thing in the act but cumulative effects that are the issue. No one wants to be a landlord, so owners of revenue properties are choosing other options.

Over one-third of all households in British Columbia are rented, and according to the residential tenancy branch, there are approximately 25,000 arbitrated tenancy disputes every year in B.C. As a tenant or a landlord, the odds that you’re going to be involved in a dispute of some kind are extremely high. In local government, if our bylaws and policies are constantly being challenged or we see a high number of requests for variance, we rightfully conclude there’s a problem with the bylaw or policy, and it’s modified accordingly. Given the numbers that I just mentioned, the Residential Tenancy Act definitely requires a fresh look.

Thirty percent of Kimberley homes are owned by people outside of Kimberley. This is a huge opportunity to fill the rental gap. However, owners are choosing to leave their properties empty, using them periodically for their own use or moving over to short-term rentals. There is a belief that short-term rentals are killing the long-term rental market in most municipalities. I believe it is the reverse. The rise of short-term rentals is a symptom, not the problem. This is an unintended consequence of an uneven playing field, with the scales tipped way too far in favour of the tenant. We need to treat the problem, not the symptom.

Renting a real estate property is a business for an owner. The owner must have a fair return on that investment, or they will find other ways to achieve that return. Rural B.C. does not have huge property management companies that build and manage rental properties.

Under most recent regulations, the landlord may impose a rent increase that is no greater than the rate of inflation. If you look at ICBC, B.C. Hydro and B.C. Ferries, basically most of the government entities are taking increases that cover their increased cost of operating, and those increases are far greater than the cost of inflation. Limiting a landlord to consumer price index increases — basically telling landlords that they can do no better than tread water — is inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.

There are unscrupulous landlords, but they are the exception, not the rule. We know that there are as many unscrupulous tenants. Blanket rules to defend against the worst, at either end of the spectrum, are having unintended consequences for the majority. I do not want to see either the tenant or the landlord favoured. Clearly, there is an issue that, if resolved, will greatly increase supply without massive subsidies. This will have a positive effect on the budget and on our taxes.

[8:40 a.m.]

All levels of government must exercise judgment, discretion and creativity when choosing how to spend taxpayer money. After all, there is only one taxpayer.

Hundreds of millions of dollars being committed for a variety of housing initiatives is what’s happening today. The housing dilemma — I hesitate to call it a crisis, as much of it is self-inflicted — is real across the province. I urge the committee to recommend looking beyond the symptoms for real answers to our housing needs. It is the result, not the intention, that is most meaningful to our residents. The Residential Tenancy Act is one important element of this problem that should be addressed.

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

Any questions?

R. Coleman: Don, in Kimberley, do you allow coach houses as additional rental properties on residential lots?

D. McCormick: Yeah. Not only do we allow it. We’re encouraging it. We’ve changed the bylaws to allow for carriage homes, suites of most kinds. We do.

D. Clovechok: Don, are there any examples here in Kimberley where the supply has gone down because of the Residential Tenancy Act that’s in place right now, where product has actually been taken off the rental market, virtually displacing the renters?

D. McCormick: Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, MLA Clovechok. The reason it’s difficult is because most of the information is anecdotal. I can’t say that there has been a survey done and we have raw data to support that. But I think the hypothesis is a good one. Most people that I talk to want nothing whatsoever to do with long-term rentals.

N. Simons: I’m not sure. You say that a third of home dwellers are renters, and then you say that nobody wants to rent. There’s a little bit of a disconnect there. You’re talking about the symptoms. You say we shouldn’t be treating the symptoms, but you haven’t mentioned what the problem is, besides the symptoms. What is the problem? What is the illness?

D. McCormick: Well, I guess with respect to the first question, the one-third represents a steady state. In other words, that number has been relatively close to that number for a long period of time. When you go look around the province, there’s a certain inventory that has been committed to long-term rentals. The issue is that with growing populations in communities like Kimberley, there is no additional inventory that’s coming into the market to account for the increased demand in rental.

Very clearly, the actions that have been taken with respect to cooling the housing market down have done exactly that. Where it has cooled down is with young families, because they’re the ones that have difficulty getting the down payments together. They’re the ones that have difficulty with stress tests. So there is this very high demand, particularly with young families, for rental that we are seeing, and we need more inventory. Clearly, this is a supply-and-demand issue.

When I talk about symptoms, I guess what we are asking ourselves is: “What are the things that we can do to help increase the supply that’s in the marketplace?” As I outlined in my argument, that supply, on the rental side of things, for affordable rents is not building new structures, because it’s too expensive to be able to put rents out on new construction. What we need to do is to encourage existing inventory, the older homes, the revenue properties that people have purchased — to put those into the long-term rental pool. There are many, many of those out there, and it can be done.

R. Coleman: Just one thing. Between the two of you, I think what you are referring to is that it’s not that there aren’t more renters. The issue is that there’s nobody wanting to invest in being a landlord. The vacating in the market right now is taking place on the landlord level. They’re moving to Airbnb and other options simply because they’re now constricted from having a lease, so they can’t have a one-year deal. They can’t get 2 percent plus CPI, so they can’t cover things like a boiler going down or whatever the case may be.

They’re making the economic choice to say: “We’re not staying in the market.” In rural B.C., that is single-family, duplexes. Like Don said, there are not huge landlords or property management companies investing in these markets.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Time is up. Thank you very much, Don. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the good questions to start the day off. We really appreciate your spending the time.

[8:45 a.m.]

D. McCormick: Thank you for the opportunity to present. This is definitely a topic that warrants lots of time.

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

All right. Next up we have East Kootenay Invasive Species Council — Kendal Benesh.

Good morning, Kendal.

EAST KOOTENAY
INVASIVE SPECIES COUNCIL

K. Benesh: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this morning. My name is Kendal Benesh. I’m the program manager for the East Kootenay Invasive Species Council, an organization that’s been around for approximately ten years in the regional district. I’ve just started in this position about two months ago, so I’ll do my best to answer any of your questions.

Invasive species are widely acknowledged as causing varying degrees of negative social, environmental and economic impacts across the globe. For example, invasive species are currently recognized as the second-largest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss, and agricultural weeds alone account for the greatest economic impact of all known pests.

Historically, in the East Kootenay region, invasive species management was carried out by provincial and local governments, industry, First Nations and individual private landowners on lands that they occupied or managed. The East Kootenay Invasive Plant Council was established as a non-profit society in 2008 to continue delivery of the East Kootenay invasive plant program. In 2016, this organization transitioned into what it is now — the East Kootenay Invasive Species Council — to reflect the wider scope of invasive species impacts — for example, adding onto plants. We have things like invasive quagga and zebra mussels that are a hot topic around here.

EKISC is a local coalition of clubs, agencies and organizations dedicated to the control of alien invasive species in the East Kootenay and is one of such 13 regional invasive species organizations across the province. EKISC currently does receive government funding from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure as well as the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. We also receive funding from a variety of conservation organizations and also provide a fee-for-service from some private organizations as well.

We operate within the RDEK with the purpose of coor­di­nating invasive species management across the region, ensuring adequate public outreach and communications, working on various prevention initiatives and fostering support for the control of invasive species. We request that the following actions be undertaken by the government.

First of all, we are hoping for legislation and funding for prevention and immediate investment to avoid perpetual ongoing and growing costs for invasive species management. With a large amount of the land base in British Columbia belonging to Crown, the government needs to increase investment on a basic level of stewardship. We do recognize that we already receive an amount of funding for invasive species management annually, but we would request that, across the province, $15 million be invested into invasive species prevention, monitoring and response to address all invasive species.

This funding should also be timely. In the past, our organization has had to take out lines of credit in order to pay our contractors while awaiting government funds to be allocated across the province. We would prefer that invasive species funding come as government base funding. As our work is frequently following natural resource activities, allocating a portion of revenue from mining, forestry or agriculture could help us deal with infestations or risks arriving from these activities.

Government should also ensure that funding is in place to respond to natural disaster areas — for example, floods and wildfire, which are becoming increasingly more common — and ensure that immediate monitoring, treatment and restoration takes place afterwards. After a lot of these natural disasters, it’s a really good opportunity for invasive species to come in and establish populations.

We also request legislation to provide leadership in implementing the invasive species strategy for B.C. Although agencies such as ourselves and the other regional invasive species organizations gather public support and leverage funds for more comprehensive education or treatments, we don’t have the authority to administer the Weed Act or bring about enforcement actions. We would like to see increased investment and partnerships with non-government organizations along with First Nations and local governments.

[8:50 a.m.]

We would also request legislation to streamline regulations and establish a single invasive species act to ensure that all invasive species, not just plants and animals, are covered under the legislation. We would like to see increased enforcement by government to ensure that land occupiers, including the provincial government, are acting upon existing and new legislation and regulations. We’d like to see streamlined legislation to ensure all B.C. invasive species and pathways are covered by regulatory tools.

Lastly, we’d like to see legislation to better manage high-risk pathways that introduce and spread invasive species. This would mean either closing or better managing pathways to avoid new species introductions and ongoing management costs. For example, this would be the pet and aquarium trade, which can lead to the release of goldfish into lakes or wall lizards in Victoria; as well as the horticultural trade, where ornamental plants such as yellow flag iris, European fire ants, baby’s breath and knotweed have spread beyond garden borders; as well as recreational activities.

You would likely be familiar with the “Clean, drain, dry” campaigns as well as the check stops for decontamination for zebra mussels. These are great initiatives, but they do need ongoing and increased support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Kendal, we’re at 5:30. If you wouldn’t mind wrapping up, that would be great.

K. Benesh: Okay. Yes. So invasive species are an issue that affects all British Columbians, one that is going to require consistent, adequate funding for ongoing prevention and management across public and private lands.

Thank you for this opportunity to put forward our concerns, and thank you for your time this morning.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s good to know that there’s activity around invasive species throughout the province.

K. Benesh: Lots of activity, yes.

R. Leonard: Now, you mentioned $15 million. Is that across the province, and where did you come up with that particular figure?

K. Benesh: That would be across the province, and that was a number that was brought up by the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia. They work provincially to also work mostly on outreach and education campaigns and provide some support in partnership with us. That would be a provincial number.

R. Leonard: Okay. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Definitely…. This is my third trip around the province with the Finance Committee, and inva­sive species does come up every time and in many places around the province. So we hear you.

K. Benesh: Yeah. They’re everywhere.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah. So it’s clearly an issue, and we have brought that up in the past. I know there’s been some movement on that, but I certainly recognize that a lot more needs to be done.

Could you tell me the impact that climate change is having in this region, or do you know what impact in terms of inva­sive species?

K. Benesh: I can’t speak to the particular impact of climate change on invasive species, but for plants and animals in general, it does affect the distribution, movement and population dynamics of species across the board. What we are seeing with the loss of biodiversity and the impacts of climate change is that invasive species are just becoming more and more on the radar.

As we’re seeing some of these larger reports come out of the UN, invasive species are a common theme. Pressures for local wildlife and plant populations — invasive species are always something that are on the radar. As climate change pressures are increasing and land use changes and disturbances are continuing to happen across the board, we are expecting to see invasive species grow in risk factors.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Because we heard from one presenter that, of course, things like pine beetle and things like that are, because of climate change…. It’s exacerbating the issues or growing the issues.

K. Benesh: Right. And as we see climate change, wildfires are becoming more abundant across the region. And as I mentioned before, when large wipe-out events take place, like flood or wildfire, it is a really good opportunity for invasive species to come in, because they’re that much more resilient and quick to establish after an event like that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting.

D. Clovechok: Just really quickly, Kendal, for someone new in your position, you did very well. I appreciated your presentation.

K. Benesh: Oh, thank you so much.

D. Clovechok: From the mussels perspective, if you had your wish, what would be the thing that we need more in the East Kootenays?

K. Benesh: More monitoring.

D. Clovechok: Twenty-four-hour or…?

K. Benesh: Well, we do have the one 24-hour stop up at Golden, and I think the conservation officer service is doing a really great job of getting the word out. They’re doing the decontamination.

Monitoring across the summer in lakes. We have funding this year to do monitoring in 11 lakes across the regional district of East Kootenay, and that’s only 11 lakes out of many, many lakes in the area.

[8:55 a.m.]

I know some of the other regions don’t have as much funding for that. So increased monitoring during the summer, monthly, in a lot of these high-risk areas and just more funding for outreach and communication — talking to recreators, talking to people who are coming either from out of province or moving within the province. Just getting the word out there, because there are still lots of folks who don’t know that their paddleboard or their kayak or their fishing waders are included in that clean, drain, dry — or decontamination.

D. Clovechok: There are still a lot of holes.

K. Benesh: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time, but thank you very much for the presentation. I concur. A really great presentation.

The next one we have is via teleconference. It’s the Langley Teachers Association.

Tanya, are you on the line?

T. Kerr: Yes, I’m here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Tanya, if you wouldn’t mind, we normally take about five minutes. If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, then we have time for questions after. Okay? Go ahead.

LANGLEY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

T. Kerr: Excellent. My focus, of course, is going to be on education. It’s the K-to-12 education that I’m mainly going to talk about.

I believe that the current funding that we have is actually inadequate — that the funding for K-to-12 education, as a share of the provincial economy, has been falling steadily for the past 18 years. While the government has been making capital investments, operational funding for K to 12 remains woefully inadequate. If B.C. was still spending the same level as in 2002, we would have $3,000 more per student in our public schools.

Because of this chronic underfunding, school districts spend hundreds and millions of dollars more on special education services than they receive from the Ministry of Education every year. They’re forced to pull dollars from other programs to meet special needs, so it’s long overdue for the government to significantly improve operational funding.

I really appreciate the recommendations that have been put forward. I had a couple of questions. I’m not sure if that’s…. I haven’t done this before. But I was curious to know why we’re calling it a new curriculum and not the revised curriculum.

The other piece that I was curious about was recruitment and retention. I understand that in rural and remote areas it’s difficult to recruit and retain, but actually, in B.C. overall, we’re noticing that there is a difficulty to recruit and retain teachers. If we were to compare salaries, even just to our neighbours next door, they’re making about $20,000 more, and with our high costs of living…. I was a little disappointed to see that one of the increases is to fund compensation increases for exempt staff — principals and vice-principals — but I didn’t see anything about teachers. I don’t know if I just missed that. That was a concern that I did have.

Overall, though, the recommendations that I thought were really important…. I was ranking them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Can I just interrupt you there, Tanya, for a sec? Nicholas Simons had a quick question for you.

N. Simons: I’m just wondering what recommendations you’re commenting about — being disappointed or not disappointed about.

T. Kerr: Actually, I was just getting there. Just within the report itself, under “Professional Development,” I saw that it was called “new curriculum,” and really, it is just a revision of the current curriculum.

N. Simons: What report are you referring to?

T. Kerr: The overall report that this came in. It was page 54.

N. Simons: Can you read the title of your report?

T. Kerr: Yeah. It’s the Report on the Budget 2019 Consultation.

N. Simons: That’s our last year’s report.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You mean last year’s recommendations? Is that what you’re talking about? Or are you talking about…?

N. Simons: We haven’t issued a report yet. That’s what I’m saying. I’m not sure what we’re discussing here. Your comments are entirely valid for what they’re referring to, but I don’t know why we’re talking about last year’s report.

[9:00 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Tanya, I know this is your first time presenting. Basically, what we’re doing is listening to presenters from around the province. Then we make recommendations each year on the specific budget. We’ll be making recommendations on the 2020 budget.

Now, some people do refer to past recommendations from the Finance Committee. But maybe, I know that…. We’re just trying to figure out what report you’re referring to, whether it’s last year’s report from the Finance Committee or an education report. I’m not sure what you’re referring to.

Anyway, if you could find out and just get back to the Clerk’s office, we’d really appreciate that. Then you could just continue. That’d be fine.

Okay, why don’t we move on. Then we will come back to Tanya if we can get her on the line again.

Next up we have Shannon McGinty from Lake Windermere Ambassadors.

Hi, Shannon. How are you?

S. McGinty: Good. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. So what we try to do is keep the initial comments to about five minutes, and then we have five minutes for questions and other comments. So the floor is yours. Please go ahead.

LAKE WINDERMERE AMBASSADORS

S. McGinty: Awesome. Thank you for taking the time to hear my concerns today. As you mentioned, my name’s Shannon McGinty, and I’m the program coordinator for the Lake Windermere Ambassadors. I’m here on behalf of the Lake Windermere Ambassadors and also other water stewardship organizations within the Columbia Basin and British Columbia.

We believe that British Columbia needs to make water a priority in the upcoming 2020 budget. I’m very fortunate to be able to be a part of a group of engaged citizens, who conduct high-quality water monitoring that fills gaps, in order to support local, regional and Indigenous governments to meet their mandates of working to build communities that are resilient to climate and economic changes. We follow both federal and provincial water monitoring protocols when collecting this data.

The biggest challenge we face as an organization is financial capacity. We are often able to find funding for new projects and activities but always struggle to support our ongoing monitoring and more administrative and overhead costs that are required. We face the challenge of funders changing their interests in where they are putting their money and their funding commitments over time. So where we once would have secure funding that we relied on, we no longer have that, and then we need to find other funding options.

That all takes away from our capacity, as an organization, to actually conduct the high-quality monitoring that we aim to do and time that we use to improve our programs. So British Columbia needs to invest more money into watershed sustainability. Water is one of our most precious resources, and, as mentioned earlier, there are many community organizations and First Nations that are stepping up to lead excellent initiatives. But more support is needed.

Then, options for the province to provide this support are fairly varied and widespread, to help keep their commitments made. Ideally, the province of British Columbia could create an independent and permanent water sustainability fund. This fund would allocate money to the initiatives and efforts that deliver water protection across B.C. The money for this fund could in part come from water rentals.

Currently water rental rates in British Columbia are among the lowest in Canada, at $2.25 per one million litres. If you take that number and compare it to other provinces, such as Nova Scotia, where they’re $140 per one million litres, you can see that it’s just not really a fair price. So it’s time for British Columbia to take a stand on protecting our waters for future generations and resilience.

[9:05 a.m.]

The countless community-based organizations made up of committed and engaged citizens, some of which are committing hundreds of volunteer hours each year, can help make this happen. But we just need support from the government.

I’d like to ask you to please consider implementing a water sustainability fund to support the necessary work to protect our fresh water.

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

Before we get started, I guess this is more expensive than gas, isn’t it, if you look at it on a per litre basis? It has always been interesting to me that the leasing rates for water are so low. I certainly appreciate your passion on this issue.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation.

I have a question around your particular stewardship group. Can you tell me what uses are on…? I assume it’s Lake Windermere where you do your monitoring. What are the uses? What are the impacts that you’re monitoring for?

S. McGinty: The Ambassadors, in general, have been around…. We started as a five-year pilot project and then have, since that pilot project, been around for about ten years — so almost 15 years of monitoring. We look at a whole scope of parameters both on the lake and on the tributaries that feed into the lake.

The major uses specifically on the lake are recreation-based, but we have lots of industry in the surrounding area. Mining and forestry are two of the big ones. One of the biggest impacts we’re seeing right now is impacts of climate change, which are very hard to work on. It’s nice that we have the long-term data, and we have some historic data that is no longer being collected by the government that we’re able to compare back to. Then there’s still some government data that’s being done on the lake, but it’s only done twice a year.

R. Leonard: Just one quick follow-up. Is there a lot of residential or development around stormwater runoff in the tributaries, in the watershed?

S. McGinty: There has been some work done on it. Early on in our program — so within the first, I would say, five to seven years — we did find some problems with…. The district of Invermere is the closest municipality to Lake Windermere. We did find some concerns around their stormwater runoff. They’ve taken action, based on our monitoring, to help mitigate those factors.

R. Leonard: What kind of funding do you get? What magnitude of funding do you get right now?

S. McGinty: Where does it come from, or what is our annual budget?

R. Leonard: What is your annual budget?

S. McGinty: It depends on what projects we’re doing throughout the year. On a year where we’re doing less projects, we’re in more of a $60,000 range, and more, we move up to $80,000 to $100,000.

R. Leonard: So $60,000 is your base for monitoring.

S. McGinty: Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Shannon. Appreciate that presentation.

We have Tanya, again, from the Langley Teachers Association.

Tanya, are you on the line?

T. Kerr: Yes, I am.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry we lost you there. Our apologies. Skype can always be a little bit problematic at times. So sorry about that.

If you want to start again, that’s completely fine, or if you want to continue, that’s completely fine as well. I’ll leave that up to you.

LANGLEY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

(continued)

T. Kerr: No, I think I’ll just continue where I was at and talk a little bit about the recommendations that I had found to be really important for us from the report on…. The Budget 2019 consultation is what I was looking at. I understand there are additional documents for the budget, but I can talk a little bit about, maybe, the order of the recommendations.

[9:10 a.m.]

The first one is to provide the sustainable, predictable funding based on a child-centred model that allows school districts to cover the costs of delivering education. I think that this is probably the most important, but it also is attached to recommendation No. 69: “Increase funding for students with special needs, including funding for early identification, the provision of appropriate support programs and the training and recruitment of specialized teachers.” I think those go hand in hand.

Again, to “fund compensation increases for exempt staff, principals and vice-principals”— I did feel that there was something missing there — why the teachers weren’t included in that. But I understand that there’s also the need for “flexibility at the local level for principals and vice-principals to take on teaching roles,” especially in those “rural and remote areas facing challenges with recruitment and retention.”

Just going back, we still have issues in Langley. I know that other districts around the province are having issues staffing to the needs. We are constantly short, with teachers teaching on call. We had probably 20 unfilled positions still by December of this past year. Recruitment and retention is a provincewide issue, not just a remote and rural-area issue.

Finally, the capital funding. This has been going on, but it is still important, of course, to increase capital funding to build those new schools and maintain and upgrade the existing ones. Those are the recommendations that I was looking at. I do believe that a lot of the money that has come into education is because of our restored collective agreements. We were already underfunded, so that was the starting point. But we shouldn’t just continue on with that. We do need to see improvements.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you, Tanya. Just to clarify, you’re quoting from last year’s recommendations for the 2019-20 finance report.

T. Kerr: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Again, those are recommendations. Just to clarify, what happened last year is that administrators came to us and said: “You know what? We actually operate under a different contract regime than the teachers.” There was a situation where sometimes principals were making less than teachers. That’s why it was a separate recommendation. There was a reason for that.

As far as the retention and recruitment, there are, I think, nearly 4,000 teachers having been hired. Obviously, with that new funding, it has put a lot of strain on recruitment, like you said, because there have been a lot of hires. That has also had some impacts around the province in terms of movement.

Vancouver, I gather, had a net loss of teachers. Teachers were able to work where they lived, because there were more opportunities. There are always these unintended consequences, but I certainly hear what you’re saying. I’ll open the floor to any questions from the members.

N. Simons: I’ll just make a comment. I appreciate your submission. This committee is required, under the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, to conduct two weeks of consultation on the next provincial budget. That’s what we’re currently doing. We’re looking at what should be in the province’s next budget.

While it’s sometimes interesting to look back at what the recommendations were for the last provincial budget, seeing some things being implemented and some not, we are a body that makes recommendations to the province. That is our responsibility. I think if you want us to fine-tune the recommendations from last year, and that’s what your submission is, then maybe we can see that clarified as we deliberate. I just wanted to point out that usually we talk about what we should have in next year’s budget, not what we didn’t have in last year’s budget.

T. Kerr: Great.

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

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

A short recess, two or three minutes, because we have another teleconference that we’re trying to set up.

The committee recessed from 9:14 a.m. to 9:16 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have, via teleconference, the Coalition of Child Care Advocates — Sharon Gregson.

What we’re trying to do…. Sharon, if you could keep your initial comments to about five minutes, we’ll have time for questions. The floor is yours.

COALITION OF CHILD CARE
ADVOCATES OF B.C.

S. Gregson: Good morning, committee members, and thank you to the Chair. It’s a great opportunity, once again, to present to your important committee. I represent the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. Through research, public education and mobilization, we work to achieve a high-quality, affordable, accessible child care system that serves the public interest. We do not receive funding from the province of B.C. In 2011, along with our colleagues the Early Childhood Educators of B.C., we developed and launched the $10-a-day child care plan. We have been the lead proponents of the $10-a-day plan ever since.

The B.C. government has, indeed, taken bold steps to address the existing child care chaos. Based largely on the $10-a-day plan, government has begun to lower parent fees and raise educator wages and education levels. Government has also confirmed its commitment to Indigenous-led child care and initiated an expansion of Aboriginal Head Start.

However, while these are good first starts, we are concerned that our 2019 budget recommendations have not yet been implemented. These policy recommendations are grounded in solid research and strong evidence and are required in order to achieve a system of quality, affordable child care in B.C. Lack of progress on these recommendations is undermining government’s commitment to lowering parent fees, improving the recruitment and retention of qualified educators and, importantly, creating more quality licensed spaces with public partners.

Hence, today we are resubmitting our 2019 budget recommendations and calling on you, government, to begin implementation immediately. It’s clear, from the results of a soon-to-be-released provincewide poll, that British Columbians of all ages, regions and political allegiances agree that children, parents and employers benefit when there’s access to quality, affordable child care.

[9:20 a.m.]

Today we have five key recommendations. Number one is access. To ensure that public funding quickly creates quality, publicly owned child care facilities, we have consistently recommended that government transfer capital grant funds into a new, separate capital child care budget for the purchase and building of public child care assets, beginning with the immediate bulk purchase of custom-designed modular buildings for new child care facilities.

Government will not be able to achieve its own target of 22,000 new spaces using the current outdated approach to space creation. Given the desperate need of families for more licensed spaces, we recommend that government purchase quality modular child care facilities to be located on public grounds across the province and to phase out the use of reactive, one-off capital grants to third parties, especially for-profit operators, to purchase and build privately owned facilities.

This action can be undertaken alongside the current UBCM planning grants, both locally and provincially, to develop a comprehensive capital budget for full implementation of universal child care.

Recommendation No. 2 is quality. To more substantially address the recruitment and retention crisis of early childhood educators, who are essential to ensuring quality child care, we recommend a wage lift of $2 an hour, effective April 1, 2020, rather than the $1-an-hour increase already committed for budget year 2020-2021.

We further recommend the development of a provincial wage grid for early childhood educators with harmonization as a necessary move towards fair compensation in order to meaningfully address the long-term recruitment and retention challenges in the sector.

Number 3 is infrastructure. To align government’s commitment to a universal child care system with B.C.’s existing system of universal public K-to-12 education, we recommend that government announce the transfer of the child care branch from the Ministry of Children and Family Development to the Ministry of Education.

This approach is consistent with the evidence and the majority of Canadian provinces and territories, and it is incorporated into the $10-a-day child care plan. To further delay the announcement of this necessary move leaves both the child care sector and the education sector in limbo.

Recommendation No. 4 is affordability. To ensure that parent fees are more affordable for everyone, we recommend that government reallocate this funding envelop away from the planned expansion of the income-tested affordability benefit toward increasing the universal fee reduction initiative and expanding the number of $10-a-day prototype sites across the province, which are a huge success for everyone who’s involved.

We further recommend that government ensure child care providers indeed pass on the full fee reduction to parents of too many families. Notably, those using for-profit child care programs report that they are not receiving the full benefit of the fee reduction.

Recommendation No. 5 is implementation. To ensure that the number of families who have access to quality affordable licensed child care continues to grow and the projected social and economic benefits are realized, we recommend that Budget 2020 include an increase in operating funding of $200 million annually starting in fiscal 2020-2021. This recommendation is consistent with the implementation modelling carried out for the $10-a-day plan, which projects full implementation of quality universal child care within eight to ten years.

To conclude, we appreciate that government will want to build on the initial success of Childcare B.C., so we offer these five recommendations based on the urgent needs of families across the province, supported by multiple cost-benefit analyses, an intersectional gender lens and the best interests of B.C.’s children.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Sharon. That was a couple of minutes over the time, so we don’t have a ton of time for questions. But I wanted you to have a full time to be able to get all those recommendations out.

S. Gregson: Thank you very much.

[9:25 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just have one clarification in terms of the idea that the private child care are not passing through the $350 money that’s supposed to be going to parents. I know a great deal of time and effort was put into ensuring that that was the case. Do you have evidence that that’s actually happening? Because my understanding is that to opt-in that they have to be able to show that they’re actually flowing through that money.

S. Gregson: Yes, we have multiple examples of families who have contacted us to report that they are not receiving the $350 fee reduction in infant-toddler programs. Unfortunately, many of those parents are afraid to report to government that they are experiencing this because they fear reprisal or the loss of their child care space.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Well, I would encourage you to pass that on to the minister.

S. Gregson: Indeed we have. I have passed it on to the minister.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

That was obviously a very thorough and well-articulated position. Thank you very much, Sharon, for all your work in child care. We appreciate the time to present to the committee.

S. Gregson: Thank you. We will be submitting a full written brief.

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

S. Gregson: Have a great day. Bye, now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have College of the Rockies — Dianne Teslak and David Walls.

Hi, David. Hi, Dianne. Just a reminder, if we can keep the initial comments to about five minutes. I let the last one go over a bit. But to keep things on, we’d liked to try to keep it to about five, if we can.

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES

D. Walls: Thanks. Good morning. I’m David Walls, president of the College of the Rockies. Joining me today is Dianne Teslak, who’s vice-president, finance and corporate services.

College of the Rockies. We have seven campuses, and we’re serving the whole East Kootenay region. Our budget is about $36 million, half of which actually comes in the form of grant from the province. Our economic impact has been shown to be in excess of $250 million on an annual basis.

Dianne is going to do most of the presentation today, because we just have five minutes. It’s probably as well that we stick with one speaker, I think.

D. Teslak: Thanks. I’m just going to get right into it.

We are in an era of disruption that requires the transformation of jobs, economies, communities and workforces. Rapidly changing technology has and will continue to cause traditional jobs to disappear, new industries to be created and business models to be fundamentally changed. Coupled with an aging population, a wave of retirements and expectations of thousands of jobs without workers to fill them over next decade, we need to get prepared to ensure the strength of the B.C. economy.

B.C.’s colleges are well positioned to provide leadership through this era of change. We have the ability to train young people and those displaced from the elimination of traditional jobs for new opportunities in the workforce that will sustain and grow our economy.

As a college, we have unique and strong connections to communities and industry. We work collaboratively with industry partners to develop educational and training programs that develop an adaptable workforce, respond quickly to the shifting needs of employers and modernize the way education and training are delivered.

We need to do more of this to ensure we meet the province’s labour force needs. But we are financially constrained by our funding model and by unique government policy that prohibits the spending of prior-year surpluses in the post-secondary sector.

We would like to offer a real solution, which would enable us to continue to be B.C.’s top-performing small rural college and to take an even more significant role in building an adequately trained workforce to sustain and grow B.C.’s economy through this era of disruption. The solution is financial flexibility.

This solution involves no additional funding from government and merely allows the post-secondary sector to access previously earned surpluses that are currently frozen by government policy through the “no annual deficit” directive. This directive is imposed only on the post-secondary sector. Its elimination would bring us to the same standards of financial performance of all other government sectors in B.C., which would support our government’s concepts of equity and fairness.

[9:30 a.m.]

Some history on this issue for you. Approximately ten years ago budget legislation was passed to amend the College and Institute Act and the University Act without consultation with or prior knowledge of the Ministry of Advanced Education and the sector. This created a situation where B.C.’s colleges and universities are in a significantly different financial position from the K-to-12 system and all other sectors.

In a nutshell, we are not able to have an annual deficit, the definition of which includes all non-cash expenditures, such as capital asset amortization. We are not able to save up to support normal ebbs and flows in business cycles in our non-government-supported streams of operations, such as international education or contract training. We are not able to develop long-term plans that would involve saving up to invest in large capital projects like student housing. We are not able to use prior-year surpluses to support ongoing costs of initiatives upon expiration of one-time funds.

Finally, we are restricted in our ability to respond to disruption and unexpected needs and conditions in our communities, where training or retraining efforts could have significant positive impact for our local industry and the provincial economy. Providing us with the ability to access our retained earnings savings accounts would help us sustain our operations through the years when alternative streams of revenue may be negatively impacted by forces out of our control, such as global events that impact international student recruitment and retention.

For several years, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services specifically recommended a review of accounting standards that limit post-secondary institutions’ ability to self-finance selected capital projects and work with post-secondary institutions and the Auditor General to identify potential solutions, yet these government and administrative and accounting policies continue to restrict our ability to respond quickly and effectively to disruption and the changing requirements of our students and industries and, in fact, limit our potential to be less dependent on government funding.

College of the Rockies is most interested in opening a dialogue with government to explore how we can move forward through this situation.

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

Just before we open for questions from the rest of the members, have you had a chance to talk to the Minister of Advanced Education about this issue, at all, in regards to the use of surpluses and…?

D. Teslak: I think the conversations have been going on through a few different ministers, probably. It has been a number of years, so we’ve had many, many conversations at the ministry level and with the office of the comptroller general.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Has the ability of the college to be able to borrow now for student housing been helpful?

D. Walls: From our perspective…. We’re actually going to be building new housing on the Cranbrook campus, but it’s not through the borrowing of money. We were lucky enough, actually, to receive a grant to be able to do that. So we’re not part of the new legislation around borrowing money at the university and college level.

D. Teslak: That project does include a significant amount of institutional contribution to build student housing, but the beauty of the student housing as a capital asset is that it creates a revenue stream. So we’re able to fund the unfunded appreciation that is a result of our institutional contribution.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Just curious.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. Just really quickly, what’s the spread difference between a local student, a student in British Columbia, and a foreign student that you bring in? Percentage-wise — 1 percent, 1½ percent or 2 percent?

D. Walls: In terms of the amount of tuition that they pay, it’s about 3 to 1, typically.

D. Teslak: It depends a bit on the program, but yeah.

D. Walls: The concept behind that is that the taxpayers are paying for the domestic students, primarily, so they’re subsidized. An international student, for us, basically pays the full cost of their education.

D. Clovechok: Just a comment. Thank you for your presentation. The College of the Rockies is an outstanding organization, and they work really hard. I’ve always thought that fiscal responsibility needs to be recognized and rewarded. It’s certainly high as a priority, as far as I’m concerned, so thank you.

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

Thank you very much for the presentation. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have Tif McNaughton.

[9:35 a.m.]

Good morning, Tif. How are you?

T. McNaughton: Good morning. I’m well, thanks. How are you?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. If we could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have time for questions, that would be great.

TIF McNAUGHTON

T. McNaughton: I am speaking in regards to the agreements with young adults program, which I will at times refer to as AYA, and I’ll also be speaking about the tuition waiver program.

I speak to you today as somebody who is 34 years old and has had many privileges in my life, but this summer, I begin my first full-time permanent job. I’ve only been unemployed for one month of my adult life, but I’ve often been underemployed. I have worked in non-profit admin, and I’ve worked front line in group homes and shelters and with multiple contracts with a community college. I’ve worked in coffee shops, retail settings and libraries. I’m currently a minister in the United Church of Canada.

There were times when my rent was 80 percent of my income or times when my expenses as a student far outpaced my income entirely. I’ve often had to drop school entirely for about six months or study part-time to ensure that I could work enough to live and save some amount for school.

I had access to a student line of credit, which was cosigned by my parents, and my parents themselves have helped me out by lending me money in my early twenties. I could stay with them again while I was working at a summer job, and that was a huge privilege.

When I permanently left my parents’ home, housing became a challenge. Like many students, I only had access to an on-campus housing situation for two years, which was expensive when I could even have it. Since then, I’ve dealt with negligent landlords; absolute infestation of mice; mould, which contributed to serious health problems; and disruptive, noisy neighbours — all in the name of affordable housing while I was a young adult and a student.

I tell you this because if I found myself struggling at times, I’m aware that this has to be considerably more challenging for young adults who do not have the types of support that I have had.

Working in human services and at a college introduced me to youth who have had to come up through the foster system, and it opened my eyes to the unequal footing that we’re standing on. It is unrealistic and problematic that youth age out of most forms of support at the age of 19. I personally was not ready to live without support at the age of 19, and the current agreements with young adults program, for instance, is the main way that support is extended to youth who are aging out of the foster system.

Outside of the Lower Mainland, though, this program is only accessed by 21 percent of eligible youth. I believe this is not because of the program being unnecessary but because the program is not flexible enough to reflect the reality of most young adults. The AYA program has improved in the last couple of years, which I am grateful for, but further improvements are needed. I suggest that there is a need to make the agreements with young adults program universal and that the requirement to provide proof of need should be removed.

At present, for instance, youth must collect receipts and provide proof of their living expenses exceeding their income, and this requires a great deal of time and system literacy. It takes time away from a person who could be caring for themselves or working or accessing education. It’s difficult for participants in the AYA program to sort out how much they can work and what clawbacks they might run into, which would make it impossible to save up for upcoming basic expenses.

The tuition waiver program, which can be accessed in addition to AYA, is a very positive thing, but students, to my knowledge, must be enrolled as full-time students. Most do not have access to free or subsidized living expenses while in school. Even in my second degree program, when I had a bachelor’s on my resumé, I was not able to cover all of my living expenses with the work that I could fit around a full-time school schedule. I had to drop to part-time for most semesters.

Working at a community college, I watched students struggle academically and struggle with their mental health, because they needed to work too much at their jobs, and they could not meet the demands of their schedule. I watched students continue to live in abusive relationships or unsuitable housing, because they did not have the financial latitude to leave those situations.

[9:40 a.m.]

In addition to making the AYA program universal by eliminating the eligibility process, I recommend that the tuition waiver program be made accessible to part-time students and the practice around reducing financial supports for those who are working, or clawbacks, be changed to allow a decent percentage more freedom.

I thank you for your time here today and for this opportunity to raise my concerns around ineffective programming, which could do greater good serving the people of B.C. more effectively. Studies show that the cost of supporting someone who is not thriving in our society greatly outpaces that of adequate, easy access supports earlier in life.

My parents were there to provide such support for me. Let’s not forget those who do not have such privilege.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Tif. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I’d agree that the tuition waiver program has actually had quite a big uptake. I think it’s up to 800 now that have accessed it. That’s a positive. But obviously, with any program, there are things that can be improved upon. So we appreciate your comments on that.

Any questions at all?

N. Simons: Sure. I’ll just make a comment. I just want to say that I appreciate you bringing these suggestions to improve the AYA agreements. I think you’re speaking on behalf of a lot of people who don’t have a voice, so that’s doubly appreciated.

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

Next up we have Wildsight and John Bergenske.

John, if we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that’d be great.

WILDSIGHT

J. Bergenske: I’ll do that. If you received my short brief, it’s not all that short, because I made a lot of points in there.

First of all, if you folks don’t know who we are, Wildsight works here in the region. We have five branches right around the Kootenays, from Golden, Creston, Invermere, Kimberley, Cranbrook and Fernie areas. We work very closely with our communities, with the industry in the area, in trying to find some solutions.

You do have my longer brief. I’m just going to highlight a few of the things this morning that I think probably aren’t being covered in a lot of the other discussions as people come forward. One of them is around the present process that the government has begun on improving wildlife management and habitat conservation. I think that’s an incredibly important initiative. Right now, wildlife populations around the province are in decline. We are going to need resources in order to deal with the situation.

For years, we’ve seen an ebb and flow in terms of available funding. A lot of the funding has had to come from what’s come from hunting licences and tags through the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund. I think it’s very, very important that that fund be expanded and that there be funding coming not just from that particular use but from all of those people who are using the landscape, so that outdoor recreation in general is putting into that fund, because wildlife are fundamental to, I think, communities around the province. The only way we’re going to see that is to have some funding, and it needs to be much more broad-based than is presently taking place.

Along those lines, then, funding is going to be necessary, both from that fund and from the provincial funding, in order to enable changes that I think will be coming forward in terms of protection of habitat.

The endangered species act for British Columbia, which is a provincial commitment right now, is going to necessitate sufficient funding in order to make it function efficiently and as it should in order to recover species.

I think one of the biggest issues here in the East Kootenay, and right around the province, is the need for modernized land use planning. There is a commitment by the government to do modernized land use planning. In order for that to work, it’s going to have to be sufficiently funded so that both the planning processes and the outcomes from those processes are able to be implemented on the ground.

Here, we have the southeast wildlife corridor and the Columbia Valley recreation access management plan, both of which are under discussion but we think are important key issues to be funded through the ministries.

[9:45 a.m.]

All of this, I think, boils down to having sufficient funding within both FLNRORD and MOE — and, for that matter, under MEMPR — to fund these land use initiatives.

I think that there’s a key issue around land use in terms of the forest industry. Presently, roads have been seen to be one of the biggest single issues in terms of impact on ecosystems.

Unfortunately, because of the way the stumpage system is presently set up, we’re basically incentivizing road building. I’ve heard this time and time again from people in the industry: “Well, we’d be just happy to get rid of those roads, but that just is a direct cost to us. In fact, it’s cheaper for us, rather than long skid or putting in temp roads, to build a road because we will receive funding.”

I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed, and basically, there needs to be incentives for industry to rehabilitate roads. I think this can be built into the existing system.

Finally, I wanted to talk about the need to legislate the climate accountability act and then appropriately fund it. Basically, we’ve heard a lot of promises, from this government and past governments, in terms of climate. But now, with the CleanBC program coming forward, we basically need to have oversight in order to make sure that we’re actually taking action. In other words, an independent climate body would be extremely useful in terms of overseeing that work.

I think that’s my five minutes. I could go on for a long time, as I think you can recognize. I’ve tried to just get a few highlights there. Thanks a lot.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, John. Wow, yeah. There’s a lot in here. I really appreciate you taking the time — I’m sure we all do — putting together this brief and adding to it today.

Any questions?

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. How many members do you have in your…?

J. Bergenske: I thought of that this morning. It should be up to date. It’s around 1,500.

R. Leonard: So 1,500, and that’s individuals. Or do you have…? Are you like…?

J. Bergenske: That’s individuals.

R. Leonard: Are they active stewards on the ground, or are you doing policy?

J. Bergenske: It’s a total mix. We’ve got everything from people who just signed a membership form to people involved in the communities, especially in our branches. We have a lot going on in all of our communities. Wildsight basically facilitates everything — community gardens to the farmers markets, the stream cleanups, etc., etc. There’s a lot of that kind of activity throughout the region.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much. I appreciate you bringing up the issue around roads — that’s something very specific that I can sort of wrap my head around — as well as all the other things. Having worked in invasive species, I know that the issue of roads is that pathway of bringing in a lot of invasive species. I know there are issues around runoff, etc., etc. I really appreciate you bringing that up.

J. Bergenske: Roads are key. Often people say: “What’s the biggest…?” As a matter of fact, the Forest Practices Board was here last week, and the chair asked me: “What’s your biggest single issue in dealing with the industry here?” I said that it’s roads. I’ve said this time and time again. It’s probably one of the biggest impacts on the landscape.

By the way, invasive species was one of those bullets I didn’t have time to get to.

B. D’Eith (Chair): John, I just wanted to pick up on what Ronna-Rae was saying in regards to roads. Pardon my ignorance on the issue of roads and the impact. Are you talking about the roads that are being put in and remediating them, or maintaining them? What specifically is the need around the roads?

J. Bergenske: The very specific thing that I’m speaking of this morning is where we’re additionally building roads and we continue expanding road networks. For example, the Elk Valley cumulative effects plan that we’ve presently been working on with industry…. One of the single biggest issues that comes forward, in terms of wildlife security and maintaining effective habitat, is roads. When we talk about fisheries, again, roads come up right at the top because of erosion off of roads and roads bleeding.

I’m speaking specifically about the fact that industry has traditionally been encouraged to road, and the stumpage system has been set up so that they’re actually being paid to build those roads, whereas if they don’t need that road, there is absolutely nothing to get rid of it.

[9:50 a.m.]

They can actually be encouraged to build temporary roads that are built at a much lower standard, especially if it’s a winter road. They can go in. They can get out. Basically, that landscape is put back into forest productivity. But to me, more importantly, it’s put into secure wildlife habitat.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, John.

D. Clovechok: Just a comment, John.

I couldn’t agree with John more that wildlife management is a key priority, especially here in the Kootenays, and all the land use planning that goes around that — the CVRAMP program. I completely agree with him on how critical it is for our government and all of our politicians to have a focused look at the importance of wildlife in this province and how we’re going to save it. So I thank John for his presentation.

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

N. Simons: Just to mention that we’re currently undertaking a review of the Private Managed Forest Land Act, as one small element of this bigger picture.

J. Bergenske: Giant, big issue. I didn’t see it as much as a finance issue, but we appreciate that that’s taking place. It’s extremely important here in the Kootenays.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thanks for your time, John. We appreciate it.

R. Leonard: Can I make a comment, just for the record, for the last person?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, of course. Please.

R. Leonard: Thanks. Because she got up, and I’m afraid she’s going to leave before I have a chance to say it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So in regards to Tif?

R. Leonard: For Tif McNaughton. I just wanted to say thank you to her for her presentation and for presenting her personal story, because I think it’s really valuable for us to hear the very specifics.

You’ve worked very hard through your life and showed that circumstances are sometimes outside of our control, and when we have other…. And then you just brought up more vulnerable folks who have even worse challenges. I really, really appreciated that story because it really helps fill out our understanding of various issues. So thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tif.

Thanks, Ronna-Rae.

Next up we have Andra Louie from the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy.

COLUMBIA BASIN ALLIANCE
FOR LITERACY

A. Louie: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Andra Louie, and I am the East Kootenay regional program manager for the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, commonly referred to as CBAL.

CBAL is the Columbia Basin and Boundary region’s not-for-profit literacy organization and employs 16 literacy outreach coordinators who serve British Columbians in 77 communities. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you again about the importance of literacy, and we are grateful that people and community have been invited to tell you more about what is needed to support the work of our literacy outreach coordinators.

Thank you, as well, for your recommendation last year to continue funding to local, regional and provincial literacy organizations to support the delivery of community-based programming for all age groups and demographics. The funding provided by the Ministry of Education, combined with support from the Ministry of Advanced Education from the CALP programs, helps us to develop, deliver and maintain literacy programs across the province. It is important to remember that these programs help people who are not fully served in other ways.

Continued support from the province reflects the understanding of the importance of literacy and the key role it plays in helping ensure that all British Columbians have the ability to communicate effectively, acquire essential workplace or financial skills or give their children a strong literacy foundation in early life. We know that literacy skills are linked to strong and resilient communities. Research indicates that literacy skills are an important factor in health and well-being and people’s ability to fully participate in society.

In our work, we partner closely with libraries, schools, colleges and other community partners to build healthy learning communities. In addition to working toward their individual goals, our partner organizations work with us to help citizens of all ages improve their literacy skills and engage in lifelong learning. Adults, families, children and youth in CBAL literacy programs improve their reading, writing, numeracy, computer, English-language and workplace skills. Improved skills increase confidence, employability, individual and family health and community involvement.

CBAL has also successfully negotiated contracts with the provincial and federal governments to provide English as a second language and settlement services to immigrants and to provide essential skills and workplace preparation instruction for job seekers in communities, in partnership with our WorkBC Centres.

[9:55 a.m.]

Our staff also prepared the community literacy plans that reflect communities’ unique needs and gaps. Without this funding, communities would be left behind, and the unique needs which shape this province could not be effectively addressed through other means. This work is important and is essential.

I would like to tell you about Fostering Literacy, a literacy support program for children and their families. The program provides one-to-one tutoring to children ages five to 12, as well as support sessions for their parents and caregivers. For the past two years, this program has been delivered in Kimberley and directed at those children identified as being most in need and of an age where the maximum difference can be made.

We have one paid trained tutor who brings a broad range of experience and skills to the work. Using a number of reading and learning strategies, exercising patience, encouraging practice and developing trust with the families and children have been vital to the successes we are seeing, both with the children and with the additional support they are receiving at home with the involvement of their caregivers.

The program is highly supported and valued by the school, which chooses the students carefully and has full and frank conversations with the parents prior to beginning. Parental involvement is mandatory. The tutor meets with the child in the home for 1½ hours a week and with the child and parents for another 1½ per week, for a total of three hours per week. The home-based tutoring is one key to the success of the program, as is the ongoing modelling for parents that occurs.

Recently the Fostering Literacy tutor in Kimberley shared a story with me about her experience tutoring a child and the progress he made, as well as the benefits his caregivers received.

She told me about a child in grade 3 who loves hockey. His mother described him as reluctant to engage in reading and reluctant to be involved in the program. They initially met at the school and then at home, and while the parents were concerned that he might be more distracted at home, they found the comfort of a good hot chocolate and his own favourite snacks helped minimize his anxiousness.

After 14 weeks into the program, the student had made significant gains. Access to the various books and stories about hockey had been incredibly helpful. He was able to veer away from strictly hockey books to introductory chapter books. His reading was smooth and his recall of words much more automatic. He can read for up to 20 minutes.

When the child shared that he had gone up 15 levels in reading, his pride was palpable. His parents and grandmother, who sat in on most sessions, described the dramatic change in their son’s reading and confidence about reading.

They have found the sessions helpful for gaining an understanding of their son’s reading ability, what kinds of books and levels to read with their son and how they can structure reading time together. They can judge the reading level of books more easily and have strategies to assist them in capturing their son’s attention, including movement while reading, identifying the number of pages they’ll be reading and integrating reading into games.

In closing, we would like to emphasize that a strong commitment from the government significantly impacts our ability to leverage with other federal, provincial, regional and local funding that we rely on to deliver the vast array of programs in our communities. Within CBAL, three-quarters of our annual budget comes from these additional sources, which contribute generously, knowing that the province has made a significant contribution.

To that end, we ask that the government of British Columbia provide sustainable funding for the coordination of literacy work annually, as was recommended last year. Thank you very much for your time this morning. I’m happy to answer any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Of course, as the committee has said over the last couple of years, literacy is critical. We have supported that in the past and appreciate your words and the story. It’s so true.

Actually, my mother volunteers to teach literacy in North Vancouver, where there’s a lot of children from different countries who are struggling with English as a second language, and actually, without literacy, they can’t move forward. It makes a huge, huge impact on their lives. So thank you for bringing that up.

Any questions at all from members?

D. Clovechok: Just a comment to Andra. The Kootenay region is so blessed to have you and that organization. I’ve seen personally, firsthand, the work that you do and the work that you do through and with the college as well. We’re very fortunate to have you, and I just want to say thanks for that presentation.

A. Louie: I appreciate that. Thank you.

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

Thank you very much for all the work that you do in this field.

Five-minute recess. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 9:59 a.m. to 10:08 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re back with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in lovely Kimberley. Next up we have College of the Rockies Faculty Association — Joan Kaun.

The floor is yours. If you could limit your first comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that.

J. Kaun: I’ll probably speed-read, so I’m sure we’re good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Don’t go fast. Anyway, go ahead.

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

J. Kaun: Good morning. Welcome to Kimberley, on the traditional unceded territory of the Ktunaxa people.

I’m Joan Kaun, president of the College of the Rockies Faculty Association and an office administration instructor at the college. COTR faculty are members of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C., FPSE. I’m sure you’ll hear that acronym over the next couple of weeks. Locally, our association represents about 200 full- and part-time instructors at our seven campuses in the East Kootenay.

Programs at the college include trades, health, business, arts and science, English language learning and adult basic education. We commend the government for the removal of tuition for adult basic education, English language learning and the expansion of the tuition waivers for former youth in care. These are such positive and impactful changes to post-secondary access and affordability that have happened over the last two years.

[10:10 a.m.]

However, public post-secondary education in B.C. has been experiencing serious funding challenges over the past two decades. Government operating grants used to be 70 to 80 percent of the institutions’ overall budgets. That percentage has dropped below 50 percent at a growing number of institutions. Flat funding is not a method for post-secondary sustainability.

The last serious review of the system funding took place in the early 2000s. It’s time to review and implement changes. The long-term trend of reduced public funding for post-secondary is having other negative impacts that put the quality of our post-secondary education at risk.

My focus today is to highlight the pressing need to end using contract faculty as short-term, underpaid and disposable labour. Contract faculty should be paid using the existing mandated provincial salary scale on a prorated basis. A faculty instructor at College of the Rockies whose workload is less than 50 percent cannot move up the 10-step scale above step 9-plus. Step 1 is the top of scale. That means that if they were kept at the same workload, they would barely be paid more than their starting wage, no matter how many years they teach.

Contract faculty teaching a university studies course of one semester would be paid approximately $3,295 for the section, whereas a regular faculty at top of scale would be $6,218 — an 88 percent difference. This difference does not account for benefits, vacation and professional development. Both instructors have the same responsibilities, but one is valued significantly lower than the other.

The number of contract faculty facing this hardship is growing. In April 2015, 25 percent were non-regular. As of April 2019, 30 percent of our faculty members are non-regular. Underpaying contract faculty hurts the individual, the institution and our community. A faculty member who does not have an ongoing contract cannot move up the pay scale, has difficulty obtaining a mortgage, does not have access to professional development time or adequate funds and cannot plan for a stable future.

Paying contract faculty fairly will provide an improved educational experience for our students, because the instructors will be more available and will be under less financial pressure to leave the community for better-paying work or to work second and third jobs. Our community will benefit from workers receiving fair wages. When working people are paid fairly, they are able to get a mortgage, commit to their community, enrol their children in after-school sports and programs and have some money left over at the end of the day to spend at local businesses.

We urge the committee to recommend that the government support the elimination of secondary scales and fund a pro rata model for contract faculty to be paid on the provincial salary scale.

Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Joan. In fact, we heard a similar presentation yesterday.

Having been on a faculty of a college myself…. There was one fellow who was there for 17 years as a contract faculty. We had a big celebration because he finally got full-time, but it took 17 years. That uncertainty was very difficult on him and his family. So I certainly appreciate what you’re saying. I’ve witnessed it firsthand.

Any comments?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Joan, thank you for the presentation. Can I take you back to page 2, middle of the page? “Contract faculty teaching university studies in one semester.” Can I just ask what the commitment is on that individual for the semester? How long is the semester, first of all? Ballpark.

J. Kaun: Fifteen weeks.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Fifteen weeks. What would be the course load hours for that instructor? Ballpark.

J. Kaun: So 45 would be the contact hours.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): So 45 hours total time? Plus being ready for the course and marking and everything else.

J. Kaun: Yeah, exactly. Contact time would be 45.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Contact time is actually face in front of a student, then, is it?

J. Kaun: In front of the student.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thank you very much.

R. Coleman: Just because Bob brought this up yesterday about the 17 years for one employee, what is the path to full-time within this system?

J. Kaun: It depends. It can vary from…. Some faculty who come in to apply are very fortunate and get right into a regular full-time position. A lot are hired on a temporary basis. It depends on funding. If it’s one-time funding, then the institutions will hire a temporary instructor.

[10:15 a.m.]

R. Coleman: Is there a specific subject that moves somebody to full-time quicker than another, for instance arts versus sciences or trades?

J. Kaun: I don’t think so, no. I think it depends on the institution, and it varies everywhere.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation, and actually, thank you for this. This is an interesting little graphic.

Is there a place for your faculty associations to negotiate on behalf of these sessionals or contract faculty so that they get paid equitably — commensurate with what you get paid per hour as full-time faculty?

J. Kaun: We are in the very beginning processes of bargaining, but the issue expands beyond bargaining. It’s an across-the-system issue. It will require some significant influx of funds to solve the issue.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think the problem, of course, is that if universities’ budgets are squeezed, this is a way of controlling budgets.

J. Kaun: It is, partly. Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Because I know if you give a faculty full-time work, then there’s an obligation to employ them.

J. Kaun: To continue that work. There’s the vacation. There’s the professional development.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, all of those things. So by keeping them just below that line…. There’s all those extras plus the commitment to have to…. Because then, of course, if you don’t have enough students for a course, it’s easy to just cancel the course.

J. Kaun: Yes. It’s easier to cancel or to end a term faculty contract or a non-regular contract.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I can understand, from the administration point of view, the challenges that the administration faces, but at the same time, we’ve got to look at the faculty.

J. Kaun: If you go back to my page 1, where we talk about the funding formula, the flat funding is a huge challenge.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And, of course, the reliance on foreign student revenues and things like that.

Well, thank you so much, Joan. I really appreciate your presentation.

We’re going to go with the next one, which is Elk River Alliance — Paul von Wittgenstein.

Paul, you’re up.

ELK RIVER ALLIANCE

P. von Wittgenstein: Good morning, and thanks for this opportunity. My name is Paul von Wittgenstein. I’m representing the Elk River watershed alliance to make a suggestion for a budget inclusion for water sustainability.

A little bit about us. The Elk River watershed alliance was started in 2010 to increase local watershed knowledge, participation and governance. For the first four years, we operated as a program of Wildsight, which is based right here in Kimberley. In 2014, we became our own society and last August became a registered Canadian charity. There are 13 people on the board of directors, representing various watershed stakeholders.

[10:20 a.m.]

It’s a collaboration of diverse views and needs, and all the projects we undertake are done with contractors, consul­tants, summer students and community volunteers. What we do is help improve and preserve watershed health through projects that raise watershed literacy, inform sustainable water decision-making, collect scientific data to prioritize restoration projects, and promote safe and sustainable river recreation. All program areas are directed by community priorities and public input.

On to the recommendations: No. 1, establish a water sustainability fund endowment. Specifically, create a B.C. water sustainability fund through a one-time endowment. Ensure that fund structure provides framework for collaboration between governments and the private sector to invest in water sustainability and develop ongoing sources of fund revenues to be managed for the long term.

Recommendation No. 2: support the endowment fund with incoming revenues from user fees. B.C. charges the lowest rate of all provinces that charge a water rental or royalty. Get B.C. user fees in line with the real value of freshwater resources. Include Indigenous governments in the process and benefits, and don’t leave industry hung out to dry in the process.

Third recommendation: to structure the funding delivery to enable Indigenous groups and community-based water sustainability groups to be successful in their missions. Focus on successful local collaborations in water and land use planning; encourage integration of First Nations values, community, education, R and D, innovation, social enterprise; and quantify results to hold funded groups accountable for the funds they receive.

Now, it’s important to fund watershed management. For one thing, we need to build a water and climate resilience strategy. Climate change brings additional threats of droughts, floods, insects, pathogens and wildfires. Our communities and ecosystems are already feeling the impact. Iconic species like the blue-listed westslope cutthroat trout suffer climate change and struggle without proper habitat.

Why we need it, No. 2: advance reconciliation for freshwater planning and decision-making. Threats to British Columbia’s water and treasured ecosystems are increasing. Competition over water drives conflict. We need long-term watershed-level planning and partnerships between Indigenous and local governments and all B.C. stakeholders. That requires adequate resources for local leadership.

Why we need it. We need it to recognize water as the crux of modern, strategic land use planning. The Water Sustainability Act is currently underfunded, and it struggles to support water. We’re dealing with problems from the past, issues that face us in the present and considerations for the future for water sources for communities and other reasons.

Community-based water management groups are struggling. Many community-based watershed management groups operate as non-profits and depend almost entirely on volunteers and project-level funding via grants and donations. These groups are capable, willing and should be able to do more, but they face inadequate sources of reliable core funding. It leads to significant obstacles for developing as organizations, difficulty in attracting, retaining and developing talent, impeded and limited success with their missions and less effective work in the watersheds.

Water is one of the most important multi-user, multi-benefit resources that we still enjoy. We must manage B.C. water resources and watersheds with the same intensity as our other precious natural resources. If we don’t make it a priority to manage water sustainably, the future is predictable.

We need to take that bold step now to include water sustainability in the 2020 budget. Let’s make our great-grandkids proud of choosing to do the right thing in time.

Tonight you have a chance to see local watershed groups in action. We’re hosting a westslope cutthroat trout workshop in Fernie, and it should be of interest, because that is one of the B.C. blue-listed species of concern.

Thank you very much. I’d be happy for questions.

[10:25 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Paul. I wish we could stay for the event tonight, but we’re off to…. We’re doing 14 cities, I think, in ten days, or something crazy. So we’re all over the place. But thank you very much for the presentation. I appreciate all the graphics and time you put into everything here.

Any questions at all?

N. Simons: I’m just curious. What kinds of issues are you going to be talking about tonight? What’s the general format of tonight’s meeting?

P. von Wittgenstein: Well, first of all, there’s talking about the life cycle and how it’s being impacted with influences in the habitat. We want to make a point of helping the public to understand what a fish red looks like. Red is when they’re spawning. If they get stepped on and disturbed during that period, the fish won’t spawn properly, and we have less success.

We want to hear from the people at the workshop. Where do they think the important areas of concern are that we should be looking at for various reasons? It’s really a two-way dialogue.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you for your very thorough and impassioned presentation. Obviously, you put a lot of thought and time into this. We really appreciate your presentation. Any other comments or thoughts?

P. von Wittgenstein: If I could finish with one more thing. I spent 20 years in China, and I’m from here. China’s water is seriously compromised. We don’t want to end up with those problems. They’re much harder to fix rather than to get right in the first place.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hear, hear. Thank you so much.

Next up we actually are going back one, which is to Chris Johns, who’s on the line from school district 5, Southeast Kootenay.

Chris, are you on the phone?

C. Johns: Yes, I am, sir.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wonderful. Sorry, Chris. We didn’t quite get to you at the time, so we appreciate you being patient. If you wouldn’t mind, if you could try to keep your initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, that would be wonderful. The floor is yours.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 5,
SOUTHEAST KOOTENAY

C. Johns: I appreciate the opportunity, on behalf of school district 5, to present our concerns with respect to special education funding and the replacement and ongoing issues around Mount Baker Secondary School.

If you look at exhibit 1, which I believe everybody has, what we’ve done there is taken a comparison about the adequacy of special education funding over this school year and then projected into the next school year. Towards the bottom of the first page, the targeted funding equates to about 9.7 percent of our total district budget. But we have to pull an additional 5.6 percent out of our basic allocation, which is the year that we’re in right now.

For 2019-2020, even though the ministry has increased the provincial targeted funding by 9 percent, which we are very appreciative of, it still provides us with a shortfall of about 5.7 percent that we have to bring out of our basic allocation. Targeted funding for all students with needs would work best for our district. I think we’ve demonstrated, in exhibit 1, that these 13 percent of students that, right now, are in our special education group, are in need of additional funding over and above what we’re presently receiving.

I looked back at the 2019 consultation report, recommendation 69: “Increase funding for students with special needs, including funding for early identification, provision of appropriate support programs and the training and recruitment of specialized teachers.” We wholeheartedly agree with that, and we would like to see the Ministry of Education and the government itself continue to put additional funds in for this needy group of students.

Moving to the second issue. It’s with respect to our request to have approximately $400,000 in emergency funding for the music and band rooms at Mount Baker Secondary. In the letter that we sent to the hon. minister in June of 2018, we indicated all of the studies that have been going on. We had the opportunity, in that summer, to actually make those repairs.

Now we’re at a point where, as you can see in exhibit No. 2, we are past that point of being able to piggyback on the construction that was going on with the Key City Theatre. Now we’re looking at an additional $400,000 in what we consider to be a building — the music and band room — that is in need of emergency repairs.

[10:30 a.m.]

Exhibit 3 — and I’m cognizant of the time — is the letter we received from the ministry. I guess I’d like to draw your attention to the second paragraph. Tiffany says: “I appreciate there are significant challenges in maintaining an older facility.” I would concur with that. The annual facility grant has been able to address those concerns. But we have been spending hundreds of thousands, if not into the millions, of dollars towards trying to keep a building that is 70 years old operating. It needs to be replaced.

If you look at exhibit 4, we’ve outlined in this executive summary that the condition of the building is determined to be very poor and requiring significant redevelopment. There are three options that are proposed. You can see the building was started in 1949. If you recall my presentation last year, I brought the family album along and showed the committee the photographs of the actual construction of Mount Baker back then.

You can see it’s had a number of additions. It’s way past its best-before date. If you were a grad from that school, that first class in June of 1951, and you’re still in our community, you’d be somewhere around 85 to 86 years of age. It gives you an idea, another perspective, on the age of the building and the need for it to be replaced.

I’ve also included a couple of exhibits about earthquakes in this area. We consistently hear that seismic upgrades are a priority at the coast, which we totally understand. We get that. But we’re not immune to them in this area of the Rocky Mountains either. So, Chair, I would just like to suggest that our school district has made this presentation, similar ones, and has petitioned governments of the past. We’ve had seven Ministers of Education tour Mount Baker Secondary. I don’t think anybody would disagree. It has no cafeteria, for example, in this modern age. It’s a building that was built for the 1950s. Now we need, with the revised curriculum, an improved building with greater access for students.

With that, with three seconds left, I say thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. It was exactly on time.

C. Johns: I know. I brought my timer this time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that.

One thing, Chris, just in terms of how the committee works and the recommendations that we’ve had in the past. Because we’re dealing with pretty much the entire $47 billion budget, it’s often difficult for the Finance Committee to make very specific recommendations — not that the Finance Committee doesn’t. It does from time to time.

I just would encourage you to continue the actions that you’re taking in regards to contacting Minister Fleming and the Ministry of Education on these issues. Just because of the nature of this committee, we’re dealing with recommendations for the entire budget. So we may, but we generally don’t tend to drill down right to very specific projects. It’s just something to keep in mind moving forward.

We appreciate your presentation. Of course, I come from music and music education myself and have a lot of empathy for what you’re saying in terms of all of this. Thank you for your presentation. I just want to make sure we manage expectations and what this committee can do for you in regards to specific projects. Just a thought.

Any questions?

N. Simons: No questions, just a comment.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Comment from Nicholas Simons.

N. Simons: I appreciate the advocacy for music and band rooms. I hope your persistence isn’t also a source of frustration. We heard you loud and clear.

C. Johns: Great. Thank you very much. I’ve been at this for 11 years as a school trustee, so I’m in it for the long run.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s good. Actually, I just did my local area. They were working on seniors housing for 12 years, and they just got funding for it. It can take time, but it’s a good fight. So keep up the good fight there. Thank you so much for your time.

C. Johns: Thank you for the opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have regional district of East Kootenay — Rob Gay.

[10:35 a.m.]

R. Gay: I didn’t bring my stopwatch like Chris did. I brought a lot of paper, but the one I think is probably more germane for the talk is entitled Taxation on Telecommunications Assets in Underdeveloped Areas.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Perfect. All right. The floor is yours.

REGIONAL DISTRICT OF EAST KOOTENAY

R. Gay: Okay. Welcome to Kimberley and the regional district of East Kootenay. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I’ll try to be brief.

Really, our request is to review the B.C. Assessment’s regulation rate assessment plan, with an eye towards designation — very low taxation to rural areas. I’ll explain about that.

On that half, I just want to remind the panel that you will receive taxation from residents that do receive broadband services on their monthly bill. I think we’re asking for a reduction in taxes to the buildout — to the assets — but not a reduction to the residents.

So myself. My name is Rob Gay. I’ve been 14½ years as an electoral area director with the regional district, 8½ years as chair of the RDEK and five years and founding chair of the regional broadband community, which is made of the Ktunaxa First Nation, the regional district of East Kootenay, regional district of Kootenay-Boundary, regional district of Central Kootenay, the village of Valemount and part of the regional district of Columbia-Shuswap.

The key point is we’re trying to get broadband service to rural residents in this area. Much of our region, as you noticed when you flew in today, is mountainous — narrow valleys with scattered populations and really a lack of a business case for the larger telecoms who want a return on investment, normally in less than ten years.

What’s happened is that the Teluses and the Shaws have come into the centres like the Kimberleys and the Cranbrooks, thrown their net sort of narrow, taken those clients and then left the outside. It’s a difficult business case, and I’m sure you folks have heard that before.

It’s widely understood by the federal government — and the CRTC ruling in 2016 basically said — that broadband internet service is an essential service for all Canadians. Financial support by Industry Canada has been great for us. NetWork B.C. has provided support, as well as our local regional government to help make the business case for rural and remote areas in Canada in the Kootenays.

Work is conducted by the private and not-for-profit sectors, and these small Internet service providers often know their technical stuff, but they really struggle with their business acumen when they’re trying to deal with these grants. We’ve been supportive with them in helping them go forward to the federal government and NetWork B.C. in making grants.

On May 1, 2019, just a month ago, a presentation was provided at the B.C. Broadband Conference by the B.C. Assessment Authority. It outlined a project timeline. B.C. Assessment’s goal is to implement taxation on these assets in 2021. We’re a few years away from that.

Our position is that the costs to deploy broadband infrastructure to support connectivity services is significant, and revenue opportunities in rural areas are often not adequate to provide return on investment that would attract private investment resulting in underserviced rural communities throughout B.C. The taxation of broadband infrastructure adds significant costs, which are additional costs that further inhibit the ability to sustain the business case for private investment.

Our ask in the RDEK will be asking, through UBCM delegates, to pass a motion to either exempt broadband telecommunication assets from the property taxation or alter the valuation to a nominal amount throughout British Columbia. We also will be sending a letter to Minister Sims shortly. It was just approved by our board at our meeting on Friday.

Some supporting documents for your information. It’s just an excerpt, a couple of pages, from the B.C. Assessment presentation that was provided. It gives their outline. The telecommunications is, basically, a better summary, I think, of what I’ve said.

The problem with these underserviced areas throughout British Columbia, not just the Kootenays, is the valuation regulation. We have no problem with that. I think the B.C. Assessment does a good job assessing it. But there needs to be a way…. Minister Coleman remembered his time around the supportive housing and how the approach was taken. I’ve included that and how, when supportive housing is built, the taxation is still assessed, but the taxation is very nominal. We’re trying to encourage our not-for-profits and local governments to provide land for housing. I think that was a good move.

[10:40 a.m.]

There are some, I guess, options in government and some results in the past that have provided some break on taxes to areas where we’re trying to all provide grants to bring a service to people, and then we want to tax the significant assets.

That’s my pitch this morning. Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thanks very much, Rob. I’m just curious. In regard to the Ministry of Citizens’ Services, you said you’ve reached out. Is there anything around the connecting B.C. programs that would be helpful for this? Or is that something that is a different issue? I’m just wondering.

R. Gay: Yes. Certainly, through the northern development and connecting B.C., we’ve been working with Internet service providers recently — last week, actually, with Kaslo — to help them gain grants.

I think this surprised everybody. As I say, it was on May 1 when B.C. Assessment said: “Now we’re going to start taxing.” For example, a tower in the Kootenays, with the height of them, is probably in the range of $250,000 to $300,000. I take the St. Mary Valley, which is the valley just going to the west of here — probably need four towers to get in to serve just a handful of places. I see Bob Johnstone there — in Meadowbrook, same issue.

The infrastructure cost is quite high. To tax that just doesn’t seem right when all orders of government are trying to provide some funds to support these Internet service providers, to make a business case for them, so we can bring the service in. As I say, government wins, because we are getting the GST from the connection fees.

I don’t know. I think it would be just nice to be able to speak with the B.C. Assessment Authority to see if there’s some way, and some way through legislation, for the rural areas — and define that however they might — to have some relaxation in taxes. Maybe it’s just for a time. I’m not sure. It shouldn’t be for always, but to help us get started. It just seems like we’re putting a big weight around somebody’s neck that we really don’t need to.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. What is the tax regime right now on telecommunications?

R. Gay: Well, on the new stuff and the small ones, it’s been very low. It’s been the property tax, but they haven’t taxed the asset as much. I don’t know what it would have been for the Teluses and Shaws, because we do see taxes on pole lines in B.C. Hydro.

In fact, in B.C. Hydro’s case, where we have some power dams, they don’t pay taxes on the power dam — in my area, I’ve got one in the Bull River — but they do a grant in lieu of taxes to the local government, which is significant. It’s about $32,000 a year. It’s based on the output of the dam, how many kilowatts that it does. So yeah, there are different models around. I don’t know what they pay on their actual rights-of-way.

R. Leonard: Have you, as a regional district, worked on a digital strategy?

R. Gay: We have, yeah.

R. Leonard: So you have something that’s got a pathway forward to try and…?

R. Gay: MLA Clovechok was asking us that same question, because we’ve been after this for about four years, five years. He said: “Where are you? When does it look like to be finished?”

We were going down the road pretty well, and then the CRTC, in 2019, said: “We went from a speed of five megabits. Now we want to go up to ten as a national thing.” So all of a sudden, what we had in place is not good.

Our previous MLA, Bill Bennett, said: “You’ve been in my office looking for money for the last ten years.” I said: “Bill, we’ll be keeping knocking on the door, because that technology changes.” So it does.

It’s been such a fabric of all of our lives now — for emergencies, for education, for business. I don’t need to tell you folks why we need Internet.

Sorry for the long answer.

D. Clovechok: Just to support what Rob is saying. I mean, it’s critical, especially from Golden all the way through the Elk Valley. I know in my own personal home, where I live just south of Dutch Creek, I have to stand in a corner to make my cell phone work. From an emergency perspective, we’re handcuffed. So we definitely need to find some ways to support rural broadband. I’m totally on side with that.

R. Gay: Yeah. So in adding this layer of tax, I think we’re just adding a cost that…. We’re trying to struggle by. That’s the point we’re trying to make.

With our regional broadband committee, we’ve…. Two weeks ago I spoke with people from the Vanderhoof area who are trying to form a committee, because we’ve been quite successful at the federal level, being a larger federation and asking for money. We’ve also dealt with the folks on the Island that are trying to bring Internet to, I think, about 40 First Nations communities.

[10:45 a.m.]

There’s lots going in B.C. So to tax all these folks…. I think you’ll probably hear more about it.

N. Simons: Thanks for the warning.

R. Gay: You’re welcome. Well, it’s not bad. I think B.C. Assessment’s doing their job. All we’re saying is: as with affordable housing, is there some way we can look at some relief as this business just starts to grow?

R. Leonard: I particularly appreciated you highlighting what that was about, because I was like: what has supportive housing got to do with telecommunications?

R. Gay: Yeah, well, it was just a model that government had used before, so I got a little attachment for you there.

N. Simons: The submission that the regional district provided was relating to farm land and building of housing.

R. Gay: Yeah. I was only allowed one topic. I got that letter.

N. Simons: Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you knew we also had that.

R. Gay: Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, we only had one. And I thought: “Well, we’re not going to win on that one, I don’t think.”

N. Simons: Duly noted.

R. Gay: This is new, and I think we’ve got some chance.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Rob. Appreciate it.

R. Gay: Thank you very much, folks, and thanks for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Meadowbrook Community Association — Robert Johnstone.

Hello, Robert. How are you?

R. Johnstone: Good morning. Welcome to paradise.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great to be here.

MEADOWBROOK COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION

R. Johnstone: My name is Bob Johnstone. I’m the presi­dent of the Meadowbrook Community Association. Hereafter, I’ll say MCA.

Meadowbrook is a rural area immediately east of Kimberley. I would point it out, but I’m totally confused in this room down here about which direction is which. Around 700 people live along Highway 95A and several side roads. The MCA wishes to inform you of its efforts to address issues relating to the highway and side roads in our community.

On several occasions, the MCA has made submissions to this committee regarding the inadequacy of funding to combat invasive plants. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, MOTI, continue to indicate that they do not have sufficient funds to address all of the identified infestations.

I should tell you that Sandra Loewen, who’s sitting in the front row there, annually does an inventory of all the invasive plant infestations on the highway and the side roads of Meadowbrook, which is about 30 kilometres, and reports that. Despite our submissions, the risk to agriculture, tourism and property values continues.

In November of last year, 2018, six members of our board met with local MOTI officials to discuss not only the invasive plants issue but several other issues of concern.

One was the winter maintenance of Highway 95A and the side roads in Meadowbrook; paving the remainder of the side roads in Meadowbrook; reclamation of Cherry pit, an abandoned gravel pit from about 30 years ago; embankment safety on Highway 95A in the east entrance to Kimberley; and speed limits on the side roads in Meadowbrook. The highway in Meadowbrook is either 80 kilometres an hour or 60, yet all the side roads are 80, so you can come off the highway at 60 and do 80 on the side roads, which aren’t necessarily wide roads either. Roadkills was another issue, and the last one was possible involvement of the MCA in an adopt-a-highway program.

Our written submission provides greater details about each of those issues and the response from MOTI. I want to emphasize that we’re not here today to complain about the officials of the ministry. The staff who attended the meeting listened attentively to us. They responded at the time, or else they promised to get back to us.

The only issue they haven’t been able to get back to us finally on is the issue of the speed limits. That’s because I think it’s them in the Kamloops office, and it’s not the local office that makes that decision. I just heard from Ron Sharp, the manager, yesterday that he’s still waiting to hear. But it’s been over two years since we raised the issue, and we still haven’t heard.

As a result of our interactions with the ministry, our board perceives there may be some systemic issues that prevent local staff from addressing our concerns. The first question is the amount of funding: is it adequate, or is it an issue of how it’s allocated? We really don’t know that question. But we keep being told, on various issues, that there’s a lack of money.

[10:50 a.m.]

An apparent disconnect between the expectations of residents and the highway maintenance contract provisions for winter maintenance and paving. We were told the previous winter that the contractor was in compliance with the provisions, yet there was all kinds of dissatisfaction in the community and people phoning Mainroad’s office and the highways department.

Centralization of decision-making on matters like speed limits that disperses accountability and creates unacceptable response times.

The last one, we feel, is the bureaucratic impediments to citizens wishing to volunteer their services and to officials exploring innovative solutions to vexing problems. On the volunteering of services, we have an agreement with the Ministry of Forests, Natural Resources, Lands — you know the one, the ministry of everything. We have an agreement with them to manage trails in our area. That agreement provides for liability insurance for people working on the trails. Yet if we participate in the adopt a highway program, we have to take out insurance. It seems to me that that’s something that hopefully, the province could supply.

The vexing problems. One of them we’re talking about is Cherry Pit. It’s sitting there. It’s bound on two sides by a residential area, Cherry Creek Falls Park on the other and a logging road that’s the main access into the back country and the recreational reserve that is a little farther in. This Crown land opposite is wonderfully used for recreation. We have volunteers put in ski tracks in the winter and that kind of thing.

It would seem to me that it would be nice to get that pit reclaimed, made into another recreation area. We would apply to get both those pieces as part of the recreation area that we have designated right now. Incidentally, we got that designation after buying out a mineral claim and getting that out of the mineral reserve system, thanks much to Doug Clovechok, I might add.

We have some recommendations. The first one is to examine the adequacy of the funding provided to MOTI and the appropriateness of its allocation. Second is to determine if the provisions of the highway maintenance contractor are congruent with the expectations of residents. Three is to ensure that MOTI decisions can be made locally whenever possible. Fourthly is to provide liability insurance for organizations who participate in the adopt a highway program, and five is encourage and enable provincial officials to engage in creative thinking and quest innovative solutions to vexing problems.

We recognize that money is always tight. But we need to be able to sit down and say: “How can we solve this problem?” Is there a way of doing it, rather than saying, “There’s no money”?

Those are our recommendations. Thank you very much for the opportunity to express our views. I’d be happy to answer questions if I can.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Robert. We appreciate the presentation.

R. Coleman: Robert, I read your presentation last night. Who owned Cherry Pit?

R. Johnstone: Who owns it? It’s Crown land.

R. Coleman: Who mined it — Highways?

R. Johnstone: Yes.

R. Coleman: And it’s mined out now?

R. Johnstone: Well, there are still piles. One of the responses we got is: “Well, we might need it in the future.” But the piles that are there are infested with invasive plant stuff. You can’t spread that stuff on the highways and the side roads. The ideal solution would be to level the thing, seed it and then….

R. Coleman: Presently, it’s actually cutting off some of your access for people with motorized access to the back country, right? That’s an access you’re using?

R. Johnstone: Yes. It’s not just motorized. It’s like horseback riders and so forth. The people who back up onto the pit — if they want to access that logging road, they’ve got to drive about five miles, whereas they can just come across on their skis or the horses and so forth.

It’s a problem for the department. No question about that. We were hoping to sit down and be able to say: “We’ve got some ideas. We recognize you’ve got some issues. Can we come up with a solution?” But it just didn’t seem like people were in that mindset.

R. Coleman: I thought you had a chewable chunk presentation — like, basically, you could take this chunk, this chunk, this chunk. So we’ll see how we can help, I think.

R. Johnstone: Thank you. I appreciate that.

N. Simons: Could I ask…?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, Nicholas Simons is recognized by the Chair.

N. Simons: Thank you, hon. Chair, for your continued indulgence.

Excellent presentation. Thank you for providing that. Do you know when the last contract was negotiated with Main Road?

R. Johnstone: I want to say about a year or so ago.

[10:55 a.m.]

N. Simons: Were they all done at the same time?

D. Clovechok: It was a year ago.

N. Simons: I’m hoping that some local officials had some say into their satisfaction with the previous five years or made recommendations for changes. Do you know if that occurred?

R. Johnstone: No, I don’t know.

N. Simons: I know that you have an able MLA in Mr. Clovechok. I think that maybe there’s an opportunity to meet with the ministry about some of your concerns, because I don’t think that they’re unique to this area.

Sometimes people feel a little distant from the decision-makers. This is a good opportunity for you to lay it out for us, and I really appreciate it.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. I just wanted to say you’re not alone as a community. The issues you raised around roads and invasive species, about speed limits, about adequate funding, about trail maintenance, needing to buy liability insurance — all of those things are issues in my community. I’m sure that it helps for us to be able to hear it. Hopefully, it will encourage others over the years to add their voices to these concerns to make sure that we can address them adequately. Thank you for all the work you do in your community.

D. Clovechok: Just a quick comment. The Meadowbrook community is a get ‘er done community. If anybody can do this, they will. I’ve been in that pit several times with Bob, and it definitely needs some remediation work. We can work through that, I think.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. Thank you very much, Robert. We really appreciate it.

Seeing no further presenters, could I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 10:56 a.m.