The committee met at 4:01 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): This is the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. We are in lovely Kamloops, where it is sunny and warm. Good afternoon.

My name is Bob D’Eith. I’m the MLA for Maple Ridge–​Mission and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We’re thankful to be here on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc and Shuswap peoples. I would like to acknowledge their traditions, values and enduring wisdom.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Normally, we travel in the fall to hold public consultations and visit different regions of the province to hear directly from British Columbians about their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget. This year we’ve 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 will be reviewing this new timeline and welcome feedback from the public.

Our consultation is based on the budget consultation paper that was released by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available here, at the entry where you came in, if anyone’s interested in reading that.

We are halfway through our first week of public hearings. There are still some spots available next week if anyone would like to share their ideas in person or by phone. We also invite British Columbians to provide their input in writing or by filling out the on-line survey. Details are available on our website, and Nicholas Simons is going to tell you what that website is — right, Nicholas? Because we’re having a test from this morning.

N. Simons: So leg.bc.ca. That’s all you need.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Exactly. Well, it’s true, actually. It’s 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 carefully considered and used to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be in the next provincial budget. Our report will be available in late July or early August. I’d also like to thank everyone here today for taking the time to share their input and ideas with us.

I would kindly ask that everyone be respectful of the following time limits in terms of our format today. Each presenter has five minutes to share their input, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. You are welcome to provide any information that you have in addition to your oral testimony — to share in writing.

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

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

Next I would like our members to introduce themselves. We’ll start with MLA Doug Clovechok.

D. Clovechok: Hi. I’m Doug Clovechok, and I’m the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

N. Simons: Nicholas Simons. I represent the Sunshine Coast.

M. Dean: I’m Mitzi Dean. I represent Esquimalt-Metchosin.

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

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

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Dan Ashton. I represent Penticton to Peachland.

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

Assisting us today from the Parliamentary Committees Office are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond, in the back. Also, we have Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard services, who work extremely hard for us, setting up and setting down. We very, very much appreciate all the hard work they do.

First up we have Thompson Rivers University, which is actually hosting us today.

We really appreciate you having us on your campus. We have Jim Thomson and Brett Fairbairn.

Welcome.

[4:05 p.m.]

Budget Consultation Presentations

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY

J. Thomson: Good afternoon. Welcome to Thompson Rivers University. On behalf of the Thompson Rivers University board of governors, we welcome you to Kamloops and to our beautiful campus situated on the traditional and unceded lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc people.

We thank you for the opportunity to participate in this public consultation on the next provincial budget. Your visit to Kamloops is timely, as we have spent most of the last week in convocation ceremonies. We watched more than 1,400 students pass over the podium and graduate, and these are only the ones that could attend. We actually have more than 2,000 students graduating this spring. These are gratifying moments. As we all know, education changes lives.

Before our submission, we would like to acknowledge the province for investments made for current and future students of TRU. There have been substantial contributions to the Industrial Training and Technology Centre, the ITTC. It’s now open. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to go around the campus or not, but you’ll see a building under construction. That’s the new nursing and population health building, and it’s advancing along very nicely.

We’ve had some contributions that have enabled us to acquire some affordable student housing — Upper College Heights. There are 340-some units, I believe, and enough land for a couple hundred more units. There have been contributions for open textbooks, tuition waivers for former youth in care and elimination of adult basic education fees.

I’d like to now introduce our new president, Dr. Brett Fairbairn, to provide TRU’s submission for the budget consultation process.

B. Fairbairn: Thank you very much, Jim, and thank you to the members of the committee for the work that you’re doing. Public hearings of this kind are an important part of the legislative process, and we appreciate the opportunity to address you and make a submission.

As Jim has mentioned, higher education institutions change lives. That’s why we’re in the line of work we’re in, as volunteers like Jim or as professionals like myself.

One measure of change in lives is access to jobs. I think that’s certainly one that occurs to many people. I am mindful that when my grandparents were alive, where I lived, about 8 percent of the population had post-secondary credentials. Recently, we had a study from the government of British Columbia that estimated that of new jobs in the coming decade, 77 percent would require post-secondary training. So from 8 percent to 80 percent is an enormous social change in a few generations that has transformed higher education and continues to create new needs.

Universities like TRU have a special mission in expanding access and creating inclusion. That’s very much on our minds. As we serve the growing complexity of society, universities need to offer a wider array of programs and offer new and better services to support student success. Some of the areas in which I certainly see potential and need for growth and where we would look for support and assistance from the province would be in areas like health care and technology.

Health care. In our wider region, we anticipate…. It has been forecast that there will be a need for 14,000 new professionals. Meanwhile, we’re turning away 75 to 80 percent of the applicants to our bachelor of science in nursing program. We have the new building going up on campus that Jim mentioned, so we will be able to accommodate more students. But what we’re looking for is the funding for seats in health care and in nursing and related fields.

Technology. We’re very pleased to be offering software engineering at TRU. That’s very important to our students and the needs of our region. We certainly would look to expand that into electrical engineering and computer engineering — very closely allied fields of great importance for the economy.

[4:10 p.m.]

As universities have grown, we’ve seen a growing range of student learning supports to ensure that students are successful. That includes everything from writing and tutoring for students to counselling to services for people who’ve encountered sexual violence. That array of services is increasingly expensive and is one of the costs that we confront and look for help with as we pursue our mission in higher education.

I’d also mention work-integrated learning as an important theme in our field — internships, student involvement in research projects and the like. We very much welcomed the announcement on Monday about new investment in that field, which will go a long way towards assisting us in that regard.

Really, just to sum up, thank you again for this process and for receiving our submission. I would simply leave you with the thought that investment in higher education is one of the most important tasks, one of the most important choices that a government can make.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Welcome to the position. We really appreciate you presenting to us.

Questions?

Mitzi Dean, who’s just back from Ottawa.

Thank you very much for joining us, Mitzi.

M. Dean: Thank you. I have a couple of questions, if that’s okay. My first question is…. Our government has an intention of increasing representation of women and young women in STEM. I’m just wondering whether you have a strategy around that.

I’m also interested in what your thoughts are about the balance of international students and domestic students.

B. Fairbairn: Thank you for those questions. Certainly, I would think about representation of women in science, technology, engineering and math fields, but also in our trades, which we have at TRU and which is an important area to think about as well. In all of those areas, we have very significant and very successful programs, and I’m really pleased to see the commitment of our deans and of our faculty to increasing the representation of women. We’ve had some important steps forward.

Regarding international students, TRU first came to my attention as a person in a university in another part of Canada because this university has a long record and special expertise in international education and partnerships. The legacy of that is that approximately 30 percent of our undergraduate on-campus population are foreign students. We’re very pleased by that. We’re very satisfied with that as a level of international students. We’re not looking to increase it rapidly.

We’re certainly always interested in diversifying our student body. We have shifted over the years from a focus on countries like Saudi Arabia and China to the point where today, the largest group of our students come from India, and we’re now expanding our networks in Africa and South America — not with a view to increasing the total number but, rather, to improving the balance and the intercultural experience of all the students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Can I just follow up on that? One of the things that we hear, too — we don’t have the evidence; we’ve asked for it a couple of times — is just this idea that sometimes, because of the amount of money that foreign students can bring in, where they pay, say, the full ride, as opposed to domestic students, who don’t, there’s an incentive to bring foreign students in, in terms of budgeting and whatnot. Are you seeing any displacement of domestic students with foreign students at all?

B. Fairbairn: No. I would say not. I would say that across North America, when universities come under financial pressure — if government grants are limited and tuition fees are limited — there are only a few other places that institutions typically look. But universities like ours are mission-driven organizations. We’re not looking to maximize revenue. Really, the proportion of international students that we’re looking for is determined by our academic goals and our values.

We don’t see displacement of other students. At a place like TRU, it’s quite the reverse. When you look around the campus, we have an array of programs here. We have buildings and facilities and services that would not exist and would not be available to the Canadian students if we didn’t have the international students as part of the student body.

I’m very confident in our case. Not only are we not turning away Canadian students — as an open access university, we would not do that — but I’m very confident that we’re offering more programs and services and a richer experience because international students are here.

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

Any other questions?

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. I did get to be at the opening of the trades building. It’s pretty fabulous. There was a young woman, student, who was part of that celebration. I’ve recently met with some students who are now in the trades — some women.

[4:15 p.m.]

One of the things that they were suggesting was that they would like to see, within the curriculum, training being more sensitive, training around anti-harassment policies and engendering that different culture within the trades. I was wondering if you could comment on that.

B. Fairbairn: Certainly, that’s something that we are developing within programs in many parts of TRU. Our faculty and our staff will provide that context and that information, that training and awareness to students. But often the most effective programs are the ones where students educate other students.

Certainly, our student wellness ambassadors — our athletes and others who really are working to educate people against sexual violence and harassment — have been very successful. I would be happy to see that expanded in trades. Certainly, we’ll be looking to do so. I’m sure there is always more that we can do, but I know we have outstanding work that’s done by staff who are dedicated in that area and by students who really help educate their fellow students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time now, if that’s all right. Feel free to follow up if there’s anything written or any further things you’d like to add. That’s fine. I really appreciate you coming, Brett and Jim. Thanks very much.

Okay. Next up we have Kamloops Society for Alcohol and Drug Services, Phoenix Centre — Sian Lewis.

If you wouldn’t mind keeping your comments to about five minutes, then we’ll have time for questions. That’d be wonderful.

KAMLOOPS SOCIETY FOR
ALCOHOL AND DRUG SERVICES

S. Lewis: Yes, I’m going to be pretty tight to the five minutes for you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity and for being so welcoming. I’m not a very seasoned speaker, but I’ll do my best. My name is Sian Lewis. I’m the executive director for Kamloops Society for Alcohol and Drug Services. We provide addiction treatment and withdrawal management regionally, and we’ve been doing this for over 40 years.

Last September I spoke with you about the dire need for expanded services and new investments for addiction treatment. I provided a list of credible groups and institutions that all agree that the current system of care is not adequate. We cannot meet the excessive demand for detox and treatment. Access to these vital health services must be increased. At the time, I offered multiple solutions, focusing on one particular approach that could generate new dollars to fund detox and treatment. I’ve provided that handout from last year once again.

Today I want to talk about the reality of those living with addictions. Our agency has collected over 300 stories recently from those with lived experience of using drugs, with an innovative software survey tool called SenseMaker. The survey indicated that 85 percent of these respondents wanted to share their stories.

I’m going to share two of these stories with you right now.

“Meth use has been one of the worst decisions that I’ve made in a long time. Addiction to meth has a lot of negative effects, one being on my health. I have dental problems, mental problems, memory problems. I can go on, but mostly, it has affected my family. My selfish decision cost me my career, but fortunately, I can return to work if I put this addiction aside and enter treatment.

“My relationships with my children are estranged. I used to wonder why, but now I glance in the mirror and I see why. My outward appearance shocks me. I don’t recognize myself. I was blind to the effects of meth. I now have the choice to slow down use or to eliminate this from my life. This is my second time around in detox, trying to kick this habit, so I know I can be successful.

“Meth use will eliminate everything from your life and even take your life. I don’t want to become another death statistic for meth addiction.”

The second story:

“This has been by far the lowest period of my life. It seems I’ve gone to hell and back, and still it’s not over. I was in a relationship for ten years. I was a happy father. I wanted to party one week and went to Kamloops to do this. However, if I had known what it would turn into, I would have made a different choice.

“Because of drugs, I have lost the one thing that made my life happy — my family. I lost my wife to heroin and myself to meth. I’ve been homeless for five years. I’m tired, depressed, embarrassed and struggling every day to survive.

[4:20 p.m.]

“People laugh and talk down to people who are less fortunate than others, and there is no need. To survive while homeless takes a strong mind and an even stronger individual. I’ve lost my wife and kids and home, and I wait to go home. I’ve also lost friends to overdose and now feel that I’m a sitting duck waiting for the inevitable to happen — to lose my life. But I pray that it doesn’t come to that.

“I’m not proud to admit that I’m an addict. However, the reason that everyone’s story is the same is that each person has been hurt. Without the proper support, we all fall. Some of us still have hope, and I know I want to change. I need help, for I have nobody but me.”

I have to say that it’s very emotional to read these stories.

Sixty-one percent of respondents indicated that they have attended detox and treatment, of the people that responded to our survey. Detox is that first essential step in recovery, and treatment is a very important second step.

Approximately half of those folks who are trying get sober will use again. Relapse is common. Addiction isn’t unlike other chronic diseases, such as diabetes or asthma, where people frequently fail to follow their treatment plans and relapse, if you will, oftentimes with terrible consequences. Drug abuse rewires the brain, and it takes a significant amount of time away from drugs to repair this. With proper treatment, these symptoms will diminish over time. After 90 days sober, the odds of long-term abstinence increase significantly.

The current provincial mental health and addiction strategy includes adult substance use as one of the four focus areas. But there is no mention of detox or treatment and the need to grow capacity and better resource these services. Some $600 million has been applied to the overdose response since July 2017, and fewer people have died due to multiple initiatives. Naloxone is one example. Our survey shows that 77 percent of those respondents have access to this drug that reverses overdoses. This is great news.

However, what is the next step for the person who survives an overdose if we have a chronic wait-list at detox? Access to long-term residential treatment — that process is severely flawed, and the client is expected to pay a per-diem fee that equates to thousands of dollars. Where is the investment for detox and treatment? These are vital components to the continuum of care.

Over 300 people in Kamloops shared their personal stories of drug use — the heartache, the pain, the sorrow, the loss — and 61 percent looked to detox and treatment to support their recovery. We need to improve the system of care. Build capacity and improve access. I look to this committee, once again, to help make this happen.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I appreciate the stories. It certainly hits home with me, and probably with many people in the room. Many people are…. One of my family members is a recovering addict. When he asked for help, we, as a family, were able to rally around and get him that help privately. But many people don’t have that option.

Also, just the stigma. You mentioned…. The stories also talk about the stigma. The fact is that he was too ashamed to come to us earlier and finally he had no choice, and he did. If you can take away the stigma…. It’s great to have the services, but if people are too ashamed to use them because of the stigma, then they’re not going to access them. It’s both. We have to deal with stigma. We have to deal with services too.

S. Lewis: Absolutely. I’m really focusing on the services, because we have a chronic wait-list. There are always at least 25 people on the wait-list, and upwards to 50 for our detox here in Kamloops that serves the whole Interior Health region. So although there are people who feel that they can’t come forward for treatment, there is a long lineup of people waiting to get in who are ready.

I had a mother email me and say: “My 30-year-old daughter is using heroin again. She is terrified. She wants to come into detox.” We have to triage, like every other sort of service of this calibre, and my best answer was: “I will put her on the list, along with so many others that are in this situation. I’m sorry. This is the best I have.” She emailed me back and said: “Well, maybe you don’t need to bother, because my daughter will probably be dead by tomorrow.”

The stigma. Absolutely, we’re always battling that. We’re in a crisis that has been going on all along, and it’s unfortunate that this really wasn’t being brought to the surface until we had the opioid crisis and people were counting how many people had died from overdose. But if we count the number of people who die from alcohol-attributable deaths, every year more people die from that.

[4:25 p.m.]

I’m glad that we’re at the point where there’s more discussion and there’s more support from government. I just hope that we can find a way to build that capacity for detox and treatment, because truly, people need those two steps. Those are very essential. The research tells us this.

N. Simons: I was just wondering about the clients that are waiting — how long the average wait would be — and also, whether or not, in the current crisis, the detox beds are going to come anywhere near close to doing what they need to do for us. The current number of people who are using heroin and fentanyl…. I guess fentanyl, now. I’m pretty sure that the detox for people using fentanyl is fraught with dangers, and there’s more emphasis on management until longer-term solutions can be found. How long are people waiting?

S. Lewis: It is very inconsistent because, again, it’s triaged. A woman who is pregnant, for example, will be brought in right away, and it will bump everybody down the list. If somebody’s in hospital, and the hospital is calling, and they say, “This person needs to come in,” they jump the line.

We typically tell people five days, approximately. That’s too long. Even that’s too long, because people need that immediate…. They have that moment where they feel that they’re brave enough. It’s not brave. I mean, they’ve obviously made the call. It’s the bravery to experience the pain and the pull of that craving and that addiction. It is a horrible, horrible experience. People call, they are willing and they’re ready, and we say five days. As you can imagine, lots of them just can’t make it. Even people who walk through the door sometimes turn around and walk back out because it’s just such a pull for them. But the reason….

I get what you’re saying about fentanyl and that people may be on things like Suboxone as a maintenance throughout the course of their life. That may be the preferred treatment. But the first step is always detox. We have to get them in that bed. It’s a medical review of everything that’s going on for them — trying to determine what drugs are in their system and then helping them to balance to a place where they’re physically stable enough, that their health is physically stable enough that we could consider if they’re one of these folks who needs to be on Suboxone.

We align with the standards of care. It’s changed a lot in the province because of the opioid crisis, but we have to align with those standards. So you’re right; it’s a very dangerous time. There are lots of checks and balances and changes to practice in place because we never want somebody walking out the door who is an opioid user and only has seven days of detox. They will go back and use. So we have a whole system of care in place. It’s a much different approach than it was even five years ago.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We’re out of time, but thank you so much for appearing again and your passion for this.

Next up we have Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society of British Columbia — Sarah McNeil.

Hi, Sarah. Just a reminder that we try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes. That would be great.

CANADIAN PARKS AND WILDERNESS
SOCIETY, B.C. CHAPTER

S. McNeil: Thank you for having me. My name is Sarah McNeil. I am speaking to you on behalf of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, British Columbia chapter. I want to start by acknowledging that we are gathered today on the unceded, stolen territories of the Secwépemc people, who have lived on and cared for these lands and waters since time immemorial. I also want to recognize the responsibility that we have to help undo the injustices that Indigenous peoples continue to face at the hands of settlers like me and to identify the immense privilege that allows me to participate in a process like this consultation.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, B.C. chapter, is a non-profit, grassroots-based conservation organization. We are one of 13 chapters across Canada that has helped to protect over 400,000 square kilometres of threatened area in the country. Here in B.C., we have played a significant role in the creation of our provincial and national parks, which now account for more than 15 percent of the land base in the province.

On behalf of our members and supporters, we thank the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for your time and consideration of our recommendations for B.C. Budget 2020, specifically the recommendation that the province invest in Indigenous-led land and water conservation to combat biodiversity loss and climate disruption.

[4:30 p.m.]

I’m grateful for this government’s promise to make life better for all British Columbians. I’m speaking on behalf of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, but I’m also a resident of Kamloops and a citizen who’s deeply concerned about our future.

I grew up in 100 Mile House, and I watched my friends and my family evacuate in 2017. I watched them stand between their homes and a wall of flames on the front line of a fire crew. I have been told to stay inside rather than go outside, that I should find a treadmill instead of running on the trails that I love because smoke from wildfires renders our air too dangerous to breathe. Here, in a province that is known for its natural beauty, in a place that prides itself on its wilderness, the air is often too dangerous to breathe.

I thank the government for their commitment and their recognition of the many threats that face our province, including climate change, wildfires and biodiversity loss. That these threats are all intertwined and, further, that they require a coordinated effort can no longer be ignored. The government has developed a robust climate plan, and the government is investing resources to defend communities from wildfires.

We ask that the province tackle biodiversity loss with the same seriousness. Governments across Canada are working together to meet federal targets for conservation, which include protecting 17 percent of land and inland waters by 2020. The federal government has made an historic investment to support this initiative, establishing a fund that provinces, territories and Indigenous governments can access to create new protected areas.

Over 100 proposals seeking funding were submitted for the federal government, and more than 60 of those came from British Columbia. Many of them were led by First Nations, who have played and continue to play a critical role in the stewardship of lands, waters and wildlife. We strongly believe that the conservation vision being put forward by these First Nations is a key component of the strategy to combat climate change and address global biodiversity declines. So CPAWS is recommending that the province support these initiatives with the resources allocated in Budget 2020.

Many of these proposals, if fulfilled, will help this government meet other priorities, including recovering species at risk and mitigating climate disruption. There is a growing chorus recognizing the need for more Indigenous-led and collaborative conservation efforts. CPAWS has two specific recommendations.

Firstly, we recommend that the province set aside dedicated funding of $40 million in 2020 to work with First Nations to support their vision of land protection for their territories and to expand the network of protected areas in B.C. We ask that this funding is used to prioritize areas that act as climate refugia, that are under-represented in the protected areas system, that contain intact and uneroded landscapes that support a broad diversity of species, that act as carbon sinks and that increase ecological resilience. We also ask that the government ensure that ongoing funding opportunities exist to support First Nations stewardship of these places over the long term.

Secondly, we recommend that the province increase annual funding to B.C. Parks by $50 million. This increase will bolster B.C. Parks’ ability to preserve the ecological integrity of existing and new areas in the provincial protected areas system. This is an incredible opportunity for the province of British Columbia to address the biodiversity crisis while supporting reconciliation with First Nations.

We look forward to the B.C. budget report, and we remain committed to working with all members of the government to make B.C. a leader in conservation. Once again, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Sarah. Appreciate it.

M. Dean: The federal grant stream that you mentioned — does that require provincial matching of dollars in the proposals, do you know?

S. McNeil: It doesn’t, as far as I know. That will be in our written submission, but my understanding is that when a project is submitted, it could be submitted by a provincial government or a territorial government or an Indigenous government. They’re required to have a percentage — I believe it’s 20 percent — of those funds already accounted for. Then they could request a maximum of 80 percent from the federal government.

The issue that we’ve identified and that we’re asking the province to address is that there were way more proposals than there is funding available. A lot of those proposals are really valuable and, like I said, led by Indigenous governments who have the best understanding of what’s needed to protect biodiversity in their territories. So we’re hoping to fill the gap.

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

Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate your time.

I’m just going to turn the chair over to Dan Ashton, the Deputy Chair.

[D. Ashton in the chair.]

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you. Up next we have Thompson Rivers University Students Union, if you folks want to come up.

Manuela, Leif and Kole — is that correct?

[4:35 p.m.]

Thank you very much for coming today. I saw you folks here for a minute. So five minutes for your presentation and up to five minutes for questions. Please start when you’re ready, and once again, welcome.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

L. Douglass: Thank you, folks. We really appreciate the opportunity to present in front of the committee today. We’re from the TRU Students Union. My name is Leif Douglass. I work as a staff person for the students union.

K. Lawrence: My name is Kole Lawrence. I’m the vice-president, external, of the students union.

M. Ceballos: My name is Manuela Ceballos, and I am one representative of the campaigns committee.

L. Douglass: Perfect. We have three recommendations for you folks today. I’m going to go on our first recommendation, which is to re-evaluate the Thompson Rivers University funding formula.

Why are we recommending this? TRU currently ranks 22nd out of 25 post-secondary education institutions in terms of per-student funding in B.C. while at the same time having exceeded the full-time-equivalent student enrolment targets for the last number of years.

Another way to look at this is that from 2005-06, when TRU was first formed as a full university, to 2018-19, block grant funding to post-secondary education institutions in B.C. has grown by 19½ percent above inflation, representing a real increase of over $300 million to the sector as a whole. Over the same time period, TRU’s funding levels increased by only 5.8 percent above inflation, or about $3½ million.

Full-time-equivalent enrolment numbers for these years are not available from DataBC, unfortunately, but from 2007-08, the earliest year available, to 2016-17, full-time-equivalent enrolments at TRU have grown by 32½ percent, far exceeding the average growth in B.C. of 8.5 percent for this time period.

In total, over 4,500 people in our region, as well as over 30 community organizations, as well as city councils from all across our region have signed their names or written letters of support for TRU to have its funding re-evaluated. We’re basically requesting a full re-evaluation to ensure that our funding level reflects the role of the institution.

K. Lawrence: Our second recommendation is to restructure the current post-secondary student financial aid programs to create an upfront needs-based grants program.

Good financial aid is aid that supports equitable participation, timely completion and full transition from studies to workplace. Some types of financial aid, like RESPs, loan remission programs and tax credits are less effective in providing these outcomes than a needs-based grants program.

The primary issue with RESP grants is that they disproportionately benefit high-income families who least need financial support. Loan remission is problematic because it provides little to no assistance for students who are debt-averse or unable to pay the upfront costs of their education. Further, since remission amounts per student for the B.C. completion grant are not publicly available and vary year to year, students are unable to plan expenses accordingly and are left in uncertain financial positions.

Finally, education tax credits are problematic because, first, the majority of education tax credits are transferred to a future year or to a relative, which results in no immediate financial relief for the student, and second, because benefit received from education tax credits is in the spring, while the largest costs of post-secondary education occur in the fall.

On the other hand, needs-based grants are targeted to students with financial need, provided at the time when the largest costs of education are due and are transparent, therein allowing students to be sure of their financial position before incurring the costs of education. Numerous academic studies conclude that they are the most impactful financial aid option on participation, completion and workforce transition for post-secondary students. Despite this, B.C. remains one of the only provinces without a comprehensive system of needs-based grants for students demonstrating financial need.

We recommend, therefore, the creation of a needs-based grant system. This can be done cost-neutral by investing the current value of RESP grants, loan remission programs and education tax credits into a provincial grants program.

M. Ceballos: Our third recommendation is to create a provincewide international student strategy. International student enrolment has increased massively, both at TRU and in the province, bringing both benefits and challenges.

For instance, one of the benefits seen at TRU is that a high proportion of the university’s tuition revenue comes from international students. But challenges arise, as our province is left economically vulnerable to the single decisions of post-secondary institutions that do not always respect the needs and challenges of international students.

At TRU, we have facilitated group discussions to hear how a growing international student enrolment has impacted experiences of different members of the university. Issues have been identified around recruitment, enrolment, meeting a student’s basic needs, the academic experience and the cultural and social experience. We have included a link in our report with a document that we have built around these responses, and we really encourage you to take a look at it.

British Columbia needs a new strategy that ensures that international education will continue to provide benefits while also remaining sustainable through respecting the needs of international students.

K. Lawrence: We appreciate this opportunity to present. Thank you.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Great. Thank you. Well on time.

Any questions from the panel?

[4:40 p.m.]

R. Coleman: You’ve given us more statistical information than the other presentations that we’ve seen in the last couple of days, so I’ll ask you the same question, which couldn’t be answered in Kelowna earlier today.

You have made a compelling statistical thing that 25 percent of international students in this country are in British Columbia. The question I asked the student union in Kelowna was: how many students in B.C. are not getting into post-secondary institutions because there’s an influx of a level of international students that actually leaves some of our own kids on the sideline? Are there any statistics that you could tell me, or information you might have? It’s not about the international students. But are we actually disenfranchising our own students at this point?

L. Douglass: I don’t think we are. I hear that concern and question all the time. I’ve never seen anything that says that we are doing that. I know the numbers have expanded quite a bit, and I’ve seen some news stories starting to question that more and more, because there are increasing numbers. But to my knowledge, this hasn’t been happening in institutions. I wish I had a study for you.

R. Coleman: When you say that belief, do the entry levels go up because of the levels of international students that come up? Does it actually affect the domestic students as far as the grades they have to have to get into post-secondary education?

L. Douglass: I don’t think so. It’s a little unique here, because we’re an open-access institution. Typically we haven’t, in the past, capped the number of international students or domestic students that we’ve been receiving. I think it might be different if you were at another institution in B.C. that has much higher requirements in terms of whether or not you’re getting into UBC, for example.

I can only speak to here, and I don’t think that’s been the case here in terms of entry requirements either.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Any other questions?

N. Simons: Just on that subject, thinking about it, we don’t know how many people apply to post-secondary and that don’t get in. We don’t get told that. Some people apply to numerous institutions. It would be very difficult to calculate. I guess at a certain point, an institution such as TRU needs to have a certain expectation of academic capability.

I would just have a little bit of an issue if we started thinking about places being taken before…. I don’t think that’s how we should look at it. I think we should try to ensure that everyone who seeks to pursue post-secondary has that opportunity — end of sentence.

R. Coleman: As Nicholas earlier said, and I said, because it’s graduation season, this is when we start to hear from parents that their kids can’t get into university. Then they bring up the fact of how many international students are taking the places their kids could possibly have. That’s why it becomes more topical at this time of year.

L. Douglass: I do think it’s tricky. I know I was here for the beginning when TRU and our president was presenting. I think there’s also the balance in terms of the dollars they bring in, which may also provide additional resources to offer more seats versus also using up seats. It is fairly complicated, and I wish there was some specific information I could point you to.

One thing — Manuela mentioned it — that we didn’t put in our submission…. This is a report that we put together sort of institutionally. I had some copies printed. We put a link in our submission. There’s a PDF on line. We did a whole bunch of focus groups on our campus here to talk to students, faculty and staff, all about internationalization, growing international student enrolment. It’s an eight-page report. If you’re interested, I could leave some copies in the back here.

N. Simons: You could send it to us.

L. Douglass: I can send you a copy. There’s a link in the back section of the report, and it’s available on our website. I’ll maybe leave a stack, as well, if you folks are interested.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Very well presented. Thank you. Just one before you go, though. What’s the spread between a foreign student coming and a student from British Columbia here — the difference in tuition fees? Do you know?

L. Douglass: Here, an international student is paying….

M. Ceballos: We have a flat fee of $9,000…

L. Douglass: …per semester.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): As compared to…?

K. Lawrence: It’s $2,600 per semester.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): A little over three to one, then.

L. Douglass: About that here.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you again. Good job.

Mr. Chair.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you for stepping in for me.

Next up we have Imperial Tobacco Co. Canada, Ltd. — Sébastien Charbonneau.

Just a reminder that we try to keep the comments to about five minutes, and then we have time for questions.

IMPERIAL TOBACCO CANADA

S. Charbonneau: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sébastien Charbonneau. I am the director of government and regulatory affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco.

[4:45 p.m.]

My remarks today will focus on two issues. The first one is the augmented threat of further illegal tobacco market growth and the associated loss of tax revenue. Secondly is the need to address youth use of vapour products while still offering them as a potentially reduced-risk alternative for adult smokers.

Let me start with the illegal tobacco issue. This is a problem that has been ignored by the federal government despite the fact that the illegal tobacco makes up around 20 percent of the market in Canada, costing upwards of $2 billion in lost tax revenues every year. Since 2006, those tax losses are around $28 billion, 60 percent of which would have gone to the provinces. But this is about more than lost revenue. The illegal tobacco trade is run by some of the most notorious organized crime groups in Canada. Those criminals are the beneficiaries of the federal inaction.

This problem will take on a whole new dimension come November this year, when federal regulations mandating plain packaging and the standardization of individual cigarettes come into effect. This will then make it virtually impossible for consumers, retailers and law enforcement to tell a legal from an illegal tobacco product. This will thus open the door for increased contraband and counterfeiting of tobacco.

In a February meeting between the Canada Revenue Agency, our company and provincial Finance departments, including B.C.’s, I asked what plan CRA has in place to deal with this augmented risk. Their response was: “We don’t really have a plan.” Therefore, it will fall on you, the provinces, to sort this out. No province that we’ve spoken to knows how they can maintain legal market integrity and its associated tax revenue with this policy and this federal inaction.

In addition, the three major legal tobacco companies in Canada are under creditor protection, making this a very delicate time and forcing a debate on whether governments want a legal, regulated and taxed tobacco industry or an illegal, unregulated and untaxed free-for-all. With all of that in mind, we make our first three recommendations: first, maintain the tobacco tax at the current level to avoid stimulating further demand for illicit tobacco in the province; second, review B.C.’s enforcement efforts to determine if they are sufficient in a plain-pack market; and lastly, demand federal action on this file.

I’ll move now to the vapour products. We share the concern about youth usage. Our position is very clear. Just as we believe that youth should not smoke, youth should not vape either. We do not want youth using any of our products — full stop. But youth vaping is, unfortunately, occurring. It must be addressed before it becomes as significant a problem as youth alcohol or cannabis consumption.

The challenge with youth vaping is the access. To properly address it, it is important to understand how and where they are getting those products and to ensure that the laws already in place are enforced. To that end, we recently announced a new campaign with retailers to remind them, their clerks and consumers that vapour products, like tobacco, are not to be sold or used by youth. In addition, we have recommended a series of measures to Health Canada to address youth access to vapour products, particularly around on-line sales, and strong enforcement measures to punish those who furnish these products to youth. These are detailed in our written submission, and our company has already implemented several of them.

We also understand that there may be concern about flavours. Again, it is important to remember that youth are already barred from purchasing these products legally. If that is happening, then the system has broken down, and it is naive to think that banning flavours will somehow prevent youth access.

In conclusion, the critical issue is to maintain a balance that makes it appealing for adult smokers to switch to these products, which Health Canada and many others around the world have recognized as a safer alternative to combustible cigarettes, while at the same time ensuring that they do not fall into the hands of youths.

[4:50 p.m.]

That is it for my comments. I thank you for your time and your attention, and I would look forward to your questions, if any.

N. Simons: Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. The issue of $2 billion in lost revenue — can you just tell us the source, how that’s calculated? I’m wondering, also, if Imperial Tobacco is engaged in funding any research into vaping?

S. Charbonneau: Okay. So a two-part question. For the first part, the $2 billion tax loss is an estimation based on public accounts versus projected tobacco tax revenue and the 20 percent estimated rate. The sum of it all is that, currently, provincial and federal governments collect between $8 billion and $9 billion directly on the legal tobacco market with a 20 percent rate. Looking at the public accounts, that’s how we came up to the $2 billion. It’s upward of $2 billion.

N. Simons: Before you answer the second part about the research, can you describe what the illegal product is? Is it illegally imported? Is it stolen? What is it? How is it…?

S. Charbonneau: In Canada, the illegal tobacco market is almost entirely domestic. It’s either entirely illegal or it’s inappropriately stamped. If there are no stamps on the product, therefore, it’s considered by authorities, finance departments, as an illegal product. By and large, 97 to 98 percent of the products that we consider, and law enforcement considers, as illegal are domestically produced.

N. Simons: By the tobacco companies?

S. Charbonneau: Not by the legal tobacco companies. There are 50 illegal cigarette manufacturing sites in Canada. This is not me saying it. This is the RCMP.

Sorry — the research question.

N. Simons: Yeah. Just if, in fact, the company is involved in any research or funding research.

S. Charbonneau: We are always open to financially support research to understand the long-term effects or short-term effects of vapour for consumers — vapour products, of course. We do so. We do so globally, and when we do so, we do it fully transparently.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Is there a common dominator geographically for locations for those 50 illegal producing factories?

S. Charbonneau: Yes. They are all located in Quebec or Ontario on some First Nation lands, but not all First Nation lands — a few.

M. Dean: Are there other types of criminal activities that they’re very closely linked with? Is there a trend of identifying it linked with other gang-related or trafficking or any other trends?

S. Charbonneau: Yes. In fact, illegal tobacco trade is one of the primary sources of revenue for organized criminal groups. According to the Quebec provincial police, the illegal tobacco trade is eight times more profitable than the cocaine trade for those criminal groups. They use these funds as, essentially, a source of revenue to finance other types of illegal activities, whether it’s weapons, drug trafficking, human smuggling or, of course, money laundering.

I know money laundering is an issue that has been looked at in B.C. Very recently, in the Parliament in Ottawa, a Senate committee has also identified organized crime’s involvement in money laundering. They made an observation for the next parliament in Ottawa to potentially look at the source of revenue or the source of the money that is laundered. There’s a lot of intel out there that indicates that the illegal tobacco trade is one of the primary sources of revenue for the organized criminal groups in Canada, but not just in Canada — also abroad.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a couple of little questions. One is in regard to vape products coming in from overseas by mail order. Is that a big part of what you’re talking about, that sort of illegal flow? Is this domestic, or is it international?

S. Charbonneau: For vapour?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Vapour, yeah.

S. Charbonneau: My comments about the illegal tobacco trade were about combustible cigarettes, not vapour. If you’re asking about the….

[4:55 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s for access for youth. I mean, I gather it’s relatively easy for youth to order products on line and get them without any checking or any problems.

S. Charbonneau: Well, it should be regulated so that it is not possible for youth to order vapour products on line, much like it is done in our regulations regarding the on-line order of cannabis.

It is actually in our submissions to Health Canada and here. Those are the types of measures that we’ve put in place, where we believe that on-line sales, if permitted, should be tightly regulated and controlled by independent third parties, where age verification is done at the ordering stage but also at the delivery stage. There should also be a limit of the amount of products you can order on line so that you’re not stocking up for reselling.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So as far as the combustibles, the cigarettes, and the black market for that, how big is it in British Columbia versus, let’s say, Ontario or Quebec? I mean, is it really a problem in British Columbia compared to some other provinces?

S. Charbonneau: By volume, it is certainly not as significant as it is in Ontario, where currently it’s upwards of 40 percent. In some parts of northern Ontario, north of 70 percent of the products are illegal. If you talk to your colleagues in Manitoba, they will tell you that they’re at the choke point for the western provinces, and there’s a lot of demand for illegal tobacco flowing west.

The trend of illegal tobacco in the province of British Columbia is trending up. It’s lower than in Ontario, but it’s higher than in Quebec. It’s hovering around 15, 16 percent, as best we can estimate right now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate your submission.

S. Charbonneau: Thank you again for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Thompson Rivers University Faculty Association — Dr. Thomas Friedman.

Hey, Thomas. How are you?

T. Friedman: Hi. Good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So just a reminder, we try to keep the comments to about five minutes. That’d be great.

T. Friedman: I’ve got my timer right here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, perfect. Thank you.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

T. Friedman: Thank you so much for the opportunity to address your committee.

I want to acknowledge that we’re on the traditional lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, part of Secwepemcul’ecw, the unceded territory of the Secwépemc peoples.

I’m representing the TRU Faculty Association. We have approximately 800 members at both our Kamloops and our Williams Lake campuses. I want to focus on an issue that you’ve heard about already in your meetings and you will hear about again. It’s a very important systemic issue facing the academic world and, particularly, post-secondary education in the province.

I want to make sure that you understand that TRU, our institution, has a unique legislative mandate. We have a responsibility to deliver undergraduate and graduate programs, to conduct research in support of both undergrad and graduate programs and to meet the educational needs of our region, which includes from Clearwater down to Merritt, over to 100 Mile House and Williams Lake.

The failure of our institution to acknowledge that precarious labour is a problem has jeopardized, in our view, our ability to meet that legislative mandate. It’s different in different institutions, but it’s a systemwide problem that needs a systems solution.

We have negotiated faculty complement language, which means that 70 percent of all of our courses have to be delivered by those who are in tenured or tenure-track positions. That means that 30 percent of our instructors do not have the job security that’s needed to deliver programming, to plan for the future, to make sure that our programs are responding to student needs. These individuals do not get the support that’s needed for professional development.

We feel that this is a real failure, because our students deserve to have the very best. Student success depends on not just the quality of instruction — our contract faculty are very highly qualified — but on the support given to faculty so they can deliver the kinds of programs that we need and be responsive to the changing needs.

[5:00 p.m.]

At our Williams Lake campus, for example, 75 percent of all of our faculty are contract to contract. They have no job security. As soon as their contract’s up, they’re let go. They don’t have the opportunity for professional development, and they certainly don’t have the opportunity to participate in strategic planning. A community like Williams Lake really needs this kind of strategic planning so that our institution is responding adequately to community needs.

You might ask why we’re bringing this to the committee when it could be a bargaining issue. Well, this isn’t an issue that one institution, one employer, can address. This is a system issue. It’s an issue that involves social policy and economic policy. Our argument is that precarious labour means that we have individuals who are committed to doing the best they can for their students unable to settle down in our community. They’re unable to take out a mortgage. They’re unable to make any long-term plans for the future. We feel that that’s really a loss, not only to our institution and our students but to our communities as well.

What we’re asking your committee to do is recommend that government support the elimination of what we’re calling secondary scales. You’ll see from our chart that the payments at TRU are substantially lower than what we feel the pro rata or proportional payment should be. We’re asking that you eliminate those secondary scales through funding that would allow our institutions to create a pro rata model for all of our faculty.

The question comes up: isn’t flexibility important? Yes, it is. There’s no guarantee that that 30 percent of our faculty have ongoing jobs. It’s just that they should be compensated fairly for the work they’re actually doing.

I thank you for the opportunity, and I’ll take any questions you have.

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

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. Do you have a breakdown by gender of the two different categories? Is there a big discrepancy? I have an assumption in my head, but I’d like to hear what the stats are.

T. Friedman: This is one of the disturbing aspects of precarious labour in the academic world, and it goes beyond just this issue. We know that there’s a gender disparity. We know that more female academics are in the precarious positions than male, and more marginalized, racialized faculty are in that group. In some departments, 100 percent of the precarious academic staff are women. That creates some real, serious social issues as well.

M. Dean: Do you have any sense of the depth of the disparity? Is it 80-20, 60-40 in the two different groups?

T. Friedman: I’d say 60 percent of all of our contract faculty fall either into female or racialized faculty.

M. Dean: And in your regular faculty, the people who have secure tenure?

T. Friedman: It’s probably close to 50-50 now. We’ve reached the point where there’s a lot of gender equality in the tenured faculty.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just quickly: semester system here, correct?

T. Friedman: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Fifteen weeks?

T. Friedman: Thirteen weeks and then two weeks of exams.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): A person on term would earn how much?

T. Friedman: For a three-credit course — that is, three credits for the students — they’re earning approximately $6,300. That’s one-eighth of a normal teaching load for one of our ongoing or tenured members. If they were earning a pro rata, it would be approximately $11,500 for a course.

That course…. You say 13 or 15 weeks. That involves three to four hours of class contact time a week, but also prep, marking and developing the course materials.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): So it’s about 50 percent.

T. Friedman: Yes. That’s right.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have to commend, I guess, the faculty associations. You obviously have a clear message this time, which is good. It’s been very consistent so far throughout the province and very well articulated. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

[5:05 p.m.]

Of course, it has been brought up, as well, as you mentioned too: “Isn’t this a bargaining issue?” I know it’s a bargaining year. But it was also brought up to us by other associations that without the dollars on the table, it’s not going to get addressed.

I think we understand that from past presentations, and we appreciate your bringing this to our attention. Thanks so much.

T. Friedman: Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It was great seeing you again.

Next we have A Way Home Kamloops — Katherine McParland and Fred Ford.

If we could keep the comments to about five minutes so we have time for comments. The floor is yours.

A WAY HOME KAMLOOPS SOCIETY

K. McParland: My name is Katherine McParland, and I’m the executive director of A Way Home Kamloops Society. This is my board member and co-chair of the B.C. Coalition to End Youth Homelessness, Fred Ford. We’re honoured to be here today to speak to you about a very important issue. That is the need for a provincial plan to prevent and end youth homelessness in British Columbia.

A Way Home Kamloops was the first community in all of B.C., the second in all of Canada, to develop a youth-specific homelessness action plan. We were the first community in all of Canada to do a youth homelessness count. We just conducted our second count, which identified 136 young people who were experiencing homelessness in the last year. It’s a significant issue. Out of the work that we did here at the local level, we recognized that we would not be able to move the dial on youth homelessness without provincial investments and policy change that will support the coordinated efforts of communities to achieve these goals.

Out of that work, we decided to form the Coalition to End Youth Homelessness. This includes 40 organizations all across B.C., both rural and urban centres. Our whole vision is to see a provincial fund to end youth homelessness by fall 2019.

F. Ford: We’ll let you think about that for a moment. I’ll clarify a little bit.

It’s a pleasure to be here, and it’s nice to see some familiar faces and some former colleagues. I’m relatively new to Kamloops, but I first met Katherine about two years ago, when I was working on a project to analyze the circumstances of teen girls in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley who were at risk of homelessness and exploitation.

In doing some research about what was happening around the province, I ran into stories about what was happening in Kamloops and the work that Katherine was doing. Before long, we started talking about the need for a provincial initiative to end youth homelessness. This was something that the A Way Home Kamloops group had already identified as a priority. So we started bringing people together and finding out what was happening in different parts of the province.

As Katherine mentioned, there are now 40 organizations that are involved from around the province. We were fortunate to receive provincial funding last May to have a provincial meeting, where we were pleased to have representatives from eight or nine ministries. I told Katherine at the time that it would be unrealistic to expect for us to have ministers at the meeting, and that deputies or directors would be….

K. McParland: They were there.

F. Ford: Yeah. We did get ministers and deputy ministers there — and a strong commitment. Our goal is for there to be a plan in place by this fall to end youth homelessness in B.C. We don’t expect to end youth homelessness by the fall, but if you’d like to challenge yourselves to do that, then we would be supportive of that as well.

What we’ve been working on is an analysis of each ministry’s mandate related to how that affects youth homelessness, and writing a report. We’re doing that on a monthly basis, but we have no funding. We’ve been doing this off the sides of our desks. We’ve done about four ministries so far, and we’ve presented a report to provincial leaders of the homelessness action plan.

K. McParland: The reports include information from all across B.C. Our representatives are collecting information. It gives a really good snapshot.

[5:10 p.m.]

F. Ford: We’d be happy to share some of those reports with you, because it really does give a flavour of how the issues are affecting youth in each community, whether it’s through Education, MCFD. We’re concerned that MCFD is usually tagged with the responsibility, but we want a cross-ministry approach to ending youth homelessness.

K. McParland: And we believe that if one government ministry takes on the role of mom and dad, such as MCFD, all the other ministries have a responsibility to be aunties and uncles. So that’s what we’re hoping you, as the province, can support us to do.

As a result of some of these reports, some of the key themes that we’ve seen where you can make a real, tangible difference really quickly…. We need a distinct call for proposals for youth housing. There are a very limited number of organizations that are doing that work, and we need to support the sector to build their capacity so that we have the stable housing that young people need.

There’s been a lot of work done in Vancouver and across the province, where there has been a recommendation to have dedicated rental subsidies for young people experiencing homelessness. Previously this was administered through the homelessness prevention program, and they were allocated for former youth in care. We would like to see that increased and opened up to all young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, to be administered by community organizations so that youth are also receiving the tangible support that they need to prevent future episodes of homelessness.

When we look at the Ministry of Children and Family Development, we received a lot of feedback across the province. I’d like to applaud some of the efforts that have been taken by Minister Conroy and Minister Robinson to address some of the issues that have been happening. Some of the key areas that, I think, would be strategic for change involve policy change with MCFD.

The first is the youth agreement. This is for youth under 19. We are seeing many young people being denied a basic source of income, and they’re forced into exploitation. We would like to see the youth agreement be obtainable for youth from a rights-based lens, as opposed to a contractual lens — similar to the income assistance program. Additionally, we applaud the efforts of MCFD to re-imagine the agreements with young adults program, and we support that work.

As you can see, a provincial plan will include so many of these different components. We just gave you a little taste today of some of the things our community partners have identified across the province, but there’s so much more.

F. Ford: We’ll take some questions.

M. Dean: Thank you so much for your work and for pulling all of that together as well. I’d be really interested in reading some of it. Are you in contact with Justice for Girls in Vancouver?

F. Ford: No, we haven’t encountered them yet.

M. Dean: They’ve done a lot of work with youth, particularly young women, homeless in the Downtown Eastside. So I’d strongly…. Just google “Justice for Girls.”

Were you aware of the grant that was rolled out earlier on this week — the $6 million, to end homelessness?

K. McParland: We’re pretty excited about that.

M. Dean: All right. I don’t know, but that could be an opportunity of actually working with the province on creating and delivering a plan or something.

F. Ford: Thanks, Mitzi. We’ve been concerned that in many of the initiatives for housing, youth have not been well represented as targets. So we will try to take advantage of that and hope to see a higher representation.

M. Dean: Yeah. I was just looking on line, and it’s not clear if it’s inclusive or not.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Could I clarify something? Obviously, the word “youth,” depending on who you talk to, can mean different things. I know that in my community, in Maple Ridge, when the advocates for a safe house for youth…. They’re talking about kids under 19. In the supportive housing…. You can be 19 or older and be in the supportive housing. So I’m just wondering. When you talk about youth at risk or youth needing housing, could you be specific in terms of the ages for that, just so I’m clear on that?

K. McParland: Certainly. The ages of youth are 13 to 25. We are the boomerang generation. There was a great report by our former representative, Mary Ellen, around our generation. The average age that we leave home is 28.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s the average?

K. McParland: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’ve got five kids. I really don’t want to hear that.

F. Ford: More than 50 percent of youth between the ages of 20 to 30 depend on their family for housing and finances. So especially for youth coming out of care, we would expect that their needs would be greater.

K. McParland: You might go to university or try a partnership, and maybe that doesn’t work out. You need that safe landing place.

[5:15 p.m.]

I applaud the supportive housing work. I think it’s incredible work. What we’ve heard from young people across the province is that it’s not safe to be 19, 20, 21, and to be in a home where there are people who have been on the streets their whole life. I lived on the streets, and what I can tell you is that young people are the currency on the streets. They need distinct programs, distinct housing options that meet their developmental needs, because we don’t want those young people to become the homeless adults.

We want to invest in them and provide the incredible opportunities for them to gain skills so that they aren’t the future generation of homelessness. We’ve seen in our community that by investing in youth, they’ve created change. Thompson Rivers University provides five bursaries a year to youth in our housing.

We’re hoping to elevate the voices of youth and, with my other hat on, I’m doing a practicum, with my master’s degree, at the Representative for Children and Youth office. We will be releasing a report on youth homelessness that will take the lived expertise of young people all across B.C. and what they’re calling out for. They’re calling out for distinct services that meet their needs.

N. Simons: I’m just wondering: of the youth that you survey, for how many is the state their guardian? How many are in care? Technically, how many have the province as their guardian?

K. McParland: We just did a youth homelessness count here, and I think it was 49 percent identified — I’d have to go back and review, but it was approximately that — as being in care. What we find as a challenge is that those young people are not brought into care. Young people sometimes are saying, “I’m being abused; I can’t return home,” and there’s an investigation that takes place. If the parents say, “No, they can come home. They’re just choosing not to follow the rules,” that youth may not be brought into care.

The youth’s voice has less weight than the parents’. We still live in a society where there’s that perception and stigma that youth should not be heard. That’s why we’re trying to change that and elevate the voices of youth.

N. Simons: It wasn’t always that way.

B. D’Eith (Chair): What do you mean?

N. Simons: Well, Social Services would have a child. The child didn’t go home, and then they would find a place for that child.

F. Ford: Yeah, there need to be more options for sure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. It was great to see you again. I appreciate all the work that you’re doing, and I’ll be really interested to read that study that you worked on. That’ll be really interesting. Thank you for coming.

K. McParland: I’m really thankful that you guys got us in, because I was told I might have to join via teleconference, and I was like: “I really enjoy meeting them.” You guys are my heroes. Thank you for the work you do for our community.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think it’s the opposite, actually.

Next up we have SelfDesign Learning Foundation — Amber Papou.

If you could limit the comments to five minutes, that would be wonderful. Then we have five minutes for questions.

SELFDESIGN LEARNING FOUNDATION

A. Papou: Hello, everyone. My name is Amber Papou. I would first like to thank you all for inviting me here today to speak about an organization that provides great service for the province of B.C. and one which I am incredibly passionate about.

I spent a good part of my 20-plus-year career working in education and skills and workforce development around the province. I am a certified B.C. teacher, and now I am the president and CEO of an organization called the SelfDesign Learning Foundation.

A real quick little bit about the foundation. We are a registered charity, and we are incorporated as a non-profit in the province of British Columbia. Since our inception in 1983, the organization has grown to become a leader in the development of programs and initiatives that focus on personalized and lifelong learning.

[5:20 p.m.]

One of our biggest programs is called the SelfDesign Learning Community. It is one of the largest independent distributed-learning programs in the province. We are 100 percent funded by the Ministry of Education. We follow the B.C. curriculum, and we provide tuition-free education for approximately 2,000 K-to-12 learners every year. Currently we’ve got enrolment of 1,600 K-to-9 learners and 450 10-to-12, and 90 of those are graduating next weekend. We’re expecting a further 120 to graduate next year, in 2020, which will make them the largest graduating class in our history.

Just to put it in perspective for the committee, distributed learning is technology-based learning. It provides flexibility for learners to learn at home. It’s markedly different than home-schooling. Home-schooling is parent-led, and it results in students finishing without a Ministry of Education graduation diploma, whereas distributed learning is teacher-led. We are one of the only provinces — and maybe the only province — in Canada that has a distributed-learning policy which then supports learners, who do graduate with a Ministry of Education diploma.

In SelfDesign, in our school, we are a distributed-learning program. We do focus on technology. However, we are a place-based and real-world learning program. We use technology as a way to support our learners, not kids sitting in front of computers day in, day out. We use a technology for our learners to communicate with approximately 200 certified B.C. teachers that work with our learners every year.

Because our program is very inclusive and we do provide significant services for our learners, we have a very high population of students with special needs in our program. Of the 2,000, we have 900 that are designated with special needs, 500 of which are designated with autism. SelfDesign, as a result, is, if not the largest, close to the largest school for autism in the province, whether it’s bricks-and-mortar or distributed.

Because of that, year after year, we’re growing in demand for special needs. As a result — I just talked to my principal yesterday — our enrolment opened a couple of months ago, and we have a wait-list of 460 right now. We’re hoping to be able to provide services for at least another 300 of those learners, but every year, we end up with about 150 special needs students waiting to get into our program. That’s why I’m here.

First, I’d like to say that SelfDesign absolutely, 100 percent supports the current education funding model. I think we are evidence of success. We are incredibly efficient. As other independent distributed-learning programs I can speak to in group 1 standing, we rely on funding through the ministry on a per-student basis. If you will, of the equivalent of what a public bricks-and-mortar receives, we receive 42 percent. We receive 100 percent for our special needs learners, but by the numbers, we’re incredibly efficient. We do save the ministry, as well as taxpayers in this province, millions of dollars every year in terms of funding, with our efficiency.

As you’re most likely aware, there was a review of the education model. It was recently tabled in December of 2018. There were 22 recommendations in that review, one of which is incredibly concerning to me, not just as the president of SelfDesign but also as an educator and as a parent. That it is the recommendation to look at funding special needs students based on a prevalence model.

I can’t go into too many details about the prevalence model, but it is based on a percentage, an average percentage. If you look at our school, just in terms of the impact that would have on students…. We have about 25 percent of our population that is designated with autism. We know that the provincial average is significantly less than that. These are children who do not operate very well or at all in a bricks-and-mortar system. They require extra support that our school can give.

[5:25 p.m.]

I guess, for me, as an educator, I’ve been really paying attention to what’s been happening in other jurisdictions in Canada, especially in Ontario, where they have introduced a prevalence model. It’s had significant negative impact not just on the students and the families but also on educators. It does put a lot of stress on educators.

In conclusion, what I would like to say is that I’m really happy — so are our school, our families and our students — with the current education model. If there are any changes made, I encourage the government to actually spend more money in helping support students with special needs. Thank you very much for having me. If you have any questions….

N. Simons: Thank you very much. Particularly interesting — your statistics on students with, I guess, neurodiverse special needs. I can see why the prevalence model wouldn’t work for independent distributed learning. Probably any of the distributed learning, it would seem to me, would be challenging, because the premise would be that more would be served generally.

Anyway, the question I have is: do you have a sense of how many parents have their child enrolled in your program after trying others? Or is this something that they enrol their child in early and stay with?

A. Papou: Well, it’s a very interesting question. We don’t market — we don’t go out and publicize; it’s all word of mouth — and our program has grown exponentially over the last five years, especially for children with special needs. There’s a very close-knit community of parents who have children diagnosed with special needs, and they do have conversations.

Some of our parents, for sure, start in kindergarten, and they go right through. Others have tried and, actually, they get recommendations from different school districts or teachers. Because we do contract B.C.-certified teachers, there are some of our teachers that actually work in the public system as well, so they’re very familiar with it. They do recommend it. It’s a blend, and what we’ve found is that if one child in a family is registered, then we often get the whole family registered in the program.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Amber, can I ask you…? In terms of distribution of students around the province, is it everywhere? Is it pretty equally distributed, or are there, kind of, pockets where there’s more enrolment?

A. Papou: You’d think it would be more heavily predominant in the Lower Mainland, but it actually isn’t. We do service many rural communities where there’s lack of services. Actually, we’re doing a blended program right now. We’re going to be piloting. A blended program is where it’s dual. In-person and then part of it’s done in distributed learning.

It’s actually for Malakwa. The school in that community was closed a few years ago, and actually, SelfDesign came to the rescue. We created a blended program, but it didn’t quite work with the ministry requirements. So we shut it down, and we’re re-establishing it.

What happened there is that it’s predominantly an Aboriginal population — very low SES. So we’re going to jump into it again. Otherwise, the kids were taking school buses — two hours in each direction to school. So that’s one of our proud moments here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation. I appreciate it. It’s nice to see you.

Next up we have Columbia Shuswap Invasive Species Society — Robyn Hooper.

Hi, Robyn. Just a reminder, if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we have time for questions.

COLUMBIA SHUSWAP
INVASIVE SPECIES SOCIETY

R. Hooper: Thank you very much for having me. My name is Robyn Hooper, and I’m the executive director of the Columbia Shuswap Invasive Species Society. The Columbia Shuswap Invasive Species Society, which I will refer to as CSISS because it’s a little easier, is one of 17 regional invasive species organizations whose mission it is to actively prevent invasive species infestations through education, management and restoration of B.C.’s ecosystems. We are also members of a new B.C. invasive species affiliate network.

Our not-for-profit society and its volunteer board has seen considerable successes due to the funding provided by the government of B.C. We are very thankful for your support.

Some significant examples of some of our success in the last year. In 2018, we strengthened and expanded our network of partners to over 200 to further our objective to deliver collaborative and coordinated programs across the CSRD region. Last year we directly engaged with over 4,000 people in the region.

[5:30 p.m.]

During our field season, we documented over 700 invasive plant records and sampled over 100 lake samples for invasive mussels. We had over 158 volunteers participate in 12 weed pulls. Those are just a few stats of some of the work that we do out there on the ground.

Our organization continues to build on these successes, and we would like the committee to know some of our priorities and needs moving forward with this new budget. Some of our key messages to communicate.

Number 1 is prevention and immediate investment to avoid perpetual and ongoing costs of invasive species. With over 94 percent Crown land, government needs to increase investment and enrich partnerships that will fiscally leverage our non-governmental funds. Invasive species cost the B.C. government, landowners and industries and create loss of revenue. Investment in prevention through educational programs and control results in net cost savings for government. Regional non-profit societies such as CSISS are able to leverage funding resources.

Number 2 is we ask for increased long-term, stable funding to support CSISS and other regional invasive species programs, including aquatic, plant and other invasive species. We ask for investment of over $15 million annually. Our regional land and water resources are threatened by a number of invasive species, including zebra and quagga mussels, and we require financial support for our regional education programs.

Number 3 is we ask for providing leadership in implementing the invasive species strategy for B.C. The invasive species strategy of B.C. must be updated and implemented. This includes updating the B.C. Weed Control Act, which is very outdated, and implementing a new invasive species act that prohibits the sale of invasive species and includes enforcement. This is covered in several other reports on the budget in past years.

Number 4, and I think most importantly, is to close high-risk pathways that introduce and spread invasive species, such as the pet and aquarium trade, the horticultural trade, boating and water recreation and other forms of recreation and tourism transport. In particular, invasive mussels are the number one threat to B.C. All water craft from outside of B.C. must be inspected to prevent this emergency threat to B.C.’s water bodies and our infrastructure.

I hope we have time for questions, and on behalf of our organization, thank you very much for the opportunity to share and provide input on the provincial budget.

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

I’ve got a stupid question.

R. Hooper: I love stupid questions.

R. Leonard: I thought there was no such thing.

N. Simons: No comment.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Nicholas concurs.

I’m just curious. When they do inspections for mussels, are they looking for physical mussels, or are there other indications…? How do the inspections work, just so I understand that?

R. Hooper: Good question. The province of B.C. — the conservation officer service — runs the inspection stations, for those of you that aren’t familiar with them. They do inspect for any standing water as well as visible mussels. The mussel can be in a larval stage in water, which is invisible to the human eye.

The best way to find mussels on a watercraft is through mussel-sniffing dogs. We now have two in B.C. Those inspection stations that you mentioned are all around B.C., but they do not cover all the border crossings, and they are not run 24-7. They are only run in the April-to-October sort of range.

There are gaps in the system. Currently it’s not required to be inspected. It’s only required once you pass an inspection station. There are boats that potentially can still pass through our borders.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Very interesting.

M. Dean: Thank you for your presentation. Have you put a figure on your recommendations, like this one around increasing inspections, for example? Have you provided an annual figure, an amount of money that it will cost?

R. Hooper: The inspection stations themselves are run by the province. The total figure that all the regional B.C. groups have put together is $15 million annually for all invasive species. We haven’t put it towards invasive mussels in particular, but we do know that it would cost over $43 million annually — just the cost of having invasive mussels in B.C.

Prevention is really well worth it, in our minds, and there is funding being put forward through the provincial conservation officer system right now for inspection stations. But more funding is needed, in particular for aquatic invasive species prevention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do you know how much they’re spen­ding now on the mussel inspections?

R. Hooper: That’s a great question. I’d have to follow up, but there is a report from the conservation officer service. I know that there was new funding allocated in the last spring. They just had an announcement in the last few weeks, as well.

[5:35 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Where are the mussels coming from — Manitoba, Alberta? Where are they coming from, mostly — or the States?

R. Hooper: They are coming from eastern Canada and the States. The green zones that do not have invasive mussels currently are British Columbia, Alberta, Washington and Oregon. There are just a few provinces and states that are mussel-free.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Robyn. It’s great to see you. I’ve had the unique privilege of talking to you several times about this. You know that mussels are a huge concern where I live because of the lakes and everything we have.

Are there any touchpoints that you could identify where we need to have more 24-hour services? I know we’ve got one in Golden and one up the Radium hill, which is not 24-7. Are there any specific touchpoints that you need to focus on?

R. Hooper: I know that the province has done quite a bit to look into where boats are travelling and try to maximize efficiency as best they can for where travellers are going. I think what really needs to change is actually the regulation around requiring inspections if you’re coming from out of province so that if boats that are travelling through don’t hit an inspection station, they know they need to be inspected and have to follow up with another station.

We’re not going to catch everyone. There’s just going to be that odd boat. It’s really maybe more about that regulation change so that boats must be inspected. As of right now, it just says that they have to be inspected if they pass an inspection station. It’s a wording change there.

D. Clovechok: Just another quick question: are you getting any money from the federal government?

R. Hooper: Great question. We have applied for different federal grants. We receive the Canada Summer Jobs funding, so we have some summer assistants that are out there doing boater outreach. Then we also do a tiny bit of work for Glacier National Park and Mount Revelstoke National Park. That’s just a little bit of contract work.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So basically, no.

R. Hooper: In terms of the federal aquatic invasive species funding, no. It was directed through the Canadian Council on Invasive Species. From what I can understand, the funding is going to social media and the outreach that goes onto television, not the on-the-ground outreach that we do in our region.

D. Clovechok: Well, that’s a fair assessment. I think this is an opportunity for provincial politicians to work with their federal counterparts, because this isn’t a B.C. problem. This is a Canadian problem.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Hear, hear, Doug.

R. Hooper: Absolutely. I agree. I made a presentation to the federal standing committee on aquatic invasive species and, really, there’s not enough being done federally. A lot of their funding is focused on the Great Lakes. Those partnerships with the federal government are key to helping prevent the introduction here of invasive mussels.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just really quickly. Thank you for your presentation. We had a scare three years ago in Shuswap with those infected…. I’ve been a staunch lobbyer of the ministry that we need a solution if we have a mussel contact in the lake and that we’ll probably — my nickname for it is nuclear — have to euthanize that lake. If we had done that with milfoil in the ’70s — I worked with OBWB during that period of time — we wouldn’t be having the chronic problem that we have on a continual basis today.

I hope that through your organizations and through the ministry staff, we will come up with a program. If we do find them, it has to be done immediately. There’s not time for years and years of studies, etc. As my peer across the way…. When we lose the Kootenay lakes or the Okanagan chain of lakes, we’ve lost the tourism that we depend on so much. So anything you can do would be greatly appreciated.

R. Hooper: Thank you very much for your support. Appreciate it.

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

Any more questions?

Okay. Thank you very much for your time.

Next up we have the village of Chase — Coun. Alison Lauzon.

Hello. How are you? Alison, just a reminder that if we could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that.

A. Lauzon: You bet.

VILLAGE OF CHASE

A. Lauzon: Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to the committee and share our submission from the village of Chase. My name is Alison Lauzon, and I am a newly elected council member to the village of Chase. This is a topic that I’m bringing forward that I’m very passionate about.

Most of you are familiar with highway rescue services. When a vehicle crash occurs on a highway in B.C., depending on the severity of the incident, the nearby highway rescue crew, if one is available, is dispatched by the local area dispatch service to attend the incident.

[5:40 p.m.]

Traffic control is often needed in order for police and ambulance personnel to safely attend to those involved in the incident. In some instances, a vehicle or vehicles are crushed such that the driver and passengers cannot safely exit the vehicle without extrication tasks being performed. On occasion, a vehicle has crashed over an embankment, and in order to assist the occupants, a highway rescue crew is needed to deliver the occupants to a location where they can be treated by paramedics. Other times, more severe situations occur, where a driver and possible passengers have succumbed to the injuries sustained in a crash and must be extricated after a coroner has arrived on scene to deal with the deceased.

Over the past number of years, speed limits on B.C. highways have increased. As all of us have travelled different highways in B.C., we all know that many motorists travel above the speed limit, and some of those excessively. During times of the year where there is a large volume of traffic, the likelihood of crashes occurring increases significantly. Speed, volume of traffic and driver error are all factors that increase the incidence of vehicle crashes, and when crashes occur, the highway rescue service is as valuable as the ambulance and police services.

As referred to earlier, there are incidents where a driver and/or passenger cannot receive treatment from the emergency health team on scene unless they’re removed from the vehicle. Extrication takes time. Certain expertise requires hours of training and specialized equipment. The more quickly an individual can be removed from a vehicle, the more quickly he or she can receive life-saving treatment.

Ambulance personnel as well as police and coroners services are funded by the provincial government, and they are deemed to play a significant role in responding to and dealing with various aspects of a vehicle crash. Highway rescue services also play a significant role in such incidents, from traffic control to ensure the crash scene is safe for the personnel on scene to extrication of people from vehicles to over-the-bank rescue to securing the scene until the appropriate authority or agency arrives.

At this time, as highway rescue services are not comprehensively and sustainably funded by the province of B.C., a large portion of the costs associated with the delivery of highway rescue services are paid for either by the municipality that provides its service or by a society, which must fundraise to provide this service. There are reimbursements available to the service delivery authority, paid for by emergency management B.C. However, these reimbursements do not cover the costs of the services provided. While tools are repaired or replaced, if damaged, at the cost to EMBC and an hourly rate for each call-out is paid to the service delivery authority, these reimbursements only cover a small portion of the overall cost to deliver the service.

For the village of Chase, while the reimbursement of time and tool costs is very appreciated, other costs must be incurred in order that the service can continue. First and foremost, the personnel attending rescue calls must be properly trained. This takes a large amount of time, and when individuals are compensated for their time, even at low hourly rates, this cost can add up quickly.

Vehicle costs are a significant hit for a small community. The cost of a properly equipped vehicle can be a large portion of a small budget, with most vehicles costing anywhere between $150,000 to $300,000. This, of course, does not include the repairs, the maintenance, the tires, fluids or fuels, licensing of a vehicle and the purchase of necessary equipment.

An additional issue facing emergency personnel is post-traumatic stress disorder, the costs associated with rehabilitation. In particular, insurance costs are usually much higher than most communities can afford.

The village of Chase taxpayers subsidize a highway rescue function for a large area outside the municipal boundaries, one of the largest service areas in the province, at a rate of approximately 3 to 1. For every $1 the municipality receives from EMBC, $2 must be spent by the taxpayers of Chase to deliver this service. While some of the recipients of this service are Chase residents, a large number of these individuals served are from other parts of B.C. as well as other parts of Canada.

We are respectfully requesting that the province of B.C. develop and implement a sustainable funding program to ensure that highway rescue services, a vital part of the response to highway traffic incidents, can remain in place and be more fairly funded. Perhaps a partnership between EMBC, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure and rescue delivery authorities can ensure this important service continues to be delivered.

[5:45 p.m.]

Again, I thank you for allowing me to present this. On a personal note, I’m just going to add to this. I’m actually a member of our emergency services in Chase. I’m an active member, a volunteer of Chase Fire Rescue. I can speak firsthand of the cost that is associated and the impact it has on our community.

The equipment that we have is incredibly outdated and antiquated. I drove the rescue vehicle. In such incidents as going up Highway 97C, I swear an elderly person in a scooter probably could have beaten me up the hill.

This vehicle is definitely outdated. It’s reached its life cycle. But to replace that vehicle, we don’t have the funds for it. Nor can we go to the taxpayers to request to have that vehicle replaced.

I find this an essential service. I use that highway. I come to Kamloops on a regular basis. I’m driving to Salmon Arm. I have a sense of security knowing that, should I get into an accident, there is going to be someone, inevitably, if I need that service, that is going to get me out of my vehicle. Possibly, now, my daughter is 17, driving that highway. It just gives me a small sense of security when she’s out there.

I just feel that the province really needs to step up and offer more funding. I’m sure we’re not the only community in this situation. Last year we had a $20,000 repair to our vehicle. We absorbed that cost, not the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. I let you go on. I’ve got about 7½ minutes. We don’t have as many questions, but still, I think, well appreciated.

One little question before I go to Mitzi. Just a clarification. Are your services not covered by the PTSD WorkSafe presumption that was changed recently in terms of supports for PTSD?

A. Lauzon: We actually had an individual, a member of our group, that was funded through WorkSafe. However, the level of treatment, how they felt that he reached rehabilitation…. What would be the word? He ended.

He was off WorkSafe. He was to go back into the field. Unfortunately, that person had a relapse. The resources made available to him, it wasn’t enough. He needed far more help than they were able to offer him.

M. Dean: Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for all of your service, as well, and coming out and helping people. Do you have a contract or an agreement with emergency services B.C., and what review mechanisms does that have?

A. Lauzon: We do have an agreement. In that agreement, the funding that we receive…. Any time when our services are dispatched, the moment that vehicle leaves the hall and is responding to an incident, those costs are covered in the sense of the equipment.

Should that equipment get damaged, the hours…. It’s very low. I think it’s a $14-an-hour rate that those individuals receive when making those calls. Then once the vehicle returns back to the hall, that is when it ends.

M. Dean: I understand that. What review mechanism is there in the agreement for renegotiating the agreement?

A. Lauzon: To be honest, I can’t answer that. I really don’t know. I’d have to refer back to our administration to that. I’m not sure how often it is reviewed, to be quite honest. I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sorry.

R. Coleman: Thanks, Alison. It’s a challenge in a lot of places. In actual fact, I just had a friend that was subject to the search and rescue out of Hope that saved his life, because they actually rappelled down a ravine and pulled him out when a semi went off the highway.

When you’re referring to your emergency vehicle, that’s not also your fire truck, is it?

A. Lauzon: No. We have, actually, a separate vehicle for rescue.

R. Coleman: Okay.

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

A. Lauzon: Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just for everyone who’s here, we’re going to take a short five-minute recess to just allow the members to stretch their legs, get some fresh air. Then we’ll be back in five minutes.

I appreciate your patience. Thank you.

The committee recessed from 5:49 p.m. to 6 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Kamloops Art Gallery. We have Kathy Humphreys, Evan Klassen and Charo Neville.

Come on up. I have a feeling…. Is your organization…? Is it the same as last year?

Interjections.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Fantastic. Well, I realize there are three different organizations, but just if we can, how about two minutes each? How about that, unless you’re doing it all together?

A Voice: Yes, we’re doing it all together.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, perfect. If we can keep it to five minutes, that’d be fantastic.

Okay. It’s all yours.

KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY,
KAMLOOPS SYMPHONY,
WESTERN CANADA THEATRE

E. Klassen: My name is Evan Klassen. I’m the managing director at Western Canada Theatre. I’m joined here today by Charo Neville, the curator at the Kamloops Art Gallery, and Kathy Humphreys, executive director at Kamloops Symphony. And our artistic director of Western Canada Theatre, James MacDonald, is in the audience. We bring greetings on behalf of our staff, volunteers, board members, gallery members, audience members, sponsors, donors and artists of our three organizations.

The arts are a significant contributor to the social and economic health of Kamloops. With the support of the province, predominantly through the B.C. Arts Council and the gaming branch, our organizations have been able to achieve great things.

C. Neville: I’m just going to start with the highlights of our impacts and successes. At the Kamloops Art Gallery — thanks to the increased support of 18 percent, $18,000, from the B.C. Arts Council in 2018 — we have committed these resources to involving more artists in the interactions with our youth in our community. This serves two key purposes. We provide members of our community with access to artists of national acclaim that are continuing with the artistic dialogue in our province and country, and we provide professional artists with increased opportunities to propel their careers.

As a community a good distance from Vancouver, as you know, these opportunities to connect our audience with professional artists ensure that visual literacy, critical thinking and opportunities to have difficult conversations around racism and the impacts of colonialism can occur in a safe and trusted space. We could not bring these artists to our community without this additional support.

We are also committed to growing our school program and ensuring that every child in Kamloops is introduced to the gallery. As a result of the recent increase in our funding, we have committed to hiring a full-time school programs coordinator, and as a result, this past year our school program attendance has grown by 25 percent. Again, providing children with access to artwork that precipitates conversations around creativity and considering diverse perspectives serves us socially and economically.

The Kamloops Art Gallery budget has remained at $1.3 million for the past five years, and we continue to work to diversify our revenues, in spite of the shallow resource pool that exists in Kamloops. Each year our visitor numbers increase. We know that we are an important tourism draw, with 40 to 50 percent of our visitors from across Canada and internationally in the summer months, and that any investment in the arts helps strengthen the community and our economy.

K. Humphreys: The Kamloops Symphony engages, enriches and educates through the power of music. The KSO has demonstrated its commitment to ongoing growth and development, while maintaining financial and organizational stability over its entire 43-year history.

For the past three years, we have successfully transitioned artistic and administrative leadership from music director emeritus Bruce Dunn and me to the next generation of arts leadership. I’ve got two more weeks left with the Kamloops Symphony, after almost 30 years. The remarkable quality of the applications and the talented individuals who have joined us in these positions is a testament to our achievements.

As the only professional orchestra serving a broad region, we produce nine or ten different programs and present up to 15 performances in Kamloops and a series of three performances in Salmon Arm, annually. Educational opportunities are provided through the Kamloops Symphony Music School for 17 years now, which is experiencing rapidly increasing enrolment, and through several educational concerts of excerpts from our regular programming.

[6:05 p.m.]

There’s been a surge of interest and increased participation and engagement and outreach activities over the past year. Two programs designed to reduce barriers to participation are our free open dress rehearsals, which attracted 200 participants at each of three open dress rehearsals during the year — a 300 percent increase over the past year — and our Soundcheck reduced ticket price program for young adults, which is having a noticeable impact on audience age demographics. At the same time, both subscription and single ticket sales increased.

Engagement activities include the KSO Chorus, which attracts community choristers, including secondary school and Thompson Rivers University students and adults of all ages, to perform with the orchestra. We presented 13 Conducting 101 presentations in seven elementary schools and have a waiting list for next year, including schools as far away as 108 Mile House. Next steps include the development of regional touring of both public concerts and educational programs for children.

E. Klassen: Western Canada Theatre’s impact on our community is based on our annual operating budget of $2.7 million, which returns funds back to the community, helps foster the employment of 18 full-time and 35 part-time employees, fosters community volunteerism and spurs on local business. The arts are an essential ingredient to the creation of livable urban centres throughout this province, and we believe that we are doing just that.

We have seen our population increase by over 10,000 people in the last decade, as British Columbians seek affordable communities throughout the province. The arts increases the attractiveness and livability of regional urban centres such as Kamloops for a broad and diverse population, including skilled professionals and young families. As a uniquely positioned service provider, WCT supports the creation of arts throughout our community and promotes arts education. In this way, our community impact extends beyond those who just patron the arts.

As a group, we would like to thank the province for its continued and increased investment in the B.C. Arts Council. However, there is still more to be done, and we do encourage the province to complete its doubling of the B.C. Arts Council budget, as committed to by Premier Horgan, to $48 million.

The B.C. Arts Council, as the province’s arm’s-length arts-funding agency, provides essential funding to our organizations, and its increased investment has resulted in successes to our organizations and our community over the past few years. Increased investment will continue to provide essential operating funding to allow us to leverage other resources, thus doubling return on investment. BCAC funding also directly supports career development and job creation right here in Kamloops, as our early career development program allows us to create internship and co-op opportunities at a young level.

K. Humphreys: The arts are a significant driver of local tourism throughout the year, and we play an important part in providing a wonderful quality of life for Kamloopsians. Our programing is regularly identified as a key indicator for livability by newcomers to the city. Therefore, we also encourage the B.C. Arts Council to address regional disparity issues between geographic centres.

Our location in the interior of B.C., the size of our community and the limited opportunities for artists here mean that we must engage artists from outside the region. This means extra expenses for travel, accommodation and per diem that must be borne by our organizations while we have no access to dedicated travel funding to meet these needs. The travel costs we incur are an ongoing and increasingly expensive part of our core operations.

C. Neville: Our organizations are also grateful recipients of funds from the province of B.C. through the gaming branch. In fact, in some cases, the community gaming grant is larger than the B.C. Arts Council grant. It is essential that the province regard these grants as essential, stable, multi-year funding. Both sources of funding are vital to our organization’s successes, and ensuring stable funding is essential to our ability to plan.

Lastly, in late 2018, we were pleased to see the community resilience through arts and culture grant was offered for a 2019 intake. We would, however, appreciate seeing the program have, as one of its specific aims, the development of partnerships between communities and established arts organizations, as the two can work better with one another and the communities will benefit from the involvement of the arts organizations.

E. Klassen: In the past year, our community has also suffered under the closure of our largest performing arts space, the Sagebrush Theatre, due to a structural failure in the roof supports and the subsequent repair. The closure of this venue has highlighted the need for modern, appropriately sized arts infrastructure, along with climate-controlled storage space for the gallery. Demand for performance, exhibition, rehearsal and workshop space is at an all-time high, and we encourage the province to make the investment in arts infrastructure a priority in the coming years.

K. Humphreys: Once again, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the provincial budget process. We look forward to the government’s continued investment in our sector and our community.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much. That was nine minutes.

[6:10 p.m.]

I would encourage next time…. There’s absolutely no reason why the organizations couldn’t present separately — we have no problem with that — so that we’d have adequate time to really hear each. They really are three unique presentations. Please feel free to do that in the future. It also leaves us more time for questions. Even me talking is cutting into that time. So I apologize.

I did want to say, Kathy — 30 years. Congratulations on an amazing commitment to arts and culture in this province. I worked in arts and culture and music as well for 15 years. That was only half of what you did. Hats off to you. Thank you very much for your contribution.

N. Simons: I was just going to say that as well. It’s sad that you’re leaving. I remember I used to come up and play with the symphony, and Kathy would be my contact person. I didn’t know I was sitting underneath a potentially unsafe roof in the Sagebrush Theatre.

K. Humphreys: It’s a good thing we didn’t know that.

N. Simons: Had you known that, I would have put two and two together.

I think you and Bruce Dunn — I guess he’s still associated as emeritus conductor — have brought a wonderful musical experience to so many people in this community and in the region. Bob knows what a commitment it takes to work in a sector that isn’t always richly rewarding in terms of every aspect of life. Certainly in the social life of a community, everything that you all do, I think, is very valuable and recognized, at least by the community. Thank you for your commitment to the community.

K. Humphreys: Thanks, Nick. I must say that a long career in the arts is actually extremely rewarding in all the important ways.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. Wonderful. We are out of time, but we did hear your asks, and thank you very much for your contributions to arts and culture. It was wonderful seeing you again.

Next up we have Kerri Schill, Chris Ponti and Julie Dormer.

I’m going to try this time to stick to the five-minute rule if we can. I’d really appreciate that.

C. Ponti: We worked on it. We practised.

K. Schill: It’ll probably be shorter than that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, the last group had three separate organizations. I had a little latitude, but we really do like to have time for questions if we can. If you can go ahead, please do.

ADVOCATES FOR SD73

C. Ponti: We’re here today representing a non-partisan group called Advocates for SD73. Our group continues to grow, and we’re currently almost 900 members. We’re concerned with the state of our education system. Education, in every sense, is one of the fundamental factors of development. No one can achieve sustainable economic growth without substantial investment in quality education. Education enriches people’s understanding of themselves and the world. It improves the quality of their lives and leads to broader social benefits to individuals and society. A high-quality education raises people’s productivity and creativity, and plays a crucial role in promoting economic and social development.

J. Dormer: One of the most important benefits of a high-quality education is that it increases a person’s chances of having a healthy life. The health care budget is the single largest expense for B.C., and an investment in education now will reduce health care costs in the future. While we all agree that health care spending is vital, we think that spending $1 today will save $3 in the future, and it’s a wise investment.

K. Schill: Not only is it important to substantially increase funding for the operating budget; it is also crucial that the same is done for the capital funding budget. Seismic mitigation work is important, and every child has the right to learn in a safe environment. The new schools built to replace unsafe ones are beautiful and amazing places to learn. However, the focus on this mitigation has come at the expense of school districts outside the seismic area. Even with the large budget increases to help pay for these upgrades, other areas in the province have been neglected and are in dire need of capital investment.

An increase in the Education budget for 2020 will help the Ministry of Education address the gross inequity and move towards a fair and equitable learning experience for all students in the province.

[6:15 p.m.]

C. Ponti: The reinstatement of the class-size and composition language has put a huge strain on the education system. According to our local school district’s long-range facilities plan, it is estimated that they will need 24 more portables and to repurpose 13 rooms in the next five years.

In case you don’t know what repurposing means, it’s the eliminating of much-needed learning areas, such as music, learning assistance and computer rooms. My daughter happened to be in one of these repurposed rooms this year. It was not until February that they actually got hooks to hang their jackets. It wasn’t till late in February when they got a projector. It’s almost the end of the school year, and they still don’t have a cubby or lockers to put their stuff in. That’s what repurposing is.

As for the 25 portables, their cost is estimated at $3.6 million at today’s costs, which will come out of the district’s operating budgets. That money should have been spent on educating our students. We believe that this cost should come out of the capital budget and not their school district’s operating budget. This could alleviate some of the chronic problems in the schools, like the sharing of textbooks. This issue needs to be addressed in multiple school districts across British Columbia.

K. Schill: Currently the ministry is overwhelming the parent advisory councils across B.C. with the burdens of the system’s funding shortcomings. PACs are routinely relied upon to fund the purchase of SMART boards, Chromebooks, sports equipment, musical instruments, team jerseys and field trips. The list is seemingly endless. Forcing parents to plug the holes in the current funding system is not sustainable and creates inequitable learning situations.

The 2017 Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services reported this: “Committee members emphasized the importance of equity and fairness within the K-to-12 system in order to ensure that the diverse needs of communities across the province are met and that all students, including those with special needs, receive a high-quality public education.” This continues to be a recurring theme that needs to be addressed.

J. Dormer: Globally it is recognized that a high-quality education reduces poverty, boosts economic growth and leads to increased income. A high-quality education promotes gender equality, reduces racism and promotes inclusion. A high-quality education is one of the most important investments a province can make for its students and for their future. All students in British Columbia deserve the best education possible. With a significant increase in both the operating and capital budgets, our students will be better equipped for success and create a great future for all British Columbians.

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

Questions?

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. I’m interested in who the 900 members are. Can you give us some examples of who’s involved?

C. Ponti: Well, when we thought about starting this group…. As a member of a PAC and a DPAC, using the communication network that we already had was our first starting point. We went through the district parent advisory council, began the group, sent out information to all the PACs through our communication network and then started growing from there. We did some radio, print and TV stuff to get the word out, and more people just came.

M. Dean: Would you say that it’s mostly parents of students who are currently in the system?

C. Ponti: Yes, our focus isn’t just on parents, for sure. The schools are important for economic growth for the city. Everywhere is after doctors, right? Our doctor retired; I don’t have a doctor now. There’s a chance that a doctor might look at our school district and not want to move his family here, seeing an army of portables waiting for their children. They might want to move to a district that has got the brand-new schools and that has been set up nicely.

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

Next up we have the British Columbia Hotel Association — Tyson Andrykew.

[6:20 p.m.]

If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes. The last group were literally…. Oh, they left already. I was going to give them kudos. They hit five minutes exactly — not that it’s a competition.

B.C. HOTEL ASSOCIATION

T. Andrykew: I will do my best.

My name is Tyson Andrykew. I am the executive general manager of the Sandman Signature Hotel in Kamloops. I’m also the president of the local Kamloops Accommodation Association, which represents nearly 50 hotels and motels in this city. And today I am speaking on behalf of the B.C. Hotel Association.

The B.C. Hotel Association is over 100 years old and has been the advocate and spokesperson for the interests of the hotel industry throughout B.C. The BCHA has over 600 hotel members and nearly 200 associate members representing an industry with revenue in excess of $3.2 billion, 80,000 rooms and more than 60,000 employees in this province. We are a significant component of B.C.’s $13.8 billion tourism trade and have members in almost every community throughout B.C., which gives us a strong voice with all levels of government.

While I’m here representing that association, I hail from Mr. Clovechok’s region in Revelstoke there, which is a community adversely impacted by the short-term rental situation, and it adversely impacted my family, who founded, built and have continued to operate Three Valley Gap just outside of Revelstoke.

Today I want to talk to you folks about two issues within the short-term rental situation. First, I want to touch base on the subject of short-term rentals. As you know, in many communities, short-term rentals have contributed to loss of housing stock, a rise in rental rates, property damage and crime, as well as skirting the issue of tax remittance at the federal level.

As multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations, the short-term rental industry, like Airbnb, continue to hide under the guise of the sharing economy while making huge profits and denying local and federal government tax revenue that support our communities. In certain communities, tourism workers cannot afford to live there due to the increase in rents from the entry of the short-term rentals.

Currently local governments do not have any real incentives to address the short-term rental issue with the new use of the online accommodation platform fee, the OAP, and the municipal and regional district tax, the MRDT. We seek a dedicated commitment from the government to hold the communities to account through a requirement to implement the short-term rental regulatory framework in order for the communities to be able to access the OAP and MRDT funds.

Part of the OAP and MRDT application process includes appendix 1.8, “Affordable housing MRDT plan,” the application process that deals with affordable housing specifically. We would like to see the following two additions to appendix 1.8. They are: “What bylaws have been implemented by the respective communities to address the short-term rental issue in their community?” And the second point: “How successful have those bylaws and regulations been in regaining previously lost, affordable monthly rental units?”

By inserting those two additional questions, we hope that communities will implement STR regulations. Without any additions or amendments like these, communities would not have any requirement to work towards implementing any sort of regulatory structure and would continue to collect tax revenue without addressing the short-term rental impact.

An important achievement that I do want to recognize the government for — and I think we deserve praise for it — is that the provincial government is the first to implement the PST and the MRDT on the short-term rental industry so far, and it’s the only province at this point, still. This is a huge step forward in holding these big corporations to account while simultaneously profiting from the generated taxation revenue.

However, the small omission that had occurred in this process is that PST is currently only charged on the room rate alone. So this is the second issue that I just wanted to quickly touch on.

What we are currently seeing is that hosts will post a lower room rate so that they pay PST on that rate alone, and then they’ll go on and add markups after the fact — cleaning fees, management fees, whatever it may be. That’s where the hosts can regain some of that revenue stream for themselves without paying any sort of taxes on it. That small omission, we feel, is a fairly significant loophole that we would like to see addressed.

That’s all I’ve got for you today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. That’s excellent.

Just before I start, I wanted to clarify something. In regards to trying to get the municipalities to be able to enforce more…. I kind of got a bit lost in there. I’m just wondering if you could explain that again to me just in terms of what you’re asking, because there was some specific language. Could you circle back on that again?

[6:25 p.m.]

T. Andrykew: For sure. Currently, with the recent changes to the abilities for communities to access the MRDT funds, there’s a process that has to be gone through and a particular form, if you will. In that is where we’re looking for those specific additions to be made. Currently, if you look at the form, it’s relatively simple to go through. We’re essentially hoping that through that application process for those funds for affordable housing, we can hope to close some of those loopholes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Now, is that something that should maybe go through UBCM to make sure that there are not some issues, that there might be inadvertent issues or something? Is that something that would make sense?

T. Andrykew: That could be another avenue. I’ll that note that down and discuss that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Not that that would be the only avenue. I’m just wondering if that would be sort of a dual avenue to make sure. There could be unintended consequences that I know nothing about that the municipalities might be able to bring up and say: “Well, wait a minute. What about this?” Just a thought. Anyway, just a clarification. Any questions from the members?

R. Coleman: Tyson, more of an observation. The largest hotel company in the world doesn’t own any hotel rooms. Actually, it’s becoming that the largest casinos in the world don’t own any casinos and the largest ride-share companies in the world don’t own any cars. How do you see the future of your industry?

T. Andrykew: We still believe that there’s a…. That’s a deep question.

R. Coleman: It’s a deep question.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Like with Marriott moving to their own sharing, right?

T. Andrykew: Yeah, exactly.

R. Coleman: I asked Taj Kassam the same question. I’ll see whether you do better.

T. Andrykew: Mr. Kassam — I don’t know.

You know what? I think there’s always going be a place for our industry. I don’t see it as a long-term threat. In Kamloops alone, there are only, I think, 150 short-term rentals. So different communities in British Columbia are being impacted by this, right? In Kelowna, I think it’s more like 2,000 short-term rentals. So there are various communities that are having much more significant issues here.

In the grand scheme of things, I really don’t see our industry going anywhere. I think there’s still a demand for that personal touch, for that service, instead of these — what we’re calling — ghost hotels, where the place will buy up an apartment building and kind of operate like a hotel. That’s what an Airbnb area can be like, right? We still think that we’re offering a service that is far greater than that.

R. Coleman: Good answer.

T. Andrykew: You can tell Mr. Kassam I did better.

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

Great. Well, thank you very much, and thanks for the clarification. I appreciated that.

Okay. Next up we have Right to Play — Emily Gibson, Roxanne Etienne and Lisa McColl. There’s a fourth person….

Did I miss somebody?

Interjections.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Lila. Okay.

If we could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d really appreciate that.

RIGHT TO PLAY

R. Etienne: First of all, I’d just like to mention that we are on territory of Secwépemc.

E. Gibson: Thanks very much for having us today. My name is Emily Gibson. I’m the program director with Right to Play’s promoting life skills and Aboriginal youth program. We are here today to ask the B.C. government for support to continue working with Indigenous communities in British Columbia, to support them, to design community-led, consistent, weekly play- and art-based programs.

We submitted a fairly detailed submission, so instead of regurgitating that, I was really happy to invite two of the youth from our programs and the former youth worker. We have Roxanne and Lisa and Lila here, who are going to share a little bit about how the program has impacted them.

L. Zabotel-Gott: The Right to Play program is important to me because I get to spend time with others and see them happy. I have become closer with others, because we work as a team. Before the program, I would sit around and watch movies after school.

[6:30 p.m.]

I have learned to be more active by playing outside. My favourite part of the program is going on a field trip, like swimming on traditional territory or in camps. Before the program, my friends and I did not have that much opportunity to learn or play new activities.

I like learning about our culture. We have gone medicine picking and canoeing and learned about our land.

Many kids do not have people to teach them about traditional ways. The Right to Play program made it possible for us to learn from elders and knowledge keepers. It is important for the program to continue so that youth have a safe place to go, to be healthy and learn.

R. Etienne: Weyt-kp xwexwéytep. Roxanne ren skwekwst.

I attend the Right to Play youth leadership program in Skeetchestn. Wednesday may be an ordinary day for other people, but to me it’s not, thanks to activities like making cookies and making teacup candles and learning how to play lawn bowling. The food is always delicious.

The Right to Play program has helped me make new friends and get to know other community members and have fun. I want to be a Shuswap language teacher when I get older. The program has helped me work on that by helping me talk to younger people.

I know that the program is important for future generations to help them step out of their comfort zones, make new friends, overcome shyness and learn about their culture.

L. McColl: The Right to Play program has made significant impacts in the Skeetchestn community. Youth are more active outside of the program because of the variety of activities they learn. They have learned to use the fields and play spaces safely — spaces that have historically been used for drugs or other nefarious activities.

Through the youth leadership program, we have been working to get teens job-ready. We have doubled the number of teens applying for our summer student positions.

The most meaningful impact for me has been to watch youth who have ideations of suicide, low self-esteem and difficult home lives come each week, sometimes daily, and begin to walk with confidence. They’re excited to learn about their language and engage in traditional activities and become proud of who they are. Youth have reported having learned healthy ways to deal with stress, like going for a walk, creating art or talking with a friend.

In a short time, this program has made a significant impact on the community. It is imperative that this program continue in order to teach youth to be emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally well.

E. Gibson: Since launching programs in British Columbia in September 2015, we’ve had an overwhelming interest from Indigenous communities in the province for partnership. We’ve had over a hundred communities apply, with spots for around 14. We’ve been endorsed by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, First Nations Summit and the BCAFN to deliver programming to all Indigenous communities who are interested.

We’re currently underfunded by about half our budget. We would love to be able to maintain our current reach and also grow to meet more of the demand.

Thank you very much for listening to us today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much to both of you for presenting and having the courage to come and talk to us. We really appreciate that.

What I was going to ask is: what is your budget? How much do you need?

E. Gibson: Our budget is about $1.4 million in British Columbia. Currently we receive $500,000 from Microsoft — USD. So we’re asking, in our proposal, for $1 million for three years from the B.C. government to bridge that gap and partner with additional communities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Now, if I remember from the last presentation…. Sorry. I’m just trying to clarify some things before we go to questions.

[6:35 p.m.]

Is Microsoft…? Wasn’t that sort of start-up money? Is that ongoing, or is that more just to launch the program, with the expectation that there would be other funds coming in?

E. Gibson: Yes, you’re correct. For the first three years that we were here, they were our core funder. They renewed at about half contribution, and we’ve been trying to find diversified funding sources to fill the gap and ensure sustainability in the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Members. I just wanted to clarify that.

R. Coleman: Thank you. So right now you get no money from the federal or provincial government for this?

E. Gibson: We did receive $150,000 from the Ministry of Education last fiscal, and we did receive $30,000 from civil forfeiture for our symposium this past spring. Currently we have no funding coming to British Columbia from the federal government.

R. Coleman: Having said that, do any of the leadership organizations of First Nations, the assembly or others, fund you in any way?

E. Gibson: No.

R. Coleman: So if you were to do the 100 communities that are asking for your program to come into their communities, what would your budget be?

E. Gibson: We budget around $80,000 per community because it’s very capacity-development focused. We offer multiple week-long trainings a year. We bring all the youth workers together. We have dedicated program officers to support the youth workers to design their program. We visit their programs, etc.

N. Simons: I wonder. Did you guys have to get convinced to come and do a presentation, or did you volunteer? Are you happy to? You guys did a really good job, I’ve got to say. What you said and how you said it was very good and really tells us what the importance of the program is. I guess that’s supposedly why you’re here — to tell us. I’m just glad that you’re involved in this, and you made a really good presentation. Thank you.

D. Clovechok: I just want to congratulate you both — all of you, actually, but the two on the ends, the bookends here — for a great presentation. It was wonderful. Thank you for doing that.

To the federal government. Have you applied for money from the federal government and have been refused, or you have not applied to the federal government?

E. Gibson: We previously received funding from the federal government. We had funding from INAC and a small grant from Sport Canada, which helped us launch Aboriginal child and mental wellness measure. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say this. We are going to apply for the new Sport Canada funding, but it’s a small pot. We have national gaps.

M. Dean: Thank you so much for the great presentation. I’m interested to hear from Lila or Roxanne. When the youth are together, do you feel like it’s the same number of boys and girls youth? Does it attract more boys or more girls? It’s great to see two young women here today.

L. Zabotel-Gott: It’s equal sometimes.

R. Coleman: Just one follow-up question. So you have a program running in a community, and you had $80,000 go into that community. How many youth do you touch?

E. Gibson: In B.C., at the moment, we’re reaching just over 1,700 youth. Because we prioritize working with remote and underserved communities, sometimes the youth population is small. So we’re really focusing on the quality interactions versus….

R. Coleman: So the average would be about, say, 15?

E. Gibson: About 25.

R. Coleman: About 25?

E. Gibson: I think 25 to 30 is the average.

N. Simons: When you’re in the communities, do you find that as soon as a program is offered, people know what it is and want to be involved right away, or does it sometimes take a while for people to get comfortable with the program?

L. McColl: People are excited to come out right away, especially because we have the funding. With the thorough training, we’re able to customize it and do things like focus on cultural activities, land-based learning that is particular, in this case, to Skeetchestn, and that’s amazing. It’s not just: “Let’s play soccer. Let’s do some art.” For example, we might go pick sage or pine needles and then make pine needle baskets.

[6:40 p.m.]

Another really important part is that engaging youth worker to work with the youth. One thing that Right to Play is really great at is providing those opportunities for people like myself to get trained — training at the beginning, when you start, and also throughout as you go through the year and progress on other things — to be able to deliver a high-quality program that’s going to make an impact.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I had a little comment. I was just curious: is there an integration of elders into the program?

E. Gibson: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, I kind of knew that. I just wanted you to talk about that.

E. Gibson: Absolutely. We are lucky that we do have elders within the Skeetchestn community, and also, when elders are not available, we have knowledge-keepers. Those people might not be elders because of age, but they might still have the learning that we’re trying to teach. If we were going sage picking, it might not be possible for some elders to do the teaching on the spot because of mobility issues, so at times we also engage those knowledge-keepers.

Right to Play helps us foster those relationships and honour the elders for their time. Traditionally, it’s important to give a gift for the knowledge that they’re giving us.

R. Leonard: Thanks again. I join in with all my other colleagues in saying thank you for your amazing presentation.

As you’re talking, I’m thinking: “Do you have partners in terms of location? Where do you operate out of?” It’s one thing to be hiring folks to deliver, but there’s always a place that these things need to operate out of.

E. Gibson: Yeah. When communities apply to partner with us, it’s sort of whatever department they get branched under. Maybe it’s the band. Maybe it’s the health centre or the school. Then they identify…. Usually there are not a lot of venues for a program if it’s happening out of the school or a youth centre or a rec centre — where it’s taking place.

Then the community has a dedicated supervisor who’s in the community to supervise that youth worker. Lisa was one of the Right to Play youth workers, and now she’s in the managing role and is supporting that youth worker on their day-to-day.

R. Leonard: Which comes to my last question around the qualifications of the folks who work in the program. Is there an accreditation process for your activities and programs?

E. Gibson: That’s a great question. It’s entirely led by the Indigenous community partner. They hire the local youth worker, so it’s dependent upon what they feel is an important qualification. I know, from my experience, a lot have tried to provide this opportunity to individuals who could really use this opportunity for the capacity-building and the support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very, very much to all of you for coming up, and I wish you all the best with your program.

Next up we have Kamloops and District Fish and Game Association — Thomas Koester.

Come on up. How are you, Thomas?

T. Koester: I’m fine. I’m a committee of one today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Sounds good. Thomas, if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that’d be great. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

KAMLOOPS AND DISTRICT
FISH AND GAME ASSOCIATION

T. Koester: That’s it, and I’m sure you’ll have some questions.

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. I met with the group last year with Gord Bacon, and we brought up two concerns that we felt needed a lot of extra funding. One was steelhead. One was wildlife habitat. I’m happy to say that the provincial government did increase funding in those areas. I think it had a lot more to do with our parent organization, the B.C. Wildlife Federation, than it did with Gord and I. But anyway, that was appreciated.

Our presentation this year…. Our request is really a bit different. We’re a club of hunters and fishermen in the Kamloops area. We have just 200 members right now. Our request for increased funding is for B.C. Parks.

[6:45 p.m.]

Now, that may seem a little strange, but we work really cooperatively with a number of agencies. One is B.C. Parks. We work with the fisheries and the wildlife biologists and the B.C. Conservation Foundation on any number of projects.

It may appear that our request for extra funding for B.C. Parks would be more an administrative issue for them — that they need to allocate funds in the areas we want them to. But we continually…. When we approach them for a joint project, it’s: “We have no money.”

Most of the park plans are a five-year plan, and they’re supposed to be reviewed every five years. It’s really difficult. So I’m just putting a boost in here to increase funding for B.C. Parks, not necessarily for the big projects — you know, more parks or more campsites and that sort of thing — but the local, cooperative projects that go on. And I’m giving you four examples of where we worked with B.C. Parks and why we think it’s important for the funding to be increased.

Walloper Lake is near Kamloops. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. There is an aeration project on it, for the winter, to keep the fish alive. We’re really involved in that — setting up the aerators and the fences and taking them down.

Every year we have a family fishing day in February. This year we had about 400 people there — many international students from TRU and international students from the school district, as well as local families. We set up a lunch program, give a free lunch, and someone’s there to clean the fish if any people wish to keep their fish. It’s a really fantastic way to get people to learn about ice fishing or just get into fishing.

In fact, this year we had a request from a local elementary school. Ten of us — I was one of them — spent a day on Walloper Lake with 24 kindergarten students, lots of parents and lots of help. You want an experience? That was just a fantastic day. But the facility itself…. There is a wharf there. There’s a boat launch, but it’s really in rough condition. Every time we approach B.C. Parks and say, “This needs some improvement,” they say: “We have no funds.” We feel that if their budget was increased, we would be able to do something there.

This coming Sunday, Father’s Day, we do a family fishing day. It’s a provincial day. It’s a free fishing day, and we’ll, again, provide a free lunch. We’ll have several hundred people, and 15 to 20 of us will be there with our boats to take families fishing that don’t have an opportunity to do that. That facility really needs some improvements.

The other examples…. I’ll be more brief. Pine Park is part of Lac du Bois Grasslands Protected Area. It’s right on Tranquille River. The stream to sea program, which was the old salmonid enhancement program, where kids could raise coho salmon in the classroom then release them into the river…. Every school day in May, there are students out there releasing salmon.

We, as volunteers, ten of us, went in and volunteered for a full day to prepare the site for those kids. We don’t mind providing the free labour, but the facility for the washroom…. Parks continually says: “We can’t upgrade the water supply because we have no funds.” It’s an area that gets a tremendous amount of use by the public.

Lac du Bois Grasslands burrowing owl project — we have been involved in that for many years. We have several club volunteers who are just dedicated to that. The habitat is changing. It’s drier. The owls are having some problems because the mice aren’t there like they normally are. We have to go in, as volunteers, and try and improve that. We have a lot of cooperation from the local ranchers. But there needs to be some work there on the habitat, and B.C. Parks needs to be able to put some funds into that.

Our last example is the Roche Lake Provincial Park, which is just south of Kamloops. It gets tremendous use by fishermen and campers. From all over the province — actually, all over western North America — people come to Roche Lake.

[6:50 p.m.]

We tried, a couple of years ago, to get some trails put in there, working with B.C. Parks. No money for trails. They just…. It can’t happen. So we do have some issues with B.C. Parks over access, such as Paul Lake, but we cooperate with them in many, many projects — and with other groups. That’s our request: that you would really look at increasing the B.C. parks. Here I am, representing a group of hunters and fishermen, saying, “Put money into Parks,” because we do work with them really carefully on these projects for wildlife and fish.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Tom. I appreciate that. It’s interesting because it does give a different perspective to organizations like the wilderness societies and others that have come to present to us on parks, specifically. Now you’ve given another perspective on it, and I do appreciate that, Tom. Don’t ever think that your contribution to this process is not…. You said last year…. I remember the presentations you make. These kinds of stories do have an impact. Please continue to make them.

T. Koester: That’s why we’ve brought this topic. We wanted to just kind of come at it from a different angle.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Tom, for your presentation. Anybody that comes in here with a camel hat…. I’m from the East Kootenay. I wet a line, and I pull a trigger. So I know what this is all about. I just want to know: has the B.C. Wildlife Federation offered any help or assistance in that? Your advocating for parks is wonderful, by the way. But has the BCWF offered up any help for this?

T. Koester: Not specifically with B.C…. No, not on our projects. We kind of do that on…. They have some major projects going on. Actually, we have a meeting tomorrow. I’m going to find out about the wetlands projects. We have some wetlands projects in the Kamloops area. Our club is going to be getting involved in that, but not in these specific….

D. Clovechok: Well, keep up the great work. I appreciate it.

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

Okay, well, thank you very much, Tom. We really appreciate your coming.

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

T. Koester: I’m not nearly as nervous this time as I was the last time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Practise, practise.

Next up we have bc211, which is Rob Conley and Louise Ghoussoub.

If we could try and keep the comments to about five minutes, we’d really appreciate that.

BC211

L. Ghoussoub: All right. We’ll do that.

Good evening. Thanks for having us here. We’re delighted to have the opportunity. My name is Louise Ghoussoub, and this is my colleague Rob Conley, here to share a bit of information about bc211. So bc211 is a non-profit agency working in partnership with the United Way. Since 1953, we’ve been bridging the gap between service providers and individuals needing all kinds of support. So 211 provides a free information and referral service for community, government and social services via phone, text, web chat and email. As well, we have an on-line directory.

Callers call us, their needs are assessed by highly trained information and referral specialists, and they’re then provided with resources such as basic needs, food, housing and financial support, as well as specialized services — for example, perhaps, services for seniors. Our service is available 24-7, 365 days a year. Our staff are multilingual. If we don’t have someone on staff to speak the language that’s being required, we connect with an interpretation service.

We also operate some government help lines — VictimLink B.C., the alcohol and drug information and referral line, Youth Against Violence — and these lines serve the entire province. Additionally, we also operate the shelter and street help line for the Lower Mainland, as well as greater Victoria. We strengthen communities by connecting people with the help they need.

We’re here today because more than 90 percent of the province, which represents one-quarter of the B.C. population, does not have access to 211.

R. Conley: We’re here to recommend and request that the provincial government provide ongoing annual funding for a provincewide 211 service. Other provincial governments in Canada have recognized the value of funding a 211 service for their residents and have invested provincial tax dollars accordingly.

[6:55 p.m.]

They see 211 as an important service to the public that contributes to the common good by delivering needed information and referral service to their communities. In fact, we’ve been very pleased to see that a number of ministers and MLAs have been promoting 211 via Twitter and also email response messages. That’s been wonderful to see.

The 211 service is offered in most of Canada and the United States, and it has played a valuable role in connecting people to the help that they need. This has been especially the case in recent years, when we’ve seen the number of disasters that have taken place. We also have seen that 211 agencies in neighbouring regions have been able to assist by providing added capacity during these crisis situations. In fact, we have a similar reciprocal agreement with Alberta 211 for the same type of backup.

People know to call 911 for an emergency. But do they know who to call if it’s not an emergency but still vital to their well-being?

L. Ghoussoub: I’d like to just share a little bit about our rationale and discuss the benefits for a provincewide 211 service. Considering 211 helps to reduce the number of non-emergency calls made to 911 and other municipal phone lines…. We currently work with the Red Cross and Canadian Border Services to assist refugees, new immigrants, as well as asylum seekers to think of 211, as it provides an easily accessible channel for delivering emergency or disaster information.

Our infrastructure for provincewide 211 phone service is already built. Our call centre has been set up. We’ve been answering 211 calls for over ten years. Our technology is up-to-date. We’ve got staff who are trained and, again, already answering 211 calls. Our database currently holds 15,000 records for the province. When people call us from areas around the province, we already have those resources. Our database is up-to-date.

The data we collect from callers is much sought-after and can and should be used to assist the planners and decision-makers of B.C. We are already playing an important role in what I now consider the seasonal B.C. wildfires. During the past two years, we’ve been a source of information for British Columbians who’ve been impacted by the fires. In crisis events, residents of British Columbia need accessible and accurate information, and 211 is able to provide that.

R. Conley: Just in regards to what the costs would be to make 211 a provincewide service, 211 service in B.C. was first proposed by the provincial government back in 2004. Although it didn’t roll out until the United Way funded it in the Lower Mainland in 2010, we’ve since seen that we’ve expanded to Vancouver Island in 2017, but we’ve got to the point that the limited funding from United Way can’t carry us through to the rest of the province. So this is the basis of why we’re looking for support.

We estimate that an expanded service for all British Columbians is likely to result in a 20 percent increase in the calls and contacts that we currently get. Based on current operating costs, this would require an annual operating budget of approximately $1.35 million. Of this amount, we are asking the province to commit $810,000 on an annual basis, which is 60 percent of the total cost required to support provincial 211 service. The remaining 40 percent is $540,000, and that would continue to be provided by the United Way. So it’s a partnership situation.

L. Ghoussoub: One million residents currently do not have access to the 211 service contact centre. I think there should be equitable access to information for all British Columbians. So bc211 and the United Way of B.C. are asking the provincial government for support in expanding the 211 service. We need to close the gap. It’s what we’d like to do.

M. Dean: Thank you, and thank you for the work as well. I was part of those discussions back in 2010, when we were talking about bringing 211 to Victoria and Vancouver Island. I’m still left a little bit baffled about what the vision was from the United Way. Wasn’t it originally a vision of providing a provincewide service? How come we’ve ended up in this position, where the United Way has responsibility for delivering and developing this yet there wasn’t prior agreement with the government about those responsibilities?

The government already spends money on help lines and crisis lines through the health authorities. It’s a big puzzle for me to kind of understand how we’ve come to this position where there is inequity and not a clear understanding about those roles and responsibilities.

[7:00 p.m.]

R. Conley: I’ll take a stab at that. I think what we’re seeing is that the United Way, of course, is broken into, actually, ten different organizations throughout the province. It’s not one united organization. The United Way of the Lower Mainland is the largest. I think there’s about $23 million that they raise on an annual basis. The rest of the province is definitely piecemeal as far as what they’re able to manage.

The United Way of the Lower Mainland actually took this as an initiative. When things didn’t get going in the initial stage after 2004 or 2005, they were looking at saying: “Yes, we need to do something.” The number of non-profits that are in the Vancouver area specifically, I think, account for something like 80 percent of the non-profits in all of the province. They see that the moneys that they were putting into that area…. People weren’t necessarily knowing where those organizations were that they could connect to, to get that help.

What’s happened is that there was always the vision that this would go provincewide, but you’re only looking at one United Way that took the initiative. Victoria was able to join in and basically raise the funding in order to expand it there. I’m sure that this would eventually go provincewide, but just basically, if you’re looking at the rest of the province, it’s hard for them to raise enough funds to get it to that final step.

I don’t know if I completely answered your question. It’s really based on United Way’s ability to raise funding and also work within ten different regions of the United Way in the province.

N. Simons: What’s your current geographic jurisdiction?

L. Ghoussoub: With the phone…. If you think about the southwestern corner of the province — the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, Sunshine Coast, and then up as far as Lillooet, over to Boston Bar and then down — that’s the geographic phone coverage area.

N. Simons: So half of my constituency. The Powell River side of the Sunshine Coast is…

L. Ghoussoub: …not covered.

N. Simons: I know. I’ve talked to the minister about this. I’ve been assured that they continue to talk about it. I just think it’s a valuable service. I know the work that you do to update your contacts, and everything is always up to date. I had a tour of your offices down in Vancouver.

Thank you for the presentation.

D. Clovechok: Thank you for your presentation. I think, to mirror my colleagues’ comments, it’s a valuable service.

When I look at the 77 percent that isn’t covered, the majority of that is rural British Columbia. From a funding perspective, have you gone to the municipalities, the regional districts, to see if they are willing to look at providing some funding as well, to provide service in those areas?

R. Conley: This would actually be something that would be directed to United Way, as far as how they’re approaching it. We have some insight as to what’s going on, just because we do connect with them on a regular basis. Really, what’s happened is that there are a number of initiatives that have been worked on within each of the regions. I know that very much that has happened…. Danalee, who is here from the United Way, is definitely doing what she can to try and arrange for some of that funding.

They’re also on the north line in Prince George. They’re very active in trying to work not just with municipalities but even with some of the larger employers for added donations, trying to make up enough in order to bridge the gap. There are a number of initiatives going on. It’s just a case of…. We’re getting very close to making that final step.

I think what the United Way is looking at, though, is that they don’t see this as always going to be a United Way effort, because they see that this is basically a service that’s being provided for all of British Columbia. They were taking an initiative to get it going when they couldn’t see that provincial funding, but they’re really looking to say that they feel that the government can take a role in it and that they’re willing to still be a partner in it.

They would also be able to see that…. Some of that funding that they put into 211 service, they would then turn around and put back into other social programs that need it as well.

D. Clovechok: The follow-up, more specifically to the Kootenays, where I’m from, is that the Columbia Basin Trust is also available for funding these kinds of initiatives. I guess, to the United Way, that’s another avenue of money that could be applied to those communities that are affected and associated with the Columbia Basin. There’s probably some money out there other than just the provincial government.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Is there any financial accommodation for VictimLink through you? Do you get compensation from entities — i.e., VictimLink — for the service?

L. Ghoussoub: Yes.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): So there is accommodation provided.

L. Ghoussoub: Yes, we’re funded by Public Safety.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay. Do you know the amount?

[7:05 p.m.]

R. Conley: VictimLink is about $750,000 per year. The alcohol and drug line from the Ministry of Health is $250,000. Our whole bc211 operation…. There is $1 million for contracts that we provide on behalf of the government for half of our revenue, and the other half is coming directly from the United Way.

One of the things I was thinking, too, is that, in regards to provincial funding, we actually have seen…. It’s in the information speaking to the fact that in Ontario, what we’re seeing is that they currently are funding their 211 services. They’re providing about 80 percent of the funding. Also, in Nova Scotia, you’re seeing that the government took a very big lead there, actually, in getting the 211 going. They’re funding it to the tune of 93 percent of their operating costs on an annual basis.

What we’re looking at, as far as having United Way fund it as opposed to having government involvement…. We’re just seeing that because of it being a provincial service, it does tie in very well as almost a spinoff: 911 — emergency services; 211 — non-emergency. It does tend to actually help out, in that you get fewer calls on 911 service. You’re also seeing that it takes some of those calls that are going into municipalities, to city and the like, that don’t really necessarily go to those entities.

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

D. Baker: Am I allowed to make one comment?

Hi. I’m Danalee Baker. I’m the executive director for the United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo. I just wanted to say…. I know you were talking about the crisis line, but it’s an information line. We saw in the wildfires how important that was. I think if there is an endorsement by the provincial government, the municipalities will step up. They will match, but they need you to give the nod, whether that’s money or some portion of the money. Ask your assistants. They use it every day.

D. Clovechok: Have you approached the Columbia Basin Trust?

D. Baker: No, because that’s not my area. We have approached TNRD, but they need the nod from you. They need you to put in something. I know they’ll match the money.

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

Next up we have Canuck Place Children’s Hospice — Denise Praill.

How are you, Denise? Nice to see you. Please go ahead. If you could keep your comments, Denise, to about five minutes, that would be wonderful.

D. Praill: I’m mindful that I’m between you and freedom. So thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, food, anyway. Thanks for that thought.

D. Praill: You’re welcome.

CANUCK PLACE CHILDREN’S HOSPICE

D. Praill: I have some remarks that I’d like to read for you. I provided a handout with some more details as well.

More than 765 newborns, children and youth with life-limiting illnesses and their families receive care through Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. Canuck Place supports the province of B.C.’s mandate to provide specialized services for children with complex medical conditions and disabilities, their families and communities.

Canuck Place cares for children with some of the rarest conditions in the world. Last year we had over 175 different diseases and conditions presented by our patients. Each child is diverse in their requirements and family situation, but they all share medical complexities that present enormous challenges and overwhelming needs.

When a child is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, parents are impacted by the 24-hour care they provide for their child. The very real stresses incurred by these families include financial pressures, relationship challenges, fatigue and distress, which can affect mental and physical health and overall quality of life. Canuck Place helps ease the burden and enhances how these children and families live.

A children’s hospice is different from an adult hospice. About half of the children in palliative care have complex genetic and neurological diseases that in previous generations would have been fatal. Because medical advances and interventions have extended these children’s lives, pediatric palliative care is delivered far longer and with a wider range of specialists than adult palliative care. This time period can be hours, days, months and, in many cases, years.

[7:10 p.m.]

The Canuck Place team recognizes the challenging transition patients and families must make as cure becomes less likely and the focus shifts to alleviating suffering and comfort. When families come to Canuck Place, they have access to our specialized counselling and recreational services, pain management, 24-hour physician and nursing care, all under one roof. Here, children can experience the joys of being a child, and families can build lasting memories one moment at a time.

Within the Child Health B.C. framework, Canuck Place is a tier 6 provider for B.C.’s most complex pediatric patients. In-patient care is provided in our two provincial hospices, located in Vancouver and Abbotsford, through the operation of 13 patient beds and eight family suites.

However, the impact and difference that the Canuck Place team makes in families’ lives does not just happen in hospice. Care in the home and community is delivered through our enhanced community care program. That includes our mobile team of experts — physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and counsellors — who are able to reach families all over the province. This team provides medical assessment, education, care planning and coordination with local health care providers, pain and symptom management and comprehensive end-of-life care for children, while also supporting families in their journeys.

A key program element is the operation of a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week phone line, which allows families and health care providers to reach a Canuck Place nurse or physician, who has ready access to the child’s medical history. Alongside the care line, we also offer video conferencing so that, when appropriate, visuals can be part of the consultation and clinical response that families receive. These effective and efficient prevention actions lessen the impact on the health care system as a whole, as they result in lower rates of unplanned emergency room visits and reduced acute care admissions. Canuck Place takes a leadership role in the development of pediatric palliative care standards in B.C. and nationally.

Clinical leaders deliver education and training to health care professionals at B.C. Children’s Hospital and Women’s Health Centre and in communities within the province. We also provide clinical rotations in pediatric palliative care. Canuck Place recently developed a guide and training sessions for clinicians on how to have serious-illness conversations with children and families. Last year more than 150 physicians, nurses and social workers were trained at Children’s Hospital and Women’s Health Centre, and training sessions occurred in Prince George and Ottawa as well. Canuck Place in-patient care is highly cost-effective, about 30 percent less when compared to a pediatric B.C. hospital ward or ICU bed. We have the data, a published study, that shows that.

Canuck Place is facing, unfortunately, significant challenges. In the last four years, there has been an increase of 26 percent in the number of children and families admitted to the program. Last year alone there were 133 new children and families who joined, and 96 children died in the Canuck Place program, an increase of 13 percent from the year prior. We also face infrastructure challenges, with an aging heritage building and the need to upgrade technology to better serve patients and ensure safety, privacy and quality of care.

The province of B.C., through PHSA, provides fixed annual funding of $6.685 million, or approximately 40 percent of our current fiscal budget. The balance of funds is provided by private donors. Even with this generous community support, there is a gap of $1.2 million this year. This gap will only continue to grow without the increased support of our government partners. Our ability to deliver care in the face of increasing demand is in jeopardy.

In the adult health care system, each health authority has a designated palliative care team providing this team-based specialized care, funded by the province. Canuck Place is providing this service for children across the province, yet we are not adequately funded to continue delivering appropriate levels of service. Saying no to families isn’t an option.

Our request to this committee is to assist Canuck Place to bridge the current funding gap, which includes operational, infrastructure and technology needs, with an appropriate end-of-year grant in the amount of $3 million and — perhaps this is the most important part — to actively partner with Canuck Place to build a sustainable fundraising strategy that crosses ministries. I think our work is not just nested in health care. We have other skills we’re bringing to the province.

Just to close, I invite each of you, individually. When you’re in Vancouver or Abbotsford, we would love to see you at Canuck Place so that you can visit firsthand and really witness the specialized care that’s happening under our roofs. Then you can translate that to the home and community care that we’re providing when our team is called to your constituency.

On behalf of the children and families that we are truly privileged to serve — it is the hardest work I’ve done, but the very best work — I thank you so much for the opportunity tonight.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much. We really appreciate everything you do.

I’ve mentioned this to you before. I had a personal experience with the Vancouver Canuck Place with a young friend whose daughter was 15. She passed there and had palliative care. I was absolutely blown away by the care that she received, the compassion and just the skill of the people there. Also, just the feeling of home. It didn’t feel like you were in a hospital or in some…. It felt very comfortable. Families were made very comfortable. The work that Canuck Place does is amazing. I just wanted to say that.

Any questions? Thoughts?

D. Clovechok: Thank you very much. What you do is important.

N. Simons: Thanks for the invitation.

D. Praill: Yes, I will follow up with each of you. I can say the words, but when you walk through the doors and witness it, it’s not a place of sadness. It is a house that is filled with love. That’s the legacy for each of us.

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

Can I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 7:15 p.m.