The committee met at 8:06 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good morning, everyone.

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

We’re very happy to be here in Courtenay. I’d like acknowledge that we’re gathered on the traditional territories of the K’ómoks.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Every fall, normally, we hold public consultations and visit different regions of the province to hear directly from British Columbians about their priorities and ideas in regards to the provincial budget. This year we moved the consultation 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 timeline and welcome any feedback on the change.

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

In addition to these public hearings, British Columbians are invited to share their ideas for the next provincial budget by sending a written submission or by filling out an on-line survey. Details are available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance. The deadline for input is 5 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2019.

All of the input we receive is considered carefully, and it’s 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. Thank you to everyone who’s participating today and for taking the time to share your suggestions and perspectives.

In regards to the meeting format, I would kindly ask that everyone respect the following time limits. Each presenter has five minutes to share their input, followed by five minutes for questions by the committee. You’re welcome to provide any information you have that you’re not able to provide in the oral submission in writing.

If there’s anyone who hasn’t registered in advance, if you’d like to speak to the committee, please talk to Stephanie, at the front, and we will try to accommodate you.

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

Why don’t we start with introductions? Doug Clovechok, why don’t we start with you?

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

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

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I am the MLA from this beautiful town and the surrounding areas, Courtenay-Comox.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good morning. My name is Dan Ashton, the MLA for Penticton to Peachland. I’m glad to be here in Courtenay-Comox. It is beautiful.

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

Assisting us today is the Parliamentary Committees Office — Susan Sourial, to my left, and Stephanie Raymond, who’s over there. Thank you very much for all the work you do.

We also have Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger, from Hansard Services, who are recording the proceedings. I’d also like to take a moment to thank all of the people at Hansard back in Victoria, who you can’t see but who are working extremely hard behind the scenes. We want to acknowledge them.

All right. First up we have Bud Taylor.

Hi, Bud. How are you?

[8:10 a.m.]

B. Taylor: Good. How are you, Chair?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. Just a reminder. If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d really appreciate that.

Budget Consultation Presentations

BUD TAYLOR

B. Taylor: All right. I’d like to address the consultation with regard to public safety and climate change. On October 18, 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the United Nations, issued a state of emergency with regard to climate change. If we do not reduce emissions within a dozen years…. They drew a line in the sand and said that if we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is facing increased drought, famine, catastrophic events.

I’d like to address the odd-even scheme, which has been successfully implemented around the globe in places like Paris; São Paulo, Brazil; Beijing; and New York City, in response to pollution, traffic congestion and accidents.

The odd-even scheme is to travel on interchanging days on major thoroughfares in a community, region or municipality according to the parity of the licence plate, whether it’s odd or even — the last digit of your licence plate. So on interchanging days of the week, vehicles would travel according to the parity of the licence plate and on the opposing days or interchanging days, they would choose to travel, in a voluntary scheme, on public transit.

The first implementation of a traffic rationing scheme was by Julius Caesar, back in the day. Because of the noise, congestion and accidents from horse carts in Rome, he was irri­tated and vexed and complained to his mayor and councillors. He implemented a rationing scheme for horse carts throughout Rome.

Beijing, during the Olympics — if you recall the image of dust masks because of the red haze from pollution, and the need for athletes to be more comfortable and breathe more freely to compete — implemented the odd-even scheme, and they encouraged participation by people parking their vehicles and travelling on transit with a tax incentive of three months.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg implemented the odd-even scheme during Hurricane Sandy to help people who were suffering from Hurricane Sandy.

In Paris, this scheme was implemented with some growing pains. Many people don’t know that zero is an even number. So implementing a voluntary scheme will require a lot of guidance.

In B.C., in the highway traffic act, we already have HOV lanes legislated — high-occupancy vehicles. High-occupancy vehicle lanes have been legislated by the highway traffic act in B.C. So implementing a voluntary scheme here would be with ease of legislation, possibly.

Benefits of the odd-even scheme: reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced pollution, increased use of transit and the potential for the trade of international carbon credits to fund infrastructure and fund incentive to participate in the scheme.

That’s all I have to say for now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Bud. We appreciate that.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much, Bud, for your presentation. As usual, you thought it all through, and you have some interesting tidbits. Who knew about Julius Caesar?

The last thing that you said, around tax credits…. How exactly would that work, given that if you’re talking about the broad public taking action, like limiting their use of cars…?

B. Taylor: Okay. Two points. Julius Caesar ordered an implementation of the scheme, and we know what happened to Julius Caesar. Too many orders. So what we’re talking here is voluntary. It’s like the by-donation movement.

[8:15 a.m.]

The second point is…. In Europe, the European Union’s emission trading system is reducing pollution throughout, I think, 33 countries or more by 2.2 percent per year in phase 3 of their emission trading system. They are meeting the premise of the Kyoto protocol to transfer technology from emitters to technology that is improving the use of energy.

R. Leonard: Just overall, if the public’s actions are reducing their carbon, then there is a credit for the jurisdiction.

B. Taylor: The actual trade of carbon credits, cap-and-trade…. When North America commits to cap-and-trade trading, that’s where emission producers commit to getting permits for their pollution year by year and then….

It’s like companies A, B and C, where company A is able to reduce their pollution year by year by a certain amount. Company B cannot reduce their emissions, so they purchase carbon credits from company A. The city or the regional district is company C, and with reducing pollution from roadway traffic and the carbon credits that that will trigger…. It’s company C, and you can trade those carbon credits to companies A and B in a cap-and-trade system.

How is that?

R. Leonard: Thank you very much. I really appreciate you coming today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Bud. A very interesting presentation. We appreciate it.

Next up we have Nanaimo District Teachers Association — Denise Wood.

Good morning.

NANAIMO DISTRICT
TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

D. Wood: Thank you for having me today, and thank you to the K’ómoks people, upon whose unceded territory we convene.

I’m Denise Wood. I’m president of the Nanaimo District Teachers Association, Local 68 of the BCTF.

The NDTA, or Nanaimo District Teachers Association, provides support and services to approximately 1,200 members. These include classroom teachers, support teachers, teacher-librarians, counsellors, speech-language pathologists and school psychologists. These teachers work in Ladysmith, Cedar, Nanaimo and Lantzville communities, which are the ridings of Nanaimo–North Cowichan, Nanaimo and Parksville-Qualicum.

Upon its inception in 1917, one of the primary goals of the BCTF has been to promote the cause of education. My presentation today will focus on public education as a spending priority for the next provincial budget. I believe that our students and our teachers are worth investing in.

Since 2002, education funding has decreased from 20 percent of government spending to just over 11 percent this year. While there may be $1 billion in new money in education, this increase has not reversed previous declines. This new money has mainly been due to increasing enrolment and the restored language in our collective agreements that has provided for increased service levels by addressing class-size and class-composition concerns in some, but not all, school districts.

I’m going to present three priorities that teachers in Nanaimo have when it comes to education spending and the provincial budget.

Our first priority is funding for special education. For years, B.C. has been allocating far less money for special ed to school districts than districts have been spending on special education. Inclusive education is a goal that’s shared by all stakeholders, but meaningful inclusion of all students requires significant support in the form of specialist teachers, education assistants, learning resources and more. School districts have been asked to make difficult decisions between providing services for all students or providing services for students with special needs, because there hasn’t been enough money to do both well.

Teachers have been pushing for a review of the funding model, and the ministry was tasked with updating the current model. However, the funding model review panel had a mandate to find a way to provide improved services with the same amount of money — an impossible task, given that there was not adequate funding in the first place. The model that the panel has recommended for special education funding relies predominantly on prevalence of need as a driver for funds.

[8:20 a.m.]

In other words, school districts will no longer need to identify students with special needs in order to show that they deserve funding. They’ll now be provided with the funding based on the predicted needs of the student population at large as determined by third-party health and socioeconomic factors. The idea here is that the money that’s used to identify student need and prove funding requirements can now be used directly to fund services.

In primary grades, where student need often goes unidentified, this could be a useful way to fund special education services. But to remove identification from the mandate of schools is to do a great disservice to students. Teachers rely on the information provided by assessments and diagnostic tools in order to provide appropriate and consistent care tailored to the actual disability of the child. Without that information, it’s all guesswork.

Our second priority is funding for general operation of school districts, particularly to address class size, class composition and non-enrolling ratios.

In Nanaimo, restored collective agreement language has created 110 full-time positions for teachers, which has allowed us to reduce class size and provide better supports for students. We would like to be able to keep our class sizes at current levels, and so would students and parents. However, proposals by BCPSEA at the bargaining table will see classes increase and teachers laid off in Nanaimo and elsewhere. The reason, according to BCPSEA, is that there is no money for small classes — no money for small classes and no money for other service improvements either.

The composition of a classroom, as it pertains to the collective agreement, refers to the number of students with special needs in one room. In Nanaimo, the language requires that the school district make best efforts to keep that number to fewer than two. This is for the benefit of all students in the room, as it recognizes that students with special needs can require a larger proportion of a teacher’s time and energy, and time and energy are not unlimited. This language does not keep students from accessing classrooms or supports. On the contrary, it ensures that classrooms are better able to support the needs of the learners in the room. BCPSEA, however, wants to remove any reference to composition language.

Funding needs to be in the budget that will allow BCPSEA to bargain a collective agreement with teachers that recognizes the need for smaller classes and better support for students — better support from non-enrolling teachers like counsellors, teacher-librarians and student support teachers too. Our current language has ratios for how many of each type of non-enrolling teacher there is, but the language is old, and it doesn’t reflect the current context.

In fact, in Nanaimo, we have fewer counsellors and student support teachers than we did before the ratios were restored because the school district was not funded above the ratios and had to reduce jobs and services. This language needs updating, but there’s not enough money on the table for these kinds of service improvements.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at about 5:30 now. So if you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up, that would be great. Thank you.

D. Wood: Okay, thanks.

Just really quickly, our third priority is to address teacher recruitment and retention, especially as it pertains to salary improvements. Again, there’s not enough money on the table to address some of those concerns. I’m just asking you to consider increasing the amount budgeted for public education in this province. I think our students and teachers are worth investing in, and I hope you do too. Thank you.

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

Questions?

Thank you very much. We really appreciate your….

D. Wood: I have provided a brief. Some of the points that I didn’t get to would be in there. Thanks so much.

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

Next up we have North Island College — Dr. Lisa Domae and Colin Fowler.

Good morning. Just a reminder. If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes. Please go ahead.

NORTH ISLAND COLLEGE

L. Domae: Good morning. As introduced, I’m Lisa Domae. I’m the executive vice-president, academic and chief operating officer at North Island College. This is my colleague Colin Fowler, who is the vice-president of finance and facilities at North Island College.

North Island College, for those of you who don’t know, is your public community college in the north Island region. Our mission and our mandate and, actually, our passion is to build the communities of the north Island one student at a time. We have an enormous commitment to access and to meeting the needs of all of the students of the north Island from here to the top of the Island, as well as to communities on the mainland coast.

[8:25 a.m.]

We’re here to talk to you about two issues that are pressing for us and that we see as vital to our future ability to meet student needs. Colin and I will share our comments, and we will talk to you about two things. The first thing is our need for student housing.

We want to thank government for its support of our college and its support for the needs of housing in the region. As some of you know, the topic of student housing has become provincially important as more and more students are unable to access post-secondary education and training because they are not able to find affordable, safe and secure housing in the region. This is not only true of the major urban centres, which receive a lot of attention, but it is very true here in our regions. For example, this community in which we’re meeting today has a vacancy rate of 0.5 percent, making it very difficult for our students who travel from remote communities to receive the education and training that they need.

With the support of government, we are moving forward with the planning and development of student housing here at this campus for 148 single students and 20 families. Our projected cost for the project is approximately $25 million to $30 million, and we will finalize those costs as we move forward with architectural design later this year. We’ve determined the number of beds that we want to offer, which is 148 single students and 20 families, based on a demand analysis that we did this year and, in fact, in 2014 as well. It showed more than sufficient demand to meet two facilities of that size.

We will be working to finalize a business case for the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training later this year. We’re hoping to fund it through a mix of provincial grant funding, debt financing and North Island College self-funding.

We are seeking grant funding from the Ministry of Housing for two reasons. The first is because the housing includes space for 20 families, and family housing is an area that is very, very underserved in post-secondary education. In fact, many post-secondary institutions don’t offer family housing because it tends not to recover its costs. It’s very expensive to run, and it brings a host of additional concerns. However, at NIC, based on the fact that our students have told us that this is what we need and we know who our students are, we are committed to going forward with it. However, we will be seeking some grant funding from province for that.

The second reason is because our single-student housing, at 148 beds, doesn’t provide enough economies of scale to ensure that housing can be both affordable for students and revenue neutral for the college. So we are seeking your support for provincial grant funding for our housing project to ensure its viability.

I will turn it over to Colin now, who will talk a little bit more about the financing of the project, and in general to support NIC.

C. Fowler: Thanks, Lisa.

In terms of the financial flexibility subject that’s in the paper that we’ve handed out, I’ll just kind of summarize, and then we’ll turn it over for questions.

Some of the long-standing financial policy and legislative constraints in the province kind of stifle community colleges like North Island College a little bit in providing some of the services, especially in the area that Lisa just talked about in terms of student housing. Decision-making in government is not too different from at North Island College. It does involve some trade-offs. I think, right now, we’re sort of trading some of our community services just to make it that little bit easier to balance the provincial budget.

We do that at every entity level. All colleges and all universities have to return a surplus to the province. We could do that at a post-secondary sector level. We could work together as a sector. We could work with the province directly to ensure that the budget is balanced for the sector, but with slightly less constraints that are inherent in the system right now. There’s the Budget Transparency and Account­ability Act, but there are also requirements within the College and Institute Act that actually make those constraints even a little bit more restrictive, more so than school districts face. They have a little bit more flexibility than we do.

One of the things I will say about the post-secondary sector is that we are very good at working together on initiatives such as this, when there’s sort of a mutual benefit there, and at working with the province. We do that with some of our shared-service-type contracts, where we work together to sign on to contracts that actually save the whole sector money instead of each institution working individually.

[8:30 a.m.]

We’ve kind of set up those working groups and those relationships with other post-secondary institutions that could help us to work together and, I think, to actually do similar work with this financial flexibility model that we’re talking about today. I think that would actually benefit all of our communities. I think we could provide a little bit more services out there to our communities if we had that little bit more flexibility to operate in a more business-like fashion.

That’s all I have for you today. I’ll just turn it over for questions.

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

I just had a question. We’ve heard the idea of the surplus issue. Could you maybe just elaborate a little bit more about how changing that piece would impact the college?

C. Fowler: I think it would actually help us a little bit more in the planning stages. I think, even if we had that little bit more flexibility, we’d likely see that.

Colleges and universities probably have surpluses anyways. But having that plan to be able to perhaps, say, run a small deficit for, for instance, amortization expense on our student housing — that would be probably how North Island College would like to do it — we could then build that into our budget. It gives us that little bit of room, which doesn’t necessarily mean that at the end of the year we would be in that deficit position. We would balance that off with the rest of our sector to ensure, bottom line, that we were balanced.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Basically, it’s the flexibility within the accounting systems that would allow that.

C. Fowler: It is, yeah. Thank you. Also, within the College and Institute Act, there’s a further restriction that gets quite specific, actually, about what needs to be brought in to the calculation of whether you’re in a surplus or not. That actually was changed, I think, around 2011, in response to the meltdown of the markets in 2009 and 2010, that massive correction in the markets. It did impact a lot of our larger universities, who ran deficits.

I think that created a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, and then some legislative changes were made. There were different accounting policies at the time that have actually changed. Those deficits that were run because of the investment losses that our large universities took…. Those losses wouldn’t be as high today with the accounting standards that we have.

I think that the legislation that we have was a response to something that occurred in the world markets that may occur again. But I don’t think we would see the same level of deficits as a result of it.

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

Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation, and best of luck with the project. Obviously, student housing is very, very important.

C. Fowler: Thanks, everybody.

L. Domae: Thank you for the opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the British Columbia Construction Association — Chris Atchison.

Welcome. Just a reminder. If we could keep the comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, that’d be wonderful.

C. Atchison: Absolutely.

B.C. CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION

C. Atchison: Good morning. My name is Chris Atchison, and I am, as stated, the president of the B.C. Construction Association.

The BCCA is a provincial, non-profit society founded in 1969. We are the provincial voice for thousands of employers in the industrial, commercial and institutional construction sector, representing more than 240,000 skilled-trades men and women in British Columbia. We advocate and lead on issues that matter most to our industry. BCCA represents both unionized and open-shop contractors. We are proudly non-partisan and seek fairness and balance from our elected government and their policies.

The construction sector contributes roughly 8.6 percent of the provincial GDP, and we greatly value our partnership with this province to build and maintain British Columbia’s infrastructure, its workforce and its communities. A while ago, BCCA initiated the deputy ministers industry infrastructure forum, where we play an integral role as co-chair.

In addition, we provide a variety of workforce development programs, highlighted by our skilled trades employment program and our new Builders Code initiative, which focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace to help build a construction industry that works for everyone. These all go hand in hand in strengthening our industry and our province via our leadership.

Over the past year, the B.C construction industry has faced many disruptions, which serve to create some uncertainty, stifle healthy competition and test the confidence of our sector. Some of these examples include the union-only component of the community benefits agreement, the B.C. labour code review, the environmental assessment overhaul and Bill C-69. All had little or no industry consultation before rolling out.

[8:35 a.m.]

In addition, our public sector procurement practices — or the lacking adherence to best practices — remain lacking, creating avoidable risks to taxpayers and owners in the building community. With that said, I’m here today to request that together, we provide shared leadership for this sector in two specific and productive areas.

Area 1 is the prioritization of the capital asset management framework, or CAMF, at all levels of government. Through our work with the deputy minister’s industry infrastructure forum, senior representatives from the construction industry and capital ministries work together to improve public procurement practices.

The capital asset management framework is a crucial and ongoing project of this partnership. It’s a comprehensive document intended to aid public agencies in utilizing the best capital management procurement practices. Adherence to CAMF in construction is essential to fair, open and transparent procurement processes. That is a responsibility of government and construction builders to taxpayers.

Our recommendation to ensure best practice in public procurement includes oversight — an effective way to audit the capital asset management performance across public sector. Capacity building. Mandatory procurement training and ongoing professional development for all public servants responsible for procuring construction services over $1 million. And sustainability — that the B.C. government adopt capital asset management framework as a public procurement policy, not just a suggested guideline.

Area 2 is prompt payment legislation. All representatives of B.C.’s construction industry are aligned in agreement on the following statements regarding prompt payment. There is a significant prompt payment issue in B.C.’s construction sector which places undue risk burden on contractors and negatively impacts cash flow throughout the industry and the provincial economy.

The second one is that payment security and promptness is a fundamental requirement of successful business operations. Lack of prompt payment is one of the most significant issues in the construction sector. We have seen Ontario, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and the federal government all pass bills on this.

It’s important to note that there are currently $114 billion worth of construction projects underway in B.C. and another $261 billion coming. The estimated risk premiums associated with the lack of prompt payment is roughly $4 billion. That’s money that can flow back into the economy of British Columbia.

When contractors don’t get paid on time, it places financial burden on small businesses and blocks cash flow into the community and into the economy. Solving the prompt payment challenge will release millions.

To get the legislation right is imperative, and it’s imperative that all stakeholders are at the table and that B.C. watches the development in other jurisdictions closely. We must work in partnership with a full coalition government to determine the optimum solution for B.C. while seeking to harmonize with the prompt payments initiatives nationally.

In closing, prompt payment legislation, as well as embracing the CAMF policy on public construction projects, will demonstrate leadership, instill confidence and return some certainty to an industry that is at the heart of B.C.’s economy.

On behalf of the B.C. Construction Association, thank you for your time and attention today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it. I just wanted to clarify something in regards to prompt payment.

What is the primary cause, in your opinion, as to what is slowing down the payments? What types of actions would make that better? What’s the logjam, so to speak?

C. Atchison: The logjam is that it’s nuanced. There are so many layers of contracts that are involved in the construction process, right down from your sub-subtrades to your mechanical trades and your electrical trades, all the way up through your general contractors and then to your owners. There are so many gatekeepers of the cash process, right down to the final trade contractor that needs to be paid.

There are many opportunities for failure in a system that does not have legislation or rules or adjudication to ensure that that process goes forward. There is a review. We have been in contact with the Attorney General’s office, and we are awaiting a review. The Law Society is doing a review of the Lien Act, which is complementary legislation.

We think that that does not go far enough, based on some of the evolutions in other jurisdictions that we’re seeing. The roadblocks are that it’s a complex labyrinth of payment structures and agreements that are in place throughout the construction industry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you for that.

M. Dean: Thanks, Chris, for your presentation and for coming in for your proposals. I have a couple of questions that are more broadly about the construction sector.

[8:40 a.m.]

It won’t surprise you. I’m really interested in what the impact has been of the Builders Code, if you have any examples of that for us, just for the committee. I’m also interested in whether you have the data on how many people in this sector are actually working in British Columbia at the moment and are not from British Columbia, have come here from other parts of Canada or are foreign workers. Do you keep those statistics?

C. Atchison: To answer your first question about the Builders Code, it is proving to be a wonderfully successful strategy, a toolkit that will help encourage the attraction and retention of equity-seeking groups into the construction industry, which has been largely dominated by male workers. It’s 95 percent male. We’re looking to change that and change the culture of industry by applying the policies that we’re introducing through the Builders Code.

With regards to your other question, that specific data will be probably better available through B.C. Statistics. BCCA has a philosophy throughout its membership that we want to hire local first. We want to engage the local communities; then regionally; then provincially; then nationally; and, where necessary, internationally. But our focus has always been about local first.

We do see, when other economies are suffering through­out Canada, that there is an in-migration for people who do wish to reside in British Columbia and work on major projects here. But in some cases, that is the nature of the skilled trades, and becoming a journeyperson is giving them the ability to move where the work is to apply their trade. But the specifics in terms of those numbers — I don’t have those.

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

C. Atchison: Thanks very much for having me.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness — Andrea Cupelli.

COMOX VALLEY
COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS

A. Cupelli: Good morning. My name is Andrea Cupelli. I am the coordinator for the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness. The coalition consists of 24 different member agencies in the community who serve our most vulnerable community members. We work as a collective to plan, coordinate, recommend, advocate for and come up with community responses to homelessness and to increasing affordable housing.

I want to thank you very much for the opportunity to have me here today to speak. I also wanted to thank you for recognizing that there is a housing crisis in B.C. We did look at the Budget 2020, and we were really happy to see the proposals that were listed in there and feel that they’ll make a really positive impact to our communities in B.C.

I’m also really grateful to see a housing-first model implemented, in particular with the rapid response to homelessness program, in which we just recently opened up a 46-unit supportive housing building here in Courtenay, and we could certainly fill another two.

Those are very important priorities that the government has addressed, but we do feel that there are three others that we would like to propose today. The first priority is increasing the shelter rate. So current levels of social assistance are insufficient to meet the cost of living and are contributing to homelessness in B.C. All of the rates need to be raised, in our opinion, but at minimum, we’re recommending an increase to the shelter portion within income assistance rates.

That shelter rate has been frozen at $375 a month for just over a decade now, and housing prices continue to skyrocket across B.C. as well as within the Comox Valley. It’s now impossible to even rent one room in a suite for any less than $600 a month, and one bedroom and bachelor suites are starting anywhere from about $1,200 a month, if there’s availability. Our vacancy rate hovers around that 0.5 percent, depending on the time of the year.

Our community’s most vulnerable people cannot find a room or housing, and they end up living on the streets in a perpetual cycle of unsafety, fear and uncertainty. The other priority I wanted to discuss today was increasing funding to the homelessness prevention program and the homelessness outreach programs.

[8:45 a.m.]

We recommend this funding and support for our community organizations who are tackling the housing and homelessness crises head-on. The Comox Valley has not received any additional funding in many years, yet we are seeing more and more people of all ages and backgrounds coming through the doors of our agencies, looking for help.

We’re running out of options, running out of funds, and we’re running out of ways to help them. We’re sure that other communities, and particularly smaller, rural communities, are experiencing the same issues.

An increase in this homelessness outreach program funding would also help in our response to homeless encampments, which are a growing concern in the Comox Valley. Our small municipal governments do not have the financial resources to fully support an appropriate response. The city of Courtenay has even put forward a UBCM resolution calling for a provincial strategy and funding regarding encampments.

An increase in the homelessness prevention programming, for rent subsidies in particular, often means the difference between someone becoming homeless or remaining safely housed. Outreach workers in the community asked me in particular to advocate for the increase in funding to the HPP programming. We do need to be addressing the root causes of homelessness and the affordable housing crisis. These programs are a really great way to do so and help in that temporary space while we’re working on other prior­ities.

The other priority that was identified by the coalition was increasing social housing in smaller communities. While we’re really grateful for the rapid response to homelessness program, we do feel that there does need to be a continuation and a further increase of funding for the construction of social and affordable rental housing units and housing-first models. And allow funding proposals for creative solutions, again particularly in smaller communities, where some of those approaches that may work in urban centres might not be the right fit, or we might not have the right capacity to be able to implement them. So just allowing for some creativity there.

Another thing that’s come up recently is around minimum housing income limits with social subsidized housing in smaller communities. We’re asking that these are reconsidered. For example, in the Comox Valley, the minimum housing income limit is $23,000 for a bachelor and $31,000 for a one bedroom, so you have to make at least that amount of money to be able to apply for certain low-income or subsidized housing. Those limits aren’t attainable for someone who’s on PWD or other forms of social assistance. We feel that, perhaps in smaller communities, a rent-geared-to-income model for these types of provincially subsidized housing would be more of a fit.

That’s all of our priorities for today. But again, I just wanted to say thank you. We recognize that B.C. has really become a leader in response to homelessness. Going to national conferences, it’s always about what B.C. is doing. I thank you very much for that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much. We do appreciate the perspective. One of the things that’s great about being on this committee is that we go to big city centres, but we also go to smaller communities and to rural communities. It always becomes clear that what may work in Victoria or Vancouver or Surrey may not work in Courtenay-Comox and may not work in Prince George, Nelson or wherever. So we really appreciate getting your local perspective on some of the challenges. Thanks for your work.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation and for all of your work as well.

What we’ve heard from other presenters and, I guess, what we kind of understand about the province is that even when we create a strategy or a local kind of coalition and plan for homelessness, there are some subgroups in the population where sometimes that kind of approach doesn’t capture them, maybe, so much. For example, youth, or women as well, face some particular issues.

I’m just wondering whether you feel that the approach of your coalition is able to capture all groups and how you’ve managed to do that.

[8:50 a.m.]

A. Cupelli: It’s been magic, actually.

M. Dean: Well, if we could just order…. We could just pay for some magic.

A. Cupelli: It’s hard work. As I mentioned, we are 24 different member agencies, so that would include the Comox Valley Transition Society for women and children fleeing domestic violence. We have youth groups. We have the whole range. So when we get together, we’re not just looking at one type of housing or a one-size-fits-all approach. We are working along the housing continuum and thinking of all the specific needs in our community.

M. Dean: Do you have Indigenous groups engaged as well?

A. Cupelli: Yes, absolutely.

R. Leonard: Thank you, Andrea. I think our community is very well served by having you in the position that you are. Also, thanks to local government, who has been very supportive of the coalition to make sure that you are able to do the work and that there are some funds locally that are really helping propel things forward.

Some of the things that you’ve raised I know we are definitely aware of, and more than aware of taking action on, regarding rapid response to dealing with the tent city issue as well as the issues around social housing. We note that economic development did a small workshop on the housing hub. But I’m definitely wanting to see you guys engage more with the housing hub, because we need to find those partnerships that are going to work with the groups that you’re interested in and to find the solutions that actually work for that sector.

You brought up something that I think is really valuable for us to hear, and that’s around the rent-geared-to-income. It’s not something that people know, and it’s been a challenge, as you say. I really appreciate that you have brought that forward, because it has been a source of frustration when provincial resources are applied to build rental housing and then there isn’t the capacity for people in need to access that housing.

It is an issue around partnerships, as well, with different layers of government. The way that particular model that you’re referring to, the Braidwood project…. It was an issue of how the funding was put forward for it to happen. I’m hoping that by bringing it forward today, it’s something that we can flag now and address in the future. So I really appreciate you bringing it forward.

A. Cupelli: Wonderful. Thank you. I just did want to mention that the forum with the economic development society was also in partnership with the coalition, so we’ve been working really closely now with them as well. We’re expanding our partnerships.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your presentation and all your work in the community.

A. Cupelli: Thanks for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Canadian Freshwater Alliance — Danielle Paydli.

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

CANADIAN FRESHWATER ALLIANCE

D. Paydli: Certainly. Thank you so much for having me here today. My name is Danielle Paydli. I work with the Canadian Freshwater Alliance and lead a coalition called Our Water B.C., whose member groups are passionate about ensuring that the waterways in B.C. are healthy and thriving.

I’d like to respectfully acknowledge that I’m speaking with you on the unceded traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation and tell you a little bit about myself.

I grew up in small-town Alberta. When I was little, I would always walk down to our local pond, our only body of water in about 50 kilometres. I’d catch frogs and get dirty and do all the things you’re supposed to do as a kid. However, as I grew up, I was often unsatisfied with small-town living, as those who grow up in small towns often are. I was looking for something more, so I travelled and explored cities and cultures in Europe, Asia and Africa. I eventually settled in Saskatoon, “The city of bridges.” I’d spend hours walking my yellow Lab down by the river. However, I was still unsatisfied and looking for my next adventure.

[8:55 a.m.]

Fast-forward to two years ago, when my family and I showed up on the Island. We’d never been here, but we moved ourselves, our two kids and my yellow Lab to the Island. I really fell in love with B.C., the beauty of the rivers and streams — and that smell. You know that smell when you’re in the middle of the forest, you’re surrounded by trees and water, and you just breathe in? That smell. I definitely fell in love with that smell.

I realized that this is what I was searching for. I’m thrilled to now be part of ensuring that the natural spaces and waters are protected in my new community. So when I started this work, I was wondering: how? How are we going to tackle the problems that we face in B.C. — the droughts and the floods and the fires? Imagine how thrilled I was to find out that the how has, in a lot of ways, already been answered by the provincial government.

By passing the Water Sustainability Act and prioritizing co-governance solutions, you’ve really charted a new way of governing for water health. The government of B.C. created this fantastic act, but it’s all about the regulations. It’s all about the rigorous, hard work of implementation. So should this government ensure that future regulations within the act be properly funded to lend it strength and resiliency, it will be an amazing success for B.C. It will, in fact, set B.C. up as a leader in water health and protection.

We have this great policy, a great structure. I’m here to tell you that we also have the hands on the ground — passionate water stewards who are willing to get their hands dirty, put their energy, resources and immense amounts of knowledge to work so that we, as a collective, can build a healthy, sustainable water future for B.C. These are biologists, activists, university professors, research teams, engineers, business owners and community members.

Now we just really need the financial resources and commitment to push forward the agenda for healthy waters in B.C. So how can we build the fund that supports all of these goals?

I see it in two ways. One is by creating a permanent and independent water sustainability fund through an initial endowment, held in trust, that allocates funding to initiatives and efforts that deliver water protections across B.C.

Although a different structure, an example of a major government investment in water health is the Great Lakes restoration initiatives in the United States, whose purpose is to protect and restore the largest system of fresh water in the world. This initiative answered a challenge of the governors of the Great Lake states, and we believe that we can offer you the same opportunity to manage the challenges we have here in B.C.

Secondly, we need to create an ongoing funding source by increasing rental fees that industry is paying for using water and investing this revenue back in to a water sustainability fund. Currently, water rates for industrial users in B.C. are amongst the lowest in Canada. They pay just $2.25 per million litres of water, in comparison to Quebec at $70 or Nova Scotia at $140 per million litres.

Raising water rental fees for industrial and high-volume users could easily provide a sustainable revenue source for the water sustainability fund. As you can see by the rate comparisons, it’s also that increasing our fees shouldn’t impact our business competitiveness.

Although this is a good idea — amazing, actually, in fact — it’s not a new one. So I have a number of examples of similar funds. For the sake of time, I’ll only include one: the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, which was set up by legislation and is governed by an independent board of directors. It funds on-the-ground conservation projects and environmental education. It’s largest source of funding comes from a conservation surcharge on fishing, hunting, trapping and guide-outfitting licences sold in B.C. Since 1981, it has provided over $180 million in grants for more than 2,600 conservation projects across B.C.

A fund like this comes with so many benefits. In terms of reconciliation, it would create an opportunity for a practical and meaningful approach to advancing the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

First Nations have long exercised rights and responsibilities to care for water, yet they don’t receive any of the rental rates, and the province charges for freshwater withdrawals in their territories. So it’s really time to ensure that funding flows back to the front-line communities.

It would also provide the resources needed to support groups, such as the Cowichan Watershed Board, who have actually had to truck salmon upriver when streams have run dry in past years, and enable them to restore fish habitat and spawning grounds for salmon.

It would build sustainable economies through building social licence for sustainable resource development; new local jobs in monitoring, restoration and stewardship; and supporting local businesses that depend on healthy waters.

As you can see, through the water sustainability fund, water stewards win. Fish, salmon and wildlife win. Diverse plant species win. Our forests win. The government wins. Businesses win. The tourism industry wins. Communities win. Bird enthusiasts win. Everybody wins.

Thank you so much for having me. I welcome any questions that you have. I didn’t time myself so….

B. D’Eith (Chair): We have been hearing this from other groups. I’m just curious, just to set up the questions…. Did you have an idea of what sort of rate would work, in terms of how much would the rate have to be increased to sustain some kind of fund like this?

[9:00 a.m.]

D. Paydli: We don’t see it being a huge increase in the actual rate that’s charged. Right now the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is doing research into what exactly that should look like. Given that there are different rates for different levels of users, exactly what that should look like and the difference in rates per type of user, we unfortunately don’t have the exact numbers yet. We were anticipating more September chatting with all of you. We don’t have the rates yet, but we do have somebody working on that. I’m hoping that we can stay connected and that we can get you those numbers, hopefully within the next month or so.

B. D’Eith (Chair): There is a deadline for this committee: the end of June. If you can, great. If not…. I was just curious, whether that work was being done. If something like the rates were looked at, knowing what would be effective would be a very important part of that. You’re working on that, so great.

I’ll open it up to the members.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. Can I just ask for a little bit more detail on how Indigenous communities have been engaged in the work and in developing the model and the proposals?

D. Paydli: We’ve been working most closely with the First Nations Fisheries Council. They’ve been one of the guiding members within the Water Leaders group that has given some guidance in trying to develop this initiative and ensure that we’re moving forward in the right way through consultations with their different member groups.

That’s been one key way in which people have been involved with this. Also, there are a lot of examples of what First Nations communities have done in collaboration with local government. One is the Cowichan…. I believe you’ve already done Collingwood. Is that right?

Interjections.

D. Paydli: Colwood. You’ve already done that consultation?

Interjections.

D. Paydli: Okay. I believe that you’ve heard from the Cowichan Watershed Board. You already have that kind of a basis. Those are a couple of different ways that we’ve been engaging and trying to ensure that we have guidance from the First Nation communities as this is being developed.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation and your story. We really appreciate the way that you did the presentation. It was very engaging.

Next up we have Parkinson Society of British Columbia — Gail Soliski and Jean Blake.

PARKINSON SOCIETY B.C.

J. Blake: Thank you for the opportunity once again. We had some good news this past year. However, we do have a strategic plan. I’m here to talk about another part of it to try and better improve care for folks with Parkinson’s.

I’m the CEO. I’ve met quite a few of you. Thank you, again, for your help in the past. Gail is a care partner for her mom with Parkinson’s disease. She’s also a co-lead. We have a support group here in the Courtenay-Comox area, and she helps to run that program on a volunteer basis.

As you know, about 13,000 of us live with Parkinson’s here in British Columbia. It is most prevalent in age 60 and over. This number, as we know, is increasing and increasing. Of the neurological conditions, it is the most treatable, but if not treated appropriately, those risks for complications escalate, and so do the costs for the health care system.

For example, Parkinson’s disease patients have a fracture risk of roughly double the similar population. They have balance and gait issues, and of course, that greatly increases their risk for falls. We know that exercise and appropriate therapy can help, and we do encourage exercise. The society actually funds training programs for physical therapists, OTs and exercise professionals in Parkinson’s-specific exercise and therapy. However, guess what. Access to those people is pretty limited across the provinces.

[9:05 a.m.]

We also know that one of the big things that will hit people is difficulty in speaking and swallowing. Access to appropriate therapy, speech-language pathologists, can really help with this. Again, that’s even more difficult to access across B.C. As a society, we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve been able to run a program that helps, but it’s a few-hours workshop. We know and we’ve had feedback that we’ve actually helped care partners save their loved one’s life because of the knowledge that they had. But that’s not sufficient, and it’s a terrible way for people to have to live.

The action that we’re requesting is that the government of B.C. expand funding so that more allied health professionals can be hired across B.C. We’ve put in a relatively small ask. It’s a targeted ask. For the first priority, the society is already in conversation with the Interior Health Authority to see if we can actually fund a program on a five-year basis where they would gradually take over the funding into their base budget. We’re just asking that the government consider doing that in several other areas.

Victoria has just hired their very first-ever movement disorder specialist, and he’s opening a clinic two days a week focusing on Parkinson’s care. He needs a nurse, part-time at least, and some other health professionals.

Again, there are communities like this that have even less access. Perhaps there is not the population for hiring somebody like a movement disorder specialist to live here, but we would like the province to look at funding someone on some type of a visitation schedule. There certainly are enough people. The support group estimates that it’s probably about 600 people just in this community. To access a movement disorder specialist, they’ve had to travel to Vancouver. The wait-list there is around two years. Now they’ve got the gentleman in Victoria, so hopefully that will improve a bit. But still, that’s pretty tough if you need to see someone.

We also know that the allied health professionals can help keep the people healthier longer, so that they, perhaps, don’t need to see the specialist quite as often, if they get appro­priate therapy and care from other health professionals. Ultimately, if these people don’t get that care, they end up in hospital, they end up in emergency, and they end up in — you’re going to hear — long-term-care beds.

I haven’t done a broad consultation around pricing for those beds yet, but when I was with Alzheimer ten years ago, it was about $80,000 a year, and you funded the First Link program because of that. It’s a cost-avoidance issue, keeping these people…. They can stay healthy. They can stay at home. They can stay independent. But they need access to appropriate therapy.

Personal story.

G. Soliski: Good morning.

Thanks, Jean.

My name is Gail, and I’m on the executive of the local Parkinson’s support group and have been for a number of years. My mother got parky in 2010. We were offered no guidance from anyone and left on our own to battle this horrible disease. One year after her diagnosis, mom’s Parkinson’s had progressed to the point where she felt she had to move in with my husband and me.

In 2019, we recognized that we no longer had the skill set necessary to take care of Mom. She moved into a public care facility, and is now charged 80 percent of her income for her care. This price now allows Mom very little money for the physio and massage treatments necessary to remedy her muscle cramping, another free gift from Parkinson’s. We have yet to find a local masseuse trained to handle Parkinson’s patients, who, as you may know, cannot turn over.

Parkinson’s doesn’t discriminate. It stiffens and cramps all and any muscles, vocal cords included. My mom probably speaks at half the volume that she used to but is completely unaware of this. Speech pathologists trained in Parkinson’s can help rectify this problem. Unfortunately, the speech pathologist only works half a day a week at our hospital. As you can imagine, the wait-list is almost forever.

Luckily, we attended a speech-and-swallow seminar put on by Parkinson Society B.C. Without this seminar and learning the benefits of vocal exercises, I believe Mom’s speech would now be almost inaudible. Vocal cords also help with the swallowing situation. You may know that you don’t die from Parkinson’s; you will die with Parkinson’s. Most Parkinson’s people die of aspiration because their vocal cords are all cramped up and food slips into their lungs. That’s how they die.

Mom was the first Parkinson’s disease patient that our GP here in the valley had in his clinic. We’ve shared knowledge and materials about Parkinson’s so that he could learn and, in turn, share with his colleagues and newly diagnosed patients. We would’ve preferred if our GP could have led and directed our journey.

[9:10 a.m.]

Last week I attended the fifth world Parkinson’s conference in Kyoto, Japan. There I learned how critical it is that newly diagnosed patients get early access to treatment programs. Their quality of life is prolonged, thus mitigating later-in-life treatment requirements. The sooner the patient becomes involved in exercise, diet and social treatment programs, the better. Unfortunately and typically, early diagnosed patients do not join support groups, exercise groups or seek help.

It is imperative that a Parkinson’s-trained neurologist is immediately available. It took over a year for Mom to see a neurologist here. He is a not a Parkinson’s specialist and has just recently dumped Mom because he doesn’t know how to help her anymore.

Deep brain stimulation procedure, DBS, stops the never-ending rocking and rolling. Mom weighs 106 pounds because she cannot be still. She is burning and eating calories all day long. In B.C., the wait-list for DBS is five years and now, at 82, unavailable to Mom. DBS is a dream come true for any Parkinson’s patient fortunate enough to receive this life-altering aid.

I am asking: will you make this and other Parkinson’s treatments dreams come true?

J. Blake: I will just say that Dr. Honey, who is the only neurosurgeon that does DBS, has told me that he is up to speed with the wonderful funding that was announced in April. We do not have a second neurosurgeon yet hired. They’re working on it. We are hopefully going to see that five-year wait-list decrease over the next couple of years.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s great. Thank you very much. Now, we went eight minutes and 30 seconds — I really did want to hear your story — so there isn’t as much time for questions.

I did want to say it was really wonderful being able to celebrate. All parties came out to the lunch that you put on in the Legislature and heard about the really exciting news around the deep brain stimulation surgeries and doubling that. I think everyone was extremely pleased with that.

Thank you so much for your story.

R. Coleman: Jean and Gail, thank you, first of all. I just had a friend diagnosed with Parkinson’s, so I’ve been going through the journey with them as to where they might find treatment. It strikes me that it’s not just looking for the neurosurgeon that has the ability to understand Parkinson’s. So far, it seems to me that, and maybe I’m wrong…. How short are we on clinicians that understand even the massage therapy for somebody with Parkinson’s? The voice training stuff — you can get exercises that you can do with your friend, those sorts of things.

This is the second friend I’ve had diagnosed in the last two years with Parkinson’s. Finding a massage therapist for something is simple. We have one in the family that we use. But when it comes to Parkinson’s, it’s a bit of a different specialty. So how far are we behind on clinicians? Is it because people just don’t see this as the field to go into because Parkinson’s just seems to be a little bit misunderstood? It just seems to me that people are prepared to go and get the therapy, but trying to find the therapist is a challenge.

J. Blake: I think it’s a combination. Certainly, it only has a very small space in the undergrad curriculum. We have been trying to do what we can through scholarships and bringing in specialists to train, but of course, we’re relatively small, and you can only attract so many people at a time.

If the clinics hire people, we engage in the training process. That is one way where we think we can at least try and reach more people on a targeted basis. We have a referral program that we just launched last year similar to Alzheimer’s First Link — we’re calling it PD Connect — where we’re asking physicians, any allied health professional, when they come in touch with someone…. If they haven’t been in touch with us, we have a plethora of wonderful resources. But it’s not enough.

We really need a more targeted approach through the clinics. That’s why we’re asking for that to happen and then, as well, for at least some kind of visitation program. We would certainly engage in terms of training as well. We brought the national Parkinson’s foundation and the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society up here a little over a year ago. We had about 100 health professionals that we trained — nurses, social workers, PTs. No doctors, unfortunately.

It’s a big issue. That’s why we have a strategy. But we need more help.

[9:15 a.m.]

R. Coleman: Well, the organizations’ information is very helpful. Coming from an Alzheimer’s background — my sister died of Alzheimer’s last fall — we got to learn a lot about that one over a ten-year period, for somebody with early onset. If it wasn’t for your organizations that would provide the information as to where we can actually sit down with the families and help to direct them, to give them some advice, I don’t know where they’d go. So thank you.

G. Soliski: Do your friends who have Parkinson’s live here in the valley?

R. Coleman: No, they live in the Fraser Valley.

J. Blake: We have a very active group there. We’ll see that one of the priorities, though, is that….

The other thing is that this is going to be called a pandemic soon. The World Health Organization is looking at it. Because we have aging, guess what. People aren’t smoking so much. Smokers have a lower risk. Also, unfortunately, because of the growing use of pesticides.

R. Coleman: I quit smoking over 20 years ago, almost 30.

A Voice: I never smoked.

J. Blake: Pesticides are a really…. We don’t have enough legislation around preventing the use of the pesticides that cause it. It’s a very strong link now between certain pesticides.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re well over time, but thank you very much for everything you do. We really appreciate you both coming in.

J. Blake: This ask is small. Basically, it will not prevent the disease, but it can really help to keep people healthy longer and reduce the consumption of health care that we’re certainly experiencing in communities like this because those resources are not there. Again, we are willing to partner or put money up front.

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

Okay. We’re just going to take a short two-minute recess. Stretch your legs.

The committee recessed from 9:16 a.m. to 9:22 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next we have the Wachiay Friendship Centre — Michael Colclough and Roger Kishi.

If I could just have you gentlemen keep the comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, that’d be absolutely great.

WACHIAY FRIENDSHIP CENTRE SOCIETY

M. Colclough: Thank you for the opportunity to meet with the select standing committee this morning and speak to you.

I am here to congratulate the provincial government on their progressive budgets, over the last two years, to reduce poverty in our province. They are seminal budgets in the history of British Columbia, in my opinion. I’m now a retired civil servant. I spent my career in the provincial government. I congratulate the Premier on including “Poverty Reduction” in the name of the Ministry of Social Development. I think that’s a bold move.

I thank the province of B.C. for their strategic investments: $50 million to support Indigenous language revitalization, $158 million for Indigenous housing, $6 million for friendship centres for the next three years and investing in Aboriginal Head Start. Aboriginal Head Start — we were successful in our application and are currently building, right now, a 3,500-square-foot daycare centre in our building, which we hope to open in a couple of months.

[9:25 a.m.]

The core funding that the provincial government is providing to friendship centres has certainly increased our stability and ability to retain full-time staff in administration. That is a difficult area to allocate funds on a continuous basis and pay for a financial controller and assistance in the administrative area in non-profit societies.

Funding invested in daycare will increase our provincial GDP and allow parents of families living in poverty to pursue education, skills and training so they can better support their families. There appears to be an effort in many ministries to reduce poverty, as is evident by service plans and the Premier’s letters to ministers.

I’m here today to suggest that B.C. gaming needs to be more progressive in the initiative to reduce poverty in British Columbia. B.C. gaming needs to provide greater consideration to requests for increased funding to food banks; homeless outreach services; provision of tents, sleeping bags and clothing for the homeless; as well as capital investment in societies dedicated to fighting poverty.

Our food bank processed 637 applications in the last seven months. The statistics were compiled, and they include 1,152 adult females, 1,297 adult males and 234 families with 413 children. And 1,411 people identified themselves as non-Aboriginal, and 1,325 identified themselves as Aboriginal.

Despite our efforts to be efficient, effective and economical, 3E, there are times we do not have food to provide families. When we are low on food, we prioritize families, because that includes children. This means other people go hungry, and we have to look them in the eye and say: “We’re sorry. We have no food at this time that we can provide to you. We’re prioritizing, because we have to budget our funds monthly over the year.”

B.C. gaming provides us with funds, but they are inadequate to meet the need. We appreciate their funding.

Please consider allocating greater funding to poverty reduction in B.C. gaming.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee today.

R. Kishi: I just have a couple more comments.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, please.

R. Kishi: I work at the friendship centre as the director of our homeless and housing programs. I’d like to say that we have presented to this committee several times when it has been in Courtenay. We’re really happy that we’re not here this year making the request for funding of friendship centres, because that’s now happened.

In our program, the homeless outreach program and the homeless prevention program, which I’m working in at the friendship centre…. The Coalition to End Homelessness raised the issue in their presentation just half an hour ago. We’ve delivered the homeless outreach program since 2008 and delivered the homeless prevention program since its inception in December 2014. In the last fiscal year, we served almost 500 clients through those programs, about half of them being Indigenous.

In the entire time that we’ve delivered those programs, we’ve never seen a budget increase. Not since 2008. It’s making things…. We’re having to make priority decisions on things like…. Michael raised it with our food bank. Even with our rent subsidies, we’re now prioritizing families with children for the rent subsidies. If it’s a single person, even if it’s a single woman fleeing violence, we’re having to say: “I’m sorry, but we are prioritizing our rent subsidies to families with children.”

We just would reiterate what the coalition said in their presentation: that it’s time for an increase in those budgets for the homeless outreach program and the homeless prevention programs.

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

M. Dean: Thanks so much for your work and for your presentation as well.

Just a couple of check-ins, I suppose, really. I wanted to make sure you were aware of the food security hub run by the Mustard Seed, supported by the Victoria Foundation. It’s a model that the ministry has invested some money in, and it’s thinking about that as a provincial model to be adapted for different communities. I’d really recommend, if you haven’t heard of it, that you make some connections there with the Mustard Seed and the Victoria Foundation.

[9:30 a.m.]

Just also checking that you’re aware of the homelessness prevention grants that were announced this week — $6 million. I’m sure you’re well positioned to actually really make the most of those sources of funding that have become available.

R. Kishi: Well, for both of those…. I see that LUSH Valley is presenting a little bit later. They are sort of the coordinating food security here in the Comox Valley. So they are doing stuff. They’re actually doing some things around food gleaning and providing that food to social housing units in the Comox Valley.

The $6 million. That’s just been announced. We’re going to await the process to access that through SPARC.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Michael, could I just ask you a question in regards to the gaming? Just so I’m clear, is it a question of having criteria changes within gaming, or is it…? What is it within the gaming application? Are there some that just aren’t eligible? What is it, specifically, within gaming that you feel needs to be changed? Is it the applications or the criteria that people are looking at? What is it specifically?

M. Colclough: Well, the application process is a bit onerous. I would certainly recommend some changes there. Also, the reporting. I think Ronna-Rae is familiar with some of that, in that I provided her with a briefing note, plus I’ve provided several ministers with a briefing note. Even though I’m not in government, I still write BNs.

On the processes involved in application and reporting at B.C. Gaming, the way they allocate the funds, we don’t know. That information is not available — and how much funds are allocated to each of these specific areas in which you apply. The process of evaluation is not clear. That information is not…. How they review, how they prioritize — there’s no information available to the public on that process as well.

You may apply for X amount of dollars. We applied for $40,000 for food, $50,000 or so this year, I believe it was. I’m trying to remember. We received, I think, $20,000 less than we applied for.

Every year we apply for our $100,000, but that’s not guaranteed. This year we received $70,000, in all, for the two different programs we applied for funding. I felt that there needs to be more attention within the organization as to how funds are allocated in the respective areas, such as schools and for recreation. And whereas the government, in my briefing note that I sent out to several ministers, is looking at poverty reduction, there seems to be no one interested in looking at getting on the bandwagon to reduce poverty in B.C. gaming and directing funds specifically towards reducing poverty. That was the gist of my BN to various ministers that I know and meet with.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Thanks for the clarification. I really appreciate that.

Well, we’re out of time, but thank you very much to both of you, Michael and Roger, for presenting and your work.

Next up is North Island Students Union — Carissa Wilson.

Carissa, if we could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be very helpful. Thank you.

C. Wilson: You bet. I’ll be quick.

NORTH ISLAND STUDENTS UNION

C. Wilson: Good morning. I’m Carissa Wilson. I’m an organizer at the North Island Students Union, a member union for students at North Island College — Local 15, British Columbia Federation of Students. North Island College serves the largest catchment area in the province and, across four campuses and a learning centre, sits on the unceded territory of 35 distinct Indigenous nations.

Last year a student delegate and myself spoke to this committee about removing interest on the B.C. portion of student loans and the value of open education resources. We hollered out loud when the student loan announcement came, and we still keep hollering. Every time our organization gets together, we really get loud about it. So thank you.

I’ve been with the students union for five years, just a drop in the bucket of the student movement. The progress we’ve seen with this government has been much needed and much welcomed.

[9:35 a.m.]

Funding for open education resources through BCcampus has saved students in our province over $10 million. The bigger win, in my opinion, is that each time these materials support an adult learner returning to their education to better themselves, their families and their communities, we all benefit. Removing barriers to education benefits us all.

North Island College sees about 4,000 students in credit programs each year. The average student is in their early 20s. Many of our students are adult learners pausing their day-to-day life to enrich with education. One in two students across B.C. graduate with debt — 65 percent of those students with more than $20,000 in debt. These figures don’t account for those who dropped out of school, who are still in school or those who use personal debt, like family borrowing, credit cards and lines of credit to finance their education.

This debt load plays out in our society in important ways. A 2018 RBC report sees that 45 percent of graduates are delaying purchasing a home thanks to this debt, and 25 percent delay starting families. I’d like this committee to consider and the 2020 budget to include a comprehensive needs-based, upfront grant system. Recent polling shows that 68 percent of British Columbians support the idea of upfront grants and that 64 percent agree that people are required to take on too much debt to get their education. Upfront grants help students when they need it.

On the other side of the coin, years of frozen institutional operating grants coupled with millions of dollars in base-funding rollbacks has left B.C. colleges saddled with program cuts and increased wait-lists. Currently only 60 percent of NIC’s funding comes from the province, forcing the institution to place more and more tuition load on students. In the upcoming budget, an increase to funding institutions would see big results in student success, which is better for everyone.

Currently at NIC, the institution is working on a student housing business case. Part of the challenge of returning to school is housing. The Comox Valley, like much of the province, sees rental insecurity. Here in the valley, rental vacancy is currently 0.5 percent. This leaves very little access to good quality and affordable rental accommodations.

As an Access institution, many of our students leave their home community to complete their education. Access to safe, stable housing benefits us all. The business case sees 148 single beds and 20 family units. By adding these beds on campus, our students can leave other rentals in the community open, and students can enjoy the stability they deserve. The students union is working closely with the institution throughout the planning process. Now I would like to ask to see capital grant funding for housing projects for colleges, to ensure housing projects can remain viable and revenue-neutral.

Just to circle back, I’m so appreciative of your time, both in our community here and provincewide. Being able to be heard across the province really has big value.

From my place in the student movement, upfront needs-based grants are very needed. Increase funding for colleges and universities and capital grants for student housing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Carissa. I really appreciate that. We have heard from other students, student unions and student organizations across the province already. We still have a number of days left. We appreciate the comments and hearing about the needs.

M. Dean: Thanks, Carissa. I appreciate all of your efforts and your presentation today as well.

I’m interested in…. You mentioned wait-lists. As a committee, we’ve struggled to get to the detail of exactly how many students are applying to get into colleges and universities and how many are facing barriers and aren’t getting in each year or whatever. Do you have more of the data on wait-lists? Can you explain that a little bit more to us?

C. Wilson: I didn’t bring a ton of wait-list data with me. Sorry. Our biggest wait-list is in our health care programs. We only have two, four-year degrees at NIC. One of them is business, and the other one is nursing. So our nursing sees the longest wait-list.

Fortunately, funding just came forward to support ECE training. That’s really opened up a lot for our campuses, who are able to see that funding applied to our Port Alberni campus as well. That’s really opened up some access to education in our smaller campuses.

Fortunately, NIC is able to support a lot of our students. If there is a big wait-list, we tend to be able to find teachers and fill those spots. So I think NIC is slightly a little bit better placed than other colleges, just based on our size and the saturation that we have in our communities. We’re able to really connect with our smaller communities — Port Alberni, Campbell River and Port Hardy — and actually tailor our programming a little bit better.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a bit of a follow-up on that issue. So there are wait-lists to get into programs. I’m just curious if there’s any experience once people are in programs of having wait-lists for courses or prerequisite courses or any challenges at all in that regard.

[9:40 a.m.]

We’ve heard that in some universities or colleges that you get in…. I mean, the cohort programs usually are fine. But if you’re non-cohort and your prerequisites…. I was just wondering if you’ve seen any challenges on those kinds of wait-lists at all.

C. Wilson: I haven’t seen a ton of that yet at our institution, because we’re able to couple really closely with Vancouver Island University. We’re able to team up with them and move students, which is a hardship for our students. I’m not going to say it’s easy to have to commute to another community an hour-plus away. But there are times when students…. Again, it’s back to our health program where this happens the most. Because we share our programming with VIU, we’re able to share some of that course load with them, but again, at the cost of our students travelling.

R. Leonard: Just a comment. Thank you very much for recognizing that North Island College is realizing its vision of serving communities. It’s such a broad geographic range that they have to serve, and they’re doing a good job, so thank you for recognizing it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks for your time.

Okay. Next up we have B.C. People First — Michael McLellan.

Hello, Michael.

B.C. PEOPLE FIRST SOCIETY

M. McLellan: I’m Mike McLellan. I’m from B.C. People First Society. I have a few things to bring up.

This kind of lands where the affordable housing comes in and how we need to make it affordable, first of all, because as we all know, the rental subsidy on PWD is only $375. As rent goes up, you keep it at $375, so that needs to be raised with a rent freeze. Otherwise, we’re talking people’s PWD, as we all know. Thank you for raising the rates.

But as they go up — and you can put that 2-point-what­ever-it-is up every year — that person’s disability cheque gets lessened. We’re in a bit of hardship at that point. It really makes it more difficult to see that. We’re sitting at $1,233, and your rent portion’s $375. It needs to be up. That is a big thing for me. I just keep seeing it.

I looked at rent just in Nanaimo. In one bad area, it’s $1,250. That’s a two bedroom. When you’ve got a new place that’s just being built, for a two bedroom, a den and I believe it was two bathrooms for $1,600, and it’s a good area, that becomes more of a wonder. That’s a big piece for me — to see those rates go up, especially the rental piece, with the rent freeze.

Another thing I would love to see is as inflation goes, so does the raise of the rates, because we’re sitting and going: “Okay.”

Next, the minimum wage. It goes up every June 1 right now, but you’re starting to leave the earnings exemption at $1,000. So somebody who wants to work, who’s living on disability, has to now go to their employer and say, “Now I have to cut my hours back,” because they think: “If earnings exemption is there, this is all I can make.” So then they’re cutting their hours back, because the minimum wage has gone up. But that’s how they think.

[9:45 a.m.]

As for the increase, if it’s 1.5, the earnings exemption should go up 1.5 percent. I’m just throwing numbers out to kind of give an example. That is a big thing for me as well. That is how people think with developmental disabilities. Our whole board is a board of members with developmental disabilities.

Those are my main concerns to see come forward to the government — seeing how those can be put into play — because there’s lots there that needs to be done. I understand that. But there’s also lots of work, lots of other priorities.

Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Michael. We’re going to have some time for questions too.

M. McLellan: Oh. I’m good with that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Thank you very much for the presentation. It was very well articulated. I hadn’t actually heard that idea of matching minimum wage. There’s some logic there. That makes sense.

Any questions at all?

As you mentioned, one of the challenges is…. Obviously, it would be great to be able to put those rates up, and they were put up $100 and then $50 more. But for every $50, I think it’s about $90 million. I was thinking the same thing, Michael. Why can’t we just put it up? But we’re talking huge numbers. It’s something to keep in mind.

M. Dean: Thanks, Michael. Thank you for all of your work in the community for people across the province and for coming and presenting today.

I’m wondering whether you can shed any insight for us on how these policies affect men and women differently. Is there anything that you see from your lived experience and your expertise of being on a board — that we could do something differently with the levers that we have in government that would close any gaps that you can see?

M. McLellan: To close any gaps between the men and the women type of…? Just so I get clarification. I’m trying to understand.

M. Dean: Yeah, as an example — or any other marginalized groups. In my work, what I see is…. We’re kind of talking high level, but we also need to dig deeper and see how some of these policies don’t reach people who face multiple barriers in British Columbia. So yeah, there are gaps, for example, between men and women and how they can thrive and flourish in their particular context in the province.

M. McLellan: There are lots of gaps. I mean, probably if you look at one huge gap…. If you’ve got somebody who lives on PWD and somebody who’s not and then they want to get married, that person who’s on PWD loses it. “See you later.”

Where are we — in the 1950s, where that would happen? I’m sorry, but it’s just like…. They want to be independent and feel the same — that’s just one huge gap — but now they’re depending on the person who isn’t living on PWD to afford to pay for them.

That’s a huge gap, in my opinion, and that goes back years. It’s a policy. Everything that’s sitting there…. How do we deal with that? I don’t know, but we’ve got to find a way to make it so that that person who lives on PWD actually can feel like they’re contributing to life.

[9:50 a.m.]

Another gap in this type of industry is if you get married and you’re both on PWD, you lose $150. Why should they lose $150 when the rental market is where it’s at, etc.? Shouldn’t you be keeping it as both the wage…? Keep it at….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Sorry. Do you mean if two people with PWD get married? Is that what you’re saying?

M. McLellan: Yeah, they’d lose 150 bucks. That 150 bucks, which could go towards rent, could go towards whatever it needs to go to, is gone. Just thinking that these two people are married doesn’t mean rent’s going to go down.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much, Michael. I really appreciate your lived experience and being able to share that. I know you’re well connected with a lot of folks who are living with disabilities.

It’s really great for you to come with the passion that you come with. I’d like you to share with the committee a little bit around your advocacy around the public transit.

M. McLellan: Why did I know this was coming?

R. Leonard: I don’t know.

M. McLellan: Public transit. That’s how I first met Ronna-Rae. It’s a big issue for me too. The day they were going to try and pull something, and I’m like: “Yeah, nice try.” The hours that just came from transit last year to Courtenay…. What a huge difference — more runs, more buses, etc. That brings up how that bus pass is more reasonable and how much that was appreciated, what the government did to bring that back the way it should have been. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. Well, we’re out of time now, Michael, but thank you so much for your passion on this issue and coming forward and advocating for people with PWD. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have the British Columbia Wildlife Federation — Alan Martin.

Hello, Alan. How are you?

B.C. WILDLIFE FEDERATION

A. Martin: Very well. Thanks, Bob. It’s a pleasure to be able to present to you again. I know you’ve got a difficult job with many competing interests, so I’ll be to the point and very brief. I provided you with a selection of overheads. I won’t read them out. The first two basically set context.

The first one is: we’ve got an environmental crisis across the province. I like to call it the BFF problem, and it doesn’t mean “best friends forever.” It’s bugs, it’s fire, and it’s fibre. It’s changing our landscapes. It’s changing the sustainability of fish and wildlife habitat, natural resources we depend on, and it’s changing the functioning and resilience of our watersheds. So that’s a problem.

I guess the next issue is: well, what do we do about it? Certainly, I think there needs to be a greater investment in maintaining those functioning landscapes and watersheds for ecological, for economic and for social reasons. That is critical to maintaining the natural diversity of our environment.

A lot of the issues around climate have been dealt with by increasing efficiencies and reducing consumption of fuels in the initial stages. Certainly, in terms of the long term, B.C. is a bit player in terms of consumption of energy, but it’s not in terms of our natural heritage, which needs investment in order to maintain the diversity and values that are so important, both to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

We have four specific recommendations. We’ve made them before. B.C. Wildlife Federation is a non-partisan conservation organization — 42,000 members. Certainly, we’ve made presentations to this committee before and to parties on all sides of the House.

[9:55 a.m.]

Our first recommendation is to establish governance and funding models for fish and wildlife. Certainly, all parties have moved that forward, and we appreciate the progress that’s being made on that.

Our second recommendation. There’s a long history in terms of forestry as a foundation of the economy, particularly in rural B.C. We think that the public trust and public interest in forest management needs to be improved, and we have a number of recommendations around improving the Forest and Range Practices Act — specifically, having objec­tives that are place-based, community-based and preserve the functioning of our landscapes and watersheds.

Our third recommendation is that nothing’s done over­night. We do have a Forest Practices Board, but we think their responsibility should be expanded to all the activities that occur across our landscapes and watersheds so that you have a body that is looking at the cumulative effects of development — where the limits are and where we should improve our regulatory regime, our enforcement, our science and other activities that are required to support forest management.

Finally, I think you’ve already heard this before around watershed sustainability — the previous speaker. We collaborate with a number of other groups and see the need for a watershed sustainability fund. There are tremendous ecosystem goods and services that come out of having functioning watersheds, and there are two components to this.

One is a regulatory component, and the other is a stewardship component. I think with a fund that’s focused on an area of provincial jurisdiction that looks at a long-term, strategic approach, we’ll be much better off than one-offs. Certainly, I commend the government for their Pacific salmon restoration and innovation fund, but it’s short-term. It’s one-off. I’m sure it will do a lot of good, but it’s not strategic, and it doesn’t allow you to adapt and improve over time in terms of your investment.

Those are my comments. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity again, and I look forward to your report.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Alan.

Questions?

M. Dean: Thanks for your work and for your presentation. I’m interested in how your work contributes to reconciliation and how Indigenous communities are involved in the work and in setting priorities.

A. Martin: Well, I think that having a…. In terms of fish and wildlife governance, the First Nations have an Aboriginal right to fish and hunt. That right would be very hollow if there was no wildlife or no fisheries across the province. So I think that working collaboratively and collectively is very unifying in terms of dealing at a community basis. And when I say a community basis, I mean both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

Certainly, there have been steps forward, such as the moose roundtable in the Cariboo, where Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups, industry and others are working together for a common sustainability outcome. In that case, how you return moose abundance across the landscape in the Cariboo, which is a concern to all.

D. Clovechok: Thank you very much for your presen­tation, and thank you for the work that the BCWF does. It’s really phenomenal. I’m from the Kootenays. One of the slides that you’ve got in your package talks about lack of investment in the fishing and wildlife populations. I couldn’t be more in agreement with you, so I’d like to hear from you what some of those solutions might look like.

A. Martin: Well, I think some of the solutions are an independent fund where you can leverage community, financial and technical support. Do you spend the money on those activities that are required to get those programs going?

[10:00 a.m.]

Certainly, we’ve seen other funds where…. For example, $10 million has been committed to wildlife next year in the FLNRORD budget. If that was put in an independent fund, the leverage ratios for things such as the Pacific Salmon Foundation are 7 to 1. Those could be spent on science. They could be spent on inventory, monitoring, collaborative programs with First Nations. There are a number of opportunities for doing that.

D. Clovechok: So that would be independent of government, then, much like the B.C. freshwater fish society.

A. Martin: Well, you could have a fund within government or outside of government. The governance is less important than having both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups advising the minister on how to best spend funding to maintain the sustainability of the habitats and the fish and wildlife they support.

D. Clovechok: One of the key issues, I think, around this is that if you took it outside of government — and disagree with me if you want — it would allow non-profits to contribute into that fund, much like the B.C…. That would be a….

A. Martin: It would. Yes, absolutely. The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation is an example.

D. Clovechok: Exactly, yeah. Right now they’re handcuffed, because they can’t do that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Nice to see you again. Thanks for all your work for this important issue. Appreciate the presentation.

Next up we have LUSH Valley Food Action Society — Maurita Prato.

Maurita, if we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes so it’ll leave time for questions.

LUSH VALLEY FOOD ACTION SOCIETY

M. Prato: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you today. I’m the executive director of a small, local non-profit called LUSH Valley Food Action Society. Our vision is to have a region where healthy local food is at the heart of community well-being. We run a number of programs that aim to help people, particularly those with various barriers, to gain skills and knowledge to grow, cook and have access to healthy and, wherever possible, local food.

Community food security is defined as all people at all times having consistent access to healthy and culturally appropriate food. For LUSH Valley, that definition encompasses a systems approach. That means an understanding that in order to have long-term access to healthy food, and with the global challenges we are facing, we need a thriving and growing local food economy that can compete with the global one.

As you probably know, the global and commodity food economy is built on a legacy of inequalities, subsidies and externalities. It gives it an unfair advantage in the market. We also know now that cheap commodity grains in particular are leading to an epidemic of diet-related diseases, which are really costly in many ways to society.

On the other hand, more nutritious food and access to fruits and vegetables that are grown locally and ecologically provide many benefits to our society. By encouraging healthy diets and providing better access to healthy local food, we can, over the long term, hopefully decrease the strain on emergency services that is a result of some of these chronic, diet-related diseases. Local growers are, again, providing these additional benefits to society but are often not being compensated for those benefits and are struggling to compete in a global market.

I also wanted to point out — actually, this connects with other speakers that have talked — that because of the housing crisis, we’re seeing more food-insecure people in our community. If someone is choosing between being evicted or eating well, the choice is almost always to eat whatever food is available. We know this is a problem for people receiving social assistance. We talked about the $375, which is supposed to cover housing. Instead, the additional food budget is being spent on those housing costs.

We also know that secure housing, food security and a healthy environment and other social factors that other speakers have talked about are social determinants of health. Or to put it another way, the more stable that we have these in our community, the more likely that people will experience well-being and positive health outcomes over their lifetimes. Again, if we can focus on these sort of upstream social determinants of health, hopefully, we’ll be decreasing the strain on emergency health and food services.

[10:05 a.m.]

For the 2020 budget, this is simply sort of a general statement — just more of a focus on these types of preventative health solutions that take an upstream approach. I was happy to see your focus areas for 2019: reconciliation, inequality, climate change and the economy. In particular, I was specifically grateful to see investments made on new entrants to agriculture and protection of farmland. I hope that that focus on investments in local food producers, protection of farmland and support for new entrants remains in the 2020 budget.

In general, I’d like to see more of a focus on food systems and food literacy education in schools, increasing local food markets by providing more local food aggregation and distribution resources and more support for institutional purchasing of local food as well as, in general, for food security programs. More specifically, I’m suggesting that you consider investing in more innovative ways to create direct linkages between local food growers and people dealing with food insecurity. I’d love to see the creation of long-term contracts between local food growers and social housing providers, for example, and other people offering social services.

Some of this work is happening in our community already. LUSH Valley has been working with local farmers and social housing providers to come up with some plans on how we might do this. We do have a report that will be coming out on that. Again, this will mean support for local food aggregation and distribution, which I know there’s already some support for, but also a way to create an incentive for those who are providing housing or for social service organizations to make the economic choice to choose local food.

I think if we can increase and secure markets for local food growers and producers, while also decreasing food insecurity and decreasing the long-term pressure on emergency health providers, that those could be some real win-win investments. Thank you for your time.

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

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. I just want to say how proud I am that our community has an organization like LUSH that has operated for so many years. I think it was probably LUSH that really introduced me to that whole paradigm shift in how we address food insecurity with our vulnerable populations and how empowering it can be. I was hoping that you could share a couple of the programs that you provide in the community right now.

M. Prato: Sure. We provide a fruit tree and a farm gleaning program where we share that gleaned produce with social service partners. Last year we had both a farm and a fruit program, which gleaned 55,000 pounds and distributed that back into our community — fresh food to people who are…. We had over ten different community partners, including the food bank, including the Washington Inn housing providers and including the transition society.

Then we run a community garden that’s sort of barrier-free. That includes therapeutic food growing programming as well as a bunch of healthy food programs, both in schools with youth and with Indigenous partners. We have a lot going on.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just had a question. Are you involved at all with the coupon program for farmers markets? Have you had any experience with that? How successful has that been in the community?

M. Prato: It is successful in our community. There’s a farmers market group out of the Comox Valley. We work closely with them as a partner. They would like to see…. One of the problems is that because our valley is so spread out, transportation can be an issue. The coupon program is going very well, but when I talked to the president just a couple of days ago, she was saying that transportation is an issue.

Thinking about it, I mean, it’s always…. One of the things that we’ve seen over our time is that this distribution piece is huge for our community. Their services are centralized, or they’re in a place where people can’t get to. So trying to figure out how to bring services to people. The coupon program is fantastic, but in our community in particular, that’s a bit of a barrier for people that are vulnerable.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good to know. Thank you so much for your presentation. We appreciate all the work you’re doing in the community.

Next up we have North Island College Faculty Association — Shirley Ackland, Janis Almond and Erin McConomy.

[10:10 a.m.]

I appreciate that there are three people. Just a reminder. I know it’s difficult, but if we can try and keep it to five minutes for the initial comments, that would be wonderful.

NORTH ISLAND COLLEGE
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

S. Ackland: It’s a pleasure to be here to provide input for the 2020 budget consultation. We would respectfully acknowledge that we’re meeting on the unceded traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.

I’m Shirley Ackland. I’m here as the president of the North Island College Faculty Association and the 350 faculty members that we represent. With me today is our chief bargainer, Janis Almond, and our secretary and non-regular faculty representative, Erin McConomy.

While our government has increased access and affordability for post-secondary education, and we’re very grateful for that, the inequitable way faculty are being paid is still being left unaddressed. We’re going to use our time today to highlight the pressing need to end using contract faculty as short-term, underpaid and disposable labour. Contract faculty should be paid using an existing provincial salary scale on a pro rata basis.

J. Almond: At North Island College, 52 percent of faculty are on contract — referred to by us as sessional faculty. This is well above the provincial average of 30 percent.

I’d like to draw your attention to the handout, where you can see, in this triangle right here, what a regular full-time faculty member makes, per course, at the top of the scale. In comparison, at North Island College, which is the third triangle from the right on the graphic, they’re paid 55 to 60 percent less than a regular faculty member. This is for the exact same work. What that means is that faculty, both regular and sessional, have the same expectations — responsibilities to deliver the curriculum and support students — regardless of their pay.

In addition, NIC sessionals never get a raise, whereas regular faculty receive annual pay increases. Further, it can take some sessionals 15 or more years to become a regular faculty member. Those are 15 years without a pay raise. Sessional faculty often do not have access to benefits, cannot contribute to the retirement plan and cannot undertake professional development to the same extent as regular faculty. Sessional faculty are often in their prime earning years, and their current and long-term financial and mental health are significantly impacted.

Erin is now going to share a story of one of our current sessional faculty.

E. McConomy: This faculty member is an award-winning poet with seven published books who performs his poetry both nationally and internationally. He’s also an active and sought-after scholar who has published widely in academic journals and is often the keynote speaker at conferences.

Despite this, he has been teaching as a sessional, at the bottom of the provincial salary scale, for 13 years. He has no job security and no consistent health or dental benefits for himself or his family of four. He has had to apply for the same job every four months for 13 years. He has always needed to work at multiple institutions, at an average of 150 percent, just to make a living wage.

Because of the lack of job security, along with the rising cost of living, he recently moved from the Lower Mainland, but he is now having to commute between Vancouver and the Comox Valley to work just to make a living to support his family. He wants to be a regular full-time faculty member at North Island College, which would allow him to provide for his family and to contribute to the institution more fully and to the community where he lives now, as well as find some much-needed balance in his life.

J. Almond: In addition to the impact on individual faculty members, this inequity hurts the institution and the community. Because of the precarious nature of sessional work, the institution and, therefore, the students suffer from lack of a stable employment base.

[10:15 a.m.]

Quality education and student successes are significantly impacted. Temporary, disposable faculty prevent the institution’s ability for succession planning. It erodes a positive learning and working environment for all. Our communities benefit from workers who are paid fair wages. Measures to make life more affordable are only half the equation. People still need to be paid a wage that allows them to get a mortgage, enrol their kids in sports and contribute to small, local businesses.

When over 50 percent of the faculty at North Island College are temporary, it doesn’t promote economic growth in our communities. We urge the committee to recommend that government support the elimination of secondary scales and fund a pro rata model for contract academic faculty, to be paid on the provincial salary scale.

S. Ackland: Thank you, committee members, for the opportunity to present our recommendations for the 2020 provincial budget considerations. We’re happy to answer any of your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Shirley. I know there’s collective bargaining going on. Can you give me an idea of the timeline on the collective bargaining? When is this happening? Just so that I’m clear on that.

S. Ackland: Certainly. Our contracts expired. They continue, but they were up on March 31 of this year. Across the province, in the federation of colleges and university colleges, we are all at different spots to collectively bargain.

We see the secondary scale issue as a systemic issue across the province. There are only two institutions that don’t have a secondary scale. Those are Langara and VCC. This is not something that’s going to be answered in bargaining. This needs funding, and it needs to be addressed through the budget if we’re going to get a fix to this inequity around the province. It’s the right thing to do. It’s fair pay for the same work. It has been continued. I helped to bargain our first collective agreement in 1990. In the time that I’ve been at the college, for 30 years, we’ve had secondary scales. It’s not getting better.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The only reason I bring that up — just before I open it to the members — is that I’m just looking at timelines and at the fact that the 2020 budget won’t be introduced until February of 2020. If collective bargaining is going on now, I’m just wondering about the timing of all this. From what we’ve heard from other presenters, money would have to be on the table. If it’s not, then it’s not going to be dealt with, because there’s no extra money for it. There’s the 2, 2, 2. I don’t want to get into the collective bargaining thing. I’m just looking at the timeline of this and trying to get my head around it.

S. Ackland: I think all of us would recognize that al­though we have individual issues across our institutions individually, this is systemic. This is an issue across the province. It’s something, we hope, for which the budget and the consideration of fairness and affordability will come into your conversations.

R. Coleman: I’ve asked other questions and gotten similar answers on others as I’ve gone through the different presentations. They’re all much the same about this particular chart. We’ve seen, I think, four or five of them now. What’s your turnover?

S. Ackland: Of staff?

R. Coleman: Of the ones that are in this situation. Do they turn over and go into, for instance, other educational opportunities because there might be a shortage of teachers at the secondary level or the elementary level? What’s your turnover of these contract staff? Is there a big turnover in them?

S. Ackland: Actually, you would think so, because it isn’t long-term work. But people have had six to eight years of post-secondary education. It’s not the same. You don’t get a K-to-12 teaching certificate when you come out of the university sector to teach at a college or university. We have faculty that have cobbled together work and employment in different sectors, and some of them have taught in high schools.

For example, we have a woman who has taught in fine arts for over ten years with a master’s degree. She didn’t accrue enough hours to collect unemployment insurance. For the last ten years, she’s had to be on welfare for four months of the year. I know, all of you around the table: can you believe that? After eight years of post-secondary education, she can’t get enough work at our institution that’s regular for her to feed and support her family.

[10:20 a.m.]

The turnover. What’s happening, Mr. Coleman, is that we’re having a hard time finding people to take on the work because it’s not well paid. I don’t think I would have said that when I entered this career — that after eight years of university education, it wouldn’t be a well-paid job.

R. Coleman: How many of them do more than one course on contract?

S. Ackland: Many. Actually, for example, I am doing un­ion release work, so I have a substitute. She has 100 percent work, but she’s been a sessional for ten years because she’s considered to be just doing my backfill. She has no benefits that continue over the summer.

It impacts her pension, and it impacts all of your ability to provide that ongoing continuity of support for families. In small communities, like where we live, this is crucial. This really impacts our community’s ability to have long-term, family-supporting, community-supporting jobs.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation. As Mr. Coleman said, we’ve seen this a number of times, but each community, as this chart indicates, has different nuances. The question that I had, since we have the student union in the room as well, is: what’s the impact of this particular situation on student learning and the outcomes and their opportunities?

S. Ackland: The impact is huge. Janis and I have been at the college for 30 years. We’re a couple of the old-timers, and Erin has been there for over ten. But what happens when you have contract faculty or sessional faculty is that they don’t continue from year to year. So students might look for somebody as a mentor, as an adviser, somebody to come back and sort of plan how their career is going to unfold, and that doesn’t happen when you have contract faculty.

Students often look forward to an instructor that is just inspiring. Often that instructor isn’t back the following year. So it really does impact on students’ success.

J. Almond: Certainly, when students might need an extension for a course that they had some difficulty completing, for a variety of reasons…. That instructor’s contract ended on a Friday. Their extension takes them into, maybe, the following week. That person now is gone. Another person needs to pick up that work and try and connect with the student to ensure their successful completion of that course.

It has a variety of impacts, and each student case is slightly different. Erin, I know that you also have seen the impact of having sessional instructors not continue on, where students have come to you as well, around finishing off their courses and the impact for students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you. We’re over time, but that’s fine. We appreciate your presentation and your commitment to our post-secondary institutions. Thank you so much. Nice to see you, Shirley.

S. Ackland: Thank you. Appreciate your time today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ll take a short recess. We’ll be back in about three minutes or so.

The committee recessed from 10:23 a.m. to 10:31 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re back with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Next up we have the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association — Chris Jaeger.

If we can keep the comments to about five minutes, that would be great, Chris. Thank you so much.

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

C. Jaeger: Absolutely. Good morning. I’d like to begin by respectfully acknowledging that this meeting is being held on the traditional lands of the K’ómoks First Nation. I also thank the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for inviting me to speak. This seemingly simple act of civic engagement is a privilege that is not available everywhere, and I’m grateful for it. I also appreciate that, as members of the committee, your days are long and not always easy ones. Thank you again.

My name is Chris Jaeger, and I am fortunate enough to be the president of the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association. Our membership includes the 600 elders, professors, counsellors, librarians and IT professionals who serve the students of VIU at its Nanaimo, Cowichan, Powell River and Parksville campuses.

Our university is built on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the Cowichan Tribes, the Qual­icum First Nation and the Tla’amin First Nation. On behalf of VIUFA, I respectfully thank them for the opportunity to live, learn, work and play on their lands.

I know you have heard a great deal about the rate of pay for non-regular instructors within our sector. We, at VIU, share the same concerns our colleagues are expressing in this forum. I will refrain from discussing this topic directly, but I still do want to stay on the subject of equal pay for equal work.

Last September I spoke to the committee about the funding model for B.C.’s post-secondary sector. I spoke about some schools receiving base funding to teach a subject when another school receives nothing for delivering the same program. The example I gave was of a master of education student, for whom UBC might receive $14,000 to $20,000 of base funding, while VIU, as an example, would receive nothing to offer the same degree.

This inequity persists. It leaves VIU, as a teaching university, between $4 million and $6 million a year, with a shortfall to make up by finding savings. This shortage directly impacts the student experience — everything from deficits in classroom and lab technologies, forgone applied research opportunities and a facilities maintenance backlog. These are examples of the impact of this lack of base funding.

[10:35 a.m.]

Last year I said that B.C.’s colleges and teaching universities were up to the challenge of delivering quality, globally innovative programs, not only to B.C. students but to Canada and the world’s students. All I asked for then was an even playing field. That is the request I am repeating today: equal pay for equal work at the institutional level. This matters, because the province needs a post-secondary system that can operate with predictable certainty.

At VIU, we can hardly keep up with the demands placed on our facilities through wear and tear. We operate under conditions of constant frugality, unable to put our best foot forward. Our members’ working conditions are our students’ learning conditions, and the state of the classrooms does not go unnoticed.

The difference that achieving equity in base funding would make is immeasurable. This is important for a number of reasons, not least of which are that schooling is the first step as a student in becoming a professional and entering a profession. Schools such as VIU are often future immigrants’ introduction to Canada. We want to make the best first impression we can. And most important, a healthy network of rural and smaller schools is going to be key in fulfilling the commitments we have made to addressing the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I’m repeating myself because for the province to address this inequity would be simple, and the costs would be easy to identify and, hopefully, bear. The benefits, as I say, would be immeasurable.

Again, I thank the committee for the opportunity to present on this subject. I’m happy to take any questions you might have.

Lastly, I want to thank the K’ómoks First Nation again for hosting this consultation process.

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

R. Coleman: It’s nice when you come back to back, because then I get more questions in.

I notice, on your chart, that VIU, which is in a similar market to North Island College, actually pays $1,200 more per course than the college does.

C. Jaeger: Yeah.

R. Coleman: You must actually scavenge each other’s markets a little bit, as far as getting instructors.

The other thing is…. Because you’ve all come, I would assume that all the organizations have talked with the same chart. Do you have any idea how many courses in B.C. are done by part-time instructors versus full-time instructors in the organizations that have come before us?

C. Jaeger: I believe that we’re talking in the 40- to 50-percent range. And yes, we do rely on each other’s instructors.

There is sort of a euphemism we use. These are interstate instructors. We call them interstate instructors because…. It comes out of Los Angeles, the term. The idea is that an instructor will deliver a course at one university, then jump into their car and drive down the interstate to go to the next university and deliver a course, only to jump back into their car and go down the interstate to another university.

I, myself, have done this. I’ve gone from VIU to Royal Roads to UVic, all in one day.

R. Coleman: So as a collective group…. I was talking to the Chair earlier. If I go into a trade, I do four years of experience, and then I move into my full-time trade. As a teacher, it used to be…. I mean, sometimes they go directly to the classroom now — when there was a shortage of teachers — but now we have an aging society coming out, on top of adding teachers. They would start out, let’s say, as a teacher on call, doing substitution, and build up hours and have a pathway to full-time work.

This has been around since the 1990s, somebody said earlier. Why have the collective agreement folks never said: “Why don’t we build a pathway to work? So many hours or so many courses taught over a certain period of time get you to the full-time position.” In the case of the Chair’s comment, he knew somebody with 17 years in the system.

Why has that not been established as far as a goal for the profession itself over the last…? Well, it would be almost 30 years.

[10:40 a.m.]

C. Jaeger: Well, I guess I would begin by answering the question that there does seem to be a historic belief that the pathway to the profession is through the non-regular sessional experience and that this is a rite of passage in the sector. I think that what I and my colleagues are here to tell you is that that rite of passage does not exist anymore — the idea that a new instructor would be “tested” and have a chance to prove themselves through three or four years of sessional work with the expectation that if they did well, they would emerge into being accepted into a university.

That has now changed, and it is now a strategic decision on the part of many, many universities, not just in B.C. but across North America in particular, to balance budgets and to strategically rely on these precarious employees in order to balance the books or maybe build a climbing wall in a gym somewhere or subsidize full-time salaries or such. There’s a strategic decision.

I think I speak for all my colleagues in the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators when I say that we would be more than happy to work with PSEA and in saying that we’d love to work with you to create those pathways to create certainty. It needs leadership on both sides, and it needs a commitment on both sides. I think I speak for all my colleagues when I say we’d love nothing more.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time. Thank you very much, Chris. We really appreciate your comments and all the work you’re doing.

Next up we have Unifor Local 514 — Don Vye.

Hi, Don. How are you? Just a reminder. If we can keep the initial comments to about five minutes, then we have time for questions. Thank you so much.

UNIFOR LOCAL 514

D. Vye: As you said, my name is Don Vye. I’m from Port Alice. I’ve been dealing with an unfortunate situation for a number of years up there. The Neucel Specialty Cellulose mill in Port Alice owned by the Fulida Group in China shut down operation in February of 2015.

Unifor Local 514 has attempted to work with the owner from February of ’15 until Fulida Neucel failed to meet payroll in February of 2019. The odds are the mill would still be operating today if they had a manager that knows the specialty cellulose business. When we allow foreign companies to acquire business interests in British Columbia without providing information that they have the ability to manage the business, it does not serve British Columbians well.

As the elected representative of the remaining members of Unifor Local 514, I have to raise concerns of our members along with those of all taxpayers in British Columbia. We have major concerns on the spending by the province of British Columbia as they deal with the unfortunate situation at the Neucel Speciality Cellulose mill.

The abandoning of the mill by the owners in February of 2019 has left the provincial Ministry of Environment to deal with necessary work that will include site remediation and stabilization work. Our concerns arise from our knowledge of what government is spending and that that work could have been done more economically. There will be an estimate by an environmental consultant as to what full site remediation and stabilization will cost.

[10:45 a.m.]

The estimate from 2005 was approximately $26 million. That would be $33 million in 2019 dollars. Taking the condition of the site into consideration, we believe that the cost will be significantly more, and checks and balances on spending are of utmost importance to British Columbians.

We have significant knowledge that can assist the provincial government in doing this work as economically as possible. We have attempted to engage the provincial government in discussions to put forward our concerns and how we believe spending can be controlled, but as yet, there is no response from the province in accepting our assistance.

It appears that over and above the hardships of job loss for the former employees and the avoidance by the owners of accepting any responsibility, the taxpayers of British Columbia will be responsible for paying to deal with this unfortunate situation. To continually see the Ministry of Environment’s contractors still on site in Port Alice, doing work over and above what was originally identified in March 2019, and the fact that we were told the work would be completed by now, is of great concern. The costs continue to mount, and there appears to be no control on spending.

I must reiterate that it is in the best interest of all British Columbians that the provincial government have a thorough discussion with the former employees that have in-depth knowledge of the Port Alice mill site. I submit that, with just the work done so far at the mill site said to be approximately $4 million, that is three times what it should have cost. The next steps will be of even greater importance in cost control. I have over 30 years experience working on that mill site, and I offer my assistance to get this spending under control.

Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Don. Sorry that you’re having to go through this. This is always very difficult.

Any questions from members?

R. Coleman: I was with Don the day we reopened it, I think it was.

D. Vye: Yes. I know, Mr. Coleman, you’re very familiar with the situation.

R. Coleman: Have there been any suitors? The cellulose market is still there, right?

D. Vye: That’s the really frustrating part. As you know, there was an investment firm that came up with the money back in late 2005, and the mill restarted in 2006. We then saw a change of ownership in 2011. It was purchased by the Chinese ownership. They would not have discussions with us about the viability of that mill. As I say, if they had hired a manager, that mill would still be operating today. I’m convinced of that.

There have been no suitors at this time. I think there’s been at least a partial blockade by the present owners. It’s a very difficult situation in that even the provincial government says that they are still the owners because there has been no filing under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. So they are, although they’ve failed to meet payroll and they probably don’t have any money, still the owners. A frustrating situation, to say the least.

R. Coleman: It’s almost like déjà vu all over again. I remember when we did it the last time. The same owners from the previous operation were still the owners, and we had to work all the way through that to get to where we could bring in the new investor and reopen the mill.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I didn’t know. I’m going to make some calls on some people in the industry.

D. Vye: One more thing I can tell you is that you could have someone come in with a truckful of money…. The mill is certainly in not great condition at this time, and a truckful of money wouldn’t do it. You could have someone come in with much less money and a plan to restart that mill in phases and stand a much better chance of success. I don’t know why it is what it is, but that’s what we’re faced with today.

R. Coleman: Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Sir, thank you. I don’t know the circumstances, but I’d take a look, especially with your last comment there, at what happened in Midway, British Columbia, with a mill there. The town, Midway, got involved. The people of the surrounding area and especially the employees got involved, and it has turned into a very successful enterprise today.

[10:50 a.m.]

D. Vye: I’m familiar with co-ownership structures as well. The present owners, from what I understand, are not interested in a co-ownership model, which complicates things. As I say, capital is a big part of it. You’ve got to have money.

R. Coleman: At the same time, Don, your guys were really good about helping to put that thing back on its feet too. Let’s not forget how hard you guys worked on that too.

D. Vye: You’re very familiar with that. From the time we got the restart agreement in January 2006, our members ran. It was a long battle to get that place to the point where it would run with some efficiency. It took until late 2006, and then we started to see some progress. It was very frustrating when we went into the room and said, “Now we’d like to talk about the longer-term viability,” and the management told us to go away — frustrating, to say the least.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you, sir.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks very much, Don. We appre­ciate it.

D. Vye: Appreciate your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Vancouver Island University Students Union — Brynn Joyce and Sarah Segal.

Just a reminder. If we can try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that’d be great.

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

B. Joyce: Of course. Good morning. My name is Brynn Joyce, and I’m the elected director of external relations with the Vancouver Island University Students Union. With me is Sarah Segal, staff member of the students union, providing advocacy and support to our members.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to our requests. Many of you may be familiar with the requests students unions have focused on in the past — requests such as a reduction in tuition fees, increased funding for grants and the elimination of interest on student loans, which this government has done. We are incredibly grateful for that victory, and it is already having a positive impact on graduates.

These past requests are still important, but this year we have chosen requests that focus on the well-being of our students and the community as a whole. These requests involve issues we know that our members, VIU students, are facing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

First, we request that the government allocate resources in their upcoming budget to better address the crisis of affordable housing in our communities. In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in students communicating issues around housing. Students are continually coming to us with issues finding and securing safe, appropriate and affordable housing while attending VIU. Currently almost 50 percent of Nanaimo’s rental households spend over 30 percent of their income on rent and utility costs each month.

We have heard stories of students living in their cars, month to month in youth hostels and even being evicted from their housing in the middle of a semester or during exam periods. All of these situations have a substantial impact on a student’s emotional, physical, financial and mental well-being, as well as negatively impacting their success at VIU.

The stress this places on students also impacts the broader community by putting an increased load on community services, such as mental health and affordable housing societies. We ask that the government provide better funding to actively engage in collaborating with municipalities and affordable housing organizations to increase the number of affordable rental units being built in Nanaimo and other Island communities. Actions such as these will be for the benefit of all members of our community impacted by the affordable housing crisis, not just our students.

Second, we ask that a yearly cap be placed on the international student tuition fee increases. A new B.C. international education strategy that will provide sufficient support for international students…. There is a pervasive myth in B.C. that our international students are wealthy and more than capable of paying for their tuition rates. However, research from the B.C. Federation of Students has shown that 40 percent of international students do not have strong financial resources.

Currently there are no regulations on the increase of international student tuition fees, nor are institutions required to provide adequate notice of a tuition fee increase. Often international tuition fee increases are used by the institution to cover shortfalls in other areas of their budget. This unpredictability makes it incredibly difficult for those 47 percent of international students without strong financial resources to budget their education from year to year.

A review of data from Stats Canada shows that international tuition fees have increased by 485 percent from 1991 to 2017. Despite the fact that international students only represent 19.5 percent of B.C. university enrolment, they account for almost 50 percent of tuition revenues of those universities.

[10:55 a.m.]

The contributions these students make to B.C. reach beyond the institution, contributing $3.12 billion in annual spending and over 26,000 jobs, not to mention the cultural and social benefit our institutions and communities gain from the inclusion of these students. In fact, research has shown that when institutions take action to embrace diversity, this can improve the social inclusion and academic success of not just international students but all students. B.C. needs a new international education strategy that provides better funding to our institutions and sufficient support for our international students to assist in their cultural, social and economic integration.

To close, B.C. students are facing numerous obstacles that impact their ability to fully participate in in their post-secondary education, including those mentioned today. We have brought these requests forward because we believe B.C. students have a right to education and to a sense of safety and stability in their institution and within the broader community.

Focusing on the development of more affordable housing will provide B.C. students with a safe and secure living space, contributing to their physical, social and emotional well-being so that they can focus on their studies. Implementing an international education program that places a cap on international student tuition fee increases will provide a more stable education for our international students, many of whom would not have the opportunity elsewhere.

If we are to commit to including international students in our post-secondary education system, we need to commit to treating them with respect, rather than as a way to fill the gaps in a budget.

Thank you for your time. We look forward to seeing our recommendations in the upcoming budget.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Can I just ask a quick question around student housing and VIU? I’m wondering how adequate it is, how much more is needed and whether there are plans that you are aware of, because changes have been made to allow universities to borrow, for example, if they need to, to build student housing. I’m just wondering where that is.

B. Joyce: I can’t really speak to what the university’s plans are for their housing. I do know just from the research we’ve done that there’s a bit of, I guess, stagnation in the rental properties being created. So while there are more students coming….

B. D’Eith (Chair): So you’re talking about market housing.

B. Joyce: Market, yes. Now, I’m not speaking to the actual university housing. I know that the vacancy rate is sitting lower than what it’s expected to be, and we have more students coming every year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

Thank you very much. Yeah. We have, actually, heard from a number of student unions. We’re getting an echo of similar issues. So we really appreciate you bringing these forward for your local community.

Next up we have the British Columbia association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada — Steve Blacklock.

APPRAISAL INSTITUTE OF CANADA,
B.C. ASSOCIATION

S. Blacklock: Good morning. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here at the Westerly Hotel meeting with all of you. I am here on behalf of the Appraisal Institute of Canada. My name is Steve Blacklock. I’m the immediate past president of our association. I’ll give you a little background on the Appraisal Institute of Canada, and then I have an ask for you guys, for the committee to consider in their budget deliberations.

On behalf of the 1,200 members of the Appraisal Institute of Canada, B.C. association, I’m pleased to have this opportunity to make this submission in the context of the 2020 budget consultation process. The Appraisal Institute of Canada is the premier real property evaluation association in Canada. Founded in 1938, AIC is a self-regulating professional organization that grants the distinguished AACI and CRA designations to individuals across Canada and around the world. Our members adhere to national standards, the Canadian uniform standards of appraisal practice, and we are respected worldwide for our rigorous program of education and ongoing CPD requirements.

AIC is committed to working with government and stakeholders within the real estate industry to ensure that all parties involved in a real estate transaction are protected and well informed when making real estate–related decisions. On the subject of protecting the interests of the public, Peter German’s recent report Dirty Money, a review of money laundering in British Columbia, identified that each component of the real estate process is vulnerable to criminal actors who tend to operate in more than one area of real estate, such as sales, mortgages, insurance, and so forth. Allegations of fraudulent or criminal behaviour within the real estate industry in B.C. are of primary concern to our members.

[11:00 a.m.]

As an organization that has an independent role in a real estate transaction, AIC appraisers help mitigate and detect fraudulent activity by conducting on-site inspections of property and completing comprehensive research and review of the subject property. We also analyze comparable properties to arrive at an unbiased opinion of the market value of a property.

Through this process, a professional appraiser typically gathers a lot of information about the owner or occupant, the ownership history, the vacancy circumstances and the sales and listing history, including dates of sales, the purchaser or purchasers’ names, the list and selling prices and the intended use and users of a report. This due diligence allows AIC-BC appraisers to identify and warn of abnormal behaviour that may indicate fraudulent activity, such as inflated prices, false transactions, frequent and rapid transactions, straw buyers, counterfeit documents, data manipulation or mortgage fraud.

We are unique amongst almost all players involved in a real estate transaction in that we have no skin in the game. Our compensation is not tied to the valuation of a property nor is it tied to whether or not the transaction proceeds. Given the preceding, we are ideally positioned to identify red flags related to fraudulent activity in real estate.

Now, if AIC appraisers are to continue to be effective in aligning with the provincial government’s mandate to combat fraudulent real estate activity, access to reliable and affordable real estate data is critical to our members. Data held by B.C. Assessment and the Land Title and Survey Authority are critical to our work.

Increasingly, our members have noted that this information is becoming more and more costly and inaccessible. A recent data access survey of our members revealed that access to reliable and affordable data was the number one concern for the health and future of our organization and our profession. Without access to reliable and affordable data, the important role AIC-BC appraisers play in ensuring that parties involved in a real estate transaction are protected and well-informed is unquestionably compromised.

We believe that accurate market data is the foundation of quality valuations and that fair access to reliable data is important for all stakeholders involved in a real estate transaction. Accessing quality, affordable, comprehensive and reliable data is paramount to supporting AIC-BC members in their professions. We require, as part of our professional standards, a minimum of three years of sales history and other critical property information to prepare accurate valuation reports.

Historically, data has been extracted from a number of sources, including real estate boards, municipal and provincial records and private data providers. However, recently, some data providers, both private and public, have placed greater restrictions on the ability to access and use the data. For example, there has been a significant increase in the costs associated with accessing the full scope of data, and some historical data is no longer available or is in the custody of a data source that has been transferred to a third party.

Appraisal fees, appraisal turnaround times and client expectations are all based, in part, on open access to data. Further limitations by way of high subscription costs or an increased dependence on third-party providers may force some members to access data sources that are less comprehensive and less reliable. This is expected to have an ill effect on a significant segment of the industry as a whole, resulting in increased appraisal delivery time frames and increased cost to the consumer and additional costs to our members to maintain and operate an appraisal practice.

Our recommendation is that the government of B.C. limits the fragmentation and commoditization of real estate data by prioritizing a centralized real estate database that is accessible to and affordable for real estate professionals. The systems are already in place to facilitate this initiative. LTSA has a very comprehensive program called ParcelMap B.C. It could easily be consolidated with B.C. Assessment’s system to provide a data package or a data source that is reliable for appraisers’ needs. I’m talking fee appraisers here, not our Crown agency appraisers.

The cost of access is becoming out of reach for many small practitioners, such as we have in many of our small towns in British Columbia. We wish to work together with government to combat real estate fraud and continue to underpin the very security of the mortgage industry on which many of us rely.

[11:05 a.m.]

Thank you for your time. Thanks for having me. If you have any questions, I’m certainly here to answer them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. It’s quite complex, what you’re suggesting. So it might be difficult, in some respects, for members to get their heads around it.

There have been some measures in terms of transparency of, let’s say, ownership and things like that that have happened. That’s in regard to the money laundering and things like that.

S. Blacklock: I would commend the government for passing the Real Estate Development Marketing Amendment Act and the Land Owner Transparency Act. These are good policies. The key for our members is that the results and the data that comes out of the enactment of these new regulations will be available to our membership.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. Okay.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Steve, thank you. I’ve heard from a gentleman I have a huge amount of respect for in Penticton in your business, line of work, the same issues and concerns, and it will be brought up during discussion. So thank you.

R. Coleman: I just went on it to find out how much my house is worth — the tool at B.C. Assessment. You can just type in a civic address, and it will basically give you what the present assessment is. That data is available to anybody in the public.

When you’re talking about amassing other data, what other data do you think needs to go into that?

S. Blacklock: The product to which you’re referring is called e-value B.C. It is B.C. Assessment’s flagship thing to check what is the current Crown corporation opinion of the market value of your house, used for setting taxable values. That number…. When it comes to the membership of AIC fee appraisers, that data is available to us, but it is not to be used in a commercial purpose. If you go to B.C. Assessment….

What’s happened is that we have larger appraisal firms that were searching e-value B.C. hundreds of times a day for that data that goes into appraisal reports, which go to banks and credit unions. What happened is that members who were using that system a lot actually were locked out of that system, and attention was drawn to the fact that that has a terms of reference of use, and it is not to be used on a fee appraisal basis.

Then if you go to B.C. Assessment and say, “Well, I’d like to become a commercial subscriber to e-value B.C.,” what we’ve met with from the assessment authority is a very large annual subscription fee. That is something that we’ve been working on with B.C. Assessment — to try and create a fee category for independent fee appraisers. That’s something we’d be very much interested in pursuing through the government level as well.

R. Coleman: So would that be that larger appraisal companies are the only ones that can afford the fee?

S. Blacklock: That’s what’s happening. We’re seeing the large firms, the urban-based firms that have 20, 30, 40 appraisers, have no problem paying that kind of subscription fee. But when you have the small shops like here in Courtenay, where my firm itself has five appraisers, we find that to be an excessive cost to bear with respect to what we’re doing.

R. Coleman: What is it?

S. Blacklock: Now, the costs vary. It depends on the number of…. There are different package levels. So I’m not going to pretend to know them offhand right here. I just don’t know. But they are upwards of $20,000 on an annual basis.

R. Coleman: Would you be able to get us that information?

S. Blacklock: Absolutely.

R. Coleman: Okay. Thank you.

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

S. Blacklock: Thank you for having me.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices — Terri Odeneal.

VANCOUVER ISLAND
FEDERATION OF HOSPICES

T. Odeneal: Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Terri Odeneal, and I’m the president of the Vancouver Island Federation of Hospices. That’s all of the 11 not-for-profit hospices on Vancouver Island.

I’m going to say that hospice is a philosophy of care, not a place. Oftentimes when you say the word “hospice,” people think of a place with beds and that’s it. Of our members, actually Victoria Hospice is the only one that operates hospice beds as part of that continuum of care.

[11:10 a.m.]

You’ll see in your package all of the hospices across Vancouver Island, 11 of them. We have, obviously, Victoria Hospice, which has around an $8 million or $9 million operating budget a year. Then we have hospices that have half an FTE at best kind of thing that have just started up.

When you look at the not-for-profit sector that brings what I’m going to call the wraparound services, all of the pieces that actually make hospice care hospice…. MSP pays for the medical care of the person dying, not for the emotional, practical and spiritual supports for that person or their caregivers or loved ones who are grieving afterwards.

If you look at our budgets combined and then you actually monetize the volunteer hours that we put in, we’re at over $16 million a year. That’s dollars that are added to the delivery system that is funded by MSP. You’ll note that there is $4.6 million funded by VIHA. The overwhelming bulk of that is actually to Victoria Hospice. So if you look at the net value-added, we’re adding close to $12 million a year to the delivery system for a catchment area of roughly 790,000 lives or so.

We serve more than 12,000 people every year, and we partner very closely. One of the reasons we came together is to really partner closely with VIHA in delivering programs and creating those programs, so how we can actually all work together to create a seamless delivery system for people.

Here in the Comox Valley, we were the first location to actually create the programs for hospice beds that are nested in with long-term-care facilities, which supports the palliative approach and knowledge transfer and also takes advantage of the back-of-house services that you’re not trying to duplicate in small facilities. We share best practices. All of these supports that we do are unfunded by government. It’s the community that comes together.

The other thing that we’ve done is really been on the forefront of doing advance care planning training for the general public, which is the right thing to do both in terms of people planning for a time when they’re not able to speak for themselves but also in terms of the kind of care they receive so they’re not getting care that they really don’t want and is very costly to the system.

One of the areas that we’re really focusing on is looking at how we can better support palliative caregivers at home. That’s an area that is…. We’re literally killing people doing that. I’ve included some population demographics on the Island and the percentage of growth. I’m sure you all are familiar with those as well as the fact that 75 percent of people want to die at home, and only 45 percent actually manage to do so.

I would caution that by saying that it’s probably not a good idea to look at just the metrics of the place of death as an indicator of how well we’re doing. A fair number of people are dying at home because there’s no other option. We should be looking at the quality of death they’re having at home, both for the person who’s dying and for their caregivers and loved ones.

As I said, we are trying to align with the Ministry of Health and the health authority in terms of their desire to reduce hospitalizations and the cost of delivery through supporting people at home. We feel very strongly that that’s an area where community hospices are uniquely positioned to really add value to the system.

I’m guessing that most of you have seen that recent report from the B.C. Care Providers Association talking about how many additional long-term-care beds are needed. I would suggest that beds are only part of the solution and not the only part of the solution. We really have opportunities to support people at home.

[11:15 a.m.]

One of the areas that we’re looking at really closely, as I said earlier, is how we can better support caregivers. The stories from caregivers are simply heart-wrenching in terms of what we’re doing to them. I mean, they’re emotionally, physically and financially distressed beyond belief.

What I’m going to suggest today, on behalf of Vancouver Island’s community hospices, is that if we are asking and wanting to prepare for people to age in place, to age in their homes, you all need to consider how we’re going to support them dying in place, because that is going to be the end result with the system. Again, we need to measure the quality of dying rather than the location of dying as a metric for success.

As community hospices, we need some core funding. It’s absolutely impossible to plan and manage effectively when you can’t count on any given revenue stream from year to year to year. If you don’t have community hospices, you lose a tremendous amount of value to the system, and certainly, the people receiving the care are the ones that ultimately are the losers. We would ask that you really consider the value and the return on investment that you’re getting from community hospices.

With that, I would say thank you. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

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

M. Dean: Thank you for all of your work, as well, and the work of all the volunteers and staff across all of the hospices.

I’m interested in the Indigenous perspective. Is the Indigenous hospice approach meant to be met by the provincial Indigenous health authority, or do they come under your mandate as well?

T. Odeneal: The community hospices actually work very closely with the Indigenous populations, depending on the community and what those relationships are. Some places they’re more integrated, and some places they aren’t. But the actual delivery of those services, much of that comes under community hospices, yes. Certainly, the physical hospice, if you have beds, is an area that we support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Rich, did you have a question, or were you…?

R. Coleman: No. I just wanted to thank you. Hospice does so much more than just the hospice beds. It’s counselling, what have you.

Whenever I talk about hospice, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a lady by the name of Dorscie Paterson, who’s now 106. She was on the original hospice foundation in Langley back in the 1970s, and she still has a daily interest in it, even at 106. That really has been an inspiration for all of us to get behind it in our community.

T. Odeneal: Wow. That’s amazing.

R. Leonard: I’d remiss, too, if I didn’t say thank you for all of the work that you do. You’re a strong voice for hospice and keep driving us all forward to face that future. I thank you for your work and your clarity.

T. Odeneal: That’s going to be a little two-year retirement gig, right? Not so much.

D. Clovechok: I just also want to echo gratitude for the work that you do. It’s God’s work. The Hospice Society of the Columbia Valley, I’ve just seen the amazing work that they do. They have no beds, but they have a lot of volunteers. The work that you do is so important, so thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks so much. Wonderful.

All right. Next up we have the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists — Sarah Charles.

Thanks, Sarah. Just a reminder. If we can keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that’d be wonderful. Thank you.

[11:20 a.m.]

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPISTS

S. Charles: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. I’m Sarah Charles. I’m an occupational therapist and the service coordinator with the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists in B.C.

To start off, I’d like to make sure that everyone has a good understanding of our profession and what it is that we do. Occupational therapists consider “occupations” to be any meaningful activity in your day. We help people to partici­pate in these activities to the best of their ability. This includes things like taking care of themselves and their families, participating in work, school and communities and engaging in leisure activities.

Occupational therapy is a versatile and high-value profession that offers solutions in all health areas, including mental health and addictions, seniors, pediatrics, accessibility, return to work and health promotion. To highlight a few of the ways that we improve the health and well-being for British Columbians, I’d like to start with the financial impact that our services have. We are here to talk about the budget. OT services have reduced reliance on the health care system. This is being supported more and more by economic evidence, as well as published examples of how our services can make heath care dollars go further.

We have a study published in an independent health economics journal that showed that when compared with 18 other spending categories, including pharmacy, physiotherapy and SLP, higher hospital spending on occupational therapy was the only category that reduced readmission rates.

To put this in context, B.C. spent $13 million on readmission rates between 2010 and 2013. We feel that there’s a significant potential for savings there. To give you a more local service example, two full-time occupational therapists working at Royal Jubilee Hospital are saving VIHA approximately $40 million per year in unnecessary hospital admissions. I can give you the background calculations on that. These studies are really just the tip of the iceberg, and we’d be happy to share more, but I think it highlights the role that we have in being able to make health care dollars go further.

I’d also like to speak a little bit about our role in improving primary care delivery. I think that’s a big topic right now. I’m going to present a fictional case study example — I had a picture: we’ll talk about Mary. Mary has several chronic conditions, including diabetes and osteoarthritis. She frequently visits her GP because she has trouble controlling her blood sugar. Her GP keeps telling her that she needs to improve her diet, but Mary continues to present time and time again at her GP’s office with hypoglycemia.

Luckily, Mary was able to access an occupational therapist, who visited her at home and discovered that there were several barriers to her implementing her doctor’s recommendations. Because of her osteoarthritis, she has difficulty with grocery shopping, and she can’t stand for long periods of time, which makes cooking difficult for her.

The OT worked with Mary to help her self-manage her osteoarthritis and her pain, and allowed her to better do the things she needs to do, like prepare meals. The OT set Mary up with a scooter, so she can access her local grocery store and helped to reorganize her kitchen so that she can sit down during food preparation. The OT also recognized that Mary was at quite a high risk of falling and injuring herself.

She made some simple changes to Mary’s home to help her stay safe and independent. This really is just one example of how we can take some of the pressures off the GPs in our province and help to address the health needs of British Columbians before they end up in crisis or in the hospital.

Unfortunately, it really is unlikely that someone like Mary would be able to access an OT as quickly and easily as this. Right now in B.C., getting access to an occupational therapist is very difficult, and we expect it to get even harder, unless a sustainable investment is made in training more therapists. Right now B.C. trains only 48 OTs, but last year we regis­tered 160. The majority of our registrants are actually being recruited from other provinces and countries. This makes our workforce very fragile and almost entirely dependent on in-migration.

To give you a comparison, Alberta trains 120 therapists per year, compared to our 48. Even despite the fact that we’re recruiting OTs, our current workforce really isn’t keeping up with the demand. In the public sector, wait-lists have been reported to us across health authorities, with Fraser Health experiencing some of the longest, including six months in Surrey and one year in Maple Ridge. One health authority has reported 35 unfilled positions.

[11:25 a.m.]

Going back to the example of Mary, you can see that someone like her who needs that preventative primary care would be considered a lower priority. Based on these current wait-lists, she might never actually get access to an OT. The picture isn’t much better in the private sector either, where employers that we’ve spoken to are reporting difficulty with recruitment and an average wait-list of about one month.

I had another picture that sort of outlined this. When we map the distribution of the province’s population as compared to the OT workforce, the biggest gap areas, or areas of maldistribution, are in northern B.C. and the Fraser Valley. We were very, very pleased with Minister Mark’s announcement of the one-time funding to support an additional eight training seats in Vancouver and 16 at UNBC.

We think this funding will really go a long way for setting up infrastructure to the Northern Health cohort and, hopefully, addressing the workforce maldistribution in that area. But we do have significant concerns about what happens after this. Sustainable funding really is necessary to ensure that we can begin to address the increasing demand in service. With the population in Fraser Health continuing to grow, we expect that this gap is just going to get bigger.

In considering priorities for B.C.’s 2020 budget, additional sustainable funding for training OTs really is vital to ensure that we meet the health needs of the province. We’re recommending continued funding of the 24 seats that were an­nounced by Minister Mark, as well as an additional 24-seat cohort in the Fraser Valley, to begin to address the needs of this region.

We feel that occupational therapy has a really important role to play in key health areas and has the potential to significantly improve the health outcomes in our province. But we need support from the government to ensure that there are enough of us to make this happen.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. I don’t think we need the pictures. I think you painted that perfectly.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation. It was well done. Thanks for all of your work.

I’m interested in…. Do OTs specialize, or do they always take on a diverse caseload? I’d like to just get into a little bit more of the detail as to whether there are gaps, not just geographically but also in terms of specialisms — like seniors, kids or whatever. Rather than just taking a blanket approach that we need more OTs, are there also areas where we should be paying particular attention to make sure that we get some particular needs met?

S. Charles: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. OTs are self-regulated, and we’re able to work in any practice area without additional schooling. But we do continuing education to ensure that we’re competent to work in those areas. You will see OTs working, for example, in pediatrics. They would probably work more exclusively in that area, rather than working across areas.

In terms of gaps, it’s hard to really narrow it down, because from the association perspective, we’re hearing about that everywhere. Community is definitely a big one, especially with the shift towards primary care networks. We are seeing that there is a lot of difficulty in filling those positions. Pediatrics is another one where we hear about really long wait-lists.

To answer, I don’t have any specific data on the areas that OTs are working, although we definitely could get that for you from the college.

R. Leonard: Thank you, also, for your presentation. Two questions. Maybe I gapped out when you were speaking. Did you say that there were more applications for entry into education than there are seats?

S. Charles: Yes.

R. Leonard: Okay. Then the second question is: what’s the average longevity of occupational therapists staying in their careers?

S. Charles: Both are really great questions. Yes, we definitely we have more than…. We actually have the stats somewhere. The number of applicants that we have, as compared to the seats, I think, is more than four or five times. Those are qualified applicants as well — like those who meet the GPA requirements and the volunteer work and everything else.

Then in terms of longevity in the profession, OTs actually tend to work quite…. We don’t like to retire — put it that way. We work quite far into our career. I often see — it’s funny, even just anecdotally — some colleagues and people that I work with that say they’re going to retire, but then they end up working in these sorts of other specialized areas doing part-time consultation work and that kind of thing. Generally, we do work really far into our careers.

R. Leonard: So there’s value in educating you.

S. Charles: I think so, yes, for sure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Sarah. We really appreciate your presentation. Like I said, we’ll get the written one, and we can look at that in deliberations.

[11:30 a.m.]

Next up we have Mid Island Farmers Institute — Arzeena Hamir.

MID ISLAND FARMERS INSTITUTE

A. Hamir: First of all, I just want to acknowledge that we’re meeting on the unceded territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, on whose land I have the privilege of farming.

My name is Arzeena Hamir. I’m the president of the Mid Island Farmers Institute, and I’d like to welcome you to the Comox Valley. I’m hoping you have some time to travel around while you’re here — maybe not, with your schedule.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, we flew over.

M. Dean: Not unless we didn’t sleep at all.

A. Hamir: Yes. Our institute is one of the newer Farmers Institutes in British Columbia. We represent approximately 70 small-scale and mixed-agriculture farmers — everyone from vegetables and blueberries to honey and hazelnuts to sheep and cattle. One of the things that we do have in common is that we all are facing the impacts of climate change on Vancouver Island. Just a few days ago, the province of British Columbia declared a level 3 drought here, and we are witnessing one of the driest months of May in living history. Water is essential for all forms of agriculture. Without it, we just cannot have food farming production. It all comes to a halt.

In 2017, the Comox Valley regional district commissioned a study on the agricultural water demand of the Tsolum River watershed. What it found was that if this region wanted to increase local food production by just 20 percent — it’s not large, as it is right now, just an increase of 20 percent — the agricultural water demand would increase by 500 percent with the climate projections that we have. We are seeing an unprecedented demand for water as more people move to the valley, but also as farmers realize that there is a demand for local product and they’re trying to meet that local demand.

The rivers that we have in the Comox Valley, especially the Tsolum, are already oversubscribed in terms of licences for irrigation. There’s not enough water currently for the fish that are trying to make it up the stream as well. Although we sit on a fairly large aquifer, aquifer 408, we don’t have enough knowledge as to what the capacity of that aquifer is. We know that there is going to be a demand for water between homeowners, who are going to need drinking water, versus agriculture as well.

One of the solutions we’re proposing is that the government of B.C. invest in something very simple: that we encourage farms to store water on their farms during the winter rains through the use of dugouts. It’s a very simple technology. On-farm water storage just relies on capturing winter rains. It doesn’t dip into the aquifer, and it doesn’t impact any river streams, so it doesn’t trigger the Water Act in that way. The average cost for a dugout on a small-scale farm can range anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000. Most of that cost is the trucking of the fill that comes out of the hole that you dig.

The Mid Island Farmers Institute would like to recommend to the select standing committee that funding for dugouts be provided through the Ministry of Agriculture, specifically targeting small-scale farmers on Vancouver Island. A cost share of 40 percent would encourage farmers to implement this management practice. It also has an added benefit of a fire-suppressing infrastructure that will now be in place in communities, as we have these ponds available in the case of any kind of fire breaking out in our communities.

The Ministry of Agriculture has a delivery mechanism in place already through its environmental farm plan, which is administered through ARDCorp. We see this as fitting very well into that plan already, but what we would like to see is just the targeting of the funding specifically to dugouts, geographically looking at Vancouver Island.

[11:35 a.m.]

We don’t have the benefit, on the Island, of large glaciers that are feeding our river systems. We’re already noticing that the Comox Glacier is receding. Our summer snowpack is very low. Our rivers are already stressed. We don’t have the large Fraser and the Peace rivers that farmers can irrigate from. So specifically targeting Vancouver Island for that funding would help alleviate a lot of the crises that are happening.

As bad as we are in the Comox Valley, I know our fellow farmers in the Cowichan are even more highly stressed in terms of water. So again, targeting the Island would be great. We would ask that you look at implementing a target. It’s a very lofty target, a bold one, of 25 percent of farms on the Island having on-farm water storage.

That is my presentation. Happy to answer any questions, if you have them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I just had a quick clarification. In terms of these dugouts, do they actually have…? We’ve been hearing a lot about invasive species and a lot of problems. Have there been studies done at all about any negative impacts of having standing water in farms or any issues around that?

A. Hamir: Sure. Good question. One of the things that is recommended for dugouts is that they’re aerated. We found a very simple system from Saskatchewan of a windmill that provides the aeration — kind of like a giant aquarium bubbler that’s in our pond. We have, on our own farm, a 400,000 gallon pond. It does a great job. There’s no buildup of mosquitoes.

There is one invasive that is attracted to ponds, and that is the American bullfrog. We do have a few of those that we manage ourselves. We don’t see it as a…. It’s an invasive that’s already here in the valley, so the ponds aren’t contributing to it. It’s just something that farms watch out for. You can hear them when they’re there, so it’s not difficult to know if you have them or not.

R. Leonard: You captured the question that I had. Thank you, Arzeena, for your presentation. A very specific target. So that’s good to know.

I know that in our flights over the province, we can see, when there’s farming, whether or not there are dugouts. There are also other mitigating practices that would help reduce the issues around mosquitoes or bullfrogs in terms of how they are even built.

A. Hamir: Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Arzeena, is there a total cost? You seem to have gotten some pretty specific numbers. Is there a total cost that you’ve figured out, if you did 25 percent of farms?

A. Hamir: You know, I don’t have the numbers of the total number of farms on Vancouver Island.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, it would be good for us if we were going to put in some kind of ask or whatever. If you wouldn’t mind following up with that, that would be great.

A. Hamir: I can absolutely do that. Sure.

M. Dean: Thanks. You said that it could also be used by the fire service. I’m just interested. Have you already started having those discussions with them?

A. Hamir: Yeah, we have in the Comox Valley. We have an emergency planning sort of system that’s attached to our regional government which connected with the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association to learn about how farm infrastructure could support fire — through what happened in Williams Lake and everywhere else. It was identified that the farms that have that type of water infrastructure be identified and reported to our fire services so that if they ever need to, for example, refill a tank, they know that there is a pond here or a dugout that they can pump out from. They have the equipment that is conducive to doing that. Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much. Very interesting idea. We really appreciate you coming in.

A. Hamir: Thank you. I’ll follow up on those numbers.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, please. Thank you.

Next we have Comox Valley Families for Public Education — Shannon Aldinger.

Please, if you wouldn’t mind keeping the comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, Shannon, we’d really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

[11:40 a.m.]

COMOX VALLEY FAMILIES
FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

S. Aldinger: Certainly. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am here on behalf of Comox Valley Families for Public Education. A few of you may recognize me from last year’s presentation.

I am here, once again, to seek to have the issues of consent and digital integrity added to the B.C. curriculum and, in particular, to the curriculum for students for grades 11 and 12. This would require sufficient funding to develop the necessary curriculum with the assistance of qualified sexual health educators and to train teachers throughout the province to teach these important topics or, alternatively, to fund external specialists to do it.

Despite having been recently revamped, the current curriculum still has, in my mind, three significant deficits. The first is that there’s no mandatory sexual health education for grades 11 and 12 students. All the curriculum ends in grade 10.

Secondly, the word “consent” doesn’t appear once in the curriculum. There is reference to healthy relationships, so presumably, there’s some material being taught, but from my view of the world, we need specific reference to consent to be taught consistently and repeatedly to our students.

Third, there’s no obvious curriculum content related to the interplay between sexual health and technology, and this is, of course, despite the rise in the access to and use of on-line pornography, students engaging in sexting and, of course, cyberbullying and that type of abuse.

It’s alarming to me that statistics around gender-based violence really haven’t improved in the 30-plus years since I graduated from high school. The most recent McCreary Centre report on its own B.C. adolescent health survey that was conducted in 2018 has as one of its key findings that there were no improvements in experiences of violence and that, in fact, rates of sexual abuse, dating violence and sexual harassment had increased from five years earlier.

The increase may be attributable in part to students’ increased access to on-line pornography by children at younger and younger ages. The current report is that the average age of a child’s first exposure to pornography is about 11 or 12. This is, of course, despite the fact that it’s illegal to access this for anyone under 18. That access may be intentional, or it may also be unintentional. Kids do happen to find it on-line, and we as a society, we as parents and we as an education system have to take that into account.

This access to pornography should worry us, because research has shown that adolescent exposure to pornography fosters the belief that women are sex objects and sexually submissive. It fosters an acceptance of sexual coercion and encourages and supports teenage sexual aggression.

Research has also shown that regular adolescent exposure to pornography can actually cause problems, including neurological changes, that can result in sexual dysfunction for people as young as teenagers. One of the sexual health educators on the Island recently said to me that she has already seen teenage boys come to her and describe that they cannot either get an erection or maintain an erection or have an orgasm with a partner in person. They need pornography to do that.

The experience for girls is not really a whole lot better. There’s a great author, Peggy Orenstein, who had a groundbreaking book in 2016 called Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.

She interviewed 70 young women who talked about the sexual pressure they experience, including pressure to make themselves regularly available to have sex with their boyfriends, sometimes saying that it’s just easier to get it over with at the beginning of a date rather than having it hang over them for the whole date; pressure to engage in sexual acts that the boys had seen on pornography, but they weren’t really comfortable with, and it didn’t feel good to them; and even pressure to make themselves sexually available just to friends — that that’s kind of become a norm for some circles.

They also talked about their own experiences in sex, including their preoccupation to look good, to suck in their guts and to make their breasts look more voluptuous rather than to focus on their own pleasure.

Now, we know that education is prevention. Studies all over the world show that when we teach our kids at young ages about correct terminology, they are better protected from abuse and exploitation. I see no reason why that same logic wouldn’t translate into teaching our children about consent and on-line integrity.

We already see efforts being made to educate students at the university and colleges, both in our province and federally. We had a great recent announcement, just last week, from our provincial government that it’s going to spend $760,000 towards efforts to fight sexual violence at our universities and colleges in the province. We see a similar task force at the federal level.

[11:45 a.m.]

I ask: why are we not providing the same education to our grade 11 and 12 students? Ending sexual health education in grade 10 doesn’t make a lot of sense, particularly when we know — or at least based from the McCreary Centre Society’s, again, 2018 survey — that most kids aren’t even sexually active in grade 10. By sexually active, I mean they’re not engaging in oral sex and they’re not engaging in sexual intercourse, so ending their education in grade 10 and having this gap of two years really makes no sense.

Before I wrap up, I just want to say that there’s already widespread support for this request. At its recent AGM in May, the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils unanimously passed a resolution seeking an expansion of sexual health education to include consent and on-line safety. The resolution itself, the wording of it, is the last page in your materials.

Again, it was passed unanimously. There were over 200 parent groups who voted at that conference. They represented 42 of our 60 school districts. That’s 70 percent. Unanimous support — this is education that parents want.

I also point out that it’s education that school trustees want. They passed a similar resolution at their AGM last year. This committee also included this recommendation in its report last year. It was recommendation No. 66. We’re still waiting for it to be enacted.

We thank you for your support last year, and we hope we get it again this year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We happen to have the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity.

S. Aldinger: I’m aware of that. I’m very pleased.

M. Dean: Thank you for all of your work and for coming here and presenting again. We have a whole range of presentations. To be in an age where we can have somebody like you come and talk about an area that is really quite taboo and to present such a well-researched and comprehensive proposal, I really welcome. You have my commitment to taking this forwards.

S. Aldinger: Thank you. That’s wonderful.

R. Leonard: I just wanted to say thank you for coming again, being persistent, bringing your professionalism to the discussion and making it possible for us to move forward on this.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Particularly on the technology side. I mean, there are so many impacts of digitization and the Internet. There seems to be a big catch-up going on, in terms of the speed to which technology is affecting our lives. Our children have grown up with that, things that we wouldn’t even think of as adults, because we weren’t exposed to that. They are, like you said, at 11, 12, getting exposed to things that we never were, and what does that impact?

I really appreciate that. I know a ton of work needs to be done on the effects of technology, pornography and other things on our children, so thank you very much. Were there any other comments?

S. Aldinger: I’d just add to that that consistency and direction at the provincial level would be so appreciated, rather than leaving it to be a patchwork approach by different districts, because what happens at the district level is that often they don’t want to address it at a district level, and then it simply gets left to be school by school. That creates an even wider disparity between schools and what students are getting. Of course, one of the fundamental tenets of our public education system is its universality, so all kids need this.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That bigger group that did the motion — have they presented that to the minister? Have there been some meetings at all?

S. Aldinger: Yes. We’ve sent that on as well.

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

That’s our last meeting for this particular one. If I could please have a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

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

The committee adjourned at 11:49 a.m.