The committee met at 4 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good afternoon, 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.

I’d like to begin with the recognition that our public hearing is taking place today on the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh people.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Normally, we hold the public consultations in the fall and visit different regions of the province to hear directly from British Columbians about their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget. This year we’ve moved our consultation 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 your feedback on the change.

Our consultation is based on the budget consultation paper that was released by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available at the back for anyone interested in reading it.

We began our tour last week and have just come from a public hearing in Kitimat this morning. We also invite British Columbians to provide their ideas and priorities for the next provincial budget by sending in a written submission or by filling out our 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 will be carefully considered as the committee develops its recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be in the next provincial budget. Our report will be available in late July or early August. I’d also like to thank everyone here today for taking the time to share their input.

As far as the format, I would kindly ask that everyone be respectful of the following time limits. Each presenter has five minutes to share their input, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. You’re welcome to provide in writing any information that you are not able to share in your presentation.

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

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

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

D. Clovechok: I’m Doug Clovechok. I’m the MLA for Columbia River–​Revelstoke out in the Kootenays.

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

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

N. Simons: Nicholas Simons, MLA for Powell River–​Sunshine Coast.

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

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. I’m Dan Ashton, the MLA for Penticton to Peachland.

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

Assisting us today are staff from the Parliamentary Committees Office, Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond. Also, we have Steve Weisgerber and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services, who are recording the proceedings, and of course, we have Hansard back in Victoria. I’d like to say hello to everyone back there behind the booth and thank you for all your work as well.

First up we have the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia — Annabree Fairweather and Dr. Jacqueline Holler.

Budget Consultation Presentations

CONFEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS OF B.C.

J. Holler: Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Jacqueline Holler, president of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C. — that is, CUFABC.

I’m a faculty member here in Prince George at the University of Northern B.C., on Lheidli T’enneh territory, where I’m an associate professor in the department of history and coordinator of women’s and gender studies. I’m joined today by CUFABC’s executive director, Annabree Fairweather, who has flown up from Vancouver to join me.

The confederation represents more than 5,500 faculty members at B.C.’s research-intensive universities, which include SFU, UBC, UNBC, UVic and Royal Roads. I’m there­fore speaking with the voices of thousands of faculty members, lab instructors, sessional instructors and professional librarians. We’re delighted to be with you this afternoon to offer our priorities for the 2020 budget, not all of which require new money.

[4:05 p.m.]

That said, one of the most pressing priorities for CUFABC is the chronic underfunding of post-secondary institutions in B.C. Whether measured in dollars or in percentage of per-capita GDP, B.C. lags behind other provinces, despite its robust economy. Looking at transfers in dollars — I have lovely graphs, and I won’t share those with you right now, but we can share those after — B.C. is ahead only of Ontario and Nova Scotia. Looking at percentage of per-capita GDP, B.C., at 22 percent, is behind every province but Ontario and substantially behind Quebec’s 27 percent or Newfoundland’s 35.

Stagnant funding for research universities limits B.C.’s attainment of its full potential. Research conducted at universities is crucial to solving the most significant problems we face: social, environmental and technological. Education and training conducted at universities are key to managing the looming labour shortage, which will be particularly acute in areas that require higher education. In the current term, underfunding has helped produce reliance on precarious employment contracts, which disproportionately affect members of equity-seeking groups, such as women and Indigenous faculty.

We hold the overarching view that government should fully reinvest in post-secondary education for research universities to ensure fairness in employment and to make sure that B.C. is leading the country in knowledge production and the training of highly qualified personnel.

Another critical priority for CUFA is one that, although it certainly involves financial issues, is indirectly related to the work you do in this committee. Nevertheless, it is the reality that our members are denied the right to free and fair collective bargaining under the auspices of the Public Sector Employers Council of B.C. We would urge you, in your advice to the Minister of Finance, to support free and fair collective bargaining for B.C.’s universities.

The third priority for CUFABC focuses on the partially funded graduate scholarship program, which received only $20 million of the $50 million government commitment. We’re delighted with the commitment, but we’re asking for a follow-through. We would also wish to call attention to the program’s focus on students in STEM disciplines. While we welcome efforts to increase the participation of, particularly, Indigenous and women graduate students in STEM, a narrowly targeted program will not meet the needs of our universities or the province. Many of the graduates we will need in the future, including to replace an aging civil service, will be drawn from non-STEM disciplines.

As a supervisor of more than a few humanities MAs, who are building successful careers in municipal and provincial government, I would urge you to think broadly when you complete your government’s investment in this graduate program. It is our position that a $50 million graduate program, extended to all programs, not merely to STEM, would make a remarkable difference in British Columbia’s ability to attract the very best graduate students and to retain them so that their future careers will help build B.C., rather than another province.

Our final priority is a bold redesign of the knowledge development program, or KDF. The Premier announced, last year, $125 million in new KDF funding, which is a remarkable and forward-thinking investment. As with graduate scholarships, however, almost all of the new funding went to vaguely defined tech programs.

In addition, as you probably know, the KDF requires external sponsorship, and it funds institutions and infrastructure, rather than actual research. These programs should, of course, be funded, but there is virtually no evidence supporting the position that they should be funded exclusively. To that end, we would propose to redesign the KDF. Our proposal would see the KDF dedicated to a system of arm’s-length, peer-reviewed grants for research that address the most pressing social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges facing British Columbia.

There are models within Canada that can guide this vision. I would point you to Quebec’s research funding agencies as a gold standard for a provincially funded research program that encompasses the entirety of the academic disciplines and the entirety of the problems that a province can face.

We’d be happy to discuss details of that and any other aspects of our proposals further with the committee. Thank you for your time this afternoon. I look forward to your questions.

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

R. Coleman: Not knowing the acronym, what is STEM?

J. Holler: I’m so sorry. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

R. Coleman: Thank you.

J. Holler: I should have spelled that out. That’s my fault.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Us arts people like STEAM, though.

J. Holler: STEAM. STEAM sounds so much better, yeah.

Certainly, you know…. Please don’t construe anything I said as an attack on STEM. STEM is absolutely critical to a lot of the big problems we face. No doubt about it. It’s that exclusive focus that we’re concerned about.

[4:10 p.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation and all of your work. Focusing on STEM, though, the strategy that we’re rolling out…. How much of an impact do you think that that’s going to have? Are we going to move the dial, or is it going to take a long time? What do you see in terms of women entering post-secondary and their trajectories?

J. Holler: Hmm. Well, as most of the people, or many of the people, in this room will know, women are now slightly overrepresented in higher education as a whole, but they still remain greatly underrepresented in particular areas of STEM.

As I said, we absolutely welcome efforts to get women into STEM, and those are necessary. It hasn’t happened on its own. In fact, in fields like engineering, the number of women participating, as you probably know, has declined. So that’s critical. That’s important. No quibble with that. That’s a long-term project that’s probably going to have to go on for a long time, along with efforts to get women into all kinds of forms of employment where they’re not represented, such as mining, right? Not my area, but it’s part of a broader effort.

So that’s welcome. It’s going to continue for a long time. But let’s broaden that to apply to all of the issues we’re facing now, not merely the environmental, technical, scientific.

For those of you unfamiliar with Quebec’s system, Quebec has three granting councils, all under one umbrella. One is nature and environment. One is health. One is society and culture. The criteria for applying to those change from year to year, but they’re always focused on things that are going to solve particular challenges in the province in that sector, in that area. So we’d be happy to share further information on how the Quebec system works.

N. Simons: Could we just make sure we get that? If you submit it to the committee, we’ll….

B. D’Eith (Chair): The Chair recognizes Nicholas Simons.

N. Simons: Thank you, hon. Chair, and for your indulgence in what I said there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I had just a quick question. You touched on it briefly. We’ve been hearing a lot from faculty in regards to the contract workers. I’m just wondering if you wouldn’t mind maybe expanding, from the confederation’s point of view, on that, just so that we have your view on that.

J. Holler: Certainly. I’d be delighted to. This is a national conversation. It’s not merely a provincial conversation or a research university’s conversation. It’s not even only a university conversation.

What’s happened over the course of the last 20 or so years, right across the country and certainly at our member institutions, is that there’s been an increasing reliance on short-term labour contracts for faculty. And very often, students and parents don’t even see this, because what they see is a professor at the front of the room. But that person might be on a one-semester contract. That person might be doing, in the Lower Mainland, one-semester contracts at a whole bunch of different institutions.

I could elaborate on all the harms in that, but it’s become increasingly widespread. It brings harms to, certainly, faculty ways of life, work-life balance, health, all of those kinds of things. It’s not great for students in a whole bunch of ways, including that they can’t get reference letters, often, from someone who’s a precarious faculty member. It’s not good, ultimately, for anybody, except it’s good sometimes for a bottom line that has a lot of…. You know, there are a lot of moving parts in a university budget. Everybody gets that. And sometimes it’s easier to reach for those short-term contracts to preserve your flexibility in a context of austerity or a context of stagnation, let’s say.

Our concern with it…. We have all of those concerns, but we’re very concerned, particularly and increasingly, about the effects on equity-seeking groups. What we’ve found in our data-gathering is that women and other equity-seeking groups are overrepresented among those precarious faculty. Very often…. Once you get into that group, it’s not like: “Well, I’m going to do this for a few years, and then I’m going to get a tenure-track job.” You’re off that track forever, because when the tenure-track job comes up, you’re not competitive for it.

It really is, at our member institutions, creating a kind of ghetto into which women and other equity-seeking groups are disproportionately placed.

R. Coleman: We’ve had a number of faculty associations present to us in the last seven, eight days. Some actually pay the same for their contract people as they do for their permanent people. Others have different numbers and what have you. You said at the beginning that you represent all of those in your collective group. So why haven’t you guys come up with a negotiated path to permanency for these folks? You’re in a collective agreement position. I mean, it seems to me….

[4:15 p.m.]

Bob and I have talked about this. We’ve had different faculty that we’ve heard that have been doing something for a long time and finally got into a permanent job. Why isn’t there, in your side of this industry, similar to what a teacher does…? A teacher comes out of university, can get on a TOC list. They can build into longer-term and, eventually, into full-time positions.

It seems to be vacant in your position of higher learning. Can you explain to me why? Some folks say that this has been going on for 30 years, so why in that 30-year period hasn’t your own organization got to some kind of a proposal on this?

J. Holler: The first thing I’ll say is that we have all…. Now, we don’t bargain as one unit. We bargain as five distinct members with their own internal associations. So we don’t have coordinated or shared bargaining.

R. Coleman: And that’s just the research universities, right?

J. Holler: That’s the research universities. Now, that said, all of our members have attempted, to varying degrees, to put forward proposals on this. It’s extremely difficult to bargain. I refer to my earlier comment.

Now, one of the challenges in making something happen at the research universities that’s comparable to, say, what could happen in the schools is that we have a merit-driven culture in which we have a national and international job market for every job that comes up. When we post a position for an assistant professor at UNBC, we will get applications from all over — many bright, shiny things in those applications.

If what you’re trying to do is feed precarious faculty members into that process and the principle that, say, the institution stands on is one of merit — we must have the most meritorious person at all times — that’s not a pathway that most precarious faculty members are going to be able to take, precisely because they’ve been on these short-term contracts.

We have tried to bargain those mechanisms. They’re complicated. I mean, I agree with you that collective bargaining is a big part of this picture. And the lack of funding. Employers’ need to manage increasingly stagnant or even shrinking budgets means that that’s the least attractive option — injecting money into that, right now, pretty cheap and flexible workforce.

R. Coleman: But if you’re advertising internationally, surely, in British Columbia in part-time faculty, there are people equally qualified to take those jobs in British Columbia — and not have to go into the budget to bring somebody in from outside of the country, when you’re trying to balance it on the back of, let’s say, people who are in a part-time position.

J. Holler: Yeah. At the research universities, we are a merit-driven workplace. We don’t talk about “qualified enough.” We talk about who has the most outstanding research profile when we look at applicants.

I’m not saying that nothing can be done in collective bargaining, and we’re all trying to deal with this in collective bargaining, but it’s extremely challenging in the context that we bargain in and the context in which we’re funded.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re way over time. Thank you very much. We appreciate it — actually shedding some further light on this, as we’ve been hearing people over the last week or so.

Thanks for your presentation. Thanks for flying up.

J. Holler: Thank you, all, for your attention and for your great questions. We’re happy to share information at any time.

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

Next up we have Prince George Chamber of Commerce — Todd Corrigall.

T. Corrigall: Would you like me to hop right in?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, please.

PRINCE GEORGE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

T. Corrigall: Thank you so much for welcoming me here today. To the Chair, to the members, thanks for coming out. We certainly appreciate it.

My regrets. My board president, Lorna Wendling, and vice-president of finance are unable to attend today. They do send their regrets.

What I would like to talk to today is the employers health tax. Back on May 29, I had an opportunity to travel down to Victoria to meet with the Liberal caucus and some senior bureaucrats that were appointed through Minister James’s office to discuss some results of a survey that we put out to our members. The Prince George Chamber of Commerce represents over 700 small and medium businesses and some large enterprises here in Prince George. From those responses, some of that information coming back was quite staggering.

At the risk of pushing ideas and policy decisions, I’m going to preface the numbers by saying that we’re not saying: “Scrap the EHT.” What we’re saying is please take the time to engage with the B.C. Chamber and the regional chambers and get a better understanding of what these impacts look like and how we can build a smarter EHT going forward.

[4:20 p.m.]

From these results, 70 percent of the businesses in our region are going to be impacted by the EHT, and 36 percent of those businesses are considering staffing reductions to mitigate these costs. We’re talking directly about taking money out of the economy, which is very, very challenging. If those impacts continue down, the residual impacts across our economy are going to be quite substantial.

One of the comments that we were hearing back was: “They have to increase rates.” Fees, services, goods — everything is going to be going up. If we’re seeing attrition in the employment market while the costs of goods and services are going up, it’s basic economics. It’s very, very challenging and will be irreparably damaging to communities similar to Prince George — again, business closures that are moving ahead.

I want to be clear. It’s not a race to the bottom or to the top of the meter numbers, depending on how you look at it. But we’re certainly seeing tax rates in our neighbouring provinces being reduced substantially.

With that new west partnership trade agreement that’s been in place for a very, very long time — and it’s a great agreement for western provinces — it does make it easier for a business to relocate to Alberta while still doing business in B.C. So there are challenges of businesses that can move simply across the Rockies, maintain their business functions in B.C. and get a much more reduced tax rate for their corporations.

Again, increasing costs of services and goods. When we look at the granular numbers from what those impacts look like, it was quite wide-ranging, as you can imagine. We’ve got many different business sizes that are here. The lowest here that we were seeing was about a $5,000 impact to their business. The maximum that we were seeing was $1 million. This was an entirely confidential survey that was hosted by an external agency, so we have no control over who responded and what the size of those businesses are and where those impacts come from. Those are simply the numbers that we’re seeing.

One of the biggest issues that came out of this is what we’re going to classify as sort of the unintended consequences. That’s not-for-profits, how they operate, and the sports and community organizations that are here.

We had respondents that said they’re seeing their donations and their giving being reduced substantially, because corporations and businesses that are being hit with this new tax are having to take that money from somewhere, whether that’s, again, terminating employees, lessening hours, lowering pay or full-on shuttering. Their community giving is now sliding. The local hockey team, the local baseball team, is seeing money withdrawn from sponsorship opportunities. Local not-for-profit groups are also seeing that happen.

On a related but unrelated note, what I wanted to close with was we’ve seen the news today that TMX has been approved. We’ve seen the news over the last few weeks of curtailments, mill closures — things that are really driving the economies outside of the Lower Mainland.

It’s important to note that B.C. is built on two economies, and that’s tourism and responsible, safe resource development, which we’ve been doing for years. It’s important that everybody get behind these initiatives so that we’re continuing to grow our economy, continuing to invest in post-secondary education and considering to bring these opportunities forward so that we can ensure that we have a very safe, secure business environment.

I look forward to your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Todd.

Any questions from the members?

N. Simons: Not to pick a fight, but the average family is going to be saving 1,800 bucks a month on the elimination of the most regressive form of taxation the province had left, the only province with a Medical Services Plan premium. I wouldn’t say that that’s irrelevant in this discussion, because the economy is really people. The people who work in these communities are people who otherwise would be paying that.

Yeah, we want to invest in schools. We want to invest in our health care system. We need the money to come from somewhere. I think eliminating a regressive tax and replacing it with something that’s progressive…. Perhaps it will look like every other form of taxation and undergo changes over time. But I think we have to consider the impact of saving families quite a bit of money that way.

T. Corrigall: If I may, MLA Simons, again, we’re not saying: “Repeal this tax.” What we’re saying is: “Let’s engage in a dialogue on how we come up with a smarter EHT.” This is a message that’s been driven by the B.C. chamber, that’s been driven by the member chambers across the province. There have been resolutions passed through the B.C. chamber AGM. What we’re looking for is a seat at the table to have a discussion on how we save the business community.

[4:25 p.m.]

N. Simons: You say that donations are down. Is that anecdotal? Do you have any evidence to suggest that charities in this region are down because of the EHT?

T. Corrigall: Well, we have responses to the survey that are indicating that. As I stated, this was hosted….

N. Simons: You don’t know who they are, though.

T. Corrigall: I have an idea who they are, but this was done in confidence, and we will respect that confidence.

N. Simons: Sure.

R. Coleman: At the risk of a debate breaking out…. Nicholas and I could talk about this later. There’s nothing progressive about this tax. It’s just another tax. What I’m seeing — actually, this isn’t anecdotal — is the reduction of the level of group plans of dentists. Dental is being dropped from group plans to try and find savings to meet the EHT for business, because the flow-down — these guys were paying some of this before — is now to the bottom line. They are, quite frankly, all….

I know three businesses that have actually cut back on their sponsorships and stuff already, right in my own community, that I met with this last week at a round table. It isn’t…. There’s nothing…. He calls it, for one, a regressive tax. This is not a progressive tax, in my opinion. But we’ll talk about it over dinner.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Did you want to respond to that at all, Todd?

T. Corrigall: Again, I’m in agreement. This is what we’re hearing from this survey. This is what our members have expressed to us. These are the conversations that you have in the coffee shops. Yes, somewhat anecdotal; yes, somewhat factual from survey responses.

R. Leonard: We won’t get into the debate about it at this point. However, I do have some questions. You said you went to Victoria and spoke with the Liberals and with some senior people in the Ministry of Finance. I haven’t seen the survey. I guess, digging a little deeper into it, the question I have is…. You say that the impact has been $5,000 to $1 million in costs. Is that this year, where the businesses are paying half of the MSP as well as the EHT? Or is it after this year, when it’s solely the EHT? Does it take into account the 50 percent savings in MSP before the EHT was introduced the year before?

T. Corrigall: If I may, that’s a great question. This has been the results of what they’re feeling currently. I think, then, the challenge with that is certainly that we are in a double-dip year. There are going to be some challenges in getting through this, but I think it’s also the unknown of going forward, what becomes of the EHT and if there are any piggyback charges that land on that. The businesses don’t feel like there’s a concrete answer, moving beyond the double-dip year, on what that’s going to look like. This is a process that we will continue to re-examine as it moves forward so that we are bringing forward factual data.

To your point for the senior staff, we did provide it to Chris Dawkins, who is the acting assistant DM of policy and legislation, and she does have the granular detail.

R. Leonard: Okay. Just to clarify, you may call one year a double-dip. What do you call the year before when there was the half savings on MSP and no EHT?

T. Corrigall: We have no nomenclature for it.

R. Leonard: Okay. I’d say that’s a savings. But that’s part of our discussion later.

R. Coleman: Yeah. But not every business was paying MSP.

R. Leonard: No, that’s true.

D. Clovechok: Thanks, Todd. It’s just interesting…. Does the chamber have any data yet that would demonstrate, as you say, that businesses are going to have to recalculate the way that they do business to pay this tax? That may, where I come from, already looking at layoffs…. Have you job loss because of this, or getting business owners back into the business more than they have been in the business? Is there any data that would support that from your area — that businesses are actually going to start gearing down in order to survive this?

T. Corrigall: Thank you, MLA Clovechok. To this point, we have not seen any of that data coming forward, but as I mentioned to MLA Leonard, this is a bit of a process now. We need to get through and better understand exactly what’s happening, exactly what those impacts are and how resonant they’re going to be so that the information that we’re bringing back to government and to these committees is factual to the date.

Anecdotally, we’ve certainly heard business owners saying: “I need to get more engaged now in the day-to-day operations of my business so that I can free up some of those staffing costs to pay for this.” But in being 100 percent factual, we don’t have broad data on that.

D. Clovechok: Just as a supplementary to that, would it be a safe assumption, then — you may not have an answer for this — that the B.C. chamber may actually take upon itself an impact study once this is…?

[4:30 p.m.]

T. Corrigall: It is my understanding that the B.C. chamber is in the process of developing some EHT-specific data sets, surveys and materials that will be going out there.

D. Clovechok: That’s good to know. I’ll look forward to seeing that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m just curious. What percentage of surveyed businesses have no EHT? There is a $500,000 payroll exemption — up to $500,000. I was just curious what sorts of numbers.

T. Corrigall: We weren’t getting that granular with the information. It was a broad-stroke survey of the membership, which is representative of over 700 businesses.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So none of them said they pay no EHT?

T. Corrigall: You know, from a comment perspective, I would have to really kind of get into the comments. I believe, off the top of my head, I saw two that said it does not impact them.

Again, if we go back to stat No. 1, 70 percent of the respondents are going to be impacted by it, so you can extrapolate that out.

B. D’Eith (Chair): How many businesses did you have surveyed?

T. Corrigall: It went out to all 700 members. We received a 14 percent response.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, 14 percent. So of the 80 or 90 or whatever that responded, none of them paid zero?

T. Corrigall: As I said, two to three that I can remember off the top of my head. The granular detail — ADM Dawkins has that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I was just curious, percentage-wise. Thank you very much, Todd. I really appreciate your time.

Next up we have College of New Caledonia — Henry Reiser and Tara Szerencsi.

Hi, Henry. How are you?

H. Reiser: Nice to see you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, nice to see you too. If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes.

H. Reiser: That’s what I’m going to do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m going to have to get a little bit more tough on everybody. Otherwise, we’re not going to get through this.

COLLEGE OF NEW CALEDONIA

H. Reiser: Well, everybody, thank you very much for giving us the time to present to your committee. I’m just going to skip through the first page. All of that is just background. We have six campuses. We serve an area of 120,000 kilometres, and we’ve been in business…. We’re celebrating now 50 years, and that’ll start in September.

I know we’re to ask for three things, our key priorities. We have one key priority, and that key priority is for a new health sciences clinical centre.

We have a long history in delivering health care and related programs. We offer programs in dental assisting, dental hygiene, health care assistant, med lab technology, medical office assistant, medical radiography, northern collaborative baccalaureate in nursing, practical nurse and diagnostic medical sonography.

In 2018, the B.C. Labour Market Outlook stated that health care will see the largest increase in job openings in the next ten years as B.C.’s population continues to age. The industry will account for 16.4 percent of total job openings throughout the province. CNC was recently asked by Northern Health to invest in a pharmacy tech program, rehab assistant and MRI tech programs. However, due to physical space limitations, we’re unable to do that at this time.

These programs have been highlighted in the provincial skills gap as critical needs in our health care system, especially for the north. CNC supports a philosophy of growing our own graduates for the health care system, as we strongly believe, and evidence supports, that students who live and study in the north will work in the north. With our newest health program, diagnostic medical sonography, we’re giving preferences, during the application process, to students residing in the north.

Currently health science programs at CNC are housed in a significant portion of the main campus building, which is about 50 years old. Most of these classes are held in the 100 and 400 blocks, which are aging, deteriorating and, in general, beyond their useful life. To expand the health sciences program and better meet the labour market demands, CNC envisions a health science clinical centre to be constructed at the Prince George campus. The building is currently estimated to require 7,800 square metres over multiple floors to facilitate all CNC health science programs, which are currently scattered throughout the campus.

[4:35 p.m.]

The centre would also include space for clinic out-patient services related to current and potential new CNC health science programs. This would enrich the applied educational opportunities for CNC’s health sciences students and would also allow for clinical student placements on campus, which is a desire of both Northern Health and the entire northern B.C. region to meet the shortfall of allied health training.

We’ve done this successfully in our dental studies program, where community members receive dental services here at CNC. Expanding clinical out-patient services to other health sciences programs would allow CNC faculty to continue to practise their skills and maintain clinical competency while guiding student practice.

Clinical out-patient services at CNC would increase the capacity of Northern Health services and would be a wonderful asset to the community as a whole. As of last year, there was a 17-month wait for a non-urgent ultrasound. If this service was available at CNC, then the wait-list would be decreased, students would be provided with clinical placements closer to home, and faculty could remain current in their professional practice. This type of service would also fit the concept of interdisciplinary learning and service that is the trend now in health care and education. Community members would have one-stop shopping for their out-patient delivery. I think it’s OPD.

Health needs. The net impact would not only better education but better health care provision in the north. The new construction would reduce energy consumption and maintenance requirements. We propose to build using step 4 energy code. A health sciences clinical centre at CNC could even support the provincial emergency program for use as a mass emergency medical triage when other provincial facilities may become overwhelmed. When we had the fire two years ago, our nursing lab was fully equipped and capable to act as a real-time care facility. A health sciences clinical centre at CNC Prince George campus will fulfil the college strategic pillars of student success, culture of service and community engagement.

The 100 Block of CNC’s main Prince George campus building currently has a facilities condition index of 0.58, with a requirement index of 0.61. The 400 Block has a facilities condition of 0.54, with a requirement index of 0.55. Ultimately, these deteriorating assets will need to be replaced. We believe that a health science centre for the north would best suit that need.

Now for the best part. The estimated budget for a health sciences centre is $70 million.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a quick question before we go to members’ questions. Is that a $70 million ask of the provincial government? Or is that the cost?

H. Reiser: That is the cost of the building.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is there a breakdown of how the college would anticipate funding that? Is there a split? I’d just like to know a bit more detail.

H. Reiser: Right. What’s happening is that we are developing a business case for the Ministry of Advanced Ed. We know that is a significant ask, and we will be looking for donors from the community to offset some of those costs.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thanks, Henry.

Questions?

Mitzi, you had a question.

M. Dean: Yes. Well, you asked half of it. Thanks, Bob.

Thank you for your presentation. What about the ongoing operational costs then? You’re asking for $70 million. Is that a one-off capital cost, and then the institution will be able to absorb all of their future operating costs?

T. Szerencsi: We’ll review that within the business case itself. I think that we’ll be able to absorb most of the additional cost. What we’re talking about is replacing two buildings that cost us a lot to maintain — heat and cool and so on — with a building that will be more efficient and, in theory, cost us less.

Overall, college budgets have been stagnant or even reduced over years, so we’ve become adept at accommodating, and we would do our best. We definitely would be reviewing that within our business case and work with our ministry on that.

H. Reiser: Further to your question, though, MLA Dean, is that we have existing programs that have operational support in them already. It’s the new programs that are being proposed that may have some additional operating support, as all new programs do.

[4:40 p.m.]

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. I was going to say congratulations on your 50th anniversary, but then it came with the other side. The flip side is that it’s also 50-year-old infrastructure that you’re trying to deal with.

H. Reiser: Right. Yes.

R. Leonard: I’m just wondering. In the numbers that you have here…. I don’t pretend to know what they actually are other than it looks like they’re less than they should be. Have you been dealing with deferred maintenance with your buildings, or has that been something that you’ve been able to cover through the years? Not at all? Partial?

H. Reiser: No, we’ve been receiving some directed capital dollars from the ministry to support, but there’s significant deferred maintenance, particularly in 100 Block and 400 Block. Those are the oldest buildings on the campus.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any other members?

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

H. Reiser: Thank you, everybody.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Nice to see you again.

Next up we have Physiotherapists for Northern Communities. There are a number of presenters — Christina Conrad, Hilary Crowley…. Oh, just the two. So who’s here?

H. Crowley: Hilary and Christina. Apologies from Terry and Elizabeth. They couldn’t make it today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem. If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes.

H. Crowley: Yes. We’ll be quite short, actually.

PHYSIOTHERAPISTS FOR
NORTHERN COMMUNITIES

H. Crowley: I’ve come before your committee several times, always with the same request. This time we’re coming with a big thank-you. We are Christina Conrad and Hilary Crowley, representing the recently graduated and recently retired physiotherapists of northern B.C.

We want to thank the government for announcing their commitment to the northern physiotherapy program for 20 physiotherapy seats to be established at UNBC in September 2020. We’re thrilled with this news. This program at UNBC will address the needs of our rural, northern and Indigenous communities and will facilitate the recruitment and retention of therapists by training them where the need is greatest.

Our previous requests to this committee highlighted the needs for this program, such as the shortage of physiotherapists per capita in the north, geographic challenges to therapy access, long waiting lists for pediatric intervention, inadequate level of health services for increasing industrial development and ensuring the mobility of our aging population.

C. Conrad: Having more physiotherapists in the north will reduce health care costs by, for example, reducing length of stay and readmission to hospitals; reduction of acute and chronic pain through therapy, thereby alleviating the need for ER visits and medications, including opioids; and triaging patients with joint pain, minimizing the need for surgical interventions.

We are asking this committee to recommend the funds be set aside for the joint UNBC-UBC physiotherapy program, as announced by the Hon. Minister Melanie Mark on May 24, 2019. This will enable UNBC to tailor the program to meet the needs of the northern, rural and Indigenous communities and also research health issues in the north.

The joint program will lead to graduates receiving UNBC-UBC degrees, and this uniquely tailored program will ensure that graduates are ready to meet the needs of our communities and will be well prepared to work in emerging roles, such as primary care, chronic pain management, telehealth and other collaborative practices.

We wish to sincerely thank the hon. minister for this commitment to the north and also you guys, for your time today. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Can I just clarify? Appreciate that. It’s nice to hear. But just in terms of the…. Is there an ask, in terms of this joint program?

H. Crowley: Yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re pleased that there are 20 seats but…. Are those seats not joint seats? Could you maybe just elaborate for the members on that a bit so we understand?

H. Crowley: Sure. The hon. minister, in her announcement, said that this would lead towards a joint program between UBC and UNBC. When other speakers spoke at the announcement, they didn’t mention the joint program, and they mentioned the UBC program coming to UNBC. We’d just like to make sure that it becomes a joint program. We understand that it may start as a distributed program, like the northern medical program is.

[4:45 p.m.]

The minister did say…. UNBC really wants and we really want it to be a joint program. So UBC and UNBC, together, run the program, rather than UBC running the program and just renting the space at UNBC. We need UNBC to be able to tailor the program to meet the needs in the north.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. Thank you.

R. Coleman: Hilary and Christina, in your remarks, you mentioned the uniqueness of physiotherapy for northern and remote communities. Can you tell me what’s unique about physiotherapy that changes as you get to Prince George and into rural B.C. versus physiotherapy, let’s say, in the Fraser Valley or the Okanagan, for instance?

H. Crowley: One thing is distance — really difficult. You’ve got back pain, and you live at Bear Lake about 70 kilometers north of here. You drive into Prince George and get treatment, and you’re helped. By the time you get home, it’s all come back again. So distance is a huge thing.

R. Coleman: That’s the patient side. Is there a uniqueness in how you treat differently here?

C. Conrad: For myself, I have to kind of be a jack of all trades, where a lot of my colleagues in Vancouver are able to find clinical specialties and special interest areas. In my practice area, I see everything.

R. Coleman: So you have to be more of a generalist.

C. Conrad: Absolutely. I also have to be able to practise in different types of settings than you might see in Vancouver or the Lower Mainland — clinics that might not have all the equipment that you would like or travelling to different settings or doing things via video conference.

R. Coleman: Thank you.

C. Conrad: No problem.

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

Okay. Well, thank you very much for coming, and thank you for clarifying that. We really appreciate it.

Before we call up the next person, I did want to mention that we have MLA Shirley Bond from Prince George–​Valemount here. Thank you very much for attending. We really appreciate you being here. That’s great.

Next up we have The Exploration Place — Tracy Calogheros.

Welcome, Tracy.

THE EXPLORATION PLACE

T. Calogheros: Hello, everyone. Hadih. Welcome to Prince George, and thanks so much for coming up to join us up here in the north. I often joke that beyond Hope and past Merritt is all a matter of perspective, so welcome to the good part of the province.

I am with The Exploration Place Museum and Science Centre. I’ve been with that organization for 25 years. I have been the CEO there since 2003. I am also the president of the Canadian Association of Science Centres and have been for over a year now, and just re-elected for a second term. I’m also sitting on the Fraser Basin Council as a director. I’m not looking for work. I’m just sharing that with you as a means of letting you know that, at least on the topic that I’m about to address, I do sort of know what I’m talking about.

Critical thinking. A lot of the presentations that you guys are hearing about are around what we’re going to do for the future. They’re very specific. They’re looking at very small areas where funding is needed to target what every speaker addresses as future needs, broad needs.

I’m here to tell you that critical thinking is the basis for all of that, and that is stemming from early education. It is working its way through our informal learning centres. An earlier speaker talked about the lack of funding going into the humanities. I would argue that at our earliest education levels, through elementary schools and secondary schools, the humanities have been slashed for a long time.

Museums and science centres are located in virtually every community across the country and, certainly, in British Columbia. As a former chair for the British Columbia Museums Association, I know that we have in excess of 300 museums, art galleries, science centres, zoos and aquaria in the province.

The Ontario Science Centre has just hit its 50th anni </presentor> </presentation> <minutesBreak/> <presentation> <presentor> versary, and it did a major study looking at public trust. Public trust and critical thinking go hand in hand. When they did their surveys of Canadians, what came to the fore is that museums and science centres topped the list. We are more trusted by the public than universities, professors, politicians — sorry, guys — certainly more than the media and definitely more than industry.

Our organizations are the place that citizens are going when they’re looking for broad, unbiased information. It’s where they’re bringing their children, it’s where they’re bringing their visitors, and it’s where they’re spending a significant amount of time.

[4:50 p.m.]

At my own organization, we have members that are coming to visit us three and four times a week. We have children in our licensed facilities for daycare and after-school care. We have in excess of 600 hours a year with these kids in our care. So we have the opportunity to shape minds, shape thinking and reach far into families in an area where trust really becomes the basis for that.

Critical thinking, then, is all part of having that hand in the humanities and also having a hand in STEAM. I appreciated the reference earlier to the arts folks liking to have that “A” in STEM — so science, technology, engineering, arts and math. When you bring them all together, that really is where the magic happens, and that is what’s going to completely prepare Canadian citizens for this century and the next.

Museums and science centres are largely non-profits, charities and mom-and-pop operations that are running on a shoestring. My own organization has in excess of 40 staff at the moment. We have a $2 million budget. Out of that budget, $1.2 million is salaries. So I’m running an entire program on $800,000 a year, and we are performing the function of a northern provincial museum. We have First Nations collections. We host in excess of one million objects, artifacts, documents, and all of that is within a class A centre.

I have to spend an awful lot of my time, and my management team’s time, chasing project dollars, hoping that we’re going to be able to find the funds necessary to be able to keep the doors open, introduce a new program and pilot a program in one year that then will find funding and attract attendance in subsequent years.

Now, we are blessed that we have been able to organize and negotiate a rolling five-year funding agreement with our regional district. About 35 percent of our annual operating budget comes from the Fraser–Fort George regional district. I can tell you that is the envy of my colleagues across the country, because it simply doesn’t exist anywhere else. That small piece of core multi-year funding is what has allowed us to really build projects that are taking us into the future. We’ve won national and international awards as well as provincial and local.

What I’d like to tell you is that we need to rethink how we are disbursing those funds that we do have available to us on provincial and federal levels. Rather than asking charities of all stripes — but I’m speaking specifically about museums and science centres, zoos and aquaria — to continually come back to the table seeking funding for this small project that happens to chase the latest whim…. It isn’t what’s actually necessary when we’re talking about building minds for the future.

There’s a project that I’ll use as an example, and then I’ll pause for any questions you may have. Symbiosis is a joint project between Science World and The Exploration Place that was funded about a year and a half ago now and is coming to the end of its first round of funding. I do believe they’re coming back looking for additional funds. This program is taking STEAM into every community across British Columbia. Exploration Place is the northern hub; Science World is doing the southern piece of the province. So everything north of Williams Lake is the Exploration Place’s area of purview.

We are subject to what Science World is able to fundraise and what they then disburse to us for the northern components. I would encourage you, when you are looking at any of the kinds of funding where you’re seeking to reach into families, when you’re seeking to influence minds, when you’re helping to develop a population that’s going to be able to think critically…. Whether it’s dealing with fake news or trying to assess the value of a pipeline project, you need a basis in science for that, and you need the ability to take what you’re learning on the scientific side and extrapolate out of that and then apply the humanities to the thinking around it.

We do work in reconciliation. We do work in science. We do work with early learning. There aren’t any other organizations anywhere in our country — or in North America, I would argue — that are addressing so many components of an individual citizen’s life in a place where that individual citizen feels confident in the information that they’re getting, where they feel welcome, regardless of ethnicity or background or socioeconomic status. I’m telling you that our museums and our science centres are underfunded on longer-term agreements that allow them to really take those dollars and turn them into something that’s valuable and useful.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Coming from the non-profit sector, I get it.

Questions?

R. Leonard: Thanks very much for your presentation. What’s whipping around in my head is…. I’ve met with some students who have concerns around climate change, and they’re talking about where they turn to for valid information that they can trust. So hearing you speak about that in a way that’s about engaging younger people as well as the general population is quite exciting.

[4:55 p.m.]

I’m wondering where…. You talk about chasing project dollars. Where do you get your funding? And then the question comes in terms of that notion of trust. Do you have an accreditation process? Is there an oversight body for your sector?

T. Calogheros: Well, there’s the British Columbia Museums Association within the province. That organization doesn’t have an accreditation, necessarily, and they have some ties, through B.C. Arts Council, to peer-reviewed funding for organizations across the province. But there is no structure in place that actually looks at accreditation or funding.

You have whoever happens to be able to, off the side of their desk, participate in the British Columbia Museums Association Council then doing their best to come before the provincial government and argue, on an advocacy basis, for why. I guess I’m doing some of that work here right now, even though I’m a former president. I’m not on the council at the moment.

For the Canadian Association of Science Centres, similar sort of situation. It’s run mainly by CEOs of science centres from across the country with one staff person. So trying to put together any kind of formal accreditation is pretty impossible. The Canadian Museums Association has come a little bit further there. But again, their ties are mostly to the federal government. Generally speaking, they hive operational dollars off the top of Young Canada Works or summer career placement.

British Columbia — now I’m going back to the ’90s — used to do a student tuition grant to non-profits where students that then worked in the various non-profits of all sectors were able to access student tuition grants that would allow them to then attend post-secondary. It was a really popular program. It was well subscribed. It was done out sometime in the ’90s, I think. It was a long time back. Those sorts of creative approaches to finding ways to get money into organizations that they know they can count on are really important.

I’m on the hunt for operational dollars. We are a B.C. Arts Council operational client, which means that we access about $120,000 a year directly from the B.C. Arts Council. I get some of my funding annually from B.C. gaming. But in all of those cases…. The Arts Council note is two years rolling funding. Gaming is still single-year.

It becomes really tough when you’re trying to write a budget in September for the following year, yet the programs we’re building are five, ten and 15 years. We’re starting with our shortest visitors and trying to work them all the way through their secondary experience and into post-secondary, because they don’t decide at 18 that they want to be an engineer. That decision is made when they’re a little person who is being exposed to all these various levels of science.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a quick clarification for you, Tracy. You’d said that you would like to see a different way of funding. Could you just briefly say how you would like to see that? For example, do you think…? We’ve heard a call for gaming, for example, to have it an arm’s-length or some sort of different process and multi-year. Is that sort of what you’re asking for? What specifically are you asking for?

T. Calogheros: Money.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s money. I get that. I understand that, Tracy. But I mean….

T. Calogheros: B.C. Arts Council.

B. D’Eith (Chair): It’s how B.C. Arts Council funding is and then more long-term, multi-year funding?

T. Calogheros: I think you’ve got the structure in B.C. Arts Council. Quite often, arts, heritage and culture wind up lumped in with sport, tourism, industry. I mean, it’s the longest names in the world. Every government does it. My argument is that that arts, culture and heritage function is actually really core to all of the other work that we’re trying to do as a society, that unless we anchor people in it and properly resource the Arts Council….

I would suggest looking long and hard at the Arts Council and its level of funding and really focusing and targeting dollars there that can be significant in terms of multi-year operational dollars that allow the individual operations in each community to best utilize that funding. It isn’t project money. There are B.C. Arts Council project grants as well. But that core operating funding…. If you’re not an operating client, you don’t qualify for the project funding.

I guess that speaks a little to your accreditation question. If they vet you and it’s peer reviewed, you could certainly vest more money there and feel confident that it’s going to go to the organizations that can best put it to use.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Did you see any additional funding from the increase in funding to B.C. Arts Council over the last years?

T. Calogheros: We accessed…. I have $80,000 annually. That’s the number we’ve been at for a long time. So out of a $2 million budget, that gives you a sense of the percentage. We did access an additional $30,000 in enhanced capacity funding to hire an Indigenous curator for two years.

Again, it’s great funding, but it’s, quite frankly, a drop in the bucket when you’re talking about the amount of work that needs to be done and the crisis that we’re facing around public trust and the ability to apply critical thought to evidence-based decision-making.

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

[5:00 p.m.]

Next up we have the United Way of Northern British Columbia. We have Trista Spencer here, and we have Sarrah Storey, who’s going to be on the conference line.

Are you there, Sarrah?

S. Storey: I’m here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

UNITED WAY OF NORTHERN B.C.

T. Spencer: Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for having us here to speak today. Welcome to Prince George.

I am Trista Spencer. I’m the operations manager for United Way of Northern B.C. I’d like to introduce to you bc211 today. Sarrah Storey, on the line, is my colleague. She’ll be speaking about Better at Home and how they’re connected and working with us at United Way.

So bc211’s vision is to strengthen communities by connecting people with the help that they need. As a free information and referral service, bc211 achieves this by enabling access to community, government and social services through its on-line and Dial 2-1-1 options. With over 15,000 records, including 1,200 Indigenous listings, this resource is comprehensive, considering our breadth of needs and cultures across the province.

And bc211.ca is an on-line platform for social service resource and referral information, already enabled throughout B.C. Like a search engine for social services, bc211.ca allows users to search for information related to their area of need. For example, if you’re in Prince George and are having challenges finding employment, you would go and search “employment” and “Prince George,” and a listing, large to small, of all the resources available in the area would come up on your screen. This allows the user to access information in a very confidential and convenient way.

Access to a phone service is an essential need for those seeking help. The ability to speak with a trained specialist to get the right direction toward the right service is integral for success and often more efficient to the user. Users can contact bc211 by simply dialling 211 on their phone, just like other widely recognized services like 911 and 811. With 80 percent of calls answered in under 20 seconds, the responsive nature of the service makes it a smart choice for people to use.

With over 160 languages, including 11 Indigenous, this phone service is very inclusive for our diverse population. However, the Dial 2-1-1 service is only available in the southern part of the province, leaving a gap in services in the north.

While the world around us shifts to a self-serve model, there are many around our province who may be unable to use the bc211.ca option. With an aging population and a great deal of our remote communities throughout northern B.C. not having the connectivity required to make an on-line platform an effective resource, the need for Dial 2-1-1 is great. Imagine if you could only access 911 through the Internet.

While the infrastructure already exists, making the activation of Dial 2-1-1 a quick and simple task, funding is required to bring this part of the service to the north. At only 42 cents per person per year to enable this 24-7, 365-days-a-year service, we are working hard to remove this barrier. Since bc211.ca launched in northern B.C. in 2016, United Way of Northern B.C. has taken money out of programs on the ground in our communities to fund this needed resource.

With the pressures on our emergency and health care systems, it’s important that we identify new systems and resources that can alleviate some of the strain, and 211 answers that call by allowing people to seek out the assistance they need without having to utilize services like 911. E-Comm 911 reports that for every 100 legitimate emergency calls to 911, another 150 to 200 calls are classified as non-emergent. In other words, almost two-thirds of the calls to 911 are not for fire, police or ambulance.

What do we need to get the service in the north? We need the government to step in and assist with funding to ensure that equitable services are available in northern B.C. and across the province. From our at-risk youth to young families who are struggling, adults seeking employment or financial assistance, or our seniors who are struggling with necessary services or feeling isolated, bc211 can help.

To speak further in supporting our seniors, I’d like to introduce Sarrah Storey, on the phone.

S. Storey: Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on the phone. I know this is a little different, but I’ll get through this really quickly.

The Better at Home program, as many of you know, has been running for around six years right now. In 2017, we completed over 180,000 services alone that have helped seniors age in place and overcome social isolation. They have truly helped seniors, some of whom would not be where they are today without the help they receive from the many Better at Home sites, which also provide assistance on many other levels.

[5:05 p.m.]

As you can see to the right, the service distribution list shows many services received. The sites also do something not shown, and that is working on finding other agencies and health services, seeking out other supports to help those that need it. The Better at Home program serves almost 75 communities now, which includes the new intakes. There are about 40 communities on the wait-list right now that we know of.

Our seniors in north-central B.C. face many challenges while they age in place. Some include having pets they will not leave to go into a care home, homes they cannot clean, yards they cannot maintain, appointments they cannot get to because of the cost of transportation or because they can no longer drive.

Many seniors need these services because of age, physical limitations and health reasons. Some of those limitations include things we take for granted each day, like lifting a vacuum, bringing in wood for the winter to keep warm, plowing a driveway, filling out forms, fixing a broken lightbulb with a ladder, mowing grass, getting to specialists’ appointments, affording a hotel while at medical appointments for surgery, finding home supports after surgery or just bending down to clean out their stove or fridge.

The best part about the Better at Home program is that seniors can age in place, close to their friends and family, while keeping their livelihoods, pets and dignity longer than if they needed to go on to an assisted living facility.

One of the main issues for north-central B.C. seniors is that not all are technologically competent, have access to Wi-Fi or have access to supports. They don’t always know where to look for supports in larger or smaller centres, and this seems to be consistent. Many agencies don’t always know where to turn to, either.

Our ask for you today is that you fund bc211 in our area of north-central B.C. so that all seniors, their families and service providers can find services in one place or with one call. The Better at Home program relieves pressure on the medical system, the seniors housing crisis and helps seniors who are dealing with social isolation. In turn, pressure is relieved on the entire system, including 911, 811, local health authorities and agencies. As the Better at Home program provides ease with aging, so does 211, with your help.

Thank you for listening to us talk so fast. I appreciate that a lot. We got it done.

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

R. Coleman: When we were in Kitimat earlier today, there was a poster for 211 in their community centre in Kitimat. So I guess, maybe, the service is spotty. But I understand that 211 also houses VictimLink, at a cost of about $1.2 million that’s paid into VictimLink. How does someone in Prince George access VictimLink?

T. Spencer: Through 211.

R. Coleman: Through 211…? How do they…? The presentation we had is that 211 was basically co-located with VictimLink, and it was part of their funding. So I’m just wondering: if I was in Prince George and wanted to access VictimLink, how would I do it?

T. Spencer: I’m actually not familiar with that VictimLink piece, so it’s something I can certainly get back to you on. That VictimLink piece — was it a presentation from bc211 or 211 through Canada?

R. Coleman: No, it was through 211, similarly tied in to the United Way, if I recall. I asked them what happened to VictimLink. They said: “Well, you go to 211 to get VictimLink.”

VictimLink is for victims of crime in a whole platform of different languages, all combined for victim services across B.C. So I’m just wondering how you access that. Can you dial 211 in Prince George and get VictimLink like you can in other areas of the province, or is it a separate number?

T. Spencer: Right now 211 would give you that access to that VictimLink. But because 211, the dial service, isn’t available in the north, if you dial 211 right now it wouldn’t allow you through. So that’s where our limitation is and essentially why we’re….

R. Coleman: So could you, Trista, find out for me how people are accessing VictimLink here?

T. Spencer: That VictimLink? Yeah.

R. Coleman: Obviously that funding is housed with 211, as far as provincial funding is concerned.

T. Spencer: You bet. That would be something that would certainly require a little bit of research to identify, because United Ways across the province are working together to bring that funding throughout the province in all the different areas to ensure that bc211 is active in both the on-line and the dial services.

Right now the funding only is available in the lower area of the province and on the Island. So right now, we’re struggling to get what we require to get that service up in the north. Having that VictimLink service…. If it’s available through only bc211, it wouldn’t be available via phone in the north.

R. Coleman: I don’t know if it is only open…. I know it’s co-located. That’s all.

T. Spencer: I can certainly get that information.

N. Simons: There’s obviously a problem if there’s a poster in a community centre advertising a number that doesn’t work.

T. Spencer: Well, there are two different posters, so that might be the clarification.

R. Coleman: There was a poster for 211 in Kitimat, in their community centre, so I’m assuming 211 works in Kitimat.

[5:10 p.m.]

T. Spencer: There are two different posters: bc211.ca and B.C. Dial 2-1-1. The one that we have been giving out is the bc211.ca. All the communities that we’ve gone out into — as well as speaking at the NCLGA in Williams Lake and trying to connect with as many constituents and leaders — have been about the dot-ca version of this service but also communicating that we need some support to get funding through the dial portion.

If they’ve received other information, then it’s not through us.

N. Simons: I’m very prepared to be convinced that this is a program that’s needed around the province, because I’ve seen its effectiveness in the Lower Mainland. Half of my riding is covered by 211, and half of it isn’t. There are over 65 Service B.C. offices in rural British Columbia. They are a part of our communities. I represent a rural area. I think that in some cases — without the huge mix of all sorts of services in the Lower Mainland — in the smaller communities, sometimes it’s a little more obvious. Maybe the service has been there for a while, or they’ve got a sign on their door or what have you.

How can you…? Do you think it’s going to be the same benefit for people phoning from Kitimat or up north down to Vancouver to get names and referrals?

T. Spencer: Do you mean with regard to the resources available?

N. Simons: Yes.

T. Spencer: Yes, it is. I was actually surprised myself when I first went onto the service to identify whether it was even worth going on. The nice thing about it is that it’s not just those popular, well-known services that are listed. It’s everything from large to small, and they’re adding to it every day. There are specialists who are adding to those resources every day. As long as we get some funding to go towards that, it’ll actually enable those operators to continue to work and get more information onto that database.

Now because, over the last few years, that expansion of service…. You may or may not be aware that before bc211, it was referred to as Red Book. It’s been expanded across B.C. It’s definitely not as comprehensive yet, so we’re working towards that and adding new languages, adding new areas, adding new resources.

If you do go on there and you look up Kitimat, you look up Fort St. John, or you look up some of those remote areas, you are going to find some resources. While they’re limited, the more education that we get out there about that service, the more we will be able to add those resources. Every day we’re sending information down to them, saying, “Hey, can you add this?” or “Hey, can you put this on that page?” so that we’re even helping in that process and adding those resources to the page.

N. Simons: Do you have texting ability?

T. Spencer: The texting ability will come with the dial. There is also an on-line chat. So there are a couple of more comfortable ways for people to actually access the information. As we know, in the on-line world, not everybody is comfortable with the phone. The phone is important for those rural and remote people or the people who are not able to make those connections on line, but just as important is keeping up with that on-line presence. So we do have that texting, and we have the on-line chat so that people can find that convenient, most comfortable way for them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re over time by quite a bit.

N. Simons: Sorry, Mr. Chair.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So unless they’re adding something new….

Interjection.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is it going to be something new?

R. Leonard: It was a quick question just to augment that one. Is the information that you have to provide in 211 bigger than Service B.C., in the sense that it’s not just provincial resources but that it’s community resources as well? That’s the question.

T. Spencer: That is correct, yes. It’s comprehensive, yes.

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

Next up we have the city of Prince George — Kris Dalio, Robert van Adrichem and Mayor Lyn Hall.

L. Hall: I will introduce Rob van Adrichem, our external communications director. Coun. Cori Ramsay is in the audience as well.

CITY OF PRINCE GEORGE

L. Hall: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I’m just going to skim over a couple of things here. I know time is important.

First of all, I just want to comment — and a thanks for involving the city of Prince George — on the emergency services pilot program as the result of the wildfires in 2017 and 2018. The pilot program, for us, will give us the opportunity to fine-tune our digital registration program, which will save our volunteers probably up to an hour in registering the people that are arriving here in Prince George as evacuees. That went a long ways to really giving us greater flexibility on the resource side of it.

[5:15 p.m.]

Certainly, the northern capital and planning grant was a welcome piece of information and funding for many communities along Highway 16. The Plaza 400 building, which government owns, and the courthouse are now hooked up to our downtown renewable energy system, which really helps us meet our greenhouse gas emission standard. Thank you for that. I just want to touch on a couple of things — I’m going to finish off this evening with a little update on forestry — and a request.

We’re currently going through infrastructure issues, like everybody else in the province. We’ve got a $35 million pool that we’re currently about to start in the next seven or eight months. The pool was passed by referendum, a $35 million project. This particular one is part of the province’s involvement in the investing in Canada infrastructure program, and we’ve put in a request for $10 million for that new pool. The other one is the aquatic centre, which is about 22 or 23 years old. For that particular facility, we’re looking at a granting program request of about $6.3 million. That falls under the B.C. clean communities fund. I wanted to leave that with you this evening.

Cannabis continues to be an interesting piece of work for each municipality in the province. I guess we’re now at two government locations here in Prince George, four private sector locations here in Prince George and about four or five that are still in the hopper, waiting to be dealt with by city council. One of the things we’re waiting on — I’m wondering if you can shed any light on that — is around the revenue-share piece of this. As everyone knows, the feds and the provinces have come to agreement. We’re wondering at what point in time the province will notify municipalities as to whether or not there is a revenue-share component for us.

If I could, I would like to just take a moment and touch on forestry. Over the last ten days, there has been considerable impact on the forestry industry in the north and the central part of the province. There’s no question that it relates to fibre availability, access to that fibre, and southern mountain caribou — just to name three issues that the industry is struggling with. I certainly wouldn’t leave out current market conditions.

N. Simons: And pine beetle.

L. Hall: Pine beetle, somewhat. But I think the three pieces that I’ve put out are probably some of the major ones. Over the last ten days there have been approximately eight mills in the region that have curtailed operations for two to six weeks. We know that a couple of them, once the yard is empty of logs, will shut down operations. We’re seeing these operations impacting thousands of employees across the central part of the province and the north. Fort St. John lost a mill of 190 people. We have concerns about other locations.

I speak to it not from a Prince George perspective but from a regional perspective. The North Central Local Government Association geographical area is what I would refer to. It starts in 100 Mile House, goes to Prince Rupert, Haida Gwaii and then up to Fort Nelson. It’s a tremendous impact. Every one of our communities in the north has forestry as its main economic pillar. So when we see conditions like this and the decisions that are made by forest companies to take these measures, it has a drastic impact on us.

We’re in the process of trying to get together with the Council of Forest Industries. We want to get together with some of the leading folks from various industries, including Canfor, Tolko and other mills that are operating in our area, just to find out not so much what the short game is but what the long game is. This is where government, I think, really needs to come to the table. We’ll put a request out this evening. If Minister Donaldson could participate in those meetings, that would be very beneficial for us. We’d just need to have an idea of the long-term goals — or restructuring, if that’s what we’re seeing — that are happening in the north.

I would add that the forest industry is not just a north or central B.C. industry. It is a predominant industry in the entire province. I know you all know that. Certainly, when we talk about the impact it has in the region, we’re also talking about the drastic impact it has throughout the entire province. We have mills throughout the Okanagan, in the Kootenays, on the Island. We’re very concerned about this, and I can’t stress it too strongly, because we continue to hear news, day in and day out, about the drastic impact that it’s having.

[5:20 p.m.]

We are going to, as I say, have those meetings. We will send a request for the minister to participate in those so that we can, I think, have a broader conversation about the industry overall.

The last one that I’ll touch on is transportation, the transportation piece. Since Greyhound moved out, we’ve had B.C. Bus North. B.C. Transit has stepped to the table. We’re actively, actively looking for private sector bus companies to come into this region. I know that the Kootenays are doing the same. The Okanagan is doing the same. The north part of the province is doing the same in the Peace River area.

This is an important economic piece for us as well — the transport of goods, the transport of individuals from location to location to go to work, to find work. So it’s a big piece for us around the economic strategies that we put in place.

Along with the transportation piece, we’ve instigated the Charge North Consortium. It involves 37 municipalities, six regional districts, the Community Energy Association to increase charging stations along 2,800 kilometres of northern highways. It’s a huge consortium, and we’re really working diligently with partners that we know would be interested in coming to the table with us on the electrification for vehicle charging stations throughout the North.

I’ll leave it at that. Sorry to rush through it so quickly, but I know that time is ticking.

Kris, did you have anything to add?

K. Dalio: You covered it all.

L. Hall: Oh, good. Okay.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Your Worship. We appreciate that.

Questions from the…?

There’s a lot there.

L. Hall: Yeah, there’s a lot there. We’ll give you a summary.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Mayor, for your presentation. I just want to echo what you’ve said in terms of the mills in the Kootenays. I’ve got four major ones and a multitude of small ones. They’re under the gun. Transportation — massive, massive concern, not only for employment but for medical. When it comes to rural mills and transportation, you’re certainly not alone. We recognize that.

L. Hall: I will say, too, with the demise of Greyhound in our province, B.C. Bus North has really filled that gap. We’ve had great conversations with the ministry staff about how we entice the private sector to come in. It’s not necessarily a government-driven entity that needs to be in. It’s the private sector we’d like to get into the busing business. That’s who does it. So we’re working diligently with that, but I know the folks in the Kootenays are trying to do that as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate that.

L. Hall: Okay. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next we have Child Development Centre of Prince George and District Association — Tanya Klassen and Darrell Roze.

If we could please keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that’d be wonderful.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE OF
PRINCE GEORGE AND DISTRICT

D. Roze: Well, thank you for having us here today. Our charity provides support to over 1,000 children per year that have special needs and developmental delays. We provide that in Prince George, Mackenzie, McBride, Valemount, and we provide that in some First Nations communities as well. Our services provide a tremendous impact, and they provide a tremendous return on investment from a financial perspective, because they reduce future health, education, social service costs and criminal justice costs.

Unfortunately, we are dramatically underfunded for what we provide, and that underfunding is getting worse over time. One of the issues that we have been experiencing is that we’re not funded for all cost increases that we experience on an annual basis. Over the last 15 years, the province has only been compensating us for the cost of unionized wage increases.

You can imagine the other costs that we’ve experienced — the increases to insurance, janitorial costs, maintenance, electricity, heating, utilities, travel, supplies, equipment, recruitment, legal fees, auditing fees, bank charges, computer support and wages and benefits for excluded positions. I’ve probably missed a number of them.

The increases there over the last 15 years have left a big hole within our budget. On an annual cost, we believe it is about $162,000 a year right now, increasing by about $10,000 a year.

[5:25 p.m.]

For $162,000, that decreases our services by about 5,000 hours in the year, so it’s had a big impact on our services.

The province further failed to cover an $86,000 negotiated cost increase in 2013. That was something that the province approved and failed to fund and that we were required to provide. The province has further failed to fund increases to demands, so while our demand has increased dramatically over time, we haven’t received commensurate increases to our funding.

As you’ll see, we’ve got a sheet that we’ve handed out. You can see the increases on the right side. Our therapy services have experienced a 39 percent increase over the last 15 years, and our supported child development services have experienced a whopping 344 percent increase. Over that same time, the only increase we’ve received for personnel is two support people for our supported child development program, increasing our support workers from 17 to 19 — so dramatically insufficient to cover anywhere close to the increase in demand that we’ve received over that time.

We are requesting funding to allow us to get back to a similar state that we were in 15 years ago. That would require an increase to our funding of $627,000 to our therapy program and $1.4 million to our supported child development program.

Now I’ll hand it over to Tanya to handle another issue.

T. Klassen: Well, as you know a little bit about the child development centre already, we provide a lot of services to Prince George and the community. But I want to address the issue of social, emotional and behaviour management challenges with children ages three to five. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen huge increases in the mental health–related referrals to the child development centre. Actually, currently the supported child development caseload has 60 percent of this type of children at this point. One of our pediatricians, newly retired pediatricians, Dr. Hay, called it an epidemic.

We’re seeing anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and aggres­sion in our children, and it has a significant impact on our child social and psychological development. However, and as you probably know, the risk of these types of behaviours leads to substance abuse, failure in the school system and beyond, and even involvement in the justice system later on. However, you can also not look too far from the children’s mental health to see the mental health of their parents.

What we’re proposing is a program that we have actually done, a pilot project in 2012, called the BEST program, which stands for behavioural, emotional, social teaching program. That’s something that I’ve personally been involved in. It was an eight-week program. We worked with a few of the community agencies here in Prince George and found that it had significant impact on the children of our community. And we’ve actually noticed that the parents expressed high satisfaction levels.

We worked with the children in a preschool-type environment, as well as with the parents in a parenting group. And we noticed that the parents who completed the program had increased skills to help them with their children, and then the children had increased skills to better manage the new skills that the parents had. What is significant to note is that anecdotal reports from the school district and the parents tell us that a year following the completion of this program, none of the children had absences due to social, emotional or behavioural issues. I think that’s quite significant.

We’re asking for a fully funded, year-round program. We think that’s necessary for our region’s children to fully achieve the potential benefits of this program. It would operate four days a week on an annual basis, and it would be two blocks of a five-month period each. We’re suggesting that the cost of this would be free for the children that we’ve identified as at need for this program, and we’re asking for a total of $242,000 to fund that program.

D. Roze: We have a full proposal in your handout regarding that program as well.

T. Klassen: With a bit of a breakdown of what it would look like.

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

Questions from the members?

N. Simons: Sure. I just wanted to thank you. The Children and Youth Committee is currently looking at this issue overall throughout the province, and I really appreciate the opportunity to hear from you. I think that your program being somewhat…. I don’t want to say unique. But every community in B.C. is, and you serve different communities from here as well.

[5:30 p.m.]

Could you explain what the impact of the lack of funding is on the children? What happens when a child doesn’t have access to the services that you would provide if the funding was raised?

D. Roze: Sure. Our funding is only about 50 percent of what we would require to provide full support. If you don’t provide support in a timely manner during a child’s early years, it leads to permanent delays. Those children will never become the person they could have. Your early years of support build the foundation for everything that comes after. It provides you the ability to learn more in the future, so we’re really impacting our overall capacity in the future. And because those children are more impaired, they require more services. It has a dramatic impact there.

I’ll let Tanya talk about the mental health piece. That’s another big one.

T. Klassen: As we know, the foundation of sound mental health begins in the earliest years of a child’s life. It actually begins with the attachment. What you’ll see is that if you have a child that has insignificant attachment or some mental health challenges in the home — that’s based on the parents who have challenges, their sense of mental health, substance abuse, poverty, that sort of thing — you see a continuation of that cycle, over and over and over, through the child’s life.

M. Dean: Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for all of your service as well, looking after families and children in the region here.

The pilot program, the BEST program: how has that been designed for Indigenous communities and families, and how is that culturally safe?

T. Klassen: I could probably speak to that. I would say the best way to identify that is our cooperation — I guess cooperation would be the best way to say it — with the native friendship centre and the Aboriginal supported child development program. When we did the pilot project, we included employees from both those agencies, so we got that perspective.

In addition, we provided the service free of charge. In that sense, it reduced one of the barriers that some of our Indigenous families have, and then we were able to be more inclusive of all the people that would fit, or the children that actually were especially at need for this program.

D. Roze: We’ve also provided support to a substantial…. A substantial component of the families and children that come to us have always been First Nations. I’d say it’s around 40 percent. Our staff are very engaged with working with those families, and we do that very well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Darrell and Tanya. We appreciate your presentation and your commitment to our children. Thank you very much.

We’ll take a five-minute recess. Thanks.

The committee recessed from 5:33 p.m. to 5:42 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

Next up I’d like to call YMCA of Northern B.C. — Amanda Alexander.

Hi, Amanda. How are you?

A. Alexander: Good. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be great.

YMCA OF NORTHERN B.C.

A. Alexander: Sure. Absolutely.

Good evening, members of the select standing committee and fellow citizens. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. My name is Amanda Alexander. I’m with the YMCA of Northern B.C., and I’m representing the five YMCAs across our province.

The Y has had a valued partnership with the provincial government in support of many shared priorities, and today I’ll focus on two particular pieces: early learning and child care, and youth mental health. We have two recommendations for Budget 2020 where we can help the province achieve shared goals. The first is to support youth mental health by continuing to fund the delivery and expansion of the Y Mind program, and the second is to open more child care spaces by investing in innovative ways to accelerate the training of early childhood educators.

I’ll speak to the recommendation to support Y Mind first, our youth mental health program. We know that supporting youth mental health is a priority for government, and we thank you for that commitment and investment. We know — certainly, I know that you are on the same page — that evidence shows that about 50 percent of mental illness begins in childhood before the age of 14 and 75 percent by the time folks are in their mid-20s. So earlier investment into mental health is just as important, in terms of giving tools in the toolbox, as when the first symptoms arrive.

That’s something that the Y Mind program is really aimed and successful at doing. We are currently running this program in 26 communities across B.C. One of the things that we know is really important is that geography shouldn’t be a barrier. As far as small, northern, rural and urban — all communities deserve to have those services. We have also created a culturally adapted version for Indigenous youth that is now being implemented.

I’d just like to share a quick story about the impact of this program.

“My name is Kaya, and the Y Mind program helped me conquer my debilitating anxiety issues. In 2018, I took time away from my job as a lifeguard at the Family Y to manage a swimming pool in the Yukon. My high expectations quickly turned into those of regret and disappointment. Feeling alone and closed off, I began down the path of severe anxiety.

[5:45 p.m.]

“My condition became so extreme that I could no longer study to become a teacher, work or even socialize. I struggle to live in the present, become isolated and constantly worry about things out of my control. This is when I sought out serious help for my mental health.

“My healing process started when I found the Y Mind program. I was nervous at the first class and imagined that everyone was judging me for attending a mental health program. The warm staff made me feel safe and welcomed, and the mindfulness tools I gained helped me to recognize my feelings and identify different paths that I could take to heal.

“The YMCA gives life and sense of purpose to so many people, and I’m no exception. They gave me a reason to get up in the morning and provided me with incredible opportunities. I’m now proudly back on track to become a teacher, while working as a lifeguard at the Y.”

Therefore, we recommend the continuation of this program and to support further expansion beyond 2020 to continue to extend our reach across our province.

Our second recommendation is to invest in developing early, innovative ways to accelerate the training and placement of early childhood educators. I want to thank you and extend my appreciation for the investment into child care. The initiatives are fast and furious, and we appreciate the ability to provide quality child care. The challenge for us is not having enough staff.

As much as there have been fantastic increases to the capital funding that we can achieve…. The prototype sites are all fantastic, but without staff to staff these centres, our hands are tied constantly. There isn’t a day that our staff team and our local association…. We provide care for approximately 600 children from Fort St. John to Prince George, Vanderhoof and Fort St. James, and it is continually a struggle to meet licensing requirements. We are not even reaching the targets of straight ECEs; we use ECAs wherever we can, responsible adults, and we are stretched constantly.

The degree of how many folks we have to involve to ensure that we’re compliant won’t allow us to…. We struggle to do what we are already doing. Other than being able to…. We are prevented from being able to take further steps to take advantage of the fantastic opportunities. We know that we probably could have, at our local association, opened at least a centre each and every year, had we had the staff in place.

What we are proposing as a solution is that we be able to fast-track a program to be able to support the training of child care workers within our centres, and that we’d be able to develop a curriculum in order to be able to do that. The ministry’s early care and learning recruitment and retention strategy, while comprehensive, we know doesn’t address the immediate need for trained professionals and new centres.

We would like to work with government and other stakeholders to design and test a new, innovative model to accelerate the training of ECEs, similar to an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship model would result in more staff in centres faster and would ensure high professional standards throughout the classroom work and on-the-job mentorship. Lack of these trained ECEs gets in the way of our collective goal of ensuring that licensed child care is available to all B.C. children and all B.C. families who need it.

We recommend allocating funds to test new ways to accelerate the training and placement of new childhood educators. The YMCA, across the province, is the largest deliverer of child care, and we would love the opportunity to try and work collectively to be able to work with all the great initiatives that are already on the table.

In summary, the YMCA recommends the continuation of funding to support the delivery and expansion of Y Mind to support youth mental health, and we recommend investing in finding new ways to accelerate the training of ECEs to expand child care spaces in our province. Thank you.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation. First, can you give us a little description of the Y Mind program and what the components of that are, just for our interest? Maybe start with that, and then I have a follow-up question.

A. Alexander: Sure. On the Y Mind program, I can’t give you a very specific…. I haven’t read the curriculum myself. But I can talk to the fact that it is very specifically geared around tools to deal with anxiety. It’s a group format, so there’s some normalization, and there are some tools that specifically provide support when anxiety becomes an issue, when mental health becomes an issue, that support that.

[5:50 p.m.]

N. Simons: Okay. Just if I may, Chair. The ECE training — it’s clear that we need to rapidly increase the amount of opportunity there is for people to get trained. Do you think that if the spaces were there, there would be people applying for those positions for the ECE program? Is that part of the recruitment challenge?

A. Alexander: Yeah. I think that while the wage enhancement, the $1 an hour, was a good start, it isn’t enough. I think that we need to make it more accessible for folks who are interested. So I think it’s multifaceted. I think it also needs to be faster. We need to be able to train ECEs quicker so that we can get them here and now when the opportunities are present.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Amanda, thank you. I apologize. My mom’s in a home, and I always want to phone at 5:30 for dinner. I’ll read the transcripts and catch up to the first part of it. So accept my apologies for not being here.

A. Alexander: Thank you.

M. Dean: Thank you for all your work and for coming forward with your presentation.

Have you done any research in other jurisdictions where they’ve been able to increase capacity in the early-years sector? For example, are there any other examples that we can draw on where there’s been a success of actually trying to catch up on that workforce issue?

A. Alexander: Sure. I can share that I’ve had some conversations with my colleagues across the country. I know that we’ve been following a lot of the Ontario path. They had a hire-at-wage increase for their ECEs. I believe it was $3 an hour. That did help to not only attract people to the field but also retain them, particularly in the not-for-profit sector. That was a significant issue.

Honestly, across the country, ECE shortage is highly prevalent. In that sense, I think we need to think innovatively around how we’re able to increase the labour force.

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

Next up we have Spruce City Wildlife Association — Dustin Snyder.

Hi Dustin, how are you?

D. Snyder: Thank you. I’m doing well. How about yourself?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. I just wanted to mention if you could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be really helpful for us.

SPRUCE CITY WILDLIFE ASSOCIATION

D. Snyder: Okay. Perfect.

First off, thank you all for the opportunity and for coming up and not only listening to myself but all of us with concerns and asks and the whole works. We appreciate the opportunity to engage.

I just want to give a little bit of history. This is my third year doing this, and the last couple of years I’ve had a strict sheet, and my wife times me the night before to see if I can get through it all in time. Last year I had the mayor of Vanderhoof, Gerry Thiessen, tell me: “Dustin, you’re reading off your sheet too much. Speak from the heart. Look at them. Make some eye contact.” That sort of thing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Very good advice.

D. Snyder: I left the sheet, and I just scribbled some notes. I don’t even know if I can read all these. I’m mostly going to be speaking from the heart here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Your time is up, Dustin. [Laughter.]

D. Snyder: My name is Dustin Snyder. I’m the vice-president of Spruce City Wildlife Association. I’ve been involved with them for, probably, three or four years now.

First off, last year I’d asked for an investment in salmon. I’d just like to acknowledge that there has been significant investment in salmon, and I definitely appreciate that. We can see some of that making some progress through PSF as well as through the BCSRIF, which hopefully some funding is going to be announced from there soon.

One thing that I’d like to bring up is fish passage concerns. So the sheet that kind of went around there that I brought is some notes from the B.C. fish passage technical working group. I’m not going to go through all their notes there, but what they focus on mostly is resource roads, forestry roads and that sort of thing.

When you look at these numbers here, that doesn’t include any highways or any issues that fall under the Ministry of Transportation. But as you can see here, just for resource roads, the number they have there…. At the rate that they’re working, they will finish all of them in 8,000 years. However, that’s if no more roads are built. So just a generally unrealistic target there.

[5:55 p.m.]

The pictures below that, I took myself. So this year, I’ll be going out to that same spot. This is Cross Creek. It’s in the Babine Lake watershed. This is a spawning creek for sockeye as well as a rearing stream for trout, and kokanee spawn in there and rear in there as well.

The picture on the left is what it looked like when my dad and I got there. This was our third year visiting that site and our third year filing a complaint there. On the right is what the culvert itself looks like and looked like last year. You can see how the culvert is kind of forced up in the middle, and all of these boulders are piled in front. This is a Ministry of Transportation culvert. It does impede fish passage 100 percent. Juveniles cannot get through. Again, you can see the amount of water flowing around and actually underneath a break under the culvert, and then it kind of spills out the other side. So fish cannot get through.

Another example that I’ve visited multiple times is Kenneth Creek, just east of here. The chinook in that stream have continued to decline and are now COSEWIC recommended for endangered. The provincial species of bull trout, which is also listed at risk or a species of concern, also travels and feeds in that creek as well.

Now, the minister has acknowledged that Kenneth Creek does have a failing culvert. Thank you to my local MLA for bringing that up. However, it is beyond an environmental concern now and, I guess, has fallen into a capital project concern, which means that environment has nothing to do with it. The money needs to wait to show up, which is extremely concerning from my side, seeing the endangered chinook kind of struggle to get up there.

We spent 500 hours of volunteer time last year in the region trying to catch our brood stock. In that 500 hours, we came up with 62 eggs. That’s 62 individual eggs. We found sex ratios that are all over the place. Nobody in the region is monitoring salmon. Nobody is really doing big piles of work to help them or invest in them. In talking to multiple contacts, it doesn’t sound like anybody within this upper region is going to be getting any of that BCSRIF money either.

Next, on to the wildlife side of things: biodiversity in beautiful B.C. B.C. holds 25 percent of the world’s grizzlies, 30 percent of the world’s bald eagles and 60 percent of the world’s mountain goats. Caribou, steelhead and moose, all once plentiful and very iconic creatures, are now, in some cases, potentially going to be memories, something that our grandkids or kids only hear about or see in books.

I believe, and I’m sure you have heard or will hear, that it is necessary to dedicate 100 percent of funds from fishing and hunting back into the resource. Even having said that, multiple people in the hunting world believe that we get a pretty good deal on our hunting licences. If hunting licence fees were increased, I believe most, if not all, hunters would support that, if we were guaranteed that money was going back into the resource. However, any increase without the dedication of those funds would likely not be seen as well.

I also believe that all users should contribute to wildlife, salmon, just outdoors in general. Wildlife viewing, ecotourism, mining, forestry — we’re all using the same resource, even though they’re managed differently or managed separately in separate silos or in separate offices. Folks especially like wildlife viewing and ecotourism. Those do have long-term impacts on the animals and being around the animals and that sort of thing.

With a lot of the fish and wildlife stuff, I’ve been somewhat concerned, in some cases especially, with salmon in the local area. I have explained to people in DFO that I no longer recognize that my kids will get the opportunity to fish here. I now work hard for my grandkids. The tears for my children’s opportunity have long time dried. I know that they will not get the opportunity. We cannot fix this fast enough. It’s impossible. All I can hope now is that by the time my kids have children, I’ll be able to fish with those kids.

The last thing I have on my note here is that if you guys have not heard or have not yet been presented about the water sustainability fund, that is something that Spruce City Wildlife Association greatly supports as well.

Thank you all for your time. I hope I stuck close to the five minutes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Dustin. Well, it’s seven minutes, but I wanted to let you go because you were doing very well.

Any questions for Dustin?

[6:00 p.m.]

D. Clovechok: Good to see you, Dustin. Thank you for your presentation. It’s bang on, as far as I’m concerned, especially when it comes to ungulate management and wildlife management in general.

I agree with you that increased fees…. As a hunter myself, I would be happy to pay that if those moneys went back into a fund that would be directly associated with wildlife management like the Freshwater Fisheries Society. So that’s the model that exists today.

I’d be interested and curious in your opinion. Would you see a similar and a like organization, potentially, evolving around wildlife, that would be, like the Freshwater Fisheries Society, outside of government and that would be managing the wildlife — ungulates, grizzly bears, and so on? I’m interested in your opinion on that and if you think that would work.

D. Snyder: I believe so, and ideally, yes. The only concern that we really ran into, I believe, is how that integrates with forestry management as well. Right now, in talking with provincial moose biologists, even here in the local office, as soon as we switch to the conversation of habitat, she goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s not my…. I can’t get involved in that,” because habitat is managed completely separately than wildlife.

Right now our moose biologists are almost employed to count the moose. If those numbers keep going down, she just keeps counting smaller numbers. But ideally, yes, I believe that something like that can likely leverage more funds and potentially be, maybe not more effective, but be able to leverage funds better.

D. Clovechok: Your statements are completely correct. It’s almost like a dog chasing its tail right now. It’s been that way since the ’50s, so certainly, it’s a non-partisan issue. No government since the ’50s has put enough money into wildlife management, and it’s time that we started to look at that. Thank you very much.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I just want to say thank you. I remember you from before — Jesse Zeman, if I remember his name correctly, from West Kelowna, and Dave Brown from Penticton. It’s people like you who are making a difference. Thank you.

One thing that you did touch on that’s always been a pet peeve of many of us is the silos in all levels of government, not just provincial. That’s something that if this committee can make a suggestion so we have that young lady doing a hell of a lot more than just counting moose…. Those are the things. And try to get these things combined, because like you said, we have a very limited amount of time to try and turn this around, otherwise it will be your great, great, grandkids that will have the issue. Thank you again for your interest in it.

R. Leonard: Very quickly. It can happen. I was in Vancouver, in Still Creek. We were working to keep the last bit of it open, never expecting we would see salmon return, and 80 years later, they came in. Not 80 years since I started working there. So I’m really pleased that you have that hope.

I just have a very simple question. The B.C. fish passage technical working group — who are they affiliated with? Who are they?

D. Snyder: That is kind of made up by the…. From my knowledge, there is forestry involvement there. There are B.C. engineers that are involved in that. As well, there’s a water stewardship component that are kind of slightly involved.

Sean Wong, I believe, is his name. I believe he heads up a good portion of that. He’s involved with Ministry of Transportation, but that’s kind of a side thing for him.

R. Leonard: So it’s a provincial government…

D. Snyder: Yes, it’s a provincial thing.

R. Leonard: …technical working group across ministries. Or forestry.

D. Snyder: Yes, I believe it’s across ministries.

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

All right. Next up we have Nechako Environment and Water Stewardship Society — Wayne Salewski.

Hi, Wayne. How are you?

NECHAKO ENVIRONMENT AND
WATER STEWARDSHIP SOCIETY

W. Salewski: I could sit with this gentleman all day. We collaborate on many, many things, and I appreciate the relationship between small-town Vanderhoof and big city Prince George. Also, I’d like to acknowledge Shirley. If she could be my MLA and helpful, as she does on all cases…. She’s an amazing lady.

Thank you for providing the time to make a presentation on the need for a funding mechanism on water and water-related rehabilitation in the province of B.C. My name is Wayne Salewski. I come from Vanderhoof. I chair the Nechako Environment and Water Stewardship Society, and I also chair the community working group for the recovery of the Nechako Lakes sturgeon, a SARA-listed species.

[6:05 p.m.]

Dustin’s comments about SARA and SARA-listed issues are really pertinent. We see the chaos in the conversation about caribou. When we start to SARA-list salmon, we are going to see economic chaos in this province that’s not recoverable.

I really have a problem with what we’re doing on SARA. We need to be four days early, not four days late, on this conversation about SARA. We don’t put mechanisms in place until we get to the SARA-listed issue, and then we blame everybody but ourselves on the conversation.

Our NEWS Society has been around for 12 years. We do stream restoration, stream rehabilitation. We work really successfully with all levels of government — federal, provincial, municipal, regional districts — and we’re working hard with our cattlemen’s association to bring stewardship and stewardship values to the Nechako Valley. We have over 32 different streams that we’re working on. In our short history of a dozen years, we have invested over $2 million of our funds in funding stream rehabilitation on these streams.

We have a great relationship with our schools. Our education system has bought nicely into what we’re doing, and we have students that are participating from kindergarten to universities. We’re very proud of our relationship with school district 91, College of New Caledonia and the university. You have a young lady at the back who’s doing a presentation, Dr. Margot Parkes, who’s a cohort of ours and a partner in delivering education and outreach.

Fifty percent of all kids in the Nechako Valley live on a farm, so that message gets to go home. We’re creating that atmosphere where we can see mom and dad changing their principles and values based on the education that the kids are doing.

This idea of a water-related fund, a mechanism to do it, is absolutely critical to our success. We can find the funds and funding to do the projects that we’re doing, but we are living in a world of what we call 50-cent dollars. So if they give us $100, we need to find another $100 in order to match and make this work for us. Unfortunately for us, this isn’t always timely, and our partners are cyclical. We have challenges. It’s embarrassing, and I’m really angry to tell you that we have returned over $1.1 million that we weren’t able to find or match those 50-cent dollars with. That’s a tremendous amount of rehabilitation opportunities that have disappeared from our grasp.

We actually returned $700,000 to one agency that had given us $1 million over a five-year window when we couldn’t match the dollars in a timely fashion. Everything is tied to fiscal years. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand winter in our country. It freezes up, and I don’t have a 12-month window. I might actually have a fish window of as little as six weeks. Sometimes I’m grateful to get a window of eight weeks in order to make these types of expenditures. To return that kind of funding is not only heartbreaking, it actually breaks the spirit of wanting to do this.

I come from a community…. You can see by my head that I’m an old man now. There aren’t too many of us left up here. A lot of people work in our communities and take the money, run to the Okanagan or Mexico, and leave. Very few of us left to volunteer. We are a small group of five people. We don’t even qualify with some funding organizations because we don’t have enough members. We’re not pulling bicycles or shopping carts out of streams and rivers here. We’re actually doing large-scale, industrial rehabilitation of streams that have disappeared.

This lack of a constant funding mechanism is really unfortunate. We believe that the resource sector has the ability to do this. Whether you’re in the mining industry or the agricultural industry or the logging industry, there are large dollars that are turned over. In Vanderhoof, in the forest district that I grew up in, the Stuart-Nechako, last year’s stumpage bill just in our forest district was $100 million to the province. Just for stumpage — we haven’t made a product out of that.

If you are in Vanderhoof, the Nechako Valley Auction Mart, $38 million in sales last year. These are typical numbers of resource values, resource extraction. Our Mount Milligan mine, $2.1 million a day.

[6:10 p.m.]

We have lots of money that it is out there. We’re just not putting anything back into that land base that is there. And it’s just about as simple as that. It isn’t really complicated — period.

I think you would all recognize that there are only about 15 percent of us who live up in the north. The rest of you live in the big cities that are down there. It’s problematic in getting this job done.

I think that’s it. I really appreciate the opportunity and the time that you guys are making to come up to our region to do this and to have these conversations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Wayne. Before I open the floor to the members, I didn’t hear you mention anything about Indigenous interaction. I’m wondering if you could just touch on that.

W. Salewski: Tremendous. We’re actually building capacity within our First Nations. We have wonderful working relationships with seven of the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council. We cohort on many, many projects. In fact, we have just received some money in conjunction with UFFCA, Upper Fraser Fisheries Conservation Alliance. Those are wonderful people to work with. We only need 20-cent dollars when we’re working with First Nations.

We have many programs with them and building capacity within their nations but also to create employment and employment opportunities.

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

Next up we have B.C. Federation of Labour — Laird Cronk.

Good to see you.

B.C. FEDERATION OF LABOUR

L. Cronk: Thank you. I want to recognize that we are on unceded First Nations territory as we meet here today.

I have written remarks. When you have a labour leader and a microphone and you’ve got five minutes, you need to make sure you stay on those five. I can assure you that I’ve read it about 100 times, and it should be about four minutes and 40 seconds. There’s the challenge.

The B.C. Federation of Labour represents 500,000 union workers working in every corner of this province. We’re pleased for the opportunity to provide input into this 2020 budget cycle. While a far more detailed report, a written submission, is forthcoming to this committee, I’m here today to talk about the core priorities our submission will focus on.

The world of work is changing, and many British Columbians are worried about their economic security. For too long, these economic changes have disadvantaged workers, instead benefiting the interests of the wealthy and those with influence and connections. Under successive previous governments, budgetary surpluses in B.C. came at the cost of a growing social services deficit, insecure work and sharp inequality. British Columbians experienced damaging cuts to public services, a tax system tilted to the benefit of the wealthy, an affordability crisis and direct tax on their rights as workers.

I want to recognize that the current government has taken significant steps to reverse the damage: historic investments in child care and housing, action on poverty reduction and reconciliation, the launch of a Human Rights Commission, reforms to employment standards and the labour code and comprehensive action on climate change. While clear progress has been made, there is much more to do. Budget 2020 is an opportunity to take advantage of B.C.’s strong economic growth and put this province’s wealth to work for working people.

The first priority I’d like to talk to you about is a fair and equitable economy for all. While B.C. currently boasts a country-leading, red-hot economy, the best measure of the health of any economy is whether it performs for everyone, whether it is fair and equitable and whether it meets the needs of working people. On this important metric, Budget 2020 is an opportunity for transformative change. That’s why we believe Budget 2020 should make our tax system fairer and more progressive by asking the top 1 percent in British Columbia to pay a little bit more.

Specifically, with more details to come in the report, we are recommending the introduction of a new income tax bracket — a new rate of 22 percent for earnings over $200,000. This will affect only the top 1 percent of income earners in B.C.

Secondly, we are recommending the creation of a fair tax commission with a mandate to focus on progressivity and reducing inequality, looking at the entire B.C. tax system, including income, wealth, property, consumption and other potential taxes. New progressive tax measures will bring in new sources of revenue needed to make investments in quality services for families and communities.

[6:15 p.m.]

In addition to tax change, Budget 2020 should focus on other equity priorities: further increases to social and disability assistance rates, adequate resources for the new Human Rights Commission and justice and fair treatment for migrant workers.

Finally, the B.C. Fed of Labour is a strong supporter of the government’s intention to bring in legislation to make the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous people the legislated framework for reconciliation in B.C. While we look forward to getting further details on the legislation, we support government allocating new resources to ensure that the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and all other ministries can successfully implement the act.

The second theme I’d like to talk about is quality public services for families and communities in B.C. A profound social service deficit is the legacy of successive previous B.C. governments. We recognize that this government has begun the hard work of reversing that tide, particularly with investments in child care, housing and health care.

With B.C.’s strong economy and the revenue from new progressive tax measures, Budget 2020 can introduce new investments in public services and programs that families and communities can rely on. We are recommending that government create a new dedicated fund focused on strengthening public services and expanding social programs. Now is the time for bold, dedicated investment in public education, health care, housing and transit.

The final theme I’d like to touch on is secure and sustainable jobs in our changing world. Advancing technology, automation and digital platform–based labour have increased precarious and insecure work throughout B.C. Meanwhile, declining union density has contributed to income inequality and insecure work.

To address these challenges, we propose five things for Budget 2020.

The first, in the next legislative session, is the restoration of a one-step union certification process, based on signing membership card votes.

Second, increase the Labor Relations Board budget to $12.3 million and the employment standards branch budget to $26 million in order to adequately support card check and the other recent changes to both provincial labour regulations.

Third, fund the creation of a single-issue commission on multi-employer sectoral bargaining, a recommendation of the section 3 panel of the labour board.

Fourth, increase funding for the workers adviser office. That’s the office that advises British Columbians on WCB issues. Fifth, restore and fund compulsory trade certification in British Columbia. Give workers access to full-scope trades training.

Finally, economic insecurity and the climate crisis are two central public policy challenges of our time. The B.C. Fed believes they must be addressed in tandem, ensuring that climate action provides fairness and opportunity for workers. Budget 2020 should therefore outline a sustainable jobs plan as a companion to CleanBC, one that shows how CleanBC will create good, secure, family- and community-supporting jobs in every corner of this province and in full partnership with First Nations.

With that, I thank you.

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

I’m just curious. Can you give, perhaps, some examples of how CleanBC and the job market could work together, just so I have an idea on that?

L. Cronk: Sure. We know CleanBC has multiple buckets, I’ll call them, that look at clean transportation and the built environment, they call it, like retrofitting, etc. What we don’t know yet is how the government intends to spend the money. When they intend to spend money in terms of, let’s say, government office building refits, will they be in one section of the province? Will it concentrate on schools? Somebody earlier said that we need to do things beyond Hope. Will it be beyond Hope? Will it be here in Prince George? How will that be rolled out?

I think it’s important for working people in B.C. to see how the important greening of our economy actually works for them, not just in the Lower Mainland but works around the province.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation, and thanks for all of your work.

There’s also been investment in advanced education and skills training. I’m just wondering how you see that contributing to the modernization of the workforce.

L. Cronk: I’ll bring it back to trades training. I mean, it involves education in a number of different areas. In trades training in B.C., a lot of work has been done with First Nations. A lot of work has been done on ensuring those that are inside the apprenticeship system, for example — in that part of advanced education — are well taken care of in our system and make it all the way through the different levels.

Not a lot of work has been done to ensure full access of workers to that. So there are a large number of workers that work in the construction industry that never have access to trades training and certification. There’s one example of where the government could increase funding by implementing what we used to have in British Columbia, which is a process where, if you work at the trades, you are actually in the trades and get a certification and have a skill for life.

[6:20 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do you mind if I ask a supplemental before we move, Dan?

I’m just curious. We know there’s going to be a big need for trades. I’m just wondering if you had any comments on how we can encourage women in trades and Indigenous people in trades as well.

L. Cronk: Well, a good start was to have a tradeswoman and an Indigenous trades worker on the ITA board, and you do know. I think that’s very important for input. I think it’s important to listen to those communities. We know there’s about 4 percent of the trades workforce that’s Indigenous and about 4 percent that are women.

Those numbers, particularly the number of women in the trades, have not changed in decades. Part of it is ensuring that it’s not just glossy posters or awards for hiring a woman for an employer — those are important aspects — but making sure that the jobsite is inclusive, ready and prepared for women and Indigenous workers to be embraced and part of that workforce. That takes training.

I come from construction. I know some of it is pretty nasty, old school, should’ve changed a long time ago and needs to change. I think, as you talk about a new workforce, you need to be cognizant that the existing jobsites, and the employers and the workers on those sites, need to have training so that it is a…. You can attract people. But if they show up, and it’s not a good place to be, you are going to poison that well very quickly, and it will not happen. We need to make sure it is real when you get to the jobsite.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. Also, on a jobsite, you’re going to have to have amenities that are more indicative towards what women require on those jobsites, other than what we, as men, do.

Just one question about your proposal for a wealth tax. Do you want to broach over it real quickly, what the federation is thinking of? You mentioned there were three or four in….

L. Cronk: There will be a lot more detail in the report itself.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay.

L. Cronk: For the purposes of today, and in respect to other people’s time, I’ll say this. It’s a new tax bracket at $200,000. Income over that goes to 22 percent, from, I think, 16.5, 16.7. It would generate somewhere around $500 million. It’s going to affect about 1.3 percent of British Columbians.

The other piece of it is to bring in a fair tax commission to actually look, with experts to government, like the section 3 labour review panel, and say: “Hey, let’s look at our existing tax system. Let’s look at all of those other elements we talked about and make recommendations to government so that we do this in a holistic way going forward.”

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Okay. You had mentioned a wealth tax. A wealth tax, to me, is an asset tax. That’s something that I think is very thin ice for either a federation or any government to take a look at. People buy things with after-tax dollars. The last thing that I really think that people want to have a look at is another tax on those assets that they’ve acquired.

I’ll see the paper, and I’ll wait to see it.

L. Cronk: Yeah, for sure.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I may have caught you off guard on it. It was just that you had mentioned that you were looking at wealth.

L. Cronk: Are you talking about the other things that the tax commission would look at?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Yes.

L. Cronk: Well, I mean, the point of it is to have experts in the field come forward and say what makes sense.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): We want fair and equitable taxation, but it has to be fair and equitable. That’s all.

L. Cronk: I agree.

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

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re over time, but thank you very much for your presentation. Nice to see you.

Next we have Nechako Watershed Roundtable — Dr. Margot Parkes.

Hi, Dr. Parkes. How are you?

M. Parkes: Hi. Very well, thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be great. Thank you.

NECHAKO WATERSHED ROUNDTABLE

M. Parkes: Thank you all for this opportunity to present to this committee. My name’s Margot Parkes. I’m here as the acting co-chair of the Nechako Watershed Roundtable. I’m also a Canada Research Chair, at the University of Northern British Columbia, in Health, Ecosystems and Society. I’ve been privileged to live in B.C. since 2005 and on the unceded traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh here in Prince George since 2009.

If I was doing my job as a prof, I would get everybody to stand up and have a good stretch right now. I really commend you on this task of paying attention to such a scope of ideas tonight. I’m really here to add to your sense of the importance and imperative of thinking about watersheds as a way for us to imagine thriving livelihoods — as we were just hearing, in relation to labour — but also thriving lifestyles, lifescapes and living systems in this really important part of British Columbia.

[6:25 p.m.]

Instead of stretching your legs, I encourage you to think up into this enormous system which is the Nechako. We are at the confluence of the Nechako and the Fraser here, and the Nechako is a system over 1.5 times the size of Vancouver Island. It’s an amazing living system. Like any watershed, we’re tasked to think about how land, water and communities interact for our future. So it’s in that context that I’m presenting to you as the acting co-chair of the Nechako Watershed Roundtable.

Why do we need watershed round tables? Why do we need to have efforts to coordinate our intentions, to think about land, water and healthy communities altogether? NWR, the Nechako Watershed Roundtable, brings together a number of different players — local government, First Nations. We have 14 First Nations in this extraordinary area that we interact with and that we’ve brought together since 2015 — a really important multi-stakeholder effort to pick up the pieces of how we can be better together to deal with land, water and community issues in this kind of area.

There are a lot of overlapping jurisdictions and boundaries, which means we have to figure out how to work together. One thing I learned when I came and moved to northern B.C. — I’m from New Zealand originally — is not only that watershed issues are an issue here, like they are everywhere in the world, but that B.C. has an incredible opportunity to do better and that in the north we have to work together, and this is an example of how we’re doing it in the Nechako.

Why do we need a watershed round table? Not only are we bringing together First Nations, local government, NGOs…. I’m from UNBC as a member of this effort. You heard from Wayne. NEWSS is another member of this effort. Fraser Basin Council is also here, another contributor to this effort. We have youth representatives and extraordinary engagement from people who care about thriving futures in this area. We come together because we can be better together and pick up the pieces where the safety nets on land and water issues do fall…. We have gaps in our safety nets on these issues, so we have to figure out where the gaps are and how we can work better together.

NWR is an example of that. We bring together a diverse array of voices. You’ll see in the handouts there’s some information about the Nechako, to bring it into your imagination, and about our round table and how we work together.

We facilitate collaborative action where otherwise there wouldn’t be conversations about sticky issues. We work to think about future generations, so we’re grappling with these converging issues of climate change and ongoing multiple resource developments and issues in relation to water quality and water quantity. We deal with some pretty significant issues in this watershed, such as the Kenney dam and the influences on flows, that have had an unprecedented impact.

What this means is that we are challenged to find ways to get this core business to work to be better together. Everybody wants to be better together, but it takes time and effort. It requires the glue to bring the conversations together. That’s what the round table provides. It’s another example of what I understand you’ve been hearing a lot about, of why we need to consider having a version of a water sustainability fund, a way to make sure that we’re bridging the safety net on land and water issues in B.C.

B.C. can do better, but it does need committed resources to bring things together where otherwise they would fall through. So NWR…. We have outlined in the handout you see that we need to operate a minimum of $100K to keep this kind of collective effort working.

We also…. There are emerging issues coming down the track that we’re well equipped to respond to, like landscape- and watershed-level planning processes, like trying to understand, as the climate changes, what’s going to happen with the issues of the Kenney dam and the downstream flows, whether it’s on sturgeon or other species or humans that it impacts, and also the fact that there is some really exciting work being led by First Nations in this, who are partnering with the NWR to have the difficult conversations of how we can really imagine these issues being handled progressively and, over time, into future generations.

Those are the key messages: the importance of this kind of effort as yet another example of the need for sustainable funding for water-related initiatives in the province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I have a quick question for you. You said that…. Is the watershed round table funded right now?

M. Parkes: It’s a very good question. We have cobbled together funding consistently from multiple sources. It’s another variation of the story that Wayne has mentioned. Fraser Basin Council and UNBC have particularly been seeking ways that we can support this effort. We do have small amounts of money coming in from local governments.

[6:30 p.m.]

We’ve worked very hard to try to figure out where local government and other players who could put money together to pull this…. But that kind of pulling together — the bake sales that we often joke about — is just not sustainable. It’s absolutely exhausting, and we lose the opportunities to maintain this kind of goodwill and momentum.

We have had an amazing success of cobbling together budgets. I’m involved with multiple collective efforts like this on multi-stakeholder processes. It’s not unique to this scenario; I really understand that. But there is a massive lost opportunity without a sustained operational core budget line, as Wayne said, that then you could leverage from to bring in other resources. We’re very good at bringing in other resources.

The lack of that kind of core piece to be the glue to convene the conversations that people want to have…. When we convene the conversations, people come, and they come consistently. I’ve been here for ten years. They’ve come consistently because they want to work together, but that doesn’t happen without coordination. That involves multiple groups but also the province and the federal government as well, as part of the wider round table.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much, and thank you for your dedication. The question that I have is around the makeup of the Nechako Watershed Roundtable. Do you have a lead coordinator? Do you take turns? Is there any…?

M. Parkes: That’s a great question. You’ll see in the little diagram on the second page of the notes…. It’s pretty hard to see, because it’s so small. It is an important question. We have a round table, which is very open. Anybody that wants to sit at the round table, if we imagine this as a round table, can.

The core committee is at the crux of it, and that’s the piece where we’ve identified the membership subgroups. That’s where we have local government, First Nations and not-for-profit-sector contributors. Within that, we’re very fortunate that with in-kind funding and matching funding from FBC — the Fraser Basin Council — and UNBC, we’ve been able to maintain a secretariat function. It’s very tenuous, but we have consistently been able to maintain that. That secretariat function is really critical to bringing the core committee together and then also being able to convene the working groups.

We’ve got a really exciting working group emerging with youth engagement, with community-based lakes monitoring programs, with ways in which we’re connecting with First Nations. But if we don’t have the glue to bring that kind of stuff together, we just miss opportunities all the time. People want to come around, and they want to come to the table. But if they don’t know when, and who’s organizing it…. It’s literally as simple as that.

This is a fairly nimble structure. You’ll see lots of different kinds of governance models for watershed initiatives. I don’t think this is the best one. This was a starting platform that was actually built from five years of work with an alliance that was even less formal. But we had to formalize to some degree, which is why we’ve created that core committee structure. That then triggers the ability to have working groups and progress work that people want to progress.

R. Leonard: So it’s very much grassroots.

M. Parkes: Yeah, it is. I mean, there has been occasional support for particular activities and projects that have aligned with provincial or federal budget initiatives, but there is no source of ongoing operational funding for this kind of important multi-stakeholder governance work. We have been tasked and have searched through sustainable funding opportunities to figure out where the opportunities are, and we’ve pretty much exhausted them. We’ve looked, and we’re open to suggestions and motivations.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. We very much appreciate it — and your dedication to the watershed.

Next we have Gordon Robertson and Bree-Anna Robertson.

Gordon, if we could try and keep the comments to about five minutes, that would be wonderful.

GORDON ROBERTSON

G. Robertson: This is my daughter, Bree-Anna. She was born with severe cerebral palsy 33 years ago. She’s totally dependent on others for all aspects of her life. She can literally do nothing for herself but breathe.

[6:35 p.m.]

She needs help to roll over, get her up in the morning, take her to the bathroom, give her a bath, feed her, give her drinks, turn on the TV, change the channel or the DVD, get her dressed, get her in and out of her wheelchair, turn on her speech-dedicated computer, and so on and so on.

Her mother and I decided, when she was very young, that we were not prepared to put her in a group home when she became an adult. So we looked around for other options and discovered something called a microboard, through the Vela Microboard Association. A microboard is a small, not-for-profit society that has the sole purpose of supporting one individual with a disability — in this case, Bree-Anna.

Having a microboard allows us to receive funding from CLBC and Northern Health to hire staff to support Bree to lead as independent a life as possible. It allows her to decide, with support, all the things that most of the rest of us take for granted, like what time she gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, what she’s going to do and where she’s going to go in a day, who she’s going to do it with, where she is going to live and with whom, and who is going to support her. In other words, she gets to have a self-directed life, just like most of the rest of the adults in B.C.

It’s not possible to have this kind of freedom in any group home environment, no matter how hard the people running it try. They simply do not have the staffing level to provide one-on-one care, and they do not have the option of letting people choose who they live with. If a person is waiting for a spot in a group home, the first one to come open is where they are going. It’s as simple as that.

The only other way for an individual with a disability who needs paid supports to get that kind of life in B.C. is with something called individualized funding, or IF. By the way, I’d like to point out that both microboards and IF are also cheaper than staffed residential care or, in other words, a group home.

Bree leads such an independent life that her story — as an example of what is possible with a microboard or IF — has been shared several times internationally, including to the United Nations in New York and the Zero Project in Vienna, Austria. In most of the world, people with Bree’s level of disability still live in large institutions with hundreds or even thousands of other people like them.

This is her outside the Melbourne, Australia convention centre, where she had been invited to share her story at the prestigious International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 2016 World Congress.

People are always amazed that someone with her level of disability leads such a normal life. She has been to Disneyland six times, Las Vegas twice and on several long road trip vacations with her mom, me and a caregiver throughout the western U.S. to places like the Grand Canyon, San Diego and the California and Oregon coasts. She has been a regular at the Williams Lake Stampede for years and often goes on vacation with her current primary caregiver. She uses her computer to read at her cousin’s elementary school. She’s very well-known in her community.

Her quality of life is directly tied to our ability to hire and retain staff to support her. This has been severely compromised by the recent decision by the government to create a significant wage gap between unionized and non-unionized support workers by providing a low-wage redress of approximately 18 percent over three years to people who belong to certain unions and only 6 percent over the same period to all the other workers, which includes around 50 percent of the people working in the sector, including Bree’s support staff. We have already been struggling for several years to find and retain good staff. A 12 percent wage difference will only make it even harder.

Every employer in the sector is experiencing difficulty hiring and retaining staff, whether they are unionized employees or not. While it is comforting to know that the government has recognized this by offering the low-wage redress, doing it in such an unfair manner is very disheartening and feels cruel. We do not see this as a union versus non-union issue. It is a simple issue of equal pay for equal work. Why should someone be forced to join a union just to get a fair wage for the work they do? Bree’s care needs are as high as pretty much anyone who lives in a union-supported environment, so why should her staff, who work just as hard as anyone in a union position, be paid less?

The people who choose to work for microboards or IF employers tend to do so because they recognize that it gives them a chance to really make a difference in someone’s life — to be creative — because the focus is on one person, not on however many people may live in any given group home. People who are supported by microboards or IF have the opportunity to have a quality of life that is infinitely beyond compare under any other support system available in B.C. — or Canada, I might add, for that matter.

[6:40 p.m.]

Please don’t put that opportunity at risk. Provide the same funding increase to all support workers, no matter who their employer is or whether they choose to belong to a union or not. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Gordon. Before I open the floor to the members, I just wanted to say that you definitely moved me, as a human being, with your story — regardless of being an MLA or anything else. I have a very different situation in my family, but a long-term medical situation. I know how much compassion and time….

I just wanted to say, from me to you, that how your family has dealt with this is incredibly admirable. I’m very moved by this. So thank you so much to both of you for coming. I just wanted to tell you that.

Anyone have any questions for Gordon or Bree-Anna?

N. Simons: Thank you for your presentation, to both of you, for letting us know about not just the microboard situation but the impact of providing more fair wages to those who belong to unions and those who negotiated the in­creases. I think that’s part of the collective bargaining system.

I’m interested in knowing what you’ve heard from government, with respect to the efforts that are being made to address that issue that has been raised.

G. Robertson: I know that there have been meetings held, but I don’t know much more than that. We’re very active with the Vela Microboard Association, which is an umbrella society. But each microboard is independent. I know that the executive director of Vela recently met with the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

I also know that in the past, when the unions involved negotiated wage increases, previous governments had always applied the same wage increases across the board, whether you were union or non-union, which is why it’s come as quite a shock to people this time around that that hasn’t been the case.

I personally have nothing against unions. I worked for the provincial government for 36 years before I retired. Rich was my minister for awhile, the Minister of Forests. I certainly understand the value of unions, but I also understand that the primary purpose of unions is to serve their members. So whether you’re a BCGEU member caring for somebody who lives in a group home or you’re a nurse or a teacher or a steelworker, your union’s job is to protect you. If there’s ever a conflict between the best interests of the employee that was a member of the union, and the people that that union member is serving, the union must stand up for the member.

It’s up to…. We feel, as a family and as people that we know, that it’s our job as family members…. There are a lot of self-advocates out there as well, who can speak for themselves. We need to stand up for us and for our family members because, at the end of the day, we’re the only ones who really can.

N. Simons: Well said. Thank you.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. Really do appreciate hearing your story and getting to meet Bree-Anna. My question is around the difference — the 12 percent. If there were equitable increases along the way in the past, why is there still a 12 percent gap?

G. Robertson: There will be a 12 percent gap under this proposal, where if you belong to a union….

R. Leonard: But it was because of a wage redress issue, right?

G. Robertson: Well, the wage redress is just…. It hasn’t actually been implemented yet. It’s been announced.

It was originally announced as 2 percent a year across the board for three years. Then, shortly after that, the Premier announced that — and it’s not for all unions, even; it’s only for certain unions — they would actually get an extra 4 percent a year for three years. So people who belong to unions like the BCGEU would get an 18 percent increase over three years. For the people who don’t belong to those unions, whether they’re non-union or they belong to a different trade union that isn’t part of that group that’s recognized, they would only get a 6 percent increase over that same time frame.

[6:45 p.m.]

R. Leonard: I won’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of how we get to this place. My question relates to the supports that you have been able to find. We’ve heard in the past — I think it might have been Children and Youth Committee — of communities where it’s very difficult to find people to do the work. I was wondering if that’s been a challenge at all for you and how you personally have worked around gaining employees and accessing them.

G. Robertson: I have connections around the province. I know that it’s really an issue everywhere. It’s an issue from Vancouver to Fort Nelson. In some communities — smaller communities, of course — it’s more of a challenge just because there are fewer people to draw from. In communities like Fort St. John and Dawson Creek, where there are lots of high-paying jobs as the economy rebounds in those communities, it’s hard to find people who’ll work even for the $20-plus an hour that you can now offer.

It is a provincewide issue for us. We’ve been fortunate in that we have a couple of core employees who have stuck with us for a while. We have had some blips along the way. One of Bree’s primary caregivers worked for us for 12 years, developed a very rare form of breast cancer, has been unable to work for us and will likely not be able to work for us ever again.

We struggle to find people to fill in other shifts and to fill in weekends and things like that. I’m retired. I’ve been retired just over five years, so I am the support network.

R. Leonard: The glue that holds it together.

R. Coleman: Thanks for your story, and thanks for your time today. It really does emphasize that the ability to go to microboards was the right decision for a whole bunch of people that can really benefit from them, and Bree-Anna’s story is one of those.

D. Clovechok: Hi. I just want to say, Gordon, thank you, and Bree-Anna, for your presentation. This world needs more parents like you and your wife.

G. Robertson: Thank you. We’re just doing what we think everybody should do. We realize that it’s unusual, but we’re just doing what we think should be done.

D. Clovechok: More should do it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I would like to echo that same sentiment, Gordon. Thank you so much, both of you, for coming and sharing your story.

Next up we have Jan Manning.

J. Manning: Thanks, everyone, for coming. I really appreciate that you’re here tonight. I really do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): If we could limit the comments to about five minutes, that would be wonderful.

JAN MANNING

J. Manning: Okay. I’ll do what I can.

What I’m presenting here tonight is something to do with the CORE program. The CORE course is the B.C. conservation and outdoor recreation education course, which has to do with hunting. Some of you probably know that. In this package, there’s a piece at the very back, a memorandum of understanding, that I’d like to refer to, too. But I’d like to mention that the conservation and outdoor recreation education course, or CORE course, has been around since about 1972 or ’74, depending on who you talk to.

I think that polling shows…. Well, I do know that polling shows that climate crisis fears will lead in elections in B.C.’s top five concerns by citizens, and 67 percent of people think that it’s a top-five concern in their area.

[6:50 p.m.]

I think that we need a place to energize our responses and to strengthen our environment. The CORE course and environmental education program comes to mind. Environmental education used to be around in all high schools. It was a 120-hour program, and it was there for many years. It disappeared and was taken over gradually, I think, by some of the sciences and technologies that came along — the STEM programs, etc. But we used to have that program. CORE hunting licences used to qualify people of any age to go out hunting, and that money went to mandatory CORE…. It allowed conservation to happen.

Several sources say that Canada is warming at twice the global rate, and northern B.C. is at three times the global rate. If you’ve been here for any period of time, you know that’s the case. I think that we can take action and change and harmonize some of our plans to mitigate the problems that are coming. We’ll need to understand ecosystems and land degradation, ensure food security, drive sustainable resource use, adapt to changing weather, prepare for disasters and for climate refugees. We need to ensure the survival of B.C.’s full spectrum of plant and animal species.

I think the way to do that is to reclaim the CORE course. The CORE course right now is under a memorandum of understanding between the B.C. government’s Forests and Lands fish and wildlife branch — they’ve gone through various names, but they are the fish and wildlife branch — and the B.C. Wildlife Federation. The memorandum of understanding involved both parties improving the CORE course. They were to improve the CORE course. They were to collect the revenue from graduations and put that back into the CORE program, and that did not happen.

The course was subsequently starved out, really. Many booklets and work that was done were taken away, hands-on portions removed, and the B.C. regulations synopsis studies were minimized. Eventually, the B.C. Wildlife Federation further outsourced that course to an on-line American firm, and it’s in its third year of a three-year trial with the on-line American firm. That concerns me because I think we’re losing out on a very valuable resource that we could be using here in our province.

First of all, we need to recover the CORE course or the resource. Next, we need to develop a new CORE program to address the environment, using the original CORE course at its base. We make it mandatory for everyone who benefits from B.C. resources: anglers, commercial fishers, snowmobilers, hydrologists, mining executives, farmers, hikers, foresters, CEOs, heli-skiers, guide-outfitters, everyone that uses our precious and dwindling resources. Then the program can be delivered at three levels. Each includes a mandatory outdoor component with several ecological conservation topics to draw on.

Level 1 is an elementary curriculum program. Youth are introduced to ecology with school gardens, owl pellets, wildfire safety, fish hatcheries, leave-no-trace kinds of learning. I’m sure we’ve all heard some of those.

Level 2 is a secondary curriculum course required for graduation. Teens will benefit from a CORE program with the additions of greater fish identification and habitat — by the way, there is none now — endangered species planning, changing landscapes, avalanche safety, bear awareness. It includes critical conservation discussions and an outdoor component as well, like archaeological plots or possibly team-building. There are many options in that too.

This is what I think is quite important. Level 3 is a leadership and perception course. All adults from diverse backgrounds — and that’s a key component — who recreate in or benefit from B.C.’s resources, from ranchers to researchers, can be exposed to a comprehensive CORE program that examines multiple needs. It includes all those things, such as avalanche awareness, water demands, bear awareness, airsheds, species awareness, outdoor safety and survival, as a base for critical thinking and ethical leadership.

I think we have a lot of that around. We just don’t necessarily have it all in one place. I think having a leadership and perception course as a third level can really help us to gather our thoughts about where we’re going and what we’re doing with our endangered species. When a person thinks ethically, they’re giving some thought to something beyond themselves, and you draw on critical thinking. We all need a structure to focus on a perfect future, a positive future, and to discuss how we’ll get there. Working together requires focusing on common ground.

This committee’s focus is finance. What will it cost us to do nothing? Sound forest practices will reduce wildfire risks. Comprehensive species management will eliminate expensive measures like the caribou recovery program. Recreationalists with the appropriate skill sets will reduce search and rescue as well as ecosystem impacts and related costs.

[6:55 p.m.]

Through fair-market-value pricing, the CORE program could easily be self-sustaining. Surplus funds from the advanced course could be siphoned into the school-based curriculum program. I think it could definitely be self-sustaining.

Some of my adult years were spent teaching kids. For over a decade, if you were ten years old in B.C., you took an anti-smoking course. Kids took what they learned home. Smoking rates plummeted at all ages when kids learned, and they spread the word. The project was an undeniable success.

This CORE program, which could easily be taken from the CORE course and expanded and enhanced upon, has the potential to be beyond any single-purpose endeavour. As a mandatory program, it offers the structure to address emerging environmental concerns, and those are certainly coming at us. We own the CORE course, and I think we should put it to work in a new manner.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Jan. Thank you very much. We really appreciate that.

Any questions?

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation.

J. Manning: Oh, thanks. I’m sorry I’m so nervous. I’m not normally like this. I’m normally quite careful and capable.

R. Leonard: You’ve captured our imaginations. The question I have is around this leadership and perception course. You talk about exposing everyone to that program, but how do you actually hook them in? Is this only the hunters, through the original…?

J. Manning: No, it’s not just the hunters. It’s all people. As I mentioned here, it’s just about everyone that works in the bush, works in the ocean, works in the streams.

R. Leonard: So how do you get a rancher to take this course?

J. Manning: I think we make it mandatory. I think if you want to be out in the woods working in a resource area or recreating in a resource area, then perhaps…. It’s a new idea that really recognizes that all over the world we’re in trouble.

When I was at the caribou recovery forum that came along in the spring, what I noticed, in standing in the room, was that every single person there had a reason why they should be thought of first. I heard the forestry CEO say: “But we don’t have the wood. We don’t have this. We don’t have that.” I heard the fellow that was out on his snowmobile saying: “It’s not our fault that the caribou are dying. We need access.”

Everywhere I looked, someone had a different idea about who should be in charge and who should get first dibs. That concerned me, and I thought that perhaps what we really need is everyone in a room together. How could we do that? We could do that by saying that this course is mandatory at the elementary level, it’s mandatory at the secondary level, and it’s mandatory if you want to work in the woods.

The course itself, of course, could be decided by whomever wishes to make that decision. I’ve listed the five ministries here that I think might be most interested, but who knows? But it concerns me that we’re not thinking about the future in the same way. We’re saying: “Me first.”

I had a line in here. It was actually pretty good. I thought that it sort of made it here.

R. Leonard: Yes, you did. It was a good one.

J. Manning: You probably read it. I’m thinking that we have to find a new way. We have to find a new way to get through the upcoming trials that we’re about to have. Our environment is in terrible trouble. We just heard tonight that the Trans Mountain pipeline has been okayed, and we’ve just declared a climate emergency. Well, those two just don’t really compute. And if they’re going to compute, let’s do something about thinking together, critical thinking together. That’s my thought.

R. Leonard: Thank you.

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

J. Manning: Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Prince George Backcountry Recreation Society — Dave King.

Hello, Dave. Nice to see you again. How are you?

D. King: Good. I’ll try not to keep you too long.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, that’s fine. If we can keep it to five minutes for the initial comments, that would be greatly appreciated.

PRINCE GEORGE BACKCOUNTRY
RECREATION SOCIETY

D. King: I’m director of the Backcountry Recreation Society. It’s an association of about ten different clubs and organizations all involved in non-motorized types of recreation scattered through the Prince George–Robson Valley area, and something over 3,000 members.

As has been heard tonight through the various discussions, there’s a lot of industry that’s got problems out there, but one that has great growth potential is tourism. It was mentioned by at least one person. Related to that is what happens out in the Crown lands that helps to attract it in our B.C. parks on the rest of our Crown lands.

[7:00 p.m.]

I’ve argued — I’ve made presentations before — that B.C. parks are not being as well managed as they could be. They have not got the staff, the numbers of people that are needed. Fortunately, over the last couple of years, there has been some additional money made available to B.C. Parks. At least in this region, one long-term auxiliary-type person has become full-time, and one full-time position was added.

However, they are still scrambling to just manage the B.C. parks. If it wasn’t for work by volunteers, like members of the Backcountry Rec Society and, particularly, the club I belong to, the Caledonia Ramblers — a tremendous amount of time we’ve put in helping manage trails, keeping the trails open, other facilities, and so on — they would be in trouble. It’s just been ongoing.

I don’t think it’s unique here, but it certainly is very prevalent here. We get occasional phone calls saying, “Could you help us out in parks clearing deadfall?” or something else, and so on — so that side of it.

One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that B.C. Parks should have naturalists, as they used to have, many, many years ago in high-use parks. Three parks around here come to mind. There’s Purden Lake Park, Mount Robson Park and our new ancient forest park, the Chun T’oh Whudujut that Shirley played a major role in getting established a couple of years ago. I feel very strongly that there should be naturalists on site during the summer months or busy seasons in those three. Elsewhere in the province, I’m sure there are going to be many others.

They would provide tours. They would provide information for visitors and help look after the conservation values in the parks and so on. But something is needed there, because the park staff just are unable to provide that right now. I just see it as a crying need in some of these parks here.

Anyway, the other side of it is the rest of the Crown lands that are out there that have really come under recreation sites and trails for management for recreation. They are desperately underfunded. I was very disappointed to see no mention of recreation sites and trails in the summary report from the September public hearings this committee held — no mention whatsoever. I know I wasn’t the only one around the province that had made mention of the fact that the recreation sites and trails are seriously underfunded.

We’ve got two people here in Prince George looking after the Prince George and Mackenzie forest districts. All kinds of recreation sites — there are trails, and so on. There’s just no way that they can look after everything. If it wasn’t for volunteers looking after and clearing trails for them, and other facilities, they would be in big trouble.

As I say in the report here, even some of the heritage trails, like the Alexander Mackenzie Heritage Trail — the last few years, we’ve put in five to seven days clearing blowdown each year from that trail alone. A couple of hundred hours — I don’t know what it would cost if you were doing it by contract. It would be horrendous. They do provide a little bit of money to cover gas costs and so on, but that’s it.

If you’re going to manage for tourism and recreation on the Crown lands, there have got to be some improvements to the agencies that are responsible for those activities, both in B.C. Parks and on the Crown lands. I think on the Crown land part of it, the recreation sites and trails is in really desperate need of additional resources. There’s just no way.…

I got an email today from them saying, “Could you go out and work on Tacheeda Mountain Trail,” which is not far from here. It’s got an old forestry fire lookout on the top, and they’re wanting to preserve it as one of the heritage forest lookouts around the province. “Can you go and help us out on that?” To me, it’s a sad situation. I really feel, as I say, that both our organizations need more resources — money and staff.

[7:05 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thanks, Dave. Any questions from the…?

N. Simons: Yeah. I just point out that your comment that…. This community involvement in maintaining trails is something that we do see volunteers doing, but everybody…. People are stretched. I think we heard clearly from you that there are a lot of reasons why investments in our parks would be good. Thank you for making that case.

D. King: I think that more investment would make it more attractive, shall we say, and be easier to sell to — let’s call it — foreign tourists. They could be better promoted in that sense.

The issues are different in different areas. I mean, you look at the southern part of the Lower Mainland, this kind of thing. Parking lots. Accesses. Limited places. They’ve got severe problems there. But in three-quarters of the province, there are definitely more options. They can be managed better and used to track tourists far better than they are right now, and marketed far better.

N. Simons: Just to add, I do know that previously, when naturalists were there, there was a certain attachment that people would get from their learning in these parks. Their value lasts a long time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Dave, for your continued passion for parks and recreation. We really appreciate it. It’s great hearing from you.

D. King: The Ancient Forest would probably be a good place to have a First Nations person because of their deep involvement in that park.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good point. Thank you so much, Dave.

Before we break, I just wanted to thank everyone from Hansard and our Clerk’s office.

Susan and Stephanie, thank you so much. I know it’s — what? — day 7 now. It’s been a long day already.

I also want to thank the members for having attention to all the…. It was a long day. I really appreciate everybody staying on task and staying awake. You know, it’s hard. It’s been a long day. Thank you so much for your continued concentration.

A motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 7:07 p.m.