The committee met at 8:30 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

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

We’re very grateful to be on the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa people and the Doig River, Blue River and Halfway River First Nations.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Normally we travel in the fall, where we hold public consultations to 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’ll be reviewing this timeline, and we 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 who’s interested.

In addition to in-person meetings, the committee invites British Columbians to share their priorities in writing or by filling out the 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 the input we receive will be carefully considered by the committee to develop 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. Thank you, everyone who is participating today, for taking the time to share your ideas.

Just in terms of the format, if we could please respect the time limits of five minutes to share your input, followed by five minutes for questions. You’re welcome to provide any information that you’re not able to share in your presentation in writing.

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

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

Next I’d like to allow our members to introduce themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Assisting us today is the Parliamentary Committees Office, Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond.

We have Steve Weisgerber and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services, who are recording the proceedings. Also, to their team back in Victoria, I just want to send our thank-you for all the hard work they do.

First up we have North Peace rural roads initiative — Karen Goodings and Jackie Kjos.

Karen and Jackie, thank you so much. The floor is yours.

Budget Consultation Presentations

NORTH PEACE RURAL ROADS INITIATIVE

K. Goodings: Thank you for allowing us to come and present again this year. We did this last year, and we really felt that we were well listened to. We are back again this year with much of the same message but much more briefly. I welcome you to the North Peace.

[8:35 a.m.]

J. Kjos: It’s nice to see everyone here in Fort St. John. I work with Karen’s team.

The North Peace Rural Roads Task Force is made up of industry and local government. Karen is, of course, electoral area director for area B, which is actually the largest one in B.C. She has been passionate about this for as long as I’ve known Karen. That’s been quite a long time now. One of our challenges that we’re going to talk about here is called our transportation challenge. I’ve given a bit of a graphic or a handout this time that shows a few pictures to just help you understand.

We do plan on submitting a video by the end of the month as well, because it’s really difficult to explain what a real rough road feels like until you’ve been out on it. I’ve been up travelling around and taking some video.

I’ll quickly go through what our challenge is. It starts with our geography. All of our terrain is clay, and it’s very poor road-building soil. We have deeply-incised rivers running in every direction — the Peace, the Beatton, Blueberry. All of these rivers run through that clay, and they cause these great big trenches, and they were much bigger rivers in the past.

We have a really poor base to build road, and we have really challenging terrain — lots of hills, lots of problems with slide. We have very limited gravel. The only place there is gravel is down along those rivers, and it’s becoming depleted. As we continue to try and maintain 2,200 kilometres of gravel road, that gravel is getting depleted — farther to haul. So as a road deteriorates, we can’t fix them.

There’s 1,600 kilometres of gravel. Or 74 percent of the roads in the North Peace are gravel. We have no intention of them all becoming pavement. It’s not realistic. But there are some key corridors that really need to be upgraded, particularly just where we have both industry and residence. These roads were built by the rural residents, by the agricultural industry. They pushed out. Even now, you dig into an old road, you’ll find corduroy, which is just old logs they laid down, built the road over top. So you’ve got rotting wood, clay over top and some gravel on top, and then you start running 200,000-pound loads over top of them. They don’t last very long.

They’re very unsuitable for high-volume industry use. In some cases…. Not as bad as it was 15 years ago when we started this group because a lot of progress was made, but we still do have some challenges.

It affects not only our rural residents, which we’re very concerned about. They need to come in to town for things like groceries, school, doctor appointments, college, all of those types of things and travel those roads every day with jobs. It’s also our industry out there.

Our agriculture industry has been here since the land was first cleared. They’re very much the economic base. They’re the backbone of the Peace. What’s happening is you’re getting larger farms and bigger equipment.

Same thing with them. They’re out on the roads with massive equipment now. This is a picture I took this spring of seeding. This top picture. This unit is 120 feet long — I have to convert to old school, because I’m kind of old school — and it’s about 20 feet wide. You put that on an 18-foot road, it becomes problematic.

Forestry has been, except for the last couple of weeks, our steady and consistent. It’s been a long-term economic driver, and we’re getting larger truck configurations. That’s an eight axle, but they’re starting to run nine axles up here as well. They’re heavier, harder on the road, more impact. It’s energy that really puts a beating on our roads.

All of the LNG that is going to the new LNG Canada is coming from the northeast, and 25 percent of that is coming from north of the river. There’s kind of a fallacy that it’s all coming from Shell, and it’s all in the Dawson Creek area. But Petronas is a 25 percent investor in that, and all of their assets are north of the river. We’re seeing steady activity.

Also, as natural gas prices have stayed depressed over the last ten to 15 years, there’s been more of a move towards these liquid-rich areas where they’re able to take things like propane, butane and other by-products, which are quite valuable still, and they’re extracting them.

The industry has changed. There’s more infrastructure being built out in the field to do that separating in the fields, because the propane goes one way, the butanes go another and the gas goes a different way. So there’s more and more building more heavy loads. And there’s a lot more production.

Another area that we struggle with here are road bans. For 90 days in the spring, we lose use of those roads for industry, and that’s a long time. People get laid off over that. Everybody’s costs increase, because there’s some stuff that has to be hauled in reducible loads so the volume to be hauled is reduced. It restricts the economy.

Interestingly, in the province of B.C., 76 percent of the extraordinary loads — these are the big, massive loads that require permits — come out of northeast B.C., of which 40 percent originate right here or end in the North Peace. Some of those loads….

[8:40 a.m.]

When we started this project 15 years ago, we were concerned about 85-tonne loads. Some of these loads that are coming up here now are 185 tonnes. They’re 100,000 kilograms heavier. So on these roads, you go back and you think: “Okay. They’ve got corduroy under them and wood and clay and some gravel on top.” You put a 200,000-kilogram load on them, and they just can’t stand up.

Another difference in this region compared to the rest of the province, if you look along the graph at some of these places like Prince George and Cariboo and even Highway 1, a third of our vehicle traffic in the northeast is passenger vehicles — cars, pickups, etc. — and two-thirds is heavier vehicles. That’s the complete opposite of the rest of the province, so we really do deal with a lot of heavy traffic here.

We’re looking for three things. We’re looking for incremental funding for first-time hard surfacing of key corridors. This is a picture, the top picture there on the back, of the Beryl Prairie Road. A year ago we were really kind of banging the table and concerned about the Beryl Prairie Road, and now it’s gone. The road is ten kilometres of…. It’s disappeared. There’s nothing left. Now it’s not a case of repairing. It has to be rebuilt. We need to catch these roads before they’re completely destroyed, or we’re just throwing away massive amounts of government funding.

In the years between 1997 and about 2013, there was great investment up here that left a real legacy for the residents, driven mostly by the energy industry. But some of that is getting aged, and it’s deteriorating. This second picture is infrastructure that was built probably in about 2000, and it hasn’t been kept up. There were millions and millions of dollars poured into that. If we lose that, not only do the residents lose that infrastructure, but oil and gas is now starting to deactivate and rehabilitate those areas that they’re no longer in, and they need these roads to be able to go back in and do all that restoration work. So those are important.

The last priority is to get some pullouts. That’s a picture of one of these modern tractors. I was stunned. I haven’t really gone and looked at the agriculture industry. Karen called me one day, and she said: “Have you looked at the tractors that are out there?” The three tires on that tractor…. I’ve got a picture of my truck, my pickup, sitting next to it. My pickup is the same width as those three tires. And there are actually three on each side, which keeps that tractor fairly level. It takes up a lot of room. If that meets an oil and gas load…. Even a pickup is hard-pressed to get around it. We need some pullouts. We have no pullouts on these roads.

Those are our three recommendations and our asks of government. We’re continuing to work with the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Energy and Mines to advance this issue. This is not as massive as it was 15 years ago, but there are some key roads, particularly where oil and gas is impacting, that we need to get to before they are destroyed and the cost to rehabilitate becomes ten times as much because we’re starting from scratch.

I think I went over my time. I apologize.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fine, Jackie. I’m just fascinated by the Tim Hortons cup in the middle of the road.

J. Kjos: Yes. What happens is you…. That’s for perspective.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know. I got that. But why is there a Tim Hortons cup in the middle of the road?

J. Kjos: Why would she put a picture of someone littering on a presentation. But it does just show…

B. D’Eith (Chair): …how big the cracks are.

J. Kjos: Yeah. And the whole centre of that road. In places, there are cracks that are eight or nine inches wide. The water is getting in there, and it’s deteriorating it. It freezes and spreads more.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Karen, did you want to add anything?

K. Goodings: No. I think she’s done very well. We’ll go to questions.

R. Leonard: You say there are 1,600 kilometres of gravel roads. How much is mixed with residential, would you say?

J. Kjos: All of it.

R. Leonard: All of it. And for how many residents?

K. Goodings: Area B is about 5,600 people. Of course, those are spread out over a larger area, but every one of them needs those roads in order to be able to get to school, to get to doctors, to get wherever they need to be.

J. Kjos: One of the differences with this area and our industries here is that we have no forestry main lines. Lots of communities have a forestry main line that brings the wood from the field right to a mill. We don’t have that. We have to use the public roads.

The oil and gas industry, traditionally, has been everywhere. It’s out in the agriculture area. You see it when you fly in. It’s everywhere. Even though there’s been a change in the industry, those wells that are still active have to be serviced. So the impact on the residents, if there’s industry activity past their place, is that their road that they depend on to come to buy groceries and go to school is impacted by industry.

[8:45 a.m.]

Industry is great. If you drive around, you’ll see signs that say “No industry access” between, you know, whatever time school’s in and out in the morning. “No speeding.” “No noise.” They do everything they can to be good neighbours. They grade the roads. They look after it. But the bottom line is that these are public roads that need investment by the government to sustain the economy of the region.

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

Well, thank you very much, Jackie and Karen. Very nice to see you again, and thank you for your advocacy. We really appreciate it.

J. Kjos: Thank you.

K. Goodings: We have invited the minister up, and we’re waiting to hear from her. We’d like to take her on a tour so that we can show what we’re talking about.

J. Kjos: Yes. Next time take more time. We’ll take you out too.

K. Goodings: Yeah. We’ll take you on a tour.

J. Kjos: I’ll guarantee that we will get you…. If you want a helicopter ride, I will go on record and say we’ll get you helicopters — the whole works of you.

K. Goodings: No kidding. We will.

J. Kjos: We would take you on a fly-drive combination.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’d have to talk to the conflict commissioner on that one.

R. Leonard: A drive sounds like more experiential of your issue.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m for the helicopter.

J. Kjos: The experience, though, is to understand the geography of this area and where industry is and how big this country is.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Karen. Thanks, Jackie. I appreciate it.

J. Kjos: The invitation stands.

K. Goodings: Thanks, everybody. I hope you enjoy your stay in the northeast.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much.

I just wanted to say that Dan Davies, MLA for Peace River North, is in the room.

Thank you very much. Thanks for coming out.

We’ll be taking a short recess until the next people get here.

The committee recessed from 8:46 a.m. to 8:52 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have school district 60, Peace River North — Erin Evans.

Erin, if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, then we have time for questions. That’d be great.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 60,
PEACE RIVER NORTH

E. Evans: Sure. Absolutely.

I just wanted to thank you guys for giving us this opportunity to present to you again. Nothing has changed from last year that we wanted to present. We have over 6,000 students in our school district in 22 schools. We have a new school, if anybody gets a chance to go see it, across from the hospital, Anne Roberts Young School, which is just being built. It’s a new elementary school.

Basically, we need more land for other schools as well as a middle school and another high school. There’s going to be 4,000 housing units built where one of our new schools is. Currently at Margaret “Ma” Murray there are 4,000 housing units that are going to go in over a certain period of time, and of course, that brings more kids. A few years back we had over 600 babies born in one year here in Fort St. John. So our community is growing significantly.

[8:55 a.m.]

We also have aging infrastructure. Just about all of our schools were rated poor to very poor during the last round when they came and inspected our schools.

We have aging infrastructure. We need land for new schools and, of course, for the infrastructure that we have, to continue to maintain it up to the standard where we can have students in our schools where they’re safe and our staff is safe. We’ve just submitted our capital plan this week to the branch. Again, we’re looking at new facilities, a couple of replacement schools or at least some major renovations in those schools.

We are in collective bargaining right now with our CUPE. Our local PRNTA has settled, but of course, that’s a provincial bargaining as well. We have one of the lowest-paid CUPE staff in the province, and to combat against industry…. We’re losing a lot of our red seals and journeymen to industry because they pay twice as much as what we can pay at our school district level. If we’re going to contract out electricians, that costs way more than what we would be able to — than having an in-house type of a trade, if that makes sense.

We are looking at some funding and some influx of cash in order to bring our staff levels on par with the rest of the province and with the trades, because it is hard to recruit and retain good, qualified people in the north. Most northern and rural and remote communities have the same issues as we do.

That is pretty much it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Erin. What would you say would be the biggest priority for this school district right now?

E. Evans: Biggest priority? Probably wages — to keep on par with our trades — as well as new infrastructure or at least the planning for new infrastructure. So new land for new schools, and things like that.

M. Dean: Thanks for your presentation, and thanks for supporting all the students in the area as well.

It might be in the document, but could you just explain what…? Do you have a vacancy rate in your teaching staff, and if so, what is that? Do you know what the per-capita growth is in the student numbers?

E. Evans: The per-capita growth — I don’t have that off the top of my head. I think we’re expecting over 100 for the new enrolment for September. That’s kind of what we’re expecting. Typically, because it’s a resource town, our growth sort of goes up and down. One year we were only expecting 100, and we got 300 students. Then the next year, we were still expecting 100, but we were negative 50. Then the year after that, we were plus 100, I think.

It kind of goes up and down, and it’s really, really hard for us to even estimate what our growth is. But it’s continuing to increase. In some periods, it’s slower. In other periods, it’s a faster increase. But it’s a steady increase. It has been for the last 20 years.

M. Dean: Do you have a vacancy rate, do you know?

E. Evans: For our teachers? Yeah. We are definitely short of teachers right now. We are looking…. At one of our rural schools, we’re short, I believe, five qualified teachers. There have been three letters of permission. We are significantly short in our rural and remote. I’m not exactly 100 percent sure what the vacancy rate is for our qualified teachers currently, but I know that we are still recruiting and trying to maintain.

Of course, it all goes with bargaining. If bargaining goes south, typically what happens, particularly starting in September…. We may or may not have those teachers come into the district, particularly if they’re new. They would want to be somewhere where there’s stability in employment.

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

Next up we have B.C. Wildlife Federation, region 7B, Peace-Liard, and it’s Gerry Paille.

Very nice to meet you.

[9:00 a.m.]

B.C. WILDLIFE FEDERATION,
PEACE-LIARD REGION

G. Paille: I’m the regional president for the B.C. Wildlife Federation, and I’m also the chair of the B.C. Wildlife Federation’s wildlife and allocation committee.

I think you’ve already heard from Al Martin and Chuck Zuckerman and maybe one other. I’m going to touch on a couple of big-picture items and then some more specific local issues that we see.

We’re still in a state where there is insufficient funding for fish and wildlife and habitat big-time, especially when you compare it to other western jurisdictions. We heard from Virgil Moore, who has just retired as the director of fish and wildlife in Idaho, at our AGM — which, by coincidence, was held in Fort St. John this year. Their budget is $120 million. Most of it comes from licensing fees and about 40 percent from federal excise taxes and, interestingly enough, none from general government taxes. In British Columbia, the director, in response to Virgil’s remarks, said she thinks it’s about $80 million.

In British Columbia, it’s really, really hard to figure out how much money is being spent on fish, wildlife and habitat, because it’s a multibranch and multiministry responsibility situation. Just this morning I was looking at the budget documents from Idaho, and it’s just laid out so nicely. We don’t ever see any of that stuff from British Columbia.

In the run-up to the last election, all parties said they were going to dedicate all hunting fees to fish and wildlife management. It has never been done. Only the surcharges are dedicated, so there’s probably about an $8 million shortfall there of actual, dedicated funds for wildlife management. It’s not to say that we’re not spending more than that, but that makes it vulnerable, when the funds aren’t dedicated.

We’d like to see all nature-based tourism operations contribute to the management of fish and wildlife. Right now it’s mostly hunters and anglers that are paying the way. We hear that the bear tourism industry is voluntarily collecting money, but they’re giving it to a private organization, not to government. More and more we’re seeing stakeholders paying for what we see as core government responsibilities, like wildlife inventory and prescribed burns and things. We have local fundraisers, along with the Wild Sheep Society of B.C., and we’re spending quite a bit of money towards those things. This shouldn’t happen. That’s core government business.

To get on to local issues, Site C is a big one for us. The related compensation program — we have no idea how much money that is. The conditions under the water licence say that Hydro gets to assess how well they’re doing, five years after the dam has been running, and then ask for more money or say everything’s good at that time. From past experience with the other two dams, the compensation programs have been woefully underfunded, and they really have done nothing to replace things like moose. It was estimated that the Williston impoundment area got rid of about 12,000 to 15,000 moose, and they’ve never returned. The compensation programs just haven’t done it.

[9:05 a.m.]

We’ve got a huge issue with staffing up here — recruiting and maintaining staffing in the resource ministries. The executive director, a month ago, told me that they’re short 17 positions — 17 vacancies now, five in fish and wildlife. I heard that our fisheries biologist just left. When the COS opened up some more positions around the province, guys bid out and went to other places. We had one CO in Fort St. John for a while, until the new recruitment class graduated. We need some incentives to get staffing up here and to keep them.

The last thing I want to talk about is chronic wasting disease, which is particularly important for the East Kootenays and here in the Peace country because of our proximity to Alberta, where chronic wasting disease has been found. Recently there have been two cases found in Libby, Montana, 50 kilometres from the border in the Kootenays. We probably have it. So we’re looking at scaling up surveillance in that area. There is no dedicated budget to a CWD program in British Columbia. They need freezers. They need money to do testing of the samples. The program just is not being funded at all right now. It’s being done off the side of somebody’s desk.

R. Coleman: Gerry, I’ve sat through a lot of things on fish and wildlife over the years. It’s the first time…. Could you tell me what chronic wasting disease is?

G. Paille: It’s a prion disease. It’s a malformed protein. It’s related to mad cow disease. I think it’s called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. It’s never been shown yet to transfer to humans, but in areas like Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, it’s highly prevalent. It just makes the deer sick, and they die. It’s 100 percent fatal.

R. Coleman: Is it prevalent in wildlife?

G. Paille: Totally.

R. Coleman: Does it go across to the domestic animal?

G. Paille: No, it’s cervids. It arrived in Saskatchewan through a farmed elk that came from North Dakota and then spread kind of like wildfire from there. They’re going to scale up their surveillance program in the East Kootenays — maybe make it mandatory to turn in heads.

We don’t have the money to deal with it. If there is actually a positive case in B.C. — New York spent $2 million on sharpshooters, helicopters, hunters, essentially depopulating in a ten-mile radius around the positive tests there — we need to be prepared to deal with this, and we need money to do it. It’s not in the budget right now.

R. Coleman: I just wondered. Have we had a case yet in B.C.?

G. Paille: We have had no confirmed cases, with around 6,000 samples from the East Kootenays and maybe 1,000 from here over the last ten years or so.

N. Simons: The Idaho licensing fees — do you happen to know if they’re higher than they are here?

G. Paille: They’re a little bit higher but in the same range. We’ve been advocating for government to do a survey of hunters and anglers to see what they might stand in terms of increases to licence fees. At the same time, we don’t think hunters and anglers are the only users of wildlife in the province, and other users need to be contributing as well.

N. Simons: Gerry, besides the bear viewers, who would you include in that list of other contributors?

G. Paille: Snowmobilers, backpackers, birdwatchers, any organization that’s going out on the landscape and basing their businesses on wildlife and habitat.

N. Simons: Just a final comment. Do you know if other jurisdictions use fines towards the cost of conservation, as we do in B.C.?

G. Paille: They do in Idaho, yes. Sometimes judges, on wildlife offences, will rule that the money goes into the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Gerry, for your presentation. I couldn’t agree with you more, especially in the Kootenays, that CWD is a huge issue and needs some money put behind it.

[9:10 a.m.]

I just want to talk a little bit about the funding model. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s certainly a non-partisan issue. We haven’t funded wildlife in this province since the ’50s. It’s chronic, and it needs to be addressed.

I’d be really interested…. I don’t know if you were, prior to the last election, at the meeting in Cranbrook. It was an all-party, all-people meeting. We talked about this and the development of a society — call it a society, for lack of a better word — similar to the Freshwater Fisheries Society, where you create a model where wildlife management is taken away and out of the hands of government and put into an organization that could be directly funded through and with government money. But it also opens up to philanthropic money, as well, and corporate money that could be directed towards it.

I’d like to know what your opinion would be on the creation of a model like the Freshwater Fisheries Society around wildlife management.

G. Paille: We’re not 100 percent happy with the Freshwater Fisheries Society but absolutely support some kind of model like that. I’m thinking you heard Jesse Zeman.

D. Clovechok: I did.

G. Paille: Jesse speaks very well about this.

Yeah. We’re a proponent of moving the money out of government with some government oversight. We think that we can leverage more funds, like you were saying, from philanthropic organizations if the money is separate from government. People are reluctant to give whole piles of money to government, not being sure as to how it’s going to be spent.

R. Leonard: Since you brought it up…. Thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate it. It was a really good overview of what you’re dealing with.

You say you’re not entirely happy with the Freshwater Fisheries Society. What kinds of issues are there?

G. Paille: Well, for up here, they don’t spend any money up here for one thing.

R. Leonard: Okay. So this is an issue around accountability, right? You’re giving money, but you’re not getting anything in return, and you have no way of forcing that.

G. Paille: Yeah. And the same thing with the fish and wildlife compensation program from B.C. Hydro. We have an issue with that too, big time.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I don’t think it’s accountability. It’s use in areas where the disbursements take place. That, again, is that government has issues with silos, and there are issues with silos that have to be addressed in regards to fisheries and wildlife habitat. We’ve all got to work together on this. That’s the only way we’re going to get to the bottom and make it fixed. So drop the silos, and let’s see if we can make a big difference for the province.

Having gone to school in the United States, specifically Washington state, and the amount of money that gets poured into wildlife and fisheries rehabilitation, we’ve got a long way to go.

G. Paille: We’ve heard, I think, Jesse’s presentation. We’ve heard that Bonneville Power puts something like $300 million annually into fish and wildlife management. It’s incredible amounts of money.

We’re also advocates for a federal excise tax. It’s not a British Columbia solution, but in the States, they have two acts where there is an excise tax on firearms, ammunition and fishing lures, and the states apply for that money to come back. So in Idaho, they get something like $50 million annually from that tax.

Our retailers in British Columbia can’t stand to have a B.C.-only solution, especially here. Going to Grande Prairie is pretty easy, and with the Internet shopping, you could avoid that tax pretty easily if the option was there.

I’d advocate for the provincial government to work with the feds to try and get something going in that area.

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

Next up we have Save Our Northern Seniors — Margaret Little and Mavis Nelson.

If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have time for questions, that would be wonderful.

[9:15 a.m.]

SAVE OUR NORTHERN SENIORS

M. Little: My name is Margaret Little — Save Our Northern Seniors, or SONS, as we’re called. I’d like to introduce Mavis Nelson, who is a director on our board as well. I bring regrets from Jean Leahy, who has been here for every presentation except for two. She missed last year because it was in Dawson Creek, and she had no way of getting there. Today she’s in the hospital.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Please give her our best.

M. Little: I will. I wanted that on the record, because she has been a tremendous advocate for seniors in our community. Mavis and I are here to carry on the tradition.

We have made a package for you. I know we don’t have time to go through the whole thing. However, I’ve left it for your nighttime reading. They are our concerns that are in the community. But our biggest concern today is staffing and facilities.

In 2002, concerned citizens came together because our loved ones were being sent to Pouce Coupe or wherever in the province, and we decided that we wanted more facilities here. We were lucky enough to get a hospital here with the Peace Villa. However, Peace Villa was full the day it opened, meaning that there were a tremendous number of people in the community that still needed placement.

We don’t need any more surveys or any more presentations on statistics. We need action. We’re up to here with piles of statistics about what’s going to happen. That’s enough already. Let’s get on with it. My question is: is anybody listening when we say we need more facilities and more staffing — funding?

At the back of your package, you’ll see a chart that looks like this. It tells you the facilities that we have. At the very bottom, January 2019, there are 346 spaces in Fort St. John, and there were 246 people waiting to get into a facility of some sort because they could not cope at home anymore.

Northern Health tells us that 25 percent of the people in Peace Villa don’t meet the criteria for complex care. But there is no place for them to go, so we need more facilities.

Families can no longer provide support at home, and there are no places. Home support and adult day programs need to be enhanced. If you believe that families should remain in their homes, which I do agree with, there has to be support. In a rural area like the Fort St. John area, the Peace area, it’s very difficult, because we’re quite spread out. It’s not like Vancouver. You can go down the road for the library or whatever.

Each facility in Fort St. John right now has at least a long waiting list. The hospital, which should be for acute care, has anywhere from ten to 15 people waiting for placement. There’s a desperate need for assisted living. In May, this month, there were 47 people on the waiting list to get into assisted living. These numbers don’t come out of the air. I get them from Northern Health, and Northern Health has been excellent in providing information.

We believe the concept of aging in place is a good one, but there has to be adequate supports for families and for the loved ones. In the end, we need to have more facilities.

In January 2019, the regional district sent a letter of support to the minister, supporting the third house at Peace Villa. They have the land. All we need is the go-ahead from the government to say: “Yes. We’re going to build it.”

On March 19, 2019, Hon. Adrian Dix sent us a letter that said that supporting seniors is a priority. I’d like to hold him to that statement. Supporting seniors in our community is a priority for us.

I’m going to let Mavis talk about staffing.

M. Nelson: We have difficulty in recruiting and training in this area. The ministry, of course, has just announced that they’re going to start a RN training course at Northern Lights College. That’s at least a year away. We need to continue to recruit care aides, both locally and out-of-province trained people. Just the last two days in the news, we see how they’re having difficulty in the Lower Mainland. Well, you can double that problem up here.

[9:20 a.m.]

Currently assessments can only be done in the Lower Main­land. We should be able to do the assessments here, at the Northern Lights College, where the training is available, perhaps even waiving the $800 assessment fee. Then, of course, you have to consider the travel costs that everybody has to have to get down and back again.

Home support care workers and Better at Home workers here have a unique northern problem, as Margaret mentioned — time and distance. Add this to staff shortages, and clients go without services quite often.

We highly recommend staff ratios be considered. The need is obvious in our area. We support the need for more full- and part-time positions and less casuals. Forty percent of the health care workforce is casual. Our residents, patients and clients need the consistency for comfort and security. Our staff needs to be able to know them to be able to provide proper care.

Now, on a personal level, I see this from two different situations. My mother has been in the care facility for over 4½ years now, which is longer than a normal stay, really. There are two care aides for 17 patients on her lane. Regularly, we are missing bathing, and lack of hair, foot and nail attention. We have laundry nightmares, missing clothing, personal items gone missing. Sometimes they’re put to bed at six o’clock due to no evening activities.

Dietary concerns are not always acknowledged because they’re in a rush. They have missed scheduled snack times, and there is a definite lack of mentally and physically stimulating activities. I have watched workers run from room to room trying to keep up — once, two of them laughing in total confusion and frustration. They could have been crying just as easily. They were totally overwhelmed.

Now, on the other hand, my in-laws are in their own home. They’re 90 and 100 years old. Much help from the family and home support and Better at Home meal services and cleaning services, but we’ve dealt with no-show home support because of lack of staffing or confusion or whatever.

They get about 20 minutes every morning. Is that enough time to check on two seniors? I don’t know. And twice a week, we hope, bathing time. That can be 30 to 40 minutes. So that’s not exactly much time, either, for those services.

Better at Home provides them with one hour a week. Assisted-living facilities are much needed for seniors, like in my in-laws’ case. They need to have a consistent, comfortable and meaningful life as well. That’s what I have to say.

M. Little: Thanks, Mavis. Our dream would be to have more staffing to provide care at home like Mavis has outlined here. We’d like to have a third house, which would have a large area for a recreation area, and also, the vision could be whatever we need in our community.

We have ideas but….

M. Nelson: Yes. We’re loaded with ideas.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thanks, Margaret. Thanks, Mavis. Thanks for the stories too. It’s very important to actually hear what’s happening. It’s personal, and I appreciate that as well.

Any questions from the members at all?

M. Dean: Thanks for all your dedication, and thank you for coming and doing the presentation today. I’m interested in…. You have a lot of stats. I’m not asking for you to go and do more studies, but do you have a breakdown by gender of the composition of people who are receiving services and those on the wait-lists?

M. Little: Yes. Northern Health has just completed, basically, what you’re asking. It’s not by gender but by age group. The statistics show that by 2035, we’re going to be in desperate trouble.

M. Dean: Do we have it by gender though? Do they not keep those stats?

M. Little: They probably do, but they didn’t present those.

M. Dean: Okay. So we don’t have access to those. The care aides and the staff as well — do you have a breakdown of that by gender?

M. Little: No, I don’t. But our working population here is very young. They’ll be working for a while, and then they’ll have babies. That’s why we need a daycare at the third house. That’s one of the drawing cards for the young people working. Because the mom…. Their shifts are different than, say, a teacher shift. They drop their little ones off, but then they have no place for them during the day.

[9:25 a.m.]

A daycare right in the facility is one of the things that the staff has really liked.

M. Dean: Do I take from that that you’re assuming that the majority of the care aides are women?

M. Nelson: Oh, of course. Yes.

M. Dean: Right. Okay. So that’s a really smart idea to actually look at the universal child care plan and look at bringing some daycare and child care spaces in.

M. Little: And having…. I agree with that. However, we are getting more men into the system who need to have caregivers, have daycare, for their children. Fort St. John has a tremendous number of families that are extended and need that extra support in their workplace.

M. Dean: Interesting. Thank you.

D. Clovechok: Thanks for your presentation and your passion around this. It’s really important. I’m just wondering if Northern Lights College is offering a regular care aide intake.

M. Little: Yes.

D. Clovechok: How often does that happen?

M. Little: There’s usually one every year either here or in Dawson Creek. You should have seen the presentation that we had at the hospital when they announced the training session for the RN. It was wonderful. It’s called Communities Working Together. It was really heartening to see, after all these years of….

Yes, that was one our passions too, to get more training here in the north. I’m a teacher who took training here in the north, and so is Dan. I know how important it is for our young people to have that stability and to be able to have their education in the community.

D. Clovechok: Just as a follow-up, are those intakes full?

M. Little: Yes, usually.

D. Clovechok: They are full. Are they going down into the high schools? I know that with the College of the Rockies, they were looking at a dual credit.

M. Little: Yes.

D. Clovechok: So they’re doing that as well. That’s great. That’s good to know.

M. Little: There are six lined up for September.

D. Clovechok: Excellent. Outstanding.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We heard it time and time again, that if people are trained in the north, they stay in the north or the Interior or wherever. So that’s really important, to have those positions here. That stuck with me.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. That lived experience is very helpful, obviously. I would say most of us get the opportunity to follow that path with family members. It’s really valuable to find out in each community what’s going on.

In your presentation package, you make a suggestion that the college take on the assessment for the care aides that come from out of province. Would that be a good recommendation? I’m just trying to tease out some specifics. Do you think that that would help you with your recruitment process into the north?

M. Nelson: I would think so. Being trained here, everyone knows what is needed, what is required. It’s probably slightly different than what the Lower Mainland people might need too. So it could speed up the process.

R. Leonard: This seems to be for people that are coming from outside of this area. You don’t graduate here. You graduate somewhere else. Then you come in, and you have to do this assessment.

M. Nelson: Or foreign workers. There’s another one. And we are close to Alberta, so sometimes oilfield workers come with their families. Alberta is different than B.C., so we could maybe take advantage of some of those.

R. Leonard: Has the college indicated their interest in taking on the assessment?

M. Nelson: That, I don’t know. I can’t answer that.

M. Little: We do know that we have a number of people who come here who would qualify but need to have the assessment. As Mavis said in her presentation, $800, plus or minus, to travel to Vancouver to have the assessment when we have qualified people here that could do that assessment. It would spread out the people in the community. We have people who are qualified who are doing jobs that they’re not qualified for.

A Voice: And perhaps overqualified, in some cases.

R. Leonard: Most important that we have reliable workers taking care of our loved ones. So just make it easier to get them to come and stay. Thank you.

[9:30 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): A quick follow-up on the child care piece. Have you talked to the ministry at all in regards to that idea? There is a Minister of State for Child Care — and the whole launch of the child care program in the province. I’m just wondering if there’s been any dialogue with the ministry on that.

M. Little: No, we haven’t. But we have talked with Northern Health. We have talked with the school district. We do know that Northern Lights College has a daycare right in their facility as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Well, it might be worth reaching out.

N. Simons: One of the things that the Health Minister is trying to do is bring up the number of care hours to the 3.36 direct care hours that the province set as a standard many years ago. I believe that there’s been some funding put into hiring additional care aides for facilities.

I’m wondering about the home care and Northern Health’s ability to try and promote aging in place — so supporting families in their homes. I guess you’re in contact with Northern Health fairly regularly. Do you know of any initiatives that are set to increase the number of people available to provide in-home care to put off a move to a facility?

M. Nelson: I can’t say that I do.

Margaret, do we have anything?

M. Little: I don’t know of any initiatives, but we have been in contact with Northern Health regularly. All we have to do is pick up the phone and/or email. We’ve been talking about it, but we don’t have anything concrete that’s happening.

Part of the problem is the assessment. We have people working in jobs where they’re actually trained as home care workers but aren’t assessed. The problem is the distances that they have to travel, and secondly, that they just don’t have time. We don’t have enough.

N. Simons: Just to follow up, in my community, which is rural, we’re the sort of little cousin of Vancouver Coastal Health, because we’re the rural part of it. We’re paying people to take a care aide course. We’re actually paying for it. They are specifically being trained, so to speak, to work with people in their homes to stave off the need for extended care and to address the issue of a lack of people doing that. They have a full cohort of people participating in that course. It’s just an idea of a different stream of care aides for supporting families to age in place. So it’s just an idea.

I’m glad you’re in contact with Northern Health, and I’m thankful for your presentation today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time, but thanks, Mavis. Thanks, Margaret.

We’re just going to take a short recess.

The committee recessed from 9:33 a.m. to 9:38 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have B.C. Schizophrenia Society — Andrew Stewart.

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

B.C. SCHIZOPHRENIA SOCIETY

A. Stewart: Yep. I’ll squeeze in everything I can. I’ve practised it, and it’s about that.

The B.C. Schizophrenia Society urges the Finance Committee to focus on investing in acute and tertiary care; psychiatric beds; community services and support for at-risk family members, caregivers and individuals living with schizophrenia and severe mental illness; public education; and reducing stigma around mental illness. This investment not only makes good financial sense but demonstrates how this government values mental health and well-being of British Columbians.

Schizophrenia is a serious, treatable mental illness affecting 1 percent of Canadians and close to 50,000 British Columbians. Schizophrenia commonly strikes youth — women and men between the ages of 18 and 35 — robbing our youth of bright futures. Chronic and severe mental illness affects a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours, from positive symptoms such as hallucinations to negative symptoms such as social withdrawal and thought disorders.

[9:40 a.m.]

When youth and families with individuals with schizophrenia and severe mental illness issues are in crisis, they turn to B.C. Schizophrenia Society for support, resources and answers. BCSS is the only non-profit organization in the province providing program support for families and caregivers impacted by schizophrenia; public education to reduce severe mental illness stigma; and, through B.C. Schizophrenia Society Foundation, supporting research to find answers to this devastating mental illness.

The B.C. Schizophrenia Society is made up of a provincial office with 26 regional educators in eight branches and provides local community-based services throughout the province. The B.C. Schizophrenia Society is grateful for this government’s creation of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions in 2017 and for the commitment your government has made to date to improve the access to and quality of mental health and addictions services to children, youth and adults.

Our recommendations outline several ways to further improve the quality of life of at-risk youth, families and caregivers of those living with severe mental illness: increase funding to additional acute and tertiary care psychiatric beds throughout the province; increase funding for family and caregiver support services and educate the community; increase the funds for community-based mental health services, supports for youth at risk for severe mental illness and with family members living with schizophrenia and severe mental illness; and expand education and access to resources about schizophrenia and severe mental illness to reduce stigma and discrimination.

Research shows that effective health and social supports within the community and a comprehensive network of support, education and information for family members, caregivers, clients or people with lived experience can decrease the need for frequent ER visits and costly hospital stays for those with severe mental illness, improve social skills, decrease the incarceration rates of those with mental illness and reduce the stigma around mental illness. With the 2020 budget, the government of B.C. has an opportunity to create a transformative subsequent change by enhancing investments to support education of youth at risk, families and their ill relatives and by increasing public awareness and understanding of mental illness.

For more than 35 years, BCSS has continued support, education and advocacy on behalf of families with schizophrenia and severe mental illness. The success of this work has been largely due to the partnerships with the provincial government, health authorities, non-profit organizations and individuals. We believe this provincial government’s commitments to the new mental health and addictions plan are a positive step for those with mental health– and substance use–related illnesses.

We urge the Finance Committee to continue this direction with new and greater investments of psychiatric beds in the community; support and educational services for family caregivers and for youth at risk; and finally, in public education, to reduce the stigma and discrimination that comes with mental illness.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great, Andrew. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you presenting.

I have a brother who has suffered from schizophrenia for over 30 years. Luckily, he has a mother and a father and a family that have fought the battles you have to fight every day to keep him in a safe place.

My question for you is…. You talked about families a lot. But what about people suffering from schizophrenia who don’t have those advocates? I’m just wondering what resources might be helpful for people who don’t have those advocates.

A. Stewart: Well, that’s where BCSS comes in. It’s hard navigating the system and not having that support. We’re trying to give the resources to everybody involved and are working with hospitals. We have our BCSS educators in the hospitals. If they encounter someone like that, they would support the nursing staff if they didn’t have support. That’s a very difficult situation when they don’t have family, friends or a network of support. But we do our best to be in the hospitals and find those people to provide them with resources and the benefits of getting them treatment, for sure.

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

Questions for Andrew?

[9:45 a.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks, Andrew, for all of your work and for presenting today as well.

Some of your mandate and some of your priorities are shared by other provincial organizations as well, like the Stigma-Free Society. Also, there are other provincial organizations where people who might need your services might come in through another door, like the Foundry centres. So I’m interested in just understanding in a bit more detail how you would collaborate with other organizations so that we can actually achieve some of those priorities more efficiently and effectively, I suppose, because of those partnerships that would work together to achieve them.

A. Stewart: You mentioned Foundry. We do have programs called Kids in Control and Teens in Control. We have worked with the Kelowna Foundry to offer those services in Kelowna through the support of the Foundry. That program works with a lot of hubs, youth centres and partnerships.

We work with local non-profits to utilize space and services and to get our programs out there. So we are working with other non-profits and trying to align ourselves with the Foundries and the proper resources to get our programs in front of more people.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. Are you from here?

A. Stewart: No. It’s actually my first time here. I’m part of the provincial office, which is in Vancouver, but we have an educator in this area, and we support the whole province, so I changed up my location.

R. Leonard: Good for you. I guess my question is…. I didn’t realize this. I’ve had someone in my constituency who went to hospital, and there was no bed for him. There were no supports in place. I don’t think there was such a thing as an educator. This is new to me. Are they paid staff that are in the hospitals?

A. Stewart: Yes.

R. Leonard: Are there agreements with the administrations to…? Because unless the staff know that that’s a resource that’s available to them, who will call you out? You’re obviously not present 24-7.

A. Stewart: Some of our funding comes from health authorities where we have agreements set in place with the hospitals to be on the psychiatric ward in some of our locations — not in all of our locations, for sure. A lot of people reach out to us just because they haven’t got answers and have done a Google search, and we come up. That’s how we come across.

We have 26 educators. That’s one thing that we would like to do. They’re all part-time staff, and there are waiting lists. That’s something that we would really like to increase and expand through B.C. as well, because there is a high need, and we’re not reaching all the families or all the people with severe mental illness, for sure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Andrew. We really appreciate all the work you’re doing in the society. It’s a very important part of our province and everything.

A. Stewart: Not a problem. Thank you for your support.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have Northern Lights College — Anndra Graff.

How are you?

A. Graff: Good. How are you? I see some familiar faces from last year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s right.

Anndra, just a reminder. If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that. Thanks.

NORTHERN LIGHTS COLLEGE

A. Graff: Good morning, everybody. My name is Anndra Graff. I’m the vice-president of finance and corporate services with Northern Lights College.

It’s really exciting times for the college right now. As some of you may know, we opened our $34.4 million trades training centre in Dawson Creek. Students started back in September, and they have enjoyed the facilities this academic year. We’ve had some great comments from them. They’re no longer freezing in a post–World War II building.

Northern Lights College’s geographic area comprises the northern third of B.C. We cover approximately 325,000 square kilometres, and the area is occupied by about 72,000 people. NLC has physical campuses in Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Tumbler Ridge and Chetwynd, and access centres in Atlin and Dease Lake.

[9:50 a.m.]

As an organization spread across this large distance, the college provides services annually to about 2,400 learners in credentialed programs, as well as about 900 learners in community education and workforce training. We are committed to building on its history in post-secondary education by developing the strengths of its staff and the people of northern B.C.

The college continues to focus on the preparation of the skilled workforce and plays a critical role in the enhancement of the economy and quality of life in our vast region. Despite our continued efforts to remain accountable and effective and to use short-term funding envelopes to fill resourcing gaps, the continued reliance will ultimately lead to organizational fatigue and reduce capacity to meet the significant and varied needs across our region. We are already seeing signs of this across the board.

These are three of the significant changes we believe are required. The first is advancing Aboriginal post-secondary education in our region. The northeast population of Aboriginal people is twice that of B.C. NLC has a strong commitment to true, lasting reconciliation with our First Nations. We have made progress at Indigenizing curriculum, including our practical nursing diploma program. Various courses in this program now address Aboriginal health issues, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous teachings and practices.

We continue to have direct student supports, delivery of and participation in cultural events, learning opportunities on all our campuses and also in our First Nations communities. This has all been funded by very short-term Ministry of Advanced Education grants. The reason for these events is to create space within our college that is safe and respectful, not only for our Indigenous students, but also a space reflective of and safe for our college’s original inhabitants.

We truly want to assist in these efforts and be the good neighbour to Treaty 8 and Tahltan people. Funding support is appreciated. However, there remains so much more to do. In particular, providing a full complement of student support services will be instrumental in increasing retention rates among our Aboriginal students and, ultimately, providing a seamless transition into the workforce.

The second topic is mental health supports for students. We have seen an increase in students struggling with mental health issues — in particular, anxiety and thoughts or attempts at suicide. Students experience mental health crises that have become more common on our campuses and frequently require college-led intervention. We at NLC have implemented student alert and retention systems, and the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training has also developed a virtual mental health counselling, information and referral service for post-secondary students, and we look forward to the implementation of that program.

Despite these new services, students are often faced with mental health challenges that require community-based services. As an institution based in northern B.C., we’re limited in community resources available to our students. Some of them do not even have access to anything. They also have barriers, limited hours and services in the clinics that do exist.

The final note is a move to multi-year funding allotments. There’s a need in B.C. for strategic funding to build capacity and to produce more graduates annually in high-demand areas. Sustained and predictable, multi-year operational investments will provide for more effective strategic planning and development of comprehensive and long-term partnerships and collaborations — and, ultimately, more efficient and effective use of available funding envelopes.

In conclusion, we continue to believe that access to training in the north and for the north is critical to support industry and communities and also ensure that local community members are accessing the necessary skills for employment. As a regional community college, we provide critical access to academic, vocational, trades, apprenticeship, continued education and workforce training programs. Without this local access, many of our students would be unable to participate in post-secondary education and, by extension, they’d unable to access jobs that keep our economy moving.

That’s my presentation for this morning.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Anndra. I really appreciate it. Just before I open the floor, I’m actually finding myself saying things like: “If people are trained in the north, they stay in the north.” But do we have actual data to support that? I’ve been saying it a lot, but I’m just wondering if there has been some sort of data to back that up.

A. Graff: We don’t collect that data at Northern Lights College. Once they graduate, they’re…. BCcampus, I believe, does the student-wide satisfaction survey. That data is collected, but we don’t track them, after they graduate, on where they’re living or where they’re working.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. That’s fine. I’m sure there’s data out there but….

R. Leonard: There are workforce surveys, too, I think.

A. Graff: There probably is, of where they were educated. I’m actually born in the north, trained in the north and have stayed in the north.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Anecdotally fantastic.

R. Leonard: There you go. Proof positive.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Any questions for Anndra?

[9:55 a.m.]

M. Dean: Thanks, Anndra, for your presentation and all your work in the community. I’m interested in just a little bit more detail. You say that you’re really wanting to serve Indigenous communities. Have you set targets for inclusion? How are you monitoring and measuring that? I’m also interested in whether you’ve been able to increase women and young women getting involved in the trades training.

A. Graff: Those are good questions. The Indigenous students…. We do track Indigenous. One of the struggles we have is self-identification. We’re trying to actually look at a campaign of trying to get them to self-identify when they enrol in post-secondary education. We do track that, and our numbers have been increasing.

You have to build relationships with your First Nation communities for them to trust you to send their children into your schools, so we do a lot of the cultural events, visiting their communities and building that. We’ve hired, as I think her title is, an Aboriginal education liaison. She’s actually going out into communities, working with their career counsellors, trying to make plans for students. It’s kind of small, but big in that way.

Women in trades. We do always encourage women in trades. We do have women in trades in most of our programs. Our dean of trades was actually at the women-in-trades conference in Vancouver. He was down there, and I’m sure he’ll be coming back with some ideas to promote that.

M. Dean: Do you have any sense of any trends or changes? Are you tracking percentages or anything like that?

A. Graff: Not that I’m aware of. But that’s not to say that they aren’t already doing that.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. Since we have you here…. Just earlier we had a presentation from the Save Our Northern Seniors. They were talking about care aides. One of the proposals was around doing the assessments for care aides that come from out of province, so that they don’t have to go down to Vancouver — or wherever it is in the Lower Mainland that they go to do the assessments. I was wondering if you know if that’s something that the college would have capacity for. They said the assessments are $800. I don’t know where that figure comes from.

A. Graff: Is it done by a post-secondary institution down there or a health authority? I’m not sure. It would be something to…. I’ll make a note, though, and definitely look into that.

R. Leonard: We get to network here.

A. Graff: Yeah.

D. Clovechok: Thank you, Anndra. Just a quick question around health care aides again. What would be the percentage of Indigenous students that are in those intakes for your HCA courses? Do you know?

A. Graff: I don’t have that exact figure on hand. Is there any way I can get back to you with a number?

D. Clovechok: Absolutely.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, please. There’s time. That’d be wonderful.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just a quick note on the assessment. It’s my understanding that the assessment is conducted in the Lower Mainland. You pay $800 for it; you travel in for it. Single digits pass it. That includes people from other provinces. It’s literally not working whatsoever. It’s something that has to be addressed. It’s not just for people coming in from other countries. It’s for people that have been trained in Canada. The pass rate is in the single digits.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So it’s very difficult.

A. Graff: That’s just health care aide workers transferring from province to province?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Yes, province. They have to take it also.

A. Graff: Okay.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Anndra. I really appreciate you coming in and telling us all about your college. That’s wonderful.

Next up we have Peace River North Teachers Association — Mary Tremain and Michele Wiebe.

Just a reminder. If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that. All yours.

PEACE RIVER NORTH
TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

M. Wiebe: I’m Michele Wiebe. I’m the president of the Peace River North Teachers Association, and Mary Tremain is vice-president of the Peace River North Teachers Association. As well, she is an ELL support itinerant for teachers and a teacher mentor as well.

[10:00 a.m.]

We’re very pleased to be here to talk to you about our concerns. We represent about 450 teachers in the North Peace area. Our presentation will focus on recommendations for consideration that will impact public education in our region.

We have three issues and recommendations that we’d like to talk to you about this morning.

The first one is funding for special ed. The recommendation is that the Ministry of Education provide adequate funding for students with special needs that continues to be linked to the actual needs of students rather than predicted needs based on a prevalence model.

The second one is funding for schools to address learning needs and ELL. ELL is for English language learners. The recommendation is that the Ministry of Education recognize the need for class size and compositional limits and fund all schools to be able to adequately support limits to class size and composition.

The third issue we have is around recruitment and reten­tion of teachers. The recommendation is that the Ministry of Education provide adequate funding so that teachers in B.C. are paid at a salary commensurate with other provinces. We also have some other ideas for retention and recruitment for teachers.

M. Tremain: Special education funding has been inadequate already, under current funding models, but right now the ministry is proposing to go to a prevalence model. I’m not sure what you’ve heard about that, but currently students are designated with certain special needs, and the funding is tied to that.

There’s this notion to have an arbitrary percentage that’s just assigned, and it doesn’t matter if children are missed. The funding is provided based on a range of third-party medical and socioeconomic population data rather than being linked to actual needs. The argument for the model is that its costly and time-consuming assessments and paperwork will not need to be done, and funds will then stretch further.

The PRNTA is concerned that this model will see further reductions in service to an already vulnerable population, as there will be no requirement to provide services that are actually linked to needs. Furthermore, teachers who already manage a multitude of diverse needs will be given responsibility, without support, to meet those students’ needs.

Early identification of learning needs must occur so that students can access services as soon as possible. We know early intervention is key.

Students with high-incidence designations must be funded, and the ministry must provide adequate funding aligned with actual need. Without targeted funding, there is a significant risk that students designated low-incidence — so blind, hearing-impaired and that sort of thing — will have funds intended to support their needs diverted to other students or programs. That already happens.

In the North Peace, we have had more English language learners move here than ever before. We have a population of between 5,000 and 6,000 students, and we have over 550 ELL students. In that, we’re looking at about 16 language groups. There are six school-based teachers that support those 550 students.

M. Wiebe: We had the language…. In 1991, our ratio was 1 to 74. So we’re a bit concerned.

Funding for schools to address learning needs. This is near and dear to my heart, because I was on the bargaining team in 1991. In 1991, when we had local bargaining, teachers in Peace River North were on the picket line for two months. It was the longest teacher strike in B.C.’s history. Do you know why we were on the picket line for two months? It was for class size and composition.

When Christy Clark was the Minister of Education in 2001, she illegally stripped our class size and composition language. Honestly, it was like a knife going through the heart of every teacher here. When the ruling came from the Supreme Court in 2016, and our class size and composition language was reinstated, many teachers who walked the picket line in ’91 were no longer teaching. Our new teachers really had no idea why we were so excited about having our language restored.

Those of us who did walk the picket line did so because we knew the effect of high class sizes and the challenges related to high student needs. BCPSEA has tabled concessions during this current round of bargaining, and I know that there was an announcement yesterday that they're going into mediation. That's what I understand. Averages for class size and the elimination of special needs categories are spun to the public as change that is “good for teachers, good for students and good for the education system.” This is part of a quote from a form letter sent to a teacher from an NDP MLA.

[10:05 a.m.]

Teachers are frustrated at the lack of movement at the provincial bargaining table, and we are fighting, once again, for limits on our class size and composition. Why is this? Why do we have the same people in BCPSEA who bargained when the Liberals were in power now doing the negotiating for the NDP?

It is these things that keep me up at night — when I see the needs in the classrooms and the needs that teachers are having because of lack of support in the classroom. Things are only getting worse for students and teachers if BCPSEA continues with tabling concessions at the bargaining table.

My last point is around recruitment and retention. We’re both going to talk about this. We have a number of concerns around recruitment and retention of teachers in this area. The cost of living and housing costs in Fort St. John are similar to those in the Lower Mainland. I’ve often talked to the district and to the trustees about building stratas of condos or maybe making some kind of housing for teachers, but so far, nothing has been done to address the housing problems for new teachers in our district.

In our rural schools, the district does provide a few teacherages for teachers. We’ve advocated for a reduced rent for them, which has been done.

M. Tremain: Another concern, of course, is our weather. Teachers who move from more temperate climates often really struggle with winter in the north.

They’re shocked by the expenses of winter tires, block heaters, many of the things they just don’t have. The newcomers need to get a block heater, winter tires, deal with additional operating costs. They face hazardous driving conditions. They have to acquire winter clothing, footwear, whatnot, that really does significantly add to expenses.

Particularly, many of our people who come are new teachers, and they’re at the bottom of the pay scale. It’s shocking when now you’ve got a five-year bachelor’s degree — and what your starting salary is. It’s ridiculous. Those folks really suffer.

Also, winter behaviours change. If you’re accustomed to being out and walking and whatnot, you can’t do the things that you would normally have done. We definitely see more instances of SAD, seasonal affective disorder, and cabin fever. They really affect people quite powerfully.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just a heads-up that we’re at nearly eight minutes. If you could wrap it up, that would be wonderful.

M. Wiebe: Okay. You have what else I’ve written. There’s research that shows that many teachers leave within the first three to five years, and the mentorship program really makes a difference for them. We do work with our district on mentoring our new teachers.

I do also want to mention that we do have AHCOTE. It’s the Alaska Highway consortium on teacher education, and when teachers are trained in the north, they stay in the north. You were talking about that. That’s basically really important to us.

M. Tremain: It’s a program that needs to be expanded, though. It’s very limited.

M. Wiebe: Okay. That’s about all I have to say.

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

Questions? Comments?

There was a lot there. Thank you so much for your comments. I really appreciate it.

All right. Next up we have North Peace Justice Society — Kate Stringer.

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

NORTH PEACE JUSTICE SOCIETY

K. Stringer: If you run that timer, I can just glance over once in a while. I don’t have a prepared speech, because I didn’t even know this was going on this morning. Thank you to Dan for reaching out.

The North Peace Justice Society. What I’ve handed out is kind of our general community information pamphlet. So there is a lot of information about what we do in there. In a nutshell, we are a non-profit organization that’s been operating in the region since 1997. We’ve been in existence for well over 20 years now.

Our main program that we’ve continued throughout that entire time is the restorative justice program. It is the heart of our program, and it’s the heart of what I’m going to be talking about here. So I’m going to focus on that.

For those of you who may not be aware, the CliffsNotes version of what restorative justice is…. I don’t want to say it’s an alternative process, but it’s an alternative process to the traditional criminal justice system.

[10:10 a.m.]

Sometimes they happen separately. Sometimes they happen concurrently. There are many ways to integrate the existing system with the restorative processes that we’ve created in this province.

Our local organization sees, on average, between 40 and 60 files a year with an operating budget that hovers around $75,000, which covers operating costs for all of the programs we offer. So we do offer other programs. The restorative justice program does make up the bulk of those costs because it is a program that does require professional care and service and comes with a high ethical responsibility to our clients.

We recognize that they have been through a traumatic event. They have been significantly impacted by this event. We owe them the level of care and concern that they would receive from any other professional in the traditional criminal justice system.

Pursuant to that, we are reliant on volunteer facilitators in our programs, which is a very significant challenge, especially…. We talk about retention of teachers. We talk about retention of all the tradespeople in this area. Retention of volunteers is incredibly complicated as well, because often, people come into this community for three to five years, and then they leave. We are constantly training and recruiting new volunteers and new facilitators. That is a significant cost to the society.

We’ve previously been subsidized by training through the RCMP community justice forum platform. However, they have made it relatively clear that they are stepping away from that platform and won’t be supporting it going forward. It is already nine years out of date, and it is only expiring faster with all of the different research that’s being created within the country and the province specifically.

We know what victims’ needs are. We know that restorative processes can address them. Now restorative justice community organizations are struggling to maintain the funding levels and the training levels to adequately meet those needs and create processes that are both effective and beneficial to the community.

I don’t think I need to harp too hard on the minimal provincial funding that we do receive. We are grateful for any funding. But we also acknowledge that every minute that is spent by staff and volunteers soliciting funding from community sources, granting sources or other provincial or federal sources is time spent away from clients and away from building connections and collaborations in the community.

We have a high turnover rate in our RCMP detachment, in our school district, in our prosecutor’s office, in our probation office. We are constantly working to collaborate with these people to inform them that these programs do exist in the community. The more time we spend on finances, the less money we spend on programming.

We know that this program is beneficial to the members in our community, especially in small communities like this where hiding isn’t an option for anyone and especially in a time when we know victims are unsatisfied with the traditional criminal justice system. They tell it to us over and over and over again. It’s our responsibility as community members, as government members, to offer them a reasonable alternative that can help them resolve and meet those needs.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wonderful. Can you clarify one thing? You mentioned about the RCMP pulling out of a program. I didn’t get it. Could you just elaborate a bit on that?

K. Stringer: In the late ’90s, when restorative justice became a big program in British Columbia, the RCMP put together a basic facilitator training model called the community justice forum. They have updated it. The most current manual is dated 2010.

It’s a scripted model, and in restorative justice circles, it’s often referred to as fast-food restorative justice. Restorative justice organizations in the province — and ours, especially — are trying to move beyond that so that we can better serve the people accessing our programs in a more diverse variety of offences and crimes that they experience.

N. Simons: Thank you very much. I’m a big fan of restorative justice.

What forms of restorative justice…? Do you do justice circles? Do you do victim-offender reconciliation? What’s your caseload, and where do you get your funding?

K. Stringer: The funding is the easiest question to answer. It is a mishmash of civil forfeiture, community gaming, community accountability program, fundraising, private donations. The B.C. Hydro GO fund has been a contributor in the past couple of years. But it’s one-time grants that we are constantly applying for and just waiting on yes or no. The city has also been a big supporter over the last 20 years, and we’re very grateful that they’ve chosen to continue that support.

[10:15 a.m.]

In terms of what model we’re running, we are currently only equipped to offer the CJF model. It is a circle process that is scripted. However, we have currently received funding through the civil forfeiture office to work on revitalizing our training program. That will allow us to move in a less rigid motion in the restorative process. We know from interviews with victims that their ability to choose and the flexibility of the process to meet their specific needs and desires is what correlates to higher satisfaction with restorative processes.

N. Simons: The last question was about caseload.

K. Stringer: Caseload varies from year to year. It’s usually between 40 and 60, if you look at the four years of data.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. Also a big fan of restorative justice.

Who are your volunteers?

K. Stringer: I have volunteers who work as professional mediators, professional counsellors. I have a few students in the Northern Lights College social work diploma. Erin Evans, the director over there, is a very big supporter. She pushes it on her students, thankfully.

I also have people who have had family members, or themselves, be involved in the restorative process, who’ve seen the value in the process itself, who have come through the training.

We have had representatives from the local Indigenous communities attend our training and work at building restorative justice processes within their own communities that work in alignment with their own cultural practices and traditions.

M. Dean: Thanks for all your work and for joining us today. Have you joined the federation or the provincial group of…?

K. Stringer: Yes.

M. Dean: Okay. So are you able to benefit from the training that’s been developed by the Victoria RJ society? They’ve kind of taken that all over North America. Is there a way that you can partner with them that would be of value?

K. Stringer: I am in contact with the restorative justice group in Victoria. The challenge with that is there is always an in-person component to the training. The cost of having their trainer….

Their training is laid out to be eight sessions on a weekend across a six- to eight-week period, kind of thing. If I were to try and fly a facilitator from Victoria to Fort St. John six to eight times and not put them in a hotel — they can crash on my couch; I don’t have a spare bedroom — and not feed them for the time that they’re here, I would still be looking at an annual cost of between $4,000 and $10,000 for an external trainer.

This is why we have made the decision to build something that will be in-house, that can be trained by board members or myself moving forward. It’s a combination of an on-line training piece, which will be offered for free to anyone in the community who’d like to access it, as well as the in-class modules, which would then be offered in the community.

We’ve reached out, as well, to the CJI, with their external trainers, and they gave me quotes in excess of even that. But I am working with the ladies at RJV. I think they’re lovely, and they do wonderful things in their programs.

D. Clovechok: Well, thank you for your presentation. I’m a big fan restorative justice as well.

I’ve got three questions, very simple ones. You mentioned the RCMP turnover of its members. I’d like to know what kind of an impact that has on your society.

K. Stringer: The biggest impact is that when we get new members of the RCMP into the detachment, they are woefully undertrained in what restorative justice is and what it should be considered for. They are underprepared to speak to victims or even offenders about the possibility of a restorative justice process when they’re attending a call. Many of them are brand-new, fresh out of Depot. Some of them are simply in that first five years.

It’s a constant training process, which we have taken on as a society, to try and educate their members about: What is restorative justice? When should it be considered? How can we talk to victims? How can we talk to offenders? How can we have this conversation about something that might be a beneficial alternative for them?

I do watch presentations, usually two or three times a year. I’m in contact with the restorative justice liaison in our detachment as well as the community policing liaisons in the detachment, trying to constantly build that organizational knowledge of restorative justice.

D. Clovechok: Have you brought this to the attention of the commanders?

K. Stringer: We have an interesting dynamic going on right now in our community. Our inspector retired last July. Sorry. He didn’t retire. He retired, and then he transferred. So our detachment has actually been without a formal officer in charge for over a year. They have, since, named somebody. However, he is only part-time in Fort St. John and part-time in Prince George and coming back and forth.

[10:20 a.m.]

I do know that the current staff sergeant in the detachment is very knowledgable about restorative justice and is very much supportive of restorative justice, especially in this community and other communities he’s worked in. However, he has been trying to do the job of an inspector as well as a staff sergeant for over a year. It’s like we don’t even exist sometimes when I go in there.

D. Clovechok: That’s unfortunate.

K. Stringer: It is.

D. Clovechok: The second question I have is around the Indigenous communities. How are you working with your society around restorative justice with them, in a cultural way?

K. Stringer: Many of our participants — probably, I would say, between 15 and 20 percent — are Indigenous community members. Whenever we are working with a member who is Indigenous, we’re fortunate that often that identifying information comes in. We try not to ascribe to them to say: “Well, you’re Indigenous. You must want this cultural practice involved.” Instead, it’s another conversation we have with them about what they would find valuable within the circle.

We do have connections with the local Indigenous communities to have Elders come in and preside over those circles and be a part of those circles, should the participants invite them in. However, we as a society don’t ascribe to say: “Well, you’re from the Saulteau Nation. We must have a Saulteau Elder here.” We don’t do that, because we allow them that freedom of voice and choice to dictate what the proceeding is going to look like and their own cultural identity.

D. Clovechok: Great. Thanks.

N. Simons: I just found out that Fort St. John has a new commanding officer, officially.

K. Stringer: Yes.

N. Simons: Oh, you just said that. While I was researching that, you were telling me that.

K. Stringer: Yes, Inspector Taylor is his name. He is a staff sergeant from Prince George. He is familiar with the north and some of the dynamics of working in a resource community and a training detachment. So I am hopeful that it will be a pretty seamless transition. In the meantime, he is spending, I think, two weeks in Prince George and two weeks in Fort St. John until he can make arrangements to move to Fort St. John permanently.

D. Clovechok: There was a third one, and I just remembered it. What’s the level of provincial funding that you get right now?

K. Stringer: We receive $2,500 a year.

D. Clovechok: Twenty-five hundred?

K. Stringer: Yeah. That’s my reaction as well. I personally consider civil forfeiture and gaming grants to be provincial funding, in a sense, but not in the sense that the province is actually supporting us. It’s other organizations supporting us.

Our actual provincial funding comes through the community accountability program, which is $2,500 a year. Beyond that, we are free to apply for civil forfeiture grants. We are free to apply for gaming grants. The gaming grant contributions have been dwindling over the past five to ten years, and I was very happy to see that the civil forfeiture cap for restorative justice programs was actually increased this year.

N. Simons: What is the cap on restorative justice?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I can’t remember whether it was increased.

K. Stringer: For civil forfeiture? It was $20,000 this year. It was up from $10,000 last year.

N. Simons: What do you get from gaming?

K. Stringer: Us, personally?

N. Simons: Yeah.

K. Stringer: Over the last few years, we’ve received between $12,000 and $15,000.

N. Simons: So there is a little bit more provincial…. It is provincial allocation.

My question. Have you done any qualitative assessment of the program? Can we see what people say about your program? Do you have a satisfaction survey that happens?

K. Stringer: Most of the qualitative data or the satisfaction data is collected by researchers at a provincial level, so I can definitely provide you with names of people who are actually actively doing that research in the province and across the country. But locally, it’s through exit interviews. There’s nothing formally in place for a long-term evaluation with these individuals. When we conclude the file, there is a conversation had with all of the participants about how they felt it was managed and how they felt it has continued.

N. Simons: I think that would be helpful — to tell people about its usefulness and its appropriateness and how victims feel afterwards too.

K. Stringer: Absolutely. Oftentimes we speak in generalities, just due to the confidentiality. Many times victims or participants are willing to talk to me about their experiences, but they don’t want to shout it from the rooftops, because they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be defined by a single event in their life.

D. Clovechok: I may have missed this, but how many clients a year would you serve?

K. Stringer: I see between 40 and 60 files.

D. Clovechok: I missed that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right off the top.

K. Stringer: It’s 40 to 60 files, and files will range anywhere from two or three participants…. I’ve had circles all the way up to eight to ten participants. So it’s depending on the specific files. We do receive files from more than just the RCMP. We receive files from the conservation office and the school district as well as some other community organizations who have contacted us about the service.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time.

D. Clovechok: I’d like to ask one more question.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m sure you would, but we’re out of time.

K. Stringer: The contact information on the back of the pamphlet is my personal contact information. So if you do have follow-up questions, please feel free to contact me at any time.

D. Clovechok: Thank you very much for the work you do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it.

Motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 10:25 a.m.