The committee met at 9 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Welcome, everyone. Good morning. We are in Surrey. This is the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. 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.

This is day 10. We’ve been in Colwood, Kimberley, Castlegar, Kelowna, Kamloops, Courtenay, Qualicum Beach, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Prince George, Fort St. John, Quesnel, Abbotsford and now Surrey.

Thank you, Members. That was day 10. Pretty amazing.

We’re pleased to be here on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people, — in particular, the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Kwikwetlem and Qayqayt people. Thank you for that.

We are a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties. Normally, we travel in the fall. We travel to hold public consultations and visit different regions of the province to hear directly from British Columbians about their priorities and ideas for the next provincial budget. This year we’ve moved our consultation 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 last week by the Minister of Finance. There are copies of this paper available at the back for anyone who is interested in reading it.

As I said, over the last two weeks we’ve visited 14 communities throughout British Columbia, and Surrey is our 15th in this final public hearing. To date, we’ve heard over 240 presentations on a wide range of topics, and I’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to share their input and, of course, our members and everybody working so hard to allow us to be here.

If you didn’t have an opportunity to meet with us, you still have time to share your ideas and priorities by sending a written submission or by filling out the on-line survey. Details are available at our website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/finance. The deadline for input is Friday, June 28 at 5 p.m. All of the input we receive is carefully considered by the committee and helps to develop our 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.

As far as the format, we would kindly ask presenters to respect the following time limits. Each presenter has five minutes to share their input, followed by five minutes for questions from the committee. We have a full docket today, so we’re going to have to stay within that. If there’s anyone who hasn’t registered in advance but would like to speak with the committee, please see Stephanie in the back at the information table, and we will do our very 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 be posted.

Now I’ll allow our members to introduce themselves, and we’ll start with MLA Doug Clovechok.

D. Clovechok: Well, good morning. My name is Doug Clovechok. I’m the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

With the Chair’s grace, I would also like to recognize today as National Indigenous Peoples Day. So to all the folks back at home — and I’m not there — I wish you a very good day.

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

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

I, too, want to acknowledge that today is National Indigenous Peoples Day. I’m sorry that I’m not home to celebrate with them, but we’ll celebrate where we are.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Ronna-Rae.

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

I also want to say that it’s a day when many of us like to be in our home ridings and to have the opportunity to share and celebrate. But we’re called, and we’re all here, and we’re looking forward to hearing your requests today. So thank you for coming.

[9:05 a.m.]

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

I’d also like to take a moment, on behalf of all committee members, to recognize the wonderful staff at the Parliamentary Committees Office and Hansard Services who have been assisting us over the last two weeks. It’s quite the heroic effort, I must say. Thank you so much.

Here today from the Parliamentary Committees Office is Susan Sourial, the Clerk of the committee. Stephanie Raymond is also at the back. Many thanks to the two of them and also to Mary Newell, Mariana Novis, Karan Riarh, Katey Stickle and Josée Couture for all the work they do behind the scenes to make sure this consultation happens and to support the committee throughout our deliberations.

We’d also like to take the time to thank Hansard Services. In particular, I’d like to thank Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat, who are recording today’s proceedings, and also Steve Weisgerber, who was here for the rest of this week, and the entire Hansard team back in Victoria for everything they do in broadcasting, transcribing and publishing our meetings. Thanks again to everyone.

First up we have school district No. 43, Coquitlam — Barb Hobson.

Budget Consultation Presentations

SCHOOL DISTRICT 43, COQUITLAM

B. Hobson: Good morning, members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Barb Hobson, and I’m chair of the board of education of school district 43, Coquitlam, B.C.’s third-largest school district. I speak to you on behalf of our entire board and our school district partner groups — the Coquitlam Teachers Association, the Coquitlam Principals and Vice-Principals Association and the district parent advisory council.

Our board recognizes that the public K-to-12 education funding model review is underway to ensure equity, inclusion and accountability within the education system. Our funding concerns can be encapsulated into four main areas: support for vulnerable students, students with special needs and students with mental health needs; support for the revised curriculum; funding to make contractual commitments; and funding for capital projects.

I’ll begin with support for vulnerable students. CommunityLINK and vulnerable student supplement funding are important for supporting vulnerable students. However, both are significantly underfunded. If we are going to have this program — and we believe we should — then providing increased funding and a more equitable allocation process amongst school districts is critical.

Special needs. The funding for students with special needs is inadequate. Funding for early identification is crucial as is it necessary to provide funding for adequate and robust support programs.

Mental health support. There has been an increase in the downloading of mental health services into the education system, and there is an associated cost that has not been adequately funded, resulting in districts having to redirect funds. The rise of students struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges is well documented. In school district 43 and other districts, these students are some of the most challenging to support.

New education curriculum changes. Funding supporting the implementation of B.C.’s new curriculum has fallen short of need. Implementing the new curriculum requires an increased commitment of staffing at the district level and teaching resources that have not been funded.

Overall, education underfunding is a chronic problem. Early indications of the new funding model have raised grave concerns over sustainable and equitable funding for districts. Unfunded cost pressures continue to accumulate, including exempt staff compensation increases, benefit cost increases and inflationary costs for supplies and services.

Capital funding for new school construction, additions and seismic upgrades. We are encouraged by new schools, seismic replacement and upgrade funding capital project initiatives of this government, and we support continued growth in this area. Unfortunately, the practice of requiring school districts to contribute funds destined for student education to be redirected into capital projects is at cross-purposes to a successful education system.

[9:10 a.m.]

We have exhausted our options for physically accommodating more students and require additional funding to acquire land and build new schools. Under the present system, it is likely that over the next two years, we will need to redirect over $15 million from our operating fund to fund facility additions to meet our growing population.

In summary, we support a robust K-to-12 education system that is adequately and equitably funded and contributes to the personal, social and economic success of students and their families. These reasonable and financially viable recommendations, if implemented, would provide school district 43 with funding that is more closely aligned with the actual cost of delivering services; provide stability and predictability against inflation; increase funding to allow a focus on supporting students with special needs, mental health needs and behavioural concerns; the ability to better support educational initiatives, such as the new curriculum; the ability to undertake additional capital projects to meet class requirements and enrolment growth now in the near future.

In closing, we thank the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for hearing our presentation, receiving our recommendations and ensuring that they are considered in the upcoming budget. Thank you.

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

Any questions from the members?

We have heard from a number of school districts, and you do, in fact, echo many of the concerns that the school districts have. I think that a lot of the questions have been asked. We really appreciate your presentation and everything you do for our students. Thank you so much.

I would just like to turn the mike over to Deputy Chair Dan Ashton.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just before we proceed, there’s a gentleman I would like to introduce in the gallery who has driven over to say hi: former councillor from the city of Quesnel, former mayor from the city of Quesnel, former councillor from the city of Penticton and former mayor from the city of Penticton, Michael Pearce. He’s a mentor and a good friend.

Thank you for coming from your retirement in White Rock to grace our presence today. It’s always good to see you, Mike.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia — Theresa McCurry.

APPLIED SCIENCE TECHNOLOGISTS
AND TECHNICIANS OF B.C.

T. McCurry: I’m really pleased to be here again. I want to say thank you very much and good morning to my colleagues here.

My name is Theresa McCurry. I am the CEO of Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of B.C. I’ve been there for just over a year. It’s been a busy year, and I’m going to report out on a couple of things that have happened, and whatnot.

Our membership is just over 10,000 people. That includes about 1,500 students. A lot of them are from BCIT but Camosun and Okanagan College as well.

We operate across 18 different engineering and applied science disciplines, such as mechanical and civil engineering as well as ten technical areas. Those technical areas include home inspection, on-site wastewater and fire protection. We operate in 22 different municipalities across B.C. These are bylaws that are brought in that require ASTTBC fire protection personnel to assess buildings and whatnot.

We contribute an estimated $6 billion to B.C.’s economy yearly, and this is according to a Conference Board report from 2016.

Our members do play an important role in B.C.’s economy. We contribute to a secure, healthy and sustainable province, which is part of our mission. These are people whose profession is in the area of applied science and engineering technology. They’re sometimes referred to as the practical engineers because they apply their hands-on technical knowledge with their problem-solving skills that they learned in school.

These people collect, process and analyze data. They design equipment, processes, systems. These are teachers. They’re dam inspectors. They’re partners in engineering firms, traffic technologists, project managers for construction projects all over the province.

[9:15 a.m.]

Among the 18 different disciplines, these technology professionals represent a wide range of sectors, including avionics, biomedical, computing, chemical, electrical, environment, geological, instrumentation, oil and gas, and telecommunications. For example, in Kelowna, we have AEM, or Anodym Electronics Manufacturing, which is patenting a new technology that can detect stress fractures in wide-body aircraft in a matter of four hours. Right now that whole process takes 48 hours. So we’ve got some really exciting things happening across the province.

As a provincial regulatory body, we advance professional regulation, certification, recognition and, soon, rights to practice for the applied science and engineering technology professionals. For the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside many of my counterparts from the other four associations, working with government on the rights-to-practice process as part of the Professional Governance Act. It’s been a busy year.

We welcome the advancement of the rights to practice for our members, believing it will increase critical oversight, ensure public safety and intensify the accountability by project teams. This is key.

At ASTTBC, we embrace projects and programs that positively impact communities, stakeholders and all equity-seeking groups. We endorse inclusion, diversity and equity in all of our interactions. We are a growing economy in B.C. But if, as a province, we are to maintain this growth, it will require a reassessment and change in focus on how — and what — we teach and how we train our workforce. Demand will see a transition from trades to technology and a utilization of artificial intelligence and robotics. We’ll see more and more young people seeking recession-proof careers in technology.

So how will we answer this demand? In the past decade and a half, supply and demand has necessitated the need to focus on trades training. Statistics show that only 4.7 percent — well, I’m told 4.7 percent; I didn’t research that myself — of B.C. tradespeople were women. But with research completed and pilot projects now in place, this statistic is set to change and at least double by the end of 2020, and exponentially beyond 2020. This process has worked. Where there is focus and measurement, change can happen.

If we transferred that same effort and focus on increasing the number of technologists and technicians in the same way we have with tradespeople, the projected skill gaps for technologists and technicians will be satisfied. If we were even bolder and added efforts to combat the lack of equity and inclusion, and if we recognized that bullying and harassment is in every workplace, which creates psychologically unsafe workplaces, then the numbers of women, First Nations people, persons with differing abilities and immigrants entering the technology professions would be enabled to increase dramatically.

With this in mind, the reason I’m here is for the ask. We ask that government assist ASTTBC by supporting projects and programs similar to those employed in the trades to enable the entry and retention of equity-seeking groups and further assist the adoption of programs to combat bullying and harassment within these groups.

Increase the number of persons seeking technologist and technician, as well as technical specialist, certifications by reinforcing the need for K to 12 to embrace STEM — or science, technology, engineering and math — courses for all grades.

We request support for internationally trained or foreign-trained persons to seek prior learning assessments, evaluating their experiential learning and competencies, and establish government-approved gap analysis training opportunities.

Finally, we ask that the government work with all levels of government to find ways to virtually connect with on-reserve classrooms and home-schooled individuals, enhancing their math, science and reading skills and presenting them with opportunities to enter the technology-driven occupations and enhancing their opportunities across B.C.

ASTT is committed to serving the people of this province, assuring British Columbians’ health and safety and the sustainability of their environment. We look forward to continued partnerships. I welcome any questions you may have.

[9:20 a.m.]

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

Before I open the floor to the other members, do you have any statistics on the split between men and women in these fields at all, as it sits right now?

T. McCurry: I can tell you that within our organization, with our regulatory body, within the technicians and technologists, we have increased it this past year. Last year it was 12 percent; this year it’s 13 percent women. In the technical specialists, it’s very low. It’s anywhere from 7 to 8 percent women.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Part of your presentation is also to try to increase the number of women in those fields. I’m just wondering what steps would be…. You said there’s work in K to 12, obviously, to get people interested and then also safety in the workplace and things like that. Are there other initiatives as part of this that are important to get gender equity in these fields?

T. McCurry: There are a few. I’ll start with K to 12. Just recently in Delta, one of my council members…. His daughter, who’s in grade 10, said to her career facilitator: “I’m thinking I’m maybe going to be either an engineer or an engineering technologist, so I think I should probably do advanced physics, or should I do physics? I’m not sure which one I should do for grade 11, as I’m looking at what I need for my prerequisites to go into BCIT or Camosun.” The response was: “Oh, that’s so boring. You don’t want to do that.”

B. D’Eith (Chair): Really? That’s got to change.

T. McCurry: Yeah. I know that with some of the people I’ve worked with in engineering consulting fields, they’re frustrated, because very often, if you think of an engineer, you think of Dilbert. That’s what I’ve been told. I think if we’re able to spotlight some of the really wonderful opportunities, the coolness factor, as we did in biotech…. I came from the biotech sector for 20 years. In the ’90s, that was something we had to do, because we were bringing so many people from the United States and Europe. We really needed to home grow, but it took work with the province to focus on what these opportunities are. So that’s one.

I’ll just mention one other. We are working with the province on a women in engineering and technology project for the next two years. It will identify how to retain and recruit, but it doesn’t have any funding. There’s no commitment to the sustainability of that, and it’s that sustainability piece that I’m asking for.

D. Clovechok: Thanks, Theresa, for your presentation and what you do.

Out of curiosity, does your organization have any partnerships with technology companies that promote women in technology? I know back in Alberta, they had a women in technology program that was aligned specifically with high school students that would provide mentorship from women in those fields. IBM and Microsoft and a long lineup of women that were involved in those jobs would actually bring kids in. I’m just interested to see if you’ve done anything like that.

T. McCurry: We don’t have anything formal, but we’re hoping that with the women in engineering and technology project, we’ll be able to identify those champions across B.C. Usually they’re engaged. We’ve got some very large engineering consulting firms, but a lot of them are small to medium. Taking away time to go into…. Whether it be the BCITs or the high schools, sometimes they need a little bit of extra help. It might be travel costs, or it might be other things. It’s not a lot of money, and that’s where we’re going to need some help.

So we don’t have any formal programs yet. We look at it. We do participate in those areas, and I think it’s a really great idea.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. A couple of questions. You said that 1,500 students are members of your association?

T. McCurry: Roughly 1,500.

R. Leonard: Okay. Is that a usual practice, to have students as members of a professional association?

T. McCurry: It is. I know for some of the associations, it’s harder. What we try and teach them is the requirement for professionalism of the job, early on. So as a student, they abide by our code of ethics. There are ten principles within our code of ethics, and they agree to those.

It doesn’t cost them anything. We don’t charge students. There’s no fee that way. But it is about a mindset and a culture. That’s why we feel that we’ll bring them in early enough that they get to see the association, understand what it is, what the opportunities are. It’s easier to connect and provide mentorship that way too, which we’re doing.

[9:25 a.m.]

I recently created what we call a young professionals group, so anyone who’s ten years or less into their career. They’re creating their own mentors with the students, and then they’re also looking for mentors for those who’ve been in the field for a while. So that is key to let these people know as they’re looking for their careers. We help them that way.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re out of time.

Interjection.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, no, if you’re really quick.

R. Leonard: Just the question of the right to practise. I mean, that is a huge step, marrying it with the idea of the students being part of your body. Do you have an outreach program or public awareness program or anything that deals with demonstrating that higher level of accountability now and oversight?

T. McCurry: We’ve sought rights to practise for 45 years.

R. Leonard: And I’m so glad we’ve got it.

T. McCurry: We just got it on the table. So some of those discussions are just happening. We’re developing what that might look like. Rights to practise, for us, are anything from our senior technologists with eight to ten years plus experience, who can work within codes and standards — not above, where the engineers can work, but just within codes and standards — or looking at regulatory pieces where we’re not included but we have the education and competencies. So I’d call it more of a continuum than just one particular area. Does that help?

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

Next up we have Surrey Teachers Association — Julia MacRae.

J. MacRae: Thanks very much. I’m a secondary teacher. I’ve been teaching in Surrey for 25 years.

D. Clovechok: What do you teach?

SURREY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

J. MacRae: I taught Spanish for ten years, and then Señorita MacRae moved to Mexico, and there I taught English for 14 years.

I’m elected by the teachers to represent them. I’m the first vice-president. The Surrey Teachers Association, or the STA, provides support and services to approximately 5,800 members, including classroom teachers, support teachers, teacher-librarians, counsellors, speech language pathologists and school psychologists. These members work in Surrey and White Rock at approximately 140 worksites. We serve a student body of approximately 75,000. There are also adult educators.

I believe our teachers and our students are worth investing in. In Surrey, as you well know, we are growing rapidly. School construction is underway, and more schools have been announced. That’s fantastic. We will have more than 350 portables next year, which means approximately 9,000 kids will be learning in portables. I just divided that by 26.

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

In Surrey, teachers are concerned about funding for special education. In fact, I would actually say they are desperate. For years, British Columbia has been allocating far less money for special education to school districts than districts have been spending on special education. Inclusive education is a goal that is shared by all stakeholders, but meaningful inclusion of all students requires significant support in the form of specialist teachers, education assistants, learning resources and more.

School districts have been asked to make difficult decisions between providing services for all students or providing services for students with special needs, and there hasn’t been enough money to do both well. Teachers have been pushing for a review of the funding model, and the ministry was tasked with updating the current model. However, the funding model review panel had a mandate to find a way to provide increased services with the same amount of money — an impossible task, given that there was not adequate funding in the first place.

The model that the panel has recommended for special education funding relies predominantly on a prevalence of need as a driver for funds. In other words, school districts will no longer need to identify students with special needs in order to show that they deserve funding. They will now be provided with the funding based on the predicted needs of the student population at large, as determined by third-party health and socioeconomic factors.

In the case of Surrey, for example, just on autism spectrum disorder, we serve approximately 1,400 students with that disorder, but this prevalence model, as we understand it, would only provide funding for 1,000. The idea being floated is that money that is used to identify student need and provide funding requirements can now be used directly to fund services.

I suppose that in primary grades, where student need often goes unidentified or hasn’t been tested yet, this could be a useful way to fund special education services. But to remove identification from the mandate of schools is to do a great disservice to students. Teachers rely on the information provided by assessments and diagnoses in order to provide the appropriate and consistent care tailored to the actual disability of the child. Without that information, it’s all guesswork.

[9:30 a.m.]

I’m a Spanish teacher. I don’t diagnose learning disabilities, right? When a teacher receives their new class each year, of course they spend time getting to know the kids and their needs. Some disabilities and behaviour concerns are totally obvious to the teacher, but often, kids are good at hiding their weaknesses. A teacher needs the diagnosis to be able to tailor their strategies and give the child the proper attention right from the first day of the year. Also, for a seasoned teacher, we can spy them quickly. But for a beginning teacher, they have a lot to learn, and it’s hard to notice kids with unusual disabilities. So they need the diagnosis.

Another priority for teachers is funding for general operation of school districts, particularly to address class size, class composition and non-enrolling ratios. We are proud of our Supreme Court victory from November 2016, which restored our language, once again limiting Surrey secondary English classes to 25 and home ec, woodshop and tech ed classes to 24, which is negotiated for safety reasons, because they’re dealing with hot and sharp things in those rooms.

We would like to be able to keep our class sizes at these current levels and maybe improve them, and so would students and parents. However, proposals by BCPSEA at the bargaining table would see class sizes increase and teachers laid off, which is a great concern to us.

The composition of a classroom, as it pertains to the collective agreement, refers to the number of students with special needs in one room. In Surrey, the language requires that the school district make best efforts to keep that number to fewer than two. This is for the benefit of all the students in the room, as it recognizes that students with special needs can require a larger proportion of a teacher’s time and energy, and time and energy are not unlimited.

This language does not keep students from accessing classrooms or supports. On the contrary, it ensures that the classrooms are better able to support the needs of all the learners in the room. However, we’re seeing, at the bargaining table, a proposal to remove a reference to composition language.

Funding needs to be in the budget that will allow BCPSEA to bargain a better collective agreement with teachers that recognizes the need for smaller classes, better support for students and better support for non-enrolling teachers like counsellors, teacher-librarians and student support teachers too. We would like to see better ratios for counsellors’ caseloads, for example, as there is such a rise in mental health concerns in kids these days. This language needs updating, but there’s not enough money on the table at the moment for these kinds of service improvements.

It’s also important to have proper funding to address teacher recruitment and retention, especially as it pertains to salary improvements. Teachers in this province are paid significantly less than their counterparts across the country. I don’t know if you know, but the starting salary in B.C. for a teacher with a five-year degree ranks 12th out of the 13 provinces — only better than Quebec, which has lower living costs.

After five years of university study, a new teacher in Surrey earns $48,850 if they teach full-time. It will take them 11 years to move to the top of the scale. That is if they work full-time in all those years. Once they reach the top maximum salary, we rank ninth of all the provinces and territories. I have a master’s degree in curriculum studies, I’m at the top of the scale after 25 years of service, and I earn $89,350. That’s the top possible.

Consider the high cost of living here, and it’s not surprising that we’re struggling to attract teachers to the province. In Surrey, we’re experiencing failures to fill nearly every day this year. Often, that means learning support teachers are pulled from their important jobs to cover classrooms that don’t have a teacher or a teacher on call available to teach. It means loss of service for students with special needs or English language learners. It means that B.C. is not providing a quality education for all the students in our care. We need to recruit more teachers to B.C.

Last school year, according to Surrey district documents, we lost the equivalent of three million minutes of instructional time. It would be impossible for 50 people to fill it, but it’s equivalent to 50 full-time positions, just because of failures to fill. It just shows the gaps in hiring and the teacher shortage. So I’m asking you today to increase the amount budgeted for public education in this province. As I said earlier, I believe that our students and our teachers are really worth investing in and are a great driver for the economy as well. I hope you do too.

Thanks very much for your time. I’m happy to answer any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Julia. Obviously, you have a huge amount of passion for what you do. We really appreciate everything you do for our children.

Any questions at all from members?

Well, thank you very much for your presentation. I really appreciate that, Julia.

J. MacRae: I brought along a little shorthand so that you can see what the Surrey class-size language requires at the moment. Hopefully, we can improve it in the future, but that’s it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Next up we have Retail Council of Canada — Greg Wilson.

RETAIL COUNCIL OF CANADA

G. Wilson: Good morning. My name is Greg Wilson. I’m the B.C. director of government relations for the Retail Council of Canada. I also work for 2.2 million Canadians who work in the retail industry.

[9:35 a.m.]

I’d planned today to talk to you about other issues. However, on Tuesday a PST issue was brought to my attention that deserves this committee’s attention. Adult diapers are purchased by a cohort of vulnerable British Columbians to prevent leakage, resulting from disability, long- or short-term illness or surgery. Nowhere in Canada did consumers pay a retail sales tax on adult diapers, until this week in British Columbia. This week retailers were penalized for failing to collect and remit the GST on adult diapers.

If you go to purchase adult incontinence products, — which we know as these diapers — in a retail store today, you will likely not pay PST. My colleagues and I have purchased dozens of these products in different stores, most recently just yesterday, and we have not yet been charged the PST.

Indeed, when the government transitioned back to the PST, government produced a helpful nine-page document, spelling out the sales tax treatment for various products. On page 6, the document clearly says there was no PST and GST prior to 2010 on adult incontinence products. There was no HST between 2010 and 2013 on these products. Importantly, there would be no GST or PST on these products after reintroduction of the PST. This has been the consistent treatment of these products by all retail stores since that date.

Because of wording in the PST exemption regulation, government has recently decided that these products are subject to the PST. Is British Columbia really going to be saying to men with enlarged prostates or Alzheimer’s or women who have had episiotomies or urinary tract infections that they don’t qualify on medical grounds? One small irony is that if the user develops a diaper rash as a result of the use of these products, the cream to treat the problem is not subject to the PST.

The change in tax treatment does not only impact vulnerable British Columbians and retail staff. It will increase costs for care homes and hospitals, which are major purchasers of these items, and it will impact those who are providing care to loved ones. Nobody but nobody wears an adult diaper as a fashion item. In essentially every case, there is a medical reason behind that purchase, which is precisely the reason why no other province in Canada — and B.C. until this week — has made such an odd decision.

I ask the committee to expeditiously work to ensure that products such as these adult incontinence briefs, canes and CPAP machines remain PST-exempt.

Thank you for your attention.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Greg. Early in your talk, you said that they were charging GST. But is it PST that you’re talking about?

G. Wilson: We’re talking about PST. This will be the only jurisdiction in Canada where PST is applied.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So this was a provincial tax decision, not a federal tax decision.

G. Wilson: It’s a consumer taxation branch audit decision.

R. Coleman: Greg, have they gone retroactive on this, on the audit?

G. Wilson: They will, presumably. They have the ability to go back for three years.

R. Coleman: How many audits did they…? Was there a directive that came out and said, “We’re changing this,” or is it just as a result of some audits, where somebody caught this and said: “The language does…”?

G. Wilson: I confess I first heard about this in February, at which I point I went: “No, that’s ridiculous. No government would ever do this.” February passes, and I get, again, a call from a different store in May that’s having an audit, and they say: “Well, we’ve been asked about this.”

On Tuesday, I had one of the stores confirm that they have been assessed and fined for failure to collect and remit PST on these products. Because of the wording, we assume that it’s not only going to apply to adult incontinence products but also to things like canes and CPAP machines and what have you.

R. Coleman: After they did an audit, assessment and fine, did they do a directive to the retail stores, and nobody…?

G. Wilson: No, there’s been no directive.

R. Coleman: So there’s no clarity on this.

G. Wilson: No. In fact, for six years now, retail stores have lived with the 2013 document. It was pulled from the government’s website at some point since 2013, but at no point has somebody said: “Oh, look. Actually, that no longer applies.” Adult incontinence products — which, it’s very clearly outlined….

R. Coleman: Is this the first audit where there has been a fine and collection on this? Is this the first instance?

[9:40 a.m.]

G. Wilson: It’s the first instance we’ve heard of, but presumably it’s possible. Literally, we’ve been to dozens and dozens of stores to look for people who would be charging. We can’t find anybody who has been charging. Accordingly, all of these people will now have to change and start charging.

R. Coleman: Could this be an isolated audit where somebody has misread the documentation, rather than an overall government across-the-board implementation?

G. Wilson: The audits branch, presumably in consultation with senior management, has spent three months on this. I doubt that the professionals in that department made this decision in isolation.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thanks for bringing that to our attention, Greg. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils — Andrea Sinclair.

Andrea, just a reminder — if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have time for questions.

A. Sinclair: It’s all good. I’m timed.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. Thank you.

B.C. CONFEDERATION OF
PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS

A. Sinclair: Good morning to you all. Our submission was emailed in, and I believe you all have a copy. It’s long and detailed, so I will just reference our five recommendations.

On behalf of the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, we are once again pleased to have the opportunity to present recommendations on public education priorities to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

BCCPAC, a non-partisan, registered non-profit charity represents the parents and guardians of over 565,000 children attending provincial public schools. Recognized by the provincial government and education partners, we are the collective voice of parents on educational issues within the public system. We advocate both for systemic changes and individual parent advocacy.

Every child has the right to a free, high-quality public education, and the provincial government has the responsibility to ensure this right. The universal declaration of human rights and the United Nations convention on the rights of the child both affirm the responsibility of governments to ensure that all children have equal right to access an education directed to the development of their full human potential, respecting cultural, national and Aboriginal identities and for the perpetuation and furtherance of human freedom, equality, tolerance and environmental sustainability for all.

The B.C. government’s policy on diversity clearly articulates that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that differences among learners do not impede their participation in school, their mastery of learning outcomes or their ability to become contributing members of our society.

During the fall of 2018, education was the fifth most common theme in response to the first question in the on-line survey by this committee. Since 2014, the select standing committee has repeatedly affirmed that public education is not adequately supported by public funds. This committee has recommended the need to ensure that every child, including children with special needs, and vulnerable students, can benefit from the education system.

The committee further agreed on the need to establish clear standards of support for students with special needs in both the public and independent school systems. The committee recognized the challenges faced by the education system, including acknowledging the need for more capital funding to address issues such as deferred maintenance, seismic safety and capacity.

BCCPAC and its members fully support the K-to-12 funding recommendations made in the previous five reports of this committee.

As the provincially mandated voice of parents uniquely representing student interests, our comments and recommendations reflect our own mission and value statements and the great many member resolutions that have been passed advocating for changes to address local district and larger provincial concerns. We have identified five key recommendations that are critical for every child to have equitable access to public education with the supports and services they need to succeed.

Recommendation 1: provide stable, predictable and adequate funding. That the provincial government act now on the recommendations from the past five years of this committee that have called for adequate, stable and predictable funding for the K-to-12 public education system to ensure that the provision of education programs, resources, wraparound services and personnel meets the actual needs of all students.

Two: increase capital funding. That the treasury increase capital funding for the Ministry of Education to develop a plan and timelines to replace old schools where existing schools are close to or exceeding their life expectancy and to address the soaring deferred maintenance costs.

That the treasury increase capital funding for the Ministry of Education to continue to accelerate the seismic mitigation program to meet the provincial government commitment of completion by 2025, and 2030 in Vancouver.

[9:45 a.m.]

That the treasury fund portables, where necessary, for temporary accommodation during seismic upgrades and create special bridge funding to cover the cost of portables until the reliance is eliminated.

That the treasury double capital funding to the Ministry of Education for the playground equipment program, which attempts to address the continued pressure on parents to fundraise for accessible playground equipment and recognizes one of the many inequities within the public education system.

That the Ministry of Education revise the current ministry area standards, as it informs the baseline for all upgrades and new school builds, and develop a strategy to proactively fund new school construction in areas of current and anticipated population growth based on census data in municipal plans.

Recommendation 3: increase operational funding. That the provincial government increase K-to-12 public education operational funding in Budget 2020 to provide sustainable, predictable funding through a student-centred model that allows school districts to cover the costs of delivering education that reflects the actual fixed operating costs of operating school facilities and covers all the downloaded costs to school districts as well as many inflationary costs, including but not limited to: increased funding and resources to address the backlog of students waiting for formal psycho-educational assessment; immediately address the shortage of school psychologists and clinical psychologists, including increasing post-secondary positions and recruitment to help facilitate the cross-jurisdictional international transfer of qualifications for professionals; increase funding for students with special needs, including establishing clear standards and funding for early identification and the provision of appropriate supports and the training and recruitment of specialized staff; provide funding to ensure that the necessary resources and technology are available across all districts to effectively implement the revised curriculum and graduation requirements; fund the provision of an age-appropriate sexual health curriculum for all grades that includes matters of consent and on-line safety with the assistance of qualified sexual health educators.

Recommendation 4: support a new, student-centred funding model. That the provincial government, with the Ministry of Education, continue the process of a funding model review in developing a student-centred, needs-based, equitable, transparent and accountable funding model for the K-to-12 public education system for Budget 2020.

Recommendation 5: support investment in protected child care spaces at schools. That the provincial government provide additional investments to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of State for Child Care to facilitate their working together to create more protected before- and after-school child care spaces in schools across the province.

In conclusion, by increasing its investment in K-to-12 education, the provincial government can continue its work towards creating a public education system in which each child receives support and services they need to thrive and succeed. Parents strongly believe that public education must remain at the forefront of government’s list of priorities.

We ask this committee to consider BCCPAC’s five key recommendations, which address the need for equitable access to education for every learner.

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

Any questions?

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. Can you explain to me what a protected child care space is?

A. Sinclair: Yes. In the School Act — and it’s deeper in the presentation — the school district must rent space. It’s a landlord-tenant arrangement. But if the space in the school is currently used for before- and after-care or child care…. If there is a need for enrolling space because it was not built, dedicated and designed and protected for that, enrolling space obviously takes precedence — that is, a teacher in a classroom with students.

Then that child care space gets moved out, because the priority is given to the enrolling…. It’s not that enrolling, in our mind, is not important. It is. But there’s a way to envision the rooms and the use of the buildings and decide which places are dedicated — or purpose-built, in the case of new builds. Does that make sense?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know the adding of 4,000 new positions has put pressure on that as well, I guess, because you need space for the smaller classroom sizes and the teachers.

A. Sinclair: Yeah, which is back to…. We’re not building schools every day, but with the seismic program and some of the areas where there’s an increase in population growth, we are now building new schools, where five and ten years ago, we were not.

The area standards document is currently being used as a basement, as opposed to a starting point, so the space in the schools is actually much smaller than, historically, it was. Then, again, it’s back to which things are purpose-built or dedicated as opposed to space where its use changes over time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting. Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. Very thorough. We appreciate it.

[9:50 a.m.]

Next up we have British Columbia’s Teachers Federation — Glen Hansman.

Good morning, Glen. How are you?

B.C. TEACHERS FEDERATION

G. Hansman: Good morning. Thanks for having me. I just flew in from Victoria this morning. I’m here presenting on behalf of our provincial organization.

I’m coming to the end of my term, and I had somewhat of a fairly unique vantage point in the province in that this week I finally got to the last of the 60 school districts that I hadn’t visited yet. I don’t know if any of my predecessors had accomplished that. I have had the opportunity to go into schools and see what classrooms look like, students’ experience, our members, CUPE members, principals and vice-principals that work in the public schools around the province. Being able to go to school district 92, Nisga’a, was certainly a highlight to end on.

The commonalities and stories and the needs that are expressed by teachers on behalf of themselves as professionals and based on the needs of the kids in their classrooms are certainly common threads around the entire province. The recommendations we have here are familiar. They’re, more or less, ones that we’ve made in previous iterations to this committee. There’s certainly a very high overlap between the recommendations that we make here and what my friend and colleague Andrea just made to you in BCCPAC’s presentation.

They’ve also actually been reflected in the recommendations that have come from the standing committee for the past five years as well. We note, as well, that the standing committee over the past five years has also recommended adequate, enhanced, stable, predictable education funding for the K-to-12 system in British Columbia. A lot of the needs that have been identified and the other recommendations from this standing committee still need to be met, so we would encourage you to look back at what the standing committee recommended the past five years and come forward with similar things.

I’m not going to go through this entire brief, because it’s fairly detailed, but I would like to pick up on some of the pieces that Andrea just spoke to — in particular, capital funding and operational funding. Certainly, the current government has gone a long way in terms of making many seismic upgrade and capital funding announcements for new school construction. In order to meet the targets, though, and to be able to handle growth in communities like the one in which we’re sitting — but also areas of the province, like Chilliwack, which also have thousands of kids in portables — we still need to pick up the pace. There have been some good strides made there, and I’m confident that the province will be able to get there if the pace is picked up a bit more.

On the operational side, though, the side of the budget that provides funding for the direct services that go to students, there’s still a long way to go. There has been an uptick in operational funding due to student enrolment growth, which government is supposed to fund — so it’s good that government is doing that — and also for paying with the teaching positions that have been restored due to the teachers’ Supreme Court win. Other than that, operational funding for school districts is more or less status quo.

It’s taking into account inflationary pressures. School districts around the province continue to have a huge number of unmet needs. This shows up in terms of the ability of school districts to support teachers with the new curriculum, making sure that the average classroom teacher, regardless of where they live in the province, has access to accurate, up-to-date teacher materials that reflect the new curriculum — science labs, shop, home ec equipment that is accessible to students, isn’t broken, freely available.

It’s also most pronounced when it comes to matters related to inclusion of students with special needs. There are still too many parents around the province who feel the pressure, rightfully, to make sure that their kids’ needs are met at the earliest age possible. But when wait-lists to get assessed continue to be very long in school districts around the province, when there aren’t enough psychometricians or speech-language pathologists available in the school district, when there’s no coordinated recruitment plan in order to make sure that those folks are available — and then even when students do get assessed and a diagnosis, there aren’t necessarily the supports in place — lots of families are still turning to special education services in the independent school system and having to fork out their own money to do that.

It continues to be our position that that is wrong. That’s not a slight to those families. It’s the simple matter that those services should be available for free to any child that needs them in their neighbourhood public school or, at the very least, available for free somewhere in the public education system, in the school district in which they reside.

[9:55 a.m.]

This is something that the province can do. It’s an investment worth making. The knowledge and know-how are definitely there in the system, and along with all the efforts that we’re making around equity and inclusion for students with special needs within our education system, we need to turn the page on this and move forward to make sure that no family is pressured in that regard and that our members and other professionals that work in the education system to support students with special needs are able to provide as much support as needed.

Finally, I’ll just direct you to a couple of other sections in here that pick up on some of the comments that my colleague Julia MacRae made earlier around recruitment and retention. We have a few recommendations in that regard. As an organization, not only do we represent classroom teachers but also speech-language pathologists and school psychologists and other associated professionals that work in the public education system, depending on the school district.

Where there are the biggest challenges recruiting this year, it continues to be in the north and in the Interior. But even here in the Lower Mainland, school districts are having great difficulty recruiting and keeping the qualified, certified teachers that they have. In my travels, I am meeting more people with letters of permission or uncertified individuals working as teachers in the education system. As a stopgap measure, clearly, we need them, but that’s not a long-term solution.

We have to make sure that either we’re graduating enough qualified, certified teachers in this province and/or recruiting enough from out of province. But as Julia described to you earlier, it’s an uphill battle for school districts to be able to both recruit and retain teachers from out of province given that B.C. teachers are the worst paid west of Quebec. When Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario and the territories are all trying to recruit the same limited pool of teachers from around the country, it’s a problem.

In French immersion, there’s a particular need. Every province, including Quebec, has a shortage of qualified French immersion teachers, so there needs to be a homegrown solution here, and there needs to be a solution to be able to attract people from out of province.

Then there are some speciality areas: teachers of the deaf or hard of hearing, speech-language pathologists, school psychologists. It is very challenging for post-secondary institutions like UBC and others to be able to run programs and graduate sufficient numbers of people given the costs involved and given that the individuals they’d be recruiting into the programs to do this are from the existing workforce, so people are having to take a leave of absence without pay from work in order to do that.

We have a bubble of people in those roles who are very close to retirement or who are already retired and the school districts are still relying upon in order to provide those functions. We need to address that for the reasons that Andrea identified earlier.

There’s a lot more in here, most of which you’re familiar with, most of which has shown up in previous recommendations from the standing committee, but we’d encourage you to look very closely at the operational side of the current K-to-12 budget in this province and separate out what are mandatory, non-discretionary costs and where the areas are where we can improve over the next few years.

It’s not that you could solve every single problem right away but at least be taking some meaningful steps toward addressing the wait-lists, the lack of supports that are available around the province and all the commitments that the current government has made around the U.N. declaration of Indigenous people, the Auditor General’s report earlier this week around Indigenous education and the further steps that have to be taken to make sure that the existing workforce is knowledgable, is given anti-racism training, is able to go deep into reconciliation and into Indigenous world views and knowledge in their everyday classroom practice.

That’s not something that happens magically, for sure. Teachers, as professionals, have to take it upon themselves to get up to speed and deepen their own knowledge, but there’s also the role of the Ministry of Education and school districts, as employers, to support teachers in that endeavour, regardless of where they’re working in the province.

I will end there. Thanks for this opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Glen. We just about used your full ten minutes, so there’s not a lot of time for questions.

R. Coleman: I’ve just got one. Andrea brought it up too. The top salary she mentioned was $89,000-ish, I think, with a master’s and what have you, and $48,000 at the entry level. There’s a gap.

[10:00 a.m.]

So what’s the gap? What’s the quantum gap between the starting and the high end compared to the rest of the country?

G. Hansman: At the starting salary, most teachers are what we call category 5 teachers. They graduate with an undergraduate degree, a BEd. Currently B.C. and Quebec are the lowest-paid in the country. We and the B.C. Public School Employers Association tend to use the western provinces — everyone west of Quebec — as the comparator so that both ourselves and the employer are on the same page. It’s about a $15,000 wage gap as a starting salary.

At the top end, it’s around the same amount. Any of our members that work in any of the school districts that neighbour the Alberta border — say, Peace River South, North, Fort Nelson, etc. — would jump by about $20,000 simply by taking a job in a community across the border. So our Peace River South school district, in August of last year, recruited 45 people from out of province. By the start of the school year, they had all but two of them remaining. Some of them took jobs elsewhere in B.C., but others soon caught on that they could work just 30 kilometres across the border and make more.

That’s just a practical reality. We’re not expecting to deal with that in one fell swoop, but there needs to be a step forward because it’s not sustainable for this gap to continue the way it has.

R. Coleman: Thank you.

D. Clovechok: Thanks, Glen. Just a quick question and a thank you for your organization and all that the teachers do for kids in this province.

I’m interested around recruitment. Is the BCTF doing anything with post-secondary institutions to try to highlight and grow the numbers of interested students that are coming out of high school into the profession? We’ve certainly heard in the north that “you’re trained in the north; you stay in the north.”

G. Hansman: Yes, thanks for that question. Actually, there has been quite a collaboration on that between ourselves and the deans, as well as the Ministry of Advanced Education. There have been lots of ideas that have been floated, including having the support of the Ministry of Advanced Education to do more community-based teacher ed programs in the north — not necessarily 100 percent of the time. Maybe we could do some courses here in the Lower Mainland and then do some based in the communities, because we know that’s successful, to your point.

There’s been a particular focus as well on looking at how we can create more systems like that to support Indigenous high school students to think about becoming teachers, help facilitate getting them into post-secondary programs, supporting them through those years, and then once they’re there, making sure they get into teacher education programs, because it’s very important for Indigenous students who live in all parts of the province to have Indigenous teachers working with them.

So there’s a big menu of things that have been contemplated, some of which are dependent upon funding. Some are just some practices that could be instituted around the province. There are some good conversations around that, but there’s no sort of provincial push at this point to actually make it happen, other than some of the funding announcements that Minister Fleming and Minister Mark did make earlier last calendar year.

D. Clovechok: Thank you.

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

Next up we have the Capilano Students Union — Harpreet Singh and Josh Thomas.

If you wouldn’t mind keeping your comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that. Thank you.

Go ahead.

CAPILANO STUDENTS UNION

H. Singh: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. I appreciate that your deliberations are not easy, and I wish you well as you report recommendations back to the Minister of Finance.

My name is Harpreet Singh, and I represent all students at Capilano University with the Capilano Students Union. We are also a member of the provincewide Alliance of B.C. Students. With me here today is Josh Thomas, our director of policy and campaigns, who will be able to answer any questions if you have them after my presentation time.

I am here to bring the issue of international student tuition before the committee to ask that international student increases be tied to domestic increases on a dollar-for-dollar basis. As an international student myself, this is an issue that hits very close to home. Every year I worry about whether or not I will be able to continue my studies, as I have no idea if the increasing tuition will be in line with what I have budgeted in previous years.

[10:05 a.m.]

International students are over 25 percent of the student body at Capilano University, making this a serious issue for our whole community. There are currently no laws that regulate tuition or campus conditions for international students, leading to unpredictability for annual tuition and fee changes and extreme financial uncertainties for students. To illustrate how unpredictable these increases can be, we can see that international student tuition has risen by 485 percent since 1991. For comparison, domestic tuition and fees are limited to only an increase of 2 percent per year. No such limit currently exists for international students.

The committee may be aware that international education is recognized as one of the seven major industry sectors in B.C. by B.C. Export, ranking third in 2015, behind wood and minerals. This industry plays such a large role in our economy that international student spending in 2016 created over 40,000 jobs and $2.7 billion in GDP. Despite putting billions in the economy and creating thousands of jobs, international students continue to experience discrimination and exclusion on campuses across the province due to their backgrounds.

In one of my marketing classes last semester, a Canadian student referred to all the international students as cash cows. Many Canadians believe that international students are only valuable for their ability to balance the university budget, but in fact, we are here to study for personal development and to create a better future for our world. Having many of the same goals as our Canadian peers, 25 percent of international students stay in Canada after graduation to be thriving members of this wonderful and diverse society.

It’s very possible that unfair disparities in campus conditions and tuition fee increases between international and domestic students could cause a decline in international student enrolment. With international education so tied to B.C.’s growth, this could result in a sudden shock to B.C.’s economy and jobs market with far-reaching, mysterious effects.

To reiterate our ask, we are presenting before the committee today to request that international student tuition increases be tied to domestic increases on a dollar-for-dollar basis rather than a percentage basis. This will create financial certainty for students to ensure a thriving international education industry in B.C. for years to come.

Thank you again to the committee for inviting us to be here today. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you folks on these very important matters. Again, I wish you well in your deliberations.

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

Questions from the members?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Guys, thanks very much. I know we’ve heard this before and have come across it at various of our meetings around the province. I want to thank you again for bringing it up — a job well done.

In my opinion, some of these colleges and universities are about to kill the goose that’s laying their golden egg. I was an international student the other way. I went away for training. It was a set price. It was two times. Some of these schools are four to 4½ times. I think it’s long overdue that somebody needs to take a look at it.

Pointing the fingers that kids from domestic have paid taxes and their parents have paid taxes and helped to contribute to their university — I fully accept that. But if you’re opening your doors for people to come in and be educated here…. Fortunately in Canada, many of those international students stay in Canada, create jobs, create wealth, have families.

Thank you, again, for bringing that forward. It is something that really needs to be addressed and some form of cap be put on.

J. Thomas: Thank you very much.

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

Thanks for your presentation.

We’re going to take a short recess.

The committee recessed from 10:09 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

Next up we have CPAWS B.C. — Victoria Ball.

CANADIAN PARKS AND WILDERNESS
SOCIETY, B.C. CHAPTER

V. Ball: You have already heard from two of my colleagues over in your home riding, Dan.

You should all have a digital copy of our submission, as well as an infographic attached to that, which was emailed around.

I’d like to begin today by acknowledging that I sit with you on unceded ancestral and occupied traditional and shared territories of the Katzie, Tsawwassen, Stó:lo, W̱SÁNEĆ, Kwantlen and Stz’uminus First Nations.

We sit together only a few kilometres from the Fraser River, one of the most important salmon runs of the coast. I’d like to express my deep gratitude for the stewardship of this river, these lands and the many species that depend on them, demonstrated by these nations since time immemorial.

My name is Tori Ball. I’m here representing the British Columbia chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. We’re one local chapter of a national non-profit, grassroots-based conservation organization. We’ve helped to protect over 400,000 square kilometres of threatened areas in the country. Here in B.C. we continue to play an active role in the stewardship and expansion of our protected areas system, which now accounts for more than 15 percent of the province.

Right now governments and organizations all over the world are collaborating to solve the biodiversity crisis. We’re seeing species decline faster than ever before, and we’ll need a multitude of solutions to solve it. Protecting lands and waters is one effective tool to halt this trend, while also empowering First Nations and rural communities. Canada has committed to the goal of protecting 17 percent of lands and inland waters by 2020. The plan to get here has been named the Pathway to Target 1.

This past spring, the federal government was flooded with applications in response to their call for proposals to the Canada nature fund, a pot of federal money available to help meet Canada’s conservation targets. There were over 100 proposals submitted, and more than 60 of them were from B.C. Many are being led by First Nations. We are eager to see many of these proposals go forward. However, there just isn’t enough funding available to support all of the applications.

We’re asking the B.C. government to step in and fill the gap. We want to see these collaborative, First Nations–led proposals go forward in this province. We’d like to recommend that Budget 2020 include $40 million set aside to work with First Nations to support their vision of land protection for their territories and to expand the network of protected areas in B.C. We’d like to see a priority put on areas that act as climate refugia, areas underrepresented in the protected areas system, and on intact and unroaded landscapes. Safeguarding these areas will support a broad diversity of species, act as carbon sinks and increase ecological resiliency.

Along with this, there must be ongoing funding mechanisms to support First Nations stewardship of these places in the long term. By dedicating funding to Indigenous-led conservation, the B.C. government will be contributing to your goal of implementing the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Advancing reconciliation with First Nations will undoubtedly include shared management and ownership of the land, and there are existing and successful models right here in B.C. that can be used to further these goals.

The B.C. government has set objectives around driving and growing a clean economy. Tourism is and has been a major part of this. The provincial tourism agency, Destination B.C., uses the provincial parks system as a backdrop for much of its marketing. Unfortunately, as some of you are well aware, the B.C. parks system has been dramatically underfunded for many years now.

Recent bumps in the budget are allowing for improvements on the ground, but we are not yet at a level comparable to similarly sized systems such as Parks Canada or Alberta Parks. These systems receive ten times the amount of funding that B.C. Parks does on a per-hectare basis. Studies have shown that investments put into protected areas in B.C. will create a more than eightfold return on investment through visitor spending. These are often direct benefits to local and rural communities.

[10:20 a.m.]

It is imperative that the B.C. budget include long-term investment for our parks to continue to provide many ecological and social benefits. We recommend that Budget 2020 include an increase to the existing and annual funding to B.C. Parks by $50 million to bolster its ability to preserve the ecological integrity of our existing and potential new areas in the provincial parks and protected areas system.

Providing funding for the numerous protected areas proposals and adequate funding for the existing system that many of us rely on for well-being will allow the government to simultaneously meet a number of existing objectives and priorities. From recovering species at risk to mitigating and adapting to our new state of climate disruption, connecting and expanding our protected areas networks is integral for a more sustainable future.

On behalf of my colleagues and our over 20,000 members and supporters in the province, we thank each of you on the committee for your time and consideration towards Budget 2020. We look forward to working with the provincial and local governments in B.C. to create a strong, resilient and connected network of protected areas.

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

Yes, we have heard, all over the province, about the need to protect species and to deal with our park systems. We really appreciate your advocacy in this regard, because it’s so important to British Columbia for so many reasons.

R. Coleman: Victoria, I didn’t ask the other people, but do you guys track how much money that park plate brings in — that B.C. has and whether it’s flowing through to parks?

V. Ball: We only can track what’s publicly available, and there’s a delay in the reporting out from B.C. Parks. I think 2015 is the most recent report-out available. But it doesn’t get included in the budget of how much it brings in. I think about $9 million is what was projected, or $8.2 million. It’s quite a bit, and it is allowed to flow to the parks system for quite a number of uses. It’s quite broad, what it’s designed for.

R. Coleman: Okay, thank you.

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

Next up we have the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators — Sean Parkinson and Terri Van Steinburg.

Hello. Just a reminder. If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes so that we have time for questions. Thank you.

FEDERATION OF
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATORS OF B.C.

T. Van Steinburg: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to provide input for the 2020 budget.

I want to recognize that we are on the unceded traditional territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations.

I’d also like to recognize that today is National Indigenous Peoples Day. The recent report of the national missing Indigenous women and girls inquiry and the outstanding calls of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission show us how much work remains to be done to decolonize our society and move towards reconciliation.

My name is Terri Van Steinburg, and I’m here as the incoming president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators and the 10,000 post-secondary faculty and staff that we represent. I’m joined by Sean Parkinson.

S. Parkinson: Thank you. I’m speaking today as the incoming secretary-treasurer of FPSE. Each budget produced by the province helps shape our collective future and brings us closer to making life more fair and affordable for working people. We believe a sustainable post-secondary system that treats its workers fairly is a crucial piece of this future.

Our federation has always been a vocal supporter of post-secondary education. We believe that it provides everyone with the opportunity to succeed. Changes made by the current government, like tuition-free adult basic education and tuition waivers for former youth in care, are just a couple of examples of opening up more opportunity.

T. Van Steinburg: You may not be surprised that we’ll be using our time today to speak to a systemic issue — you’ve heard from a number of our locals already — and that’s the underpayment of contract faculty. In B.C., we have a provincial salary scale used across our system that ensures educators are paid fairly without discrimination.

[10:25 a.m.]

We need to stop paying contract faculty a fraction of this scale. Contract faculty need to be paid on a pro rata basis — simply put, proportionate to the provincial salary scale.

S. Parkinson: You’ve heard about how the situation is different at locals across the province. At North Island College, this means the contract faculty members are paid 55 to 60 percent less than their colleagues. One woman had to apply for income assistance each year to make ends meet. At Thompson Rivers University, in some departments 100 percent of the precarious academic staff are women. This is a significant overrepresentation of women in underpaid work.

While local circumstances are different, the overall problem is the same provincewide. Contract faculty receive different pay for doing the same work.

T. Van Steinburg: This is an issue of fairness. Leaving aside the issue of keeping people on a short-term, precarious contract for years on end, underpaying faculty, whether it’s 20, 50 or 80 percent less than their colleagues, just isn’t right. It’s time to take action to ensure contract faculty are paid on the provincial salary grid.

Vancouver Community College and Langara College show that treating faculty fairly is possible. There, all faculty are paid on the provincial salary scale, regardless of the duration of their employment contract. This should be the standard for all institutions.

Ensuring that public funds go towards paying people fairly is the kind of investment that makes life better for every person in our province. On behalf of our members, including our 3,000 contract faculty members, we urge this committee to recommend that government fund a pro rata model so that contract faculty will be paid on the provincial salary scale. Same work, same pay. It’s not complicated.

S. Parkinson: Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to present our recommendations for the 2020 provincial budget. We’re happy to take any questions.

R. Coleman: Well, you answered one of my questions, which was how many part-time faculty there are. There are 3,000. How many full-time faculty are there?

T. Van Steinburg: Well, then, there would be about 7,000 in our sector, because we have about 10,000 members. That’s not FTE members. That’s people in class. So that includes everybody.

S. Parkinson: It does vary, Mr. Coleman. Yesterday I told the committee that more than half of the faculty members at my local, University of the Fraser Valley, are precarious academic staff. They do about 30 percent of the teaching, but in head count, they’re more than half.

R. Coleman: But the same union represents both, right?

T. Van Steinburg: Yes, we represent….

R. Coleman: We’ve asked this question elsewhere. Why can’t they get a path to permanency? When I asked this of one of the research universities, it was, “Well, we hire worldwide,” yet I’m saying: “Aren’t there people qualified within our system that could actually take those roles?”

T. Van Steinburg: That is an issue, but that’s actually not what we’re focusing on right now. For right now, we’re just focusing on the pay. Whether you can get to permanency or all of that is an important issue. There’s no question. But what we’re focusing on right now is the same pay. If you do the same work, then you should get the same pay.

R. Coleman: But then those folks are obviously looking at a path to a career with more permanency than just the same pay.

T. Van Steinburg: It’s true. You’re absolutely correct.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Also, just to pick up on that, a couple of the universities actually already pay…. They do follow the scale, and some are quite dramatically different. So there seem to be differences right across the province in terms of this practice. There doesn’t seem to be the rationalization.

The thing is, some institutions have been able to work within that financially. That’s a little bit confusing to me. Why is it that some are able to work within that and then some aren’t? I’m not sure. I’m trying to get my head around that one.

T. Van Steinburg: That’s a good question. I’m not sure I have the answer to it either. Maybe at some point in time at Vancouver Community College and Langara, the union was able to negotiate that. But we’ve been unsuccessful in trying to negotiate it for the 16 other public locals that we have — to this point.

[10:30 a.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much. As the members have said, we’ve been hearing this around the province. We really appreciate your advocacy for precarious teachers who are working in our post-secondary.

Next up we have Parent Advocacy Network for Public Education — Galen Hutcheson and Maggie Milne Martens.

Hello. If we could encourage you to keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, that would be great. Thank you so much.

PARENT ADVOCACY NETWORK
FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

G. Hutcheson: Thank you. We want to acknowledge that we are seated on the traditional and south shore lands of the Coast Salish people, and we’re very grateful to have the opportunity to present our call to action for public education in B.C.

PAN is a non-partisan group of parents and allies who advocate on behalf of thousands of students and parents across the province for equitable access to a quality public education that meets all students’ learning needs.

Before we begin, I’d like to ask anyone in this room who is either a parent or a guardian or attended school yourself to raise your hand, if you’re able, and keep it up for the next bit, please. So anybody who’s a parent, attended school yourself, please raise your hand. Now I’d like you to lower your hand if your child did or does not attend public school.

I’d like you to raise your hand if you have paid for an external psych-ed assessment or tutoring services for your child. Then please lower your hand if you’ve ever outsourced your child’s education through art classes, music classes, drama or dance classes or fee-paying sports teams.

Now raise your hand if you’ve ever been involved in fundraising for your child’s school. Sorry. Lower your hand if you’ve ever been involved in that. Lower your hand if your child has already graduated. So it’s only those people who still have their….

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’ve got five.

G. Hutcheson: Sorry. Bad instruction. Lower your hands.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s okay. We get it. We got the visual.

G. Hutcheson: So it’s only those who would still have their hands up who still have a genuine lived experience of what our true public education system is like and rely on it for their growth and development.

Today our education system is in crisis, and people with choice and the power to make decisions, like all of us in this room, don’t really understand the difference that a public education can make.

I want to illustrate this point, because we easily forget that the experience of public education from a position of privilege is different than the experience of working class and vulnerable families who don’t have the same capacity to compensate for an underfunded and under-resourced education system that purports to be equitable but is not.

Our hope is that when you make recommendations going forward, you put your own experience of educational success aside and really take in the impact of a broken system on the lives of today’s B.C. students.

M. Milne Martens: We’d like to focus on two areas of particular concern. The first is special needs. This is what we know. We know the supplemental funding only covers 50 percent of students with diagnosed conditions that require learning supports. We know that the percentage of classrooms with four or more designated challenges are still increasing. We know that wait-lists for assessments are still between two and four years, despite the criticality of early intervention. We also know that teachers are reporting increasing needs within their classroom that are more and more complex and overwhelming.

Although the percentage of children diagnosed with a disability that require support in our B.C. education system remains steady at 11 percent, the needs are actually far greater. American national and Ontario provincial statistics put it at between 16 and 17 percent.

[10:35 a.m.]

This does not even account for the children, which are estimated to be two-thirds of the population, that are also likely to be experiencing one of trauma, dislocation, poverty, depression or anxiety, which all require additional supports for learning. There is a growing and alarming student health crisis within our public education system. Current funds are wholly inadequate to address it. We need to see this as the new reality in B.C. public education schools. We need to fund an education that supports their learning needs.

Secondly, quality and equity. The redesigned B.C. curriculum is, without a doubt, world-class and prepares students for the 21st century. But there is no funding to support it fully on the ground.

Imagine that you are a new grade 4 teacher. You have a class of 27 children. You have desks, you have chairs, and you have $200 to buy material resources for the year. That’s less than $10 a child for a whole year.

Where is the money for hands-on materials, books and technologies to support personalized learning? Where is the funding for district subject specialists to support teachers in the new curriculum? On National Indigenous Peoples Day, where is the money to support the Indigenous elders, the artists, the knowledge keepers that can work alongside teachers to indigenize the curriculum without recolonizing it.

Where is the funding to support the arts, music, visual arts, performing arts? These are vital for developing the critical, creative capacities and multisensory literacies needed for effective communication and employment in the 21st century. The data is also clear that the arts are essential for relieving stress and anxiety and improving mental health. Why is there no funding for the specialists, the dedicated spaces and the material resources to support them?

Current and forecast funding is only enough for a bare bones education. All of those other extras that we might call a quality education or even a complete education are funded by parents. Those that live in poor catchments — remembering that one in five in our province live under the poverty line — simply do without. So B.C. may perform well on PISA tests, but this belies the stark income discrepancies in both experience and outcomes between have and have-not schools.

We know that this is happening, yet we continue to do nothing about it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’re at about seven minutes right now, so if you could please wrap it up. Thank you.

M. Milne Martens: Okay, all right. We can do better.

G. Hutcheson: These aren’t new facts. In fact, we’ve been here before your committee now five times. You’ve endorsed our recommendations each and every time. So we know that you hear our words. But as it turns out, this isn’t enough. What we need from you is more. We need bold and courageous, visionary leadership that demonstrates, through action and dollars, that investing in public education is a necessary upstream intervention for our future citizens.

In conclusion, PAN fully supports and endorses the recommendations from our education allies, First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, BCCPAC and BC­EdAccess.

We respectfully resubmit the same recommendations that were submitted in October 2018 to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, which you will have in your electronic package. We ask that you leave here as the champions and the public servants that the next generation of B.C. students is counting on.

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

Questions?

R. Coleman: I get that — always. But I didn’t quite understand what was wrong with a parent sending their kid for piano lessons or other things outside the school system if they can do it.

We actually sit in a school district that actually does have full-time music teachers in schools, and they do musicals and stuff in Surrey. Surrey has been doing…. I’m not from Surrey, but I know that because I have family members that actually teach music in this particular school district.

I do know that in Richmond, for things like interpretive dance and what have you, other things that young people might want to get an interest in at a higher level…. You said that if you’ve paid for this…. Well, I think that’s part of a family’s decision to go further, if they can, on other things. I didn’t understand that part of your opening.

[10:40 a.m.]

G. Hutcheson: I think the critical piece is the “if they can.”

Do you want to speak to that?

M. Milne Martens: There’s nothing wrong with paying for a child’s music lessons but to recognize the fact that people without the means to pay for music lessons, art lessons, fee-paying sports teams — increasing the resources at their school.

Public education is the place that they receive education. Should our public education give all children the opportunity to learn the language of music? Should public education give all children the opportunity to develop their creative capacities and visual literacies? Should public education give all children the ability to experience some kind of performative education within their public schooling? Because if it’s not in public schooling, and you are working class or living under the poverty line, then your child does not actually have opportunity to develop those capacities.

Now, those are all in the core curriculum, but they’re not supported by funding.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks for that. I mean, coming from the arts myself, I know that usually, the first thing that gets cut is arts and music. In my previous life, I often was fighting for that as well. I appreciate that, and making the case for how important arts are for the general development of our children. It’s really important. Thanks for that. We’re over time, but thank you so much for your presentation.

Next up we have Geoscience B.C. — Gavin Dirom and Carlos Salas.

If we could encourage you to please keep the initial comments to five minutes so that we have time for questions, that would be great. Thank you.

GEOSCIENCE B.C.

G. Dirom: Good morning Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members. Our package has our annual report, our strategic plan and, also, a detailed submission with respect to our recommendation. My name is Gavin Dirom, the president and CEO of Geoscience B.C. With me is Carlos Salas, our chief scientific officer and our executive vice-president.

A bit of background for you. Established in 2005, Geoscience B.C. is an independent, not-for-profit society to promote, fund and support public geoscience research on mineral, oil and gas, geothermal and water resources in the province of British Columbia. Geoscience B.C. works to complement the efforts of provincial and federal geological survey agencies and government scientists. We listen to the needs of the resource sectors, academia, First Nations and governments to develop relevant, applied research projects.

Through the building of partnerships, Geoscience B.C. has been successful in attracting contributions from partners and leveraging the core funding received from the province, resulting in a leveraging multiplier of 1.6 for each dollar invested by Geoscience B.C. We believe this approach provides the people of British Columbia with an innovative and responsive made-in-B.C. model for public geoscience. The model is based on collaboration to efficiently and cost-effectively collect and publicly share geoscience information and data.

With that, Geoscience B.C.’s recommendation to the committee is to support a commitment to a made-in-B.C., coordinated and adequately resourced provincial approach to public geoscience as recommended by the Mining Jobs Task Force in January 2019.

Our recommendation includes sustainable funding for Geoscience B.C. to continue research that encourages innovation and responsible development of minerals, oil and gas, geothermal and water resources in the province of British Columbia, an increase in base funding for the British Columbia geological survey so that it can more effectively collaborate with partners to deliver its complementary mandate and research funding for Geoscience B.C. and other research partners to implement the top-priority recommendations arising from the independent Scientific Review of Hydraulic Fracturing in British Columbia.

With that, Carlos will now provide you examples of the return on investment and the value-add of Geoscience B.C.’s research projects.

[10:45 a.m.]

C. Salas: Thank you, Gavin. Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. I am pleased to give you a breakdown of the number of projects and examples of the value of our research.

Since inception, Geoscience B.C. has completed 185 research projects related to minerals, oil and gas, geothermal and water resources in the province. We currently have 42 research projects underway. With respect to minerals research, Geoscience B.C. has completed over 127 projects since 2005 and has 29 projects underway for a total of $38.1 million committed to minerals-related research.

The return on investment of Geoscience B.C.’s mineral research is significant. For instance, based on independent third-party findings from the government’s assessment report indexing system, ARIS, from 2005 to 2017, Geoscience B.C. data and projects were mentioned 3,483 times in 884 separate reports and were mentioned in reports with a total exploration expenditure of $154 million. This is more than four times the $32.1 million investment by Geoscience B.C. in mineral-related research during that same 2005 to 2017 period.

Geoscience B.C. has also completed 34 energy-related projects since 2008 and has eight projects underway for a total of $10 million committed to energy-related research. As you know, the oil and gas sector, including the future development of liquefied natural gas, expert facilities plays a vital role in B.C.’s economy.

There are nearly 40 mentions in the independent Scientific Review of Hydraulic Fracturing in British Columbia’s report highlighting Geoscience B.C.’s role in providing data that serves the public good by guiding clean, responsible energy development; identifying and mitigating risk; answering specific environmental and social questions; and attracting investment to B.C.

Geoscience B.C. can also play an important role and a value-add role in meeting CleanBC commitments. For example, with respect to detecting and ultimately reducing greenhouse gases, Geoscience B.C. has teamed up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to mount its Mars mission technology to a drone and provide live GHG emissions data, which is needed to guide policy development and help lower GHG emissions.

In another example, Geoscience B.C. has been researching the viability of repurposing abandoned gas fields and wells near Clarke Lake in northeastern B.C. to generate geothermal power and heat.

Lastly, Geoscience B.C. has completed 24 water-related research projects and has five projects underway in the water research sphere for a total of $7.7 million committed to water-related research.

For example, through Geoscience B.C.’s research into deep groundwater in northeastern B.C., energy companies have invested approximately $150 million in construction of water treatment plants in the region, thereby helping reduce their reliance on surface water for hydraulic fracturing.

It’s noted that the need for more earth science to inform our understanding of water resources and to drive evidence-based decisions across B.C. is also highlighted in an independent Scientific Review of Hydraulic Fracturing in British Columbiaand s report.

Thank you very much for considering our recommendations, and we’re happy to answer any questions you may have.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much. Fascinating stuff here, especially in regards to your, hopefully, future work on the hydraulic fracturing. It was really nice to see in the scientific review a specific mention of Geoscience B.C.

G. Dirom: Forty mentions, actually.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Forty? Yes, 40 mentions. I stand corrected.

R. Coleman: Who counts that?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think Geoscience B.C…. Well, they like numbers, you know, and also the fascinating ideas around CleanBC and being able to deliver that.

Thank you so much for all the work you do.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just real quick. Carlos, Gavin, keep up the great work. It’s greatly appreciated. It touches so many people — and not only in the province and outside — so keep it up. Good job.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. Any other comments? Thanks for the thorough presentation and your passion for the…. Really interesting. Thank you so much.

[10:50 a.m.]

Okay. Next up we have Simon Fraser University — Sobhana Jaya-Madhavan and former minister and former MLA and, more importantly, my first-year constitutional law professor at the University of Victoria and now with Simon Fraser University, Dr. Andrew Petter.

A. Petter: Actually, I need to correct you for the record. I am not a doctor.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re not a doctor?

A. Petter: I’m not a doctor.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks for coming. We look forward to your presentation.

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

A. Petter: Thank you very much. We really appreciate the chance to present again to the committee and to do so in Surrey.

Last year when I spoke to this committee, I talked about the lack of post-secondary educational capacity in Surrey and other communities south of the Fraser. I will do so again. This region has the youngest and fastest-growing population in B.C. Yet it falls significantly below the provincial average in the post-secondary seats and educational attainment.

This was recognized way back in 2006, when the province, at that time, signed an MOU pledging to double the size of Surrey’s SFU campus by 2,500 FTEs to double our size from 2,500 to 5,000 FTEs. The goal was to have that done by 2015.

Of course, 2015 has come and gone, and unfortunately, we have not seen that doubling occur. We have seen, thankfully, an increase of 440 new spaces recently. But that still leaves us well short of even the target that was set for 2015. As a result, young people in this area continue to be denied the education they need to attain their full potential.

This is ironic, I think, because we are, within British Columbia, suffering a talent deficit that is really costing business in terms of the human capital they need to expand and thrive. It’s a deficit that the Conference Board of Canada has costed at about $7.9 billion in lost GDP that could occur if we were to close that gap in talent. It’s costing government almost $2 billion in forgone tax revenues.

Left unaddressed, the situation is likely to get worse. The province’s own labour market outlook is estimating that B.C. will need more than 900,000 new workers over the next decade and that 77 percent of these will require some form of post-secondary education. Thus, by increasing post-secondary spaces in this high-growth region, the province can address two problems — a lack of educational opportunities for students and a shortage of skilled workers for employers — and do so with a single solution.

It’s a solution that SFU has been working on. We’ve got a three-phase plan, and we’re well-equipped to deliver with new programs in high-demand areas like creative technologies, health innovation and to combine those programs with co-op education and entrepreneurship training, which is a particular strength of our institution.

I was very pleased that last year’s report recommended that there be an expansion in the number of seats available to students, including — and it specifically said this — at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus to address the increased demand for post-secondary training and education in B.C. I want to thank the committee for having made that recommendation.

My request is simply that that recommendation be renewed and continue this year and that the committee — as it has done before, if you go back to previous reports — might even want to be a little more specific and urge the province to recommit to that 2006 goal for 2015 to double the number of spaces at SFU’s Surrey campus to 5,000. It is a goal that is long past due.

If we move to SFU’s Burnaby campus, our principal concern there is not for more students; it’s for renewal of our aging infrastructure. We appreciate the increased support for routine maintenance that we have received in recent years under both recent governments. But some structures, sadly, are beyond repair. Our top priority is for a new life sciences building to replace what is really a crumbling biology facility no longer adequate to meet the needs of our students.

Therefore, we are hoping this committee will recommend that funding be allocated to address priority post-secondary capital projects of this kind, recognizing we are not alone, although institutions like us and BCIT are of a particular age and have extraordinary needs that are not typical of other institutions.

[10:55 a.m.]

Burnaby Mountain also poses a pretty serious transportation challenge for students, faculty, staff and now for the over 5,000 residents, soon to be 9,000, who live in UniverCity, the community we’ve developed at the top of the mountain. Currently over 25,000 commuters, 75 percent of whom come from beyond Burnaby, are challenged by what TransLink itself admits is one of the worst-performing bus routes in the region. That number of commuters is likely to rise to 40,000 in the next few years.

TransLink has proposed an urban gondola system. We believe it’s a sound solution to a pressing transit challenge, and thankfully, the Mayors Council identified it as a regional planning priority. Burnaby council just recently has endorsed, in principle, the gondola project as a priority for it as well.

TransLink calculates the cost-benefit ratio for this project at 1.8 to 1. I’m not a transportation expert, but I’m told by those who are that that is a very high benefit-to-cost ratio, and it doesn’t even include potential benefits like increased tourism. It’s really a meat-and-potatoes calculation about what it will mean in terms of reducing greenhouse gases, improving transportation, improving safety and providing year-round access to the mountain, which, sadly, doesn’t always occur, because of weather.

It would also provide a safety route if, God forbid, there were a serious accident that cut off road access — say the tank farm that’s being expanded or a forest fire on the mountain. So it has a strong safety purpose as well.

It also will free up buses that can then be repurposed to meet other goals of the mayors plan elsewhere in the region.

There is a federal green infrastructure fund that we believe is ready and available to fund this with matching provincial funding. If those two funds were to come into play, we believe it would be the most cost-effective and innovative transit investment that could be made — certainly in this region. We, therefore, are hoping that, once it has cleared the consultation process and, hopefully, a recommendation has been made to the province by the Mayors Council, the province will commit to this project and recommend it to the federal government next year.

In terms of sector priorities, we were very gratified by the province’s recent investment of $9 million to support work-integrated learning opportunities for students. We’re big believers in putting students into the community, into the workplace, as well as into the classroom.

However, we hope the province will also respond positively to other system priorities that have been set out in submissions of other colleges, institutes and universities, including the submission of the Research Universities Council, which either has been made to you or will be made to you. Those needs include mental health, which is becoming increasingly an issue for us — trying to provide adequate mental health services for our students.

Student safety. Sexual violence and misconduct. We’ve done a lot in this area. Government legislated and required us to, but we’ve had to do it without incremental resources. It’s really challenging to live up to our responsibilities without additional resources to support us — also to support diversity and inclusivity on our campuses, and particularly, within that, dedicated funding to better support Indigenous students.

I’m really happy to say we graduated our largest class of Indigenous students this year — over 160. We want to continue on that trajectory, but it requires more support to ensure those students don’t just come into university but come out the other side successfully.

Finally, I’ll just make a note about a commitment that I know government made in the last election, which was to establish a graduate student scholarship program. That’s very important, because B.C. is losing graduate students and not retaining graduate students because other provinces have such programs. We were pleased to see that there was a one-time funding allocation made for a three-year graduate scholarship program as a first step.

Our hope is that that will be now turned into a permanent program so that we can count on the fact that that funding will be there to incentivize B.C. students and attract students from elsewhere to undertake a graduate education that will be critical to economic and social development in this province, in areas likely in tech. Our new clean tech program here is going to be a big economic boon because it does have graduate students. But it would be nice to make sure we can attract the very best and brightest to that and other programs.

With that, I just really want to thank the committee for your attention. I’d be happy to answer any questions. We’re pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished as Canada’s top comprehensive university. We call ourselves Canada’s “engaged” university because of the strength of our community connection, and we really look forward to what we can accomplish together with the continued support of government.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. It’s pretty exciting — the idea of the gondola, not just…. It’s interesting to have transportation ideas that are thinking outside the box and also add to the whole clean energy…. There seems to be so many upsides to it.

Is there an indication as to timeline if this goes ahead? I’m just curious about that.

[11:00 a.m.]

A. Petter: First of all, the irony is perhaps that this is outside the box in B.C., I think because we think of gondolas and ski hills in a single frame. If you go to other countries in Central America — you can even can go down to Portland or Europe — gondolas are regularly becoming part of the regular transportation system.

It is a new idea here. I am old enough to remember when the SeaBus was thought of as a kind of crazy idea. Now we say: “Hey, that’s a good idea.” The gondola, I think, fits in that same category.

In terms of timeline, with the Burnaby council’s support and communication to TransLink, we hope a consultation process will now take place to look at the routes, to hear concerns from residents. I think they can all be addressed. I hope I’m not being overly optimistic in hoping that that recommendation might then come back to TransLink and the Mayors Council, resulting in a request to the province and, through the province, to the federal government under green infrastructure.

I would love for all that to happen before my term is up, which is August of 2020. June of 2020 would be just great.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much for your presentation. We really appreciate everything that SFU does for our community, for our students and for the province.

A. Petter: Thank you. I invite you all to come and tour our new sustainable energy engineering building, built with support from the province and the federal government. The new students will be arriving in September. I think probably September or October would be a great time. I’d love to take any or all of you for a tour of it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the Realistic Success Recovery Society — Susan Sanderson.

S. Sanderson: It’s a small committee this year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We just have a couple of people out. They’re coming back. Actually, the committee has gone from nine to seven, to start with.

If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be great.

REALISTIC SUCCESS RECOVERY SOCIETY

S. Sanderson: I’m going to read the recommendations first, then I’ll go back and fill in. Then you can cut me off.

Recommendation 1 is that immediately, the per diem for supportive recovery facilities gets raised to $40 a day. The per-diem facilities have not seen any of the increase of the $150 that was increased to basic social assistance.

Recommendation 2 is that you increase the comfort allowance to $125 per month for those social assistance clients living in an ALR-registered facility.

Three is that by the budget of February 2020, the per diem is increased to $60 a day per person.

Recommendation 4 is that social assistance rates rise to $15,000 a year for basic for an individual, or $1,250, which is the market-based level — also, because our sector relies heavily on gaming grants, that you increase the maximum of gaming grants.

The pot has been about the same amount for the last number of years. The pot needs to be bigger. Also, the maximum amount that any organization — and ours will never reach that — can receive is $100,000. It’s been that amount for a number of years, so if you look at inflation, that should be at least $117,000 for those organizations. What it means is that people who are trying to do the same amount on $100,000…. Things get cut. You just can’t do it.

The rest of my presentation is the background, but I’ll go back now and fill in. Unless you just want to ask questions, I’ll go and fill in.

I’ve made submissions to the select standing committee since 2014. Last year, I appeared before you. I applaud the number of changes that this current government has made, many of them significant, to help the people of B.C.

The area of supportive recovery and social assistance benefits is still underfunded. The health crisis caused by the poisoned illegal drug supply has resulted in the life expectancy of males in Canada going down by 2.3 years, the first time in decades that life expectancy has not continued to rise.

I believe really strongly that the funding for per-diem facilities would help to alleviate some of this. But I recognize that…. The money parts are important in this, but funding recovery and treatment is treated the same way that the disease is. It’s stigma based.

[11:05 a.m.]

There are haphazard regulations, afterthoughts and a patchwork of solutions that vary around the province. This government has gone a long way to address the social aspects of addiction by creating a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and in their numerous statements regarding stigma.

Those of us operating community-based organizations that change the trajectory of people’s lives have been waiting patiently to receive funding increases that are so desperately needed. You can immediately help to increase positive outcomes for the clients of room-and-board special care facilities, assisted living, substance use facilities, including registered supportive recovery homes.

I’ll leave it at that, if you want to ask questions.

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

S. Sanderson: I think it was Mr. Coleman that started the per-diem system originally, in 2009, which was a great advantage and really, really helped us. So we’re not chasing cheques and people who’ve already used their cheques for their drugs the previous year. They come in. They arrive at your door with nothing, with the money already spent, so you’re always behind the eight ball. So the per diem has made a huge impact, but it needs to keep pace with the cost of living. I mean, we just can’t do it. We simply cannot do it.

R. Coleman: It’s the cheapest investment when it comes to recovery, because our 28-day programs are very expensive. They’re not good on recidivism. These actually get to the person, get inside them, understand their addictions and help them recover, but for a cost of about ten more bucks a day, you could do wonders.

I’m glad you’re here today.

S. Sanderson: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m sure part of the overall discussions that the ministry is having in regards to poverty reduction include discussions like this. Of course, increasing the basic rate has been a priority, I know, for the ministry. But obviously, there are other issues like this that they need to look it.

S. Sanderson: These issues never made it to your report. I always look for the report when it’s published. I look for them, and they’re not there. So it’s disheartening.

I mean, I know that there are a lot of demands for every penny, but you know, by driving around every community in this province, that we’ve got a real problem, and it’s not getting better.

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

Next up we have the B.C. Anesthesiologists Society — Dr. Brad Merriman.

Dr. Merriman, if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, then we have time for questions. That would be great.

B.C. ANESTHESIOLOGISTS SOCIETY

B. Merriman: Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me here today. My name is Brad Merriman. I’m an anaesthesiologist at Vancouver General Hospital, and I’m the economics chair for the B.C. Anesthesiologists Society. I apologize if I’m a little haggard. I was just on call last night. It doesn’t explain the beard, but in any event….

By way of background, I know our society has been in front of this committee before, last fall, and we’re probably becoming a bit of a fixture on this circuit. But just to refresh everyone’s memory, the B.C. Anesthesiologists Society is a voluntary organization. We represent a group of around 400 specialist doctors who work around the clock at every major hospital in the province.

British Columbians benefit from the work we do and the skills and expertise we bring in specific areas. These include resuscitation and life-support measures, critical care treatment, life-saving treatment for airway emergencies and major traumas, pain relief during childbirth and also specialized techniques to minimize opioid use, both in the acute and the chronic pain scenarios, through nerve blocks and such.

The largest proportion of our services and the focus of this submission is related to the delivery of medically necessary surgery in British Columbia. As your committee is well aware, B.C.’s health care budget currently consumes roughly $20 billion annually. Of this total, an estimated $2 billion is spent every year on surgeries.

With this funding, the public health care system is able to perform over 300,000 surgeries and anaesthetics each year. However, with more than 86,000 British Columbians currently waiting for surgery and anaesthesia, the reality is that we’re facing record patient wait times across the province.

[11:10 a.m.]

To its credit, in its fiscal plan, the B.C. government has targeted significant new funds to increase surgical capacity. An extra $50 million was budgeted in 2017-18, $75 million in 2018-19 and another $100 million in the current 2019-20 fiscal year. Despite these meaningful allocations, surgical volumes are not meeting targets, and over 40 percent of wait-listed patients have waited too long for their medically necessary surgeries. That’s more than 35,000 British Columbians who are still waiting for surgery, even though they’ve already waited longer than the government’s own maximum acceptable wait times.

Earlier this month, your government lawyers argued in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that it is “an undisputed fact that there is a shortage of anaesthesiologists in B.C.” This shortage is a major reason why surgery wait times are excessive. In last fall’s presentation to this committee, the BCAS proposed that it could help government save $100 million per year by leading efficiency improvements for all the province’s operating rooms. That’s a 5 percent savings from within the $2 billion spent annually on surgery.

I’d like to expand on the benefit of what we’re proposing. By creating a 5 percent improvement in operating room efficiency, we would liberate resources — time, money and staffing — needed to deliver an additional 15,000 surgeries each year. This is how you bend the curve on excessive patient wait times and improve the health of citizens in the setting of resource limitations. Relevant to this committee, delivering timely surgical care is a benefit to the economy as a whole and also to the financial well-being of individuals and families.

A study by the Centre for Spatial Economics, provided for the Doctors of B.C., demonstrated that the cost of excessive surgical wait times is staggering. The provincial GDP drops by up to $10,800 for each patient who waits beyond the maximally acceptable wait time. With 35,000 British Columbians currently in this category, we’re looking at a GDP impact measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Similarly, provincial government revenues drop by about $1,230 per patient, a net impact of tens of millions of dollars annually.

While the economy as a whole suffers and while government revenue drops as a result of excessive surgical wait times, the negative impact on real people is even more significant. It’s estimated that the average B.C. surgical patient who is on a wait-list experiences an economic cost of around $5,000 while waiting excessively for surgery. For some patients and some families, this could be debilitating.

There are certain anecdotes that bring this home. Think of the single parent with children at home who is working two jobs and then has to go on long-term disability because of a wait-list issue. The consequences for them aren’t just whether they defer buying a new car or a bigger house or whatever. It’s putting food on the table. They’re very real consequences.

Delivering timely surgical care is a way to deliver economic benefit to regular British Columbians across our province. For the 86,000 British Columbians who are waiting for surgery right now, and especially the 35,000 British Columbians who’ve waited too long already, delivering more timely surgical care is best for their health. It’s also economically important for them, for their families and for the provincial economy.

With that, I’d just like to wrap up with our recommendations. Our society would like to optimize the efficiency of the operating rooms of this province to improve health outcomes for tens of thousands of British Columbians waiting for surgery. Our intentions are to save taxpayers large sums of money, to benefit the overall economy and to increase worker productivity. To achieve these results, we propose the following recommendations to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Our first recommendation is that all new budgetary investments in surgical capacity should be based on a comprehensive plan that addresses all necessary resources, including health human resources.

Our second recommendation is that the government work constructively with the B.C. Anesthesiologists Society to correct the undisputed provincial shortage of anaesthesiologists, while also benefiting from the efficiencies that can be found through greater collaboration with front-line physicians and nurses.

A third recommendation — this is my final recommendation — is that all new budgetary investments in surgical capacity should be structured to promote efficiency and productivity and should be transparently tied to the volume of services actually delivered.

Thank you again for this opportunity to provide input. We look forward to further opportunities to collaborate with government.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. Just a quick question for you. Have you met with Minister Dix about these proposals? Have you talked to the ministry?

B. Merriman: Personally, I haven’t, but our CEO, Roland Orfaly, certainly has.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I’m just curious as to whether there’d been any movement on these ideas or not.

Then the other issue is: how would you propose to increase the number of anaesthesiologists?

B. Merriman: Well, definitely, the challenge we face in British Columbia is, quite frankly, several-fold, but I think the largest issue is compensation. We are the lowest-paid anaesthesiologists in the country, not just by a small margin but a large margin.

[11:15 a.m.]

Recent CIHI data demonstrates that compared to pro­vinces like Ontario and Newfoundland, we’re on the order of 30 percent less in terms of compensation for similar hours worked. Certainly, that has been a big deterrent. I can tell you that in our centre at Vancouver General — we’re actually on an alternate payment plan; we’re paid a slight premium to fee-for-service — we have struggled to hire anybody from outside our province, with a few international medical graduates, and even that can be a challenge.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, good to know.

Any questions?

D. Clovechok: Thank you for coming — from on call, all night long.

B. Merriman: No worries.

D. Clovechok: Thank you for what you do. I had the unique privilege of finding myself in a situation last year where I had to go to a surgeon. I did wait for one of you guys for a bit. It wasn’t that long, but in any event, thank you so much for what you do. It’s so important.

B. Merriman: I appreciate that. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I think we can all echo that. Thank you so much. Wonderful.

We’re going to take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 11:16 a.m. to 11:23 a.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Vantage Point — Mark Friesen and Alison Brewin.

Hello. Good to see you.

VANTAGE POINT

M. Friesen: Likewise. Good morning. I’m going to kick us off.

To the standing committee, I’ve got just a question. For a show of hands, how many of you have attended a theatre or performing arts event in the last two or three months? Some audience members have. Theatre, performing arts attendance? Not so much.

Flown through the YVR airport last year — has that happened to anyone? Professional association events? Chamber of commerce?

All of those are not-for-profit organizations. We’re here to talk today about multiplying the impact of the provincial budget strategically through the not-for-profit sector and thinking about the not-for-profit sector as a whole.

[11:25 a.m.]

Vantage Point, last year, served over 11,000 not-for-profit leaders throughout the province — in 2018. Our mission is to convene, connect and equip not-for-profit leaders across the entire province.

You are currently asking British Columbians to make recommendations to the province about how the 2020 budget can have a tangible impact on three key priorities, as far as we can tell: making life more affordable for British Columbians, delivering services that people count on and building a strong, sustainable economy.

We’re here to remind you or highlight the fact that these priorities are really best achieved if a meaningful partnership can be struck or supported with the not-for-profit sector. Strategic investment in not-for-profits can have a huge impact on all three of those priorities. As we just realized, and I just highlighted in that example a moment ago, not-for-profits are currently delivering services in every subsector: arts and culture, health, education, social services, housing, economic development, small business, emergency response and preparedness, and the environment.

The sector is indispensable when it comes to the social, creative, economic, environmental goods and services across the country. Across Canada, the charitable not-for-profit sector consists of 170,000 not-for-profit organizations and contributes 13.3 percent of the national GDP, making it larger than real estate, manufacturing and resource extraction sectors. Two million people are employed nationally in the sector, accounting for approximately 11 percent of employment across the country.

Here in B.C., there are approximately 26,000 not-for-profit organizations. The sector is one of B.C.’s largest employers, with numbers matching employment numbers in manufacturing, finance and education. Not-for-profits currently work with the government to deliver $6.1 billion in programs and services to the population. But contracting direct government contracts to not-for-profit organizations is only a small part of what we’re talking about.

Our sector also keeps residents from utilizing government services by breaking down social isolation, keeping people active from the cradle all the way to the hospice and connecting community through art, activism and professional connections. In terms of GDP contribution, the sector is larger than the fishing and mining industries in B.C. combined.

Your current consultation paper for the B.C. Budget 2020 lists several programs and services. Your paper asks respondents to split up how they would spend a dollar. We’re here to remind you that not-for-profit organizations are involved in the delivery of programs in, quite literally — and we’ve looked at it — every single category you have listed in that budget consultation paper.

However, an important thing to keep in mind is that a dollar invested in the not-for-profit sector is multiplied two, three or even five times for the simple reason that, frankly, government programs and government ministries can’t go fundraise. It’s not as easy for you to get volunteers. So not-for-profits can leverage community assets, volunteering, fundraising — additional resources that you simply don’t have access to.

A dollar invested in the not-for-profit sector, in any of those sectors I just listed, goes a long way. I’m going to turn it over to Alison to talk more specifically about Vantage Point and what we’re recommending in terms of the budget next year.

A. Brewin: By the way, Mark is the director of capacity building at Vantage Point, and I’m the executive director there now. Our organization is a not-for-profit and a charity, and we’ve been supporting the sector for over 70 years. For the first time in those 70 years, we’re presenting to the Finance Committee to support the submissions of our colleagues that you’ve already heard from in the sector and to share the message from our members.

As we’ve already mentioned, the diversity of the sector is huge here in B.C. But to give you a glimpse of what this looks like, among our 400 members, 14 percent are from arts and culture, 11 percent are from community development and housing, 8 percent from education and research, 4 percent from environment and animals, 19 percent from health sector, 26 from social services, 7 from sports and rec and then the other 11 percent are from a mix of business and professional associations, religious groups, law and advocacy organizations and foundations as well.

We provide service to even more non-profits than those 400, providing training, leadership development and planning. The sector is here to support these three government priorities of affordability, effective and stable services and an economic environment that nurtures and sustains us all.

The not-for-profit sector is of sufficient scale and reach to have truly significant impact on the success of these priorities in B.C. We’re your partners on the ground. The not-for-profit sector is often the first to respond in a crisis — first to mitigate against unanticipated impacts of programs and initiatives that government or others put in action.

[11:30 a.m.]

One example, the temporary modular housing program, is only possible because of strong and stable not-for-profit partners. The thriving arts and cultural scene across B.C. can be attributed to the not-for-profit theatre and performing arts organizations in every one of those communities. In terms of economic development, many rural communities benefit from local non-profits that support investment through events or community programming such as the Valemount and Area Recreation Development, for example.

For the 2020 budget, you’ve already heard from some of our colleagues in the sector. We know that the Federation of Community Social Services has asked to be invited to the table to participate in discussions about how to better support community social service organizations. We know that the B.C. Arts Alliance has made a request to restore community gaming grant funding to a minimum of $156 million and to articulate a statement of purpose for community gaming. We know that Board Voice B.C. is requesting funding for formal conversation with the social service sector that will get their long-standing partnership back on track.

We support all of these requests and urge you to put them forward in your recommendations to the Legislature. In support of our members, our request is simple: that you multiply the impact of your dollars by investing in our sector. You’ll get a positive return on investment across the province if you do.

There are six ways that we think you can ensure that impact. One is to act on the B.C. Arts Alliance — to restore the community gaming grant pool and, frankly, to look at the whole gaming structure and think that through.

We recommend that all contracts and grants that implicate not-for-profit organizations remove the cap on how funds can be used and focus instead on deliverables, outcomes and impact. Understand that we’re your partners, that we have financial management skills and that we’re best placed to determine the business model that’s going to work for the community.

We recommend a review of the funding frameworks in B.C. in which not-for-profits operate. An examination of current funding parameters will reveal several opportunities to further the impact of your dollars. Create a fund, or invest in existing programs — like Vantage Point, for example — that support the capacity of not-for-profits around B.C., just as you invest in Small Business B.C. Invest in resources for your own corporate registry so that they can effectively play the oversight role that they’re there to play, and ensure that non-profits are compliant with the Societies Act.

Support research and development in the sector to ensure that we all understand the opportunities to build a province that is affordable, that has services people can count on and that has a thriving and not a destructive economy.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration. We look forward to, as always, being your partner in this work.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks so much. I worked in the non-profit sector prior to being an MLA. I wanted to say thank you very much to Vantage Point. You’ve done amazing work. I’ve had the opportunity of working many times with Vantage Point over the years. I appreciate what you do and the fact that you’re here, and I encourage you to come back. Please continue to present. It’s great, the work that you do.

D. Clovechok: I’d just like to thank you for your work too. I know the impact of not-for-profit foundations and organizations. I started one in Alberta with $5,000 and a donated office. It’s now a multi-million-dollar foundation. It has gone across the province of Alberta now, and I’ve seen the multiplier effect that happens. We chased the corporate dollars before we allowed government in. They asked us to come, and it worked really, really well.

Continue the fantastic work. Our communities would be at a loss without what you do.

M. Friesen: Thank you for that. We appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We just have a little bit more time. I’m wondering, if you wouldn’t mind, if we could just talk about gaming for a sec. My own experience in the past with gaming was that the officers in charge of the funding process didn’t necessarily understand the sectors. I was in the arts sector, and it was all about ticking off boxes, as opposed to necessarily looking at the benefits or the merits. I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on changes that could happen at gaming to make it more responsive to the non-profit community.

A. Brewin: Well, I think we probably have a lot. One is to restructure it — even to use the examples that they use in Saskatchewan and other jurisdictions, in which there is actually a non-profit leadership role in managing gaming and making decisions about gaming. I think if there was a model like that, it would be much more effective, it would have a much better reach, and it would be responding. It would actually be feeding the impact of the sector, rather than this very narrow, programmatic perspective that gaming currently has. I think if there’s an opportunity to look at that kind of a structure, that would be fantastic.

[11:35 a.m.]

M. Friesen: Yeah, I think B.C. is one of the only provinces that does not have a stand-alone entity that’s arm’s length that administers gaming funds, so that could be looked at. But I note our colleagues B.C. Arts Alliance, in reviewing the Triplett report and other studies that have been done — a significant finding that B.C. Gaming does not have a clear statement of purpose. So even just as simple as that, to say a clearly articulated statement of purpose that leaves less discretion to the staff to go checking the boxes — a bit more clearly articulated mandate around what this is here to do that’s clear for everyone involved.

D. Clovechok: Just around that, there are lots of benchmarks to follow. The Wild Rose Foundation in Alberta is a perfect example of how those gaming moneys are transferred and channelled to not-for-profits. There are lots of examples out there.

A. Brewin: Yeah, it would be fantastic if we could make that happen.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, we’re out of time, unfortunately. But please, if there’s anything more that you can add to that in the presentation, in the written submission, we’d appreciate it. You have till June 28, so anything more you’d like to add, we’d love to hear about it.

M. Friesen: Actually, that’s helpful to know. We can do that for sure. That’s great. I appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, absolutely. If you want to put any supplementary stuff in, please do. Thanks for your time.

Next up we have Douglas Students Union — Mitchel Gamayo and Abigail Mitro.

Good morning. How are you? If we could keep the initial comments to five minutes so that we have time for questions, that would be wonderful.

DOUGLAS STUDENTS UNION

A. Mitro: Hi, my name is Abby Mitro, and I’m currently a Douglas College student, on my way to becoming a special education teacher. I’d like to start off today by thanking you guys for eliminating interest on B.C. student loans and allocating $3.26 million to BCcampus for the creation of open education resources. These decisions have an everlasting impact for access to post-secondary education now and into the future. So thank you for listening to student voices.

Today I am here on behalf of Douglas College international students, as they account for 30 percent of the entire population at Douglas. The lack of regulation for international fees puts international students in a difficult position to plan for their post-secondary education in B.C. Coming here to attend a post-secondary institution is a huge commitment mentally, physically and financially. Students arrive with a planned budget to get them through their education, and the following year they struggle to afford the basics like rent and food due to an increased cost of living as well as unplanned tuition increases.

In September 2017, Douglas College increased international fees by 9.4 percent with only two months’ notice. Thankfully, through advocacy, Douglas College has since put a freeze on fees, but the projected increase for ’20-21 will be 6 percent, which is three times higher than the domestic increase, and it could be even higher without any regulation. This rise is a reaction to base operating grants decreasing. Institutions across B.C. are relying on international students to pay more than their fair share to privately fund our public education system.

This is not only beyond unfair but is an erosion of our public education system. International students actually see this and know they’re being treated like cash cows or revenue-generating units, as they’re described at Douglas College. International students are now facing increased pressures in a multitude of other aspects of their lives. The students union runs an emergency food bank for students to access resources in times of instability, and the majority of the students actually utilizing this service are international students.

We also see international students working in precarious jobs, paid under the table because they’ve hit their 20-hour-a-week work limit under their student visa regulations. The value of international students expands much farther than the campus at which they’re studying. Not only do they immerse our campuses and communities with diverse cultures; they also contribute over $3.12 billion in annual spending, contributing over 26,000 jobs and $1.77 billion to the provincial GDP.

We need a new, comprehensive international education strategy that includes the regulation of international fees, along with strategies to continue to keep international students coming to B.C. The province relies on them, and we need to provide support in order to keep them here.

M. Gamayo: Hi, my name is Mitchel Gamayo, and I also attend Douglas College, with Abby. I am pursuing an education degree to, hopefully, teach high school students in the near future. Today I’m here to represent students who, just like me, struggle with student debt. I, too, want to thank you for the elimination of B.C. interest on student loans. We are heading in the right direction for accessibility for all, but we still have some work to do and some barriers to break down.

I currently am in school full-time while working two jobs on the side. I consider myself very privileged and very lucky, because I’m the first person in my family to have the opportunity to attend a post-secondary institution. I’m also very proud, because I have worked very hard to get where I am. But I know that many other young people are not as privileged as I am.

[11:40 a.m.]

My parents have always been supportive of the idea of me continuing my education, but student debt and how to pay off my student loans has always been a part of our conversations since I was 16, or in high school.

On top of the two jobs I work to bear the weight of student debt, my mom, who is a single mother, works close to 50 hours to pay for rent, food and other basic necessities. While she works hard to remove those barriers from my path, the sacrifices she makes have stripped her of her own opportunities of upgrading her education and pursuing a better career. We should not have to decide whose education is more important, but the rise of tuition and living expenses has created this reality.

My education has opened many doors for me and will contribute to my success in my career, but it has left me worried about how I will continue to live with and pay for this debt over the next ten years. My current student debt is over $10,000, and by the time of my graduation, it will be closer to $25,000. This is my reality, and this is the reality for many other students across B.C. I am very fortunate to have such a great support system, but for those with less support than me, their reality is an even bigger struggle.

One way to support young people is increased access to non-repayable student financial assistance such as upfront, needs-based grants. Low- to middle-income students would not have to face as big a debt burden through a program like this. It certainly would help the thousands of young people and their families grappling with the costs of their education. Over half of Douglas students require government financial aid, and we don’t even know how many students have private debt.

I want to close by thanking the committee for the opportunity for having me present some of the stories of over 13,000 Douglas College students. We hope that you will consider our recommendations. We believe that the ideas we have shared with you today are a good investment for the prosperity of B.C. and, in particular, for creating more access for young people.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you so much. I love Douglas. I was on the faculty briefly there, and it’s a great, great institution. I’m really pleased to have you here today.

Any questions from members at all?

R. Coleman: We’ve have a number of presentations about this particular subject. Does anybody know what the differential is compared to other countries? For instance, my brother lived in England with his kids. Coming back to Canada made a whole lot of sense because the price of an education for a student in England who wasn’t from England was huge. We have international students and a price differential here to domestic students. What’s it like in other jurisdictions?

A. Mitro: That’s a good question. We do have a document. The B.C. Federation of Students has released a document with more of that information. But it’s not so much the difference in fees; it’s more that there’s no regulation on the fee increases. Right now institutions have whatever percent they want to raise it by to balance their budget. That’s where the issues lies — not so much the difference between domestic and international.

International students agree that they should be paying more for their education because they are travelling to study here. It’s actually subsidizing the institutions’ budget that is the problem.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’d make a good politician. That was an excellent pivot.

R. Coleman: She bridged her message really well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I know. Very good. Our communications people would have been very pleased with that answer.

R. Coleman: If you haven’t had media training, it’s even more impressive.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Having said that, it is a very good question from the member. If there’s any chance, if you did have any of that documentation, if you wouldn’t mind forwarding that to the committee, we would really appreciate that. It does impact on the discussion — how competitive Canada is to other jurisdictions in terms of foreign students. So it would be really great to have that if you have that available.

A. Mitro: The B.C. Federation of Students, which is the provincial branch, is submitting a written submission, so we will pass that information along.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So it might be in there. But maybe just check to make sure that’s in there. It would be good to have that.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We really appreciate your advocacy and everything you’re doing. Great job being…. Did you say you were the first person to have post-secondary?

M. Gamayo: Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s a great thing. Good for you. I just wish I could nudge a couple of my kids to do more in the post-secondary. Thanks so much.

Next up we have school district 38, Richmond — Kenneth Hamaguchi, Roy Uyeno, Scott Robinson and Debbie Tablotney.

[11:45 a.m.]

Hi, how are you? Just a reminder that if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, then we have time for questions. That’d be great.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 38, RICHMOND

K. Hamaguchi: I’ll do some quick introductions. My name is Ken Hamaguchi. I’m the board chair. Roy Uyeno is our secretary-treasurer, Scott Robinson is our superintendent, and Debbie Tablotney is another fellow trustee. We have our contingent of people from the district parents association, another trustee, the Richmond Teachers Association and Richmond management professional services.

Dear committee members, once again thank you for giving us the opportunity to participate in the Budget 2020 consultation. This brief is presented jointly by the board of education of Richmond with the Richmond District Parents Association, the Richmond Teachers Association, CUPE Local 716, the Richmond Association of School Administrators and the Richmond management and professional staff.

We are proud of our collective commitment in Richmond to cooperate, collaborate and advocate for all our stakeholders in ensuring a safe, accepting and engaging community that promotes student success and inspires passion for lifelong learning.

Our joint presentation advocates for the needs of the K-to-12 public education system and the needs of our students in Richmond. Our recommendations that we are presenting are focused on four key messages: increase funding to support vulnerable students, increase funding to support new education curriculum changes, a fair and equitable funding formula and continued support of investment in safe schools.

Recommendation 1: increase funding to support vulnerable students. Significant demands are being placed on school districts to provide adequate services to support students with unique learning and social and emotional needs. While we strongly support an inclusive model, we believe the funding is not adequate to support it.

Enrolment of students with special needs continues to grow, and increased funding is needed to support recruitment and retention of associated professionals, such as psychologists, speech-language pathologists and community mental health professionals, in addition to special ed resource teachers. School districts are expecting or experiencing significant challenges in supporting students with mental health issues, and more funding for resources, training and staff are needed in this area.

In addition, a significant proportion of students with special needs are dependent on educational assistants as front-line support to ensure that they can attend schools and are safe. There is increased demand for EAs to support our vulnerable students so that they can integrate into regular classrooms. There are significant recruitment challenges in attracting qualified EAs due to current compensation levels and conditions of work. Funding is needed to support growth in EAs, EA training and resources and supporting increased compensation levels.

In Richmond, we have created our own training program called the Richmond education assistant program — we call it REAP — that provides a certification training program for individuals wanting to become EAs, with opportunities to be hired in the school district upon program completion. This is one example of the innovative ways we are currently addressing the shortages of EAs and the challenges we face in recruitment and retention.

Number 2: increase funding to support new education curriculum changes. Richmond is committed to delivering education programs that result in student success and achieve the highest possible outcomes. We have one of the highest graduation rates among B.C. school districts. Increased funding is needed to ensure the new curriculum will result in continued student success.

Targeted funding is required to support the curriculum implementation, assessment changes and instructional delivery through increased teacher professional development, mentoring, training and investment in recruitment and retention of teachers. Additional funding to provide new learning resources and technology in the classroom is also needed.

Recommendation 3: a fair and equitable funding formula. Richmond supports the new funding allocation model that aims to provide funding that is responsive, equitable, stable, predictable, flexible, transparent and accountable. Provincial funding for K to 12 accounts for 90 percent of our total school district budget revenues.

The Richmond school district believes that the new funding model for public education should cover all costs of delivering educational services, including meeting all requirements under the memorandum of agreement that restored classroom learning conditions, as well as additional funding to meet the requirements of the new education curriculum. The new funding model should also fully fund all costs related to negotiated contract agreements and exempt compensation increases, which are not currently funded.

[11:50 a.m.]

Changes to the funding model should not negatively impact school districts and should fully support meeting the needs of all our students. Stable, predictable funding should cover all inflationary cost increases, rather than downloading costs onto school districts.

Number 4: continued support and investment in safe schools. The current provincial government has supported the need and investment in ensuring that schools are seismically safe. In Richmond, due to unstable soil conditions, 34 of our 48 schools have been evaluated to be at high seismic risk. The Ministry of Education has established a Richmond project office to facilitate acceleration of seismic upgrading approval and funding for high-risk schools in Richmond, which we fully support and welcome. It’s been working really well.

Additional funding targeted to accelerating this timeline will ensure that our schools are seismically safe as soon as possible, which is our number one priority. In addition to ensuring the safety of our students and staff, we advocate for the provincial government to fund school districts for emergency preparedness, including the development of emergency response plans, training and supplies.

In conclusion, we would like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to present our joint brief today. We appreciate the committee hearing our views and hope that the information we provided will be given consideration as part of the 2020 provincial budget. Trustees, staff, stakeholders and parents in Richmond are committed to ensuring that we continue to have a strong public education system and that the Richmond school district is the best place to learn and lead.

This document was signed by myself; Liz Baverstock, the president of the Richmond Teachers Association; Ian Hillman, president of CUPE local 716; Dionne McPhee, president of Richmond District Parents Association; Jose Pelayo, co-chair of the Richmond management and professional staff; Mark Hoath, president of the Richmond Association of School Administrators.

I’m happy to entertain questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Ken. I was just curious. You mentioned the need for seismic upgrades in Richmond. I’m just wondering: how is that progress happening now? Perhaps you could talk a little bit more about needs in the future.

K. Hamaguchi: It has gotten much better, but I’m going to let our superintendent answer that one.

S. Robinson: I think over the last two years — 18 months, I suppose — we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of projects being funded and the speed with which projects are being funded, which, obviously, the board is very happy about and our community is very happy about.

I think what we’re saying is that we absolutely would like to see that continue. Richmond is unique in the soil conditions, as Ken referred to, and the number of our buildings that require work to be done on them, frankly.

D. Tablotney: We very much appreciate moving forward on our seismic upgrades. We were sort of at a standstill for a while. But we have embarked on our long-range facilities plan. We’re just about ready to complete that. Moving forward, we will be looking at possible amalgamation of space and looking at our programs and things. But the seismic condition of our schools was our greatest concern. With the numbers that we had, moving forward, our community was really concerned about the safety of students in schools.

Very appreciative of moving forward with this, and the project office and the extra staff that we’ve had to be able to move forward with plans and paperwork submissions. It’s crucial that we continue. We’re also looking at additions in our city centre as well, where our population is growing. We’ve had to fund some of those additions. Sooner or later, we won’t have the resources for that. That will have to be considered as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much for your very thorough presentation. We appreciate your time. Thank you for all the work that you do for our students.

Next up we have B.C. Association of Farmers Markets — Heather O’Hara.

Heather, if we could try to keep the initial comments to five minutes, we’d appreciate that.

B.C. ASSOCIATION OF FARMERS MARKETS

H. O’Hara: On behalf of the B.C. Association of Farmers Markets, thank you very much for the opportunity to present today.

[11:55 a.m.]

Our association represents 145-plus member farmers markets from across all regions of British Columbia — small-scale, little, big and everything in between in terms of size. Some analysis we did this spring with our membership renewal, just to get a sense of how many small business vendors operate at our markets…. It’s quite impressive. We have about 4,200 to 5,200 entrepreneurs at our markets at the peak of the season every year, which is pretty great. A lot of those happen in those rural and remote communities, which is a nice segue for some of our 2020 budget considerations.

We’re launching a B.C. farmers market incubator initiative, and we will apply to the rural dividend fund this summer to pilot this initiative in the Kootenays and Columbia Basin region to start, with the idea to provincialize that, perhaps, in 2021. The whole point of this is to really capitalize on the fact that we do have those 4,000 to 5,000 entrepreneurs. How do we better support those small businesses in those rural communities especially? We’re looking forward to working with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development if we’re successful in that application this year and hopefully next year.

The second initiative I’d like to speak to you about is the B.C. Farmers Market Trail. We launched that project in 2018. We’ve expanded it this year to four new regions, and in 2020 we wish to finish the trail into the Lower Mainland area as well. We’ve done that with the support of the co-operative marketing program through Destination B.C. I can’t speak highly enough of that program. It’s been a game-changer for us in terms of the quality of product and the digital platform that we’ve been able to create with this to drive people, both locals and tourists alike, to find their local farmers market or to travel throughout the province.

One of the things I just wanted to mention or remind us of was in that recent local economic development survey that the province of B.C. and the UBCM completed, tourism was a top-priority sector in every region and is included in most economic development plans. So, de facto, farmers markets have been a tourism asset for years, but we really want to kind of just own that a little bit more and remind people that this is an asset to build out and promote even more strongly than perhaps we’ve done in the past. So that Destination B.C. co-operative marketing program has been fantastic.

Third, Buy B.C. We’ve obviously been tapping into the Buy B.C. program, formerly Buy Local. Love the program. It’s very good for our association to be able to tap in and build campaigns every year to promote our markets across the province.

Then finally, in closing, the B.C. farmers market nutrition coupon program. We’re extremely proud of that relationship we have with the province, delivering this program over many, many years and over many administrations, and we wish to continue, obviously. This year, this program will touch 79 communities, including Haida Gwaii for the first time, and Williams Lake, to name a few. So we’re very excited about that. Our staff is, too, because they get to go there as part of the program.

So 100-plus community partners, over 4,000 households or over 11,000 individual coupon recipients, 1,000-plus farmers and $1-million-plus direct economic benefit to those farmers. It’s really a fantastic program. I know that many people here know that already. We’ve also had a new investment this spring to enhance the program to meet our waiting list of 250 more people.

I’m also proud to say that this program has let us leverage other relationships. For example, the Columbia Basin Trust. They’ve now committed to three years of $420,000 of funding for us to broaden that program in the Kootenays and deepen it to markets that we weren’t able to serve just with the provincial funding. So that’s really cool and really exciting. Very proud of that.

Then, if we could, we’d love to have that three-year model or three-year commitment of funding from the province to just have some certainty for the program. We know it’s well-respected. If we wanted to increase the weekly coupon value from our current $21 to $24 a season and perhaps address our existing waiting list or expand to new communities or some combination of those, that would be about a $5.7 million commitment over a three-year period. So just to give you a little sense of scale if we wanted to ramp up and scale up as well.

[12:00 p.m.]

In closing, I just want to thank you for listening and hearing our contributions today. And I have time for questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks so much, Heather. I’m sure we all will benefit from our farmers markets. I have two in my riding and love going there all the time and just seeing all that. I’m a huge, huge fan of the coupon program.

Part of that is it not only helps to get local food purchased and support local farmers, but it’s a nice way in a, sort of, non-stigma way for people to get fresh food.

H. O’Hara: Definitely, yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Instead of going to lower-nutrition products to meet their…. You know they’re low-income. You don’t have to sell me on the coupon program.

D. Clovechok: Thanks, Heather, for your presentation.

H. O’Hara: You’re welcome.

D. Clovechok: I, too, am a huge fan of farmers markets.

H. O’Hara: Wonderful.

D. Clovechok: I’m one of the Kootenay MLAs.

H. O’Hara: Well, there you go.

D. Clovechok: From Revelstoke to Kimberley, everybody’s got a farmers market. And you’re absolutely bang on, correct. Where would we be without the Columbia Basin Trust?

H. O’Hara: Yes. We’ve had a really great two-year relationship with those folks now. It’s been really great.

D. Clovechok: They’re so awesome. Congratulations. I look forward to your pilot in my region. If there’s anything my offices can do to help you, please don’t hesitate.

H. O’Hara: Wonderful. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

Members? Any other members?

Well, thank you so much for all the work you do in our communities, Heather. It’s so nice to hear of expansion of farmers markets in Haida Gwaii and other areas. That’s really exciting.

I know the minister. She is one of our most enthusiastic ministers about agriculture, and I know she would love to hear of your successes. Thank you so much for everything you do.

H. O’Hara: Thanks for your time, everybody.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Merck, which is Lee Swift and Leslie Foord.

If we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes to allow time for questions, that would be great. Please go ahead.

MERCK

L. Foord: Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. Thank you so much for allowing us to participate to address you for Budget 2020 consultation. My name is Leslie Foord, as you can see. I work as an associate director in oncology at Merck, and this is my colleague, Lee Swift, who is the associate director of government relations. Both of us are proud to call British Columbia our home. We get to wake up and see these beautiful mountains, so we’re happy to be here.

From a Merck perspective…. Just to let you know, Merck continues to be at the forefront of research to advance the prevention and treatment of disease that threatens people and communities around the world. Merck is one of the top R and D investors in Canada with investments totalling $69 million in 2018 and more than $1 billion since 2000.

Merck has an important presence here in British Columbia, investing in and conducting vital, clinical studies in cancer and other therapeutic areas, as well as making our innovative treatments available to benefit British Columbians.

Really, in an era where people talk too much about what divides us, I think I can safely suggest one thing all of us in this room have in common. I am quite sure practically all of us have been touched by cancer, whether it’s directly through family or friends. The Canadian Cancer Society says that half of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives and a quarter of us will die from it.

Given those numbers and one’s own personal experience, you don’t need to have a crystal ball to guess that cancer affects everyone. Cancer is one of the major contributors to an upcoming, huge increase in need of our health care system. This is due to the aging population and associated increase of incidences of cancer. Among other drivers is a fact that almost nine out of ten cancer cases are those who are 50 years or older.

British Columbia’s population is already older than the rest of Canada. In 2016, one out of three residents was age 55 or older. These citizens will be living longer with more chronic diseases as well as cancer.

[12:05 p.m.]

Accordingly, one of the important recommendations of Merck for Budget 2020 is that British Columbia proactively plan significant and ongoing health system investment in response to the needs of an aging population. This would enable timely access to advances in treatment innovations, particularly in cancer care, such as new cancer immunotherapies.

We recommend that part of the necessary funding should come from working with the federal government to ensure that it increases the annual growth rate of the Canada health transfer to at least 5.2 percent from the current 3 percent.

Canadians are concerned about the ability of the health system to keep up with the demand. A poll conducted by Ipsos Canada for the Canadian Medical Association, released in July last year, showed that just half of Canadians have confidence that the health system will be able to meet the growing needs of seniors who will be disproportionally impacted by cancer.

Among seniors, a survey on cancer care conducted earlier this year by the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, CARP, showed that more than 90 percent of respondents believe that their provincial health system should make new investments to be better prepared to treat cancer. In addition, the same nearly unanimous number said that increasing cancer screening and providing timely cancer treatment should be a health care system top priority.

In cancer, important new treatments include cancer immunotherapies, which harness the body’s own immune system to fight and kill the cancer cells. Merck’s new cancer immunotherapy and others have already been shown to have effect in a number of different cancers, such as melanoma, lung cancer, bladder cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Studies are underway in numerous other cancers.

Cancer immunotherapy is fast becoming the fourth pillar of cancer care, alongside surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. As Canadians learn more about cancer immunotherapy, the demand for these medications and other breakthrough cancer treatments will increase.

The federal government can enable British Columbia and other provinces to provide these potentially life-saving therapies to cancer patients by increasing the Canada health transfer to promote an increase in health system investment.

We encourage the government of British Columbia to work with the federal government to increase the Canada health transfer and to develop and implement a plan for increased health system investments to address the growing health needs, including timely access to cancer therapies such as cancer immunotherapy.

You will find several other important recommendations that we will submit. One of them is related to biosimilars.

I’ll now pass it to my colleague, Lee Swift, who will briefly talk to that point.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just so you’re aware, we’re over five minutes now.

L. Swift: I’ll just be one minute, if that’s okay.

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

L. Swift: Thank you, Leslie.

Just to share one good-news story here in B.C., on May 27, the government of British Columbia announced its biosimilars initiative, which will transition patients who use specific biologic drugs — these are drugs that are injected or infused — for some rheumatology, dermatology and diabetes indications to a biosimilar version. This is possible once the patent for the original biologic drug has expired.

We are pleased to see B.C. lead the way in Canada regarding the use of biosimilars and in recognizing the important value these products bring to patients. The province’s policy to increase the use of biosimilars in these areas could help save close to $100 million over the next three years. By expanding this policy to other disease areas in the future, this number could grow significantly higher. We encourage the province to ensure that savings from the increased use of biosimilars are reinvested to create opportunities for new drug listings and improve prescription drug and vaccine coverage for patients.

With this announcement, the government of B.C. has reinforced the important role biosimilars can play in our health care system in helping broaden access not only to biologic drugs like the ones my colleague was just talking about, in oncology, but also in innovative medicines overall, and that’s good news for British Columbians.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Lee. Thanks, Leslie.

Members, questions?

That’s fascinating. When you talk to the cancer agencies…. We’re very lucky, in a sense, in British Columbia. I gather, if you’re unfortunate enough or like many of us that have had family or ourselves with cancer, that if you’re going to have cancer, this is a great place to be, because we have very cutting-edge and great treatment. We appreciate all the work that you’re doing, especially in research. It’s so important, especially with the aging population.

[12:10 p.m.]

Thank you very much for your presentation and everything you do. We really appreciate it.

Next up we have the Cement Association of Canada — Ken Carrusca.

Hi, Ken. Where’s Michael?

K. Carrusca: Michael’s in Ottawa.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Ken, before you start…. I’ll give you extra time for a bit. One of the first things that Michael did when he came in is he explained the difference between cement and concrete. I’d like if maybe you could just set the record straight for us.

K. Carrusca: I will do that again. Two years ago I brought samples, but I thought I wouldn’t bother to bring them in today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, no, it’s good. It’s important.

K. Carrusca: Look, I’ve got, I think, 700 words. If I can get through half of those words, then we’re good. I think you all know a lot of our story.

Cement is the grey powder. Michael always says that if somebody says, “Hey, I’ve got some cement shoes for you,” no problem. You’re good. It’s a powder — not a problem. If somebody brings you some concrete boots, then we’ve got a problem.

You mix cement, sand and gravel with water, and you get concrete. That’s what you see in all the lovely trucks that drive around that everybody calls cement trucks. My colleagues do get quite annoyed when I, myself, to irritate them, call them cement trucks. But yeah, they’re concrete mixers.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. See? That’s great, Ken. You learn something every day. That was one of the first things I learned when I became an MLA. So there we go.

K. Carrusca: Super. That’s important. We try to educate everybody across the country.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, now we can start.

CEMENT ASSOCIATION OF CANADA

K. Carrusca: Well, you know me. I’m Ken Carrusca. I’m with the Cement Association, a VP here in Vancouver. Well, obviously, I know that we’re in Surrey. Cement and concrete is all around us. I represent, and we represent, Lafarge and Lehigh, both companies across Canada.

Our big topic…. And, again, many of you have heard a lot of our story. Our big push is in supporting what all of us need to do on climate change. It’s one of our biggest challenges. I know I sent the speech as well, so I think you’ve got it on your iPads if you want to follow along. Our industry is responsible, in Canada, for about 1½ percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and we want to be leaders in industry in doing our part. We know, of course, that it’s citizens, all levels of government and industry that need to work together.

Certainly, for the last four years, I’ve attended this group and always make a point of thanking government for the cement low-carbon fuel program. Of course, thanks to the current government for continuing that program that was announced back in 2015. The funds from that program were used to fund infrastructure at the cement plants to allow use of lower carbon fuels.

We also talk lots in our industry about leakage and imported cement. Right now about 25 percent of the cement used in B.C. is imported from across the border, either made in the U.S. or Asia. That cement doesn’t pay any carbon tax, and of course, we feel it’s unfair to B.C. producers. The B.C. companies all pay, currently, the full $40 per tonne carbon tax, which is the highest carbon tax in North America. B.C. cement actually has one of the lower footprints, in terms of greenhouse gases, across Canada — certainly, lower than the cement that’s often imported from Asia.

That term we call leakage…. Fundamentally, it’s explained as leakage of carbon, but it’s also leakage of that cement production and leakage of tax revenue. So it affects B.C. companies in terms of jobs and just the competitiveness.

Our ask — and I know we’ve talked about this before — is that the B.C. government work with the local cement industry to ensure that all cement in B.C. is subject to that same carbon tax, regardless of where the cement is made. Some options that we have discussed before with government representatives include a border carbon adjustment or a point-of-sale carbon tax that would be applied on all cement sold in B.C., including that imported cement.

I’ll move on to two opportunities that we believe are real opportunities for government to help our industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The first one is banning the landfill disposal of waste materials with an energy value. Our industry, making cement, requires a lot of energy — traditionally, coal and natural gas. But that same energy can be brought in through lower-carbon fuels, waste materials, non-recyclable materials.

[12:15 p.m.]

The example I have in the speech is — obviously, being here in Surrey…. I say one of the largest, but probably the largest landfill in western Canada is the Burns Bog landfill in Delta. It receives, right now, around 700,000 tonnes a year of waste. As an engineer, it’s well-managed, but it’s described as landfilling, dumping material up to 39 metres in height, which is 120 feet — about 12 storeys. I took it out of my speech, but I’ll say it. I think we can all do better than that.

There have been discussions of late, of course, on banning single-use plastics. But I think we need to go further. We need to look at resource recovery, use circular economy thinking to prevent landfilling in the first place. Those resources we can put back into the marketplace and use that as fuels.

That’s what the European Union did with what they called the European Union landfill directive 20 years ago, in April ’99. Our ask on that topic is that government ban the landfill disposal of municipal waste that has an energy value — this is garbage that has an energy value — that that not be allowed to be landfilled in the first place.

The second topic. I know I’ve spoken on this before, and I’ve spoken with your Minister of Transportation as well. It’s that government mandate the use of Portland-limestone cement — the industry calls it PLC — as a lower-carbon solution for infrastructure. It’s an easy way for government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

PLC is fully authorized, meets all standards, and with it, you can reduce the greenhouse gas impact of concrete by up to 10 percent. It’s done a lot in the private sector. We’d like to see government mandate that. That’s our ask, that government mandate the use of PLC as a lower-carbon solution for concrete in public infrastructure.

In closing, again, we’re here as a cement association, Lafarge and Lehigh, to work with government and help you help all of us reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With those policies and effective public policy on landfills and PLC, we really do have an opportunity here to be leaders, not just in Canada but in North America, on those two issues.

Thank you again. Thanks for your time and patience. I know you’re travelling across the province. Thank you for the opportunity.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Ken. I must say that when I had my first meeting with the cement association, I wasn’t expecting the first words to come out of the mouths of the association to be “climate change and how we can help.” I really appreciate the thoughts around that.

I’m just curious. You talk about landfill disposal and materials with energy value. Can you give me examples of what that is specifically, what types of products have energy value?

K. Carrusca: Yeah, absolutely. There’s already work going on in that. But that one example, Vancouver Landfill, 700,000 tonnes of material — we were just in meetings yesterday at Metro Vancouver. They had a nice little pie chart that showed about 200,000 tonnes or so is construction and demolition waste. You and I are rebuilding a fence, and you think: “Oh wow, the wood can all be recycled.” But not if it’s painted. A lot of that material is going to landfill. That’s probably the most tangible example.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Ken, what do you do with it, like, if it’s painted? I’m just curious. That’s all good for me to get my head around. But how do you transfer that into something useful?

K. Carrusca: In the cement industry, a lot of the work — and I mentioned the government funding that was received — has been to establish infrastructure to handle these types of materials. So that material — painted scrap wood, as an example, construction, demolition-type waste — can be ground up. Some of the metals are separated out, and then that is used as fuel for the cement kilns.

In making cement, you take rock. You have to heat it up to a very high temperature. It uses a lot of, traditionally again, coal and natural gas. Instead of bringing in those fossil fuels, why don’t we use local materials that, coincidentally, we’re landfilling next door? Use those materials. We can actually help create some jobs in processing that waste material and then use that as a fuel locally.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Interesting.

R. Coleman: You’d burn it.

K. Carrusca: Yeah, absolutely.

[12:20 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Now, just playing devil’s advocate for a sec here….

K. Carrusca: Oh, please do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Wouldn’t burning those types of fuels also add to the carbon footprint, in terms of the types of materials you’re talking about, like wood, for example?

K. Carrusca: No. It’s a good question, something that we’re very much in tune with. Let me see if I can answer that.

Some of the other materials…. We talk a lot in our industry, as well, about non-recyclable plastics. Certainly, we support…. Where there are recycling programs in place, let’s do that.

The footprint of fuels depends on their origin. Wood, currently — and there’s a lot of discussion on it — is biogenic. It doesn’t contribute towards climate change, according to the United Nations calculations. Let’s say that wood was a tree. It captured carbon. Now it’s wood. Now you are releasing it, but the principle is you’ve got a closed cycle.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The tree is carbon-neutral.

K. Carrusca: Yeah. There is much debate on that; I will grant you that. Other materials, waste plastics…. Instead of landfilling them, let’s use them as fuel. There are carbon impacts, of course, on that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. We could probably talk all day about that. Very interesting discussion, Ken.

Any other comments?

Well, thank you so much, again, for your continued advocacy for your industry. We appreciate it. Please say hi to Michael for us.

Next up we have the Graduate Student Society of Simon Fraser University — Matthew McDonald.

Matthew, if you could try to keep the initial comments to about five minutes, I’d appreciate that.

GRADUATE STUDENT SOCIETY
AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

M. McDonald: For sure.

Hello. I’m Matt McDonald. I’m a PhD student in the economics department at SFU, and I’m here before you today on behalf of the graduate society at SFU, or GSS for short.

I’d like to give my thanks to this committee for the opportunity to express the most pressing financial priorities that grad students at SFU wish to see addressed in the 2020 B.C. budget.

The GSS, a student society recognized under the B.C. University Act and Societies Act, represents almost 4,500 students at SFU’s three campuses in Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey. Among our many services, we distribute grants, host social and professional activities and advocate for the rights and interests of grad students with SFU administration and all levels of government.

Individuals with graduate degrees have higher employment rates, higher mean incomes and jobs better matched to their fields of study than individuals with lower levels of educational attainment. But because graduate students face financial constraints and affordability issues while enrolled in their programs, government support is crucial to their academic success and future flourishing.

The first priority area for graduate students involves provincial operating grant funding for universities. The long-term trend in this funding is clear. No matter how it is measured, government financial support for post-secondary student institutions has declined over the last decade. The first three figures in the handout on pages 2, 3 and 4 show this consistently from different perspectives.

The implications of this finding are illustrated by the fourth figure, which is on page 5, which shows that SFU — and I stress it is not alone in this — has responded to declining provincial funding by steadily hiking tuition and fees. The revenue of the latter surpassed that of the former for the first time four years ago. Graduate student tuition and fees have increased approximately 15 percent in real terms in the last decade and have more than doubled since 2001.

Graduate students suffer from these issues along with undergraduates. But unlike the latter group, they have much lower capacity to take on large amounts of debt to counter affordability issues. Most graduate students are either in their late 20s, like me, or early 30s — an age when many of them are planning to start families or already have young children. Safety nets do wear thin, and we regularly hear from graduate students who have switched to part-time study and been forced to take on outside jobs or even drop out of programs, solely due to chronic financial stresses.

The overall financial strain that institutions are facing has also forced them to make regrettable decisions about mental health services to blunt budget impacts. One SFU graduate student reported to us that upon experiencing mental health struggles, they were offered a group counselling session due to a months’ long wait-list for a one-on-one appointment.

Unfortunately, when they entered the room, they were met by one of their own undergraduate students in the group. Such situations are, to put it mildly, far from ideal. But insufficient provincial funding creates and exacerbates them.

[12:25 p.m.]

One solution would be to instead of provincial health authorities covering mental health services…. In the current situation, many students are arguably paying twice over for health services — first through taxes and then through tuition and fees.

The first step in rectifying the larger funding situation is to reform the provincial operating grant funding model. Currently the economic stability mandate, or ESM, and one-off program funding from year to year effectively serve as an annual inflation adjustment, with the remainder of per FTE student grant funding being constant in nominal terms. That’s a full-time-equivalent, if I didn’t say it before.

Unfortunately, the ESM is inconsistent and passed along to labour through their contracts anyway. We think it is better to increase base per FTE funding along with general inflation.

Ideally, all university costs would be more closely matched by higher operating grant funding so that the share of revenue coming from tuition and fees might finally stop rising. This requires research, consultation and debate but is certainly a worthy future goal.

I’d like, now, to move on to our second area of concern, on-campus graduate housing. It’s well known that the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act, or RTA, does not cover university residences. This is appropriate, as residence eligibility is tied to continued enrolment. But as a result of this exception, there is also no cap on allowable annual residence rental rate increases. While off-campus renters saw maximum rent increases of about 10 percent over the last three years, students living in Hamilton Hall, the Burnaby campus graduate student residence, have dealt with hikes of about 21 percent.

Figure 5 on page 7 of your handouts gives the relative changes of income inflation, off-campus rental rates and on-campus rental rates over time in chart form. To summarize, teaching assistant pay, the primary income of grad students, is growing slower than inflation, while campus housing costs are growing much more quickly than inflation. A bad place to be in.

There is also a serious lack of availability of suitable graduate housing. At SFU, capacity languishes at around 4 percent for grad students, with 4,460 grad students competing for just 170 spaces, which are overwhelmingly studio apartments. Wait-lists are long, and many graduate students consider it pointless to even apply — those with spouses or children, in particular, as you can well imagine.

How can the provincial government help? First, by enacting into law RTA-like protections that will create reasonable maximum allowable annual rate increases on university residence units. This will stop extreme rent hikes and keep existing residences as affordable as possible.

Second, the government can contribute more to the renovation and maintenance costs of existing on-campus residences and to the construction costs of new residences. The rapid inflation in regional construction costs make sustainable rental rates for new buildings prohibitively expensive. While the B.C. student housing loan program is a great initiative, securing the funding to build residences does not make it less difficult to get the economics to work on new affordable residence stock without government cost-sharing.

We therefore ask that the 2020 budget propose to jointly fund new grad residence construction with universities or any other source of funding available.

Thank you for your interest and attention. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have at this time or, later, by email.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Matthew. Appreciate that.

I guess it’s important to understand the differences between undergraduate and graduate programs and the effect that that has on students. There are obviously unique issues, like family issues and stuff. Hopefully, initiatives like child care and whatnot will help in that regard, and more student housing, for example.

It is also interesting to hear about the fact that the increases that are protected under new measures in the Residential Tenancy Act wouldn’t apply to this. I wasn’t aware of that, but that’s a very good point.

M. McDonald: Again, to underscore, 21 percent in three years is quite a big hike when you’re essentially on a fixed income.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No. I appreciate that, Matthew. Thank you very much.

Any questions from members at all?

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

We have to take a short recess to wait for the next presenter.

The committee recessed from 12:28 p.m. to 12:41 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Kwantlen Faculty Association — Bob Davis and Romy Kozak.

If you could keep your comments to about five minutes, that’d be wonderful.

KWANTLEN FACULTY ASSOCIATION

B. Davis: Thank you very much for allowing us to come and speak to you today on the important matters that we have before us. I’d like to recognize that we’re on the traditional unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Qayqayt, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Kwikwetlem, Musqueam and Kwantlen First Nations. Specifically to the Kwantlen First Nation, we’re ever so grateful for them loaning us their name.

My name is Bob Davis, and I’m here as the president of the Kwantlen Faculty Association. We represent 1,100 faculty at five campuses of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I’m joined by Romy Kozak, a member-at-large of our association. Thank you for allowing us time today to talk about the public post-secondary sector and to highlight issues of matters that we hope are of mutual interest.

Firstly, we’d like to formally recognize and show our appreciation for the changes that the government has done to improve the lives of British Columbians, specifically those through post-secondary. We have seen the effect of these changes on our campuses, and we look forward to the positive results these investments will bring. While the government has implemented these positive changes to post-secondary access and affordability, the long-term trend of reduced public funding is being used to rationalize cost-cutting measures that put the quality of our post-secondary education at risk.

We could use this time to talk about many issues at KPU — the effect of programming changes, the impact of increased reliance on tuition versus grant funding, targeted versus block funding. Instead, I’ll be using this time today to highlight the pressing need to end using contract academic staff as short-term, underpaid labour at KPU and across the system. Contract academic staff should be paid using the existing mandated provincial salary scale on a pro rata basis.

Now, 34 percent of our membership falls into this category. While this is a lower percentage than at other institutions that you have heard from, it is still significant. Our contract faculty is paid 20 percent less than their colleagues on the provincial salary scale for teaching the same course. Underpaying contract academic staff hurts the individual, the institution and the community.

[12:45 p.m.]

Individuals who are contracted are often finding themselves working at multiple institutions just to make ends meet. Lower wages, along with the uncertainty of work every four months, puts these faculty in difficult circumstances.

For the institution, there is a business case for paying contract academic staff fairly: better and more frequent availability to students, which improves the educational experience for students; and levelling the playing field between institutions, who are in competition with each other for these faculty.

For the community, the community benefits from workers receiving fair wages. Measures to make life more affordable are only half of the equation. The other half is people receiving a wage that allows them to get a mortgage, enrol their kids in sports and have something left over to spend in the local economy. When I was a contract faculty member, I had a difficult time securing a mortgage, albeit quite a long time ago. But I did experience this.

I understand you’ve heard from many locals of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators. You can see the regional needs and differences related to this issue. The one consistent theme is we have members teaching the same courses being paid drastically differently across the province. The recommendation we’d like to leave with you is that we urge the committee to recommend that the government support the elimination of secondary scales and fund a pro rata for contract academic staff to be paid on the provincial salary scale.

Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to present our recommendation for the 2020 provincial budget. I’m happy to take any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much, Bob. We have been hearing, around the province, from faculty associations in regard to this issue of contracted faculty. We appreciate your comments on that. One thing we have noticed is the discrepancy between universities and colleges as to the percentage of…. A couple of them actually pay the same. I think it’s Langara, and what was the other one?

B. Davis: Probably VCC.

B. D’Eith (Chair): VCC and Langara pay…. I think up at Selkirk, they said that they also pay on par, when we met with them. Then at others, it’s significantly less, depending on the college or university.

To me, part of this is bargaining, too — we’ve been talking about that — between the faculty and the colleges and where that sits. It seems that some universities and colleges are able to work within that, and others don’t work within that. We’re trying, as a committee, to grapple with why the discrepancy between different institutions. Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind talking to that, I’d appreciate it, Bob.

B. Davis: Absolutely. You bring up bargaining. I think this is…. Anybody who’s been in the sector for a while knows that this has been an issue that has been on the bargaining table for many, many, many years. The gap is getting wider. The ability to deal with it at the local level has been very difficult. A lot of it has come down to the choices institutions make with how they want to support those faculty.

I think we’re getting to a critical point now, where there needs to be some movement, because the gap is getting wider. While specifics could be dealt with at the local table, because of the uniqueness…. Like College of New Caledonia, by far, has the worst situation for their contract faculty, versus some others. VCC and Langara have pro rata already. They’ve survived that way.

Bargaining has been difficult. That’s the way it should be. It’s not meant to be easy, but the parties need to get to agreement. But this is a sectoral issue outside of bargaining. We’re seeing the percentage of our grants shrinking, related to the budgets at the institutions. While the funding may have stayed stagnant, the choices with that funding are shrinking. We believe that this is a sectoral issue that needs to be addressed at a very high level. While the specifics will be dealt with in bargaining, I think that there needs to be a commitment to eliminating the secondary scales.

You mentioned Selkirk. They have certain parts of their formulas where people will never make 100 percent equal to another faculty member, by virtue of what they’re doing or what their status is. We see that at Okanagan College, there’s a 0.89 formula put on for technicians, where they’ll never be able to reach 100 percent equal to their colleagues on continuing appointments.

There are a few things that are in the details, but generally speaking, this issue has been around for a long time. I think the opportunity for the government, particularly in the development of the budget, to address it, or specifically address it at a high level, is critically important at this time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much, Bob and Romy. We appreciate you presenting.

Any other questions?

Thank you for everything you do for our students and for your faculty. We really appreciate it.

B. Davis: Actually, thank you very much for allowing us to. Have a great day.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You bet. Okay.

We’ll recess until 2 p.m.

The committee recessed from 12:50 p.m. to 2:02 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

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

Before we start this afternoon’s session, I did want to also echo some of the members in celebrating National Indigenous Peoples Day and to join with British Columbians in celebrating and honouring the many and diverse and thriving Indigenous peoples in British Columbia and to ask everyone to think about how they as individuals and communities around B.C. contribute to meaningful reconciliation. I’d like to state that on behalf of our members of this committee. It’s a very important day.

Next up we have Alzheimer Society of British Columbia — Maria Howard and Jennifer Stewart.

Hello, how are you? Just a reminder, if we could keep the comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, that’d be great.

ALZHEIMER SOCIETY OF B.C.

M. Howard: Thank you so much for having us come this afternoon and share with you the Alzheimer Society of B.C.’s vision to a world that is without dementia. We always, really, have a big vision, which is looking for a world where people impacted by dementia can live without fear and shame. We translate that down into a province where people can feel included and part of the community. And we translate that down to communities where there are supports and accessibility and opportunities for people and caregivers who are living on the dementia journey.

We would like to talk to you today just really briefly about what that looks like from a culturally diverse population. Our country, our province, the Lower Mainland — but really all of B.C. — are very culturally diverse. We know that in B.C. there are roughly 70,000 people that have dementia. We also know that if we look at a number of other stats, such as in the Lower Mainland, 26 percent of older adults are actually immigrants. And if we look into the municipality whose older population is growing the fastest, it’s Richmond. We also know that Richmond has 53 percent of people who speak Chinese.

If we turn to the Fraser Health region and look at stats they have, they are predicting that in the next ten years, the prevalence of dementia is going to grow by 70 percent. And within the Fraser Health region, there are about 200,000 people who are of South Asian descent. We also know that in the Indigenous population, the prevalence of dementia is 34 percent higher than many of the other community groups.

[2:05 p.m.]

Supporting people living with dementia and ensuring that it’s culturally appropriate and it fits into their communities in the way that they collaborate with partners is essential. I just want to share a really quick story which really has made a difference for me in understanding how, in supporting people living with dementia, that culturally diverse approach is absolutely essential.

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. and the First Nations Health Authority​ have been working together with a group of the Gitxsan tribe up in northern B.C. We’ve been working with them to ensure that their health care professionals in their band and their lands have been trained in dementia care and ensuring that they have the right skills and education to support their population and their elders who are living with dementia.

Recently we went up there. We had a chance to debrief the project and meet in a circle with the appropriate people there and listen to their experience. One of the things that they shared about the Gitxsan Nation is that the Gitxsan Nation, in life, is a maternal clan, meaning that the mother’s side of the family is the dominant side. But as they transition into death and begin to look at end-of-life decisions, they become a paternal nation, which means that then the father’s side of the family becomes dominant.

We had many people share with us that as they grew up, their grandmother looked after them. Their mom was working. There may not have been a father present. Their grandma was everything to them, from nurturer to caregiver. Then, unfortunately, some of those grandmas began to develop dementia. They began to decline. Then, because of the tradition of the clan, the father’s family came in and removed that grandmother. There, then, was a family who was broken because of dementia. The children, the adult children, who had worked so closely and loved that grandma could no longer support her in her decline. That individual with dementia was now removed to a situation where she had no bearings and no transition.

The need to then think about how we can help people understand dementia and the elements of it in a culturally diverse population is so important. There are language barriers. Many languages, like Chinese, do not actually have a word for Alzheimer’s. There is the need to gain trust in the population. There is need to think about how those relationships work.

Within the Alzheimer Society of B.C., we offer the First Link program, which we offer across the province. We do that in partnership with the Ministry of Health. We’ve had great success with the program, and it continues to grow. We have a dementia help line that is open across the province.

What we are proposing is that we would specifically commit more funding beyond what we already do to support three culturally diverse populations, which would be the South Asian population, the Chinese and the Indigenous. We would do that by actually hiring three specific staff to support those cultural groups and beginning to ensure that the programs and the supports we provide are very dedicated and designed in that culturally appropriate way.

We already do those services in certain ways. On our dementia help line, we already offer the help line calls in about five different languages. But the ability to do that very specifically would really take a further step forward in helping people living with dementia. We estimate it, as you will see on your handout, at about $660,000 over three years. Typically, we have always supported, with our relationship with the Ministry of Health, to do a cost share of a partnership.

We really believe this would be the way that we can continue to ensure that B.C., which is so culturally diverse, has the supports necessary for people on the dementia journey, regardless of their language, their beliefs or their culture. Then they, just like all of us, have the ability to make choices about how their life should be in their community.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Just before I open it up to the other members, could you tell me: are there any places within the Health Ministry that you could apply for this kind of funding, or is this something that is very specific and doesn’t fall into any particular program?

M. Howard: It’s a great question. In our discussions with the Ministry of Health, we have talked about part of the funding to go toward this. It is a very specific support because of looking at the population.

We did actually have a funding project in partnership with Fraser Health for the South Asian community, which has been going great, but that funding was withdrawn. The challenge with that is when we start services, we are committed to not withdrawing our services. So we have not withdrawn the services that we had started with Fraser Health, but we are now carrying that full freight.

[2:10 p.m.]

It becomes a difficult thing to actually ensure that it doesn’t get rolled over into a bigger bucket and actually gets specific attention, which is what it really needs.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any questions?

D. Clovechok: I just want to say thank you for your presentation. It’s important work that you do. We had, at the Legislature, a doctor from Victoria that did a presentation to our caucus. What’s frightening is the fact that we’re not getting any closer to figuring this out. In his words, the more we understand, the further away we get. The work that you do is incredibly important. It’s only going to get worse in our society, so thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I echo that as well. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your presentation. Best of luck.

Next up we have B.C. Gaming Industry Association — Peter Goudron and Chuck Keeling.

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

B.C. GAMING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

C. Keeling: Good afternoon. As already stated, my name is Chuck Keeling. I am the vice-president of stakeholder relations and responsible gaming for Great Canadian Gaming and also the chairperson of the B.C. Gaming Industry Association, or BCGIA. With me to my right is Peter Goudron. He’s the executive director of the BCGIA. The vice-chair of our association, Shiera Stuart of Gateway Casinos and Entertainment, couldn’t be here with us today, as she’s at their Chances Courtenay property where they’ll be launching a new restaurant and patio tonight, with the mayor and other local dignitaries in attendance.

The BCGIA was formed in 2015 to act as a unified voice of private sector gaming operators in the province of B.C. This is the fifth time that we’ve had the chance to present to the Finance Committee, and we’re honoured to have the opportunity to do so again.

B.C.’s private sector gaming operators play a significant role in the provincial economy and their local communities. Our membership comprises 11 of the 14 companies in B.C. that own and operate 35 of the 38 gaming properties located across our province. They directly employ over 10,000 people and annually pay wages and benefits of more than $300 million and property taxes in excess of $10 million. BCGIA members have invested more than $2 billion in B.C. and continue to invest in their properties to ensure that they are best in class, like the investment in Courtenay by Gateway that I just cited.

Gaming facilities include many non-gaming amenities such as food and beverage outlets, show theatres, conference centres and hotels. It’s estimated that collectively, the gaming industry provides 37,000 jobs directly and indirectly in communities throughout the province.

Gaming in B.C. accounts for approximately 2.4 percent of the government’s annual operating budget, generating more revenue for the provincial government than forestry, mining or liquor. In 2017-18, gaming generated revenue of $2 billion to the B.C. Lottery Corporation, or BCLC, and BCLC delivered $1.4 billion in net income to the provincial government, helping to fund health care, education and other important programs and services in B.C.

The provincial government shares gaming revenue with host local governments, and local governments that host gaming facilities receive a 10 percent share of net gaming income. In 2017-18, $102 million was disbursed amongst 32 host local governments to fund programs and projects determined by these municipalities.

The B.C. model for gaming industry is one of the most profitable for provincial governments in Canada. B.C. is able to realize such a big return largely by paying private sector gaming operators some of the lowest operating commissions in North America. We provide this context to underscore the value the B.C. model provides to all British Columbians, not to express a concern with the commissions we receive. In fact, over the last year, many operators have signed new 20-year agreements with the BCLC.

P. Goudron: Gaming operators in B.C. strictly adhere to anti-money-laundering protocols, policies and procedures as set by BCLC in accordance with federal anti-money-laundering requirements. BCGIA members have always been strongly committed to preventing money laundering at their properties.

[2:15 p.m.]

Gaming operators are appreciative of the work done by Dr. Peter German in his review of anti-money-laundering practices in Lower Mainland casinos, which was published in June of 2018. In his report, he recognized that operators had fulfilled all of their requirements and that in fact it was their rigorous reporting that shed light on concerns of money laundering in our province’s economy. The BCGIA immediately voiced its support for the report’s 48 recommendations. Our members are currently working closely with government, the industry’s regulator, the gaming policy and enforcement branch, or GPEB, and the BCLC to help implement those recommendations.

BCGIA members are also firmly committed to providing socially responsible gaming entertainment and play an active role in the delivery of player health programs in partnership with the BCLC and GPEB. Nearly three-quarters of adults in B.C. have participated in at least one gambling activity in the past 12 months. According to the most recent version of the British Columbia problem gambling prevalence study, 97 percent of British Columbians who gamble do so safely.

For the majority of the population, gambling is an entertainment option. However, for the small percentage of people who have difficulties with their gambling behaviours, there are effective programs and resources available. These include GameSense centres, RG Check certification, the provincial gambling help line, free counselling and treatment, and finally, the voluntary self-exclusion program. BCGIA members strongly support the province’s player health programs.

In 2017-18, the province’s community gaming grant program distributed $140 million of gaming revenue to over 5,200 charitable and community organizations throughout the province. In addition, private sector gaming operators supported hundreds of non-profit organizations. This was in addition to providing use of their facilities to community groups for events and the service providers’ employees volunteering countless hours to support local charities.

The members of the B.C. Gaming Industry Association are proud to support and be an active and integral part of the local communities where they live and work. They’re also proud to provide socially responsible gaming, entertainment and non-gaming amenities that provide good jobs and contribute to the B.C. economy. The gaming industry has been operating successfully here in B.C. for over 20 years, and we look forward to the next 20 years of creating jobs and economic growth.

We thank you for your time today, and we’d be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. My regrets that I’m actually not able to make that Courtenay opening. I think I’m sending my staff.

At the beginning of your presentation, you said that you represent 11 of 14 companies and 35 out of 38 properties. Who are the three outliers, and why are they not part of your association?

P. Goudron: It’s Chances Kelowna, Harbour City Bingo in Nanaimo and Chances RimRock in Port Alberni. Chances Rim Rock used to be a member but decided they’d rather chart their own course in dealing with the government and other stakeholders. The other two have just chosen not to join.

R. Leonard: I guess the question is: what is the advantage as an association versus going on their own? I’m trying to get a sense of the framework of how you operate.

P. Goudron: I think having the association accomplishes a couple of things. From a stakeholder’s perspective, looking at a small but fairly diverse group of operators, we help bring a more cohesive view to the table, rather than them having to go one by one by one. One of the things I spend a lot of time on is trying to collect the views and consolidate them into a more uniform and singular perspective so that, quite frankly, there aren’t so many people that need to be dealt with.

From our members’ perspective, there’s a good deal of benefit, in terms of sharing information and perspective amongst ourselves as we develop those opinions, figuring out what’s important and what’s less so, and also in being able to go to our key stakeholders — like government, the gaming policy enforcement branch, BCLC, host municipality governments, groups like that — and coming in with a much more cohesive kind of perspective.

[2:20 p.m.]

C. Keeling: I would add, as well, that there’s a particular nuance in our industry, whereby two of the largest operators — being Great Canadian Gaming, whom I represent, and, of course, Gateway — generate probably 80 percent of the revenue in the province, and own a similar amount of the properties. We work well together, learning from one another as similar-sized communities, but we also learn from some of the smaller operations and operators that way, and vice versa. As we cited, we are now in our fourth year of existence, and although we have lost the one operator, as Peter cited, in Port Alberni, we’re very, very pleased to have this association represent all of our interests, primarily, as Peter cited, with the provincial government, BCLC and GPEB.

R. Coleman: It’s not surprising, the three properties. The three of them all grew out of the bingo business, which was a different operation back at the beginning when we modernized the sector. The guys in Kelowna are really good operators. They all, actually, are pretty good operators, but the bingo side never did immediately sort of wed back into the gaming side when things changed.

Thanks for mentioning the Peter German report. I think people should know that your industry, over the ten-year period that Peter German talked about up to $100 million being laundered, generated net $12 billion to government. As a percentage of the gross sales, which was about $3 billion or $4 billion gross, $100 million as a percentage was reflective of the fact that your security and your background actually led to major investigations that we can’t even talk about relative to that as a result of that information and the security that’s built into the industry.

You don’t ever get credit for that, relative to those reports that are out there. Quite frankly, the police can’t talk about the investigations, and you’re not supposed to tell people what your backroom or back-office security is, because obviously we don’t want to have that intelligence out there.

I think Peter’s was a fair report. But the reality is that as a quantum to what the industry does, it’s a very small percentage.

P. Goudron: I think that’s a fair comment. We’re extremely focused on helping implement the recommendations. We think that that’s critical, and we very much are committed to doing our part and supporting the implementation of those recommendations. We think that will put us on a good path for the future.

R. Coleman: Yeah, and it’s part of your growth and your modernization. People forget that it was only in 2003 or 2004 that the first Great Canadian River Rock opened up as a modern casino in British Columbia. Before that, it was charity casinos, and those had their own challenges with regards to the size of bet and stuff that needed to grow into a more modern sector. But you’ve done a good job in the 15 years that you guys have taken over and done the job. I think B.C. is thankful for the jobs, the return on investment, what it gives to health care and education. It’s pretty important.

P. Goudron: It’s a really good point about the rapid growth of the industry, and I think that’s one of the things that the German report indicated. It was that rapid growth and the hard time that the regulator and operators had in keeping up with that growth. We’re well positioned now.

R. Coleman: Well, everybody had to learn, Peter. There was no Gaming Control Act in 2001. There was no regulator. The whole thing had to be built from scratch.

C. Keeling: In relation to the German report itself, Dr. German had six months of unrestricted and unfettered access to our people, to our properties, to our records. We think that that will be a good platform for whatever role our industry plays in the inquiry, recognizing that the inquiry has a much greater breadth in looking at all sectors, all facets of the economy.

R. Coleman: We won’t go into that right now, because I bet you we’re out of time, right?

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

Next up we have the BCIT Student Association — Stewart McGillivray and Steven Palfrey.

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

[2:25 p.m.]

BCIT STUDENT ASSOCIATION

S. McGillivray: That works for us too.

My name is Stewart McGillivray. I’m the government relations strategist with the BCIT Student Association. Next to me is Steven Palfrey, our incoming VP external, one of the elected student executives. We’re here on behalf of our association to make two requests of government, some of which are broadly in line with what I know you’ve heard in recent days from other student associations in Vancouver, Abbotsford, Kamloops, Kelowna — many of your hearings, in fact.

We just want to start, of course, by acknowledging the traditional ancestral territories on which this meeting is taking place and acknowledging — I think Ms. Leonard mentioned it earlier — that it’s National Indigenous Peoples Day.

We’re very happy to be here. We’re very appreciative of the support we’ve had from our own local MLAs in Burnaby North — Janet Routledge currently and, previously, Richard T. Lee. Very, very supportive, very accessible.

Of course, I think it won’t surprise you that we want to start off by saying thank you. We’ve been very supported by government recently, with capital investments into our Burnaby campus; with decisions by both the past government and the current government to reduce and then eliminate student loan interest; as well as substantial commitments around student housing, close to half a billion over several years to be loaned out to the post-secondary institutions to support the construction of new housing supply; as well as a suite of smaller policies — adult basic education, English language learners and a tuition waiver for former youth in care.

Which brings us to our main recommendation. It’s very similar to what I know you heard from the Alliance of B.C. Students yesterday as well as, I think, UBC’s Alma Mater Society last week and several others. It’s that we would prefer if financial assistance, as provided by the province, was redirected more into upfront needs-based and comprehensive grants — very similar to what the federal government provides through the Canada student grants.

We believe there’s a broad degree of political consensus, as exemplified by the fact that it appears in six of the last six annual budget reports from this committee as well as a reference in the platform of the B.C. NDP to $1,000 completion grants and in the platform of the B.C. Green Party to move to needs-based grants. It’s also referenced in the confidence and supply agreement between the Greens and the NDP and the mandate letter of the Minister of Advanced Education, Hon. Melanie Mark.

We think it’s an idea whose time has come. We know that there’s broad support for investments in post-secondary education. It was certainly a theme in the recent leadership campaign of Andrew Wilkinson and his “Opportunity for all” messaging. We know that if you can improve upfront access and target it where it’s most needed, at the point of entry and at lower- and middle-income students, we think it can have an improved benefit when it comes to actually promoting accessibility.

There are existing policies: the tax treatment of RESPs; the tax credit for tuition as well as education, which was being phased out as of last budget; and the existing series of completion grants and student loans. We feel it could be better targeted and, in some cases, could use existing funding.

There are a few quotes that are out there. You would have heard, I think, $80 million from the ABCS yesterday and also up to $143 million per annum last week from UBC AMS. I think, ultimately, it’s a decision for Treasury Board and government to figure out exactly what that would look like, but it is possible to do it through a combination of new funding and also redirecting the existing resources that exist through the tax expenditures for tuition and the current suite of completion grants.

I’ll now turn it over to my colleague Steven, who’s going to talk a bit about the status of student union fees, membership dues, as it were.

S. Palfrey: I just wanted to talk about some of the things that student unions and student associations have been able to do, in collaboration with government and with students.

At BCIT specifically, we’ve benefited from programs for entrepreneurship for students. We’ve benefited from Indigenous services. We have our own space for them in addition to international students. In fact, recently at the SVM conference, sexual violence and misconduct, we talked about policy, and we also talked about MOSAIC. We’re hoping to bring that into our school. As a student association, we can move really nimbly with the government to implement these ideas.

Right now in Ontario, there have been some changes. I don’t think that these changes are going to happen here, but in the long term, some legal protections would be really useful for student associations in their ability to prepare accordingly to how they should allocate their funds.

[2:30 p.m.]

I would just like to close myself off with a thank-you for the youth in care assistance fund. I don’t think I would be able to have access to the education that I have right now without it. So thank you for that.

I’m going to just refer to Stewart for some references.

S. McGillivray: Yes. You have our two requests. We’ve got a redirect of existing funding and some new funding towards a system of upfront needs-based comprehensive student grants, as well as enhanced legal protections for the collection of student fees.

They’ve been made, in the province of Ontario now, through ministerial edict so that they’re a lot more discretionary. People can opt out. It is important for students to have choice. But, of course, that does undermine the ability of an organization the size of a student association to engage in budgeting and long-term financing the same way it would if people could opt out of different expenditures on their tax return.

We have good laws in place right now — regulations that then Minister Wilkinson brought in and good support from the province and the current Societies Act, but any enhanced protections in the law that would insulate student associations from that kind of arbitrary policy directive would certainly be appreciated. Thanks, and we’re happy to take any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great.

D. Clovechok: What do you guys study?

S. Palfrey: I’m studying operations management diploma at BCIT. So you’re looking at supply chain, process design, process improvement, a lot of Excel.

S. McGillivray: I studied political science at UBC. I’m a full-time employee.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Steven, maybe we’re going to get you to do a little plot for us about next year’s tour that we do — the finance tour, on the supply side of it. We might give you a call.

B. D’Eith (Chair): As you said, Stewart, we have heard many of these issues echoed. The issue around the student fees part of it was, I think, a little bit new. I wouldn’t mind if you could spend a little bit more time on that, because I think you lost me just a little bit on there. So what is the specific ask? I mean, I know there were some legislative issues. But I want to get my head around it.

S. McGillivray: Certainly, yeah. So of course the jurisdictions are a bit different — the way they’re incorporated in the province of Ontario and the way colleges and universities are governed. Fundamentally though, right now, the way the British Columbia College and Institute Act and the way the B.C. Societies Act function, we have mandatory membership dues, inclusive of if you’ve resigned your membership. The law does protect the ability of student associations to collect those dues.

The policy direction that Ontario has taken is essentially that rather than a block fee — say, like $100 a term to your student association — each service that’s provided by a student association is now being determined on a local basis as to whether or not it’s essential or non-essential.

We’re certainly appreciative of things like capital funding. Health and dental, transit passes are being treated as essential and can’t be opted out of. The issue, though, is that it really creates a lot of havoc for an individual student association not even to know year to year how many students will opt in to which combination of fees.

In terms of the ask, we’re very fortunate that things are good in the province of B.C. right now. There’s no movement among any of the political parties to try to upset that balance, but what we found in the legal briefs of different student groups who are challenging the province of Ontario is that part of the issue was that it was done through a policy directive that was thought to have exceeded the statutory authorities in the minister’s office.

Our perspective would be that it’s a small change, but if it could be better entrenched in regulation or even legislation, then it wouldn’t be possible to have, essentially, surprise policy announcements on a whim.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You’re happy with the way it is right now. You’re worried that it might move towards Ontario. Is that it in a nutshell?

S. McGillivray: I would not say we’re worried, because we have a good political consensus in the province. But I know that I think all student associations would probably feel a bit better if there were enhanced legal protections, certainly.

B. D’Eith (Chair): More protections. Got it. Sorry, I just needed to get my head around it. So thank you very much for the presentation. We appreciate it, and best of luck with your studies and your work.

S. McGillivray: Thank you all.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Next up we have Fostering Change B.C. — Gretchen Robinson.

Hi, Gretchen. How are you? If you could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, we’d appreciate that.

FOSTERING CHANGE

G. Robinson: Sure. My name is Gretchen Robinson. I’m here on National Indigenous Peoples Day to ask British Columbia to increase financial support to youth in government care past the age of 19.

[2:35 p.m.]

Six years ago I opened a small business a block from a homeless shelter. Over the next three years, I met the homeless residents of the neighbourhood.

Amongst them was Billy. Billy is a self-described care kid. He’s a man about my age. This profoundly smart and equally funny man became my friend and cheerleader, and I became his.

Billy aged out of foster care in Halifax at the age of 19 and became homeless for the first time. It’s hard for me to believe that nearly 30 years later, we continue to age out youth in care at 19. Seven hundred young British Columbians will age out of government care this very year. Only 28 percent of British Columbians are aware of this fact.

This is my first time speaking in public, and I won’t lie: it’s causing me anxiety. But I’m here to ask you to reflect on the anxiety a young British Columbian must feel as the clock ticks to their 19th birthday, the time he or she will age out of care. An overwhelming 70 percent of B.C. parents polled do not believe 19 year olds are ready to leave home. I agree.

The Minister of Children and Family Development, Ms. Cadieux, believes we currently provide sufficient services for youth in care who’ve aged out of the system.

Consider the statistics. Most aged-out youth live in poverty. Only 21 percent finish high school. Forty percent of homeless youth are youth aged out of care, and almost 50 percent will go on income assistance within six months of exiting care. The most shocking statistic of all: the B.C. Coroners Service death review panel’s report of May 2018 states that from January 2011 to December 2016, “young people leaving government care died at five times the rate of the general population of young people in British Columbia.”

I strongly disagree with Ms. Cadieux. These statistics prove we are not providing sufficient services for youth in care. In 2014, an article was published in the Vancouver Sun. Two respected reporters plugged available B.C. stats into a 2012 Ontario study called 25 is the new 21. The results? If British Columbia spends $1 on youth in care, it will get $1.11 in return. Extending care will create social and economic benefit for all.

A 2016 Vancouver Foundation study found that more than 70 percent of British Columbians are in favour of extending financial support to age 25.

Existing agreements with young adults, or AYAs, are at the heart of this matter. They’re only available to youth attending full-time school. Outside of the Lower Mainland, a mere 21 percent of former youth in care are able to access an AYA.

Premier John Horgan wants progress on this matter, as in a July 2017 letter he addressed to the Minister of Child Development and Family Services: “Increase funding for agreements with young adults in order to offer supports to all youth aging out of care who need it, not just a few.”

What does continued support look like? Money can be funded to existing services and programs — namely, the AYAs. Let’s imagine the immediate changes. Youth in care will have financial support, more educational opportunities and the time and freedom to get involved with their community. They will be supported to adulthood in a province that still finds most youth living at home until they’re 29.

Youth in care have courage and resilience — key attributes to success. Success takes time. Youth in care need more time to transition to adulthood. Let’s commit to extending care to a minimum age of 21. Better yet, let’s match Ontario by extending care to 24. We can go even further by hearing the battle cry of 25 is the new 21.

Youth in care shouldn’t just be care kids. They should be cared for.

[2:40 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much, Gretchen. You did very well. I would never have known that was your first presentation. Very good. Excellent.

G. Robinson: It’s from the heart.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You should do more. It was very good. Thank you very much.

We have heard around the province, in fact, issues around youth aging out of care and the impact that has. This is, I think, the second time I’ve heard of that sort of anxiety, the reaching-19 anxiety and what that causes for our youth in care. So we really appreciate the stories and, also, the passion that you’re showing.

Any questions for Gretchen at all?

Great. Well, thank you so much for your passion for this issue.

G. Robinson: Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): You bet.

Next up we have Kwantlen Polytechnic University — Dr. Salvador Ferreras and Marlyn Graziano.

How are you? Nice to see you.

We’ll just wait a sec while we get the paperwork. Thanks so much.

If we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes so we have time for questions, I’d really appreciate that.

KWANTLEN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

S. Ferreras: Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, I’d like to bring greetings from our president, Alan Davis, president and vice-chancellor, who was not able to be here — he’s out of town today — and also to introduce the next provost of our university, Dr. Sandy Vanderburgh, who comes to us from Lethbridge, Alberta, starting full-time on Monday, July 1.

Anyway, good afternoon and thank you to the committee for this opportunity to present on behalf of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I’d like to thank the committee members for the opportunity to take part in this inclusive and collaborative process. Thank you for your time and your service to our province.

We have provided you with our full submission. But as we have limited time today, I will touch on just a few points. First of all, I’d like to thank you for your thoughtful and insightful reporting last November on the advanced education sector and, specifically, for your mention of KPU and SFU Surrey’s campus in your recommendation on the need for increased operational funding and additional seats. The recognition of the need to serve a growing region was very impactful.

As a polytechnic university, we believe we have a unique opportunity to serve our learners, our community and our province by reflecting and serving our diverse, dynamic and growing region by providing a wide range of offerings, services and activities; by defining, developing and teaching the essential new competencies needed by our graduates encompassing both technical and human literacies, creativity, adaptability and social awareness; by ensuring that our graduates are prepared for a lifetime of learning and relearning and providing them with the opportunities to adapt to their changing needs; and by practising what we preach as we evolve as a unique, progressive and highly regarded polytechnic university that fosters innovative teaching and learning and relevant research and scholarship.

As we mentioned last year, based on the detailed analysis of current and projected revenue streams against projected expenses, we have determined that KPU is at capacity. In fact, continued enrolment growth has rapidly diminishing returns for us.

Budgetary pressures — for example, aging multi-campus facilities, related inflationary and amortization costs and limited opportunities to increase current revenue streams — create a challenging financial outlook. Hence, we have determined that KPU needs to recalibrate in order to operate within our financial means. This aligns with our strategic plan and its commitment to ensuring institutional sustainability, delivery agility and quality. But it is at odds with the reality of serving a growing region.

This recalibration includes a two-pronged approach, reducing our offerings and increasing operational efficiency. KPU’s 2019-20 operating budget includes a reduction in the number of classes offered by approximately 3.5 percent, which equates to approximately 170 classes.

Additional reductions of 1.5 percent are forecast in each of the following four years. According to our current projections, this means going from 5,251 classes offered this fiscal year to 4,873 in 2023-24.

[2:45 p.m.]

According to the B.C. 2018 Labour Market Outlook, 36 percent of job openings to 2028 will require a bachelor’s, graduate or first professional degree, and 41 percent of job openings will require a diploma, certificate or apprenticeship training.

At a time of immense need for talent and workforce development, we believe that KPU should be growing, not contracting. KPU carries a legacy of having evolved from a college to a university to a polytechnic university without a commensurate increase in budget. Community, industry and business all have high expectations of KPU, but we are stretched to our fiscal limit.

We can expect demand for KPU to grow, based on the grade 12 enrolment projections made by the school districts in the KPU region. Between 2018 and 2023, grade 12 enrolments are projected to increase by 6 percent in the region, as shown in the chart that you have available to you. This includes a 10 percent increase projected for the Surrey school district alone. This district is the largest in the province and had 71,035 students enrolled in 2018, compared to the next-largest district, Vancouver, which had 48,320. Since KPU is the top postgraduate destination for high school graduates from Surrey, the growth in Surrey grade 12 enrolments should translate into growth in demand at KPU.

We look forward to working with government to address this disconnect between our region’s needs and our ability to grow. Wait-lists for certain programs are an indicator of unmet demand in the region. In 2015, our unmet demand was 6,159 seats. Last year it was over 15,000. I do want to assure you that KPU is doing its part to operate more efficiently within our current fiscal framework. We are focusing on optimization of our enrolment within our class-size limits, and we are seeking efficiencies through the redesign, alignment and automation of key processes. We are also investigating revenue-generating opportunities.

In addition to addressing wait-lists, a number of our key priorities include further staffing to support our efforts to increase the participation of Indigenous students; redeveloping funding to support the digital and pedagogical transformation of trades training; and additional seats in our faculty of health to accommodate a new LPN program, with ladders to our BSN and BPN programs. I should explain: licensed practical nurse, LPN; bachelor of science in nursing, BSN; and bachelor of psychiatric nursing, BPN. I’m sorry for the acronyms.

We’re also supporting our sustainable agriculture and food systems development, extension and farms to provide a new generation of homegrown farmers and food growers to support food security across British Columbia. We look forward to working with government to better serve our communities in the South Fraser region. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation, hearing from your wonderful institution.

I did have a…. That is kind of a startling number when you look at the unmet demand: 6,000, 6,000, 6,000, 15,000, or nearly 16,000. How do you account for that massive jump? That seems to be…. You would think that the unmet demand would be incremental, as opposed to such a big jump — unless I missed that. I apologize if I haven’t got that right.

S. Ferreras: No, there was a big jump; there was a great big jump. Remember that these are seats — seats in courses. In the 2017-2018 period, we experienced a huge growth of international students, which created this tremendous demand. They’re the ones that, having been here and enrolled in any number of courses as they moved further up the ladder in the diplomas or in the degrees, were coming across as more and more demand.

Last year, I believe it was — no, in the summer term of 2017 — we put a stop to international enrolment, just so that we could recalibrate and try to settle this explosion of students. Only now — for January 2020 — have we opened up seats for international students again. This will take a little bit of accommodation. We don’t expect 15,000 in the next year, but we did have that unbelievable spike, which we experienced with several others.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, there was a previous presentation we had…. Actually, MLA Coleman asked, and perhaps you can answer this: is part of that demand because the fees that our universities charge for foreign students are competitive internationally? Compared to other countries, for example, how do our foreign student fees compare? Do you have that kind of information?

[2:50 p.m.]

S. Ferreras: I do. We’ve lived this for the last two years. The number one reason for the explosion in the enrolment was the change in the Canadian government arrangement, with these expedited visas for a number of countries. They were India, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Our reaction, or the reaction from the agents that we work with through the various countries to bring international students in…. We had a flood from India, essentially. It was just absolutely…. We had no idea. It was beyond all our expectations. This happened throughout mostly Vancouver and Toronto, which seemed to be where most of those students wanted to end up. This problem does not exist in Alberta or Manitoba. That was one reason.

Another reason. Yes, we are competitive with the international market. The jury is still out as to how long this will last. But the signals that the United States government gave to international students were not positive, especially for students from Middle East countries.

And Brexit, where a lot of students that would have gone to England, or the U.K. in general, did not and chose not to. We actually had that information. Even American students came to us.

Those are three major factors.

R. Coleman: So that sort of leads me to two questions. The first one is: what’s the access for the domestic student? Is it impacted by the increase in international students? Obviously, we spend money to run our universities from the tax dollars as well as from tuition. So are any of our kids being displaced by the growth in international students?

The second one was: do we have a post-secondary institution in B.C. that’s really good at distance education, like the University of Phoenix, being able to take courses on line?

S. Ferreras: Well, that’s an easier answer, so I’ll start with that one, if you don’t mind. Yes, we do. There are a number of institutions…. Actually, all of us offer on line.

When it comes to international students….

R. Coleman: Before you go into it, is there growth in on line then?

S. Ferreras: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There is definitely growth, and several types of on line, and hybrid, as we call the mix.

In the international market, students need to enrol face to face for up to nine credits. It’s a full-time load in each semester in order to obtain their visa. So they can take on-line courses, but only in addition to those core.

In terms of the first part the…. Actually, if you could repeat the first part.

R. Coleman: The first part of the question…. What we’ve seen through successive submissions is the growth in international students, the amount that that applies to revenue of some institutions. One was actually 21 percent of its students were international, but they paid 40 percent of the tuition costs of the gross numbers of the particular institution.

My question was: are international students displacing the domestic opportunity for students to get an education in British Columbia?

S. Ferreras: The answer is no. The reason that answer is no is because, first of all, it’s a priority for us. The domestic students have the first take. But what has actually happened is the opposite. We’ve been able to offer more seats and more opportunities, open up more classes and more courses for domestic students, because we’ve had the international. We need to have a certain threshold of about 11, 13 students in order to, essentially, pay for a class, another class to be held.

We’re holding a lot more classes, as we’re doing in the reductions, than we did in the past. We’re quite sensitive to the fact that our domestic students take our priority. Of course, our moneys are allocated to the completion of those domestic students. This was part of this calibration exercise and part of what I mentioned earlier about the renewed examination of enrolment management, which is crucial to us. It would be very easy to tip that scale and go the other way, and we’re quite sensitive to that.

D. Clovechok: Just a question. We’ve heard, pretty much throughout the province, that international student enrolment is on the upswing, with significant tuition differences. If that were to plane out, and even start to decline, would that mean, then, potentially, given the realities of today in any post-secondary institution, that domestic tuitions would rise? Because in a sense, as I understand it, the higher-rate foreign student is actually supplementing, to some extent, the operations of the institution.

S. Ferreras: Well, it depends on what take an institution would approach this problem with. In our case, we’re actually reducing offerings in order to keep that balance.

[2:55 p.m.]

Yes, all the institutions are experiencing a growth, but as with all our institutions, we’ve adopted an extremely cautious approach to the percentage of our yearly revenue which comes from international because that’s the most volatile part of it. Our international revenue exceeds our government subsidy grant by quite a bit. This is the first year that we’ve actually seen that. This is a precarious situation to be in, so we have to be very careful.

The truth is that yes, still, in spite of all of this, in spite of what some people say is a very high cost for international students, they still keep coming. They’re still coming, and many of the ones that are coming are looking for immigration opportunities.

D. Clovechok: It’s a good thing.

B. D’Eith (Chair): A couple of little follow-ups on that. We’re a bit over time, but this is important, to clarify some of the things we’ve been hearing around the province. Obviously, if you feel uncomfortable talking about this in a public forum like this, I understand.

The two things that have been coming up, from faculty and from students, but faculty…. The students are saying that, around the province, you have foreign student fees jumping up 20 percent or, you know…. They’re advocating for the foreign students to say: “Hey, look. How can the foreign students plan when it’s nearly like the institutions are balancing the books year to year on foreign students?” I’m wondering if there are any solutions that the university can give to us in terms of how to manage that. It seems like a problem that keeps coming back to us at this committee.

M. Graziano: We’re very cognizant of that issue. We increased international tuition two years ago. We took what we thought was a cautious approach, and we did it in two phases, but we still heard back from our students that what they would like to know is: “When we start at KPU, will we know what our tuition’s going to be all along?” That’s part of our recalibration. That’s part of our commitment.

I can’t speak for any other institution, but these students are our students. They are not cash cows. We never look at them as cash cows. They are part of our KPU community, so we’ve heard that loud and clear. That’s part of this recalibration. We can’t just say: “Okay, we need an extra $20 million, so we’re going to add that to international tuition.” Not going to happen at KPU.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that. Unfortunately, we’re not necessarily hearing that from other institutions.

M. Graziano: We can’t speak to that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The other bit that we’re getting from faculty was the precarious and part-time faculty being at different rates. We’re also hearing that, at different universities and colleges, it’s kind of wildly different. You have some that pay on par, like Langara or VCC, and some where it’s 50 percent or more difference in terms of…. I’m just wondering if you can…. I know this is a collective bargaining issue, and I don’t want to put you in a spot, but it would just be nice, from the institutional side, to hear if there’s anything on that.

S. Ferreras: Certainly, yes. It is, actually, at the bargaining table right now — the general issue about the secondary pay. But the truth is that, unlike many of the institutions, especially the research universities, at KPU, the majority of our faculty are full-time, so we don’t have that huge sessional bump that some of our other colleagues do. I used to be one myself at SFU and UVic. We have taken an approach to, where possible, create that full employment so that the instructors who serve with us for up to a period of two years at 50 percent or more automatically become full-time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): So you’ve created a pathway.

M. Graziano: Our regularization path is quite short, yes.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s one of the biggest complaints — that there’s no pathway. In fact, when I was at Douglas, there was a gentleman there who was 17 years…. We all had a big party for him because he got full-time after 17 years. And not to speak about Douglas; I mean, it’s a wonderful institution, but just saying….

We’ve gone way over time, but I really appreciate the committee just…. It seemed like we were getting some bits filled in here. I really, really appreciate the extra time you both gave us. Thank you.

S. Ferreras: The pathway is in the collective agreement.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much.

S. Ferreras: Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have CMPA — Liz Shorten.

Hi, Liz.

Also joining Liz is Kim Roberts.

[3:00 p.m.]

Liz and Kim, if we could keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

CANADIAN MEDIA PRODUCERS
ASSOCIATION, B.C. BRANCH

L. Shorten: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. We really appreciate all the work that you’re doing. Hopefully, you’re on the last leg of your tour.

I’m here on behalf of the Canadian Media Producers Association, B.C. producers branch. I’m a staff person at the organization. We represent about 100 independent film and television producers based here in the province. With me is Kim Roberts…

K. Roberts: One of the producers.

L. Shorten: …who’s the co-chair of my board. I’m happy to have one of our members with me today.

Now that you’ve got our presentation, we can flip to page 2. We just put in a couple of screen shots of some of the wonderful content that our members are making, including one of Kim’s projects, Anthem of a Teenage Prophet, which was the opening film at the Vancouver film festival last year.

K. Roberts: We shot that in the Okanagan and employed about 60 or 70 people to do this.

L. Shorten: One of the things we’re touching on today is the work that B.C.-based production companies do and what the domestic sector of the business contributes to the film and television industry. I’ll turn it over to Kim to talk about how B.C. companies engage creative talent.

K. Roberts: We do about five or six productions a year. We actually do co-productions in other countries. We do feature films, television movies, documentaries. We own all of the productions that we’re doing, so this isn’t service work. This is work that we create and sell to people around the world.

B.C. is a great place to do business, because people really enjoy shooting here. From all over the world, they like to come here. Not only that, but having the tax credit gives us a huge advantage when we go to other countries, because we’re able to say that a portion of the budget we’ll be able to bring to the production. So it’s a great place to do business. We are just trying to grow our industry — that is, not just the service part of it but the industry where we control and own the productions that we’re making.

L. Shorten: I’m going to cut forward, just in the interests of time, to the first chart here as part of our presentation. One of the points we want to raise today is that we are not getting our share of federal funding. So we wanted to include some recent statistics over the course of these three charts, the first one being more digital production.

The focus here is to see B.C. in these three charts. The column is green, and you will see that in every case, we’re on the decline. The key charts are the second and third charts, the one that says: “Declining CMF investment in B.C., convergent broadcast.” That’s the larger fund. You’ll see the British Columbia amount that has come to our members has decreased from $40 million to, for the year ’17-18, $20 million. There are a number of reasons for this, which I’ll get to in a minute. In the next slide, you’ll see declining Telefilm investment in feature films. What was $7.5 million in ’16-17 is down to $5 million in ’18-19.

I think the one thing I want to raise is not only the decline but also to point out where these funds are going. The majority of the funds are going to Ontario and Quebec, and we’re not seeing the funding come across the country. We’ve been working with the CMF and Telefilm over the past few years. But there is a connection between our ability to leverage these federal funds and the amount of provincial funding that goes on the table.

Flipping to the last slide, we’ll get to some of the things we wanted touch on.

[3:05 p.m.]

One, our tax credit program. Keeping it stable is so important — stability and certainty.

Two, increase Creative B.C.’s funding. We’re suggesting it at $5 million per year. That will allow us to be able to leverage this federal money into the province. We’re leaving that money on the table. It’s going to Ontario and Quebec.

One of the other things that we could touch on a little bit more, if you wanted to ask questions…. We are seeing a number of our folks age out over the next five to ten years. We need to increase training across the province to continue to have people see this as a career path for young people getting into our industry.

I’ll leave it there and turn it over to questions if you have them.

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

Just a quick question. Is it the initial development funding — like, in Ontario and Quebec — from the provincial funding that’s allowing them to then leverage the federal funding? Is that the reason for the decline? Is that part of it? Are there other issues that are leading to that?

K. Roberts: That’s certainly part of the issue.

L. Shorten: Unfortunately, we have not had, for many years, production funding in British Columbia. For example, in Ontario, in Quebec, in Manitoba and, in fact, in Newfoundland, they all have production funds. If we had a modest fund, especially on the feature film side, we would start to see that number increase.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Because you need that matching funding for production?

L. Shorten: We need the matching. Kim can talk about this because he does a lot of feature films. It also helps give confidence in the international marketplace.

K. Roberts: The first question is: are you getting any support from your local jurisdiction? It’s a small amount of money that can leverage a lot of money worldwide. It’s why Quebec and Ontario are doing so many international co-productions and why it’s more difficult for us to do that. We certainly have the skill here.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Right, of course. The crews are world-class.

The idea of that $5 million to Creative B.C. would be primarily for production?

L. Shorten: That’s the hope.

B. D’Eith (Chair): For domestic film and media production. Okay.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. You’ve shown the comparison in terms of the funding. What about the tax credit program? How does B.C.’s tax credit program compare to the rest of Canada?

L. Shorten: Well, ours is actually lower than the credits in Ontario and Quebec. The Ontario credit is different. It’s what they call an all-spend credit. Ours has been based on B.C. labour alone. If you hire a British Columbian, you get a tax credit. We’re not the most attractive in terms of tax credits, but you do need a stable tax credit program to keep in this business.

I’ll turn it to Kim because he goes around the world and tries to work with creative and business partners, and the tax credit really gets you into the conversation.

K. Roberts: Absolutely. It’s stable. As you notice, we’re not suggesting that we try to increase that. We know that there is an allocation already going to tax credits. What we have right now is a stable program that is working for us. Really, I think just having a small amount of production financing or assistance with the productions we’re doing would make a huge difference to the productions we’re able to leverage in other jurisdictions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess, too, in terms of the difference…. We had a presentation from MPPIA. It was primarily about the service work that’s coming up. I guess CMPA — you’re dealing more with domestic production.

The first comment is: “Well, you’re already getting so much — hundreds of millions in tax credits — for the film industry. Why do you need another $5 million?” Really, what you’re saying is that this is actually a different issue. This is about developing a domestic production and making sure that we’re competitive on an international basis for co-productions. Is that correct?

L. Shorten: Absolutely. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

K. Roberts: That’s a very good summary.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Not bad for a music guy, huh?

K. Roberts: The important issue here is that service work can disappear. People can move to other jurisdictions and that sort of thing. What we want to see is just a strengthening of our domestic industry, that our local producers are stepping into place, because they’re the ones that are committed to bringing jobs here. They’re the ones who will stay here no matter what happens with the international market.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I guess that’s always the fear, though. If there are international market changes and if we don’t have a strong domestic production group, that doesn’t mitigate that. All of a sudden, that goes away, and the whole thing collapses. I guess if we have a stronger domestic production, that could continue.

K. Roberts: Exactly — that won’t collapse.

[3:10 p.m.]

L. Shorten: Our history has been that when what was then B.C. Film had production financing, we had a better…. Well, my editorial, but we had 75 percent service production, 25 percent domestic production. Right now it’s 90 percent service and 10 percent domestic, which is not ideal. We think, with a modest increase to Creative B.C.’s budget, we would achieve a lot towards this goal.

D. Clovechok: Well, I just want to say thanks to Liz and Kim. As the critic coming into this two years ago, I didn’t know a whole lot about the industry. Don’t know much more about it. But thanks to both of these people. They’ve certainly helped enlighten me.

This ask is reasonable. I think it’s an industry, from what I’ve being able to glean, that has great potential beyond where it is today. The return on investment in something like this, I think, would be notable. So thank you for that.

I know, Kim, that you’re still looking for my role in a western movie.

K. Roberts: Yes, that’s right. We’ve got a role for you, actually.

D. Clovechok: Good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Is it the villain?

Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate that.

L. Shorten: Great. Thanks for your time. We really appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have the BC SPCA — Craig Daniell.

Before we get started, I always love…. You did the presentation on how the SPCA was looking at building housing that was pet friendly. So many times I hear now that seniors, for example, can’t find housing because they have pets. That made an impact on me, and I really appreciated that, because I didn’t expect it coming from the SPCA. I think it was two years ago when you presented that. Anyway, I digress.

Please, if you could, Craig, keep it to about five minutes, we’d appreciate it.

BC SPCA

C. Daniell: Will do. Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present to the select standing committee again.

The British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the BC SPCA, was created in 1895 by an act of the Legislature. It’s the only animal organization with the authority to enforce laws relating to animal cruelty and to prepare cases for Crown counsel.

BC SPCA special constables investigate approximately 8,500 animal cruelty complaints each year at an annual cost of $3.5 million, and that’s funded at no cost to the provincial government. It also operates 44 facilities, providing a wide range of services, including emergency response for victims displaced by fires, youth education, animal sheltering and veterinary services, compassionate boarding for victims of interpersonal violence, and wildlife services.

Provincial government funding has been the catalyst that has enabled the BC SPCA to make significant progress with its facility replacement. Phase 1 of our facility development plan, from 2014 to 2018, covered redevelopment at six facilities at a cost of $19 million. In 2013, the government of British Columbia generously provided $5 million in funding for phase 1. Through additional support from local governments, from foundations and private donors, the BC SPCA secured the remaining $14 million to complete these projects, which included new community animal centres in Nanaimo, Kamloops, Castlegar and Dawson Creek and large animal recovery and adoption barns and educational facilities in Kelowna and Surrey.

As phase 1 was ending, the BC SPCA began preparations for phase 2, which covers the 2018 to 2024 period. It involves replacement of its two largest and busiest facilities but also includes redevelopment in five other communities at a projected cost of $51 million.

Projects include a new campus in Vancouver, comprising community animal centre, veterinary hospital, education centre and provincial office, at a cost of $32 million, along with a proposal for significant social housing on the land; a Prince George animal centre and animal emergency response facility, $8.5 million; a Campbell River community animal centre, $3 million; a large animal recovery and adoption barn in Nanaimo, $575,000; an animal behaviour centre in Cowichan, $2.3 million; a community animal education and adoption centre in Burnaby, $640,000; and a Shuswap community animal centre in Salmon Arm, $4.2 million.

[3:15 p.m.]

In 2017, the then government of British Columbia provided an additional $5 million of seed funding specific for the projects in Vancouver and Prince George. So land has been secured, and each is in the detailed planning stages. However, the size and the cost of those two projects, along with the need to continue replacement in other communities, has created an urgent need for the government to continue to financially support these capital projects.

Mr. Chairman, it will soon be three years since the government last provided funding, so without this additional support, many of these projects risk being stalled or even, potentially, cancelled.

Based on the success and proven track record in leveraging funding and implementing phase 1, the BC SPCA is confident that over the course of the next six years, it can and will raise two-thirds of the cost of $34 million for phase 2. The BC SPCA, therefore, requests funding of $12 million from the government of British Columbia, as part of the 2020 provincial budget, to support completion of phase 2. The $12 million, together with the $5 million already provided, would bring the government’s contribution to $17 million, or one-third of the total cost for phase 2.

Mr. Chairman, a further round of funding will no doubt benefit animals. But I’d ask you to think about the benefit it brings to all British Columbians. Studies point to the importance of the human-animal bond, regardless of socioeconomic conditions.

These new facilities will allow for the expansion of discounted and free veterinary services for the pets of low-income individuals; the expansion of outreach programs, such as pet food banks; the expansion of compassionate boarding programs for the animals of victims fleeing interpersonal violence — who, studies consistently demonstrate, delay leaving abusive situations out of a fear of what will happen to their pet; the expansion of curriculum-based education programs for youth; an improved ability to assist animal owners during emergencies; and job creation through construction projects and additional employment positions.

At a time when a number of animal enforcement charities across the country are actually choosing to relinquish their enforcement responsibilities back to the government due to the increasing costs and the complex nature of this work, the BC SPCA remains committed to working closely and partnering with government in the enforcement of animal cruelty legislation, leading animal-related efforts during emergencies and improving animal welfare across the province.

However, in order to continue to thrive and support communities across British Columbia, it is essential that the government of British Columbia continue to support its partner in this crucial area of work. We wish to place on record our commitment not to seek provincial government funding for carrying out the enforcement functions contained within the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, subject to an ongoing commitment from the government to support capital projects as outlined above.

Thank you very much. I’m happy to answer any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Well, thank you very much, Craig. A very convincing presentation. Thank you very much for all the work you do. Any questions?

D. Clovechok: Just a comment. Thank you so much for what you do. It’s such important work, and it just continues to grow. Keep swinging the bat.

C. Daniell: Well, thank you very much. It’s done, as I said, in partnership with government, so thank you for your support for that.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation. Your ask is for $12 million in the next budget. But your next phase is to 2024.

C. Daniell: That’s correct.

R. Leonard: I’m just wondering why…. Does it have to be up front? Can it be spread out over those…? Phased in with your…?

C. Daniell: Absolutely. Our ask is for $12 million in the upcoming budget, but we recognize that our ask is over a period of time. So we’re more than happy to work with the provincial government to make that a staggered capital funding mechanism. If it comes in a period of a couple of years, that’s fine for us.

R. Leonard: I see. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks. Good question. Excellent question.

Thanks, Craig. We really appreciate your time.

Okay. We’re going to take a short recess.

The committee recessed from 3:19 p.m. to 3:26 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Speech and Hearing B.C. — Sherri Zelazny.

Sherri, if we could try and keep the initial comments to about five minutes, that would be great.

SPEECH AND HEARING B.C.

S. Zelazny: Thank you for the opportunity to join you today. My name is Sherri Zelazny. I am president of Speech and Hearing B.C., and I am a practising speech-language pathologist here in Surrey. Speech and Hearing B.C. represents speech-language pathologists and audiologists working across our province to serve British Columbians.

The key to communication health is access to care for everyone. We advocate on our patients’ behalf and for those seeing gaps in treatment of communication and swallowing disorders. I will outline three key areas where our provincial health funding model is not meeting the needs of British Columbians and what measures you can take to address these concerns.

The first area is early intervention for ages zero to six. Speech-language skills influence the trajectory of a child for a lifetime. These skills also link to cognitive development, social skills and success in academic learning. At least one in ten preschoolers need to see a speech-language pathologist to support developing age-appropriate communication skills. It is not unusual for children to be left waiting for months or years to see a publicly funded speech-language pathologist in B.C. due to individual SLP caseloads of over 80 children. Some children will not have access to an SLP before kindergarten, due to wait-lists.

The recommended caseload for one full-time-equivalent SLP is 25 to 40 children. Assuming the maximum caseload of 40 children and a prevalence rate of 10 percent of preschoolers requiring SLP services, B.C. would require 552 full-time speech-language pathologists to address the estimated need, significantly more than the current 165. We recommend that the government take immediate steps to address the lack of adequate SLP services in the early intervention community. Immediately adding 175 full-time SLPs will go a long way towards addressing these critical unmet needs.

The second area of concern relates to hearing aid funding. Over 10 percent of British Columbians experience some form of hearing loss, but less than 25 percent actually seek assistance, largely due to prohibitive cost barriers. For many with hearing loss, hearing aids can be essential to maintaining the ability to communicate and safely move around their environment. Untreated hearing loss can lead to feelings of social isolation and depression and increased risk for cognitive and fiscal health issues.

The prevalence of hearing loss increases for those aged 65 and older, the standard age to begin receiving a fixed-pension income. The estimated $2,000 to $8,000 cost for a set hearing aids, which will require replacement in five years, poses a significant burden to a pensioner earning less than $10,000 annually.

[3:30 p.m.]

B.C. falls behind other provinces in providing basic financial support for hearing aids and assistive listening devices. Hearing aids are not covered under MSP, with only limited third-party funding. We recommend the government better support B.C. residents by providing some degree of funding for hearing aids and assistive listening devices. This will mitigate poor health outcomes associated with untreated hearing loss and, ultimately, reduce the burden on the health care system.

The third area of concern today is full-time speech-language pathologists providing residential care services. According to statistics provided by Speech-Language and Audiology Canada, British Columbia has the dubious honour of having the second-lowest number of SLPs per capita of all provinces. SLPs are vital in evaluation and treatment of communication and swallowing disorders that are often the result of progressive neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, dementia, ALS, multiple sclerosis, strokes, traumatic brain injury, head and neck cancers and many other problems.

Lack of access to timely identification and treatment of communication health disorders affects overall health outcomes, length of hospital stays and quality of life. MSP does not cover rehabilitation services, resulting in minimal treatment and care options for individuals suffering communication and swallowing disorders.

We recommend increasing the number of practising SLPs per capita to the national average to ensure British Columbians with communication and swallowing difficulties have access to critically needed services. Two hundred additional publicly funded full-time SLP positions must be added to our health care system for adequate service provision to those in the general community and residential care facilities.

Access to care should also focus on ensuring all regions in our province are receiving equitable services.

Thank you very much for your time. I’m happy to answer any questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Sherri. I really appreciate your comments.

I just had one question in regards to the first action. You said: “Immediately add 175 full-time SLPs.” But I guess the concern is: do they exist? Would they have to be trained? You say immediately. Is there somewhere they could be pulled from? I’m just wondering, from a practical point of view, how the government would address that.

S. Zelazny: Well, I think, first, the positions would need to be available so that people would seek employment here in B.C. There are 36 master’s-level positions at UBC that graduate out every year. That was generously increased a few years ago. So the number of graduates is certainly higher.

I think having the positions available would pull people to B.C. People in B.C. who perhaps want a more stable job in the public area might come from private practice. That is often where people go because of the lack of public positions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): The point is that in the private sector, there’s a possibility of people coming over to the public sector. Is that…?

S. Zelazny: Oh, I would think so. Yeah.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was just wondering from a practical point of view.

S. Zelazny: I think, potentially, we would pull from other areas as well, perhaps.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it.

Any other questions?

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

Next up we have Forrest Smith from the Greater Vancouver Association of the Deaf.

Just so the members know, Forrest is going to sit here, and his interpreter, Jessica Siegers, will be sitting there and interpreting for Forrest.

Hello.

F. Smith: Thank you so much. Great to see everyone again.

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

F. Smith: Some very well-known faces. I follow you on social media. Good to see everyone.

GREATER VANCOUVER
ASSOCIATION OF THE DEAF

F. Smith: My name, as has been stated, is Forrest Smith. As I’m talking, I know it’s awkward to look at me and hear the interpreter. But if you could do that, that’d be great.

I have just been recently elected as the president for the Greater Vancouver Association of the Deaf in February. Maybe you also know that I ran for Surrey city council for a councillor position in October of last year. I was not successful, but I am back in the Deaf community, where my heart is, and volunteering my time as the GVAD president.

I was absolutely shocked when I got back into that office. I was the GVAD president 21 years ago, in 1998 to the year 2000. I have been out for awhile and came back in as president. We used to get the B.C. gaming community grant. Twenty years ago we were receiving $60,000 under that grant. We had an office for staff that we had. We were doing really good things in the community.

[3:35 p.m.]

Coming back in, I was thinking we were coming back to that same situation. But we have zero staff and zero money. The gaming grant has gone down to zero. In the last couple of years…. I think in 2017, we received $10,000, and the years before that were also a few $10,000 years. Then, last year, in 2018, we received nothing. Then, in this year, in 2019, when we applied, we also received nothing.

I don’t know if you know the sociologist — he’s fairly well known — Ray Oldenburg. I read his book recently, and it talks about having a “third place of belonging.” Your first place is your home, with your family, where you eat and sleep, etc. Your second place of belonging is work, where you see the people that you know, and you work with them. Then your third place is your social or community place where you belong, whether that is a coffee house, a cycling club or a gym that you belong to. For deaf British Columbians, currently there is no third place, officially, for them.

That really relies on the signing people of B.C. who use American Sign Language. There are probably about 70 percent of the people in B.C. who use sign language living in the Lower Mainland. When we want to get together, we have to use a church basement, a library or somebody’s backyard that may be big enough to hold people. But we’re talking about hundreds of people to get together. So for me, that third place of belonging, that third space, is an actual physical location.

One of the things that Ray talks about is the mental health part of that belonging, that mental health piece that comes up when you are isolated, alone and living without that third place of belonging.

Oftentimes what we see are deaf people who go to work and go home, but they don’t have that opportunity, that third social outlet, necessarily. When you, as hearing people, are out in the world, you can maybe hear somebody at the other coffee shop table talking about another job. Deaf people don’t have that opportunity. This would be talking about creating a space where they could get together and share that information.

We look at new immigrants who come to Canada, some of whom are also deaf, and are very isolated and alone. We’re thinking about creating a space where, if there were a deaf immigrant or refugee coming to this country, not only would they feel at home in Canada, but they’d also feel that they had a place of belonging. I think if we’re talking about around 5,000 people in the Lower Mainland–Fraser Valley area…. It’s looking at a place to provide for their well-being, their information, a place of culture and art.

My ask to this committee is if it could be thought of that GVAD could have some automatic core funding that happens annually. We could then also apply for matching grants. We would be able to have a space, a building of some kind, and staff as well.

When I think about the GVAD history, it was founded in 1926, almost 100 years ago now. It was founded as an advocacy organization. It is the oldest advocacy organization in B.C. currently running still. When GVAD was first founded, they were fighting for deaf rights like driving licences. It used to be that deaf people couldn’t vote, couldn’t drive, those kinds of things. GVAD was the one that really advocated on behalf of deaf individuals. They advocated for the 711 calling, as well as for closed captioning on television. They have provided a space for socializing. They’ve also provided a lot of information and workshops in American Sign Language.

My vision is to bring that back — to have those resources, to have that space. Right now we’re down to zero. We have no staff. We’re starting all over again from nothing, and my ask to your committee would be to think about core funding for GVAD.

Thank you so much for your attention today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Forrest, before I start, could you give us an idea as to the amount? You had said that you used to receive $60,000, but you’re asking for core funding. Is there an amount that you’re asking for, for core funding? The second part of that is…. Anyway, we’ll ask that first.

F. Smith: The $60,000 was from 20 years ago. That was from the B.C. gaming grant, and there was no core funding then. But we were able to receive those grants on an annual basis. Then, of course, that has changed into nothing. I’m not sure if I’m using the correct words with “core funding.” I thought that was it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No, that’s fine. The question, though, too, is: can you not access gaming money at all, or could you get it? Why are you not getting it?

[3:40 p.m.]

F. Smith: Well, we would like to be able to have space. I’m guessing that’s around $5,000 a month when we’re talking about something in the Fraser Valley — so probably about $200,000 a year, as well, to be able to have staff. We could then still try to apply for gaming money. I have had those conversations. I will, of course, start again on July 1 to have those conversations. But we don’t have space, and we don’t have staff right now. It will take a lot of money to start that up again.

R. Coleman: When you got turned down, did you apply for a reconsideration on your grant?

F. Smith: Should we appeal? That was my first question when I was elected as president. I was told: “No, no, no. Just reapply in the next round.” Again, I’m just coming back to the position.

R. Coleman: Do you have a card?

F. Smith: No, I don’t.

R. Coleman: I will give you some contact information, because I think you should apply for a reconsideration. We will help you with that.

F. Smith: Okay, thank you.

R. Coleman: The core funding is not grant money; it’s something that would be annualized so that you can build the program and the access for the 5,000 people in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Correct?

F. Smith: Yeah, correct. It would be a separate idea.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, great.

Did someone else have a question?

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): I just want to say thank you very much for coming.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Me too.

F. Smith: I appreciate your time.

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

Next up we have Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver — Harriet Permut.

Harriet, if we could keep it to about five minutes so we have room for questions, that’d be great.

H. Permut: Yep, I timed it.

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

REAL ESTATE BOARD
OF GREATER VANCOUVER

H. Permut: I’m Harriet Permut, the government relations manager for the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. I’m here to talk to you about five ways to make home ownership more affordable.

I’ll start with some background about the Real Estate Board. The board represents more than 14,000 licensed residential and commercial realtors and their clients in greater Vancouver. Our board boundaries extend from Pemberton in the north to Tsawwassen in the south, from the Gulf Islands and the Sunshine Coast in the west to Maple Ridge in the east.

The real estate industry is a key economic driver in the province. Last year 24,619 greater Vancouver homes sold on the Multiple Listing Service, generating $1.7 billion in spinoff economic activity and 11,720 related jobs.

I’ve come to talk to you today, as I have for many years, about our recommendations for making home ownership more affordable. In greater Vancouver, even as home prices continue to moderate from record highs, many first-time buyers are still sitting on the sidelines, unable to afford even a modest home. A greater Vancouver household wanting to buy a modest condominium with the benchmark price of $656,900 faces many challenges.

To begin with, this household requires a down payment of just over $100,000 to qualify for a mortgage. In 2016, the federal government introduced what is known as the B-20 stress test, which requires homebuyers to qualify for a mortgage at the higher of either the rate they’ve negotiated with their financial institution plus 2 percent or the Bank of Canada’s posted five-year rate.

[3:45 p.m.]

Initially, this applied only to insured mortgages with less than 20 percent down payments. These are called high-ratio mortgages. In 2018, the federal government extended this provision to also apply to uninsured mortgages — those with 20 percent or more down payments.

If you look at table 1 in our submission, you’ll see that before the stress test, the monthly principal and interest payments for a $656,900 condominium would have been $2,787 and would have required a household income of $111,491. After the introduction of the stress test, the buyer must be able to pay $3,413 monthly, and the required household income increases to $136,532.

If the homebuyer wants to lock in their monthly payments at the lower amount of $2,787 and they can’t increase their income in the short term, then they must double their down payment to $204,353 from $100,206, as shown in table 2. This same homebuyer will also be required to pay property transfer tax of $11,138. This is money that is not available for the home’s down payment and is a substantial additional sum for a household struggling to buy a modest home.

In our first recommendation, we’re asking you to urge the federal government to review the B-20 mortgage underwriting stress test. This federal rule has locked many potential homebuyers out of the market based on outdated guidelines that ignore mortgage rate changes since the rule was implemented. In our second recommendation, we’re asking you to urge the federal government to do away with its extension of the B-20 rule to uninsured mortgages, which have a 20 percent or more down payment. These have extremely low default rates and pose little risk to Canada’s financial system. B.C. has one of the lowest mortgage default rates in the country.

In our third recommendation, we’re asking the government to increase the first-time-homebuyers PTT exemption threshold to $750,000 from $525,000. This is a more realistic number, given the prices of units for sale in our market right now.

In our fourth recommendation, we’re asking the government to increase the 1 percent PTT threshold to $750,000 from $200,000 for all homebuyers. There are all of 71 units for sale now in our market that are $200,000 and under. I looked this up before I left — 71 units. This threshold has been the same since 1987 when the tax was implemented.

In our fifth recommendation, we’re asking the government to index PTT thresholds using the consumer price index and make adjustments annually for the first-time-homebuyers program exemption threshold and the newly built home exemption threshold.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you today.

Do you have any questions?

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

Once again the chart that you provide in regards to all the different communities is extremely helpful, and I really appreciate that. I have noticed from last year that it has come down a bit, which is helpful, but it’s still…. Vancouver, detached — annual income required is nearly $300,000 a year. It’s still pretty significant in terms of affordability for the highest area.

H. Permut: Yeah, the numbers are coming down. That’s why we’re concerned about the stress test.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I understand that, and of course, it is a federal issue. So, at the most, I think all we can do is talk to the counterparts.

H. Permut: Exactly.

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Just really quick. In the Wall Street Journal this morning — I don’t know if you saw it — it says that “investor purchases of U.S. homes have climbed to an all-time high, posing a challenge for millennials and other first-time buyers.” So we have this problem in B.C., unfortunately, but this problem does not only exist in British Columbia. It’s literally continent-wide at this point.

H. Permut: Yeah, we’ve hit the big time. Oh, good.

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

Well, thank you very much, Harriet. We really appreciate your presentation — always very thorough. Fascinating stuff.

H. Permut: Thank you. If there any questions afterward, absolutely give me a call or send me a note or something.

[3:50 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Rhayne Retieff.

Rhayne, if you wouldn’t mind, we like to keep the initial comments to five minutes so that we have a chance for questions. That would be great.

R. Retieff: Okay. It might be, maybe, six.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s okay. If you go to six, I won’t cut you off.

Go ahead.

RHAYNE RETIEFF

R. Retieff: Hi. My name is Rhayne Retieff. It is my pleasure to speak to you, hon. Messieurs and Mesdames, as an independent advocate of foster youth and young adults in the province of British Columbia.

I am here to support the vision and initiatives of the organization that supports foster youth and young adults aging out of care, called Fostering Change. I have had past nurse’s training and experience and have worked as a behavioural and nutritional counsellor. I am also a recording artist, singing instructor and advocate.

Over the years, I have taught thousands of students throughout the cities and communities in the Lower Mainland. While I was teaching singing to a group of youths in Vancouver several years ago, a foster youth with many challenges attended my class. He had a beautiful voice and was a happy individual, in spite of his mother’s addiction problem and him living in a group home and having multiple challenges of Tourette’s, ADHD, fetal alcohol syndrome and OCD. He also mentioned that he was having a hard time learning with his school studies, and a group home worker that he didn’t like.

Unfortunately, a few years later, this foster youth’s mother passed away. His mother left a letter asking my family and me to watch over him, especially while he was in care. We continued to maintain our positive communication and support for him by taking him fishing and hiking, which he loved.

One day, years later, he called and said that he had to find a place to live because he was going to clock out at 19. I asked him what clocking out meant. He said that basically, at 19, your time is up and it’s “see ya.” There was no plan in place for further care for him despite his medical challenges and his being on medications. Now 19, MCF, or Ministry of Children and Families, moved him from the foster home he loved and located him in an SRO in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and gave him his mom’s will money in one lump sum.

After losing his mother, then losing his foster home where he felt secure, it seemed as if he were being set up to fail. He was left on his own with only a ministry cheque and a social worker in an office far in the background. He was abandoned by the very system that raised him. After being carefully monitored 24-7 in his foster homes, enter the polar opposite. He was cast out to fend for himself at 19 with no parents, not many skills or street smarts and no nurse or health care worker to watch over him.

Within a few short months, his life spiralled out of control. While living in the Downtown Eastside, surrounded by people who were providing him drugs, his addiction began. This was so sad, as this foster youth never had any interest in drugs before at all. With his OCD, coupled with the pain of missing his mother, his addiction took on a life of its own. Soon he had spent all his mom’s will money on drugs and buying meals for others. He was a lamb to the slaughter for all the lechers and the drug dealers on the streets who prey on innocent young adults. Now I had to take action.

Thankfully, after many phone calls to his social worker, they moved him to a nicer area of town. I begged them. A few months later, he was evicted for playing music too loud and starting a fire in the oven. They did not give him someone to watch over him, as I asked.

Again I called the ministry. I was not going to give up. Word got out, and two of his former group home workers stepped up and invited him to live with them out of province. A few years later, I was surprised when he showed up at my door, looking very thin, tired and beaten up, apparently by a friend who had just kicked him out. He said that things didn’t work out when he was living out of province, and asked me for help.

[3:55 p.m.]

I helped him by getting a mental health worker and counselling. Later, this gentle-hearted foster youth, now a young adult, told me that he went back to the Downtown Eastside. I decided to see this area for myself, because I’m originally from Victoria. We discussed rehab, safe street strategies, and found shelters where he could stay at night.

From what I gather, the fosters that do well after 19 are the lucky few whose foster families stay close and maintain support and contact with them after they age out. However, many fosters who are now adults are not so fortunate and are living on the streets in B.C.

This area in Vancouver — I was horrified by what I saw. This place is a place of sheer depravity. On the streets before me, I saw many lost souls, as well as other young foster adults who were also forced out of their group homes or family homes at 19 without support and who are now homeless, thin and addicted. Some were easy prey to persons with ill intent, who got them hooked on drugs and were exploiting them through prostitution.

The situation is inhumane, unfair and so wrong on every level. I thought: “This isn’t a Third World country. These are Canadian foster youth that have spent most of their lives in foster homes as wards of the province of B.C.”

I took him out of his environment and to Victoria, but his addiction and the individual who kept giving him drugs and money in Vancouver kept calling him back. Several times I would receive a call that he had almost died in hospital from the results of drug use. He was also in and out of hospital frequently because he was going into psychosis on the streets, and the police would take him into emergency.

It took years of hard work, heartache and a lot of effort and prayer to finally get this young man the help he needed, which resulted in him getting placed with a clean family, and a great family. One day he phoned me, proud to announce that he’d been clean and off drugs for one year, three months and ten days. That made me happy. He said that he was really happy living with his new family and that his new adopted mom reminded him of me.

I thought it was cool, and I learned that a person can be legally adopted as an adult when they are 18 or over. He then thanked me for help, and I felt full of joy. The effort was worth it. Advocating for and mentoring a foster youth until his young adulthood, and witnessing all his extreme challenges, compelled me to create a proactive program called the new MAP program, short for my action plan.

Therefore, I am proud to announce that the new MAP program…. One of the initiatives is for all foster youth 19 and over, to 26…. People that are 19 and over will be allowed to remain with their foster family or group home, if they choose, until they are ready to leave, up to the maximum age of 26, allowing them a family life to continue naturally, thereby decreasing the unnecessary trauma that ensues by forcing them out at 19. Nineteen is too young for people to be shoved out of their home with no money and no guidance when they’ve been guided 24-7 for most of their life.

As well, after the age of 18, if the foster family chooses, they can legally adopt them as an adult. As well, I’m proud to announce that the new MAP program will fund every and all foster youth adults, commencing immediately, through direct deposit upon their 19th birthday, as it will be set up for one year before, while they are 18 years old.

This will also meet the mandate that Premier John Horgan has set out with Katrine Conroy, the Minister of Children and Families, which is that all foster youth and young adults are to be funded from 19 to 26, leaving no one out. Unfortunately, with the current AYA program they’re in, there are only school prerequisites preventing…. Only 12 percent currently get funding, and the rest do not.

I seek your support in recommending that funding is allowed to the new MAP program and enacted into legislation so that all foster youth and young adults can access the long-awaited funding and programming that is greatly enhanced and will better their lives.

Basically, I also wanted to say that I had the wonderful experience of signing the Fostering Change website. I put in it that I wanted to make a challenge to the Premier. During the televised debate on TV, 41 MLAs got a hold of me, specifically Garry Begg, MLA. He said: “I love your idea of opening up a new division in the government, under the umbrella of either Mental Health and Addictions,” which you opened up, “or under the umbrella of MCF.” He then forwarded the MAP program to John Horgan. John Horgan really loved it. He loves the initiatives.

I have updated it in the last couple of weeks, since I knew I was coming here, plus getting reports from all the foster youth on what their problems are. Mainly, it’s funding. To see the treachery and what happens to young people is abhorrent. I couldn’t believe I was in Canada, honestly.

[4:00 p.m.]

I know that the new minister, Katrine Conroy, feels the same way. Premier John Horgan does. Forty-one MLAs are supporting it. I urgently and humbly plead to you that we can open up the MAP program. They need to fix the AYA program that’s preventing that all the foster youth get funded, and support MAP.

I thank you so much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Rhayne. Just so you know, I let you go on. We’re at ten minutes, so there isn’t a lot of time for questions, unfortunately, but I think you….

We have heard, just so you know, from a number of people in regard to youth aging out of care. We really appreciate your particular story because that’s an actual event story. Those types of things make an impact on the committee, and we really appreciate you spending the time, and also the commitment you made to that young person who really needed you. We really appreciate that. We should have a system that doesn’t result in those things, so I appreciate your passion for that.

R. Retieff: Right. What I’ll do is have the MAP program…. It’s about a 20-page program, and I’m going to upload it to the website and also give it — the new, updated one — to the minister and to John Horgan and Garry Begg. I hope you have a chance to look over it as well.

Thank you so much.

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

Next up we have the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre — Dr. Brian Conway.

Hello. How are you?

VANCOUVER INFECTIOUS DISEASES CENTRE

B. Conway: Good afternoon. Thanks very much for having me. I realize it’s Friday afternoon, and I’ll do my best to keep your attention for at least five minutes here. My name is Brian Conway. I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today about financial commitments that the government should be considering in the field of hepatitis C, or HCV. I lead the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre dedicated to the development and evaluation of systems of care for vulnerable inner-city populations, 80 percent of whom here in British Columbia are living with hepatitis C. This is the context in which I will be addressing my remarks.

People generally become infected with HCV by blood-to-blood contact such as in the use of injection drugs. As of December 31, 2017, about 53,000 British Columbians are known to be infected with HCV and are still alive, with an estimated 10,000 yet to be diagnosed, for a total approaching 65,000 people in our province. With about 11,000 that have been cured of their infection to date, this leaves us with about 40,000 people that are still in need of treatment. Without this treatment, up to 40 percent will develop progressive liver disease, including liver failure, liver cancer, death — not to mention an increased risk of diabetes and renal failure, just to name two of the non-liver-related complications of this disease.

Now, more than 95 percent of people with chronic HCV infection can be cured with pills taken over a period of about eight to 12 weeks. The World Health Organization has proposed a target to eliminate HCV as a public health concern in the world by 2030. Our federal government, through a framework for action that was released last year that I’ve shared with you electronically, has endorsed this goal, but to date, neither Canada nor any of its provinces or territories has put in place a program that will help us to achieve this goal.

Throughout the developed world, there are only nine countries that have achieved a program that will get us to where we need to be. These are Australia, France, Iceland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. These nine countries have in common that they have developed a written national strategy to address hepatitis C. Some have said that the obstacle we face in Canada in general and British Columbia in particular is that we have not developed such a strategy, and we’d be like everybody else if we just did it. However, there may be a different pathway forward.

The B.C. guidelines and protocols advisory committee is about to release new viral hepatitis–testing guidelines and monetize them. For HCV, priority populations such as people who inject or use drugs, Indigenous peoples, people with experience in the prison system, newcomers from countries where HCV is common and baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965, which include a number of people in this room and, perhaps, around this table, are being targeted for intervention.

[4:05 p.m.]

If we think about how to eliminate hepatitis C, the first part of that strategy, which for us in B.C. will be finding the missing 10,000, is already going to be addressed going forward. There are programs that are about to be put in place to do this.

Now at the other end of the spectrum, or the cascade of care, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that here in British Columbia, all of these oral medications that cure hepatitis C that I’ve mentioned are available through government programs without restriction on the severity of liver disease and without any restrictions on ongoing risk behaviours for acquisition of hepatitis C. We’re very fortunate that for people who get diagnosed and then get engaged in care, they will have access to the treatments here in this province. So the other end of the elimination pathway has been addressed.

We have many individual physicians in clinics that are actively treating hepatitis C, to the tune of about 3,500 treatment starts per year. That is already in place. The missing link, what we need to focus on, is taking people who are diagnosed and engaging them in care so that they may access the treatment that they need and deserve. If we fill in that middle part, if we fill in that void, we will have an elimination strategy without an elimination plan having been written. So if it accomplishes the same goal, we are where we need to be.

A proposed plan for British Columbia might be similar to the one in England that’s aptly called Eliminating Hepatitis C in England. I’ve give you a written document in this regard, where they’ve divided the country into 22 parts which are a little bit analogous, I would say, to the 16 health service delivery areas that we have in British Columbia within the health authorities — about the right size, about the right scope.

Within each of these HSDAs, what could be done is to sort of monetize the individuals who are already doing the treating and empower them to identify other individuals who are willing to treat hepatitis C in a hub-and-spoke phenomenon — to develop best practices to do this and to base themselves on national guidelines that have just been written. I had the pleasure of being part of that writing committee, so the recipes, the evidence-informed practice guidelines, have already been done.

The goal of all of this would be to increase the number of treatment starts to something like 4,000 per year. With that, without having to write an overall strategy, B.C. would eliminate hepatitis C by 2030, meeting the World Health Organization guidelines. We’ve got the beginning. We’ve got the end. We’ve already done this. Our governments — this one and the previous one, without wanting to take sides — have really put these kinds of things in place. What we need to do is to fill in the middle.

This would be a central committee that would coordinate all of these activities. National and international experts have already been approached and are very happy to be part of this effort to help British Columbia do this. The national blueprint has all of the policies that are already in place.

At the other end of the spectrum — we have to evaluate if this works — we have the B.C. Hepatitis Testers Cohort that is housed at the BCCDC. It is arguably the best in Canada, and it can be brought into this program to evaluate whether we’re doing what we said we were doing. This would constitute the overall elimination strategy, and B.C. would be the first of the big four provinces to do this. We have a unique opportunity to do so.

In working with the BCCDC and other experts in the field, we estimate that it would be about a $2 million setup fee, essentially, setup cost to fund development of infrastructure, operationalization and governance. Ongoing costs would approach $3 million yearly, looking at maintaining operations on the one hand and looking at events, governance and evaluations on the other.

Beyond what I’ve said about hepatitis C, as many of the affected individuals are people who use drugs, an added benefit would be an impact on the opioid epidemic. Simply put, people who are engaged in care and for whom we are providing a positive service tend to overdose less and die less. The engagement in care needs for hepatitis C must be considered as part of the public health response to the opioid epidemic. So it’s like an added benefit of us doing this in British Columbia.

This is a proposal that has been vetted by a number of experts in the field nationally and internationally. It is largely endorsed by the BCCDC and really is meant to link all of these things together. So, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that over the coming years, we will work together to take the C out of B.C.

Thank you very much for your attention. I think I’ve left a few minutes for questions.

[4:10 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Dr. Conway. Very memorable.

Just a quick question in regard to…. You said there are about 40,000 known people with hep C right now and about 10,000 who probably have hep C but don’t know it. It seems to me that if you knew you had hep C and there was a treatment, you’d go get the treatment. I’m just wondering. Of that 40,000, are a large percentage of that the people who aren’t seeking help for other health needs or other things? Maybe you could just tell me what sort of percentage.

B. Conway: Sure. Two-thirds of that is what you’ve just described. The other third are people who were tested many years ago and were told they had hepatitis C. At the time, the treatments were less effective and more complicated — they were injections known as interferon — and they were told by their physician that the disease was too mild and that the treatment was too toxic and probably wouldn’t work. They’ve kind of been lost to care. Somewhere there is a record of them having hepatitis C, but they have disengaged from that part of their care, and people have not gone out to find them again.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I remember there was somebody, in another group that presented on hepatitis C, who said that at some point they were tested, they were positive, and there was some block to being able to remind them or say: “Hey, guess what. We’ve got a cure.” What is the plan for that?

B. Conway: That’s it — the “hey, guess what.” This way, if you go to the health service areas, what could occur is that you could empower whoever is in charge of that smaller area — dividing the province into 16 — and say: “Part of your mandate is to go out and find these individuals.”

Since all of the testing is done centrally through the BCCDC, it would be easy to do the linkages there, find these individuals and design a process that would be appropriate for wherever you are. In Prince Rupert, it’ll be different than in Burnaby, let’s say. That’s really why, I think, dividing it down to the 16 operational units that already exist makes sense. They know their own realities. They have treaters there.

The problem is, once someone is diagnosed, linking them into care is not an automatic thing. They’re told they’re positive. They get referred to a clinic. Here in Surrey, it’d be the Jimmy Pattison at Surrey Memorial Hospital. There’s a six- or eight-week wait-list. People kind of choose not to go, and then they forget about it. There are ways of linking, and that’s really where we need to be.

R. Coleman: Is the test a blood test?

B. Conway: There’s a blood test, and there’s actually a saliva test for people who are a bit squeamish. What we have done…. We were here at one of the opioid clinics yesterday in Surrey. We took people who are on opioid substitution therapy, on methadone and the like, did the saliva test, found out some positives, told them that they’re eligible for oral treatment, and tried to link them back into care. Those are the kinds of retail, if I may use that word, initiatives that are going to find the missing 10,000.

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

Next up we have Geoff Dean.

G. Dean: I understand you’ve got my handouts on your iPads, but in case you prefer looking at paper, like I do, I’ve brought more than we need.

Thank you very much for fitting me in. I registered a bit late for this, not knowing what my schedule was.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem. We always leave a couple of spaces just for that.

GEOFF DEAN

G. Dean: I appreciate it greatly. I am Geoff Dean. I’ve been living in Surrey for 40-some years and teaching at Kwantlen all that time. I discovered…. After various years of just straight teaching, I got, for some reason, to go over and talk to our MLA at the time, Rita Johnston, along with other faculty union officers, and so on. I said to her: “I think we’re not big enough to serve our region well.” That was in ’85. She asked me to put the figures together, and I did.

It turned out, as you can see from the graph on the first page of the handout I just gave you, the colours, that Kwantlen gets a whole lot less funding — on a number-of-students basis, per person in its region — than the rest of B.C.’s regional colleges.

[4:15 p.m.]

Now, I’m not talking about the provincewide universities — UBC, SFU and UVic. I suppose Trinity Western is not public, so I’m not even including that either. But relative to the other regional post-secondaries, overall, ever since 1985 and probably before that — I think it probably started that way when Douglas College started, because Douglas was right there with us at the bottom of the heap — we’ve gotten not enough funding to serve our region as it ought to be.

On the flip side, let’s look at it from the “why should we be caring about that?” We would like — I’m sure you would like — this region to be a region. As you know, Kwantlen serves from Richmond all the way through to Langley. It would be very nice if this region could, as Surrey says, have the future live here. In order for that to happen, it needs to be a place that good, potential employees live so that businesses, when they come here, can find good employees.

In order to be a good employee, you need to be well literate. There are a whole lot of statistics out there I’ll refer to in a moment that suggest that, Canada-wide and in B.C. in particular, and so on, there’s a fairly high percentage of people that aren’t as literate as you’d think they’d be. Just because they’ve got high school diploma, it doesn’t really tell you whether they can read, write and do arithmetic well. Having an accessible adult post-secondary education institution in your region to help people become qualified to become good employees and so on — and flip side, to get off welfare and stop costing the rest of us money by virtue of their draining the province’s resources on those sorts of things — is crucial.

You may have heard of a fellow named Craig Alexander, who used to be the chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank. I didn’t quote from him in my handout here. He has, as chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank from 2010 to 2015, put together a paper called Literacy Matters, at the end of which he concluded that about the best investment that can be made to help people help the economy become more productive and so on is to put it into getting people’s levels of education up to at least the high school level and beyond.

At Kwantlen, I’ve taught college prep math — high school–equivalency math — to get people ready for trades programs, undergraduate programs, straight career diplomas or whatever kind of programs to get them the skills they need. My colleagues in that area do that in English and in some of the sciences too. There’s a heck of a demand out there for what we do, and there’s a heck of a demand for what Kwantlen in general does.

The reason I’m here is to echo what this kind of committee over the years has said needs to be done. On the back of the handout I gave you — a bit of history — I mentioned in there, in the middle of that page: “Recommendations from the budget consultations over the past few years. The 2014 and 2016 budget consultations both recommended that the post-secondary funding formula be reviewed so that regional inequities, etc., be adequately addressed.” The 2018 budget consultation recommended something similar — a lot more wordy — but the 2019 consultation acknowledged the need for increasing the availability of seats in areas like this.

Let me just say that this is totally non-partisan issue, because since 1985 and probably before, the picture hasn’t changed. Kwantlen has only received half of the funding for full-time-equivalent student seats, relative to the population of its region, that the rest of the province has gotten. Sure, things have grown. More people are here. Yay, we’ve got more seats. But the ratio between the number of seats and the number of people in the area has still stayed at that half.

Let me go further and say…. I think I made a presentation like this to the 2014 consultation. I’m retiring from Kwantlen soon, because my memory is slowly slipping away. Since then, I’ve been looking into the funding for our developmental areas, especially given the increasing number of people who don’t speak English as their native language, and for other reasons too.

[4:20 p.m.]

Comparing those numbers of people in each region with the numbers of seats in the programs that are supposed to serve those people, how many seats do we have in our adult basic education, adult upgrading programs, that are supposed to serve people without grade 12? How many seats do we have in our English language training that are supposed to serve people that don’t speak English at home, etc.?

Well, overall, like I say, Kwantlen gets half of what it ought to relative to the rest of the province. For those areas — adult basic ed — we get a quarter of what the rest of the province gets on average at the regional post-secondaries. For English language training, we get a fifth. You’ll see those points on the back of that page of handout — the fourth paragraph down or whatever.

Compared to VCC, VIU, Camosun and all those other regional universities, for trades training, we get a third. Hey, BCIT is closer to VCC than they are to us. How come VCC gets three times what we get in this region?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Geoff, we’re at about seven minutes, so if you wouldn’t mind wrapping it up, that would be great.

G. Dean: Yes. I was about to get there and say that at the bottom of that handout I’ve given you, I’ve got some specific recommendations. But basically, it’s hey, let’s get this inequity fixed, finally.

It would be wonderful, given that I’m going to be retired at the end of this academic year, if I can walk away from Kwantlen realizing that they’re going to fix this — and that the government’s going to fix this and not allow Kwantlen to lay off English language instructors as they are right now and not allow them to lay off academic upgrading instructors as they are now, because they’re trying to do other things and have much too little funding to serve their region properly.

R. Coleman: The only thing I have to ask you, Geoff: is the inequity you referred to…? Do you look at SFU and Fraser Valley University when you do your calculation plus the rest of it, or are you just looking at Kwantlen?

G. Dean: I’m looking at all of the regionals — so Fraser Valley, certainly; and Douglas, on the other side of the river, certainly. SFU’s mandate is to serve the province, not a region. If we throw SFU into the mix…. Wait a minute, then. We should be throwing SFU Burnaby into what Douglas looks after and UBC into how Vancouver is served. If you do that — and I have done that; kind of added it all up — the figures look even worse for Kwantlen.

In fact, I think the Surrey Board of Trade got a submission from Kwantlen’s president and SFU’s president suggesting that they just put them all together like that, and it turned out that Kwantlen ought to get triple the funding that it gets. I’m just sticking with regionals, and I think we ought to double what we’re doing.

R. Coleman: Okay. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much, Geoff. We appreciate you coming. Thanks for making the time to come and find us.

G. Dean: And thank you for your patience with going through the whole process you’ve been going through.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Oh, no problem at all. Thanks so much.

All right. Any other business?

R. Coleman: Yeah. I’d just like to thank our staff and everybody that’s put up with us for the last ten days as we’ve travelled this province. We’ve emptied your snack bag pretty well, so we’ve got to go shopping, I guess.

Thanks for everybody that’s done…. I know it’s a lot of work for everybody, and it’s time for us all to go home.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No doubt. I’d like to echo that, as the Chair.

Firstly, I’d also like to thank the members. This is ten days. How many was it — 250 or something? I can’t remember the exact number of meetings, but it was hundreds. So I really appreciate it.

The main thing, too, is just that your attention during the entire time was excellent. The questions were excellent. Your engagement was excellent. I’ve already received some feedback from people who have presented, and they were very pleased with how the members were so engaged, so thank you so much for that.

As far as the staff — wow. Susan and Stephanie, thank you so much for keeping us alive. Wonderful work.

And of course, Simon and Amanda and Steve and everyone in Victoria — amazing. You set up, set down, set up, set down, and you do it with no complaints and do a wonderful, world-class job. Thank you so much for everything you do.

Of course, all the presenters. Everyone who presented around British Columbia — so much passion with the presentations and so much great information…. It’s going to give us a lot to think about over the next month, so thanks.

The Deputy Chair wanted to make….

D. Ashton (Deputy Chair): Before we go, I just want to thank you, Mr. Chair. Great job. It’s a very difficult position — to keep it moving and to keep everybody in line. You’ve done a wonderful job again. So thanks, Bob. I really appreciate it.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Dan. As Deputy Chair, it’s been great having you and your experience over the years on this committee. I really appreciate everything you do, Dan.

Thanks, everyone.

Could I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:25 p.m.