The committee met at 2 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Bob D’Eith. I’m the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining you on this meeting from the traditional territories of the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations.

I’d like to welcome everyone listening and participating to our last virtual public hearing for the Budget 2021 consultation. The committee typically travels around the province to hear from British Columbians about the priorities for the following budget. However, due to the pandemic, all public hearings are being held virtually this year.

The consultations are based upon the Minister of Finance’s budget consultation paper that was released to the public on June 1. On behalf of all the committee members, I’d like to thank everyone who has participated in the consultation so far. Over the past three weeks, we’ve had nearly 300 presentations. I’m not sure — I’ll check with staff — but that has got to be a record, right? Yeah, it’s a record. We’ve already received hundreds of written submissions and survey responses, and we expect a lot more next week as well.

We encourage British Columbians who haven’t had a chance or the opportunity to participate to please fill in the online survey or make a written submission. They can do so, or find more information, at the website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. Just make sure you get it in before 5 p.m. on Friday, June 26, 2020.

The committee will consider all of the input made and then make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be in Budget 2021. The committee intends to release its report sometime in August.

Now I’d like to take the opportunity to allow our members to introduce themselves.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon from the Kootenays. I’m the MLA for Columbia River–Revel­stoke.

I’m sitting today on the traditional shared territories of the Shuswap and Ktunaxa peoples.

I look forward to your presentations.

M. Dean: My name is Mitzi Dean. My pronouns are she/her. I’m the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

I’m honoured to be speaking to you today from the traditional territory of the Songhees, Esquimalt and Scia’new Nations.

D. Barnett: I’m Donna Barnett, the MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin.

Today I’m on the traditional territory of the Secwepémc people.

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

I am on the Kwantlen territory.

I am pleased to have had a moment to listen to Nicholas’s motivational speech this afternoon.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No doubt.

We have Ronna-Rae Leonard and Nicholas Simons, who are both in our committee as well. We will, hopefully, deal with the technical issues as we go.

Assisting the committee today are Karan Riarh and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Amanda Heffelfinger from Hansard Services.

As this is our last day of public hearings, I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank everybody at the Legislative Assembly, the staff who have helped to make this consultation happen in these very unique times. I promise everybody who is listening or participating: it’s been a monumental effort for everyone, including Hansard and the legislative office. Thank you so much.

[2:05 p.m.]

Thank you to Karan, Stephanie, Amanda, and to Susan Sourial, Mary Newell, Mariana Novis, Katey Stickle, Natalie Beaton, Darren Parfitt, Mike Baer, Dwight Schmidt, Billy Young and the entire Hansard broadcasting, transcribing and publishing teams. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

In terms of the meeting format, presenters have been organized into small panels based on theme. We’ll finish off our public hearings with the topic of advanced education. Each presenter is given five minutes to present, following with questions from members. Today’s meeting is being recorded and transcribed. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live via our website, and a complete transcript will be posted.

First up we have Grace Dupasquier from Alliance of B.C. Students.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 1 – Advanced Education

ALLIANCE OF B.C. STUDENTS

G. Dupasquier: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for allowing me time to speak to you all live from my kitchen table today, which is on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Stó:lō people.

My name is Grace Dupasquier, and I am the chairperson of the Alliance of B.C. Students, which proudly represents 80,000 students in the province. I recognize that your time is valuable and that the budget deliberations are even harder this year, given the global pandemic. We appreciate your commitment to hearing our priorities today.

Our first priority is to increase funding for open education options through BCcampus. In light of COVID-19, it’s no secret that students are in more precarious financial situations. For many, textbook and coursework costs can mean the difference between their ability to afford to continue post-secondary this year or not. Investing in OERs through BCcampus eases the burden on both students and instructors. Instructors frequently cite the lack of supplementary course fare as a primary reason for not switching to OERs in their classrooms. With additional funding towards OER implementation, those concerns can be meaningfully addressed, and the overall cost of post-secondary for students can be lowered.

Our next recommendations have to do with the serious concern that the post-secondary sector has for the international student situation in light of COVID-19. Now, more than ever, B.C. post-secondary institutions are dependent on revenue from international students, and the ramifications of this have never been clearer. There is no longer a guarantee that international students will continue to come to B.C. in the steady numbers that we’ve seen in recent years.

B.C. must adapt itself to be the most attractive option for international education. We recommend a proactive, strong show of good faith towards international students — policies that post-secondary recruiters can proudly tout as giving B.C. the leading edge over other destinations.

Capping the amount that international tuition can be raised year over year to 2 percent, the same cap that already exists for domestic students, would be a huge step in the right direction. We hear constantly from international students who are struggling to deal with the unpredictable tuition hikes they face, and providing an assurance of predictability in tuition increases would give international students the ability to budget more effectively and be fully confident in their financial situation.

We would also recommend that the province consider reducing or eliminating the amount international students pay into the Medical Services Plan. Contrary to the popular belief that international students are typically wealthy, recent surveys of student populations in B.C. show that international students actually experience much greater rates of key indicators of financial distress, like food insecurity. While MSP premiums might seem like a drop in the bucket compared to other financial stressors they may be facing, many international students already have monthly budgets that are so tight that even a small reduction in their cost of living would help out immensely.

We strongly believe that implementing both of these suggestions would give B.C. a recruiting edge in the international educational sector, which will be critical to ensuring the financial stability of our post-secondary institutions moving forward.

Our next recommendation actually has to do with the same kind of thing. It’s to allow post-secondary institutions to budget a deficit for the coming fiscal year. Post-secondary institutions are scrambling to find ways to balance their budgets in light of the upheaval of the pandemic, and that will undoubtedly involve tough decisions. If post-secondary institutions don’t have the ability to budget a deficit, it’s quite likely that students will see a reduction in the services they depend on, a reduction in the number of course offerings, and layoffs, which will disproportionately impact non-unionized student employees.

Post-secondary education is going to be one of the keys to our economic recovery. Research has shown that high rates of post-secondary education in a population lead to greater economic prosperity for everyone. Recovering from COVID-19 is going to take innovation, and ensuring that education is a priority will put B.C. in a strong position for long-term recovery.

[2:10 p.m.]

We’d also like to take the opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the government for listening to our concerns regarding student funding options and introducing the B.C. access grant for low- and middle-income students. We are confident that this program will ensure educational completion is possible for students who may have otherwise been forced to drop out.

I speak to you from personal experience. I dropped out of my program halfway to completion due to my debt load. I was only able to return to my studies after years of working more than full time. I am so incredibly hopeful that situations like mine can now be avoided.

However, we would like to highlight that for graduate students, there are still mainly either merit-based or repayable options available. If we want a skilled, competitive workforce, we have to ensure that we are investing in our greatest resource: our people. We recommend that graduate students be eligible for the B.C. access grant.

I know that in my personal situation, while I will be able to finish my undergrad, I will not likely be able to continue after that. If lower-income students are repeatedly pushed back into the workforce by economic necessity instead of being able to finish their education to the highest level that they can achieve, the full potential of their contributions to their communities might not ever be realized.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today. We wish you all the best in your deliberations moving forward.

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

Next up we have Alireza Kamyabi from UBC Graduate Student Society.

Please go ahead.

UBC GRADUATE STUDENT SOCIETY

A. Kamyabi: Good afternoon. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.

My name is Alireza Kamyabi. I’m vice-president of external relations at the Graduate Student Society of the University of British Columbia. I’m here advocating on behalf of 10,000 graduate students at UBC, a talented pool of individuals who are tackling real-world problems in medicine, sustainability, technology and more.

In the last ten years, there were 95,000 publications coming out of UBC, collecting over two and a half million citations. A large portion of the authors of those publications are graduate students, highlighting the critical role they play in the research and innovation sector.

The province plays a big role in supporting graduate education and research. Our recommendations today focus on the province’s contributions through scholarships, investments in research and innovation, and needs-based grants.

Historically, B.C. has lagged behind other provinces in supporting graduate education. This lack of support has materialized itself quickly in B.C., compared to other provinces. From 2005 to 2015, graduate student enrolment in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta increased, on average, by roughly 50 percent, while B.C.’s share of the increase was only 15 percent, according to Stats Canada.

To address this issue, in 2018, the province introduced the first B.C. graduate scholarship fund. This $12 million investment has supported 800 graduate students in B.C. While this scholarship has been a massive success, its three-year funding period ends next year, in 2021. Without this scholarship, British Columbia stands alone amongst comparable provinces which have programs to support graduate student enrolment.

That’s why our first recommendation for the 2021 B.C. budget is to make the B.C. graduate scholarship a permanent funding program and to expand its eligibility to graduate students in non-STEM disciplines as well. This would ensure that B.C. continues to invest in the future of its experts, researchers and instructors.

Secondly, as you’re all aware, the province plays a big role in supporting research and innovation. Programs such as the B.C. knowledge development fund and the Centre for Drug Research and Development are key to putting our best minds to work to address the new challenges that face our communities.

The quick mobilization of research programs in B.C. in response to COVID-19 is a clear example of how early investments can result in massive contributions down the line. At UBC, there are currently over 40 COVID-19 research projects. In the face of the current pandemic, experts are calling for investments in research and technology to develop the future of our economy post-COVID-19.

We need to ensure that we retain the talent pool of graduate students in B.C. to contribute to solving present and future challenges and to fill the jobs of the future tech economy. That’s why our second recommendation is that the province increase investments in the research and innovation sector in order to retain highly skilled graduate students in B.C., maintain job prospects and develop our future economy.

Lastly, we believe that graduate education should be accessible and affordable for everyone. While a bachelor’s degree was an important factor in social mobility in the past few decades, it is slowly becoming the new minimum requirement for many jobs. As our economy develops, an increasingly higher number of positions require master’s or PhD degrees, which can explain why, between 2006 and 2016, the number of Canadians with a master’s or doctorate degree rose by more than 40 percent, according to Stats Canada.

While large investments of time and money are required to complete any degree, this is particularly true for graduate degrees. Relative to undergraduates, graduate students face increased financial pressures.

Based on the 2019 AES survey, 45 percent of graduate students reported experiencing food insecurity within the last year, and 20 percent have said they might need to abandon their studies due to financial reasons. Even in graduate programs that provide stipends, a 2019 GSS survey shows that most stipends hover on B.C.’s poverty line, with the average being $3,000 below the poverty line.

[2:15 p.m.]

All these stats describe the situation before COVID-19. When all these pieces are put together, it’s evident that many graduate students have unmet financial needs.

We would like to thank the government for introducing the new B.C. access grant in Budget 2020, which makes post-secondary more affordable for many students from lower- or middle-income families by providing upfront, needs-based assistance. However, the grant is currently limited to undergraduates and does not include graduate students.

We believe that graduate students who show unmet financial need should also benefit from the new BC access grant, especially since there are currently no needs-based grants for graduate education in B.C. Therefore, our third recommendation is for the province to implement a needs-based award for graduate students in B.C. We believe that the most effective way to do this is by expanding the eligibility for the new BC access grant to include graduate students.

Once again, we appreciate the opportunity to make this presentation. Our written submission will outline our recommendations in more detail. I look forward to your questions.

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

Nicholas, are you on the other end right now?

N. Simons: I’m Nicholas Simons. I represent Powell River–Sunshine Coast.

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

Next up we have Kole Lawrence from Thompson Rivers University Students Union.

Please go ahead, Kole.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

K. Lawrence: Hi, everybody. I’m Kole Lawrence. I’m from the TRU Students Union. We, as an organization, represent close to 10,000 members who come from across the province, as well as around the world, to study at TRU.

As we are all keenly aware, this year has been an unusually difficult time for British Columbians. Students and young people, in particular, have faced unique challenges, with many having had their studies disrupted, lost jobs and/or job prospects and faced new barriers to complete their studies in a timely fashion.

Looking forward to the next few years as the economic fallout from COVID-19 continues, there will be significant challenges that we need to face together as a province. Within this context, we have three recommendations we would like to present to the select standing committee.

Our first recommendation is to expand the new B.C. access grant in response to COVID-19. I would first like to say, on behalf of the 10,000 members at TRU as well as students across the province, thank you to both the select standing committee members who brought forth this recommendation in previous years and the B.C. government for implementing this new access grant. Normally, we would be looking forward to the new grants program rolling out before recommending any changes to the program, but in these unprecedented times, ensuring that post-secondary education is accessible to all is of heightened importance.

In a Statistics Canada survey of students this spring, 51 percent of students indicated that they were very or extremely concerned about paying for next term’s tuition. This speaks to the cost concerns that returning students, as well as new students, are facing. The federal Canada student grants program is already being doubled for one year, starting this fall, but as the increase in federal grants money returns to normal levels, there will be students who are still struggling due to ongoing COVID impacts.

This is an opportunity for the B.C. government to help the economy recover in its next budget through increasing access to post-secondary education by increasing the value of the B.C. access grant for 2021 and 2022. This will complement the Canada student grants program and ensure that B.C. students have increased levels of combined provincial and federal support for three years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our second recommendation is to establish a provincial jobs program for post-secondary students. As you may know, there’s a long-standing federal jobs program that supports students. Some other provinces, like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario, have created their own provincial components as well. Establishing a B.C. student jobs program is important because the COVID-19 pandemic is proving especially challenging for young people and new graduates. On June 5, 2020, Statistics Canada released data showing that B.C. workers between the ages of 15 and 24 are the hardest hit by COVID-19, with a 29 percent unemployment rate.

Establishing a B.C. student jobs program is important because the COVID-19 pandemic is proving especially challenging. The provincial government already provides a wide range of student jobs across different sectors. Centralizing these opportunities could provide the framework for a comprehensive jobs program, while also providing simplicity and clarity to students. With additional targeted funds, the provincial government could also be helping non-profits and small businesses recover from the pandemic, while providing valuable work experience to students just starting their careers.

[2:20 p.m.]

Finally, our third recommendation is to create a provincial strategy for international students. To give context, B.C. currently hosts over 150,000 international students, representing approximately 25 percent of international students across the country. The economic impact of international education in B.C., in 2016, was over $4.2 billion, helping to support vital services for residents across the province.

That being said, the future of international student enrolment is more uncertain than ever in the context of COVID-19. Post-secondary institutions across B.C. are nervously looking ahead to the fall semester and beyond with uncertainty about how travel restrictions and unstable global economic situations may impact enrolment and perhaps, even more importantly, how it may impact revenue.

There are also no easy answers for how to move forward for international students themselves. Some international students have expressed concern about being able to afford to study, as they have lost their jobs they relied on while studying here, or in some cases, back home, they’re facing new financial challenges.

Despite the significant role international education plays in our provincial economy, the entire sector is largely [audio interrupted] without any broad strategic plan. Each post-secondary institution across B.C. tends to recruit as many international students as they believe they can accommodate and charges fees at a level they believe students will pay. Now, each institution in turn will be making decisions on their campus about how to move forward after the COVID-19 pandemic without the benefit of a provincial plan or coordination.

This is why we believe it is time for the provincial government to launch a new international student strategy and to include both students and institutions in considering what is important to be included in that plan.

Thank you very much. Those are our three recommendations. We hope the committee takes them into consideration, and I’m happy to answer any questions.

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

Next up, we have Samad Raza from Simon Fraser Student Society.

Please go ahead.

SIMON FRASER STUDENT SOCIETY

S. Raza: My name is Samad Raza. I’m the VP of external relations of Simon Fraser Student Society. SFSS is a student union representing 25,000-plus undergrad students attending Simon Fraser University across three main campuses: Burnaby, Surrey and Vancouver. We support the students by providing resources that represent, connect and benefit our membership.

Today, SFSS would like to recommend three things to the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Our first recommendation is proposed to evaluate and revise the operating funding model for post-secondary institutions and increase post-secondary operating grants. Post-secondary institutions are increasingly relying on students’ tuition, particularly from international students, to fund post-secondary institution operating costs. In fact, tuition outpaced provincial operating grant funding in 2015 as the largest revenue source for SFU.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, more than half of undergrad students completed their studies with about $26,000 debt at graduation. Increasing student debt is one of the many factors that affects students’ education, quality of life and, more importantly, acts a barrier for them to continue their studies. Evaluating and revising the current operating funding model for post-secondary institutions in B.C. and ultimately increasing operating grants will decrease the reliance on students — particularly international students — to pay for operating costs of universities and colleges across the province.

Although the cost of evaluating and revising the operating funding model is unknown, the recommended cost for this program is $4.7 billion, doubling the current total operating grants among all schools in B.C. and ensuring that 60 percent of the institutions’ revenue is funded by the province.

Our second recommendation is to reduce or eliminate MSP premiums for international post-secondary students. We are concerned that increasing the monthly cost of this coverage puts an unfair burden on international post-secondary students. International students already face barriers, such as lack of a support system in Canada, challenges accessing the labour market and learning how to navigate banking and finances as a young adult in a new country.

Although the fee increase may be modest, this increase highlights the dependence on international students to contribute a disproportionate amount to the funding of programs and services, from post-secondary institutions’ operating costs to provincial health care.

Our third recommendation for the province is to revise the tuition limit policy to limit international students’ tuition increase to 2 percent annually, bringing it in line with domestic students’ tuition. This policy puts a cap on annual increases in tuition to a modest 2 percent per year — something international students desperately need, as tuition can increase up to 20 percent per year at SFU.

[2:25 p.m.]

In 2016, international student spending contributed over $3.7 billion to B.C.’s economy. International student enrolment even benefits domestic students. For example, at North Island College on Vancouver Island, revenue from international students allowed them to enrol an additional nearly 700 domestic students in 2017.

However, both the province and post-secondary institutions are currently economically vulnerable, as institutions will lose a major portion of their operating revenue if international student enrolment drops, and the government would lose a large contribution to the economy. For example, when international student enrolment dropped in 2009 due to the global financial crisis, SFU ran an operating deficit. Post-secondary institutions are facing a similar crisis today as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A comprehensive policy that creates both stability and predictability for international students can ensure that international student enrolment can benefit institutions, local communities and B.C.’s economy. The tuition limit policy should be adopted to include international students, providing them the stability and predictability they need to pursue education in Canada.

Thank you so much for allowing us to present our recommendations today.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. It’s nice having all of the student unions and federations together. Normally, when we travel around, we see you all separately, so it’s kind of nice having everyone together. We get the message very clearly.

Questions from members?

Ronna-Rae, did you want to send a question by chat? If you want to do that, I can ask it.

Ronna-Rae would like to say thank you very much.

Mitzi, go ahead.

M. Dean: Thank you for all your presentations. As you say, Chair, it’s really interesting having everybody together and listening to each other as well.

We’ve had the issue of international students and the reliance on their income flagged for us in the past at this committee. I guess my thought is that it’s not only post-secondary institutions. I have an independent school in my community that actually generates millions of dollars of value to the local economy. They will have no international students being able to return to school — partly, also, because visas aren’t being issued because so many parts of bureaucracy have slowed down as well.

Obviously, you’re advocating for post-secondary, but it seems to me that maybe having a strategy around international students actually spreads across all of the education systems, independent schools as well as…. You know, many of our school districts actually have international programs as well. So if anybody wanted to comment on that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Would anyone like to comment on that?

Kole, go ahead.

K. Lawrence: I would like to say that you’re absolutely right. We didn’t really include anything to do with other sorts of education across the province, but absolutely, a broad, strategic plan for international enrolment across the province seems like an important thing to do, especially now.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Grace, did you want to say something? Go ahead.

G. Dupasquier: Yeah. One of the biggest things that we hear from our international student constituents is that, fundamentally, there is absolutely no way for them to predict year over year how they can budget. They come into the country, and they have to show that they’re able to pay their tuition, that they’re able to pay their living expenses when they are admitted with their visa. But there’s no way for them to know how next year is going to be, because there’s no guarantee.

[2:30 p.m.]

Kole is so right. There should be a strategy in place that ensures that they have a level of predictability that gives them that assurance.

The other thing that I flagged, though, is that continually we hear about tuition specifically, and we hear about fairness. We recognize that international students are not citizens of British Columbia. They’re here to get an education. But they are residents. They recognize, as well, that they should be paying more for their education as an international student.

However, all they’d like to see is a level of fairness. Their tuition is higher, but it can’t be hiked in the same manner that a domestic student’s can — or the other way around rather. So if they have the same kind of predictability in there, that really gives the element of fairness, the element of assurance and just makes things easier for everybody.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Samad, did you have something to add, or are you just…?

S. Raza: I just wanted to say that I agree with Kole and Grace. Grace put things very beautifully here. Right now we are in the current pandemic situation, and every country on this planet has been affected economically, so we don’t know if, next year, the enrolment is going drop. People are projecting it might drop. But giving international students that predictability, like, “Okay, fees are not going to increase more than 2 percent every year,” then people can budget better and know they can come here and afford their education and complete their education.

In 2016, SFU increased 20 percent of international tuition fee. That was a huge hike. People don’t budget if that’s how…. If it’s going to be increased, it’s 20 percent, 10 percent anyhow. They only budget a year in advance. It’s like countries. Every country prepares their budget a year in advance. That’s how people do it too. So giving them the predictability would allow them to be more stable and provide funding for their education.

A. Kamyabi: I just wanted to add that Grace, Kole and Samad all touch on great points. On the graduate student side, a lot of the international students are very skilled, highly talented individuals that are recruited to these programs from around the world. If we provide them with assistance just to make sure that they have financial stability, it would only mean that we get to retain those talented individuals that will contribute back to our economy greatly, especially since the provincial government has made it a priority to develop the research and technology sector in our province.

I think supporting those international students that are recruited from around the world would be a very positive step towards that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve had a number of presentations from university presidents and from other university-affiliated associations. I’d love to hear from the students as far as the impact that COVID-19 has had on everyone and the pivoting to online services.

We were talking about foreign students. One of the things that the universities were talking about is starting with online services for foreign students, even if they’re not in here. There’s the promise that once they get the visa that they’ll be able to come. Or once COVID…. There are, really, two parts to the question. How have you felt that the transition to online services has been for students? Secondly, what impact do you feel that will have on foreign students?

Go ahead, Grace.

G. Dupasquier: Yes, absolutely. That’s a great question. I’m glad you’re asking us, because we can definitely tell you how it’s been on the ground.

It’s been bumpy. First of all, I will recognize that our institutions are doing their best. Everybody is in a crisis situation. It was a rapid transition, and people are figuring things out as they go.

I know that at my personal university, our administration has been working around the clock. They’ve been working ridiculous hours to try and roll things out in a way that will make things easy for students, easy for instructors but also provide that value to students. They understand that when we are in a remote learning situation, many students feel that they aren’t receiving the same value for their tuition that they would be if they were able to participate in their courses in person.

Universities are doing their best to try to mitigate that. However, it is still coming up short.

I’m a full-time student. I’m in classes right now. It’s hard. I can’t access my profs. I can’t ask off-the-cuff questions. I can’t talk amongst a group and learn from other classmates. So it has been quite challenging.

[2:35 p.m.]

On the foreign student side, I know that at my institution, they’ve made a huge effort. They reached out to every single international student that we had enrolled to ask them, basically: “Do you need help? What can we help you with?” This was amazing, and we were really happy to see that. But the feedback they got back was: “Yes, I need help. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have the resources that I normally would.” Especially if you are an English-as-a-second-language speaker, it’s impossible right now to really fully grasp what’s going on.

You might be in an online class where it takes you a little bit longer, just a second longer, to understand what people are saying. You might be communicating entirely in a written fashion, which takes away the ability to use facial expressions and hand signals to kind of cue what people mean. I know that communication has really been a challenge for international students who don’t speak English as their first language.

As well, just feeling isolated. Everybody feels isolated right now. But international students, in particular, are away from their families. It’s a global pandemic. They’re scared, and they’re alone. Mental health is a huge concern, as it is for domestic students right now. Everybody’s feeling it, but I know international students, in particular, who don’t have access to the same kind of services, are really feeling that quite a bit.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you.

Samad, go ahead.

S. Raza: Thank you so much. In terms of the transition to online, it has been really difficult to adapt quickly to the online learning since everyone was accustomed to in-person teaching and in-person learning. Overnight, we had to transition to online learning when the order came that no in-person meetings were allowed, so everything was shifted. Now we are trying to build a system where we can teach our students online. Students are having difficulties learning online, since it’s not the same as learning in person. The quality of education certainly has changed.

For the international students, it has been really difficult. Part of learning for international students coming to Canada is experiencing the culture of Canada itself. Let’s say a student is in their home country accessing classes — not the same — but paying, like, $3,000 for one class. It’s not really fair for them to do it online on the computer. Instead, they are in their home country. The whole experience of going abroad and getting a degree from abroad is going abroad itself.

Also, the time difference is really huge. Let’s say that right now we are in Vancouver, and Karachi, Pakistan, is 12 hours ahead. Basically, it’s 2:37 a.m. there. And if there’s a class at 2:30, how are they going to learn at 2:30 a.m., log-in? Their time is not going to match. This puts them under more mental stress to wake up at that time, do their class, then do their homework, submit their homework and also do assignments, final exams. It’s like putting them under more of a burden.

We are definitely trying to build a system around it, but it has been really difficult and challenging to actually get through this. And as we know, the fall semester and spring semester might be online too. We don’t know how long this whole pandemic is going to go on for.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fair enough.

Well, we’re out of time, but thank you so much for your presentations and everything that you do for students. We appreciate it every year that you come en masse and make your points. Thank you so much.

With that, if I could have a recess until 2:45. Thanks, everybody.

The committee recessed from 2:38 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing our presentations on advanced education.

First up we have Tanysha Klassen from the B.C. Federation of Students.

Please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 2 – Advanced Education

B.C. FEDERATION OF STUDENTS

T. Klassen: Good afternoon, Committee Members. My name is Tanysha Klassen. I’m the chairperson of the B.C. Federation of Students.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging that I’m calling in today from the unceded and traditional territory of the Qayqayt First Nation.

The B.C. Federation of Students is the largest provincial students organization in British Columbia, representing over 170,000 individual members at 15 institutions in all regions the province. I’m joined in this panel by representatives from three of our affiliated students unions — the Vancouver Island University Students Union, the College of New Caledonia Students Union and the Students Union of Vancouver Community College. We’ve all come to this presentation with the same goals in mind, and you folks already said it, but we would love for questions to be left to the end so we can then split the goals amongst ourselves.

Over the last several years, the committee has put forward many of our recommendations that have made it into the provincial budget. Students across British Columbia applauded the elimination of interest on B.C. student loans, ultimately saving past, current and future students thousands of dollars. Additionally, the B.C. access grant, which was included as a recommendation in previous years, is the first of its kind in almost 20 years and is going to help thousands of students.

The work of this committee is very valuable, and we thank you for continuing to listen to the needs of students and in helping us achieve an affordable and accessible post-secondary system for all.

COVID-19 provides this government with an opportunity to make big picture changes. These are changes that won’t just help students and their families but will have the ability to support access to trades, more training for small businesses for their workers and many other avenues that will not help British Columbia return to normal but will make the province better than ever before. We’re all trying to build the province’s economy back to the strength it had just months ago, and all of our asks have been crafted with this economic recovery in mind.

The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a light on problems in our post-secondary system. We’ve been saying for years that it’s precarious and dangerous to rely on international students to fund our post-secondary system. We’ve asked what it would look like when and if they stop coming, and that time is now upon us.

In past years, institutions have boasted surpluses due to exorbitant international tuition fees because of the absence of a cap on their tuition. But now our institutions must wrestle with the fact that they’ll have a decline in international enrolment upwards of 30 percent come the fall semester. The economy needs to wrestle with the fact that because of this decline in international enrolment, it will be losing millions of dollars in annual spending that we get from international students living here.

We can’t only be worried about international enrolment. Due to COVID-19, people are unable to afford to pay their rent, let alone attend post-secondary. Families have been dipping into their savings, dealing with loss of employment and unstable investment markets. Although domestic students are protected by a 2 percent tuition fee cap each year, they’re still being gouged by ancillary fees in order to help institutions bulk up their budgets and stay afloat.

With the drastic decline in tuition fees coming to institutional budgets in just a few short months, our students will be facing those consequences, and in order to keep programs and services running and to keep buildings still standing, institutions need more funding from the government that will not only help them through this pandemic but will be stable enough to keep institutions afloat for years to come.

It isn’t just in tuition fees. Students are also paying more than ever before for their textbooks, and with classes having been shifted online, students are paying upwards of $100 for a simple PDF file. Textbook publishers are still targeting professors with shiny new editions of course material and are paying no mind to the cost for students.

But without funding for more high-quality open-source options, what are professors to do? Institutions don’t have the money to continually support the creation of free, open resources, but with funding from this government, they can work together with organizations like BCcampus to make these essential materials available to students, whether they’re in the classroom or online.

It’s clear that there’s a funding crisis in our post-secondary system, and with deteriorating infrastructure, program cuts, predatory textbook publishers and the extreme price gouging of international students, something needs to be done. Today we’ll be providing you with tangible solutions to these problems, some of which will cost little to no money but will drastically improve the lives and financial security of students across this province.

[2:50 p.m.]

Financial security is extremely important right now. We know that this budget will be released in February 2021, but following the next phases of provincial reopening, there will be sectors absolutely decimated by COVID-19, and there will be thousands of British Columbians needing to retool and retrain in order to get back to work as soon as possible.

Historically, investments in post-secondary have been key in moving provinces and countries out of times of financial hardship, and these investments don’t have to wait for the budget release in February.

We hope that you’ll take our asks into consideration in the coming months and think about how they might be implemented sooner, because now is the time for us to think big. We shouldn’t be talking about returning to normal. We should be talking about how our province can make sweeping changes so that we can move out of the pandemic better than where we began.

With all that being said, I’ll now pass it to the Vancouver Island University Students Union.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Tanysha. Appreciate that. It’s nice seeing you again.

Next up we do have the Vancouver Island University Students Union — Sean Desrochers.

Go ahead, Sean, please.

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

S. Desrochers: Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Sean Desrochers. I’m a fourth-year student at VIU. I’m presenting to you on behalf of the Vancouver Island University Students Union, which is located on the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. Some of what I’m going to say today you will have heard from the Simon Fraser students union. I’m saying some of it again because it’s such a necessary area to focus on as we consider fairness for international students.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. We are asking for a provincewide cap on the increases of international tuition fees as well as a new B.C. international education strategy.

At Vancouver Island University, where I study, international students make up about 20 percent of the total student population. Yet as of this academic year, our international students are paying half of the total tuition revenue of VIU. At Douglas College, international students make up roughly one-third of the student population and pay a 70 percent share of tuition.

Without regulations on the possible increases in tuition fees for international students, post-secondary institutions in B.C. are free to set tuition prices at whatever number they see fit. There is no consistency across the province, nor is there predictability in the increases here.

Just this last academic year, international tuition fees for some programs at Vancouver Island University were approved for an increase of 9 percent, and the master’s of business administration faced a 40 percent increase in tuition for international students. This means that many of our students have faced significant increases to the cost of education over and above the amount budgeted for by students and their families. At Vancouver Community College, international students in some programs that have a wait-list will face between a 9 percent and 20 percent increase in tuition fees in September of 2020.

The contribution of international students extends much farther than the campus at which they study. In 2017, international students in B.C. contributed $4.15 billion in annual spending, contributing to over 31,000 jobs, $2.37 billion for the provincial GDP and nearly $218 million in B.C. income tax revenue.

The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the vulnerability of our institutions in regard to depending on international tuition fees to make up for funding shortfalls. With provincewide enrolment uncertain, especially in international education for the coming academic year, there are likely to be budget shortfalls despite preparations being taken by institutions over the summer.

We are concerned that shortsighted decisions may be made by a board of governors to further increase international tuition fees to offset such shortfalls, regardless of the impact this may have on current or potential international students who are already facing the same or more significant financial impacts [audio interrupted] as a result of the pandemic.

At VIU, international students bring a diversity of experiences to the learning environment far beyond just their financial contributions to the economy. Our international classmates matter to us, and we have been hearing from them just how difficult their experience has been in these unprecedented times with the pandemic. They are far from home and without the same robust government supports available to residents and citizens of B.C.

We want to ensure we don’t lose our international students at VIU and elsewhere due to further tuition increases at a time when we know international students are struggling financially, just like many domestic students, with decreased job opportunities or a lack of family financial support from their home countries due to COVID.

A new B.C. international education strategy needs to provide sufficient support to international students to assist in their cultural, social and academic integration, especially in these current times. Ensuring stable tuition fees for international students benefits our whole economy.

[2:55 p.m.]

Everyone in B.C. is aware of the need for careful economic recovery in these times. A strategy to stabilize tuition fees to ensure that we continue to attract and retain international students in B.C. could make a difference in the coming years.

You may recall that in last year’s presentation, we also shared our concerns for the provincewide reliance on international tuition fees to support our post-secondary system.

In closing, I ask you again to please consider both a cap on tuition increases for international students and to recommend an international education strategy for our province as a priority in your budget consideration. More than ever, those of us living and working within the post-secondary sector see the necessity of action on this concern.

Thank you again for considering these important issues. Sharanjit from the New Caledonia students union will speak to that.

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

Next up we have Sharanjit Kaur from the College of New Caledonia Students Union.

Please go ahead.

COLLEGE OF NEW CALEDONIA
STUDENTS UNION

S. Kaur: Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Sharanjit Kaur, and I am the chairperson at the College of New Caledonia Students Union Prince George.

I would like to acknowledge that I’m conducting business on the traditional land of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.

Today I will be addressing the lack of post-secondary institutional funding and the effect it has on B.C. students and the economy. As for the current government’s commitment to build a strong, sustainable and innovative economy that works for everyone, investment in education should be a major step in this direction because education is a key element towards an independent, thoughtful and sustainable generation.

In recent years, the proportion of public funding to B.C. colleges and universities has dropped to nearly 50 percent of total operating costs, down from more than 80 percent in the 1980s and more than 90 percent in the 1970s. For example, at College of New Caledonia, Douglas College, Vancouver Island University and Okanagan College, government funding makes up 35 percent to 54 percent of their total budgets. This is dangerously close to being less publicly funded and more privately funded by students and other revenues.

It’s not just students that think there is a funding problem. In recent public opinion polling, 62 percent of British Columbians support the statement that the B.C. government funding should make up a higher proportion of university funding. Years of frozen institutional operating grants, coupled with millions of dollars of base funding rollbacks, has left B.C. colleges and universities saddled with program cuts, increasing wait-lists for programs and courses, deteriorating equipment and antiquated facilities.

First, addressing the program cuts. This may not seem to be a big issue, as every institution cannot provide education and every fee. However, think about a student who has been studying in the same college and plans to get further education in one program. He gets to know that the program he aspired for has been cancelled. He would have to look for other colleges and maybe other places, which would add on to his expenses to move and settle in a different place. He may eventually end up not pursuing that study. No student deserves that.

Every institution cannot provide every field of education but should at least continue with the programs they have been providing unless there is some other reason than low institutional funding which is justifiable.

Next is the increasing wait-list for programs and courses. At the College of New Caledonia, there has been a waiting list of 50 to 100 students in the courses of business and management. This is very discouraging to the students, as this leads to increasing lengths of study because they must wait for the next semester to get registered in the courses they want. This also disturbs their future plans.

In the fall of 2019, there were nearly 20 international students who were registered for the human resource management program at CNC but were later told that classes were full, and they were put on the waiting list. The institution suggested that they could either take the semester off or they could take a different class for them. Since faculty is limited, students were being forced to take two semesters off, as compared to other students in the same program taking one semester off. One of the students was planning to transfer to UNBC after his anticipated completion of study but surely could not.

To prevent the increase in time of the length of completion of study, some students even end up changing their program, which may be one they are not even interested in. This is not fair to the students, and we cannot expect good results from such students.

[3:00 p.m.]

These are the ways in which post-secondary students are getting affected by insufficient funding to the institutions. The lack of sufficient funding has also incentivized institutions to increase tuition fees and ancillary fees as much as possible. They have also increasingly become reliant on international student enrolment as a source of funding. With the rising cost of tuition fees, ancillary fees, housing costs, inflation and rapidly inflating transportation costs, it’s easy to see why so many students are struggling.

Our main ask of the government is to review the post-secondary funding model with the goal of increasing funding within the system, reducing reliance on profit-generating activities and restoring majority public core funding. Please consider the following as a subsidiary recommendation — that the B.C. government provide targeted additional funding to colleges and universities in key areas for economic recovery, such as red seal trades, health and other professional programs and graduate education and research.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I would now like to pass on to Students Union of Vancouver Community College.

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

Next up we have Phoebe Lo Patigdas from Students Union of Vancouver Community College.

Please go ahead.

STUDENTS UNION OF
VANCOUVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE

P. Lo Patigdas: Good afternoon to you all.

I first want to acknowledge and thank the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Qayqayt First Nations people, on whose land we live, work and learn.

My name is Phoebe Lo Patigdas. I work as an organizer of the Students Union of Vancouver Community College. For my presentation, I will be focusing on more funding for open education resources.

Open education resources, or OERs, are teaching and learning resources that are available in the public domain and are free to use. For example, they can include textbooks, journals, videos, tests and more. When OERs are used for a course, students can save up to hundreds of dollars and then also have digital access to these materials. The need for online accessibility of education materials became even more prominent when we had to transition to online delivery methods due to the pandemic.

It is undeniable that investments to OERs by the government have resulted in significant improvements in post-secondary education in our province, both economically and academically, with $18 million in student savings since 2012, when it was first established in our province. In the past year alone, BCcampus has seen $3.8 million in student savings, and that keeps growing as more open textbooks are created and adopted across the province.

However, we would be in denial to say that work on OERs is done. The financial barriers due to the cost of textbooks and resources are still felt by VCC students and students across B.C., with 65 percent of students who still opt out on buying textbooks, and 27 percent drop a course because they cannot afford the resources required. Five to ten students in the business management cohort in VCC are sharing a book on reserve in the library. When COVID forces suspension of face-to-face services like the library and the bookstore, where do these students go?

Other than textbooks, students can also be required to buy digital access codes that they use to finish assignments and quizzes online. In just one term, students spend about $3.7 million on these. Often students are sharing one copy between many of their classmates or risking a percentage of their grade because they cannot buy the digital access codes. Now, with limitation on physical interactions, sharing a copy or using the copy on reserve in the library is almost impossible.

The economic strain brought on by the pandemic makes buying their own copies and access codes even more challenging. The financial barriers due to costs of textbooks and other materials are stunting the ability of students to succeed in their programs. These are students that are our future tradespeople, health care workers and service industry workers.

Great work is ongoing in creating resources, but there are gaps in adoption rates between departments within an institution and even between institutions in our province. There are two things that could be happening. One is that current resources are not applicable to the programs or courses in the institution, or two, there are insufficient supports for faculty to adopt existing OERs. In VCC, both are happening. There is one effect in all of this, and that is that students who cannot afford these materials are falling through the cracks and are being set up to fail.

Accessibility of materials is also a big factor. OERs are geared towards accessibility and allow for transformation to accommodate a wide variety of access needs. I am here on behalf of students in VCC, but these experiences can be seen across the different institutions in our province.

[3:05 p.m.]

Hence, I am asking this committee to consider for recommendation in the 2021 budget to prioritize funding for more open education resources. More funding would allow the creation of more resources, maintenance of existing resources and the creation of ancillary resources like test banks and assignments. Further, it will ensure that the resources that are being created are also adopted in our colleges and are in the hands of students.

Additionally, since we are moving to online delivery methods to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in this coming semester — and who knows until when? — there are great benefits in driving our focus and resources that will suffice the digital and technological needs. Overall, post-secondary education needs serious financial investment in our province.

Our economy and our society are facing significant changes due to the global pandemic that we are in. We need to recognize that education plays a major role in bringing along British Columbians towards that change. We can only do that if we make education accessible for all students by properly funding our colleges and universities, making international education sustainable and eliminating financial barriers caused by textbooks through online educational resources.

Thank you for your time. We’re happy to take your questions.

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

Tanysha, I just had a quick question. We’ve heard a number of presentations about open learning and open textbooks. I’m just wondering. As there has been funding put into that, what is the ask, specifically? I was at that announcement. What is it, specifically, that is the problem? Is it the uptake? Is it not moving fast enough? Is it that more money is needed? Perhaps you could be a bit more specific on that.

T. Klassen: Yeah, for sure. Obviously, students, folks at BCcampus and people in our organization were very happy to see the investments made into open education resources by this government and by the previous government as well. The reason why we are asking for more funding to open education resources is partially because of the pandemic. It’s also due to the fact that all of the funding that has been announced for BCcampus has been one-time funding. It hasn’t been sustained funding over time.

I’m not sure how much you folks are aware of the work that BCcampus has been doing during the pandemic, with webinars, teaching professors and students how to learn online, and things like that. They’re doing a lot of really great work. Having a couple of million dollars here and there is absolutely beneficial, and it’s saving students thousands. But having that money be sustainable and coming in, in a regular fashion, is something that we would really like to see.

P. Lo Patigdas: Can I add something on that?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yes, of course. Go ahead.

P. Lo Patigdas: As I mentioned, a lot of creation of resources…. There is great work on that — like trades, ABE-specific. I think there is a gap on being able to adopt those creations. Individual institutions have different abilities to do that but now are forced to keep up with the ever-changing online delivery methods. Not all institutions are able to adopt as quickly as they could. Really, the funding will also help the adoption rates increase in other institutions.

In VCC, we do have low adoption rates because the faculty need assistance to be able to do that. A lot of them are doing it on the side of their table or don’t have the time to be able to meaningfully integrate existing OERs into the curriculum that exists there. More funding would be able to see that — a continuation and consistent rate of adoption in different institutions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That makes sense.

Members, any questions?

M. Dean: Thank you to you all. We have had other presentations that are similar. Maybe that’s why there aren’t so many questions left, Chair.

The youth unemployment rate now has reached record levels at 29 percent. Of course, the economy is going to be different when we come out of COVID. We’re looking at retraining and trying to find ways that young people can have different career paths and different training or professions in the next few years.

[3:10 p.m.]

A couple of questions, I suppose. Do we have a better breakdown of that 29 percent of those youth who are unemployed? I would expect that it’s probably more marginalized, racialized — young people already in precarious situations. Do you have any recommendations about quickly increasing capacity in the post-secondary system to be able to offer that pathway for youth so that they can re-equip themselves into the new economy rather than going down a pathway that they might have thought they could rely on before?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. That was a big question.

T. Klassen: I think I can take a shot at answering that. I know that we, at this moment, don’t have a breakdown of that 29 percent. What I do know, anecdotally, is that students and young people are largely the people that are in a lot of these service jobs and that either have gotten laid off or have needed to take time off because of the stress levels just amping up in grocery stores, other front-line services and things like that. That number doesn’t surprise us at all, because that is exactly what we’ve been hearing from students.

I think to your second question — Sharanjit touched on it a little bit — one of the things that we are asking for, which is a very specific COVID-related economic relief strategy, is investing money and funding into institutions for those specific programs that we’re really going to need for economic recovery — things like trades, health care and the other professions that we know, going forward, are so valuable and that are going to need more people.

Having funding going into the system as a whole but also, specifically, into those programs is really going to help make sure that people aren’t dropping out of school, that they have a job after they finish and that they’re going to be able to enter into the labour market and help us recover the economy after all of this.

R. Leonard: Thank you, everybody, for your presentations. I really appreciate your taking the time, and I hope that you appreciate the opportunity to hear each other speaking, and of speaking with one voice. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Are there any more questions?

Nicholas, I know you’re on the phone. Did you have anything?

N. Simons: No, thank you, Chair. I’m fine here. Good presentations, though. Thank you very much.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. Well, thank you very much to the presenters. It’s lovely seeing some of you again — and some of you for the first time. Thank you so much.

Of course, so much work has been done during the pandemic, and we appreciate everything that your associations and federations have been doing to work alongside the universities in a very, very difficult time. We appreciate everything you’re doing — and as students, as well, adapting to the new normal. I know it’s tough, but we’re really proud of everything you’re doing.

With that, if we could recess until 3:30.

The committee recessed from 3:13 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing discussions and presentations from Advanced Education.

First up we have Frank Cosco from the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia.

Frank, please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 3 – Advanced Education

FEDERATION OF
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATORS OF B.C.

F. Cosco: Good afternoon. Thanks for this opportunity to present. I’m speaking to you from the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples.

I’m Frank Cosco. I’m the vice-president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators — FPSE, as it’s known. I’m here on behalf of our president, Terri Van Steinburg, who sends her greetings. Terri regrets she couldn’t be here. We’ve had to move our AGM to this week, and she’s still chairing it right now at this moment.

We are a 20-union-member federation representing well over 10,000 faculty from a mix of some private training institutions and, mostly, publicly funded post-secondary institutions. You probably know the names well, names like North Island, Selkirk, Langara, Camosun, TRU and my personal favourite, VCC.

Of course, we know every presentation you receive this year is going to be mentioning COVID-19 and how the next government budget has to take the presenter’s interests into account and help it get through or recover from the crisis. This presentation can’t claim uniqueness in that regard, but we can, we believe, claim to be a very important part of that recovery if given a chance.

Since the Ides of March, which I think is fitting, most of us haven’t heard much about post-secondary. There thankfully haven’t been disease outbreaks, and there have not been massive layoffs. Most significantly, essentially the whole system continued to function as close to normal as possible. Students were still in training and in session and completed, or are continuing right now, their course of study.

This was accomplished largely without major institutional expense, and it was accomplished from the homes, the basements, the bedrooms and the spare rooms of faculty. Faculty everywhere flipped their programs online, including a lot who had never taught that way before. They took it on, most often with their own equipment, and helped their students through. That’s why we haven’t been hearing about post-secondary. We think, without false modesty, we can claim it was largely because of the extra efforts of faculty.

Now those efforts are continuing in the summer semesters, where they exist, and those practice-based areas where the limits of online learning have been reached. Programs such as nursing, mechanics, dental, culinary are examples. In those programs, face-to-face interactions are restarting. Of course, these have to follow strict protocols under WorkSafe and health authorities and strict protocols in spacing requirements. So, again, everything about the class experience has changed, and, again, it’s being done through the extra efforts of faculty.

[3:35 p.m.]

But here’s where the story’s progress gets uncertain. Will the future bring austerity, a new segment of the workforce unemployed and having to seek benefits and the great body of students and potential students cut off from the option of upgrading their skills or continuing their education? We’re here to ask that that not be the story — that instead, we’d be enabled to continue with our work and our students with their work and, indeed, that we’d be enabled to welcome in more British Columbians who have this unplanned opportunity to get into post-secondary.

We don’t need to go into details about the benefits of such an approach through our interconnected provincial system. We have a written submission where you can find illustrations of that.

There are potential obstacles to this more optimistic story being the one we remember ten years from now. The system has come to rely on international students to fund growth over the last two decades. That so-called bonus money may not be coming in to the same degree in this current fiscal, and recovery in the next fiscal is uncertain. Budget managers have been well schooled in the discipline of balanced budgets and that deficits aren’t allowed.

We’re going to be making a few recommendations, which you’ll find in our written report: that public investment be increased in a multi-year plan, that responsible deficits be allowed over a number of years and that surplus accounts be examined. We may be able to unlock some needed resources. There may even be training possibilities for employers and government through these government institutions and the unionized parts of the private sector.

The COVID response in post-secondary….

B. D’Eith (Chair): Frank, sorry to interrupt. You’re out of time. If you could wrap it up, that would be great.

F. Cosco: I’m sorry.

B. D’Eith (Chair): No problem. If you could wrap it up, that would be wonderful.

F. Cosco: I’ll be all right. Thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay, sorry. I didn’t meant to just stop you like that. There might be some time during the questions to get some of your points in. So please continue to think about that.

Next up we have Dr. Jacqueline Holler from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia.

Please go ahead.

CONFEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY FACULTY
ASSOCIATIONS OF B.C.

J. Holler: I’m Dr. Jacqueline Holler. I’m president of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C. or CUFABC. I’m a faculty member at the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George. I’m also the mom of a graduating grade 12 — the weirdest grad ever — and a third-year university student. I’m speaking to you as a faculty member but also as someone who is very attuned to what’s going on with students.

CUFA represents more than 5,500 faculty — professors, lab instructors, sessional instructors and professional librarians — at B.C.’s research universities: SFU, UBC, UNBC, UVic and Royal Roads. We believe that public universities will be the engines of economic recovery, cultural and social innovation and green transformation — something I’m very interested in — in the immediate aftermath of COVID and in the coming decades.

Our resiliency as a province rests, in large part, on the education provided at universities and on the knowledge that’s being produced there. However, faculty, universities and students will need supports to ensure the survival of universities and to allow them to contribute to recovery and growth in this challenging time.

We have three broad priorities for the 2021 budget. First, we say it’s a perfect time to reinvest. B.C. lags behind other provinces in per-student spending. This produces an overreliance on precariously employed per-course sessionals, a group that disproportionately includes women and members of other equity-seeking groups and that is highly vulnerable in times of economic uncertainty such as the one we’re in.

Underfunding has also led to an overreliance on international students. International students enrich the learning experience for everyone. However, the pandemic has shown that there’s risk in overreliance on this source of funding.

We recognize the funding increases of the past few years, but we believe this crisis represents an opportunity to catch up and to do more. In the medium term, changing the funding formula to make B.C. a leader in PSE investment will allow PSE to take its rightful place at the heart of economic, social, environmental, cultural and technological innovation.

In the short term, though, research universities are facing a crunch — revenue shortfalls from student housing, conferences, events, activities and other revenue streams. At the same time, costs are increasing as universities invest in novel and costly online platforms to ensure that students can continue to enjoy the highest-quality education.

[3:40 p.m.]

Because universities are prohibited from carrying deficits, as already has been noted, these revenue shortfalls will require make-or-break decisions over faculty complement, program offerings and operational capacity. We therefore propose emergency transfers and loans to aid the recovery of the institutions facing these revenue shortfalls.

Second, we propose incentivizing enrolment and supporting students for the success of universities, individuals and the province alike. Historically, PSE enrolment tends to increase during economic downturns. While early signs at our institutions are hopeful, we just don’t know how many students are actually going to show up this fall.

We call for special COVID funding to enhance scholarships and bursaries for students, to provide targeted funding for student employment on campus — as a mom of students who had their job plans go south this summer, I certainly see that as a key thing — and also to offer targeted grants to low- and middle-income students. All of these actions will incentivize enrolment.

This is also the time to fully fund the government’s promised $50 million graduate scholarship program. This will help address the especially difficult situation of graduate students, many of whom are now facing an extra year of study because their research has been disrupted. These measures will aid recovery by stabilizing enrolments and encouraging students to remain in their programs, gaining the knowledge and skills they need to help B.C. recover, build and thrive.

Finally, we ask the government to support research in a time of crisis. Grad student and faculty researchers are grappling with a massive interruption in programs and grants. Most institutions don’t have the funding to address these shortfalls, which are going to hit research programs hard this fall and again affect those grad students, many of whom are supported by faculty grants.

In 2018, the Premier announced an investment of $125 million in the knowledge development fund. We call for an equally visionary retooling of the KDF, allowing it to support not only infrastructure but also a system of arm’s-length, peer-reviewed grants for research. Quebec is already doing this through its gold-standard research funding agencies. You’ll find further details of that in our proposal. In the medium term, the retooling of the KDF will pay huge dividends in promoting recovery, innovation and resilience.

In the short term, however, institutions face shortfalls in accessing research and teaching materials because of fluctuating currency exchange rates. All this stuff comes out of the USA. Institutions will need financial resources to help address external market pressures that affect online books, lab materials, etc. We believe that our recommendations will help B.C.’s research universities fulfil their public mission as engines of economic recovery, cultural and social innovation and green transformation.

Thank you for your time this afternoon. I look forward to your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much.

Next up we have Chris Ayles from the Camosun College Faculty Association.

Please go ahead, Chris.

CAMOSUN COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION

C. Ayles: Thank you for having me here. My name is Chris Ayles. I am an instructor of geography and environmental technology at Camosun College in Victoria.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m here on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people.

What I’d like to present on here today is very similar to what my colleagues have just spoken of. I’d like to advocate for the funding required to allow post-secondary education to sustainably play its part in the societal and economic recovery from COVID-19. No one can deny the importance of post-secondary education to a prosperous society, and I believe that importance is particularly clear during economic downturns, as people turn to post-secondary education to retrain and reorient themselves so that they’re able to help with the economic recovery.

Now, in this particular circumstance, when COVID struck back in March, government recognized the importance of our sector by making us an essential service, and they didn’t cut our budgets. You know, it must be acknowledged that compared to some other provinces, this was good news. Our budgets were not cut. But with all due respect to other groups in need, we simply need more support to be able to continue in our mission of providing education that’s needed at this time.

The details of our financial problem, I think, have already been illustrated a little bit, but we’re facing a loss of tuition revenue, particularly due to international students who can’t be with us at this time. This is forcing our institutions to look at cuts to meet the continued expectations for balanced budgets, including staff reductions — ironically, at a time when we actually need more faculty than ever in order to accommodate the massive shift that we’re seeing away from traditional classroom-based learning.

[3:45 p.m.]

I want to spend the rest of my time trying to just make that real for you by talking about how it has looked for Camosun College and how the current situation, I believe, is untenable. In the face of the health orders that started coming out in March, as everyone knows, we were no longer able to teach face to face, and even now can only do so in very restricted ways. The result of this was a massive shift to mostly online teaching. Although we have done some for some period of time, for the majority of our faculty — and students too — this was a whole new world.

Now, development of online courses normally takes weeks to months. It’s a major undertaking to change a post-secondary course to an online product which is of a high quality and which enables proper learning. In this case, in the winter, there was absolutely zero warning and zero development time. That’s understandable; it was an emergency, right? No one saw this coming. But it has continued.

Faculty are continuing to teach online this spring on the fly, many of them having come straight off that winter emergency. Others are frantically preparing for the fall, which will also be predominantly online. They don’t have nearly enough time to prepare for a full course load. Normally, the development time they might have now would be enough for perhaps one course, instead of, say, four.

Nobody knows what winter is going to bring, but I wouldn’t put money on it being normal. I think the odds of this continuing are quite high. So those same people teaching in the fall will very likely be continuing to scramble through Christmas and trying to get the winter ready.

What’s the cost of this approach, of this situation? People have been working long, long hours for days — including weekend days — for weeks on end stretching to months on end. They’re being highly stressed by the unusual nature of the work, by the lack of warning, by their difficult personal circumstances with kids all around them, bad home ergonomic offices and just the stress of being separated from family and loved ones by our social isolation.

The risk of burnout is very real. We’re already starting to see signs of it as people are choosing to take unpaid leaves of absence instead of coping with the work that they have to do. Some people are opting for early retirement for the same reasons. I really worry that, as this continues, we’re going to see more and more people going on stress-related medical leaves.

This brings risk to our students. I think that we’re going to see a poorer quality of education than what we want. Unexpected instructor changes as people sort of start to drop off could lead to additional upheaval. Then there’s a risk, I think, if the quality goes down, of students starting to stay away.

We need to provide the services that the students have come to expect from us and deserve, but we can’t keep working in this crisis mode indefinitely. It’s just not sustainable. There’s a human cost to faculty and staff, it’s a disservice to our students, and it brings the risk of a downward revenue spiral if they start to give up on us. Of course, that’s not going to help us deliver this essential service of post-secondary education.

If we truly are an essential service, we need to be given the resources required so that we can spread out the workload and do it properly. You can’t just create time, but you can hire more people to spread the work out and make it sustainable. I ask myself: would we squeeze other essential services like the health care sector or K to 12 in this manner? I hope not.

I just want to finish by saying that we realize that the needs of others that will be approaching government at this time are very real and very urgent, but our needs are also real in post-secondary education. I just sincerely appeal to government to provide the additional funding and/or financial flexibility that our institutions need to be able to offer sustainable and excellent post-secondary education through this crisis.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Chris.

Next up we have Shantel Ivits from the VCC Faculty Association.

Please go ahead.

VANCOUVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

S. Ivits: Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here to provide input into the 2021 B.C. budget. I recognize that I am presenting from the unceded territories of the Qayqayt First Nation.

My name is Shantel Ivits. My pronouns are they/them/theirs, and I teach adult basic education. I’m here on behalf of the Vancouver Community College Faculty Association and the over 700 faculty members we represent.

I’ll be using my time today to talk about why post-secondary education is an important part of B.C.’s economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most economists forecast, unfortunately, that we’re headed into a recession or perhaps even a depression. History shows that during economic downturns, there’s an upswing in people who turn to post-secondary education to upgrade their skills and to find new jobs.

[3:50 p.m.]

At Vancouver Community College, our slogan is: “We built this city.” We educate Vancouver’s cooks and mechanics, hair stylists and hospitality managers, dancers and dental hygienists. However, COVID-19 has led to a significant decline in enrolment and, as a result, an unexpected loss in revenue for the college. Meanwhile, expenses have unpredictably jumped, as we implement new health and safety measures and shift our programming online.

Despite the loss in revenue and increase in expenses, we don’t qualify for the federal emergency wage subsidy program. Like our post-secondary counterparts across the province, VCC is in a state of emergency. One of our administrators has already started raising the spectre of large-scale layoffs. Significant investment in post-secondary education is vital to maintain current course offerings, avoid layoffs and lay a strong foundation for our collective economic recovery.

This is why my first set of recommendations for the 2021 B.C. budget is to increase public investment in the post-secondary system. I also recommend allowing post-secondary institutions to run deficits, to ensure that current course offerings for students can be maintained or increased and that faculty members like me don’t lose our jobs.

I have another request, one that’s very near and dear to my heart. You’ve been tasked with making some pretty difficult decisions about what people and programs are most worthy of public funds, and I call on you to remember the most marginalized students in the post-secondary education system.

A large part of VCC’s programming is developmental education. Our adult basic education, or ABE, programs serve adult learners who have not graduated from the K-to-12 system, usually for reasons related to social inequality. ABE gives a second chance to equity-seeking communities at developing literacy and numeracy skills and earning a high school diploma.

Our students are people who grew up in the foster care system, whose education was interrupted through bouncing from one school to another, people with mental health and addictions challenges that resulted in dropping out of school, Indigenous people who are still suffering from the intergenerational trauma of residential schools, young mothers who left high school to care for their children, and senior women who have raised their families and now want to build their own skills, as well as refugees who never had the opportunity to learn to read and write, due to extreme poverty or war in their home countries.

Similarly, our adult special education programs teach literacy and career skills to deaf and hard-of-hearing students, students with cognitive disabilities and students with visual impairments, so that they may fully participate in our communities and enter the workforce.

Developmental programs are a lifeline to equity-seeking communities, a reason to have hope for the future, but they don’t usually generate revenue for the college. So these programs are constantly at risk of being cut. This is especially true now. My department, basic education, has already been cut in half over the last five years. COVID-19 renders us even more vulnerable. We can’t withstand any more cuts. As you make decisions about the best use of public funds, I call on you to provide a dedicated envelope of funding to developmental programs so that we can continue to serve the most marginalized students in the post-secondary system.

Investing in post-secondary education yields invaluable returns. It boosts the job skills and earning potential of students, which pays dividends to the province in the form of increased tax dollars. Better-educated people volunteer more and have higher voter turnout rates. Studies also show that educated people are, on average, healthier both physically and mentally. In short, a robust post-secondary system is proven to lead to a healthier, wealthier, more equitable and more democratically engaged B.C.

Thank you for the opportunity to present these recommendations. I’m happy to take your questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Shantel; I appreciate that.

Just before I start…. It’s funny, Jacqueline. I have a daughter who’s graduating from high school and one who’s in third-year university as well. we have that in common. In fact, as we were meeting, she was out on my lawn with her grad dress on, having sort of a mock grad. Anyway, it’s a very strange year. Thank you for that.

Before I open it to questions, I did want to acknowledge all the work that the faculty in all the colleges, universities and post-secondaries have done. It has been absolutely outstanding, and I appreciate — as we all do on this committee — the extraordinary effort everyone has made to make sure that our students were able to transition nearly seamlessly into online learning. So thank you so much for that. We appreciate that there are a lot of challenges.

R. Leonard: I want to say that I echo the sentiments of our Chair. I really appreciate that you guys have been rock-solid and are just such a cornerstone to our getting through this pandemic. Thank you for your presentations.

[3:55 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Do you have a question, Ronna-Rae, or are you just saying thank you?

R. Leonard: I have no question.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Mitzi, please go ahead.

M. Dean: I echo your sentiments, as well, Chair. Thank you to everybody for all of the really important, critical work and being able to pivot to be able to serve our students.

I do want to acknowledge the emotional labour. I know that as faculty, you care about the success of your students. I think, as you described very well, it takes an awful lot of work to suddenly create a different learning tool, a different learning opportunity for students. I think for a lot of people in service — I think of my staff, in particular — there’s that emotional labour and emotional toll that has impacted a lot of people who are still trying to make sure that their services, whatever they are, can continue to be delivered.

I heard you say that we can tackle that by reducing workload demand by increasing the workforce, but I just wondered whether there was anything else that any of you were doing or that you would like to be able to have the time or funding to do that would acknowledge that emotional labour and how to alleviate that pressure.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Would anyone like to speak to that?

J. Holler: If I can just respond to that, I think that’s absolutely critical. I think the workload stress has to take some account of that emotional labour. I think our institutions in CUFABC have been quite effective at reaching out to faculty with supports, but many faculty are overwhelmed with worry about their students.

Thinking about student mental health as one of the areas to prioritize in the coming year, and thinking about that, and the demands on institutions to provide mental health services in a context where you don’t have face-to-face clinics, or where you don’t have students even in the same town…. I think it would be really important, because right now I can tell you that faculty are taking on a lot of that counselling duty with students. We’re happy to support our students, but it’s not enough.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that. I’d say that my own children got a lot of emotional support, not only from their high school but also post-secondary faculty.

It’s not just about teaching. It’s also about getting through a very difficult time, so we appreciate that. Also, the challenges of the pedagogical — switching to a whole new way of teaching. It’s got to be very difficult for faculty, and we certainly appreciate that.

Frank, were you trying to jump in?

F. Cosco: A short comment. I appreciate the messages from you about our work. I agree with Jacqueline that the emotional labour should be recognized. I have to also say, though, that as a union steward, we get calls all the time from people who are also worried about their jobs. They’re going to do the work, but they want some signals that they’re going to be okay themselves. That’ll support them in supporting their students.

We’re not getting those signals yet. I know you’re not the direct leaders of these things. But in this indirect lead that you might be able to pull…. Those types of recommendations, if they could come from your committee, would help: that there be ways to look at providing that emotional support to faculty so they can provide it, as they always will, to the students. We think that would help.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that. I guess one of the issues is providing certainty in an uncertain time. It’s probably one of the most difficult things. I appreciate exactly what you’re saying.

Chris, please go ahead.

C. Ayles: Minister Dean, I just really appreciate you saying that about the emotional labour. I think that that is a component of the problem that is easy to overlook. People really feel the work they do in our sector in their bones, and the demands on that front are higher than ever.

[4:00 p.m.]

All the students that have been put through the shift are in distress, and they come to us. In a real way, I think that’s actually just one of the components of the workload problem I was describing. It’s one of the reasons why the big, unexpected shift online has been so very difficult and will continue to be, because it’s such a huge adjustment for everyone.

In terms of the question of what else could be done…. We get a lot of thanks, and that’s good. We get thanks from our administrators. We get thanks from our students, and it’s good. The thing that would help is help. The thing that would really help is help.

Tragically, we have two problems, two big problems, that in some ways could solve each other. The people who are worried about losing their jobs — the contract faculty who are precariously employed — in a real way are the potential solution to the workload problem. They’re the ones who are qualified to help spread the load and to make it easier. The problem, of course, is that it takes money to employ those people, and as tuition goes away, that’s a harder thing to manage.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fair enough, Chris.

M. Dean: Thank you, and thank you for the promotion.

B. D’Eith (Chair): All right. Any other questions from members?

Okay. Well, I wanted to, once again, thank all of you for everything you’ve done during this very difficult time and also for your presentations. The committee will, of course, take all of that into consideration in deliberations.

With that, we will recess until 4:15. Thanks so much, everyone.

The committee recessed from 4:01 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing with the ad­vanced education panels.

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

Chris, please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 4 – Advanced Education

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

C. Jaeger: Good afternoon. I would like to begin by acknowledging that I’m speaking to you from the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation.

I’m here to speak to you on behalf of Vancouver Island University Faculty Association. The membership includes the Elders, professors, counsellors, librarians and IT professionals who serve the students of VIU at its Nanaimo, Cowichan, Powell River and Parksville campuses.

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

I also thank the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for inviting me to speak. This seemingly simple act of civic engagement is not afforded to people everywhere, and I am grateful for it. Lastly, I also want to voice my appreciation that as members of the committee, your days are long and not always easy ones. I understand that under the conditions of this pandemic, your leadership skills are being challenged in ways you never imagined. Thank you again for your dedicated service to the people of British Columbia.

I’d like to speak to you about the challenge and the opportunity that lies ahead for post-secondary education in the months and years ahead. While the road ahead is steep, the opportunities where it might take us are incalculable. I propose to you that we have an opportunity to reimagine post-secondary education in B.C. I believe we have an opportunity to reimagine what post-secondary education could mean to the people of B.C.

I suggest that a robust system of colleges, institutions, teaching universities and research universities would have what it takes to deliver our promises to embrace the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I believe that a strong set of post-secondary institutions would strengthen and grow our rural communities and act as a pathway for immigrants into this province.

To do this, we need equitable funding models that value programming for its content and not its revenue potential. We need investments in our campuses, especially our remote ones. Many of our schools are suffering from wear and tear. At my school, we’re trying to operate a university with college facilities, and we’ve stretched that model as far as we can. Strong investments will signal to students that they are being invested in and that it is worth their while to also invest their time and money.

We will also be able to reimagine our relationship with our international students. Our international students need to feel that they are on an equal footing with Canadian classmates. I know the government is going to face a huge number of demands on its finances in the next year, and it won’t be easy, but I do appreciate this opportunity to share with you some ideas. We can maybe take a pause, sit back or stand back and try to reimagine which direction we go in and what we want to achieve with our future in this sector.

I’ll keep it short. I just want to thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you. I’ll leave it at that.

[4:20 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Chris. Appreciate that.

Next up we have Brent Calvert from Capilano Faculty Association.

Please go ahead, Brent.

CAPILANO UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

B. Calvert: I wanted to acknowledge that I’m calling in today from the unceded territories of the Tsawwassen peoples.

I appreciate the time that the committee is giving us to make this presentation. This is a very important time, I think, for all of us in B.C. and, certainly, for the group in post-secondary education.

I’m here as the president of the Capilano Faculty Association. We’re active in the regions of North Vancouver, the Howe Sound corridor and the Sunshine Coast. I wanted to talk to you about something fairly specific and related to financing and post-secondary education. What I’d like to dig into is the concept and difference between operating budgets and capital budgets.

Specifically, we’re tracking changes over the last eight to ten years where we’re seeing reductions in the percentage of the operating budget that is being used for instruction. We’re seeing that drop in the neighbourhood of about 10 percent. At the same time, we’re seeing an allocation of money through a process of shifting surplus money from operations into the capital budget. We’re seeing that go up about 10 percent, and we’re seeing university administration investing and engaging in capital activities.

I just want to be clear about how this is working. The money that is transferred by squeezing the operations is moving into the capital area through the reserve capabilities of the university. At Cap alone, this now represents close to $87 million in accumulated surplus. If you take the 20 organizations that are part of the federation of post-secondary educators and add the British Columbia Institute of Technology, we are talking about a combined accumulated surplus of $1 billion.

There are consequences to this. The consequences are that students are increasingly being asked to make up the funding shortfall through direct tuition and enhanced payment fees. The second part of this is that the most precarious group of faculty — what we call non-regular, contract or adjunct faculty — are paying for that operational squeezing with their jobs. They are the last people in, often on short notice, to teach classes. They’re the first people out when something happens.

The specifics around COVID-19 are very distressing and troubling to me. I feel the pandemic is being used as an excuse, in some ways, to further squeeze the operational side and put undue pressure on faculty and, by that, undue pressure on students. Faculty have stepped up admirably to shift to a remote adapted learning model in a short period of time and then are handed termination, layoff papers and all that stuff once that job is done. The consequences for students are that we have uneven representation in the form of ombudspeople, wellness offices and these kinds of things. It’s profoundly unfair across the province.

Now, if you look at the size of the post-secondary education group and you look at the amount of money that’s coming into the province through international money and things like that, you can acknowledge that it is a big business. If you feel more inclined to think about it that way, then I would challenge you and say that you need to make continued investment in the area. If we do not continue to make investments in the instructional capability, we will fall behind. The citizens of British Columbia will fall behind.

I have a very specific ask for you today, and that is that I would like to make sure that the operating funds are being fully invested first in post-secondary education and instructional capability before they’re being transferred to the surplus. If they are transferred to the surplus, I would like to make sure that there is a clear and consistent model that the public can reliably follow. Presently it’s like the shell game, with a nut under three cups. It’s shifted between restricted and unrestricted capital. It changes every day. I think we can do a lot better at this.

I thank the committee for the time. I hope that you can look into this.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Brent.

Next up we have Dr. Lui Marinelli from Selkirk College Faculty Association.

Please go ahead.

[4:25 p.m.]

SELKIRK COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION

L. Marinelli: I wanted to let you know I’m speaking to you from the unceded lands of the Sinixt peoples.

I wanted to thank the committee for allowing me to speak here. I’m the president of the Selkirk College Faculty Association. Selkirk College serves the whole of the West Kootenays.

Article 26 of the universal declaration of human rights is all about education. The first line in that article is: “Everyone has the right to education.” Later in the same paragraph is: “Higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.” It’s merit that gets you in, not money. It’s merit, not the size of your bank account.

Over the years in B.C., funding for academic institutions has been less and less the responsibility of the government. Currently at Selkirk College, approximately 50 percent of the funding each year comes from Victoria. The rest comes from domestic tuitions, more and more from international tuitions, from contracts and from research grants.

Since the lifting of the tuition freeze, the college has increased domestic tuitions by 2 percent, the maximum allowed, each and every year to help make ends meet. Increasingly, we’re getting to a point where fully academically qualified students are not able to attend because tuitions have become too high. It’s a sad day when kids find it too expensive to enter into a college or university, into an adventure in learning that may change their lives.

As I mentioned, the college has started to rely more and more on substantial moneys they get from international tuition. International students pay dramatically higher tuition rates. The surge of international students has been a blessing in some ways but a significant challenge in another. But that’s a discussion for another day.

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown how a reliance on internationals is folly. No one could have imagined a scenario where those lucrative tuitions all of sudden were no longer available, and then there was COVID-19.

Selkirk is forecasting a deficit this year of $6 million. Not all of that is a drop in international enrolments, but a significant amount is. Instead of working towards making tuitions more affordable or, ultimately, free, we’re making it harder for students to explore a higher education.

The second point I wanted to make is the college response to COVID-19, as you’ve likely heard many times already. These challenges have been many and varied. Expenses never anticipated are being dealt with. As I’ve already mentioned, a balanced budget is now in deficit.

One of the areas that is currently being ignored is compensation for instructors. Since March, almost every instructor has been asked to jump into the deep end of online instruction and has spent an exorbitant amount of time getting students through the winter term and then preparing for the spring school and the regular fall term in September. When the topic of compensation is mentioned to management, the constant refrain is: “We have no money.”

The cost of COVID for a college is quite varied, from more sanitizing stations to more computers so employees can work from home.

My loyalties and my responsibilities as the president of the SCFA are to my members. Their labour must be considered, whether there is a one-time lump sum payout to the colleges, an allowance to dip into our large accumulated surplus, etc. Colleges and universities are struggling. Selkirk is struggling. Our members are struggling to be ready for September and deserve fair compensation.

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

First, before we go to questions from members, I did want to, as I did with the last group of faculty associations, say how impressed we’ve all been with how you’ve made the transition to online learning pretty much on the drop of a dime. That was quite amazing. I’ve experienced that at home myself with my eldest daughter, who is in third year at UFV.

[4:30 p.m.]

Thank you so much for that. We really appreciate all the work that all the faculty members have been doing, as has the whole society, in trying to deal with this very, very uncertain time.

First up we have a question from Rich.

Please go ahead, Rich.

R. Coleman: Last year when we did this panel with faculty associations, probably seven to 11 presentations, the issue was in and around contract staff and part-time staff and benefits and pension benefits. Did something happen in the last year where you guys sorted that out?

B. Calvert: I’ll take that one, if you guys are okay with that.

C. Jaeger: Absolutely.

B. Calvert: We came in with a concern last year around the issue that we call secondary scales. I realize that’s probably a confusing term for you, but what it was really wrapped around….

R. Coleman: It’s not confusing. They used it last year too.

B. Calvert: Let me try to be clear what it is. It represents a pay scale structure at the colleges and universities that has regularized or seasoned faculty — of course, having some tenure in being there — being higher up the pay scale, and then an 11-step scale. The difference is quite profound from the top of that to the bottom.

We’re seeing an increased hiring of regularized and contract faculty that are automatically placed at the bottom of that scale. A percentage of instruction that is occurring is happening more and more with that group. That group is often needing to work at multiple institutions because of that gap in pay, and they become the road warriors that are moving up and down the road.

It creates incredible stress inside the institution. Really, when you think it through, it’s quite unfair for students, because the faculty are not available in the regular sense that you would think, that maybe you enjoyed — being available for service, committee work and access by students.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Brent.

Chris, did you want to comment on that?

Sorry. Go ahead, Rich.

R. Coleman: In the last year, nothing has changed, but this year it’s not an issue, or it’s not a high-level issue for you. It was certainly a high-level issue in all the presentations last year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Chris, go ahead.

C. Jaeger: I think, Mr. Coleman, the best way to give you an answer is with an illustration. Earlier today we were in our AGM, and the chair of our non-regular committee could not attend because she is doing landscaping work in order to make ends meet.

The fact of the matter is that our sector is in free fall, and we’re triaging on the fly. The people who are bearing the brunt of this are our non-regulars who don’t have full-time employment. I can tell you they’re sitting in their homes, quaking over what the fall is going to be for them. A lot of them have not been officially told yet that they’re not coming back, and they’re on tenterhooks. We are dealing with faculty in tears trying to get their courses online, faculty giving up their summers.

We have not given up on this issue, but we are in triage mode, trying to keep the ship afloat and get as many people into the lifeboat as possible.

R. Coleman: Okay, thank you.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Lui, go ahead.

L. Marinelli: To the point that you were making, Mr. Coleman, about if it’s not an issue anymore, it was a central plank of bargaining this year. But for a variety of reasons, and then COVID came along, we had to shift away, for the most part, from that. There’s been a little bit of movement in that area, but generally, there has been very little that we are able to do in bargaining, which is slowly coming to an end. But like I said, COVID-19 just overtook everything.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Anything else, Rich? You’re good?

R. Coleman: I’m good.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. I was going to ask a similar question around that, because I remember last year that was a big question. As you said, obviously times have changed, and priorities have changed. I get that. It’s still an issue, but you are putting out fires, is what you’re saying. We get it.

Any other questions from members?

Nicholas, did you have a question? Sorry, I can’t see you, so I’m not sure whether you have a question or not, or whether you can hear me.

Any other questions from members at all?

Okay. Hearing none, we are going to take a recess until 4:50, for the five-minute presentations.

Before we leave, though, I did want to again thank all the faculty associations for everything you’re doing. I appreciate that it’s a tough time; I know we all do. But we did want to show our appreciation for all the efforts that you’re making for our students and for our province. Thank you so much.

The committee recessed from 4:35 p.m. to 4:50 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are in the final five-minute presentation segment of our public consultations. First up we have Dr. Max Blouw, from the Research Universities Council of British Columbia.

Max, please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
COUNCIL OF B.C.

M. Blouw: Good afternoon, Members. My name is Max Blouw.

I’m speaking to you from the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples.

I was appointed president of the Research Universities Council of British Columbia last October, and I thank you for this opportunity to present. As a former faculty member of the University of British Columbia and of the University of Northern British Columbia, it’s a great pleasure to lead RUCBC, and it is a delight to return to our wonderful province.

For generations, B.C.’s research universities have been woven into the fabric of our province, contributing enormously to our economic and social well-being. Today that work has never been more important, and I want to offer my thanks for the support that you have shown B.C.’s post-secondary community over these last few months and, particularly, for our students.

As you have heard often today, it is owing to the collective effort of public servants, faculty and staff that students will start and continue their studies this fall. That is no small feat. It speaks to the value our province puts on public service and on education, and it should give us all hope for a better future.

Today you have heard directly from our member institutions, student groups, faculty and staff unions and other post-secondary institutions. Each has a slightly different perspective, but we hold in common a deeply held commitment to supporting students and serving our communities by delivering high-quality education and research.

These commitments are pillars of a lasting and sustainable economic recovery: a recovery that addresses growing inequality by better distributing the economic benefits of learning and knowledge, a recovery that expands opportunity to those most affected by the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 — youth, women and our First Nations communities — and a recovery that marshals our resources to reduce our carbon dependence and to position B.C.’s economy for the future.

With our many partners in the post-secondary community, B.C.’s research universities stand ready to help you and the government chart a path forward, to help you leverage federal support for critical new infrastructure with sustained and increased funding for B.C.’s knowledge development fund, to allocate resources to those areas where post-secondary skills are in higher demand and to help ensure that B.C.’s economic recovery is felt in all regions of the province.

Today, however, I want to keep our focus on our most important and immediate concern: the health, well-being and success of our students. COVID-19 is a defining moment for their generation, and the decisions we will make will determine how that moment will be defined by them as they look back several years from now, when COVID is behind us. With that in mind, RUCBC has four urgent recommendations that will help students to cope and learn in the most challenging environment that any students have faced in living memory.

First, recognizing that the economic impact of COVID-19 has made life more difficult for students with limited financial resources, we ask that the committee recommend an increase in targeted needs-based emergency financial assistance to be distributed by institutions to students in need.

[4:55 p.m.]

Second, to help students cope with the physical and mental health challenges that have been amplified by the pandemic, we ask that the committee recommend an increase in provincial funding to expand health supports for students, particularly to treat mental health issues but also other COVID-driven outcomes.

Third, to ensure that no students are disadvantaged in their access to technology and to the supports required to learn from home, we ask that the committee recommend additional resources be directed to helping students succeed and thrive in an online learning environment.

Fourth, recognizing that COVID-19 has done particular harm to B.C.’s graduate students, jeopardizing their research, pushing back their graduation dates and leaving many in career limbo, we ask that the committee recommend that the current one-time graduate student scholarship fund be increased and be made ongoing.

Taken together, these four recommendations are aimed at making a positive difference in the lives of students who have so heavily borne the negative impacts of COVID-19. They are aimed at giving them the support and help they need to make the most of their potential and, in doing so, to secure a better future for all British Columbians.

At this extraordinarily challenging time, we owe these students our best, because their future is our future, and their success is our success.

Thank you for your attention and for the important work that you do.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you so much, Max. We’ve heard from a number of researchers, and we were absolutely blown away with the way they were able to pivot from disciplines that weren’t even related to COVID to COVID-19. We really appreciate everything the research universities have been doing — quite extraordinary.

Next up we have Craig Daniell from the BC SPCA. I nearly adopted a dog the other day, but I resisted. Way too cute. The local Maple Ridge SPCA is an amazing place.

Nice to see you again. Please go ahead.

BC SPCA

C. Daniell: Good afternoon, committee. I’d like to first acknowledge that I am on unceded Stó:lō Nation land.

The BC SPCA was created by the Legislature 125 years ago and is the only animal organization with the authority to enforce animal cruelty laws. BC SPCA constables investigate 8,500 animal cruelty complaints each year. We also operate 44 facilities, providing a range of essential services including emergency response for victims displaced by fires, youth education, animal sheltering and veterinary services, compassionate boarding for victims of interpersonal violence, wildlife rehabilitation and strengthening the human-animal bond.

The BC SPCA’s priority remains the well-being and safety of vulnerable populations and animals as we navigate COVID-19. The essential services we provide in communities continue to be in high demand. The BC SPCA is providing a range of services, including emergency boarding for individuals’ animals fleeing domestic violence. Since the onset of the pandemic, we have also dispensed over 20,000 kilograms and 12,000 cans of pet food to communities in need across the province.

Recently the government granted emergency funding of $1.46 million to the BC SPCA as part of the COVID-19 response funding to help animal care organizations through the pandemic. With this emergency funding, our capacity to provide core services….Without this funding, our capacity to provide this funding was at risk. We truly appreciate the support, as it has ensured that we’re able to continue our existing operations and be ready to respond to other emergencies, including potential wildfire response this summer.

The full impact of increased demand and donor challenges due to COVID-19 is still unknown, but early data indicates growing pressure to deliver more services with fewer resources. To ensure that the BC SPCA is able to continue to provide these necessary services, we are seeking both operational and capital funding support from the province in Budget 2021. Our request is for $3 million for service delivery and operational funding and $8 million in capital funding to upgrade our most critical facilities.

[5:00 p.m.]

Operational funding of $3 million will enable the BC SPCA to continue enforcement of the Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals Act, the management of animal shelters, pet food banks and emergency boarding for the animals of individuals fleeing interpersonal violence. A $3 million grant from the provincial government would not make us whole in the upcoming fiscal year. Even with a grant, we’re still expecting a current operating loss in the region of $2.5 million, but we’re simply not in a position to absorb a $5.5 million operating loss from within our reserves.

In prior years, I have appeared before this committee to seek funding to support our need for facility replacement. For the past three years, we have been unsuccessful in our request for a total of $12 million to support capital projects, and unfortunately, work on these projects has since stalled.

We are mindful that government has many competing priorities, and accordingly, we have decided to place some of our projects on hold for the next few years. However, some projects simply can’t be delayed, or they will significantly threaten the ability of the BC SPCA to continue its operations across the province. We must either move forward with projects or consider service reductions.

In Vancouver, we must replace our veterinary hospital and animal shelter, both of which are well over 50 years old and provide a significant array of services to vulnerable communities in the Downtown Eastside. We also need to dramatically increase our educational programming. In Prince George, we need to replace an aging animal shelter and build a critically needed emergency animal housing component so that we can support wildfire relief efforts in the Cariboo. In Cowichan, we need to repurpose the facility to allow it to support a much-needed animal behaviour centre for the province.

Construction costs for these three facilities are projected at over $40 million. As land has already been secured in each case, a capital funding commitment of $8 million from the provincial government will allow the BC SPCA to move forward to construction quickly, as significant private funding commitments are already in place.

Capital funding by the province will provide lasting benefit to communities, including job creation through construction projects in the immediate post-COVID-19 period; the expansion of compassionate boarding programs for animals of victims fleeing interpersonal violence; curriculum-based education programs for youth; and the improved ability to assist animal owners during times of emergency. Thank you very much.

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

Just to mention for all of the panellists right now, we’re in the five-minute presentation period, so there won’t be any questions. It’s just the five-minute presentations, and then that’s it. We won’t consider you being impolite if you want to leave or need to leave. That’s fine. After you’ve made your presentation, you’re more than welcome to stay for all of the panel presentations.

Okay. Next up, we have Gordon Robertson.

GORDON ROBERTSON

G. Robertson: Thank you. I’m speaking to you today, as I did last year, as the father of a 34-year-old woman named Bree-Anna, who was born with severe cerebral palsy. For her, that means that she can’t talk or walk, feed or dress herself or even sit without significant support. She’s totally dependent on others for all aspects of her life, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. She literally can do nothing for herself but breathe.

Bree-Anna is supported through her microboard, Bree’s Courageous Spirit Society. A microboard is a small, not-for-profit society that has the sole purpose of supporting one individual with a disability — in this case, Bree-Anna. Her microboard receives funding from CLBC and Northern Health to hire staff to support her to lead as independent a life as possible.

[5:05 p.m.]

It allows her to decide, with support, all the things most of us take for granted, like what she’s going to do in a day, whom she’s going to do it with, even where she is going to live and with whom, and who is going to support her. In other words, she gets to live a self-directed life, just like most of the rest of the adults in B.C.

She loves to travel and has done so as often as her, and our family’s, finances have allowed her to over the years. She has attended numerous events around the central Interior, supported by her caregivers, and often goes on vacation with her current primary caregiver. She uses her computer to read at her cousin’s elementary school. She is very well known in her community.

People are always amazed that someone with her level of disability leads a life so rich in contribution and opportunity. In most of the world, people with higher levels of disability like her still live in large institutions with hundreds or even thousands of other people like them. People lead such an independent life that her story has been shared, as an example of what is possible, several times internationally — including to the United Nations in New York and the UN Zero Project in Vienna, Austria. She was invited to personally share her story at a prestigious world congress in Melbourne, Australia, in 2016 and has spoken at numerous conferences around B.C.

Her quality of life is directly tied to our ability to hire and retain good staff to support her. Every employer in the sector, large and small, is experiencing difficulty in this. Last year government, in an attempt to improve the situation across the sector, proposed a low-wage redress over and above any negotiated increases. Last year I spoke to this committee, with Bree’s assistance, about the inequities in this proposal. Nothing has changed since then.

The proposal is woefully unfair, as it would give approximately 18 percent over three years to some unionized employees but only 6 percent over the same term to all other workers, which includes approximately 50 percent of the people working in the sector, including Bree’s support staff. There is already a gap between the wages and benefits offered by the two types of employers, and adding another 12 percent to that disparity would make it almost impossible to recruit and retain good, qualified staff for small employers like us.

As far as I know, the low-wage redress has been put on hold while this issue is dealt with. While it is nice to know that our concerns have been heard, a decision has to be made and the wage redress implemented, on a fair and equitable basis across the sector, as soon as possible. This is not a union versus non-union issue. It is a simple issue of equal pay for equal work. Bree’s care needs would not change if she were supported by unionized staff, so why should her current staff be paid less?

People who choose to work for microboards tend to do so because they recognize that it gives them a chance to really make a difference in someone’s life, to be creative, because the focus is on only one person. People who are supported by microboards have the opportunity for a quality of life that is beyond compare under any other support model available in B.C. Please don’t put that opportunity at risk. Implement the low-wage redress at the same rate to all employees across the sector as soon as possible.

An even larger but related issue is the general lack of funding to CLBC, which has been underfunded since its creation. Despite numerous budget increases since then, the gap between the need and the funding level has grown every year, resulting in an ever-growing wait-list or, as CLBC calls it, a request for service list.

I know, from speaking to families waiting to create microboards for their sons and daughters across the north, that most of them are receiving virtually no funding to support them this year. Many of the individuals have complex support needs like Bree-Anna but have been offered no money other than for respite.

It is time for government to increase the funding level to CLBC by more than just the amount required to maintain current service levels with small increases. It is time to make meaningful steps to close the gap between the current level of chronic underfunding and the real need. It is time to show people with disabilities that they are truly a valued part of our society, not just a part to be looked after because they must be.

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

Next up, Michael McLellan.

[5:10 p.m.]

MICHAEL McLELLAN

M. McLellan: Hi. I’m from the Self Advocate Leadership Network. A lot of our conversation from a lot of our committee members was a lot to do with CLBC and PWD, etc.

One of the bigger things for me to see with CLBC are some services like more funding for individualized funding, life-based funding, less to the globally funded areas due to how things have had to now change due to COVID-19. For the way services are going to have to change, there needs to be some more funding in that perspective.

The other place we could look at is counselling, which would really help some of the individuals who are going through mental health issues, etc., around that. The other areas I see CLBC, hopefully, doing some funding are just getting more people services. As we all know, there are always transitioning youth and not enough hours and support for everybody.

The other piece is PWD. We always say it needs to be increased to a good amount. We’ve got to live just like everybody else, and a living wage is something huge. You know, it’s living independently. It costs more. The rent for somebody living independently with somebody — it could be anywhere — you’re looking at $1,200 to $1,000 most places. That’s just for a one bedroom. So it’s really difficult to get a place and live fairly.

The rental amount on somebody’s PWD cheque doesn’t even cover it. It doesn’t. It’s 300-some-odd dollars for an individual — $375. It’s just crazy. That amount is nothing. It’s something where I just go and shake my head, when you’re seeing rent go up. I think we need to hopefully implement a portable rental subsidy for people on PWD and help more be able so they can live like everybody else. It is a huge problem, and it is necessary to move forward.

I mean, you can see dental, you can see all of these areas, where there’s not enough money there for these people who live on PWD to get everything. It costs lots for crowns, glasses — all those things that can’t be covered totally on a PWD cheque.

Yes, people can work. Some can; some can’t. Some people can only work two to four hours a week. Some people can work 20 hours a week. Some people can work full-time. It all depends on what they can find and are they able to live independently and live paying a fair rent that makes life easier.

It’s to a point that…. What I look at are major funding gaps — gaps that need to somehow be filled. The portable rental subsidy could look…. Actually for me, the rent, the $375, is so low. Rent for that should be at least $600 to $700, in my opinion. That’s just to get probably a room at this point. As someone….

[5:15 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m sorry to interrupt. We’re at the end of the five minutes. Did you want to make a final point, or are you okay?

M. McLellan: Thank you. I’m good.

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

Next up we have John Treleaven from the Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria.

GRUMPY TAXPAYER$ OF GREATER VICTORIA

J. Treleaven: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I believe I’m the last person you’ll hear from in this series. So this is either a good thing or a bad thing. First of all, congratulations to all of you in the effort you’ve taken to reach out to many organizations in all parts of the province. I listened to many of the presentations that you’ve heard.

Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria is totally non-partisan. It’s registered under the Societies Act — all volunteers.

How did we get started? About five years ago the board of directors of the capital regional district gave themselves a 100 percent pay increase in the first meeting of the new term. We felt that the pay increase may have been well warranted but that it was quite unethical for an elected body to wait until the first meeting of their new term to double their pay. That should have been done by the outgoing council. So our focus is on governance and the efficient use of taxpayers’ dollars.

We are not against taxes at all. What we want to be assured of, though, is that the governance models within which politicians like yourselves work are as efficient as they can be so that you can do your jobs. You’ll have seen from our brief that our major concern, actually, is local government in British Columbia, particularly in the capital regional district. We continue to question why we need 15 fire departments for 400,000 people and five police forces for 400,000 people. We want the local politicians and yourselves to succeed in your jobs.

Carole James, when she started this series of hearings, spoke to the group. She said at that time that she thought it wasn’t an understatement to say that we were in an unprecedented situation. We’ve never been in this situation. Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix have done a wonderful job on the health care side — a job we can all be proud of — but we’ve done something in the process of fighting COVID that has never been done before.

The whole economy of British Columbia and Canada has been put in an induced coma. You can do that, and you’ll understand the effect. The problem is getting it out of the coma. The most dangerous period for a COVID victim, really, is coming off the respirator. If we do not succeed in reviving the patient — the patient, in this case, is the business community — we will not succeed as a province or a country.

Now, 50 percent of Canada’s GDP is generated abroad. We are beside the United States, Mexico and Brazil — three COVID deniers. The problem we’re facing now is far worse than anything we’ve ever faced. Talk to Mr. Coleman and others on the committee who put the budget together for this province from 2008 to 2010. On the revenue side, there was nothing but ski jumps. It was terrible. The situation we’re in now is worse, because we’ve had to anaesthetize the private sector.

A challenge for you. If somebody can tell me how a business pays a tax, I’ll buy dinner. There’s only one taxpayer: the individual. In putting this budget together, let’s not act as if there are two. Businesses never pay a tax; their customers do. Businesses are flat on their backs right now for public health reasons.

If we don’t creatively get them back to health, it means our tax collecting mechanism is gone. No one has ever had to do what we have to do collectively. We now know that only customers generate the economic activity upon which we all depend, including everybody who has appeared before you. They’re all compelling cases.

[5:20 p.m.]

Go back to that budget in 2009, and ask yourself what happens. If the revenue projections fail, there aren’t any. The federal government cannot do a budget. It’s going to be almost impossible for you to do a budget.

We need a Bonnie Henry moment in the Ministry of Finance and in the Legislature. She has done a brilliant job of following the data and leading us all to a better place. You must do the same. No one else has ever had that responsibility in the history of the B.C. Legislature, nor in the history of the Ministry of Finance.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Well, it was a rousing way to finish.

Thank you very much, John. We do certainly appreciate the amount of work that has to be done in terms of moving this province forward.

That brings us to the end of our public consultations.

I wanted to thank all the presenters.

Actually, Nicholas Simons unfortunately can’t get the audio on, and he wanted to thank all the presenters. He asked me to do that, so I’m doing that right now.

Before we leave, though, I did want to thank the members. We did thank all of the staff from Hansard and the Clerk’s office earlier.

I want to say to all the members — to Mitzi; to Ronna-Rae; to Nicholas; to Rich; to my Deputy Chair, Doug Clovechok; and to Donna Barnett: thank you so much for basically just doing what we had to do. I know it was very difficult to do it this way, but no complaints, just got the job done. As the Chair, I can say I appreciate that. I hope that same spirit of working together will continue through our deliberations in July and August.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): I just want to say too, on behalf of the committee, Bob, that it has not been an easy task. We were all together last year travelling the province. We thought that was hard, but this is unprecedented.

I want to say to you how much we appreciated the leadership you showed. It wasn’t an easy job that you had, and you did an outstanding job. We want to say thank you for that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Doug. I really appreciate that.

Excellent, everyone. With that, if I could…. Unless anyone else wants to say anything? I think we’re good.

R. Leonard: I’ll move adjournment.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Okay. So a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 5:23 p.m.