The committee met at 8:30 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Janet Routledge, and I’m the MLA for Burnaby North 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 would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today in Vancouver on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Musqueam people.

I would also like to welcome everyone who is listening to and participating in today’s meeting.

Our committee is currently seeking input on priorities for the next provincial budget. We are pleased to be able to meet in person with a number of organizations today and tomorrow in Vancouver. Additional in-person meetings will take place next week.

British Columbians can also share their views by making written comments or by filling out the online survey. Details are available on our website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. The deadline for all input is 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 30, 2021, which is just under two weeks away.

We will carefully consider all input and make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be included in Budget 2022. The committee intends to release its report in November.

For today’s meeting, all presenters will be making individual presentations. Each presenter has five minutes for their presentation followed by five minutes for questions from committee members.

All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website. A complete transcript will also be posted.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. We’ll just go around the table, starting with Ben.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much.

My name is Ben Stewart, and I’m the MLA for Kelowna West. I look forward to your presentations today.

M. Dykeman: My name is Megan Dykeman, and I’m the MLA for Langley East. I look forward to your presentations, and I’m happy that you’re all joining us here today.

M. Starchuk: Hi. I’m Mike Starchuk, the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

It resides on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Kwantlen, Katzie and Semiahmoo.

L. Doerkson: Good morning, everybody. My name is Lorne Doerkson. I represent the Cariboo-Chilcotin. I, too, am looking forward to the presentations.

P. Alexis: Good morning. My name is Pam Alexis. I’m the MLA for Abbotsford-Mission.

I represent the unceded and ancestral territories of the Stó:lō Nations.

H. Sandhu: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

It is located on the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

Thank you for joining us.

G. Kyllo: Good morning. Greg Kyllo. I’m the MLA for Shuswap.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Mary Newell, from the Parliamentary Committees Office, and Amanda Heffelfinger, Simon DeLaat, Mike Baer and Billy Young, from Hansard Services.

Thank you in advance for all your assistance.

With that, we’ll turn to our first presentation, which is Lisa Cable, B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society.

Lisa, you have five minutes. We'll give you a 30-second warning to wrap it up. Following your five-minute presentation, committee members will have five minutes to ask questions.

Budget Consultation Presentations

B.C. FAMILY HEARING RESOURCE SOCIETY

L. Cable: Thank you. Good morning, everybody. It’s my pleasure to be here with you today. I see a few familiar faces and some new faces.

[8:35 a.m.]

My name, as Janet said, is Lisa Cable, and I work for B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society. We are an early intervention agency which serves children who are deaf and hard of hearing from the age of birth to five years, until they go to kindergarten.

We serve families in every one of your constituencies. We work with families throughout the entirety of the province and have actually recently entered into a contract with the government of Yukon to also work with their families, as they do not have similar services there.

Every year approximately 100 children are born deaf or hard of hearing in the province of British Columbia. The majority of those children will be born to parents who are hearing. This means that many of those parents will not be educated about the specific needs of their children as it relates to hearing loss and deafness. Our job at B.C. Family Hearing is to support, educate and build a community around these families during the crucial years of early learning.

There are currently three early intervention agencies in British Columbia serving deaf and hard-of-hearing children aged birth to five years. All of these agencies have been operating in the province for almost 40 years, working with families in myriad ways: one-on-one intervention with families in their homes, group programs, workshops, parent education, sign-language classes and providing events and opportunities for this special community to come together.

The Ministry of Children and Family Development is the primary funder for early intervention services for deaf and hard-of-hearing children for this age group. The contract for the MCFD funding was granted to our agency through an RFP process in 2015 for three years. Our contract has continued, with renewals, since 2018 until this year.

With these funds, B.C. Family Hearing subcontracts to the other two early intervention agencies serving this same population. Last year, we were very pleased to see a one-time funding increase that addressed the shortfall at all three agencies, which had resulted from an over 40 percent increase in the number of families served since 2015 without any corresponding increase in funds.

We are currently in a six-month renewal and are awaiting a new contract. MCFD has committed to an increase in funding, which we are very grateful for. However, our contract renewals since 2018 have been for periods of either six or 12 months. As I mentioned, we are currently in a six-month contract renewal process.

It’s incredibly challenging to plan programming, staffing and future growth with such short-term contracts, especially when contract renewal talks begin three months prior to the expiry of the contract. We believe it is beneficial for both the provincial government and to our three organizations that longer-term contracts be secured.

Through our early intervention program, parents and their deaf and hard-of-hearing children are able to learn skills that will serve them through their lives into adulthood. Working with these children when they are young allows them to develop skills, attributes and abilities at a very early age that will ensure their success through all the stages of their lives.

The systems in place in British Columbia of early detection and early intervention for these children have excellent success, and our provincial programs are recognized nationally and internationally as leaders in the field. Ensuring that the proper long-term funding is in place will allow this success to continue.

This budget process can understandably become mired in facts and figures, such as I’ve presented today. However, behind these numbers are real children and families. The reason I work at B.C. Family Hearing Resource Centre is that I myself am hard of hearing, and I have a ten-year-old daughter who is deaf. We spent the first five years of her life receiving services from this program. I can attest personally to the life-changing work that happens when these children receive services when they are as young as they are.

At B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society, we want to be able to offer our families not only the bare minimum of what they need but all the supports and services that they should have to ensure their children grow up to be thriving, contributing members of our diverse society.

We sincerely look forward to continuing to build upon our relationship with MCFD and the provincial government through long-term contracts and relationships as we serve this special community.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Lisa.

Now, are there members of the committee that have specific questions?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Lisa. I think we’re all a little bit hard of hearing as we age, so we appreciated the….

I have to say that I was surprised when you said that there was a 40 percent increase. What’s the reason for that? What is the cause? I can understand or be empathetic to­wards the idea — this fact that the funding is on a contract basis for something that’s so important.

L. Cable: The numbers haven’t changed in terms of there being more children diagnosed in terms of a percentage of the population.

There are a couple of factors. The population, obviously, is growing. We have people coming in from other prov­inces that often are not being detected in those other provinces because the programs are not as strong. They come here, and they’re identified as deaf and hard of hearing when they arrive here.

[8:40 a.m.]

Also, when they immigrate here, people who have not been identified — they’ve had their children elsewhere — come here, and they’re being identified here.

We also expanded the services. Previously, a few years ago, they were only funded for children who sort of had a moderate to profound hearing loss. We’ve now brought in that to include children with unilateral, one-sided, hearing loss or mild hearing loss. So that also expanded the group of children that we were serving.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much. That’s great. I think everyone can appreciate what it’s like with Nigel Howard, who has kind of captured the imagination of everybody — and just the excitement about it.

Let me ask you, on the funding: what do you think would be a better model, rather than the three-year contract? Is there any discussion that’s taking place to help that?

L. Cable: Actually, we’d be happy with a three-, four- or five-year contract. As I said, what we’ve had since 2018 is six- or 12-month renewals. As I said, right now we’re in six months. What happens is we get the contract for six months, and then a few months later, we’re already in a process to negotiate the next contract renewal.

You’re not having time to sit down and say: “Okay, we’ve received these funds. Let’s plan out a few years.” Instead, you’re getting funds, and you’re right back into the contract-renewal process. We’re spending our time and energy on that instead of receiving the funds and being able to spend the time and energy on how we plan and go forward and make sure we’re providing the best services.

M. Starchuk: I think Ben and, Lisa, your presentation solved all my questions that I had. It was: what length of contract are you looking for? I mean, you said three or four years, but can you actually budget out that far with those expectations of being able to get the funds? You’re very clear. You don’t have to exert any energy writing those things that are there.

Just so we’re clear, my hearing is pretty good. My balance is not so much.

L. Cable: Because we do really know the numbers, sort of, of children…. What happens is we have new children coming in, but then we also have our kindergarten graduates going out. We do have a pretty clear number, and we can look forward to those three or five years and sort of estimate, within reason, what our services would look like.

L. Doerkson: Thanks for the presentation. How many children are affected by this? I mean, the growth, obviously, sounds staggering. But throughout Brit­ish Columbia, how many kids?

L. Cable: Each year we’re serving about 400-plus children in the age range that we’re talking about. The other two agencies are considerably smaller, and they serve about another 100 children between them.

There are about 500 families, age birth to school entry in B.C., that are receiving services. We don’t serve 100 percent of the children, because there are some families that opt not to receive services, but it’s quite a high percentage of families that do receive services from us in some way.

L. Doerkson: Thanks. What is the total funding that you’re getting now?

L. Cable: I don’t know the exact numbers to date, but our operating budget is just over $2 million, and approxi­mately 75 to 80 percent of that comes from MCFD.

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much, Lisa. You indicated 75 to 80 percent of your funding comes from MCFD. Where does the balance of your funding come from?

L. Cable: Private funding, other grants. We get a small amount from the Ministry of Health, quite a small amount. Then fundraising, grants and other private funding.

G. Kyllo: Has MCFD given any indication why they’re hesitant to enter into a longer-term contract?

L. Cable: I’m not privy to those particular conversations. Our executive director is part of that.

My understanding is that it’s not necessarily a hesitancy to give us a longer contract. It’s just within the department that that’s sort of where they’re at in terms of time. I think there’s been some turnover. I know there’s a new minister in the last year. I think by the time we get to contract renewals, they’re like: “Oh, okay, let’s get you a new contract. Well, this is all we can sort of think of right now.”

We do have a very good relationship with both the minister and the staff at MCFD, and we continue to have dialogue with them. As I said, we’ve been pushing for this for a number of years, and we just sort of seem to be stalling out a little bit in terms of getting that longer contract.

G. Kyllo: Sure. If I may, could I ask: have you seen an annual increase over the last number of years, to take into consideration the increasing demand?

[8:45 a.m.]

L. Cable: No, it has not been a regular annual increase. Last year we were in quite a serious position where all three agencies were in a deficit, and the two smaller agencies were at risk of even closing. That’s when there was quite a strong advocacy campaign, and we did get a one-time funding of $750,000 from MCFD to help cover the deficits and to ensure that those other two programs could remain solvent and go forward.

Again, we have not seen the new contract. My understanding is that there is to be an increase, but we don’t know the amount or what that increase will look like. But again, that hasn’t been an annual thing. I guess from 2015 to now, we’re in six years or seven years.

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think we’re going to have to wrap it up at this point. You’ve certainly piqued everyone’s interest.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for the work that you do and for taking the time to come and speak to us. It is very clear that your society plays an important role in providing stability to families at an early age. I think we hear the message loud and clear that you’re looking for stability in order to be able to continue doing that work.

Next we have Dr. Samson Ng, British Columbia Dental Association.

Dr. Ng, if you’d like to come and join us at the table. You have five minutes, and we’ll give you a 30-second signal to wrap up.

B.C. DENTAL ASSOCIATION

S. Ng: Hello. I’m Dr. Samson Ng, the president of the B.C. Dental Association and a certified specialist in oral medicine and pathology in B.C. I have a private practice in Abbotsford and also in Vancouver and also work at both UBC and Vancouver General Hospital.

The BCDA represents over 3,700 dentists who are committed to oral and overall health of British Columbians.

Congratulations to the government for its COVID-19 response. The BCDA is pleased that its members have been able to assist in administering the vaccine and will welcome and continue to support this and other vaccines that could be administered in the dental office. As always, we continue to support the efforts of the Ministry of Health as well as the provincial health officer.

The B.C. public health system has proven its resilience during the last 20 months, but the demands remain high due to COVID, which has delayed medical care. Today our recommendations focus on how dentistry can assist in reducing the demands on the public health care system, especially for cancer and other immunocompromised patients.

Our first recommendation is the introduction of a re­mote oral cancer screening program to expedite the triage of the potential oral cancer patients in remote areas. Oral cancer rates are increasing, largely due to HPV-related cancer. This year, 875 patients are estimated to be diag­nosed with oral cancer, an increase of 12.9 percent since 2018. Unfortunately, the cancer has a high mortality rate due to the diagnosis.

Currently patients in remote areas are often required to travel to Vancouver for diagnosis, which means that they encounter time off work, travel costs, along with the distress of awaiting a cancer diagnosis. Early diagnosis also reduces the demand on the public health care system by reducing the need for extensive treatment required for the late diagnosis care. Under the proposed program, oral medicine specialists work virtually with dentists and physicians to triage patients to ensure early diagnosis in their own communities.

Our second recommendation is to update the disability and social assistance dental plan. This plan has not been reviewed, nor have the rates increased, over the past 14 years, despite a significant increase in patients with a disability. For example, an adult has access to $1,000 of coverage over two years.

Those with a disability often have complex medical problems that are further complicated by their lack of dental care. For example, transplant patients have to wait for their dentistry before they proceed to their surgery. Currently the fee is 51 percent of the current dental fee for adult patients, often requiring dentists to bill their patients, especially for dentures, due to the lack of components.

A fee increase will also directly improve the sustainability of the over 20 not-for-profit dental clinics and enhance their ability to meet the needs of the government clients, seniors and low-income families.

[8:50 a.m.]

Our third recommendation is to create a dental plan for low-income seniors who rely on the SAFER program, which has provided rent subsidies, to determine eligibility. Teeth age with bodies and are at risk of becoming decayed and broken, especially for those who suffer from dry mouth due to medication or disease. The majority of seniors do not have dental plans. If the current social assistance coverage was extended to the SAFER recipients, we’ve estimated the cost of the new dental program to be $6 million to $6.5 million and that it would relieve the pressure on the public health care system.

Our fourth recommendation is that dentists have access to the B.C. PharmaNet system. Dentists are the second-largest prescribing group after physicians. Without access to PharmaNet, dentists rely on the patients for updated drug history. They will contact the pharmacist or the physician for medically complex patients, but this only delays the treatment for patients, as these other health care providers are not readily available.

Access to PharmaNet for dentists would reduce the risk to the patients and the demand for other health care providers. Dentists are frequent targets for drug-seeking pa­tients, and access to the PharmaNet system would reduce this behaviour.

The B.C. Dental Association values our working relationship with the B.C. government. We look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship so that we can provide British Columbians with the best oral health care. Thank you. I’m happy to take any questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Ng.

Questions from the committee?

M. Starchuk: Thank you for you presentation, Dr. Ng.

You had mentioned that dental for seniors gives relief to the public health care system. Can you explain that?

S. Ng: We know that in a dental emergency situation, lots of the ER care related to dentistry is for elderly patients who do not have access to care. They end up going to the emergency room for typical dental infections.

You will also notice that there are lots of tooth-related problems for those senior patients. They end up going to the family doctor, asking for antibiotics, without actually being able to definitively deal with their dental needs. They are temporizing the situation, and it is an ongoing situation. Because dental infection is an infection that requires surgical methods to correct such things, putting out antibiotics multiple times will only increase the drug resistance but not really solve the problem and will consume the public health care system. It’s as basic as that.

L. Doerkson: I wanted to clarify, I guess, the point. Did you say that you assumed that the cost would be around $6.5 million for programs for low-income seniors?

S. Ng: I believe that it is the calculation from the board. I do not have such confirmed details. I am able to have the board provide further details on such estimations.

L. Doerkson: How many seniors do you think fall into that category? Do you know?

S. Ng: I am uncertain.

L. Doerkson: Just going back to early detection, I think it’s pretty clear now that that’s a benefit to us. But do you have any numbers around what that might save the medicare system by understanding that earlier?

S. Ng: I do not have the numbers in front of me, but I think that the whole idea is, at least at the current position, for myself and my other colleagues to fly up to the north to provide for oral cancer–related situations. I think you’re referring to that. We actually fly everywhere, doing a rotation to support the physicians and the dentists and the DMD doctors for lots of care.

I do not have those numbers, but I feel that with the triage system, it will really save a lot of transportation costs and administration costs and, ultimately, reduce patient stress for the oral cancer–related situations. We know that Vancouver seems to be the centre that is able to help out these types of patients.

M. Dykeman: A little bit of my question was just previously asked. The program itself for the remote oral cancer assessment — has this been implemented anywhere else? Do you have an idea of what the approximate cost of that would be?

[8:55 a.m.]

S. Ng: Based on what I know, it hasn’t been really implemented in a Canadian system. I do not know the actual cost to administrate that, but I do not think it would be a high amount, because a virtual consultation is quite a minimal involvement in terms of the clinician’s times.

I think the savings of being able to triage the patients who are in need to Vancouver is more important — and also will make sure it won’t jam into the system something that is not relevant to oral cancer.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Dr. Samson. Great presentation and great facts that you mentioned — how delay in dental care can cost the health care system millions, if not billions, of dollars.

You talked about the remote oral cancer detection cen­tre in rural communities. In my understanding, we don’t have any existing at the moment. Or is there any rural area or community in B.C. that there is a centre close by?

What are your thoughts about having a mobile early cancer detention centre? You do fly to different communities, but on a permanent basis, what would you think? Would that be more doable? Any conversations around that?

S. Ng: We haven’t had anything specific, but so far, in Prince George, in Victoria, in Kamloops, somehow we have some affiliation with the B.C. Cancer Agency, and we have some time allocated to serve such needs, such de­mands. But I believe that we are more relied on by the DMD community, oral surgery community. Essentially, we provide care to their office to triage such patients.

I do not think we have any specific plan to have a site for remote communication. We are, essentially, directly connected with the patient and their clinic.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much. When you talk….

Sorry. Go ahead.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re pretty well out of time now.

H. Sandhu: I was just going to say thank you so much. I appreciate your presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Ng. Yes, thank you for alerting us to these issues and making a case for better integration in our public health care system.

Our next presentation is Marina Banister, Canadian Association of Physician Assistants.

You have five minutes. One of us up here will give you a signal when you have 30 seconds to go.

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF
PHYSICIAN ASSISTANTS

M. Banister: Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair and hon. Members, for the opportunity to speak with you today about our recommendations for the introduction of physician assistants, more commonly known as PAs, into B.C.

My name is Marina, and I am the manager of advocacy and stakeholder relations for the Canadian Association of Physician Assistants. We’re the professional voice of more than 800 PAs who work in the public health systems across Canada, as well as in the armed forces. PAs work all across the world, including, in Canada, in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

So what is a PA? PAs, like nurse practitioners, are ad­vanced practice professionals. PAs are educated in the medical model, which means their training is similar to that of Canadian doctors. They work autonomously under the supervision of licensed doctors to provide primary care, acute care and speciality care in all types of clinical settings.

Every day we hear about the hardships that British Columbians, especially in rural and remote regions, face in accessing health care. At CAPA, we understand the enor­mous task of improving health care with the budgetary resources that are available. PAs represent an untapped resource that can help the government provide high levels of care to patients while reducing overall costs. So let me dive into some examples.

Around Canada in emergency rooms, PAs are consid­ered essential in improving patient flow, lowering wait times and boosting physician morale and productivity. The addition of PAs can help lower initial practitioner assessment time and reduce the percentage of walk-ins leaving unseen by a doctor.

[9:00 a.m.]

For example, in rural Gimli, Manitoba, a PA makes it possible for the ER doors to stay open even when physicians are not on site. Doctors are always available to consult electronically, but PAs are trained to perform procedures like wound care, casting and to begin stabilizing more urgent cases. This model can be seen in rural emergency departments in places like Ashcroft, where they currently only are open on the weekends, instead of the closures we see now.

PAs can also help with surgical wait times. Demands on an already-stretched surgical workforce are growing. One successful model has been the use of PAs within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. In this study, PAs increased the surgical throughput of primary hip and knee replacements by 42 percent and decreased wait times from 44 weeks to 30 weeks compared to the preceding year. With more PAs providing support to surgical teams, tasks like post-operative evaluations, follow-up visits and even prescription refills would be more efficient.

Last but certainly not least, I want to put special emph­asis on how PAs can help access to care in rural and remote communities. Health care needs in rural and remote and many First Nations communities are complex. Patients often lack timely access to services despite high rates of chronic disease and other illnesses. The addition of PAs in these communities can improve the continuity of care and offer patients more practitioner time. It can make the physician workload more manageable and bring much-needed flexibility to local health care teams.

As proven, there are endless arguments on how PAs can help with patient outcomes. But let’s dive into some of the economic arguments for the introduction of PAs.

In its recommendations to governments, the Conference Board of Canada has said that PAs play a vital role in improving patient outcomes and reducing overall system costs. The Conference Board also reports that the Canadian health care system could save over $600 million if the use of PAs increases across the country. Given these compelling arguments, CAPA would like to make the following recommendations.

First, CAPA recommends to the committee that the prov­incial government introduce and regulate PAs under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.

Secondly, we recommend that the government earmark $6.5 million in funding to hire over 50 PAs over the course of the next three years and work with health stakeholders to identify where the PA model can have the greatest impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic has swiftly changed some of our long-held beliefs about how we deliver care. Some say we’ve pushed the telemedicine revolution forward by at least a decade or more. It’s time to make the same progress in our health care workforce. The PA model can help B.C. provide more care at a lower cost while helping doctors focus on the complex patients who truly need their exper­tise.

CAPA has been asking the government of B.C. to make this change for almost a decade, and there’s no better time than now. Budget 2022 is an important opportunity to change the workforce landscape in our province that will benefit generations to come. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Marina.

We will now ask members of the committee to ask questions.

P. Alexis: Thank you so much for your presentation.

What are the barriers? Why haven’t we done this? You’ve been asking for ten years. Can you just tell me: what are the blocks? I need to understand that.

M. Banister: For sure. From our perspective, we don’t see very many barriers in making this change. What we’ve heard is that it’s not a priority, although we believe it is.

Something that I think could really be a catalyst in this, though, are the Alberta and Ontario examples. Alberta just regulated PAs on April 1 of this year. Ontario has an­nounced regulation and is now going through with it. So more and more, we’re actually seeing more comparable jurisdictions accept this as a really welcome change. We think that this could be a great example to follow and some good jurisdictional precedent for B.C. to follow as well.

L. Doerkson: You’ve certainly piqued my interest with savings of $600 million. My question is…. I understand that there are obvious challenges throughout British Columbia, but certainly with respect to rural situations — you touched on one of them in Ashcroft — there are many struggles.

[9:05 a.m.]

Can you just clarify for me the role of a PA compared to a nurse practitioner? My understanding is that a nurse practitioner can pretty much do the duties of a doctor. Is that correct?

M. Banister: I can’t really speak to the role of the nurse practitioner. That’s not my scope of expertise.

PAs are trained in a general model. Nurses are trained in the nursing model, where PAs are trained, again, in the generalist. For example, if there is a surgeon who does a specific type of surgery, they can train that PA to do everything that they need to help them. As long as this physician believes that the PA can do those tasks, then they can do those tasks. So it makes it a very flexible rule.

Just to your point on the rural benefit, one of our biggest stakeholders and champions is the B.C. society of rural health. We’re very closely knit within the rural community, and they’ve been calling on this change for a while as well.

L. Doerkson: Great. Thank you very much.

G. Kyllo: The physician assistants — where are they currently working in the medical system?

M. Banister: They work in all types of different specialties — emergency rooms, primary care, hospitals, surgery. To be honest, I don’t know if I could think of an area that they’re not working in.

G. Kyllo: Okay. Thank you. So they’re already working in the medical system. The intention is just to give them additional duties and responsibilities. Is that correct?

M. Banister: The intention would be to introduce them into British Columbia so that they can work in this jurisdiction. There actually are about 30 PAs working in British Columbia, but they’re working in the Canadian Armed Forces and not with civilians.

L. Doerkson: What is the timeline to train to become a PA, and how many are graduating now, yearly, in Canada?

M. Banister: Great question. The timeline is…. There’s a two-year program, and right now there are two programs in Ontario and one in Manitoba.

Actually, our third recommendation, but I didn’t list it today, is to work with UBC to create our own homegrown PA program, because we know that if you train in one area, you’re more likely to stay there when you work. Alberta is also very interested in developing PA programs now that they’re regulated. So I believe we have about 75 graduates a year, but I see that drastically increasing over the next number of years as provinces become more interested in creating their own programs.

J. Routledge (Chair): Not seeing any other questions, I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today and to provide this offer, this solution to what is an increasingly pressured health care system in British Columbia. Thanks so much.

M. Banister: Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Joan Rush, Canadian Society for Disability and Oral Health.

CANADIAN SOCIETY FOR
DISABILITY AND ORAL HEALTH

J. Rush: Thank you. We’re hearing a lot about teeth.

Good morning. My name is Joan Rush. I’m chair of the advocacy committee for the Canadian Society for Disability and Oral Health and the parent of a young man who lives with a debilitating developmental disability.

I’m going to take a second from my own presentation time to thank Dr. Ng for also mentioning the importance of this issue of access to dental care for adults with disabilities. For my son and for all B.C. citizens who live with developmental disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and similar disabling conditions, I’m here to convince you to recommend that B.C. finally implement a proper dental health care program for B.C. adults who live with developmental disabilities.

Under the Community Living Authority Act, B.C. recognizes that it owes a duty of care towards adults with a developmental disability, which is defined to be a significant intellectual impairment. To qualify for services under that act, the adults must have an IQ diagnosed as lower than 80. The Ministries of Health and Social Development have mutually committed to a comprehensive system of health care and support for adults with developmental disabilities, agreed to and signed on to by all the health authorities.

[9:10 a.m.]

However, the government is failing to meet that duty of care and its commitment to protect the oral health of these vulnerable adults. People with developmental disabilities need a modern, properly funded dental plan and specialized dental clinics where appropriately trained dentists can treat them under general anaesthesia. Currently we don’t ask our dentists in the faculty of dentistry to be trained to treat people with special needs.

The existing persons-with-disabilities dental plan is completely inadequate to meet the needs of adults with developmental disabilities. B.C. implemented this tiny PWD dental plan in 1995 and has never improved the list of treatments. This plan doesn’t even cover fluoride treatments for disabled adults, which is an inexpensive treatment to prevent cavities. The antiquated dental plan creates such onerous barriers to care that many vulnerable adults cannot access even medically necessary dental treatment.

To illustrate, I’ve offered the case of my own son — he consents — who lives with severe autism. He does not speak, read or write. He requires his dental treatment under general anaesthesia.

In his 20s, he began to beat himself furiously. We went to multiple doctors, but the dentist refused to believe that his teeth were the issue. She said his teeth looked fine. He beat his head until his eyes were black. He chewed his arms until they were torn and bleeding.

His doctor prescribed pure codeine to try and deal with Graeme’s pain. It was horrifying. We sought help from neurologists, from all kinds of doctors, and could not get assistance. VGH insisted they couldn’t see him because they did not have surgical time available to them. The reason was because they were limiting their care to the services — list of treatments — and access to the fees under this book.

Ultimately, Graeme was diagnosed, after I threatened to sue the hospital, to access surgery, to get X-rays. It was discovered he had seven severely infected teeth. He needed seven root canals. If any of you have ever had a root canal, you’ll know how intense his pain must have been. He suffered so much pain that during that period, he developed a seizure disorder and continues to need daily anti-epileptics. He beat his ear so furiously it remains permanently deformed.

It was horrifying for all of us, but VGH refused to pro­vide even this standard of care. If any of you ever have a root canal–treated tooth, you will be offered a crown to protect that now fragile tooth, but they could not locate a dentist trained to provide that. Also, they argued, this plan did not cover crowns — untrue, but nevertheless.

He suffered because they didn’t provide expert treatment, under general anaesthesia, in a specialized clinic, which most of the pediatric dentists recommend for adults with complex special needs. But having limited his treatment to this, they couldn’t….

B.C. has not increased fees since 2003 under this plan. But unlike the typical dental plan, fees under our normal BCDA dental plan are increased every year between 4 and 6 percent.

This is the plan, frankly, that you use. This is the plan that the B.C. government uses for MLAs such as your­selves, all government officials, elected officials, employees. If we can use this plan and taxpayers pay your claims, why could we not use the same? The former head of the patient care quality office for Vancouver Coastal Health recommended that for such complex care patients as patients with developmental disabilities, MSP should consider their treatment medically necessary.

I am pleading with you to please do the right thing. Graeme is not alone. The three things I’ve asked for are a comprehensive dental plan, like yours; a specialized dental clinic — they’re not expensive; they could be added into hospitals — where they could access care; and that we train our dental professionals. If you do those things, you’ll meet your duty of care.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Joan.

Questions?

[9:15 a.m.]

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much for sharing that story, especially the story about your son. It must have been absolutely horrific. You did a fantastic presentation. So I just want to thank you very much.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I agree. Great presentation.

Just on the diagnosis part. I can’t quite imagine, when you describe Graeme…. In terms of people that are having that definition of PWD or those learning disabilities and are in a situation, do they…?

For Graeme to have seven infected teeth, etc., how did so much of that go unnoticed from the younger age? Is it a case that it just progressively gets worse, or is it just starting from day one when he’s diagnosed with autism and all the challenges that face a parent with that?

J. Rush: The only dentists who are mandatorily trained in Canada to treat people with special needs are pediatric dentists. Vancouver has been blessed, at the Children’s Hospital, to have had some excellent pediatric dentists.

When Graeme was diagnosed with profound autism — which he was at quite an early age, before he was three — he was immediately sent to Children’s Hospital for his dental care. It was excellent, so we never worried much. His dentist did the work they needed to do. He had regular visits. The current government — in 2016 or 2017, I think — opened another dental clinic at B.C. Children’s Hospital. So profoundly disabled children in British Columbia have pretty great access to care.

The standard description of the transition to adult care is that they fall off a cliff. The Canadian Society for Disability and Oral Health is primarily composed of pediatric dentists, many of them now retired, some of them very active, and all of them horrified that patients they have cared for as children and into their early teens — that there is no access to any specialized care.

Ontario does a bit better. They have a couple of specialized clinics. B.C. has not. B.C has not recognized the complexity of this particular client group — people who can’t speak for themselves, who can’t explain where the pain is. So as they develop these presentations…. Unfortunately, there has been a belief within the medical community that people with autism simply hit themselves for no reason. Certainly, that was what the dentist told us: “You have to understand.” But I knew my son. That wasn’t true.

I have been fighting this and making presentations, to follow on the last presenter, since 2008. That’s why I say I am pleading with you. I am a former director of Community Living British Columbia — Crown corporation, large budget. But the mandate for CLBC does not include health and dental. That remains with Health and the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. So the plan is funded by the one, administered by the other and helps no one.

I’m begging you. It is time. If you don’t like the fees the Dental Association, frankly, that you are paying for yours…. If you don’t like it, regulate dentist fees. We could easily do it. We regulate doctors. But don’t make people who have developmental disabilities and their families have to somehow deal with the underfunded….

It’s unfair and so wrong for such a challenged population. They are a very identifiable group. It’s mostly CLBC clients.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. We have about 30 seconds left. Any other quick questions for Joan?

Okay, Joan. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for sharing your personal story with us. I think we all found it very moving. I’m struck by the implications of severe oral pain for someone who can’t speak up for themselves.

J. Rush: If you could give me one second to respond to that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, I say that to wrap up.

J. Rush: Okay. It’s only to say that Graeme’s case is by no means all alone, and we were familiar….

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes.

[9:20 a.m.]

J. Rush: I mean, one young woman died from pneumonia caused by dental infections. It’s very common, as Dr. Ng mentioned, for elderly patients to develop recurring pneumonia because of dental infections.

He’s not alone. Please don’t think I came and told you my son’s story.

J. Routledge (Chair): No, we understand that. Your personal story made it real for us. So thank you for that.

Our next presenter is Christopher Lam, B.C. Lung Association.

B.C. LUNG ASSOCIATION

C. Lam: Hello, everybody. As a Burnaby kid, it’s nice to see some Burnaby representation. Hi, Janet. Good to see you again.

Thank you for your time again. I’ll get right to it. My name is Christopher Lam, and I’m the president and CEO of the British Columbia Lung Association. I want to thank you guys for, obviously, hearing a lot of issues. You’re going to hear a lot from people all over the province who need help. I’m particularly grateful for you being here, as I represent the one in five British Columbians who is living with some sort of lung disease.

We’re in a pandemic. I think we all know what respiratory illness is and what that can do to you. The host of issues around lung disease is so immense and so great.

About us, in general. We are a patient-focused organization aimed at elevating those voices. That’s why I’m here, so thank you guys for that.

I want to make it very clear that taking care of our lung health is probably the single most important thing we can do if we are intending to increase the number of healthy non-users of our health care system in the future. I don’t need to remind anybody in this room that we as a province do quite well, which also means we are going to age quite significantly. So if we’re going to impact what we look like as a province, we need to take care of our lung health. It is easily the most important thing we can do.

I want to highlight a couple things. One is that we, the British Columbia Lung Association and the province, have a tremendous history of moving mountains together. Our greatest success is something that requires continuing support and continuing funding. That is represented in our provincial smoking cessation program, which is QuitNow.

We have, by our latest data, some of the best smoking rates in the country. We’re down to about 10 percent in our province, but 10 percent is still a significant number. Particularly, we have metrics that require us to get down to about 5 percent, if not lower. We need collective support to make that happen, so we need that to continue to move on. We’ve begun rebuilding the program — some of you are aware of that — to make it into a world-class, innovative program. That requires support and funding to happen.

Most significantly with our QuitNow program is the epidemic we’re facing around vaping and youth. We are seeing astounding numbers. Our most recent data suggests that up to 14 percent of youth between the ages of ten and 19 are vaping. That number is absolutely mind-boggling. We need to encourage these kids to not start at all. This is one of the most significant health crises we’re going to face when it comes to the kids of our province.

We need to find support and funding to supplement educational tools specifically geared to our youth. We have to get creative. We have to get innovative. Tobacco companies are in control here. They have bottomless pockets, and we know that that’s something we need to face as we move forward. But we can do this together. We can be just as innovative. We have health on our side. We need to make this happen.

On a similar topic, another issue that we need to continue funding is our wood stove exchange program with the Ministry of Environment. Throughout our province, we have several wood stoves. A wood stove is a romantic idea; there’s no doubt. And I will admit it is a logical, cost-effective way for a lot of communities to heat their homes during the winter season. But in high-density-population areas, wood stoves are one of the most harmful things you can do for your health.

Coupled with that is wildfire season. So the opposite season is wildfire season. I know that affects many of your communities and your hometowns. Wildfire season re­quires a great deal of education around our province. What does it mean? What do campfires mean? Burning wood produces a particulate matter so incredibly finite and small that when you inhale that into your lungs, it never comes back out.

[9:25 a.m.]

For those of us who are suffering with COPD or asthma or other lung-health issues, this is life-changing. This is life-altering. This is potentially, without exaggeration, life-ending. This is something we need to be mindful of.

Right now in our province, we have about 150,000 peo­ple diagnosed with COPD. That’s a lot of people that are going to require critical care if things like using a wood stove and wildfires are causing exacerbations of their is­sues, which ultimately lead to hospitalizations and higher costs for our province.

One final thing I want to throw out there is that I want us to really focus on the bigger picture. That bigger picture is we require, in our province, a comprehensive, made-in-British-Columbia lung health strategy. It would be the first of its kind in our province. It would be following the footsteps of some of the other innovative jurisdictions. What this means is that now, when we’re thinking about the vaping epidemic, we think about what long COVID is doing to people’s lung health. We think about the infectious diseases, like the flu, that are going to plague us every year.

It’s time for us to have a plan that’s going to help all British Columbians age better and, quite simply put, put healthy non-users back into our system. It’s time for us to invest in something like this. It’s been done before, and we need it here in British Columbia now, if we’re really going to make an impact on how we age as a province.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much.

Questions from the committee?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Christopher. It’s good to see that we’re on that downhill trend towards 5 percent.

The question about wildfires…. There’s a few of us that are in regions that have been devastated by wildfires this year. I know in the Okanagan, where I’m from, it just set­tles right in there.

I guess the real question is going to be…. This is not a question for today. But the question, really, to you is: how can you help the ministry that’s dealing with wildfires in support of the mitigation and getting behind things that are not necessarily going to be as healthy choices? I’m talking about some of the burning, etc., that’s been put off for decades because of the fact that we’re all trying to have better air quality. But unfortunately, the reverse is happening now in the summer.

My question to you is: have you got any ideas for the Ministry of Forests, or can you at least be thinking about that?

C. Lam: Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things to ensure is that we have to have better education tools, better messaging that gets out there. I think there is a lot of romanticism around what wood smoke really is. The truth of the matter is that I think not many people recognize that wood smoke is one of the most harmful things that you could do for your lung health. That message simply just isn’t out there.

There is a lot of myths about what you can do and what you can’t do during a wildfire. For example, can you exercise during a wildfire season when it’s smoky out? Or even right down to: “Well, I see a blue sky, therefore my air quality must be good.” None of those things are actually true in a microcosm.

It’s important for us to get the right messaging out, particularly in communities most affected by wildfires. There are myths that need to be busted and information that will be good for their lung health.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation today. It’s an area that is very near and dear to me. My daughter is asthmatic and struggles through the different seasons, especially with the particulates.

In my prior life, I was on school board. At the beginning of that, vaping was something, as a board, we were really looking at, because the belief was that it was just steam. You’d hear the kids say to you: “Well, it’s just steam.” Then you say: “Well, why would you care, then? Why do you want to…?” “Well, no. I really like to make shapes with it.”

What success has been had in tackling the vaping, and where do you see resources having to go, going forward? It does appear to be a massively growing problem, and schools do have an incredibly difficult time tackling it.

C. Lam: That’s a fantastic question, Megan, and I think there are two parts to this. I’ll keep it somewhat brief. I know there is a time here.

The first part is that right now the Lung Association, in partnership with the government, has produced a toolkit that’s been targeted to both elementary schools and high schools.

[9:30 a.m.]

Now, you’re right. It is tricky to have that ear turn and hear that. The question really is: how do you speak a language they understand? It requires us to really consult the youth and really make a significant investment in having the right types of cohorts come together to make informed decisions about how we are going to do this.

I think one of the most significant things is there has to be an understanding about what they’re putting into their bodies. Let them make those informed decisions.

I completely agree with you. There is a belief, not just amongst adults but with the youth themselves, that it’s just steam. It is not just steam. The number of chemicals that are in there that are unregulated is significant.

Now recently, the government did make a number of recommendations to help with that, and I think those are excellent steps in the right direction. But we have to go further. We have to ensure that this epidemic stops, because the lives and the lung health of kids in our province are at stake here.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Mike, we have less than a minute. Go ahead.

M. Starchuk: Okay. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Christopher, for your presentation.

I just have a question with regards to possible studies that are possibly coming out with the long-term effects with COVID. You know, everybody talks about the vaccine and what it can do long term, but I’m wondering if you guys are more concerned with those people who are hospitalized with their lung infections.

C. Lam: Absolutely. There are a number of new studies that are being funded by the Lung Association, particularly around long COVID. The early results are not good. I mean, a number of those results demonstrate there is significant long-term damage to the lung tissue for those who have suffered from COVID, whether or not their symptoms were severe or not. I think it’s going to be quite some time before we see the true long-term effect.

What we’re seeing, particularly in those who currently live with some sort of lung condition, is a significant deter­ioration of long-term quality of life. That, to me, is an astounding thing that we really need to also have the message out about and that we, as a health care system, have to prepare for.

We know what the numbers are, about the number of people who have it. The numbers of people who are suffering from long COVID is astoundingly high. So we have to be prepared, which is really — thank you for the segue — why we’re suggesting that an investment in a lung health strategy will help mitigate against this over the long term.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Christopher. Speaking for myself, this has been very educational. I thought I knew about vaping and smoking and wood stoves, but you’ve really brought it home. Thanks so much.

C. Lam: Absolutely. Happy to help. Any time, guys.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Michelle Di Tomaso, Dense Breasts Canada.

Hi, Michelle.

DENSE BREASTS CANADA

M. Di Tomaso: Oh, you guys are in for a treat. I listened to “I Am Woman” about 20 times this morning. I am ready.

Good morning. I would like to thank you all for this amazing opportunity. My name is Michelle Di Tomaso, and I am co-founder of Dense Breasts Canada. Jennie Dale and I started this volunteer organization in 2016.

I’m just going to jump right in. Dense breasts make it harder for a radiologist to spot cancer on a mammogram, which is essentially an X-ray. Dense breasts appear white. So do cancerous tumours, creating a masking effect. It’s like finding a snowball in a snowstorm.

Often women with dense breasts will discover they have cancer when the tumour has grown big enough to feel. At this point, they are more than likely to need chemotherapy, radiation and possibly a mastectomy.

There is a way to find cancer earlier in dense breasts, and that is adding ultrasound to mammograms. We were so very fortunate to have Janet Routledge invite Dr. Paula Gordon, our medical adviser, and I to speak at the B.C. Legislature’s women’s caucus in May of 2018. After hearing that women were not being told they have dense breasts and its implications, the caucus — including our current Finance Minister, Selina Robinson — immediately formed an all-party committee, agreeing to write the Health Minister and push for dense breast notification and the additional, essential ultrasound screening for these women.

[9:35 a.m.]

This meeting was pivotal, as four months later, the an­nouncement was made.

It was three years ago tomorrow that Health Minister Dix announced that B.C. women and their GPs would be notified directly of the breast density in their mammogram results, with a requisition access to breast ultrasound covered by MSP.

B.C. women have listened, so much so that they are having a really, really hard time getting ultrasounds in a timely manner. There is only one clinic in the Lower Mainland offering them, and they are booked until 2022. I’m here to tell you that demand is there, but resources are low, and women are now choosing to go to Alberta to get the ultrasound, and B.C. is paying for them.

This is Sara Towgood. She is one of our B.C. women who found out she had dense breasts, met with her doctor, was referred for an ultrasound. In March 2021, she called the only clinic in B.C. and was offered an appointment in 2022. Meanwhile, she found out she could get an automated breast ultrasound in Alberta in two weeks that would be directly billed to B.C.’s MSP. She called the B.C. clinic one more time relaying this information. They called her the next day with an appointment for the following week.

B.C. women with dense breasts are working too hard to receive this essential, appropriate screening. On October 7, 2020, John Horgan and Adrian Dix announced the NDP’s ten-year cancer care plan promise, a press conference I was honoured to speak at. We are now asking that B.C. women with dense breasts be included in this plan and given the timely access to ultrasound, because mammograms are not sufficient in detecting cancer in these women.

Through consultation with Canadian clinics, health care professionals and breast experts, these are our recommen­dations.

Purchase an automated breast ultrasound machine for every mammogram facility.

Provide training to the mammogram technicians to perform the automated breast ultrasound. There is a shortage of sonographers in B.C. to perform hand-held breast ultrasounds. Automated breast ultrasounds would allow the mammogram and the ultrasound to be done in one appointment.

Give screening ultrasounds their own GL, with payment costs of $150 per screen to the facility.

MP and federal NDP Health critic Don Davies, Health Minister Dix and MLA Janet Routledge have been very en­gaged and have reached out recently to check in. Let’s get this done. We need to get this done. Finding cancers early will relieve cancer and health care and really change the stories of women with delayed diagnoses.

The package you have been provided are CliffsNotes for this solution. We have included the most recent paper done in Canada by Wu and Warren of Vancouver. It shows an impressive, incremental cancer detection rate of seven per 1,000.

J. Routledge (Chair): You’re just about out of time. You are out of time, actually, Michelle.

M. Di Tomaso: Oh, am I? Okay. Well, I will take your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): If you have got other things you wanted to say, you can work them into the answers.

M. Di Tomaso: Well, I’ve done the ask. You guys know what I want, and you guys know why.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the presentation.

The ultrasound can be done with any type of ultrasound machine, as I understand it. You don’t need a specific type?

M. Di Tomaso: They are being done right now with handhelds here in B.C. and in the majority of Canada. The problem with that is we lack sonographers here in B.C. We don’t have the manpower to do these hand-held breast ultrasounds anymore. The automated would allow us to expand the manpower to the actual mammogram technicians.

M. Dykeman: So the delay. What’s causing the signi­ficant amount of time for some is that there just are not that many clinics.

M. Di Tomaso: Well, that’s part…. No, there are clinics that can do them. They’re a little busy with diagnostic ultrasounds or breast ultra­sounds. These are for people who have found lumps.

[9:40 a.m.]

Another pushback was you’re not paying enough for the code. There’s a code that is a diagnostic code that has been assigned to screen these breast-screening ultrasounds for dense breasts. We’ve gotten an immense amount of pushback saying it’s not enough money.

M. Dykeman: Right. So my question was going to be…. You mentioned that there was one clinic. That’s why I was curious.

M. Di Tomaso: Correct. There were quite a few. When we first started, we called all the clinics, anywhere we could find that had mammogram machines that we could think of. It was literally looking them up on the website. They were doing them, but they realized that they’re not getting paid enough to do a full hand-held breast ultrasound.

The code that was given to them by the B.C. ministry…. I had to call for three months, every Monday for three months, to find out what that code was. We were getting women calling us or contacting us saying: “Okay, I’ve gone and got the requisition. I’m now trying to get my ultrasound, and I’m being told: ‘Oh, sorry. You’ll have to pay for it. We don’t have the code.’”

I called the Health Ministry for four months. The reason they gave me the code was that the day before I went onto CTV, I said to them: “If you don’t give me the code, I’m going onto CTV tomorrow, and the B.C. women will be calling you directly for this code.” Miraculously, I got the code.

The code is not enough. That’s what it is. It’s a spot treatment. The code that’s been assigned and that amount is for a person who has a lump and they’re just ultrasounding the lump. These women with dense breasts need full breast ultrasounds, and that’s labour-intensive. It just takes a lot of time.

These automated breast ultrasounds…. Alberta’s had them since 2018. They do 16,000 scans a year, and it works. They have a two-week wait. We’re at nine months, over nine months now. That was nine months in March. We’ve gone through COVID now. There are delayed diagnoses all over the place.

This needs its own direct department. Right now it’s being categorized with diagnostic, which I understand. To have a lump…. Women are waiting over a month right now who have lumps, to wait for an ultrasound. Then the dense breast people are just getting pushed right aside.

I understand, but you guys can get this done. It is done in Alberta. They’ve figured it out. We can get it done here. All we need to do…. The U.S. has been doing it for years. In 2012, they started doing breast ultrasounds. They literally do a women’s mammogram, and they take them by the hand, and they walk them across the hall for their ultrasound. They’re given their results right away. We can do that here too.

You guys have started this ball rolling, and it was totally the right thing to do. In 2019, when you announced breast density….

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, Michelle, I think there are some other questions.

L. Doerkson: Hi. My question is around the amount of ultrasounds needed to do this. I understand that sonographers may be an issue, but how many mammogram units are in the province, if you’re suggesting we have one of these units in conjunction with those?

M. Di Tomaso: Well, it’s a very good question. It’s something that…. I, myself, have been calling to find these ones. I think that’s an easy ask of our B.C. Cancer and our Health Ministry — to find out how many mammogram machines we have out there.

I’m not trying to push the thing or push this answer, but right now the Health Ministry has a working committee of 28 breast health professionals working, which you’re paying for. Our taxpayers are paying for this working committee. They meet, from what I understand, monthly. I would think that you’d be able to get that answer from them.

L. Doerkson: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’m sorry. We’re out of time.

M. Di Tomaso: I could talk for hours, you guys. I could talk for hours. But thank you so much.

H. Sandhu: You’re doing great.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you for your leadership on this. We really appreciate it.

P. Alexis: Thank you to Janet too.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next speaker is Ruth Habte, AccessBC campaign for free prescription contraception.

Over to you. You have five minutes.

[9:45 a.m.]

ACCESSBC CAMPAIGN FOR
FREE PRESCRIPTION CONTRACEPTION

R. Habte: Thank you. My name is Dr. Ruth Habte. I would like to thank the committee for listening to my presentation.

I’d also like to thank the patients that I care for. They’re the ones who give me the inspiration to attend and speak at functions like this after working for 24 hours delivering babies the night before.

First off, I’d like to acknowledge that we are on the land of the Coast Salish peoples — the Squamish, the Tsleil-Waututh and the Musqueam Nations.

I’m a volunteer member of the AccessBC campaign for free prescription contraception, a provincewide campaign dedicated to universal no-cost prescription contraception in B.C. AccessBC has been actively campaigning on this important issue since 2017, and I joined the campaign shortly after moving to B.C. in 2019.

I’m a resident physician in obstetrics and gynecology at UBC and a former pharmacist. My career path has shown me that the various no-cost or reduced-cost avenues currently in place continue to allow people to fall through the cracks and put them at risk for unplanned pregnancies.

One such patient was a woman I met. I was involved in her care when she was postpartum. As I was discharging her, she asked me about a Mirena IUD. I said: “Oh, for sure. I can prescribe a Mirena IUD for you. No problem. Do you have someone to insert it?” It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the issue of getting a prescription or having a care provider who was capable of inserting a Mirena IUD. Actually, the issue was cost.

She told how me how she was a single mother and how she couldn’t afford the $400 cost out of pocket. She had a job with a health plan, but it didn’t cover the Mirena IUD, and she was in the process of trying to get a subsidized IUD through her physician when she got pregnant. So now she was in the same boat again as a postpartum person.

Unfortunately, scenarios like this are all too common. You name almost any permutation of unintended and unplanned pregnancy, and I’ve probably seen it in my very short career as a resident now and as a former pharmacist. As a means of redressing this issue, that’s part of the reason that I thought that AccessBC was really important to join upon moving here.

I speak in my own opinion today, an opinion that’s in­formed by caring for people who have found themselves experiencing and in need of prescription contraception, where they make just enough of a wage to not qualify for income assistance and the drug coverage that comes along with it but are unable to afford the cost of contraception out of pocket.

My opinion is also informed by caring for teens. In our current system, a teenager filling their prescription using their parent’s private insurance has the drug identification number uploaded to the system. So in that respect, there is really no privacy for that teenager. It can essentially put them at risk for safety things and stuff in their home if their parents are not approving of what they’re doing.

My opinion is also informed by taking care of people who are in abusive relationships, who themselves might be from a high SES household but have no control over the money in their home.

My opinion is informed by working on the front lines of COVID-19 and seeing the impact the pandemic has had on reproductive health care. Between cuts to hours and folks losing their jobs, budgets have been squeezed tighter than ever before, and while I’ve taken care of patients with COVID-19, we also can’t forget about basic medical care needs like contraception. All of these people and more would benefit from universal free contraception.

The projections for savings of this kind are well established. A 2010 study from Options for Sexual Health esti­mated that providing universal no-cost prescription contraception in B.C. would save, net, as much as $45 million per year.

Another study, which took place in Colorado, that pro­vided long-acting reversible contraceptives — things like the Mirena IUD and the Implanon — found that it reduced the teen pregnancy rate by about 54 percent and the teen abortion rate by 64 percent. They estimated that they saved the government about $70 million.

We know, as well, that unintended pregnancies cost, in Canada, about $320 million per year. Just by being able to provide 12 months of a long-acting reversible contraceptive, the government would be able to save $34 million.

Universal access to contraception is a vital component of people being able to recognize their full reproductive rights. It’s also fiscally responsible and equity-based. It was part of the campaign platform, and I was a part of that announcement. I hope that you’ll join me in including this in the next budget.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Habte.

Questions from the committee?

[9:50 a.m.]

L. Doerkson: You indicated a savings of, potentially, $34 million in B.C. by funding this program. Is that correct?

R. Habte: It’s $45 million.

L. Doerkson: So $45 million. What would be the investment?

R. Habte: This was a 2010 study. The investment is about $50 million, and the giveback is about $95 million. So $45 million net.

L. Doerkson: Giveback?

R. Habte: The return on investment.

L. Doerkson: I see. Okay. Thank you very much.

R. Habte: Didn’t sleep. I’m sorry.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. Habte. You made a pretty powerful case.

R. Habte: Thanks for having me.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks for what you’re doing.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, our next presenter is Tarnia Taverner, Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.

You have five minutes. I’ll try to give you a 30-second warning. Then we’ll have five minute for questions.

CANUCK PLACE CHILDREN’S HOSPICE

T. Taverner: Good morning. I’m Dr. Tarnia Taverner, chief executive for Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. Thank you for inviting me to present to the committee on behalf of this children’s hospice.

In these continuing challenging times, Canuck Place families, clinical teams, staff and our board of directors would like to extend our sincerest thank-you to all the elected representatives, government officials, first responders and front-line health care professionals who are working so hard to help protect British Columbians.

Canuck Place is B.C.’s pediatric palliative care provider, offering critical care services to our province’s most vulnerable children and youth. We operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing specialized care for children from birth until age 19 years with life-threatening illness. These children are in our programs for an average of seven years. Following the death of a child, the family continues with us for another three years for bereavement and grief support.

The mission at Canuck Place is these children receive holistic care that celebrates their values and their lives, whether these lives are measured in days, weeks or years. During this past year, over 800 newborns, children and youth from across B.C. with life-threatening illness and their families received care through Canuck Place.

We operate two hospices: one in Vancouver and one in Abbotsford. We also provide responsive, specialized care to families in their homes, hospitals and communities across the province of B.C. With our in-hospice, in-community and in-home care, telephone and video conferencing and 24-hour nursing line, our families receive care, no matter where they reside in the province, at the right time and in the right place.

Our services include medical respite, pain and symptom management, end-of-life care and grief and bereavement counselling. We also provide art, music and recreation therapy. This past year has been exceptionally challenging. However, our team has expertly and deftly evolved to respond to changing needs, preparing for the worst-case scenarios, training staff, communicating with families, ramping up virtual health access and acquiring and providing much-needed personal protective equipment.

The needs and diverse trajectories for our children do not stop during a pandemic, nor do the significant needs of the families. Canuck Place continues to provide around-the-clock care, meeting the needs of the fragile children and their families, who are also becoming more isolated and alone than ever before because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canuck Place is funded through a combination of fixed support from the government of B.C. and a caring community of donors. Approximately 40 percent of our total budget is funded by the province of B.C. This amount re­mains fixed regardless of an increase in the number of children accessing our programs. The remaining 60 percent of our budget is funded by donors.

[9:55 a.m.]

Already making up over half of our annual budget, do­nor dollars cannot be relied upon to fill financial gaps as demand for our services continues to increase. When donor dollars are down or unable to make us whole as demand increases, this means we are unable to provide certain services.

Over the past five years, we have experienced a 34 percent increase in the number of children and families access­ing our programs. Children receiving care at Canuck Place are some of the most medically complex children in the province, with exceptionally specialized and complex care needs.

We have experienced a significant increase for our consultation services since 2015. Consultations occur via in-person visits or by phone with families, nurses, doctors and other care professionals in hospitals, the families’ homes and in communities throughout B.C.

A Canuck Place team of physicians, advanced nurse practitioners and counsellors provides both advanced symptom and palliative care consultative services through­out B.C. Children’s Hospital, B.C. Women’s Hospital and other health care centres. These consultative services include assessment, recommendations for treatment and management, advanced care planning, child-specific evaluation for access to Canuck Place programs.

I’m going to go to the end. In summary, our presentation to the standing committee today has one critical request: an increase to our annual funding agreement by $1.6 million with an escalation clause, essential in en­abling Canuck Place to keep pace and match collective wage agreements. This request would mark our first change in government support since 2018, despite the significant increase in patient costs over the same period.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much.

Questions from the committee.

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much for your presentation.

The $1.6 million funding lift — what is that in a percentage of your overall operating budget?

T. Taverner: Of the operating budget, it would probably…. This is just a guesstimate. Because we get 60 percent from donors, 40 percent. But it’s dropping year on year, so probably, I would imagine, about 10 percent.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions from the committee?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): It’s funny how well you know the brand, but you don’t really think about what they do. And having somebody that recently used hospice, which is in Kelowna but not necessarily for children, I can appreciate the need.

Do you take in people from all over British Columbia and Abbotsford or Vancouver?

T. Taverner: Yes, we do. I can give you a breakdown of children we’re currently serving: 72 children, Northern Health; 103 on Vancouver Island; 96 in the Interior; 177, Lower Mainland; and 349 in Fraser Health.

We also recently did some research where we wanted to understand the need across the province. When we got the data back, we realized there are a significant number of children — Vancouver Island, Interior and Northern Health — that are probably not accessing services from us that they need. We can only develop and create more reach if we have more funding, because we really need to be in those communities that are further out.

We also know the care we provide is cost-efficient and cost-effective. By investing in Canuck Place, it is a true investment for the government. Those children are out there anyway, and they’ll be accessing acute care services. We know that’s not best for the child or the family. It’s much better that we’re able to look after them, and we know then that the cost savings are there. That’s not the priority. That’s not our focus. But without the investment, we can’t reach all the children and the families that need us.

P. Alexis: Thank you so much for your presentation.

Do you have the capacity, the physical capacity, to in­crease the numbers of people you would serve?

T. Taverner: Yes, we do, but really, the work that we do isn’t specifically and focused predominantly on the hospice physical site. A lot of the work we do is in the community.

We want to partner with nursing support services and we want to partner with the other health authorities so we can provide best care in the children’s community. It’s not appropriate to always bring a child and family out of their community at what can only be imagined as the most challenging, most difficult and traumatic time. Those people need to be in their communities, and we can do that.

[10:00 a.m.]

We’ve got the ideas of the programs that we can develop whereby we’re able to reach into the community, which is much more…. It’s better for the family, and it means then that we can create more capacity. I’m already working with Interior Health to try to sort some of the gaps out.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Tarnia, for the presentation and the work that you’re doing. I know oftentimes, for children in hospice or even adults in that care, that’s the last thing we can do for their remainder of days. I wonder if this hospice society also provides symptom management at end of life, which we do.

You mentioned there is a 34 percent increase in children seeking services. Was that just within one year? What is the main cause of the rise in chronic…? I’m just curious.

T. Taverner: Absolutely. It’s a very good question, be­cause the birthrate is on the decline.

H. Sandhu: It’s a big increase.

T. Taverner: It’s kind of confusing. The increase oc­curred over the past five years. It’s because of medical advances. Babies that would not have normally survived are surviving. Children that would not normally survive cancer, for example, are surviving. But they then go on to have further treatment and further treatment.

These children are referred to us probably at time of diagnosis, if they’re living with a life-threatening illness, and we’re with them. It’s very different to adult palliative care. Children are with us for, on average, seven years. That’s likely to increase. We’re only able to provide that support if we have investment.

I also really want to emphasize the mental health support that we give to the family and, most crucially, the siblings. These siblings are going through something enormously traumatic. Imagine, as a child, that your brother or sister is dying. How do you cope with that? How, as a parent, do you cope with that? You have to have expert support from a counselling team that is able to guide you through that experience.

I had a letter, probably about three months ago, from a mom who experienced the loss of her son ten years ago. She wrote to us because she wanted to say thank you. She put in her letter that she believed Canuck Place had saved her marriage, but it had also enabled her children — her adult children now — to go on to have successful and wholesome lives. They’re both enrolled at university to study to be health care professionals.

That was a very, very impactful letter. It was one letter, but I know that this is the work that we do. We surround ourselves around that family. We pick them up, and we carry them through what is probably the worst thing that could happen to a family.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Dr. Taverner. I think that’s actually a very powerful note to end on, by sharing that very personal story about the important work that you do and need to be able to continue to do.

Our next presentation is from Terry Lake, B.C. Care Providers Association.

B.C. CARE PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION

T. Lake: Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for getting me out of the house. It’s nice to not be sitting in front of a Zoom screen.

Thank you, all of you, for your contribution to society by holding public office. I’m glad I’m not doing that at the moment. But I’m with an organization that does have some pretty unique challenges, as you know.

B.C. Care Providers represents contracted providers of long-term care, assisted living. We also represent some independent living operators and private home health operators.

I want to just predicate my presentation by recommending this paper to you that’s on the RBC website. It’s “Navigating the 2020s.” It really states very clearly that the two existential threats we face as a society are climate change and the aging demographic. I really urge you to read that. As a policy-maker, I think this has got some really, really great information.

I’m here this morning to basically advocate for six different initiatives on behalf of seniors care in the province of British Columbia. Of course, COVID has shone a light on seniors care across the country. I will say that in British Columbia, we fared very well in the first wave. Not as well in the second wave as we did in the first, but still, over the course of the pandemic, our system has handled the impact on seniors far better than Ontario and Quebec, for instance.

[10:05 a.m.]

In B.C., we have one-third owned-and-operated health authority long-term care, one-third for-profit and one-third not-for-profit. I know there have been conversations about that mix. But in Quebec, where 80 percent is government-owned, they had a horrible COVID experience, particularly in the first wave. Ontario, which has a lot of for-profit, also had a terrible situation.

Study after study has shown that it really is about the amount of COVID in the community but, importantly, the amount of staffing you have. The levels of care across the country vary. We have 3.36 hours of care per day per resident. The long-term-care commission in Ontario has recommended four hours of care. The facilities-based long-term-care redesign in Alberta is going from four to 4½. Our first recommendation is that $650 million over three years meets the staffing needs for a new minimum standard of four hours of direct care per day for each resident in long-term care.

Now, of course you can’t provide that number of hours unless you have the people to do it, and we know that we are facing a health human resource crisis, not just in long-term care but in acute care as well. So our second ask is a $25 million investment toward the development of a health human resources equity strategy that recognizes that in our particular society, there are some groups that are underrepresented in the workforce, including Indigenous peoples, women, newcomers to Canada and other racialized workers. We can provide a tremendous career in seniors care if we support that kind of a policy.

The third ask is a $20 million investment in EquipCare B.C. This was a fund developed under a former health minister who shall remain nameless. It essentially puts money into the hands of operators, both for-profit and not-for-profit, denominational health B.C. care providers. It’s for equipment that will reduce workplace injuries but, importantly during COVID, paid for infection prevention and control equipment and practices.

We’re recommending a $20 million investment over three years to top that up, because we’re running out of the current funds, but also a five-year separate top-up to dedicate towards mitigating the impacts of climate change on the seniors care sector.

We know the impact of the heat dome, wildfires, is having a significant impact on seniors care, both in congregate living but also, of course, in-home care. The Centre for Disease Control says that this was the worst health-related event in Canadian history, when we lost so many seniors at home because of the heat dome in the Vancouver area in places that didn’t have air conditioning. So we’re asking for support there.

The fourth ask is a refundable tax credit, so low-income folks that aren’t paying a lot of income tax would still get a credit, of $2,500 for seniors 70 and above to offset the costs of family-directed home health or independent living services that allow people to age in place. We know that we can’t build enough long-term care. We need to keep people aging in place with supports. A refundable tax credit allows families to support their loved ones, but it also allows the senior to employ care as well.

J. Routledge (Chair): Terry, you’re out of time.

T. Lake: Ten seconds.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Go for it.

T. Lake: The last two are to support culturally appropriate seniors care and support. So LGBTQ2S seniors, newcomers to Canada.

Finally, the one which is a bit of a no-brainer is the ex­pansion of capacity, $1.6 billion over three years. We need to double the number of spaces we have in long-term care over the next 15 years. The current plan is good in that it replaces some older owned-and-operated sites, but it only adds, I think, 1,800 new long-term-care beds over the next five years. That simply won’t meet demand.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the extra minute.

J. Routledge (Chair): Questions?

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Terry, for the presentation.

Do you have any information around how many care aides are actually in the system, training now, and how many will be produced over the coming year?

T. Lake: The health career access program is fully subscribed. So that’s 3,000 health care aides that will be coming into the system. There will be some attrition, of course, so that program will be very helpful.

[10:10 a.m.]

We need tens of thousands over the next ten years. We train through private colleges. We get a grant from the workforce development grant fund, and we train through Stenberg College and Discovery College. So we are training health care aides all around the province. That’s in addition to the HCAP program.

Even that isn’t going to be enough. We have really lobbied the federal government on immigration, because we need to bring people from other countries to be able to fulfil our health care human resource needs in Canada.

There are many caring cultures, like the Philippines, that train in excess of what they need for their own country, and they’re looking for a place where they can come, and they can give back in a very rewarding profession that pays well and support their families back home. So we can kind of solve two problems at the same time: the health resource needs that we have here and our immigration targets, which are quite aggressive.

L. Doerkson: Thanks for that.

Is the interest level in British Columbia…? I guess the question is: is everybody in B.C. that’s interested in this training able to access the programs right now? Are they full?

T. Lake: Either through HCAP or the programs we run, we are a little bit oversubscribed, I would say, Lorne. We’re meeting the demand, but if we doubled the number of programs we ran, I think there’s enough interest out there now that we would fill them as well. So I think we can still do more, now that people know they’re guaranteed a job at a minimum of $25 an hour.

For so many years — and I have some culpability there — we didn’t recognize the value in terms of remuneration for health care aides in terms of the value they bring to society, the work they do. I mean, the pandemic has shown what tremendous heroes they are.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Terry, for your presentation.

T. Lake: Not like high school, eh, Ben?

Ben and I graduated together.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): The question I had was…. When the pandemic first broke out, there was a lot of this cross-contamination between these facilities and people going between them. I know that the government has tried to restrict that.

What’s the reason that occurred in the first place? Obviously, the workers were wanting more hours, but what do we have to do to find a solution to that and make certain that they stay in the same facility? Is it the size of the facilities? What’s the problem?

T. Lake: Two things. Some people want to work in more than one location, and some operators have multiple locations, so you need a casual pool, Ben. You need people that you can call when someone is sick or you’ve got vacation. There are some people that like to work part-time, and they like to work at more than one place.

There are other people who want to work full-time in one place and then weekends at another place because guess what. They’re sending money home to their family overseas. The single-site order was to prevent people from seeding infections from here over to here, but — hindsight is 20-20 — we didn’t do enough to prevent people bringing the virus from the community into long-term care. We didn’t employ rapid testing. Now we’ve got the vaccination, and we saw the tremendous drop-off, but we still didn’t do enough to make sure everyone was getting vaccinated.

Well, now we’re solving that problem, so things will get a lot better in long-term care. But I want to say that we need to pay people enough so that they can work in one place and earn a good living, but we also have to provide the ability to have a casual pool, or we won’t be able to meet the needs. So many lines work short because you can’t find someone when someone’s sick or someone’s on holiday. We need that casual pool.

P. Alexis: I just want to talk about the tax credit that you recommended for more aging in place. That’s sort of one of the tools that you could use. I know there are a number of programs that have existed for a while. Can you talk a little bit about that, if you could?

T. Lake: I’m an example. My dad lives in Kelowna. He gets a lot of support from IHA home care. Up until now, it’s been us, the family, that has really provided a lot of the needs that he has.

A refundable tax credit would allow family members to make that investment instead of government. They can provide that care. If I know that I’m going to get some tax benefit for the care that I’m putting into helping my dad age in place, then it saves the government either home health services or moving into long-term care.

[10:15 a.m.]

We have health authority home health that is supported publicly, but there are also private home care operators that many people turn to because it sometimes can be challenging to get into the IHA or the other health authority systems. It’s a recognition that people are doing their part. And generally women my age often have to take time out of the workforce to look after aging parents. We’ve seen that with Lynda Steele on NW, and it’s not uncommon.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, we’ll thank you. We’ll wrap it up.

I guess, in closing…. I think this is a good note to finish on, because I think if anything good came of the pandemic, it was that for all of these families that have been coping and suffering independently, there is now public dialogue and public recognition that seniors health is something that we need to pay attention to.

T. Lake: And becoming more so. I’d really encourage you to read that RBC report.

Thank you so much for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Thank you so much.

Before we take a break, I’ll ask Sheila Pither to join us at the table. She’s representing the Council of Senior Citizens Organizations of B.C.

You have about five minutes, Sheila, and then we’ll ask you questions for about five minutes.

COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS
ORGANIZATIONS OF B.C.

S. Pither: Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak with you. We have about seven different proposals or ideas. The first one is long-term care.

When I woke up this morning, I was thinking: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” And they did, some of them.

We do believe we need to have a lot more inspections in overseeing the residences where people are. We feel that those visitations should be unannounced. If there are changes that need to be made, then a further inspection, and if they’re not made, then some sort of penalty for that.

We also are concerned about the national standards that we thought would be in place. That’s several months ago. We sent off our version of the standards to the Prime Minister. No reply, but anyway we did. Then the Speech from the Throne came out, and it said that there would be national standards. To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have them.

We need to develop a plan with regard to the profit mo­tive that we believe caused such a horrible, horrible situation — not entirely and not every residence, obviously, but enough to send urgent signals to us. We have been watching where the path to being able to have long-term care without a profit motive is going, and who knows? But we do believe that that’s the way it should be.

[10:20 a.m.]

The second thing I want to talk about is low-income people and computers. Many cannot afford them, but it’s becoming more and more evident that not having one is a real burden for people. Then, of course, there would be how to maintain them in terms of paying for the fees to have them. We do believe that that needs to be examined, because in the isolation brought about by COVID, we think that people with computers would have been not so isolated as those that were without them.

We do think that there should be an immediate SAFER increase to reflect the needs of renters. The apartment average for a one-bedroom in Vancouver is $1,382, but the SAFER rate ceiling is $803, so that’s a big discrepancy. We feel that all has to be looked at.

Housing. I’m not going to dwell on housing. There are a great many panels that have talked to people about it. COSCO submitted some instances of what homeless can be, and we know that the highest percentage of people who are becoming homeless is with seniors. Really, your home is a basis for your lifestyle, a lot of it, isn’t it? If you have no home, then…. It’s very difficult to be that way, obviously.

Home care. Everybody wants a seamless sort of transition from one need to another, but we don’t have that. We really probably should have case managers who would be able to take people along the road towards the correct place for them. Statistically, we know from Isobel Mackenzie’s work that many people in residences ought not to be there, don’t want to be there, but there was no alternative. We think that more help in the home is the way to go. Then you wouldn’t feel the sense of: “What do we do? How will we do it?”

We’ve been talking to people who have been telling us about the decision to have their parents in a residence. It’s really, really hard, but sometimes there aren’t a lot of choices.

Seniors centres are so important to people, where they can go and have, for instance, their income tax — help with that. There are many, many ways that a seniors centre can bring about less isolation, more instances of being able to communicate with friends, so we believe that those should be getting up. After COVID, many went. Obviously, they could not continue. So they need to be getting them up again and funding them in the future.

[10:25 a.m.]

Palliative care, particularly in the north or rural and remote. There sometimes is not, we understand, and we know that there’s a shortage of that kind of care. We urge the government to provide a wider facility — space, really — because it’s been shown, I think, that that is a really good way of looking after the end of life for people.

On a brighter note, we have heard that the custom or the way that cleaning and food was being delivered in many, many residences was not what it should have been. We understand that the government is now going to return it to these, so that it’s not outsourced. I hope that’s right.

So that’s it.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you very much, Sheila.

We’ll just take a minute or two and invite the committee to ask any questions that they have of you.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Sheila, for your presentation.

I just have a question with regards to the comments you made about national standards. What does that national standard apply to?

S. Pither: Well, what we basically did when we sent that off, we looked at the various aspects of it. There is a residence… We didn’t intend or try to say: “Well, the halls ought to be a certain distance.” We don’t have that expertise.

What we did do was take a look at the different facets of being in care. The physical surroundings are important, but the social surroundings are equally important. As we know, there was a period of time, lessened now, where you couldn’t go and visit your loved one, and they were left there. Some died there without the comfort of their people being with them.

Pat Brady and I….He, unfortunately, is dead. What we did: we looked at all the factors that we could identify, and we wrote that and sent it to various agencies federally. That’s what we did. We couldn’t be specific with expertise that we don’t have, but we do have expertise in other ways, so we relied on that.

P. Alexis: Thank you, Sheila. I am so impressed by your advocacy. I can tell you that for years I’ve been meeting with COSCO representatives in my own community, and they’re so passionate on the things that need to change. You are just doing a remarkable job, so I just want to say thank you for your continued advocacy because it really does make a difference.

S. Pither: That’s good to know. Thank you.

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much, Ms. Pither, for your presentation.

You started by talking about more inspections, penalties, etc. Can you expand on that just a little bit? I mean, how often are these inspections happening now? Are they happening at all?

S. Pither: My understanding — and maybe I’m mistaken — is that they were maybe even only once a year. Maybe they were announced, as well, at times. We say they have to be unannounced because, obviously, if you know you’re going to be inspected you pull up your socks right away. That’s kind of what we were referring to. We think it should be government inspection.

J. Routledge (Chair): I see no other questions.

I want to, once again, thank you so much for taking the time to present to us. Your presentation was really comprehensive, really clear, really practical and really important. I look forward to our conversations and deliberation in terms of how we can move forward with your recommendations.

We will now take a recess for 15 minutes.

The committee recessed from 10:30 a.m. to 10:48 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Karen Dearlove of the B.C. Centre for Women in the Trades.

Karen, if you could come up to the table. You have five minutes to make your presentation, and then we have five minutes where we can ask you questions for clarification.

B.C. CENTRE FOR WOMEN IN THE TRADES

K. Dearlove: I really appreciate the opportunity to sit in front of you and talk to you today for a few minutes about the B.C. Centre for Women in the Trades and how we think that what we do is very important and, going forward, is investment-worthy for the province of B.C.

I am the executive director. I’ve been in this position for about five months now. So I’m relatively new to this world. It is an amazing organization.

It’s no secret that the province of B.C. is facing a looming labour shortage in the skilled trades, particularly in the building industry trades. It’s actually the case all across Canada. There are many studies that have proven that the only way to address this shortage is to bring people into the skilled trades that haven’t been involved in them before or that haven’t had a space.

In particular, our organization looks at bringing women into the skilled trades. Currently women only make up perhaps 5 percent of workers in the skilled trades in B.C. That’s something that hasn’t changed for 20 years. Other organizations also are looking at how to build more equity in the skilled trades by bringing in Indigenous people, youth, newcomers and members of the LGBTQ2S+ communities.

[10:50 a.m.]

We have many programs that BCCWITT is involved in. We run an employment program — a WDA program that is funded through the Industry Training Authority — and we provide lots of opportunities. We provide career counselling. We provide financial supports for training and also for employment. We help women get those opportunities.

What we’ve found is that it’s not enough to create spaces for women and other equity-seeking groups in the skilled trades. We need to do a better job of retaining them in the skilled trades. Women, as well as other equity-seeking groups — Indigenous people, newcomers and members LGBTQ+ two-spirit community — face an incredibly toxic work environment in many of the skilled trades. They face an environment where bullying, harassment and discrimination are, frankly, rampant.

This is something that we have been trying to address through our program called Be More than a Bystander. It’s a program that we offer in collaboration with the Ending Violence Association of B.C. and, actually, retired B.C. Lions. It is an incredibly effective program. Instead of making it up to the women and other equity-seeking groups to make the change, we put the onus on men, the 95 percent of those workplaces.

It’s really about educating and teaching men how to intervene and be leaders in creating healthy, safe and respectful workplaces. I don’t even know how to describe the impact it can have on people’s lives. I was actually in Victoria for the past week because we were running a cohort there. It just truly changes people.

We train up men to go and give workplace workshops to their peers and to their colleagues. We also help facilitate those workshops. We’ve had an incredible amount of interest in this program, but it is, frankly, our lowest-funded program.

We have interest from BCIB, the B.C. Infrastructure Benefits corporation, to train up all of their new workers. We sent five spokesmen, actually, up to Site C, just in late August, which was dealing with some pretty terrible problems on site, in terms of bullying and harassment, especially gender-based violence.

What we would really like to see is that this is a program we would like to see in all training institutions in B.C. It already is becoming compulsory in some. Camosun College, in their piping trades, is starting to look at making it compulsory. We’ve also been talking with the Canadian Welding Bureau about their programs, as well as the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in Canada.

Several people are already trying to make this change, but it needs a lot more funding and it needs a lot more…. We also would like to see it, like BCIB, at all publicly funded infrastructure projects and their workforces. A lot of these projects already have quotas to try to increase that diversity, equity and inclusion on their workplaces, but as I said, it’s the retention which is the biggest issue.

I’m coming here today to talk about creating better, respectful workplaces, healthy workplaces, not just for women but for all workers, and to try to make that change so we can retain those workers that we train up and that we fund so they can have lasting careers in the skilled trades.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Karen. I now will open it up for questions. We have about five minutes to ask questions and for you to answer them.

P. Alexis: I’m a real advocate for this in my own community, because so many of those that are employed are in the trades — 40 percent. It makes sense that we actually look to the women, as well, in our community to make sure that they have the same opportunities. I’m always trying to provide those opportunities.

The 5 percent you talked about, those that are women in the skilled trades. Has that number changed at all in the last ten years? I’ve been hearing that….

K. Dearlove: For a while.

P. Alexis: So there’s no movement there on that?

K. Dearlove: This is movement in certain areas. Certain unions, especially the union employers, have taken this very seriously. One of our strongest partners and advocates is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They have been able to. We’ve trained them up, a lot of their members, through the Be More than a Bystander. But they have made it a focus. Their Electrical Joint Training Committee has made a real focus, in terms of trying to recruit women.

[10:55 a.m.]

Certain industries and certain unions and certain types of skilled trades, yes. There are also a lot of schools that are starting their own women-in-trades organizations and focus in order to try to do the recruitment.

The recruitment is happening, but it’s a retention issue which doesn’t really make that change and make a huge difference in the end.

P. Alexis: Thank you for that.

G. Kyllo: Thank you, Karen. Your organization….

Where do you guys receive your funding from, and what is the magnitude of the funding? Is there actually a specific ask for additional funding, or are you looking for movements or changes within the policy specifically?

K. Dearlove: A little bit of both. Actually, our core funding, we have run three programs, and they’re all actually funded through contracts with the Industry Training Authority. Before that — that’s only recently within the last two years — when the organization started, it did get seed money from both the provincial and federal government, as a pilot project. We’ve only been around since 2018.

What we’re really looking for is both a mandate, so creating kind of a compulsory training part of…. We would like to see it that any type of workplace health and safety training would include this. As our organization has been a leader in providing this type of training, we would be looking for us to be a partner that can help both facilitate, train up and provide those opportunities to increase that training everywhere.

In terms of numbers, I’d have to give you a little bit of number crunching. But, in fact, we would just be looking at being able to expand our current program so that we can start rolling that out. Maybe it’s something that we do in partnership with even the skilled trades certification process, as a start, looking at certain trades and rolling it out a little bit at a time until we can get it everywhere.

G. Kyllo: Bit of a follow-up if I may. Where do you guys actually provide your programming and services?

K. Dearlove: We are a small group, but we’re located all over B.C., all of my team. We actually started mostly in the Lower Mainland, but we have been able to expand our training. Actually, last week in Victoria was the first time we were able to do a cohort of this training outside of the Lower Mainland.

We have other training opportunities in Nanaimo coming up, and then we’re hoping to go up to the Interior and the north in the new year. We’re really trying to be able to get out there more. COVID has made that more difficult, but we’re finding ways to work with that and to be able to bring this training to many different sites.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you.

M. Starchuk: Karen, thank you for your presentation.

Your number that you gave at the beginning about 5 percent, it was shocking. Recently, I did a tour of KPU, in their electrical program that they have out there, and there was about 25 percent. Then you talk about retention, and then it goes: “Okay, now I get it.”

Two questions. Are you in these post-secondary education facilities to give that or provide that information that’s there? Secondly…. We’ll leave it at that.

K. Dearlove: Yeah, actually, we do partner with a lot of the training institutes. In fact, the focus of our current funding through the ITA for this program is on trainers. We’ve trained up basically everybody who works at the ITA, including all their apprentice advisers. We are looking…. That’s why we were at Camosun College — to train up some of their faculty. We’ve trained up faculty at BCIT, at KPU, and we’re looking to expand that as well.

We see it as both ways — being able to train up faculty and introduce that at the level that people are entering the training as well being able to go on site and work with workers who have already been, perhaps, in the field for many years. We’re trying to attack the issue from both sides.

In terms of the retention, too, just one note. It’s not just retaining women and other equity-seeking groups once they’ve entered the trade, once they’ve actually become a journeyperson. A lot of them don’t actually finish their training due to some of the same issues — lack of support, lack of peers, discrimination, bullying and harassment. That happens even at the schools. We’re trying to address that as well.

M. Starchuk: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): I have Harwinder next. It’s going to have to be our last question.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much, Karen. I really appreciate the work you’re doing. There is much more need for that.

You kind of answered my last question. The dropout rate due to the toxic work environment or discrimination whatnot. Do we have any numbers? I know it’s discouraging to see the numbers are smaller to begin with.

Is there any plan to do the outreach in high schools on a constant basis, or what might that kind of strategy look like? Having two daughters, thinking if we could spark the interest in those young women in the schools.

K. Dearlove: We do. We actually get asked quite fre­quently to come and give talks at schools.

[11:00 a.m.]

In fact, we really try to use our network of actual tradeswomen to do that work. We work in job fairs, in terms of in high schools as well as in colleges. We are trying to look at that.

Yes, the dropout rate is astonishing. It’s something…. It depends on the school. It depends on the trade. In many cases, it might be that a third of women who enter training don’t finish, for a multitude of reasons. Definitely the environment is part of it, but then there are just challenges.

There’s this sense, also, of that idea that it’s very difficult if you’re the only person in the room that looks like you. Not having peers and other people to be able to support you through that process — something we try to do with our network of tradeswomen — is a challenge as well. There are some different reasons why that happens, but there are many challenges all the way from the training through to retention in employment.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re technically running out of time, but our Deputy Chair has, I think, a quick question. Then a quick response, and we’ll wrap it up.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Karen. And you know what? It’s great, and I think you’re right about this issue — about retention. We have to get to that point where they feel empowered.

I guess my question is that I see, occasionally, businesses that are operated by women — not necessarily so much in the trades, although I had a recent event with a female plumber that came to my house. She was way better than the male plumber. I think of her in a male-dominated world. What do we do to empower them to maybe have more female-operated…? Well, in a leadership role or whatever, so that this balance occurs. What do we have to do to get to that point?

K. Dearlove: That’s a really good question, because it’s the same thing: if you can see it, you can be it. So we’re really looking for that representation in leadership roles and change-making roles. That seat at the table and that voice are really important.

We have a program that we are actually just getting off the ground. As soon as I leave here today, I am actually going out to Harrison Hot Springs. We’re running a week-long leadership program for women in the trades. It’s really there to help provide skills, including things like public speaking; skills about writing project proposals, looking for grants and being able to get your ideas out there; as well as mentoring and bringing women together so that they have that support.

That is one program we are just starting to get off the ground. It’s really about having opportunities for women to come into leadership positions, whether it’s in a school, in a union, in their workplaces or in the community. That is also something that really makes a difference.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, good luck.

K. Dearlove: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, on behalf of the committee, I’m really sorry that I have to wrap it up, because I think that you’ve really engaged our interest. This is a much bigger conversation about how we make women feel welcome in the trades.

Thank you so much for your leadership on this, and I hope we have more conversations about it.

K. Dearlove: I would be really happy to do that. Thank you very much for your time this morning.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Nicole Robb, Ringette B.C.

Nicole, you have five minutes to make your presentation. I’ll try to give you a signal when you need to be wrapping it up in 30 seconds, and then we’ll have five minutes to ask you questions.

RINGETTE B.C.

N. Robb: Good morning. Thank you for having me here today.

My name is Nicole Robb. I am the executive director of Ringette B.C., which is a provincial sports organization in the province of British Columbia. I’m here today to talk about girls and women in sport. As a female-dominant sport, we have a real interest in this, and I’m happy to speak to you all today.

I understand that a number of my colleagues have already spoken to you about the different ways that sport interacts with kids and youth and with girls and boys, and about the many parts of our society where sport interacts with all of the different elements, whether it’s education, health or everything in between.

I will be speaking to you today specifically about the affects of COVID-19 on girls and women in sport. Canadian Women and Sport released a report in spring of 2021 about the impacts that COVID-19 will have, potentially, on girls returning to sport in Canada. This report stated that one in four girls will not return to sport even if we see a relative return to normal. This report, coupled with previous research that has been done by Canadian Women and Sport and other groups and universities, further em­phasizes the dropout rate of girls participating in the sport system.

[11:05 a.m.]

Pre-COVID-19, the dropout rate for every one boy would result in three girls leaving sport. As an athlete my­self, that is extremely disheartening to hear. I grew up playing sport. I still play sport, and it is upsetting to hear that for every one boy that goes, three girls will leave. This, coupled with the additional dropout rate of COVID-19, is frightening.

Ringette in B.C. is currently living the COVID-19 dropout. Pre-COVID, we had approximately 2,500 on-ice participants. We are looking at a far greater loss than we saw during the pandemic. Currently, with registration underway, we are losing girls between the ages of 13 and 18 — our youth divisions, our high school students. This is not isolated to a particular part of the province. This has been seen across all parts of B.C. where ringette is played, which is in all seven B.C. Winter Games zones.

This is not just a loss of revenue. This has implications that domino throughout the sports sector. Local ringette associations are run by volunteers. For every one athlete that leaves, you’re likely losing not just an athlete and their registration funds; you’re losing the biggest investment in sport, which is human capital. Coaches, managers, local association board members and general volunteers who run everything in between — that is the biggest loss to sport.

When we lose girls and women, we lose the next generation of female leaders. Some of the reasons why this may have happened likely are due to a lack of understanding of how girls interact with sport and accessed sport during the pandemic. While many girls stuck it out and came to the sport they love, toughed it out and got changed in parking lots, and didn’t get a chance to have that social experience in the change room, that might have just been because “I had nothing else to do.”

Now we are seeing our youth not come back. Safety is imperative to participating in sport for girls. As previous colleagues explained — the Safe Sport movement, and why that is critical to the continuation for sport — changing in a parking lot, late at night in the rain, is not a safe experience.

In addition, the inability to have the peer interaction likely led to a lack of social acceptance and experience. The main reason why everyone plays sport is because it’s fun. There’s a reason why adults were so sad that sport got shut down during COVID-19. If you’re a youth female, this likely led to feelings of isolation and a lack of safety, which likely led to junior girls not coming back.

As I stated, the loss of registration is critical. It is further coupled by a number of issues related to archaic ice facility allocation policies. As you know, playing ice sports is never a cheap experience. It’s an expensive access, because the cost to run a facility is expensive. However, archaic ice fa­cility allocation policies which force local clubs to maintain the ice spaces that they had when registration was good or bad likely contributes to a revenue issue. These are all run by volunteers, and we need investment to ensure the girls will come back. Otherwise, we will lose female leaders like myself.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Nicole.

I’ll open it up to questions from the committee.

P. Alexis: I have a question about the messaging and how you can encourage, as an organization, women to re­turn. Can you tell me a little bit about that, or tell me about the efforts to date to try and make women and young girls feel more comfortable, please?

N. Robb: One of the main ways girls will come back is if they see older women and girls playing. In 2018, Ringette B.C., through an actual provincial grant…. That was the LeadForward grant, through viaSport. We applied for that, and we ran a female coach mentorship program. That has actually led to a significant increase in retaining female coaches and has allowed us to build out our female coach pool.

That is how we get more girls to come back. Girls seeing girls playing sport leads to girls registering, and parents will put their kids in something that they want to enjoy. The social nature of team sport does help to bring kids and girls back, but the biggest, for us, has always been that they need to see what they can be.

[11:10 a.m.]

Our female coach mentorship program is highly visible within the community and is at a grassroots level, working directly with the children. That, coupled with social media and those bigger celebrations of women in sport within our own community…. The ringette community is pretty tight, I have to say. It’s a pretty niche group. But that has been the number one way to get kids to come back.

I think it can be seen, as we have seen, that while adult sport was shut down, we lost a significant number of that visibility because they weren’t allowed to play. However, our adult female programs have seen a significant increase in returning registrations. So once they’re playing, they want to keep playing. It’s just having them stay. I think the previous speaker actually talked about that. Once they feel comfortable and they’re entrenched in the group, they do come back. Our adult numbers are improving and showing that they still want to play the game.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Nicole. It was in­spiring last night to watch the women’s rugby sevens playing in Vancouver. I think the women are doing very well. I only caught that out of the corner of my eye, as it was at the end of the night.

What are the numbers of youth that are — the total number and the number that have not re-registered that’s happening in Ringette B.C.? What’s the magnitude? And then the second part of this question is: what is your ask? What are you looking for to help bridge…? What do we need to do?

N. Robb: Currently registration is underway, so I don’t have final numbers yet. Registration opens around mid-August and then continues well into the end of September. Currently we are seeing approximately 1,300 athletes registered across the province. Now, not all of my clubs have reported their numbers in yet because, as I said, it’s all done by volunteers. They use a variety of systems to do registration.

At the end of 2019-2020, we had 1,970 athletes, give or take, and that was without many adults because adult sport was shut down. That was primarily made up of youth and children numbers. This year we’re looking at a reported 1,300, which…. When we compare it back to pre-COVID, we had 2,500 athletes from our youngest age group of children’s ringette all the way through to masters. If that number doesn’t improve to at least match last season, that would be a significant loss in registration.

Then my ask is…. I mentioned our female coach mentorship program. That was a small grant that was a one-time project. We then applied again, and we were successful in receiving a second grant to continue that program. But then….

All these small, one-off projects are great to get some initiatives off the ground. However, it’s not a long-term, strategic framework, and it doesn’t allow for long-term strategies to be implemented. It’s just a small amount here and there that is for a targeted measure versus more of an overall B.C. sport framework model that would allow funding to align with the B.C. sport framework, which would then allow sport organizations to address these gaps. So it needs to be more of a consistent funding investment versus small projects.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think that pretty well wraps up our time.

I would like to thank you, Nicole, for coming and presenting your case to our committee. I think we’ve all been hearing about how the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women, and you’ve added another really important piece to the ongoing implications of what it means for young girls and their leadership in the future. So thank you for that.

N. Robb: Thank you very much for having me. I hope you all have a lovely day.

J. Routledge (Chair): Is Alison with us? Alison Cuffley, BC SPCA.

You have five minutes. I’ll try to give you a signal when you have about 30 seconds to go, and then we have five minutes to ask you questions.

BC SPCA

A. Cuffley: Good afternoon. Hi, everyone. ʔəy̓ sweyəl. My name is Alison Cuffley, and I’m here on behalf of the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Thank you for having me here today.

[11:15 a.m.]

The BC SPCA is presenting today to encourage the committee in your consideration of the public support for ending fur farming in this province and to request budget allocation for the transitioning of workers from this sector, proceeding to a full closure of all fur farms in B.C.

First of all, fur farms are not farms. They don’t produce a crop. They are intensive breeding operations strictly meant to maximize the annual fur production of fur-bearing animals. Currently in B.C., we have ten mink farms and one chinchilla farm. All of these farms have current permits, and our existing legislation does not limit any other type of fur farm from operating in the province.

Fur farming is inherently inhumane, as wildlife, even when bred in captivity, are never able to lose their natural instincts. In the wild, mink are far-ranging, solitary and semi-aquatic animals. Chinchilla are extremely social animals adapted to large territories in a cool and arid climate. Both species are unable to cope with high temperatures, especially in the range of what we experienced during the heatwave and dome this past summer.

Thirty percent of all mink farms in B.C. faced a COVID-​19 outbreak, including human and animals. The COVID-19-positive mink on farms in the Fraser Valley carried a known mutation which could undermine vaccination efforts and drive a fourth wave of the pandemic or additional variants. This risk sharply increases after the existing provincial health order is set to expire at the end of January, as breeding season occurs and the population on these farms can increase fivefold, along with increased human interaction and handling during the weaning period.

This is an industry that does not benefit the B.C. economy. They employ less than 150 people, and they have access to AgriStability funds due to the volatile market conditions of luxury goods. In our current COVID climate, public heath resources from three government ministries are now dedicated to COVID-19 surveillance on mink farms and surrounding areas due to the propensity of these farms to have mink escape their enclosures. In fact, it was the trapping and testing of escaped mink on a quarantined farm that documented an additional outbreak which led to this PHO order. This monitoring will be necessary for the duration of the pandemic, and the ongoing cost is unreported.

It’s important to note at this point that abrogating the fur farming regulation would have no impact on First Nations hunting and trapping. The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs called for a moratorium on mink farming in April of this year. They stated that they do not “condone the in­dustrial breeding, confinement and slaughtering of minks for international luxury markets” and that these animals “hold significant cultural value for First Nations and are animals that play an important role in stories of creation and systems of knowledge.”

In fact, industrially produced fur products denigrate the value of traditionally harvested animals and can be an impediment to First Nations economic opportunities, which is in direct conflict with UNDRIP and the TRC calls to action.

Phasing out fur farming does not threaten other types of farming and allows for more resources to be directed to farmers of essential products. Polling shows that the general public values and supports farmers who produce food or contribute heavily to the British Columbian economy through sustainable agriculture.

In order to facilitate an expeditious phase out of mink farms in B.C., a compensation structure for existing fur farms could be established. So the BC SPCA requests that the provincial government of B.C. consider a program similar to bridging to retirement or other supports to allow fur farm operators and their workers a dignified transition to other agricultural sectors and industries. Temporary foreign workers on fur farms can also be supported through reallocation to other safer agricultural facilities.

The BC SPCA is calling on the government of B.C. to end fur farming in the province, providing transition support to both farmers and workers to other agricultural sectors that support food security and access for British Columbians.

Thank you for your consideration. I am available to answer questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Alison.

I’ll now open it up for questions.

M. Starchuk: Hi. We meet again.

A. Cuffley: Hi. Congratulations on the grandbaby. So exciting.

M. Starchuk: Yes. It’s been a while.

Alison, the question that I have for you is with regards to the transition to the other occupations. I’m assuming that you know the skill sets that most of these workers have. How do you see that unfolding?

A. Cuffley: When looking at other existing government supports such as the bridging to retirement program for forestry workers, their skills are highly transferable to other agricultural industries. As mentioned, fur farming is not farming. Their primary job is animal care, so they could be transitioned to any other markets. And again, it’s less than 150 workers in total across the province.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

[11:20 a.m.]

L. Doerkson: You mentioned that there are only ten and one total farms in the province. Can you give me a sense of how big these are? What does that…? I guess, maybe, to add to MLA Starchuk’s question: what does that transition look like for the business owners themselves? How big are these farms?

A. Cuffley: Literal size of the farms?

L. Doerkson: In terms of income. Do you have any idea?

A. Cuffley: No, none of that information has actually been available to us, so I don’t have that information.

Doing research of our own through the FIRB board and the mink farmers association, it seems as though — especially during COVID times — most of those products have been held. Both mink and beaver pelts did not sell last year, so they’ve all been held. That’s also taking into the fact that Denmark conducted a cull of over 19 million mink in their country, which is one of their primary exports.

Here, in terms of literal size, the ten fur farms take up a significant amount of ALR land base. That could be valuable for other farmers who are actually contributing food and other products to British Columbians. But we don’t actually have the number, unfortunately.

I do have, in fact, the AgriStability fund, so we could do reverse math to figure out how much they claimed un­der that insurance scheme. But in the last six years, it’s been $6.5 million between those ten farms and the one chinchilla farm.

L. Doerkson: That’s their applications?

A. Cuffley: That is the amount that they’ve received, split 60-40 between federal and provincial funds. AgriStability is an insurance program based on both taxpayer dollars and user fees meant to support farmers during market fluctuations.

L. Doerkson: Thank you. That actually helps.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, Alison, I must say, for myself, that was very eye opening.

A. Cuffley: I’m so glad.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think I can say we all appreciate your passion. Thank you so much.

Our next presenter is Trevor Hargreaves, B.C. Real Estate Association.

B.C. REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATION

T. Hargreaves: It’s lovely to see you all not via a Zoom meeting for a change. Boy, it’s quite the shift of subjects while I’m sitting here.

We submitted some advance materials to you, specifically around environmental policy as well as regulatory policy. I thought, for the sake of brevity today, I would focus on the topic of housing affordability — it being of such public concern.

My name is Trevor Hargreaves. I represent the B.C. Real Estate Association. It, in turn, represents the 23,000 real­tors across the province as well as the ten regional boards.

As I’m sure you’re aware, unlike many sectors across the province, amidst COVID-19, real estate has not particularly economically struggled. It’s really been in the midst of an extremely intensive time of business. The reasons for this being many, but what it has really done is exacerbate and outline additional concerns around housing affordability. It’s something that we see as a crisis. It’s something that we are right in the middle of, policy-wise, and I come to you with a series of recommendations in terms of potential focus in the coming year and in coming months.

While there are a number of contributing factors, the single causal factor, according to our economic and policy research, is a dire shortage of supply. Canada has long undersupplied it’s housing market at a rate making it the lowest within the G7 by a notable margin. If you factor this against sizeable immigration targets with no federal plan to provide housing for this boost in population and a market further undersupplied by COVID-19, when sellers are fearful to list their property because of all the people that it means putting through your house, it’s created a perfect storm within British Columbia.

You’ve all heard the media reports over the summer of the hot real estate market. It’s certainly been that way for us. It’s starting to cool now, but it has been a very busy time. As we get to more typical levels, we still find an extreme sales shortage as we move forward. When it comes to housing supply, there is no immediate way to fix this.

What we really see when it comes to the three levels of government is a lack of unity in approach. I voted on my way here. It has been a topic of federal discussion non-stop — the feds continually talking about what they’re going to do. As we see it, one of the really main hindrances is not at the federal level; it’s at the municipal level. That’s something where we see that provincially the opportunity sits — where the province can serve to better unite and better influence municipal governments and serve as an intermediary between the federal government and the municipalities to create a much more standardized national approach in terms of trying to create the necessary housing supply in years to come.

[11:25 a.m.]

In a market with high consumer demand and an undersupply of listings, over the summer, we saw many listings with upwards of ten to 15 buyers competing to purchase a property. So when you’re hearing a lot of discussion around “perhaps you could change blind bidding” or “perhaps you could do these slight changes to the market,” at the end of the day, what you’re talking about is a band-aid fix to very sizeable issues. If you have a great expansion of supply, rather than having 15 people competing for a single property, you will maybe have one or two people competing for a property.

That is really why, at the end of the day — and semantics aside from other contributing factors — we really lean toward the supply issue.

In terms of steps that you can take as a provincial government, really where we turn is to the findings of the Expert Panel on Housing Supply and Affordability, which was established in coordination with your government and the federal government to examine issues of housing supply and affordability.

Echoing their findings, what we recommend and en­dorse is, one, to review the public hearing process and give consideration to alternate options for more meaningful public input in different formats. As we see it on the municipal side, unnecessary public hearings add cost and time delays to projects, sometimes five to seven years in proposal of a new project.

The really critical issue here is that when you engage the public at the municipal level, typically, more often than not, who you are engaging is a vocal minority who are against a development. What we would like to see is a much more standardized process. It’s not that you’re skipping engaging the public but trying to engage the public in a more fulsome manner, so you’re getting a broader perspective of the municipal desires and thought process.

Secondarily, we recommend making infrastructure in­vestments to local government conditional on official community plans, zoning bylaws and other local policies that allow for increased density and a mix of housing types, really using your provincial leverage when it comes to funding to try to incentivize municipalities to be much more friendly and endorse these concepts of additional housing targets.

Third, through fulsome consultation, implement other supply-side measures and calls to action made by both the expert panel as well as the DAPR report, the DAPR report being a development approvals review process. Again, that was put forward by the province and had a variety of recommendations that have yet to be implemented.

Really, at the end of the day, between the expert panel findings and the DAPR report, we don’t feel there’s a big need to sit and reinvent the wheel and figure out where to go. You’ve already got the findings that you can implement. When it comes to looking at how to adapt and deal with housing supply moving forward, really turning to these findings and focusing on them is what we see as the key.

That concludes my presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much.

M. Dykeman: Thank you so much for your presentation.

I recently, with a group within my community…. We were talking about the housing crisis and what is driving it. There was an interesting point raised by an elected official at the municipal level. They were saying that…. The same thing came up, that the block maybe was in the approval process. They had pointed to the fact that there had been many, many of these applications that had been approved. But there seemed to be something that was stopping it from going to be approved by council to actually built. They weren’t actually getting built. So if you approved, say, one million units, maybe 40,000 were coming to fruition. I’m just picking numbers out of the air.

Have you noticed that throughout the province, there have been lots of approvals, but those houses aren’t getting built? Have you heard what might be causing that disconnect?

T. Hargreaves: It isn’t, I wouldn’t say, a common happenstance. What I would say is there is a lot of difference in municipal approach. That, frankly, is a problem, because some municipalities are very well staffed. Others are not. Some are very pro-development. Others are not. There really aren’t standardized processes.

When it comes to developing their own internal community review process, that differs significantly. Again, this is an area where standardization could be put in place. But I think very often it falls to those politics in terms of how those review processes go. At the developer side, I continually hear the developers. They hungrily are waiting to develop, but of course, it’s such a busy time now that they have to be able to allocate the time and the resources so it meets the time in lead-up.

You’d be best to address that question more within the housing development sector itself, the Canadian Home Builders in particular.

M. Dykeman: Absolutely. Thank you. I was curious if you’d heard the same thing, so I appreciate you going into such detail about the factors that you think might be contributing, and appreciate your time on that presentation.

[11:30 a.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Hi, Trevor. Good to see you or hear you again.

You know, these reports have come out, and they talk about this cooperation, etc. This is a big hurdle for elected officials. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. Not having a public hearing process or a different process isn’t going to change the fact that there’s going to be that vocal minority.

I guess one of the questions I’ve been trying to wrestle with is how you deal with…. Okay, so we make it easier for the development community to build more supply. If we’re going to streamline the process and make it easier, are market forces going to be enough to protect from windfall profits being taken? Or is it the case that you have some recommendation in that area to go from where we’re at today?

The acuity of the shortage — you only have to look at it — is so severe. Something’s going to break, but I don’t know what it is. On the other hand, people are willing to pay outrageous prices for homes just to get into the market. So what’s your recommendation?

T. Hargreaves: I think the first part of the scenario is not trying to lower prices. It’s trying to level off the prices, because we are predicting, moving into the year, that demand is massive, and it’s a supply-and-demand market. At the end of the day, even if only 5 percent of the people can afford to buy at these prices, they’re going to continue to do so. Prices are projected to rise again next year.

I think at the practical side, when you look at what could you actually do municipally, where I see the issue is within official community planning and where the wasted engagement is. If a community is doing fulsome engagement to say, “What are our priorities? What do we really need for housing? We need housing for the elderly. We need housing for certain pockets of economic sectors within the province. We need more condos. We need dup­lexes….” Wherever they set their priorities, they set those priorities based on the feedback that they get.

Well, once you put out your official community plan, you’re stating: “These are our planned priorities. We desperately need new housing for the elderly in our neighbourhood.” So when a proposal comes that directly checks the box, we see it as an extreme hindrance to have those discussions again, open to the public, saying: “Do we need this situation that we, as a community, have already outlined and that is a significant priority for our community?” It’s a bit of running in a circle.

There’s a streamlined process where, I think, the front-end engagement needs to be put into establishing the priorities of a community by asking the community. But once those priorities have been established, green-light those and fast-track developments that check those boxes. That’s aside from developer interest or developer profit. That’s community profit, at the end of the day, and community benefit.

P. Alexis: Probably the most important document in my community that we did was the housing needs assessment. Once we established, just like you say, what we actually needed to build and where our gaps were, it was so much easier to give approvals, because we needed it desperately. We knew where we were short. So I absolutely agree with you.

Can you tell me what percentage of rental availability is optimum? I come from a community where we have zero percent availability. What’s optimum?

T. Hargreaves: I can’t say that I come in bearing those statistics, and I think that that would depend, as well, on the needs and economic layout of a given community. Certainly, I can follow that up and run it through our economics department, if you’d like.

P. Alexis: I’m just curious: what was it ten years ago? What was it 20 years ago? Are we making headway? What works? What keeps prices at a reasonable rate?

T. Hargreaves: It, again, very much varies by where we are, I think. You also see extreme competition within Metro Vancouver right now. Then that’s actually countered as you get outside of Vancouver and get into more surrounding areas where you aren’t seeing a lot of development. It’s stagnating as well, so it’s continuing to falsely drive up the need and the competition in Prince George and Salmon Arm and these locations that don’t have a lot of ongoing new builds.

There isn’t a standardized answer to that. I think it really depends regionally. It depends on the economic growth and prosperity of the region that you’re speaking to as well.

P. Alexis: I thought maybe there was a formula of sorts.

J. Routledge (Chair): We are running out of time, and there is one more question.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Trevor, I’ve got another question. Meeting with the development community in my riding, they talked about the impact of Airbnb on extracting available and affordable housing out of the market, and they showed me the math, etc.

Is there any recommendation from the B.C. Real Estate Association about what to do in terms of Airbnbs, in terms of the marketplace?

[11:35 a.m.]

T. Hargreaves: That’s another tough political question. You’ve certainly seen it detract amidst COVID-19, which I think has made a lot of people really shaky around partaking in Airbnb, because they built their whole economic plan around it. Suddenly, in a place like West Kelowna, where you had a lot people rolling through in the summers, and you could make a lot of money doing it, I think you’ll see a bit of a detraction.

I don’t think you can tackle that, really, on the provincial side; it’s very much on the municipal side. But to address it in a more fulsome manner, probably putting together a working group of housing-related organizations would be the first step, to get a series of perspectives on it.

J. Routledge (Chair): I hate to wrap it up, Trevor. You’ve really piqued people’s interest, and this is such an important discussion. You’ve put some interesting and new ideas out on the table that I think we’ll want to discuss in more detail. Thank you so much for your time.

T. Hargreaves: Certainly. Any time you want any of our resources, to borrow our economic data, anywhere we can help, we’re always very happy to.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Brett Garnett, British Columbia association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada.

Welcome, Brett.

APPRAISAL INSTITUTE OF CANADA,
B.C. ASSOCIATION

B. Garnett: Thank you very much. Good morning, Chair­person and committee members.

My name is Brett Garnett. I’m the president of the B.C. association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada. I am an AACI P.App–accredited appraiser. On behalf of the over 1,200 members of the AIC-BC, I am pleased to have the opportunity to provide this submission.

AIC-BC appraisers are involved in all aspects of the real estate landscape. We are a self-regulated body, with a strong focus on consumer protection. To this end, we maintain a robust disciplinary process, mandatory continuing education, and each member must maintain professional liability insurance.

AIC-BC appraisers are committed to working with government and stakeholders within the real estate industry to ensure transparency and that all parties involved in a real estate transaction are protected and well informed. We believe that unbiased opinions of value, based on strong valuation fundamentals, help support a sustainable and healthy marketplace. The services our members provide help to strike the appropriate balance between access to housing and risk. This process enables all British Columbians to prosper and, we believe, will aid in the economic recovery from COVID-19.

Fraudulent, criminal behaviour within the real estate industry in B.C. is a primary focus of our membership. As an organization that has an independent role in a real estate transaction, AIC-BC appraisers help mitigate and detect fraudulent activity by conducting on-site inspections and completing comprehensive research on a subject property as well as analyzing comparable properties to arrive at an unbiased opinion of value.

This comprehensive due diligence allows AIC-BC ap­praisers to identify and warn of abnormal behaviour such as inflated prices, false transactions, frequent and rapid transactions, straw buyers, counterfeit documents, data manipulation or mortgage fraud. AIC-BC appraisers are unique amongst almost all participants in a real estate transaction in that their compensation is not tied to the value of property. As a result, appraisers are ideally positioned to identify red flags related to fraudulent criminal activity.

To this end, our research and industry contacts have made it clear that the only thing the parties who engage in real estate fraud appreciate more than money is privacy. Rapid transactions that lack proper oversight and data review provide the perfect backdrop for fraud and fre­quently result in unjustified upward pressure on pricing, something that is juxtaposed with the desire of the public and government to see more affordable housing options and assist in the economic recovery from COVID-19.

In recent years, real estate data has been commoditized, becoming fragmented, expensive and ultimately less ac­cessible. Data held by B.C. Assessment and the Land Title and Survey Authority, or LTSA, has in many cases become inaccessible to or unaffordable for our members. The onset of COVID-19 and the restrictions this posed to appraisers in contact with the public, further highlighted the need for appraisers to have rapid access to reliable, affordable data.

[11:40 a.m.]

For example, until recently, AIC-BC members would be able to confirm a property owner’s identity through BCA data. Unfortunately, this information is today redacted by BCA, and therefore, appraisers must purchase a $17 title search simply to confirm that the party they are speaking with at a property is in fact the true owner. Further restrictions on the BCA e-value site mean that today AIC-BC members cannot even search their own property information, let alone the subject of an appraisal.

On the MLS side, the 11 distinct boards throughout the province create a fragmented data system with little sharing. Appraisers are classified differently than licensed real estate salespeople, which means reduced access levels to data. We believe that this trend is in conflict with the provincial government’s mandate to protect the public by addressing fraud and unwarranted inflation in the real estate marketplace. It also conflicts with a healthy recovery from COVID-19 and the feasibility of developing more affordable housing options for B.C. residents.

Recent provincial legislation initiatives for data transparency, such as the Real Estate Development Marketing Amendment Act and the Land Owner Transparency Act, while excellent policy, if not accessible and at a reasonable cost to AIC appraisers, limits its potential impact and effectiveness. The simple fact is that if an appraiser is re­quired to go to five or more different data providers to secure information — that until recently was available from one or two sources and that today incur 20 percent of the appraisal fee — simply to verify critical factual data…. It undermines the integrity of the appraisal process.

The recommendation of the AIC-BC today is for the provincial government to acknowledge professional ap­praisers as the essential ally they are in their mandate to protect the public by ensuring land title and assessment databases are accessible to them at reasonable cost, and in addition, that the real estate boards within the province be given direction to allow AIC-BC members the same access to MLS systems that licensed realtors enjoy. While there is assuredly a cost to doing so, we believe this cost is far less than the losses that are sustained by the public from fraudulent activity and inflated real estate values.

Chairperson, committee members, we are privileged to have been invited here today to share the perspective of our members. We would be pleased to respond to any ques­tions or comments you and your colleagues may have.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Brett.

Questions from committee members.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Brett, thanks very much for your presentation. I know you presented recently to different caucuses about your information.

I want to ask you about the privacy. When did these re­dactions start occurring, so that these increased costs had to be passed on, and the speed that the appraisal institute members could do their jobs…? When was that changed? I guess what I’m wondering is…. I don’t know what drove it other than privacy laws, anyway.

B. Garnett: Well, I think that was the message that was sent: that it was for privacy reasons that it was redacted. I think it occurred somewhere in the order of two to three years ago. The redaction, obviously, is a huge hamstring for us because we really don’t know who is involved in a transaction. We need to identify the vendor immediately in any transaction. We want to match it up with a contract and, certainly, an identification of the individuals. If you can, on site is ideal.

The privacy message, I think, is lost because you can buy that information. Anybody can buy it. That is where we have an issue. Unfortunately, at $17 to do that for the legal plan, any number of charges on title, you quickly erode the ability to make any money on an appraisal. As you know, the cost to the public would increase significantly on an appraisal if that was the case.

I hope that answers your question.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I have lots of questions, but thanks.

J. Routledge (Chair): Does anyone else have a question?

You can ask another one.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): You know, I’ve been away from…. I used to be a mortgage banker back in the ’70s, a long time ago. My question, really, about it…. We would never lend money without having an appraisal in hand.

With the rising, skyrocketing prices in housing, etc., with the values that are being paid, how does the institute properly project and protect the public that is buying these properties, making certain that the value that they’re paying is not overly inflated by all of those other factors? You started off with a long laundry list of things that could affect these things. How do we make it so that the public is protected better, if there is any way of doing that?

[11:45 a.m.]

B. Garnett: My answer to that is that as we all know, when we go out and buy a property, the last thing we look at is the last transaction or the transactions that have occurred. All it takes is a fraudulent transaction to occur that shouldn’t have and that’s inflated — it’s not a real, bona fide transaction — because there was a lack of due diligence, and the parties involved were conducting fraudulent activity to their own gain.

That doesn’t get vetted in the marketplace. It’s simply held up as the new highest price of a property. So it’s self-perpetuating. The next person comes in and says: “Oh, that property transacted for this.” Nobody knows that it was fraud. So they pay a little bit more. The market’s rising. It’s must be higher than the last sale. On and on you go.

This needs to be nipped in the bud, as comprehensively as you can. The fundamental baseline is, as I said, that money laundering and parties involved in fraud love privacy. The minute you make them squirm and you’re asking too many questions and you’ve got too much information, they don’t want that. They start looking elsewhere to do their business.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. With that, we’ll thank you for your time, Brett, and for your insights and your ap­proach to what is a burning question for so many of us in our communities. Thanks again.

Our next presenter is Susan Russell, with Fostering Change.

Susan, you have five minutes. I’ll try to give you a signal when you have 30 seconds so that you can wrap it up. Then we’ll have five minutes to ask you questions.

FOSTERING CHANGE

S. Russell-Csanyi: Hi, committee. Thanks for having me today. I’m Susan Russell-Csanyi, and I’m a community organizer at Fostering Change.

I’d like to start by recognizing that I gratefully speak on the unceded ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people.

Fostering Change is a program of First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society. We’re focused on creating better outcomes for youth when they are forced out of care at 19 in British Columbia. I’m speaking today using a lens of lived expertise as a former child in care. I’d like to also recognize the collective effort of the over 130 youth advocates at Fostering Change, whose dedication and courage has shaped today’s budget ask.

There are 6,700 youth in care in British Columbia, and 900 of those youth will age out of government care and be left to fend for themselves without a social safety net this year and every year. In short, youth are aging out without support, and out of the 900 youth that leave care this year, 225 of those youth will end up homeless and possibly succumb to the adverse outcomes that plague our community.

Currently 90 percent of British Columbians provide their own children with a host of financial and wellness supports over the age of 19. You may have children your­selves or know of people that have children, and this can resonate with you. Some 79 percent of British Columbians support an extension of the social safety net for youth and children who age out of the child welfare system with government care experience.

When youth age out of care at 19 and they are left to fend for themselves, they lose their social safety net. That includes community and financial support. In many cases, youth are forced to choose between homelessness and toxic and harmful relationships in exchange for shelter. Youth fear their 19th birthday because they’ve seen the impact of what leaving care, and without support, will have on their lives.

My community of youth in and from care have lost friends and siblings and their own lives due to the lack of universal support available for youth leaving care. Youth from care, upon the age of 19 and being forced out of government care, are 200 times more likely to become homeless, 17 times more likely to be hospitalized for mental health challenges and five times more likely to die prematurely than the rest of their peers who have not been in care.

Youth describe aging out of government care unsupported as like falling off a cliff. Youth homelessness advocate Katherine McParland describes aging out of care as a superhighway to homelessness. Our team of advocates at Fostering Change ask that no youth age out of support until they have secured a social safety net of shelter, community and financial support.

[11:50 a.m.]

In practice, this looks like an automatic enrolment into support upon aging out of government care, regardless of time spent in care or care status. The financial support pro­vided is based on individual needs of youth, not on the current age-based system. It is a flexible coverage and covers market housing options as well as mental wellness and health supports.

Detailed in Dr. Melanie Doucet’s “A Long Road Paved with Solutions,” over 35 years, 76 reports have focused on increasing support for youth leaving government care. These 440 enclosed concrete recommendations have yet to be implemented by federal and provincial governments. The local report from the Representative for Children and Youth, titled A Parent’s Duty: Government’s Obligation to Youth Transitioning into Adulthood, makes 17 concrete and timely recommendations that build on increasing and improving transition support for all youth as they leave the government and child welfare systems.

The option not to invest in this population only serves the status quo, costing millions of dollars in health care. It fuels the cyclical nature of homelessness and advances the loss of life. There is also the immeasurable cost to youth and families in the communities in which we live.

We will measure the success of the investment when no youth ages out of the child welfare system into homelessness. When our community is supported in an equitable way, no youth will unroll a sleeping bag onto the sidewalk to celebrate turning 19.

We ask that when the budget is considered, our most marginalized population is not forgotten and that together we can create a B.C. where all young people have the op­portunity to pursue their dreams and ensure they receive support to do so, regardless of time spent in care and care status, so that all youth look forward to their 19th birthday.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Susan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. It touched me deeply. It’s an area that I admittedly do not know a lot about, so it was very eye-opening to hear the challenges that are faced within the community.

My question is…. You mentioned two different reports: one that had, I think you said, 43 recommendations and one that had 17.

S. Russell-Csanyi: I was just going to clarify. The RCY’s report, A Parent’s Duty, has seven concrete recommenda­tions. Then Dr. Melanie Doucet’s report has 76 general recommendations and 440 steps to take along the way. I’m glad that you asked.

M. Dykeman: My question is: have any of these been…? You mentioned that they hadn’t been. But has there been any progress? Have there been any of the recommendations that you’ve…? Has there been tracking of those recommendations, and have any started to be implemented?

S. Russell-Csanyi: Previously the Representative for Children and Youth has done reports that have tracked where the recommendations have been measured, as far as success. We know that many of the recommendations have been accepted by government, but they have yet to be implemented. So there has been success, and we’re hoping for more.

Currently the only children and youth that are served are the most successful, as far as leaving the child welfare system, but we’re looking to serve all youth in care who leave the child welfare system, not just a few.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. Are you going to be putting in a written submission too?

S. Russell-Csanyi: Yeah. Thanks.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Susan. Obviously, it doesn’t sound like we’re doing better. I know this aging-out has been a big issue.

I want to go back to children and youth before that. Is there something that you might recommend that would help the government try to eliminate children becoming in the care of government, which is fundamental to the overall reason we’re faced with this, an increasing pressure?

S. Russell-Csanyi: Thanks for asking. That’s a very up­stream approach, addressing the very colonial nature of the child welfare system and the systems that feed into that as well.

[11:55 a.m.]

Poverty, homelessness. I believe the stat is one out of three children and youth who’ve been in child welfare do end up homeless. So addressing all of those systems with a cross-ministry working approach is our number one recommendation for that upstream approach.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing that we have other questions.

You’ve made a very compelling presentation. I, for one, wrote down and am giving a lot of thought to your statement that children in care fear their 19th birthday. I think that that struck all of us. Thank you for the work that you do. I hope that we’re in a position, in the committee, to make some good, solid recommendations in response to what you’re asking.

Our next presenter is Gordon Matchett, Take a Hike Foundation.

Hi, Gordon.

TAKE A HIKE FOUNDATION

G. Matchett: Good morning. As the CEO of the Take a Hike Foundation, a charity that provides mental health services to youth, I want to thank the government for the recent investments you’ve made in mental health, and I want to thank all parties for the recognition that mental health and resilience are going to play a key role in the province’s post-COVID-19 recovery. As you prepare for Budget 2022, we hope to see these investments continued and increased.

For far too many young people, youth is a time of relentless uncertainty, anxiety and trepidation. Youth, more than anything, need a nurturing, stable and safe environment where they can unlock their unique gifts and talents and develop the self-confidence and relationship skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

Take a Hike partners with public school districts and embeds critical clinical counselling supports in classrooms serving youth experiencing vulnerabilities. Youth come together with peers and caring adults to solve problems, connect and learn valuable skills, all while enjoying B.C.’s beautiful oceans, forests and mountains. These experiences teach them self-empowerment and positive coping mechanisms and deliver invaluable capacity for the resilience that we all need to navigate turbulence in our lives.

I would like to thank the provincial government for the $138,000 in funding that was provided to us last school year. That funding was met by over $2 million of philanthropic donations. With that support, we were able to add our eighth location and double our reach in only 2½ years, and now we’re ready to double again.

We re-engaged 140 youth in high school and set them on their path to success. Ninety-five percent of youth in Take a Hike experienced increases in their mental health, despite the pandemic, and 91 percent of our grade 12 youth graduated. That other 9 percent? They’re back in class, and they’re going to graduate this year. Isn’t that remarkable, for youth that had at one time checked out of school?

There’s so much more to be done, because the pandemic has exacerbated an already devastating mental health cri­sis. Before the pandemic, one in seven youth had a diagnosed mental health concern, and less than a third got any help at all. B.C. Children’s Hospital most recently did a study that showed that two-thirds of children and youth in B.C. were experiencing anxiety, mood swings and suicidal ideation. That was up from only a third before the pandemic.

We’re very encouraged that all parties in the Legislature are taking this crisis seriously and that you have made mental health a priority. Take a Hike wants to continue to be a partner in these efforts, and we’d ask government to take the following three recommendations to improve mental health in our province.

First, continue your investments in mental health to ensure that B.C. is a leader in the country. Increase Take a Hike’s funding to $1 million annually, which will be met by $4 million of community donations and allow us to double our reach once again and embed mental health clinicians in 16 classrooms provincewide. Finally, we encourage you to develop a strategy to encourage more people to enter the mental health profession and reduce the current shortage of mental health workers.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today. Take a Hike wants to continue working with all parties on improving the mental health of young people in these difficult times. We would welcome any members of the committee or any interested MLA to reach out and contact me to talk about how we could further work with government.

[12:00 p.m.]

If you are interested in getting in touch, please contact me. My name is Gordon Matchett. I’m the CEO of the Take a Hike Foundation. My email address is gordon@takeahikefoundation.org. We will also be providing a written submission to your committee before the 30th of September.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Gordon.

Questions from the committee?

P. Alexis: I’ve just brought up the document that you’ve provided us. So you are Vancouver, Burnaby, Delta, Na­naimo, West Kootenays, Cowichan Valley and Saanich.

G. Matchett: Yes.

P. Alexis: I represent, of course, the Fraser Valley. There are a couple of us here. Can you tell me about any plans for expansion in the Fraser Valley?

G. Matchett: For sure. In the next three to five years, depending on funding, our plans are to centre our expansion on Vancouver Island; the Lower Mainland, including the Fraser Valley; and then out in the Thompson-Okana­gan region.

When we expand to a different school district, first we look for a school district that has the need and then are willing to work with us. Take a Hike doesn’t necessarily go and try to sell our program to school districts. We promote our program and attract the districts that are interested, because that’s the way we can get the most traction.

Right now we have a handful of school districts in the valley that are interested. Over the next two weeks, I’m going to be meeting with at least 12 districts across those three regions to see who might be next.

P. Alexis: Thank you for that.

M. Starchuk: Gordon, thank you for your presentation and your enthusiasm. It’s not missed.

I do have one question, where you talk about the in­crease in funding and the return that you’ve got here. It’s a pretty big gap between $5.60 and $13.40. Can you explain why the gap is there?

G. Matchett: Sorry, the $5.60 and the $13.40?

M. Starchuk: Yeah. It says you want the increase in funding to $1 million a year. “Our investment study shows that demonstrated for every dollar invested in Take a Hike, society recognized a return between $5.60 and $13.40.”

G. Matchett: Excellent. You’re referring to our social return on investment. Correct. When we did a social re­turn on investment, we worked with the folks over at PwC. Then we also involved the Ministry of Education’s analytics branch. What we wanted to do was determine, for every dollar that you invest in Take a Hike, how much does it save society in the long term?

The results we had…. At the very low end, if you use the most strict measures possible, it’s $5.60. That means if we cut out anything that might be a little bit extra, it’s $5.60. But if we were to count all the impacts that we could have, it could be upwards of $13.40.

We give that range simply because it’s a newer method of doing this study. It’s a little bit more stringent than methods that have been done in the past, and it allows you to see a range. We normally quote $5.60, which is a 560 percent return on investment. It’s almost as good as Bitcoin.

M. Starchuk: Almost. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, Gordon, I just want to say it’s nice to see you again after so long.

G. Matchett: It’s good to see you again too, Janet. It took me a second to recognize you. It’s so nice seeing people in person again.

J. Routledge (Chair): No kidding. I have to say your presentation was very hopeful. Having had a chance to actually see the program in action and talk to some of your students who told me in their own voice what it meant to them to be part of the program, I’m just thrilled that you were able to come and speak to us and share with us what you’re doing.

Hope to see you again soon.

G. Matchett: Thanks, Janet. Thanks for your involvement in Take a Hike.

J. Routledge (Chair): Before our lunch break, our last presentation is Erica Mark, TRRUST Collective Impact.

A Voice: I’m sorry. She had a flat tire this morning, so she couldn’t make it. She’s going to come in for one of the meetings next week.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, we’ll recess for lunch now.

The committee recessed from 12:04 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter will be An­drea Sinclair, B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils.

Andrea, you have five minutes. We’ll try to give you a 30-second warning so you know when to wrap it up, and then we have about five minutes to ask you questions.

B.C. CONFEDERATION OF
PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS

A. Sinclair: Got it. Good afternoon.

I acknowledge I am speaking today on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Stó:lō, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations.

The B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils is a non-partisan, registered non-profit charity, in operation since 1922. We are the provincially mandated voice of parents of over 565,000 children attending public schools. We have three recommendations we believe are critical for every child to have equitable access to public education, with the supports and services they need to succeed and thrive today and beyond the pandemic.

Recommendation 1 is to safeguard stable, predictable and adequate K-to-12 education funding. The pandemic has placed a disproportionate burden on children and youth and widened the existing gaps. Education must be at the centre of our pandemic recovery plans to ensure we build resilience for the future and prevent deepening inequalities.

We ask that the provincial government act to safeguard the adequate, stable, predictable funding to ensure the provision of education programs, student-focused resources, wraparound services and personnel that meet the actual needs of all students. The current funding formula is inadequate, especially for students with special needs, and funding for early identification is severely lacking. We have observed that the percentage of students with designations is increasing, and wait times for assessments are increasing exponentially.

We ask that the government implement the recommen­dations contained in the funding model review report, specifically recommendation 6, component 1. Beyond learning impacts, especially for the most disadvantaged children, our new normal will require more funding for learning recovery, acceleration programs, school health and safety, student mental health and well-being, and connectivity and support to teachers.

Recommendation 2 is to significantly increase the K-to-12 capital funding. According to the Ministry of Education seismic mitigation progress report of September 2021, only 38 percent of schools have had this process completed. That’s 187 of 496. The initial 2020 completion date was pushed back to 2025, and 2030 for Vancouver. There needs to be further financial commitment to truly expedite this program to ensure all children are learning in safe buildings.

Significant additional funding is also required to ad­dress the deferred life-cycle maintenance of schools. A 2020 report from the B.C. School Trustees Association noted the routine capital program totalled $204 million, yet the estimated cost of repairs and maintenance by en­gineers was more than double that, at $441 million. We ask the government to significantly increase grants provided to maintain existing building infrastructure to decrease the deferred maintenance liability that currently exists.

Recommendation 3 is to significantly increase K-to-12 operational funding. The number of children and youth needing help has reached a crisis level. We ask that a significant portion of the provincial pandemic contingency fund flow through to K-to-12 education, as the full depth and breadth of the pandemic created mental health issues, and learning impacts on our children are yet to be seen.

We know that one in five children live in poverty in B.C. The Breakfast Club of Canada stated that over 170,000 B.C. children go hungry every single day. The Coalition for Healthy School Food, B.C. chapter, reported that children and youth consume insufficient and unhealthy diets, which negatively impacts physical and mental health as well as academic performance. The increased importance of school nutrition programs has never been more evident.

Take a Hike Foundation noted the pandemic has compounded the mental health challenges facing vulnerable youth, including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, addictions, trauma, food insecurity and hopelessness.

The Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth identified that supports for students who have mental health challenges should be a number one priority.

[1:35 p.m.]

Many studies confirm the pandemic has had a dispro­portionate impact for minority students, students with diverse abilities, lower income, racialized populations, LGBTQ2S+ and Indigenous students. Now more than ever our commitment to equity is paramount in ensuring success for all children.

While there has been an increase in the downloading of health services to education, there is a cost associated with providing these services. That has not been adequately funded, resulting in school districts having to redirect funds from the classroom.

In conclusion, studies have revealed that an investment in education results in savings. For every $1 invested in education, the province will see an economic return of $11. We and parents strongly believe that public education must remain at the forefront of government’s priorities. The provincial government must act and safeguard ade­quate, stable and predictable funding for K-to-12 public education to ensure the provision of student-needed re­sources, wraparound services for children and families, and personnel that meets the actual needs of all students now and beyond the pandemic.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Andrea.

Questions from the committee?

L. Doerkson: You touched on…. I think the number was $441 million. Was that to renovate, maintain or build new schools? What was that number attached to?

A. Sinclair: Maintain. It’s the life cycle of a school building and the maintenance that comes with that. It could be heating systems, boilers, ventilation, the roof — anything that maintains the building. That’s in addition to what it may need, given where it’s located and when it was built and its seismic structural capability.

L. Doerkson: And right now we have half of that earmarked for the schools?

A. Sinclair: Half of…?

L. Doerkson: That $441 million. Did you say that we had…?

A. Sinclair: Yes, currently half.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Andrea, for your presentation.

There was something that you touched on. I wonder if you could expand on what those were and what their associated costs are, with the wraparound services.

A. Sinclair: Well, I’m not sure I can give you exactly a number. But when we think about wraparound services — and perhaps my colleagues might touch on it — it’s the….

Students and families spend birth to 18 in the preschool system and the K-to-12 system, and more so now those are becoming integrated. What occurs at the school is not all the services they need. You might need a psych-ed assessment. You might need a psychological assessment. You might be dealing with a child in care who has other services that they need.

When we talk about wraparound, it’s like: how do we ensure that — all the services that you, as an individual child, may need — the school becomes that hub for those services? It’s quite logical. The teacher is not necessarily the right person to provide them, because they’re not trained in some of those very specific professions that we would be looking for.

I hope that answers.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for that. How much of the wraparound is…? Or is it equally divided between before school and after school and how much it helps?

A. Sinclair: I don’t know, but I can take that question away.

M. Starchuk: Okay. I’m just curious because, as you just stated to us, there’s so much of it to integrate for all of that time, and it becomes the central location. I’m just curious how much is there before and after. That’s all.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, it looks like you were very thorough. Your presentation covered all the bases and anticipated our questions.

Just in closing, I want to thank you for your presentation and say that the $11 economic return on a $1 investment is quite a compelling number.

A. Sinclair: Thank you. We will submit a fuller proposal.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Darren Danyluk, B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association.

Darren, you have five minutes and then five minutes for questions.

B.C. PRINCIPALS AND
VICE-PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION

D. Danyluk: Good afternoon, committee members. Thank you for this opportunity to address the committee with the goals of our association, and thank you for the opportunity to seek support in reaching these goals in the interests of our members and the sector at large.

[1:40 p.m.]

I acknowledge I’m here today on these lands, as a guest and a settler, in the traditional territory of the Musqueam, the Tsleil-Waututh and the Squamish Coast Salish peoples. I’m very grateful every day to be here.

Just very briefly, I would like to share with you who we are as an association. The BCPVPA is a non-profit, voluntary organization of the public school principals and vice-principals in British Columbia. We are member-driven and have been an association since 1987. We have about 2,600 members. All of those are represented in each of the 60 districts. We have a chapter in every one of the 60 school districts. All told, we represent around 94 percent of the voices of B.C.’s public school principals and vice-principals.

Sixty, or very nearly 60, percent of our members are wo­men, close to 40 percent are men, and there is a small number of our membership that don’t identify as either. More than half our members are between 30 and 50 years of age, with many more years ahead of them as school leaders. About a third of our principals and three-quarters of our vice-principals are in the first five years of their journey as leaders in our public school system.

We have three goals that I’d like to share with you this afternoon and seek support on, the first of which is a provincial negotiation structure. The current design of negotiations for employment relations in British Columbia for principals and vice-principals is inefficient, and it poses problems for our BCPVPA members with respect to in­equities and variances. These inequities and variances do not promote succession planning for leadership, nor do they promote mobility between districts for leadership.

The inequities exist between districts but also within districts, and they exist on specific terms of employment that are common among all leaders, and perhaps should be common across. Contract language is modified by districts without meaningful consultation with our principals and vice-principals, and collective access to negotiation exists for all the principals and vice-principals within Canada, whether or not they are part of a provincial teachers union.

We believe that a provincial negotiation framework has proven effective elsewhere in this country, and we believe it would be just as effective and successful here in B.C. We’re seeking support on that endeavour.

The second point I’d like to share with you of ours — and goal — is to address the deteriorating mental health and wellness of our BCPVPA members. Our long-term disability claims have been on the rise, and this predates pandemic reality. Since 2016, the number of our members on long-term disability has tripled. Mental health concerns now lead as the primary reason for requesting long-term disability.

A recent survey of our membership this past spring — we entitled it “Thriving in Education” — surfaced a couple of very key points about our membership and the qualities of their leadership. One of the questions asked our members to share with us, in colloquial terms, how much they had left in the tank at the end of the week, how much energy they had in reserve for a balanced lifestyle, the endeavours with family and friends and recreation. A second question asked them: “If your district or your role demanded more of you, would you give more?”

The first question…. An overwhelming majority shared with us that they felt very little left in the tank at the end of the week for a balanced lifestyle. Yet 94-plus percent of the same people said: “Should it be required, I will give more.” What that signalled to us was that we have a membership that probably doesn’t seek out support in time. They wait too long. They are at the ready to give all they have, even if they’re on fumes.

We are asking for an investment of $500,000 to help us implement and enact early intervention strategies.

The final goal I want to share with you is the development of a leadership framework for schools within B.C. for our leadership. Our association has been designing, building, implementing and delivering leadership initiatives for well more than 30 years. Our short course is an excellent example of such. Across the province, independently, many districts have excellent leadership initiatives to develop leadership in their own regions. However, B.C. doesn’t have a systematic approach, as a province, to developing leadership.

Beginning with aspiring teachers and all the way through to mid-career and late-year principals and vice-principals, there is a need for leadership support and de­velopment. We feel that our association and the principals and vice-principals of B.C. are best situated and skilled to deliver and implement that framework.

A recognized and supported framework would ensure that school leaders continue to learn and continue to lead and provide B.C. children with what they need. We are asking for an investment of $2 million per year over a three-year period for the development, implementation and delivery of such leadership initiatives.

[1:45 p.m.]

I’ll close with a comment. Actually, I’ll quote, if you’ll allow me, a report written and shared in February of 2021 by the Wallace Foundation entitled How Principals Affect Students and Schools: A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research. Although the information is coming from the American sector, I do believe it can be extrapolated and applied to leadership here in British Columbia.

I will quote: “Given not just the magnitude but the scope of principal effects, which are felt across a potentially large student body and faculty in a school, it is difficult to envision an investment with a higher ceiling on its potential return than that of a successful effort to improve principal leadership.”

Thank you for your attention this afternoon. I am prepared to answer questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Darren.

Questions from the committee?

P. Alexis: Not really a question but a comment. I just want to say I know that it’s been really difficult these last 18 months. We’ve really leaned on principals. They’ve been just the beacons of light in our communities, in particular.

Please pass that congratulations along, because we really couldn’t have done it without exceptional leadership at all the school levels. I know there was tremendous amounts of pressure and all of that. I just wanted to say how grateful we are as a community to have the principals there.

D. Danyluk: Thank you. I absolutely will pass that on.

If I might share this with you. Beginning last year, in the first week of September, when notification notices were being sent out to communities, I made the decision to contact directly the principal and the team of that school, and I continued to do so through the whole of the school year. Around 1,100 individuals issued notices that I spoke with.

I have to say — and I’m glad my colleagues are here with me — every single one of them noted the support that they felt from their district leadership, from their staff and from their communities and parents. It was a team effort.

G. Kyllo: Similar to the comments of MLA Alexis, certainly appreciate all of the hard work and heavy lifting that you have done on behalf of schools across the province.

When it comes to collective agreements, you indicated that the collective agreements are not common across the entire province.

D. Danyluk: Correct. They’re not collective agreements, in fact. They’re personal services contracts.

G. Kyllo: Okay, so personal services contracts. It’s up to the individual school board, and each specific district would actually negotiate their own terms.

D. Danyluk: Correct.

G. Kyllo: You indicate that’s a bit of a problem with either principals or vice-principals that might be wanting to move from one location to another. Is seniority still res­pected across different school districts or not?

D. Danyluk: I would have to say no. Again, I could unpack this for a very long time with you, sir. Seniority doesn’t really play a role in it.

If I might maybe illustrate with an example of a term of employment that should be common, we believe, across the whole of the sector of B.C. It’s from my own hometown. I’m from the Kootenays, in eastern B.C., and in my school district, there is no language in my contract for maternity leave. It’s silent on that point. That would then, of course, default to what the employment standards are.

My neighbouring district in the south has language that points, in fact, to what the teachers receive, which is superior to employment standards. So in terms of mobility within the province, it’s unlikely that a woman would seek to move to my district from the neighbouring district with conditions such as that, when they have superior contract language around that particular point.

That’s the type of thing we’re speaking of when there are terms that should be universal. We’re not seeking to negotiate as a collective bargaining unit. We’re not seeking unionization. We’re not seeking that complexity. But there are specific terms that we believe are universal, and it would just be far more efficient if it was dealt with at a provincial table.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you.

If I may, just one follow-up to that. As far as remuneration rates, is there any consistency? How are actual rates for your principals and vice-principals negotiated from one school district to the next?

D. Danyluk: Several years back regional salary grids were designed in partnership with, I think, every player in the sector — the Superintendents Association, the Trustees Association, BCPSEA, ourselves — and they apply regionally. They reflect the differences in terms of cost of living, etc. Now, that’s a bit of a variance as well, depending on where you are in the province.

Those regional grids have been taken up as they’re written and applied as such. In other places, they haven’t been applied at all. One of the challenges is the 60 autonomous boards that will make those decisions as a board.

[1:50 p.m.]

I hope I have answered your question. I am not sure that I have.

G. Kyllo: That gives me a pretty good indication of where things are at. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Megan, we have less than a minute for both the question and the answer.

M. Dykeman: It was wonderful to see you again. I know we met recently. I’d like to thank you for your presentation. I looked through the submissions.

I was just wondering if you could very briefly…. I know you touched on it a little bit in your presentation, but mental health initiative–wise, can you dig a little bit deeper into what sort of supports you’re looking for in regards to that?

Thank you for all you’ve done during the pandemic.

D. Danyluk: Thank you for the question, MLA Dykeman.

In brief, we have actually started a pilot this last year with a company called WelTel. In a nutshell, basically, it’s a text message every Monday: “How are you?” We’ve piloted that with 100 of our membership. Well, we have 2,600 members.

It’s proving to be effective in that weekly contact with our membership, with a simple question. It provokes, first of all, the thought of the individual: how am I? A check-in with self. Then there’s somebody at the other end of the line that can help direct them to resources and support them immediately.

Something like that. Again, that model. But again, we’re piloting with 100. We need 20 times more resources than that to serve our membership.

M. Dykeman: We use that in farming, actually, quite a bit too. It’s wonderful to hear that you have those types of initiatives going.

Thanks again for your presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Darren. I say that on behalf of the committee.

Just in closing, as you were speaking, I’m reminded that since becoming an MLA, I’ve gotten to know quite a few — most — of the principals and many of the vice-principals in my community. I want to say that they are definitely leaders in my community. I feel like they’re partners in trying to make life better for people who live in our community. Thank you for your leadership.

Next up is Teri Mooring, B.C. Teachers Federation.

B.C. TEACHERS FEDERATION

T. Mooring: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m grateful to be here today.

I just want to acknowledge we’re all today here on the traditional, unceded and ancestral territory of the Mus­queam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

I just wanted to highlight some of the priorities in our report. I know that you’ve got the entire funding brief, and it’s actually not possible for me to go through all our priorities in five minutes. So what I’m hoping to do with my time is give you a window into the complexity of the B.C. education system and what my 47,000 members view as priorities for this coming year.

There are a number of themes within the report. I’m not going to highlight them all. I’m just going to, again, briefly go through a few of them.

First is that teachers feel it’s incumbent upon government to ensure that there’s a public-led, just recovery to address the inequities and vulnerabilities that the pandemic has exposed. Not that those inequities weren’t there before, but they’ve been further sort of exposed by the pandemic.

There are obviously demographic groups that have stood out disproportionately as experiencing the worst outcomes during this time, especially from the economic recession: young workers, recent immigrants, women, racialized and Indigenous people. Government spending needs to remain elevated in order to ensure a just recovery that’s guided by an intersectional, social justice lens to address these inequalities and vulnerabilities.

Public schools are obviously a critical part of the recovery, so it’s really important that there be a significant in­vestment towards specific skills-based training. I’m going to touch on this a couple of times. But one way that we see as the need to address the inequities is to dedicate time and resources specifically to a sectorwide approach to using skills-based training for educators to use a trauma-informed lens and a specific need for anti-racism training, specifically anti-Indigenous-racism training aligned with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call to action No. 57. Especially in light of recent events, this is critically important.

[1:55 p.m.]

Another theme is ensuring that there is stable, predictable, adequate funding for public education. This is something that we have long talked about, and I’m just going to outline. There are two philosophies of funding public education. One is our current enrolment-based funding model approach where you pool a set of resources and you ask what kind of public education can be maintained with these resources. This is how education is being funded, and it’s led to some austerity budgets and inadequate funding for public education.

The second philosophy for funding education, which we firmly believe in, is to first ask: what is the mandate for public education? What mandate should public education fulfil? What are the needs that exist within the system? And then determine the resources that are required to fulfil the mandate. This would be the best way to meet these real identified needs.

Another is maintaining targeted funding for increased health and safety measures. I’m not going to go into this very much, but what I will say is that there’s a need to ensure that ventilation, permanent hand-washing stations — all these issues that came to light during the pandemic — need to be in place in schools, and that continues to be prioritized. Public education went into a pandemic after years of underfunding, and that really showed during the pandemic.

Another — I’m circling back to this now, and you’ve heard my two colleagues mention it as well — is mental health in schools: additional funding to support a trauma-informed approach to mental health for students, staff and district administration. More counsellors are needed and professional learning for the sector in trauma-informed practice.

We partnered — and government partnered, in fact — with a UBC HELP report in February 2021, and it indicated that 80.5 percent of B.C. teachers said that their mental health was worse than before the pandemic, contrasted to only 40.5 percent of the wider Canadian population. This is also mirrored by our internal surveys.

The UBC HELP researchers also found that the majority of teachers displayed characteristics of moderate mental distress or serious mental distress. Teacher morale obviously is something that we are very concerned about. It is directly tied to health and safety concerns and trying to keep students safe while also trying to provide a quality public education to students. This is particularly problematic right now.

I also want to briefly touch on teacher recruitment and retention strategies. There needs to be dedicated funding to recruiting teachers and retaining them. We have a real concern that there are going to be more than 20,000 teachers needed over the current decade according to labour market projections that you’re going to see in the report. When surveyed, 34.2 percent of teachers indicated last January that they were more likely to leave the profession in the next two years than they were before the pandemic, and then a month later, with the UBC HELP survey, 40.3 percent indicated that they were more likely to leave education.

We already are in an environment where teachers leave the profession in the first five years at too high a rate. Just in terms of….

J. Routledge (Chair): If you could wrap it up, Teri. Thanks.

T. Mooring: Yes. Okay. I’m just going to briefly say one more thing, then, and that is just funding for inclusive education. Districts disproportionately spend more money on inclusive education than they take in. They only get about 65 percent of what is needed. This is particularly important right now during the pandemic. I know that you’re going to hear from my colleagues in BCEdAccess and Inclusion B.C. Students with diverse learning needs and disabled students were disproportionately impacted during the pandemic.

Obviously, I could go on. But I just really want to thank you for your time. I know that you’ve got our brief. I also know we all understand and value how important public education is and how important it is to properly fund it, especially during and post-pandemic. It is one of the critical services that is going to help our society, and I know that we all know that.

I just really want to thank you for your time. I’m happy to take any questions.

[2:00 p.m.]

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much for the presentation. It’s certainly not surprising. So many other groups have mentioned how many people are leaving their employment. Why? Why are the teachers leaving? I mean, what is happening there? If you could expand on that a little bit.

Certainly, when you refer to recruitment, we’ve had this conversation before, as well, and that is: is everybody that is wanting to become a teacher able to get into post-secondary education? Are there spots open for them?

T. Mooring: Thank you for the questions. Just in terms of why teachers are leaving the profession….

Sorry, what was your first question? I apologize.

L. Doerkson: Exactly that. Why? Why are they leaving, particularly so soon?

T. Mooring: Well, teaching is a very stressful environ­ment and never so stressful as during the pandemic. Teachers felt like they had the responsibility of keeping everyone safe without adequate tools to do so.

I speak at universities to teacher candidates regularly, and I heard from a number of them during the pandemic. These are teachers in their first five years. They were de­scribing the situation where they were having to, early in their careers, obviously, the first couple of years, deal with all of the complexities around the pandemic without….

One teacher described that she had secondary students. There was no handwashing station in her classroom. Trying to make sure everyone was doing what they needed to do, physically distance from each other…. The stressors of having the responsibility of keeping everyone safe have been really difficult on teachers.

Teachers already, obviously, have a critical job and a difficult job in terms of ensuring that all the needs of their diverse students are met. If you layer that on top of a pandemic, you can imagine how stressful the environment is. As I say, this is already an environment where teachers tend to leave the profession at fairly high numbers in the first five years.

In terms of recruitment or retention, we don’t produce enough teachers in B.C. to fill the need. We have folks that aren’t certified teachers teaching in many regions of the province, particularly in the north of the province. We are working with universities around problem-solving, especially around recruiting teachers generally but also teachers who are Indigenous and teachers who are reflective of the diverse communities that we teach in B.C.

Just getting enough qualified teachers to actually teach in classrooms in B.C. has been challenging. This was a problem before the pandemic. It’s even a bigger problem now. We’ve become very reliant on retired teachers to continue teaching and to also become TTOCs post-retirement, and many of them opted out this year, of course, understandably, during the pandemic. This has been a chronic issue for a very long time.

In 2017, there was a government task force to look at recruitment and retention issues in B.C. Some of those recommendations were implemented but not all of them, and more needs to be done.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. I had a question about recommendation No. 6, with provincial funding. It’s something that, in the decade I was on the school board, was always a challenge. On the one hand, you’re in a situation where you’re trying to get funding based on individual little things like, you know, do you check the box on this? Do you have ten of these? You put that in and then the time that goes with audits on those. Then, of course, towards the end of my time on the school board, there was talk about doing prevalence funding, which, of course, comes with its own challenges.

With recommendation No. 6, you are talking about the Ministry of Education reforming the provincial funding formula for operating grants to one of identified needs. I’m wondering. I have not read the whole report. Will more information be forthcoming with that?

I’m sort of looking at it, thinking that depending on how many resources you have in individual districts, that might be a challenge if you have to identify each thing that you need in your district. How do you demonstrate that with resources versus having the grants to fill the needs of some of the districts? I was just wondering if you could, just very briefly — I know we are out of time — give me an idea of what that looks like and if there is more information available.

[2:05 p.m.]

T. Mooring: Yeah, I certainly can. This recommendation specifically speaks to, yes, looking at the funding formula.

When we are speaking of identified needs here, we are specifically talking about student-identified needs. We are very concerned that the prevalence model of funding in­clusive education is still on the table. We think that would be extraordinarily detrimental to education, and education funding is of inclusive education. We’ve seen that in other jurisdictions.

What we think needs to happen is…. As I said, inclusive education is underfunded in B.C. Districts put in a lot more resources than they actually take in from the government around inclusive education, and that has to come from other areas of education funding. “Identified need” means that we need to ensure that students are identified early. That’s currently not happening. There needs to be funding for that. You heard Andrea speak of how important it is to make sure needs are identified in our younger students.

Identified needs means that the students are identified in classrooms. Students get identified according to their needs, and that’s funded. Prevalence funding on a statistical model of how often a particular disability occurs in a given society is not a way to fund inclusive education. We have needs in the system. Some districts have disproportionate needs because they have special programs and they attract students from other parts of B.C. to special programs within their district.

We also don’t fund any of the high-incidence students. Students with attention deficit disorder, for example, are not funded. Only low-incidence students are funded. There is a real need to improve the quantum of funding in inclusive education. The quantum was not looked at in the last funding formula review. That is something that we feel is absolutely necessary in order to ensure a truly inclusive education system.

I know my friends in BCEdAccess are going to talk, if they haven’t already, to you. They use an exclusion tracker, and that tracks the number of students that are asked to stay home from school because there isn’t adequate staffing in order to ensure that they’re there at certain times of the year or in certain situations. That’s not an inclusive system. We need to do better by those students.

No one wants students to be excluded from school. When a student is asked to not attend school, that’s a real failure of the system, yet it continues to happen because the system is not adequately funded.

J. Routledge (Chair): I know you’ve just scratched the surface, and there’s a lot more to talk about. We do appreciate you coming and taking the time and engaging with us. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you again.

I guess, just saying myself, I have teachers in my family, and I see firsthand the weight on their shoulders and their commitment, sometimes at their own personal cost, to make sure their students get a good start in life. They’re helping students, but it’s also helping society.

Thank you very much for your presentation and what you do, and thank you to your members.

Our next presenter is Tunya Audain.

TUNYA AUDAIN

T. Audain: My name is Tunya Audain, and I’m speaking as an independent person. I don’t represent or speak for anyone.

I find it extremely coincidental that I’m here following two people that speak for the education side — the principals association and the B.C. Teachers Federation. I am going to be speaking about education as a consumer.

[2:10 p.m.]

Those people are producers, and they are asking for money, a lot of money — $2 million for three years for leadership. I’m amazed.

Anyway, I did send in a backgrounder for you. In it, I express a strong concern about the fact that over the last ten, 15, 20 years, we’ve seen transformation experiences in the education system. Changing the curriculum. Changing assessment. Doing things behind the scenes without involving parents or the community.

My biggest concern that I mentioned in my handout, which we sent to you, was that these international people are coming in. I’ve been notified about four different incidents. They’re coming in with an agenda, and I don’t know if they are influencing the B.C. education transformation agenda, or if they’re being called in to verify and to amplify and to sort of aggrandize any kind of educational change that’s being manipulated in B.C.

What I’m asking for, from you…. Not for money. I’m asking you to audit something before you consider the 2022 budget. I mentioned these experts coming in from the United Kingdom; Washington, D.C.; Harvard, etc., all helping to implement the B.C. education plan. I’m asking the committee to audit the fees, travel and hospitality costs of these visitors and gauge their value and whether this should carry over into 2022.

I’m wondering if we’re masters of our own destiny and house here. I scrutinized the plan, and I find it lacking in research, fact, evidence, and I’m dubious about their philosophy of 21st century skills.

Secondly, my concern also relates to the style in which this transformation is happening. I’ve read the book Education Transformation for B.C., and it itemizes how a certain concept is being used to change things in the system. It’s called “social licence.” I don’t know if you’ve heard of social licence, but it’s something which, I think, is very convenient and self-serving for people who have an agen­da. They overwhelm whoever might be opposing them by saying: “We’ve got social licence. We’ve got international experts advising us and praising us.”

I’m saying as a consumer, people at the bottom level, we are lacking a democratic involvement in things that are being changed that are going to affect people — parents and students in the schools.

I think there’s a strange and unfortunate shifting away from academic excellence and knowledge and content in the schools to things which they call competencies and soft skills. Parents want, as a priority, the three Rs and the basics, and not necessarily the soft skills, which are being so heavily brought in now. Especially because of COVID, mental health is high. Look, we don’t want the three Rs do be displaced by mental health issues, but to have an equal goal there.

I want to be creative about financing. I’m suggesting the committee and British Columbia consider more choices for education and that they not necessarily always have to be to the compulsory attendance public schools. We should consider vouchers, education savings accounts, tuition tax credits, charter schools, more distributed learning. All these choices enhance families and strengthen families and enable all families to access services, not just those who can afford high-cost tutoring.

J. Routledge (Chair): Tunya, you should be wrapping it up now, okay?

T. Audain: Just one quick wrap-up. My last suggestion.

[2:15 p.m.]

In earnestly seeking efficiencies, we should consider abolishing school boards. New Zealand abolished regional school boards 30 years ago. Each individual school became an autonomous entity, and parents became a large part of governing the school.

Because trustees gained management skills, these were transferrable skills for the whole community and of praiseworthy benefit to New Zealand. They caused New Zealand to be the top of the list of corruption perception. I think that’s because parents at the ground level, as consumers, are actually involved in governing their schools.

J. Routledge (Chair): You are really going to have to wrap it up pretty soon.

T. Audain: I wish you well in your deliberations.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Tunya.

Megan has a question.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Audain.

I’m a parent of two children and a former school trustee myself. I’m just curious if you can explain a little bit. I’ve read your report, and I’ve listened to your presentation. I’m just trying to break down exactly what your chief concern is.

You talked about wanting an audit of other countries, and organizations like Harvard that have come in and provided consulting to the B.C. ed plan. Is your concern the organizations, or is your concern the lack of parent involvement in the B.C. ed plan development? I couldn’t quite distinguish that, from your submission.

Thank you in advance for your answer.

T. Audain: I’m not sure. Yes, I am concerned that parents have been mostly excluded from these ten, 15 years of all this planning.

What is the other part of your question?

M. Dykeman: What I’m trying to understand is you’re asking…. You’d like to see an audit on the fees that were charged by these foreign organizations.

T. Audain: Yes, okay. Audit, because this is a heavy cost, as far as I can see it, having these external people coming in all the way from the U.K., Harvard, Washington. There was a big event sponsored in 2015 in the Wosk Centre here, and there were a lot of other foreign outsiders brought in — experts, supposedly — to amplify the whole B.C. ed plan and give it a stamp of approval.

All of these things are costly — hospitality, fees. I’d like to know what the cost is. I’m not going to put in an FOI for that, but I would like to know. I think people would like to know that these outsiders really cost a lot of money.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions from the committee?

G. Kyllo: Thank you for your presentation.

Might I ask: do you have any previous experience as a school teacher? What was your profession before coming in and making this presentation? I guess, also, is this your first presentation to this committee, or have you been presenting to this committee for a number of years?

T. Audain: Yes. You weren’t here in 1974.

G. Kyllo: Was that the first year you presented?

T. Audain: Yes. I looked it up, and I mentioned abolishing school boards then. Do you know what happened? Several weeks later I got a dinner invitation from the B.C. School Trustees Association to meet with them. They wanted to know how close I was to fulfilling that claim. It didn’t scare them too much. Anyway, I have been presenting before.

Any other questions?

G. Kyllo: Were you a school teacher previously? What was your profession?

T. Audain: Oh, background. When I was pregnant, I took education courses to be able to teach my children if I had to. There were concerns even in the ‘60s about the quality of schools. I went to an experience in Mexico with Ivan Illich, who wrote the book Deschooling Society. We were talking about how school was disabling people.

[2:20 p.m.]

I met John Holt. We talked about home education. He didn’t know that was possible. I said: “It’s possible. I have looked up all the legislation in the world, and they do allow home-schooling.” Five years later he started the home-schooling movement.

That’s my experience with education, from the beginning.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Tunya. We’re pretty well out of time now, but on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for presenting, giving us an alternative perspective on the school system.

T. Audain: Thank you. I’m glad you have heard me.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Jordan Ab­ney, B.C. School Sports.

B.C. SCHOOL SPORTS

J. Abney: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much. My name is Jordan Abney. I’m the executive director for B.C. School Sports.

Let me begin by acknowledging our member schools and their student athletes have the privilege to learn, train and compete within and across the ancestral and unceded territories of Indigenous people across this province.

B.C. School Sports is the governing body for school-based athletics. We’ve got 440-plus member schools, both public and independent. Member schools are large, small, urban, rural, from every corner of the province. We offer 19 different sporting activities in the school setting to over 70,000 student athletes in grades 8 to 12 each year.

School sports fits perfectly within the cross-section of sport, education and health. I’d like to speak briefly about how that works.

In terms of sport, school sport is one of if not the most accessible form of organized sport for families in B.C. It typically costs far less than community and club-based activities. It resolves transportation barriers, particularly for single-parent families or families where both parents are working, as the activities are delivered at the school where the kids already are. There are far fewer parental concerns regarding safety — we know that safe sport is a big issue right now — as it’s delivered within a school environment.

Additionally, many of B.C.’s athletes who go on to compete nationally and internationally at the Olympics and Paralympics identify school sport as the start of their athletic career and their coaches as major positive influences on that trajectory.

In terms of education, there is extensive evidence that participation is school sport leads to better educational outcomes, enhanced school engagement and a sense of belonging, development of life skills and healthier behaviours both during and after high school. B.C. School Sports’ goal is to use the immense power of sport, leveraged by an educational mindset and setting, to develop quality people and the future leaders for our communities, businesses and province.

We’re proud of the number of B.C. student athletes who go on to compete nationally and internationally, but we always state that it’s really a by-product of what we do and not our objective. School sport is designed to complement the educational experience.

From a health perspective, it’s no secret that participation in sport in youth leads to a higher rate of physical activity and healthy behaviours into early and later adulthood. Sport is the best form of preventative medicine our province can ask for.

We know that, specifically, ages 13 to 18 — essentially, the high school years — is where the majority of sport drop­out happens, especially with young girls. BCSS is proud to offer the same number of sporting activities for both boys and girls, and we see a gender balance that most organizations would love to have, with 48 percent of our overall participation being female.

We also saw, during the pandemic, the mental health effects the lack of school sport participation had on youth. Studies found, while students were prevented from participating in high school sport, a terrifying increase in the report of anxiety and depression, not to mention a nearly 50 percent decrease in the levels of physical activity.

While school sport contributes to health and education results, it may surprise you to hear that B.C. School Sports is the only school sport governing body in Canada that does not receive core funding from its provincial government. As you likely have heard from my sporting collea­gues over the last couple of weeks, the provincial funding has been reduced by roughly $2 million over the last ten years. As part of these reductions, core funding for B.C. School Sports was eliminated.

[2:25 p.m.]

The impact of these cuts has been significant. We have been forced to increase fees, marginalizing that opportunity and accessibility. As the cost of renting facilities, equipment, hiring officials continues to accelerate, we may find ourselves becoming less and less affordable, reducing that accessibility that we are so proud to offer.

We have also had to reduce services to our members in schools, which means less support, training and the quality of experience decreasing. We’re concerned that we may need to reduce the number of sports we offer, which would reduce, obviously, the number of student athletes that could participate.

B.C. School Sports is eligible for community gaming grants, and we do apply each year. However, as you likely know, these funds are far from guaranteed, and we usually don’t know what the result is until well into the fiscal year, making it difficult to plan for our delivery and implementation of programs and services.

Our request today is the committee recommend that core funding to B.C. School Sports be restored and en­hanced. With a restored and enhanced level of funding, we’d be able to restore services and keep costs affordable for families. We’d also be able to implement priorities such as increasing opportunities for students with a disability.

In other provinces across Canada, programs like Unified Sports are in place. Unified pairs students with physical and cognitive impairments with able-bodied students in interschool competition. We’d like to work with the B.C. disability sport organizations to bring that, as it’s been tremendously successful and empowering across the country.

In summary, school sport is an important piece of what we offer across this province to over 70,000 student athletes each year. We want to continue to be able to provide these accessible, safe experiences to those that are wanting to receive the benefit of sport, health and education that comes from participating in school sport.

With that, I thank you for your time and consideration. I’m happy to take any questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Jordan.

Questions from the committee?

G. Kyllo: I guess more of a comment than anything. Thank you for what you do. I know that without sports in high school, I don’t know if I’d have made it to grade 12. So I certainly can resonate with many of the comments you made about the importance of sport.

Obviously, as we look at a healthy society and as you’ve stated in your presentation, if you’re busy and active when you’re young, there’s a lot more likelihood you’re going to stay active in your adult years.

I certainly appreciate what you’re doing. I’m not sure about my colleagues, but I know I certainly will be very supportive of your ask.

J. Abney: Thank you very much.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. It looks like MLA Kyllo says those of us that were active in high school tend to be active in life and other activities. Henceforth, why I look the way I look.

Can you tell me what restoring the core funding would look like?

J. Abney: Sure. How much time do I have?

To be as brief as possible, B.C. School Sports was actually formed at the insistence and recommendation of the B.C. government about 54 years ago. With that came a funding level that was intended to support the core operations. Over the course of 54 years and many governments, that has seen ebbs and flows to some levels that were considered, probably, quite high to some, and obviously now to no funding.

I think the last funding level we were at was about nine or ten years ago. It was in the ballpark of $180,000 to $200,000 a year. That basically helps with the core operation. Right now what happens is that our member schools pay a membership fee, which really goes to cover a lot of those core operation things that you need.

What it would do is enable us to reduce a lot of those costs. Right now schools are charging kids just to cover their basic athletic fees, including membership in B.C. School Sports, because they just don’t have the capacity to have athletic budgets. It’s very much a pay-to-play model. As you heard me say, as costs accelerate, that pay to play continues to accelerate with it.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Jordan. As my colleague said, the importance of sports not only keeps them active. As a mother of three children, it also keeps them out of trouble. Oftentimes, during those years, kids may choose some wrong path, and that leads to very bad consequences.

You mentioned that ten years ago there was a $2 million, if I’m not wrong with the numbers, funding cut. Was there any reasoning given to you? What was the reason behind that cut?

J. Abney: Thank you for your question.

To my knowledge — it predates me — it wasn’t $2 million directly to B.C. School Sports. It was $2 million across the sport sector.

[2:30 p.m.]

We find we’re sort of in an awkward place where we kind of fall under education — and from what the pandemic has shown us, we are really an extension of education — but we’re also a critical part of the sports system. So we kind of get caught, with each ministry kind of going: “Well, you’re over there, and you’re over there.” We kind of end up in no man’s land. There are many ways to solve that, but I’ll let this committee make their recommendation on the proper way to do that.

We’re trying to get to a point where we can be recognizing whatever way is best for the government but to be saying this is a group that is important for our society, important for our kids, and we want to make sure they’re running properly.

Sorry. That’s an indirect answer. The cuts were across the sports sector, and many of the multisport organizations, as I understand it, were sort of filtered out of that funding model.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I wanted to clarify, Jordan. What’s the percentage of disabled students that are participating? What’s the penetration of that? I think it says here 90,000 student athletes participating.

J. Abney: Currently we offer what we call para-events in three of our sports. We have para-events in cross-country running, aquatics and track and field, where we actually have disciplines for that. We have a partnership with Special Olympics B.C. for our track and field events specifically.

What I mentioned in there…. A unified program sort of would be a parallel pathway to the traditional varsities program that you’re probably most familiar with, with school sport. What that would enable us…. It’s almost a separate type of activity, where it’s really trying to target kids in schools that may not have the ability to participate in some of those other functions. It’s a whole different stream of programming that allows, like I said, students with intellectual or physical impairments to compete with alongside.

In our current events — like I said, those disciplines that we do have — they’re sort of competing in their own division, amongst the bigger event, but they’re kind of competing against themselves. This really combines the two, if we were able to proceed with unified, which is one of the things that I’d really like to do if we were able to secure some funding.

In terms of the numbers, penetration-wise, I’d have to kind of look. I would guess it’s pretty low currently — in its current form, maybe 2 percent, somewhere in that range. It wouldn’t be very much at this point.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re going to have to wrap it up now, Jordan. On behalf of the committee, I really want to thank you for taking the time to come and speak to us.

As you were speaking and answering questions, I’m reminded that I have a 13-year-old in my household who is an avid softball player. I am absolutely convinced that her attachment to sports is what got her through the pandemic in a state of mental health. I also think it’s taught her really important life skills, like teamwork and cooperation and strategy and, for a girl her age, confidence, which is so important.

Thank you for your leadership in this area.

J. Abney: Thank you for the opportunity.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Julia MacRae with the Surrey Teachers Association.

You have five minutes, Julia. I will try to give you a 30-second warning when it’s time to wrap up, and then we will ask you questions.

SURREY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

J. MacRae: Don’t be shy to remind me, thanks. As tea­chers, we like to talk a lot.

I’m representing the Surrey teachers. It’s my 29th year in the teaching force, so I have a lot of experience with the school system. I guess my theme today is: we have the bare minimum, and B.C. can do better, in my view, on the education side of things.

I know this government is interested in ongoing, stable funding for schools, and I’m really pleased to know that that’s a strong desire in this government. But we are experiencing austerity as teachers, still. It was a very hard time for us in the years previous to this government, and we haven’t experienced a change that makes us feel a spirit of generosity from the government.

In Surrey, I will say there’s been excellent investment in building schools, which was neglected for far too long. We still have 360 portables and masses of kids still joining our ranks.

[2:35 p.m.]

This fall we have 500 kids up but a surprising more than 1,000 extra students in secondary that weren’t predicted. That’s been a lot of moving around to try and get the staffing together to provide for them, so it’s been a rather dramatic September so far.

I’d just like to concentrate on a couple of major areas when it comes to mental health. We’ve seen in the pandemic, of course, a lot of people superstressed and anxious, students and teachers. What we have is the bare minimum, and we could do so much better.

For example, I’m representing the union. We perceive it as: our contract language is what holds the line. To me, it’s the bare minimum. Contract language is where you start. At least we’re going to have one counsellor per 968 elementary students, which is what it says in our contract, and one counsellor per 380 secondary students, averaged across the district. It’s not necessarily that there are 380 kids in a secondary school and they get one counsellor, but it’s averaged across the district. That’s our contract language. I think we can do way better than that.

I just really think that there’s so much crisis, so much particular need in children, and it is a bargain to invest in counsellors for children and teenagers. If they get the supports they need at a time when they’re receptive to learn, so much savings happens in the society over the course of their lifetime — so much more likelihood of them becoming productive citizens — than if they have an experience of brokenness or trauma as a child or a teen and are unable to access mental health supports.

I urge you to increase the allocation of funding for counsellors in schools, both elementary and secondary, so we can see generosity, especially in that area, that goes beyond the contract.

How are we going to find those counsellors? In Surrey, we don’t have enough counsellors, and we can’t hire them. It’s expensive to get your master’s degree in counselling. So perhaps there could be some kind of program developed for people who are in mid-career and might like a change, who have a lot of experience and repertoire dealing with kids and understand a lot about the school system and, generally, children and teenagers’ needs, who might want to certify, get their master’s degrees in counselling and not take out a second mortgage to do it.

If we have this need, we should find that from within our ranks. There are lots of teachers that have such a great repertoire of so many skills, and then they don’t move out of their classroom position because they can’t. You need a master’s degree in counselling in Surrey to become a counsellor. How do you get that? Well, that’s at least $20,000 or more, depending how long it takes you.

The same goes for special ed. We can find more teachers who will take a specialist program, perhaps, if there’s a program provided to help them get to that. I asked some people: “How much do you think a beginning teacher earns?” What do you think it is?

Can I ask you, Mr. Doerkson? What do you think?

L. Doerkson: A beginning teacher?

J. MacRae: First year. How much do you think they earn?

L. Doerkson: So $50,000.

J. MacRae: In Surrey this year, starting this fall, it’s $53,487, I think, if they get a full-time job. That’s if, if, if. And that’s really….

They’ve done at least five years of university, and they’re doing the exact same job as every other teacher. They have the same caseload. There’s not fairness in the system, but there’s the same expectation of them to perform productively. It’s really not that much money, as a professional, to have that — I mean, thinking of the housing crisis, thinking of what it’s like for you.

J. Routledge (Chair): You’re about to run out of time.

J. MacRae: I have a second theme: adult education. In Surrey, we have an adult education system within the public school system, and I’d just like to advocate for more intentional funding for adult education.

There’s a school called Invergarry, which is an adult education school. I would say it’s pitiful. It’s an old school building. The staff is aged. That’s nothing against those teachers — they’re awesome — but they are not retiring, even though two of them are over 80, because they know there’s no one to replace them, because those teachers are paid less than the other teachers in the district.

They can’t get full-time work, and they can’t qualify for a full pension, no matter how many classes they teach, because of the way that system is set up. So there’s a disservice there. Now we have a teacher shortage. It’s unable to recruit new teachers for that, and the school declines.

[2:40 p.m.]

Now, in Surrey, which is the economic engine of British Columbia in some ways because that’s where so many workers live, there is a real need for adult education as a path to getting the English that you need when you first arrive to be able to join the workforce at a low level, getting English or other qualifications you might need to go into a post-secondary path or to recertify.

There are probably thousands of people who have professions or good work experience. They earned points on their immigration to be able to come to this country with those skills and are unable to work in their field or even in an affiliated field because they don’t have the education possibility to go ahead.

I just urge you to take a look at that and intentionally invest in adult basic education in Surrey. It could be double or triple what’s offered now and have a good result for our province. It’s been neglected for far too long. I’m really pleased to be able to make that point.

Am I out of time?

J. Routledge (Chair): Oh, yeah. You’re way out of time. But if we have questions, you can work in a few more of your points in answer to the questions.

L. Doerkson: You ask me, $50,000 a year…. We spoke with one of your colleagues earlier about the coming shortage in not just teaching but in other fields as well — care aides, nurses, etc. What is the biggest hangup in not becoming a teacher or not wanting to become a teacher? Is it wage? Is it not a calling?

I get that money solves a lot of problems for a lot of people. What is the situation as far as the lineups to be­come teachers? Are there people interested in the craft?

J. MacRae: I’ve had many students. I’m a secondary teacher. I taught English 12 for many years. I would say many kids are interested in becoming teachers because they see the model of teachers right in front of them all the time. They see: “That’s interesting.”

The experience of being a teacher is an experience of scarcity. You’re always struggling to get another thing. I go to used bookstores. I find things on the street. “Oh, how could I use this?” It’s really the bottom of the barrel, trying to find what you need to teach an interesting class. It feels like you can’t get what you need. That’s a very demoralizing experience.

I would say, as my first theme of mental health…. Also, another aspect is teacher mental health. We did a survey where we had 300 people respond to their experience of the pandemic and are they mentally struggling. One person said: “Our mental health is what keeps the system going.” This is in the context of our criticizing the employer family assistance plan, which is counselling for employees. It’s just totally inadequate.

The supports don’t feel like they’re there. As I said, I think it’s very bare bones, and we could do better.

L. Doerkson: You mentioned the number of counsellors per. Was it really one to 900 students?

J. MacRae: That’s the contract minimum. I don’t even think we have that, because we haven’t been able to hire.

L. Doerkson: What’s the real number? Do you know?

J. MacRae: I don’t know. That’s a district average. There may be a teacher…. We have two elementary schools that are more than 900 kids. They may have a full-time counsellor at that one school. But most elementary schools are like 400 to 600 or 700 kids. There will be one counsellor there for some of the days of the week. Then that same person is a counsellor at another school for some other days of the week.

It’s very, very thin when it comes down to what the actual counselling support is for elementary kids.

M. Starchuk: Julia, thank you for your presentation and your enthusiasm. Can you go on to maybe expand upon the adult learners? I’m really familiar with the building and where it sits and that whole parking lot that’s out there. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s well used.

What kind of enrolment?

J. MacRae: I’m not 100 percent sure what the enrolment is right this minute for this term. They have a different system set up. They’re ten-week terms, I think. The students register, and the teachers teach it. I would think that’s a school of 500 or 600 people.

Another aspect of the student body…. I was referring mostly to immigrants, but also, it’s kids who have either aged out without graduating or who have had some kind of dramatic experience in their teenage years and didn’t quite finish. They’re coming back to try and get post-secondary prerequisites down. Some have a lot of learning disabilities, and there’s not much support provided in the contract or there are no minimums there in the contract for adult educators for supports. For prep time and pro-D, it’s not paid. It just needs to be equal to other schools. I think we could do much better for the students in that building.

[2:45 p.m.]

I encourage you to come and visit it. I know you’re a Surrey MLA. I’d be pleased to connect you with the teachers there so you can go yourself and talk to them.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Julia.

You mentioned about teachers that have just graduated five years. You said: “I think if they can find a job.”

J. MacRae: If they get full time.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Yeah. I guess the question is…. We heard earlier that there was a shortage of teachers. I can’t balance or square that. So where’s the shortfall?

J. MacRae: Well, I agree with you. Where’s the shortfall?

I’m working in the union office, so I receive calls from members in distress asking me things. They are saying things….

For example, just this week I got: “I’m a French teacher. I had 100 percent at this school, but now the principal is telling me I have to have 90 percent because they don’t have quite the same number of kids that was predicted. So I have to go down to 90 percent and take a pay cut. Is that true?” I have to go: “Yeah. Or you can insist on 1.0, and you’ll go to another school.”

There are always these little…. They don’t have quite the enrolment entitlement for that school, so the French teacher and the music teacher and the librarian have to take a little cut so they can remain there, if they agree to it. It’s always these nickel-and-dime things, you know? The experience of scarcity is what happens. All we’re doing is meeting the contract, not providing generosity.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I liked your idea about mixing up classes or making it creative and going out and looking for things. I know that at one time we talked about finding a way to get more of those resources in the hands of teachers. You know, putting it out there so that they can do better jobs.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, Julia, we have other presenters, so I’m sorry that we’re going to wrap it up. This is a much bigger conversation.

J. MacRae: Oh, absolutely.

J. Routledge (Chair): I hope we get to continue it in many other forums.

I guess what I want to say is you’ve really opened a window on a day in the life of a teacher right now, in this moment, in B.C. You’ve given real examples, and you’ve made the life of teachers, the experience of teachers, very accessible to us. Thank you very much for that. It was an important thing to do.

J. MacRae: Thanks very much for the time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Before we take a break, we have two more presenters. The next one is Maria Howard, Family Services of Greater Vancouver.

FAMILY SERVICES OF GREATER VANCOUVER

M. Howard: Good afternoon. It is always so wonderful when I get to see people. So thank you for this.

I’m Maria Howard. I’m the CEO of Family Services of Greater Vancouver, and it is a real privilege to be here today and share about our agency and have a bit of a discussion.

Family Services of Greater Vancouver is so appreciative of our partnership with the B.C. government. We share in many ways in many of the programs we do through a number of ministries, and together as partners, we are making a difference in this province. I thank you all for all the work you do and the commitment you do in every different way, from your constituencies to your work in the House. It is making a difference.

The vision of Family Services of Greater Vancouver is a brighter tomorrow where people have resilience and confidence and a sense of hope, and our mission is that children are nourished and youth are optimistic and adults feel empowered and families and parents have the right tools to make the best choices to grow stronger families. Those are all very clear words that many great non-profit agencies have in our province. What sets Family Services a little different is that we focus on crisis and moving people out of crisis into resilience.

It is so critical. Wouldn’t it be great if we all had just one crisis in our life, and when that crisis was over, life then became a beautiful place? But it’s not. Crisis continues all the time, so helping people move from crisis into resilience, building skills so that the next time they are in crisis they can adapt and manage better, is so important.

Family Services has been around since 1928. We are almost at our 100th birthday. We are very proud of the work we do throughout many communities in the Lower Mainland. We have over 50 programs. We are here to help people in a variety of different ways — people who are vulnerable, people who are traumatized, people who are very much marginalized.

[2:50 p.m.]

We do that with six main programs. We have our Directions Youth Services, which reaches out to homeless youth in that category of 16 to 22, youth aging out of care. We do that through detox houses, a 24-7 drop-in centre. All our youth programs are low barrier, meaning that they do not have to be dry, off drugs. We take them how they come.

We offer specialized family services, working with the Ministry of Children and Family Development around foster families, all of the issues that happen with families trying to get through life. We offer trauma counselling for many families who experience domestic violence. We offer victim service support systems, which sit within the Vancouver police department, the New West police department. Victims of sexual crime, domestic crime — trying to make those crises much easier for people to manage.

We also have a family services employee assistance program. It’s the only employee assistance program in B.C. that is run by a non-profit. It is all focused on giving back to the community.

We have a community education program. That’s where I want to talk today. But what I want to say really clearly is that the families who come to family services range from many families who are immigrants, who are in poverty, who have a very difficult situation, but there are also families who live in a usual situation but go through their own personal crises — domestic violence, other things. They have problems too. So we reach out to many.

Our financial empowerment program is a very special program where we are working with people to manage their finances. Financial literacy is so keen. We know that in any crisis situation, money always has a very absolute, important part. Whether it’s where you live, how you eat, where you go to school, it all is about the stress around the money. When you have a stressful relationship with money, everything else falls apart. But what we see also is that people who have other crises can’t give attention to money.

What COVID showed us is all these wonderful benefits were offered to people through the government and other partners to help people do COVID, but people were so stressed about where they were going to live, where they were going to get food. They didn’t have jobs. They couldn’t get their coordination together to file their tax returns. If you don’t file a tax return, you don’t qualify for our benefit.

If you don’t have a SIN number, if you don’t have a passport or a visa, and you’re an immigrant, all these things prevent you from moving forward. If you don’t know how you’re going to feed your kids, you just don’t know how to move forward with all the other things that you need.

A really quick story about a woman by the name of Christine who had a job. She was a single mom with a 13-year-old — an immigrant from a South American country. She lost her job, and all of a sudden, everything started to cave in on her. Again, there were benefits offered and things that she could apply for, but she had not filed tax returns in about seven years. Pretty daunting to try to think about filing tax returns for seven years.

She came through our program, and through the one-on-one services that we offer, plus multiple workshops that we do with partners, we were able to get her tax returns organized. We were able to give her the confidence to talk to CRA, to talk about her situation. We connected her with many other agencies, and she came away feeling confident. She still has a number of hurdles to go through, but her confidence around her financial management and her courage to not push that to the side when it seemed daunting had really increased, which is so important, because now she was able to deal with the issues of housing and food and jobs.

Our ask today is really about a consideration of helping us partner like we do with a number of other programs through B.C. government to look at $1 million over a couple of years to help the financial empowerment program, which we run with a number of programs, expand on a provincial level. Through this program, we know we could increase the number of people who come through the program almost about 70 percent.

We now see a good number, 2,000, clients a year. We offer over 150 workshops, and throughout COVID, that number…

J. Routledge (Chair): Maria, you’re over time. So if you could wrap it up….

M. Howard: That number didn’t drop. I just ask you to consider. We are really open to a dialogue.

Thank you so much for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Thank you.

We’ll open it up to questions, and maybe some of the questions might give you an opportunity to expand on a few of those things.

M. Starchuk: Maria, thank you for your presentation.

I have a question with regards to…. I see the ask that’s there. But currently what’s the wait time, and what would that $1 million do to a wait time?

[2:55 p.m.]

M. Howard: The wait time right now in the program is fairly minimal. We have staff who answer the phone, and we commit to having a one-on-one connection with staff. So the wait time right now is minimal.

The ask of the funds would expand it over a provincial basis. This program right now is geared specifically to the Lower Mainland, and we would like to reach this out into other areas of the province. We’ve had numerous discussions with other agencies in the Interior and the north who really need this service, and right now, we are absolutely partnering with them. We are either offering workshops together or sharing the content that we do and educating and training the train-the-trainer model, but further funds would allow this program to expand across the province.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

P. Alexis: I’m fascinated that you’re 100 years old. Can you tell me just a little bit, if time permits…? I mean, not you, personally. I’m talking about the organization.

M. Howard: I’m fascinated about that too.

P. Alexis: She got it.

I want to hear about the things that were pertinent or relevant 100 years ago. I think back. We came out of a pandemic in 1918. We’re at 2021. I’m just fascinated with the parallels. Can you give me any little snippets? I’m curious.

M. Howard: Yes, certainly. I can do that fairly quickly. Family Services is offering identical services today to what we did 100 years ago: helping people — homeless youth, poverty, financial literacy, counselling, trauma. It’s the same issues.

The difference today for Family Services and how we have really become unique compared to many of our really other wonderful counterparts is that the clients we see are the most complex of the most complex. In fact, the number of referrals we get through MCFD and MPSSG are the most complex.

They are people who have incredibly complicated youth situations, of repeat foster families, substance abuse. We see domestic violence that has been coming through, bringing children into families. So the difference for our agency is we now see very, very complicated clients, which means that our staff has to be very highly specialized. It is very important work. However, it becomes more complicated.

The number of hours you could spend on supporting a youth who isn’t in low-barrier care, who might go through an agency which has “mandatory” in the criteria…. It might take only ten hours to service that youth. For us, because it’s low barrier and there is no requirement for them to be clean and dry, we might have to spend 25 hours. That is a significant difference today.

P. Alexis: I see. Wow.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions for Maria?

With that, I’ll thank you for your time and thank you for the work that you do. In closing, I’d like to say that I think for most of us, probably all of us around this table, we know intuitively that poverty can destabilize families. But what you’ve introduced me to, anyway, is the notion that financial literacy stabilizes families, and that that’s not the same thing. That’s an important thing for me to go away and reflect on. I appreciate you introducing us to that.

Our next presenter is Anastasia French, representing living wage for families campaign.

LIVING WAGE FOR FAMILIES B.C.

A. French: Hello, I’m Anastasia. I’m from Living Wage for Families B.C. Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk today. I really appreciate it.

Here at Living Wage for Families B.C., we do three main things. First of all, we calculate what the living wage is for communities across British Columbia. The living wage is currently $19.50 an hour for Metro Vancouver. We’re in the process for calculating it for 2021, and we expect it will go up by about $1 an hour.

We certify those employers that commit to pay their direct staff and contracted workers a living wage. There are now over 270 employers across the province that do that, and these range from municipalities, such as the city of Vancouver, the city of Victoria; to large companies, such as Vancity Credit Union, Lafarge concrete makers; to tiny, small businesses, such as Technaflora Plant Products in Mission and Inter-Mtn. Enterprise in Kelowna.

[3:00 p.m.]

What we found during the pandemic is that, despite the fact that it has been a very, very difficult time for many businesses…. Actually, what employers have realized is that crucial to their economic recovery and their success in getting their way through the pandemic is making sure that their staff are taken care of and their staff are invested. Paying a living wage is key to that. We’ve actually seen a 36 percent increase in the number of living-wage employers since the pandemic as a result of this. It’s really interesting.

The final thing we do is that we advocate for government policies that both lower the cost of living for families and lift up the wages of the lowest-paid workers, which is why I’m here today.

Before I go into our top three recommendations for change, I just want to take a minute to acknowledge the power that government policy can have. If it wasn’t for investments by this government, the federal government and previous governments, the living wage would actually be $3 an hour higher. Investments in things like child care, child benefits and the elimination of MSP have actually helped to lower the cost of living for families in B.C. So thank you for that. However, there’s still more to be done.

Our pre-budget submission contains seven recommendations for change. I don’t have that much time to run through those recommendations. So instead, I’ll focus on our top three. Our first key recommendation is for the provincial government to implement a living-wage policy for their direct staff, their contracted workers and any company receiving COVID-19 benefits.

Many of the employees that are earning the least amount of money in this province are the ones that are on the front lines. They’re the ones keeping us safe, keeping us fed, keeping us cared for through this pandemic. Of these, many are contracted either directly or subcontracted through government — working in health care, as security guards, cleaners; working in education; or working in social services. Many of the people that are doing vital work are actually earning the least amount of money.

By doing this, it will also signify that the province is committed to addressing the issue of low-wage poverty. It shows that paying living wages should be a normal part of doing business in this province. Hopefully, it will encourage other employers to do the same.

Many municipalities — there are ten across the province — have implemented similar policies. They have found that both the administrative cost and the financial cost are actually minimal compared to what they’d initially thought. The benefit that they have found is in both the quality of work from their subcontractors and from the morale of their staff, and the impact it has had on their community is really significant.

Our second recommendation — it draws on much of the work that has already taken place — is to continue with steps to increase the minimum wage. It’s fantastic that it has been brought up to $15.20 an hour. However, there is still a $4-an-hour gap from what minimum-wage workers in Victoria, Vancouver and some of the more expensive parts of the province earn and what they actually need to be able to live, to survive.

If the worker is in Victoria or Vancouver, that means they have to work an extra ten hours a week just to be able to pay rent, pay for food and make sure they can make ends meet. That’s ten hours a week that they’re not spending with their families, not spending in their communities and not being able to survive and live the kind of life that we all want to be able to live.

Our third recommendation. We’ve really seen the benefit that investments in child care have had. That’s the second-biggest cost that many families have found. How­ever, the biggest cost for families — time and time again, year on year — is the cost of housing. More needs to be done. We need to take the ambition that has been shown with child care and move on to how to address that for housing, by building more affordable housing and implementing policies that will help lower the cost of rent for families in this province.

Finally, the provincial government has demonstrated real care for our most vulnerable neighbours throughout this pandemic. This budget should build on the foundations that have already taken place and make sure that there’s a just recovery for low-wage workers and their families in this province.

Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Anastasia.

Questions from the committee?

You actually even have a bit of extra time.

A. French: Oh my goodness. I can talk about the benefits of paying a living wage. I thought I didn’t have enough time for that part, but I can give that spiel.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Well, in the absence of questions, I think you should take a couple of minutes to do that.

A. French: All right. In paying a living wage, doing that, it benefits employees. I think we can all know the benefit it has for people being able to spend time with their family and not having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, which puts their health at risk, their well-being at risk. It also means that they can be more independent.

I’ve spoken to so many women who are low-paid workers. Basically, since earning a living wage, it means they don’t have to cozy up in relationships that they don’t want to be in. They can choose to live on their own. They can choose to be healthier and happier, so that’s good.

For businesses, it makes sense. I hear from employers that it increases morale and productivity, which makes sense, but it also lowers costs for things like retraining. At the moment, we have got a labour shortage across the province. We’re hearing, from employers, the problems they’re having finding workers. By paying a living wage, it increases commitment and lowers retraining fees. In the U.K., 97 percent of living-wage employers have found some kind of benefit to being part of the program. I haven’t done the research yet for our employers here, but I hear similar stories.

The third thing is the impact on the community. As you mentioned earlier with your previous speaker, we all know the kind of impacts that poverty and low-wage work have on health care, on social services, on crime, on those kinds of things.

[3:05 p.m.]

Most of the people in this province who are in poverty are working. They’re working really hard to try and make ends meet. They’re just not earning enough money. By lifting the wages, that has an impact. In addition, when you give someone who is a low-wage worker a pay raise, they’re far more likely to actually spend that money locally, in local businesses — which has a trickle-down impact across the economy and helps restart it. That’s my final bit of spiel.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, with that, we’ll thank you for your time and thank you for your leadership on this. You’ve made a very compelling case, in a very short period of time.

P. Alexis: Thank you for explaining “cozy up,” because I was a little bit confused. I think it must be British terminology.

A. French: Maybe it is, but they were her words. She also said that she didn’t have to get men to buy her drinks and those kinds of things as well, which, when I spoke to her, it was a very: “Ugh, it’s not nice that these people had to do things.”

I also spoke to another employer. Previously, one of their employees was living in shared housing, and some of the people they were living with were not abiding by COVID protocols. As a result, they were putting their health at risk. They felt really nervous coming in to work and, potentially, infecting everyone else.

By making sure they brought them up to a living wage, they could afford to go and live on their own and be able to actually be healthy and have that impact as well. It’s interesting. The benefits are more than, of course, just being able to pay for rent and those kinds of things, but also just on your independence and your freedom.

H. Sandhu: You’ve talked some good words.

J. Routledge (Chair): Right. It’s now time to take a re­cess. We’re a little bit behind time, so I’m going to suggest we aim for a ten-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 3:06 p.m. to 3:16 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presentation is Ron Ce­cillon, with CEFA Early Learning schools.

Ron, you’ve been here for a while. I think you’ve figured out you have five minutes. I’ll try to give you a 30-second warning so you can wrap it up, and then five minutes of questions.

CEFA EARLY LEARNING

R. Cecillon: My name is Ron Cecillon, and I’m here to represent CEFA Early Learning. CEFA Early Learning is proudly a woman-owned, B.C.-founded business. We’ve been operating franchised early learning schools since 1998. We currently have 29 schools here in the province, offering well over 2,200 spaces. We’ve been in operation since 1998.

All of our schools are operated by small business owners, the majority of them either being parents or teachers from our schools. However, this isn’t about CEFA. This is actually about making a distinction about early learning and child care, because we believe there is a bit of a difference here.

Our industry right now…. The private sector and individual operators, the majority of them being women, pro­vide more than 50 percent of the spaces available in child care across the province, these individuals. They do it because of the love and the desire to provide opportunities for children. At CEFA alone, we employ more than 600 teachers, principals and support staff. Ninety-seven percent of them are women. Many of them would be women of colour and immigrants as well.

We are tremendously grateful for the funding mechanisms that are in place that help to support our small business owners and our operators as well as the families that we provide for through the various funding mechanisms to ensure that quality education is available. What I’m asking of the committee today is a few considerations with respect to additional funding mechanisms to create more early learning spaces in the province, regardless of their operating model.

Recent changes, as recent as last week, have put a challenge towards the private sector to open new spaces. In years past, we’ve been able to open spaces on a 3-to-1 ratio, versus the public sector.

What I’m asking is the committee to give some serious consideration to establishing a new funding mechanism that supports early learning versus child care — we think there’s a difference there — and redirecting more of the existing funds into the child care side of things so that we continue to offer and support an accessible, inclusive and affordable child care side of things. We recognize that that’s incredibly important. However, we recognize the fact that choice should be an option, as well, for parents.

[3:20 p.m.]

I’m also recommending that the committee consider a funding mechanism that encourages developers and landlords to work together with providers. More than 50 percent of our operating costs are actually in leases right now. Many cities are working on their official plans to create spaces that are consistent with opening child care and early learning. However, the rental rates are very cost-prohibitive from that.

When we look at fees — and we know fees are a big topic today, especially in the federal election right now — fees are driven through the input cost to open and operate a school and an early learning centre. What we’d love consideration of is working with developers, possibly on a tax break or incentives to keep their fees lower. If they keep their fees and rental rates lower to the provider, we can then pass those savings off to all the families that are choosing to come to our particular schools, thus being able to deliver new spaces much more quickly than the 18-month to 24-month time frame it takes to develop a school or a centre on that particular side of things.

As I said, often rates, between rental rates and labour, are about 85 percent of one’s cost when it comes to an early learning centre.

I’m also asking the committee to consider exploring early learning and child care subsidies using means testing and redirecting the dollars and cents to the families that truly need it. Right now, it’s a one-size-fits-all here in the province. Regardless of what your earning is, you qualify for the CCFRI. We believe there’s a better way to do that through means testing.

We also suggest there’s an opportunity to look at how funding at the CCOF level potentially is prorated based on the fees a particular centre and/or school would charge — thus, again, redirecting the funding to families that need it more so.

Finally, I’m asking the committee to look at the business operators that have started to develop schools and are in the process of opening schools and give them consideration and additional funding to bring those schools to fruition. Because of the recent changes that have hap­pened, there are spaces at risk. Just today I received a call about one of our potential operators sort of stepping back and saying that they do not want to open a school because of the challenges.

We need more funding to encourage more people, more entrepreneurs and more women to open schools. How­ever, the current format makes it quite challenging.

As one of the largest groups providing early learning spaces in the province, I think it’s essential that funding remains predictable, flexible and continues with certainty. Without this development, opening of new spaces — both child care and early learning — are at significant risk. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Ron.

I’ll open it up to questions from the committee.

P. Alexis: Thank you, Ron. You mentioned a couple of times that there’s a difference between child care and early learning. In a nutshell, could you provide that distinction for us?

R. Cecillon: In our opinion, one is curriculum-based, and one is more play-based. We believe there’s room for play-based. However, we believe that specific early learning that truly sets children up for success as they enter kindergarten is essential.

We recognize, too, that needs of parents are quite different. Some people are looking just for care, and that’s okay — care meaning supervision of children — while others are looking for more educational opportunities, more educational play-based and specific learning opportunities for their kids. That takes time, money and research to develop.

We’re pleased to say that many children coming out of early learning are reading and writing at three years old and are really positioning themselves in grades 1 and 2 well above the curve because of the learning that they’ve experienced.

[3:25 p.m.]

We’re happy to work with government as well to help develop their programming so that it can be offered to more people and more families.

M. Starchuk: Ron, thank you for the presentation.

You had made mention about getting developers, I be­lieve, involved at an early stage. I know that in my city — in my former role — there were bylaws that had to happen, amenity space in these places. Sometimes there was resistance because it just sits idle except for one or two days of the year. But there were some really good success stories, where they actually utilized those amenity spaces for exactly what you were talking about. Are you pursuing that on local government elsewhere?

The people that were running the stratas didn’t want them, but when they found out there was actually revenue possible from this afterwards…. They could basically drop their child off in the morning. They go to work, and they come back to their own complex, and they’re there to be picked up.

R. Cecillon: We’re definitely pursuing it, as are many others within the child care and early learning space. The challenge, still, is the cost. Stratas are definitely looking to be part of that, but the cost is still prohibitive in many ways.

Even in Surrey just recently, a small centre we’re looking to open has rental rates of over $500,000 a year for 65 students. It’s simple mathematics if you do the math. It’s beautiful. It’s set aside for it. But what’s happening is that you just can’t afford to develop a school or an early learning centre in a space that is expecting between $500,000 and $600,000 a year.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Ron.

Just further to Mike’s point here about this incentive kind of system…. I don’t know. We’re not the landlord, and I do think that finding partners or developers or stratas or whatever it is might be a good example. Have you got any examples of where…? Of the 29 schools that are open, have you got any relationships where they have seen the benefit to their building or neighbourhood and putting in space for that?

R. Cecillon: Not at the moment. I think it’s a great question. What they do like is the fact that typically, when you open a school, the school is open. It’s low maintenance, and you don’t have, like hospitality, where there tends to be a churn. We don’t have examples exactly of that.

What we’re suggesting is that if you look at rental rates, you have your base rates and then you have your common area. A big part of your common area is taxes. Is there an opportunity to look at tax incentives so that that additional portion of the rent, especially in new buildings, tends to come down?

We can negotiate across the board lower base rental rates, but what’s happening now is that the taxes in all the communities and the development permits and every­thing that goes into developing a building is driving up those additional rates, which sometimes are upwards of 70 percent of the base rate.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I’m going to leave you with one thought. That might be…. I understand the dilemma here, but I think, considering what we hear as MLAs in terms of the access to workers and the difficulty and the retention, that you might find that there might be employers that are actually motivated into doing something that they may never have thought of before. It’s just a thought.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much for your time, Ron. This child care early learning is…. I think we would agree, and we’ve heard it from so many people so far who have come to speak to us, that it is key to economic recovery and building a better economy. So thank you for sharing your ideas with us of how we can tweak it a bit in terms of our big plans.

R. Cecillon: Thank you.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Ron.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Sheryl Burns, CUPE 1936, community services of greater Vancouver.

CUPE LOCAL 1936, COMMUNITY SERVICES
OF GREATER VANCOUVER

S. Burns: Good afternoon.

I would like to acknowledge that we’re all gathered here on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Indigenous people.

[3:30 p.m.]

As Member Routledge said, my name is Sheryl Burns, and I’m the president of CUPE Local 1936, representing 1,400 community social service and child care workers. I’m also a general vice-president of CUPE B.C.

We recognize that significant progress has been made in child care since 2017, and we’re very pleased with the shift in responsibility for child care from the Ministry of Children and Families to the Ministry of Education by 2023. This allows us to integrate a child care system within the public education system. Research tells us this is best for children and families.

We can utilize our existing public education infrastructure to deliver high-quality, accessible, public and affordable child care in communities throughout B.C. We have the existing workforce, physical space and administrative structure to open thousands of child care spaces, especially for school-aged care, overlooked in the child care agreement with the federal government.

A universal, affordable and public child care system helps build a just and equitable society for everyone. It ensures an accountable, high-quality system responsive to the needs of Indigenous and racialized children and children with special needs so they thrive.

It also advances gender and racial equity by providing decent-paying employment with retirement security to child care providers, who are almost entirely women, many of them racialized, recent immigrants and refugees to Canada.

These are the reasons why we support the $10-a-day plan proposed by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. This plan calls for public delivery of child care to the greatest extent possible. Situating a $10-a-day child care system largely within the public school system will provide B.C. families with accessible, accountable and affordable child care. The government could renovate, could support school districts in opening child care spaces, do capital spending on renovation and the building of modular child care spaces on school grounds while employing district employees to operate these child care centres.

Child care and community social service workers pro­vided essential services that helped British Columbians navigate COVID-19, yet they are poorly compensated. The provincial $4-an-hour wage enhancement program for early childhood educators is appreciated. However, child care workers unable to obtain an ECE certification or those who work at StrongStart or a non–provincially funded program don’t receive this enhancement.

To ensure improved income equity, we recommend that the $2-per-hour provincial wage enhancement be extended to all child care workers in B.C. Low-wage redress pro­vided social service workers some relief from low compensation rates. However, we have not achieved the intended wage parity with community health and recommend further wage increases to achieve that desired wage equity.

Provincially funded community social service workers only receive 80 percent paid sick leave. Our members often can’t afford to take sick time due to the 20 percent reduction in wages. We are asking the provincial government to provide provincial community social service workers with 100 percent paid sick leave.

Our sector has experienced chronic underfunding and significant recruitment and retention issues. Employers and employees alike provide increasingly complex services with decreased funding support. To provide improved services, we recommend increased overall funding to the community living sector. In community living, individualized funding is the norm. Clients experience limited access to peers while front-line staff endure amplified employment precarity. A return to a global funding model will improve service quality while providing program participants increased access to peers and staff with enhanced job security.

Thank you for the opportunity to express our priorities in these budget consultations. I want to close by saying I really do appreciate everything the provincial government has done for child care and social services. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but we do.

[3:35 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Thanks so much, Sheryl.

I’ll open it up to questions from the committee.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Sheryl. Just to be clear…. Thank you for your comments and presentation. I didn’t see a written one, but I do want to….

The parity that you talked about with early childhood educators to health workers — is that…? No? I’m just wanting to be comparing apples to apples, because you said parity. I’m just wondering if you could be clear as to what parity it is that you think they should be at. And what are the educational requirements for both groups that you’re comparing?

S. Burns: I was talking about two things. I knew I’d talked about these things very quickly, so I’m relieved you asked me that question, actually.

On the one hand, I was talking about early child care educators. Early child care educators are a group of child care workers that have their early child care education certificate. Those educators, for the most part, have been provided a $4-an-hour provincial wage enhancement in two instalments of $2 per hour.

Unfortunately, there are child care workers that work in the child care sector that don’t have that certification because they’re not able, usually for financial reasons, to access that certification. They’re not getting the wage enhancement.

Then there are early child care educators who work in StrongStart programs as well as non–provincially funded programs who aren’t benefiting from the wage enhancement. StrongStart programs are through schools, and that, I think, is part of why they’re not accessing it. The non–​provincially funded programs often have the benefits of the provincial community social services agreement.

We know that they shouldn’t be getting a $4-an-hour wage enhancement, because that would put them above the other early child care educators in the province. However, with this second $2-an-hour wage enhancement, it means that now they risk falling below the rest of the early child care educators in the province. That was one issue.

The other issue is that in the last round of provincial bargaining, the government came to community social services with an offer of low-wage redress. We achieved a $2-per-hour general wage increase over three years, plus we achieved low-wage redress. The goal of that low-wage redress was to get community social service workers to have wage equity with community health.

While we got $100 million in low-wage redress, community health also got a $60 million low-wage redress to try to achieve equity with facilities. So it meant that the gap continued. Even though it was narrowed, we didn’t actually achieve the equity that we were after.

We’re just talking about equity within comparable job classifications between the two provincial collective agreements for social services and community health. I hope that clarified it.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, it does, but I guess the question I’m looking at is…. You talk about them being the job classifications. What I’m wondering…. Historically, have they been lower because of the fact that the educational requirements have been different?

S. Burns: No. Historically, if we want to look at history, it’s because back in bargaining in 2002, community social services was asked to mine their own agreement and find $72 million in savings. That caused a significant rollback in wages. We’ve been trying to catch up to that, so the low-wage redress was partly to help address that.

We were extraordinarily grateful for that. It made a huge difference to our sector, but we just haven’t quite achieved parity. If you looked at equivalent job classifications, you would find that both the education requirement as well as the job responsibilities are virtually identical.

[3:40 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Thank you, Sheryl. I think you gave a very, very thorough explanation and presentation about where we’re at in terms of transforming our child care system, where we want to get to and what some of the barriers are in getting there. Thanks so much for coming and sharing your expertise with us.

S. Burns: Thank you. Thank you for your time. Good luck with the consultation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Christine Bradstock of the Physiotherapy Association of B.C.

PHYSIOTHERAPY ASSOCIATION OF B.C.

C. Bradstock: As you have just heard, my name is Christine Bradstock, and I’m the chief executive officer of the Physiotherapy Association of B.C.

I’m very grateful to be able to address you here today on the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish people — in particular, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

I also wish to thank you for being on the committee, for representing your area of the province and for providing this opportunity here today.

Physiotherapists hold unique roles in primary health care, and they have a wide scope of practice. They work in both public and private settings. Through assessment and treatment plans, they help with pain management; pediatrics; post-operative care, especially knee and hip and replacements; seniors care, including balance and falls prevention; stroke rehabilitation; maternity care; workplace injuries; motor vehicle crash injuries; cancer rehabilitation; and emergency room assessment and treatment.

There’s a significant shortage of physios in B.C., and we need more locally trained physios. Our population is aging. Demand is increasing. Physios are aging and retiring. Recruitment and retention for locally trained physios is essential.

In 2014, nearly 16 percent of Canadians were aged 65 and over. By 2035, that is expected to be nearly 24 percent. The number of seniors needing and receiving continuing care is projected to double by 2035 to 2.9 million. Another way to look at this is that in 2014, the number of seniors who accessed physiotherapy was 566,000. This is expected to jump to 1.5 million by 2035 across Canada.

In 2018, 300 new physios were hired in B.C. Only 228 in 2020. This still leaves lots of vacancies in the province. We need physios trained in British Columbia. The number of Canadians accessing physiotherapy has been rising, increasing from 8.4 percent of the adult population in 2001 to 11.6 in 2014. That’s 3.8 percent a year. Between 1980 and 2016, British Columbia experienced the largest net inflow of senior migrants of any province. Seniors who migrated to B.C. between 1980 and 2016 will end up costing the province $7.2 billion.

For seniors, fall prevention programs improve quality of life and reduce mortality. Physiotherapists can include fall prevention teaching and exercise and education sessions. Physiotherapists prescribe exercise programs aimed at regaining and maintaining strength, flexibility, balance and endurance that will help reduce the risk of falls and fall-related injuries.

British Columbia’s provincial health officer reported in 2009 that Indigenous peoples are twice as likely as non-Indigenous to be hospitalized following a fall. More seriously, falls are the leading cause of death in Indigenous seniors.

[3:45 p.m.]

In alignment with the mandate letters for the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Advanced Education, Ministry of Children and Family, we address topics of reconciliation, equality and anti-racism as part of our presentation. This includes improved access for Indigenous communities to culturally safe health care within their communities and improving support for children and youth with special needs.

The physiotherapy profession focuses on lifestyle modifications, and exercise prescription is consistent with the promotion of health and wellness and demonstrates the contribution physiotherapists may bring to improve health outcomes for Indigenous people.

Jordan’s principle was first adopted in 2007 by the House of Commons by way of a unanimous decision. It was de­signed to ensure that Indigenous children do not experience delays or denial of service due to jurisdictional disputes in regards to health care coverage. There is a growing belief that government’s response to Jordan’s principle does not reflect the vision that was addressed by the House, and this must be addressed.

It is important to mention recommendation 23 of the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action. We call upon all levels of government to increase the number of Aboriginal professionals working in the health care field, ensure the retention of Aboriginal health care providers in Aboriginal communities and provide culturally competitive training for all health care professionals. UBC’s faculty of medicine and department of physical therapy have both released strategic plans that directly address some of these key recommendations.

Pediatrics. There is limited data….

J. Routledge (Chair): Christine, you are over time.

C. Bradstock: Okay, I’ll jump to the options. Thank you. I expected 30 seconds, so sorry about that.

Our recommendation. We, the association, believe in having target seats of 200 additional. Currently there are 100, so we are looking for 300. We defer to the provincial government, UBC and the post-secondary institutions to build on UBC’s expertise, experience and coordinate meeting the objectives of both the faculty of medicine and physical therapy.

Partner with First Nations Health Authority, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Children and Family, Ministry of Advanced Ed and the seniors advocate.

Build on the successful distribution sites that are currently at UNBC and soon to be Fraser Valley.

Add an additional training program at UBC Okanagan and in Victoria.

As an FYI — UBC, UNBC, UBC Okanagan and UVic all have distributed medical programs.

Focus on seniors, Indigenous people and pediatrics as areas of practice.

And, in accordance with the budget consultation, alignment with lasting and meaningful reconciliation.

I welcome your questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Christine.

I’ll open it up for questions.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much for your presentation. You highlighted the important work that physiotherapists do.

Listening to your presentation, I could not even count how many times — working in health care for 17 years and having those injuries from the workplace — I got helped by the physiotherapist. They are not only helping seniors and other people with falls, they are helping a large number — whether it’s nurses — with their repetitive injuries. I don’t know if I was able to function if we didn’t have that support from your colleagues. It’s really great work that they’re doing.

You mentioned about opening up spaces more in B.C. What are some ideas? What are some hurdles that you heard about? Why can’t we create more spaces, as I can attest to the importance of the work and direct benefits, to keep the health care going with the workforce who need their help as well?

C. Bradstock: We currently have 80 seats at UBC in Vancouver. We have 20 at UNBC in Prince George and soon to have 20 in the Fraser Valley at distributed sites. We want to build on that — the focus of areas of practice — because we’ve often seen that when people are trained in an area, they have a tendency to stay in that area.

[3:50 p.m.]

As you may have seen over the last couple of days in the news, Northern Health is in need of health care workers. Physiotherapists can certainly help in that area.

Some of the challenges exist in pockets around the prov­ince, and that is one way to fill that need — to have those schools having people trained in their local areas.

H. Sandhu: A follow-up, Chair — a quick one.

I was looking at the graph on how many internationally educated physiotherapists we have, and I wonder, meanwhile: when we’re working on creating spaces or asking government to create spaces, what is our focus on actively recruiting and training the internationally educated physio­therapists to meet that demand that we’re facing right now?

C. Bradstock: Certainly, that outreach to different countries and bringing in physios from other countries — whether they are new grads who have just gone away and trained or gone to school and are coming here or they’re experienced physiotherapists — is an expensive venture for health authorities, for private practice, to go out and do that outreach across the globe. Then when they come in, some of them need additional training, and they certainly need to pass a couple of exams: a written exam and a practical exam.

There are some hurdles before they can start practising, and not all of them get there. Some of them actually come for short periods of time and then go back, so having a focus on both internationally trained and locally trained is critical. We believe that having locally trained is a key element here.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think we’re going to have to wrap it up at this point. Thank you so much for your presentation, Christine, and thank you for the work that your members do. I know that I have benefited personally from physiotherapy. I think I’m mobile as a result of it.

C. Bradstock: You bet. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. Feel free to contact me individually.

J. Routledge (Chair): For sure.

Our next presenter is Ruben Munoz, Graduate Student Societies of B.C.

GRADUATE STUDENT SOCIETIES OF B.C.

R. Munoz: Good afternoon. Thank you.

Dear members of the British Columbia Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, my name is Ruben Munoz. I’m currently the chairperson of GSSBC, the Graduate Student Societies of B.C., which is an organization that advocates for the interests of graduate students of all the universities — of UBC, SFU, UVic and UNBC. We highly appreciate the invitation from this committee to the hearing, and we are grateful to the committee for granting the space for graduate students to express our financial concerns and how these concerns can be addressed in the next budget ’22.

I would like to begin by drawing your attention to our role, the role of graduate students in our society. It’s not just education. We are research leaders, we are entrepreneurs, we are education partners, and some of us are parents. Our reach goes beyond the classroom. We help to shape our communities, so we contribute to our economy. Most of us have families that support our educational goals, and in the same way, we hope that we can give back to support them one day.

However, due to the pandemic and the ever-increasing cost pressures, this path that we have is only getting more and more challenging. This adversity is mostly due to the steady increases in tuition and other fees, as well as nearly non-existent affordable housing. This forces many students to take additional side jobs and, on some occasions, to stop their studies. This issue also deters undergraduate students from accessing graduate education and forces graduate students to stop their studies.

[3:55 p.m.]

Like I mentioned before, funding is, by and large, our most concerning, pressing issue. The tuition limit policy is insufficient because there is no cap for international students’ fees. In 2020, tuition fees in the province increased 5.3 percent, which is four times the inflation rate of 1.3 percent. This means that, over time, non-stopping in­creases in tuition are making the graduate education even less affordable.

Now, we will say that we see, with excitement and hope, that the 2021-2022 budget takes concrete steps towards making it more affordable. We are pleased to see how the extension of the B.C. graduate scholarship has helped to fund more than 1,000 students in the province. We also applaud the 9.5 percent increase in the budget for the ministry for the same time period, but we remember the reinstatement of the $75 health fee charge for international students and each family member. Like I said, higher education is becoming less affordable.

We would like, also, to highlight that the stagnation and relative decrease in funding from the provincial government, funding that is consistently below the inflationary increases to tuition, is ultimately leading to the slow privatization of post-secondary education in B.C. The ratio between provincial funding and tuition being the primary source of funding has already shifted to tuition.

This is alarming for us grad students, because we recognize the role of graduate education in society, especially because it is through education that we can help to solve equity issues in a more increasingly inequitable society. Scholarship funding, while vital because of the affordability issues that I mentioned, is not sufficient, and it will not reverse the trend of privatization.

We would also like to bring to the attention of the committee how unaffordable housing has affected the advancements of our studies. For most in this province, unaffordable housing is not a remote problem, and it is certainly a major issue for us.

On average, rent of a one-bedroom apartment on campus is $1,200, and only less than 9 percent of students can successfully apply to it because of capacity issues. The existing options for students with families are extremely limited basically because of higher prices and non-existent capacity. For these reasons, 91 percent of the 18,500 students do not have an option but to live off campus, and by doing so, we are forced to accept market-driven prices.

We came here today to ask you to continue supporting and, specifically, to boost graduate education on two fronts: freezing tuition fees to leverage microeconomic pressures and allocating resources to build truly affordable housing on campus dedicated to grad students.

We would like to thank you for your attention and for your interest in supporting graduate students. We hope that our speech has shed some light on the financial issues that we face. I’d be happy to take any questions from the committee now or by email, if you prefer.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Ruben. We are a little bit behind time, but we do have time for a few questions, if there are any.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Ruben. I understand the difficulty in terms of the cost of coming here. I guess the education system…. You know, there are some supports there for international students through Mitacs, and I’m wondering: do they cover any of these costs for international students to attract them to British Columbia or other parts of Canada?

R. Munoz: It is my understanding that, no, that does not cover for international students. But I mean, that’s my understanding. I’m not 100 percent sure.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay. I think that there is. Mitacs is headquartered here in British Columbia, for all of Canada, and I think that it would be a good idea to check that because of the relationship there.

I think one of the other things is that education in British Columbia, a third of it at least, is subsidized by taxpayers. I think that’s one of the reasons why international students are not necessarily…. You know, because of the fact that they get a degree, and then they go back home, right?

R. Munoz: Absolutely.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): The retention — I mean, that’s what we’re looking for. I think the incentive that we’re looking for is: what would make these people stay here, besides the fact that it may be a nice place to live?

[4:00 p.m.]

R. Munoz: Right. I think that’s what we mentioned. The difference between the tuition of domestic and international students in some colleges, some institutions, is almost double, almost twice, which is understandable based on that. But what we struggle to understand is how there is no cap for international students’ fees. Every institution determines that on its own.

We know that even when domestic students have that cap of 2 percent, it is not necessarily fair with international students, who have this constantly increasing number.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

G. Kyllo: I think more of a comment.

International education is a huge driver of our economy and province. I was actually responsible for B.C.’s jobs plan from 2013 to ’17. One of the pieces that was brought forward was that bringing the brightest from around the globe to come and get their education here…. Even though students can get their education here and go back home, they fostered amazing ties with people here in British Columbia, so the opportunity for increased commerce is significantly valuable.

There are definitely longer-term benefits to British Columbia by having a very strong and robust international educational program because of the relationships that are actually created. Even though international students may get their post-secondary education here and may not choose to actually live here on a long-term basis, there’s definitely residual and longer-term value.

It’s something that was recognized by the previous government, and I certainly want to encourage you to continue to have that dialogue with the current government to make sure that they fully recognize and appreciate the value of the international education system here in B.C.

R. Munoz: Absolutely. In that regard, we found that in other provinces, the rate has not increased as dramatically as it has increased here in B.C. That’s also one of the reasons why we pushed for this hearing, because we see that the province is somehow leading to a disadvantage in that field, while this advantage has been taken by other provinces — like Ontario, for example — where the in­creases are not as dramatic, right?

More than that, it also attracts the students of other countries so that instead of coming to B.C., to Canada, they are choosing other destinations.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’m not seeing other questions. So I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for coming and making this presentation on behalf of the grad student society and to let you know that, yes, we do understand that the cost of living for students — be it through housing, through tuition, through fees — has, in many cases, led to lifelong debt. We understand that.

I think what was in our questions…. We’re just grappling with what we can do to bring it under control, be­cause we do need graduate students, as you say.

R. Munoz: Thank you for understanding.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Saad Shoaib, Alma Mater Society of the University of British Columbia.

ALMA MATER SOCIETY OF UBC VANCOUVER

S. Shoaib: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. My name is Saad Shoaib, and I serve as the vice-president external affairs at the Alma Mater Society of the University of British Columbia Vancouver.

I am presenting to you on this important and key issue on behalf of 150,000 undergraduate and graduate students that attend the University of British Columbia, along with its affiliate colleges, the Alliance of British Columbia Students and the University of Victoria Students Society.

Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that UBC’s Alma Mater Society is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-​speaking Musqueam people. Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ is just one of over 34 Indigenous languages and one of more than 50 dialects spoken by Indigenous communities across British Columbia. However, most of these languages are critically endangered.

We share the provincial government’s commitment to creating lasting reconciliation, challenging colonial structures and working with Indigenous partners towards decolonization and indigenization.

The province’s adoption and commitment towards the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, otherwise known as UNDRIP, and the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are a critical first step in this work.

[4:05 p.m.]

The importance of including Indigenous language programs at post-secondary institutions, or PSIs, has been recognized by Indigenous communities and experts for decades. With article 16 of the TRC, calling upon post-secondary institutions to create university, college degree and diploma programs in Aboriginal languages. Restricting Indigenous languages has been a key tool in the colonization and oppression of Indigenous people in Canada, and these destructive colonial policies have directly caused critical endangerment and erasure of Indigenous langu­ages across the country.

Unfortunately, this is not a new issue. Indigenous communities have been vocal and have been warning governments about this destruction for years. In 1998, the Assembly of First Nations declared a state of emergency on First Nations languages, calling on the government of Canada to act immediately and to make a commitment to provide the resources necessary to reverse First Nation language loss and to prevent the extinction of their languages.

It is important to recognize, however, that in 2012, the Ministry of Advanced Education implemented the Aboriginal post-secondary education and training policy framework. One of the guiding principles of this long-term educational plan is that First Nations, Métis and Inuit languages and cultures are critical components of quality educational programming and are essential to support the success of Aboriginal learners.

The ministry also developed the Aboriginal service plan in the late 2010s, providing additional funding to post-secondary institutions to implement innovative new programs, activities and services to meet the academic, social, emotional and cultural needs of Aboriginal learners. Several initiatives that have since been funded by this plan include Indigenous language courses at a variety of post-secondary institutions across B.C. An example of such an initiative is the establishment of the bachelor in Nsyilxcn, a language fluency program, or BNLF program, at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus.

The creation of the BNLF program was initiated through collaboration with the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association, along with the First Nations Education Steering Committee to create a framework for Indigenous language fluency degrees to be offered by Indigenous communities and post-secondary institutions.

The framework initiative was then funded by a $2 million investment from the Ministry of Advanced Education to aid in the provincial government’s capacity to collaborate and share language revitalization courses. As a note, this funding was a one-time injection. While Aboriginal service plans do provide post-secondary institutions with a framework to request funding for Indigenous reconciliatory initiatives, there is currently no standing funding for the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages at B.C. post-secondary institutions.

It is critical that standing funding be made available to post-secondary institutions and Indigenous communities that wish to create programs which contribute to the preservation of their respective languages. While the province made a first great step by establishing funding for the program between UBC Okanagan and Nicola Valley, efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages must be multifaceted, comprehensive and immediate.

The extraordinary and innovative work done by Indige­nous communities, organizations, Elders and activists across the province is truly incredible. However, as the TRC calls to action mandate, this work must also be taken up by post-secondary institutions and the provincial government, in coordination with the respective Indigenous communities.

The AMS of UBC, the Alliance of British Columbia Students and the University of Victoria Students Society therefore recommend that standing funding be provided and allocated to support reconciliation, indigenization and cultural revitalization efforts at post-secondary institutions through continued investments in an Indigenous language fluency degree framework and the Indigenous-led development of Indigenous language programs.

Thank you to the members of this committee for giving me the ability to speak on this important issue.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much.

We’ll open it up to questions from the committee.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation.

What type of funding level are you thinking is necessary to support this and sustain it?

S. Shoaib: Absolutely. Previously, the Ministry of Ad­vanced Education allocated a $2 million investment. But that’s something that the Indigenous communities and the organizations that were mentioned, such as the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association, along with the Assembly of First Nations, would be able to provide a better understanding of.

That’s something Indigenous communities throughout the province would be able to partner with the post-secondary institutions on and provide a better understanding, in terms of the funding needed to establish those programs at the according post-secondary institutions.

[4:10 p.m.]

The $2 million investment from the Ministry of Ad­vanced Education resulted in the establishment of the bachelor of Nsyilxcn at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. That’s a joint program between the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and UBCO.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Well, I guess it is getting late in the day. Thank you for making such a concise and to-the-point presentation at this point in the day.

Thank you for reminding us of the power of language and the importance of language. For some of us who grew up speaking a language that was reflected all around us, it reminds us that language is important in terms of how we define ourselves, our sense of belonging and how we present ourselves to the world.

S. Shoaib: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the ability you’ve given me to speak.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Brenden MacDonald.

You have five minutes. I’ll try to give you a 30-second warning if you happen to be looking at me. We don’t have any lights or buzzers today.

B. MacDonald: I should be okay.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, great.

BRENDEN MacDONALD

B. MacDonald: See through the stereotypes. Raise us up. Unlock economic potential and dignified health outcomes. My name is Brenden MacDonald. I’m from Vancouver Island.

I’d also like to acknowledge that we’re on unceded Coast Salish territories here in Vancouver.

My person-with-disability success backstory. I’ve been on welfare for years. What happened? Briefly, as a teen, I was abused and have suffered greatly. I have separate diagnoses of chronic pain and schizophrenia. PTSD has intensified symptoms and stress over the span of my illnesses.

I’ve been lucky. My brother helped out lots. Debilitated from trauma and illness, I was technically not expected to work, which is a ministry category. After eight years on PWD, I found part-time work. In fact, my uncle was the supervisor. Four years later, today, I live independently, and 2021 is the second year I’ve reached my earnings exemption and a lot earlier than in 2020.

A steep cutoff. I got a full assistance cheque one month, then zero the next. My work income did not suddenly increase by $1,300 because of the reduction.

See through the stereotypes. Raise us up. Stereotypes say poor people are lazy, use drugs and commit crimes. Often in the same class as prescription drugs, illegal and recreational drugs are used to relieve pain. Violence, theft and property destruction are a sign of disordered resource allocation rather than marks of poor character.

It’s difficult to be peaceful when one is eating poorly, housing insecure and without optimal health care. Poverty is a complex legacy of our collective history. It’s not our fault.

I have three policy recommendations that I thought of.

One. Gradually and gently reduce assistance after the annual earnings exemption is reached. Smooth the transition to greater, sustained income. Reaching exemption can drop one’s assistance suddenly. That’s a disincentive to work. Secure assistance and work income represent greater personal wealth stability.

Two. Increase the shelter and basic assistance amounts to pretty much match a liveable income, however it would be defined. Give those in both PWD and expected-to-work categories enough money to secure safe housing and return to work and also to escape abusive situations. To find and keep work and shelter, we need cash to support the brain, body and personal safety. There would be more spending in local economies. These are direct benefits of more dignified rates.

[4:15 p.m.]

Three. Enable more coverage and better access to pre­ventative and optimal care. Many illnesses might be avoided, and the worst suffering reduced, by covering medically optimal care. If the cost did go up at day’s end, perhaps the explanation would include everyone living ten years longer. Improved health outcomes could be more normal.

Conclusion. Higher upfront rates would enable many to work sooner after first requiring assistance. Low rates are not an incentive to work sooner. Crime- and health-related costs could decrease, and approaching old age would be more dignified for all. Pain and stress could be traded for a few bucks extra per person. Better for the economy, the community and the individual, this feels inherently worthwhile. Working together and seeing through the stereotypes will raise us up.

That’s my presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Brenden.

B. MacDonald: You’re welcome.

J. Routledge (Chair): Questions from the committee?

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation, Bren­den. When I read your story last night, I had to share it with somebody, because it’s a tough love story, and it’s got a great ending. I want to go see that movie again someday.

My question comes to you. Were you made aware of that steep cut? Could you forecast that?

B. MacDonald: I could forecast it, because I was told I was approaching it, approaching the limit. But maybe it’s not exactly communicated how steep a cut it is. It’s kind of understood, generally, in the disability community — that if I earn a certain amount, they’re just going to cut me off. That’s the kind of idea.

I learned that they’ll actually reinstate the assistance after one month if I did report no earnings. They’ll return it. But that’s still not…. That $1,300 drop suddenly is definitely not incentivizing.

M. Starchuk: Do you have a solution? When you say incremental, are we talking like 75, 50, 25?

B. MacDonald: I don’t know how exactly to do it. It is a little bit…. Different situations are different. Some people’s income is more seasonal, and that sort of thing is an issue. But just seemingly, my experience of having one month with a full assistance cheque, and the next month zero….

My income did kind of go up a bit quickly in 2021. I was thinking: “Oh, gee. Should I control my income, limit my income to try to fit in these numbers? Or no, I’m going to go for it.” My experience was a drop, a $1,300 drop in income suddenly, which, at this low level income, is quite substantial, obviously.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation today. I was wondering. Your third policy recommendation related to preventative and optimal care. Could you provide some examples of that that you would have felt were beneficial to you or others that you have spoken to? Could you just expand on that a bit?

B. MacDonald: Sure. For instance, my partner is quite mobility limited. They can walk with a cane, but they’re right now thinking about getting a chair or a scooter of some sort. The policy is like: “We’ll give you the minimum of what’s medically required, and that’s all we will give.”

In order to get some sort of device which would increase the range of my partner — increase their range, increase their ability to get out to the community, all the benefits that range would come with…. But it’s like they have to argue, basically, the bare minimum kind of strategy. Even the legislation around assistive technology, assistive de­vices, is like: “We are going for the bare minimum.”

[4:20 p.m.]

It’s not like what can really improve your range, improve your well-being, which is a different approach. It’s a different approach.

M. Dykeman: That’s great. Thank you for that example. I appreciate you taking the time to present today.

B. MacDonald: Thank you for listening.

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Brenden, for your presentation today. I just want to get a better sense of, first off, how much you might be receiving. It sounds like $1,300 per month. Secondly….

B. MacDonald: Well, that’s the PWD amount, yeah.

L. Doerkson: Right. So what threshold do you have to cross to lose that, and is it all lost?

B. MacDonald: The annual exemption is…. It’s been increased in the last couple of years each year, actually. The last couple of years they’ve increased the rate. I think it’s around $15,000 or something. I forget exactly the number, because it has changed somewhat recently, so I’m not quite remembering. But I know it’s about…. A few years ago it was more closer to $14,000.

The way it works is that as your income goes up, it gets to the AEE, the annualized earnings exemption. You get a certain amount each year, and then once that hits, any additional income is deducted. So after I reach the limit, my next month I had an income higher than the PWD amount, so my PWD amount was zero. That’s what I meant by…. If another month later my earnings were zero, then the next report period I’d get the PWD amount back.

That does recognize that things are not permanent. My health might change, whatever. I might suddenly lose the work. Then they’ll give me the earnings back. So that’s how that works.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you, Brenden. Thank you for sharing your story and sharing it in such an eloquent and poetic way. You have helped us see past the numbers to the reality of life.

B. MacDonald: Cool. Thanks for listening.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our last presenter today is Joshua Millard, the Alliance of B.C. Students.

ALLIANCE OF B.C. STUDENTS

J. Millard: Hello. Thank you for giving us the time to speak on these important issues that affect students and others throughout the province. My name is Joshua Millard. I’m the executive director at the Alliance of B.C. Students.

I’m here today on behalf of our alliance members — the Kwantlen Student Association, the Langara Students Union, the University of the Fraser Valley Student Union Society, the University of British Columbia Graduate Student Society and the Capilano Students Union, in collaboration with the University of Victoria Students Society and the UBC alma mater students society.

Together these groups represent over 155,000 students. Yes, you heard that correctly. That’s over 155,000 students jointly rallying behind these key recommendations for your 2022 provincial budget.

A few minutes ago my friend and colleague Saad from the AMS presented to you a recommendation regarding funding for Indigenous language programs at universities. That is one of three recommendations we are jointly supporting for the 2022 budget. Today I’ll be speaking about our second recommendation, increased and regular funding for sexualized and gender-based violence prevention.

Of course, I want to begin by acknowledging the territories we live and work on — the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

It’s important to acknowledge that sexualized and gen­der-​based violence has disproportionately affected Indigenous communities, and that fact has been front and centre in our consultations and our work.

Sexualized and gender-based violence has been and continues to be prevalent throughout our society and this province. Though we must always remember those who experience this violence are far more than just statistics, numbers can illustrate the severity of the crisis and the necessity for action.

One in five women will be sexually assaulted while at­tending university, and one in four women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. Of course, roughly 90 percent of sexual assault incidents are not reported, so these numbers are likely much higher. For example, only roughly 2 percent of date rape incidents are reported.

[4:25 p.m.]

As representatives of students, it is also important to mention that at universities, two thirds of sexual assault incidents occur in the first eight weeks of the semester. Additionally, these alarming numbers have yet to account for the increase of sexualized and gender-based violence throughout the pandemic.

These are people you know and care about. They’re your friends, your family, your neighbours, your work colleagues. Sexualized and gender-based violence is the only violent crime that has not been reduced since 1999. It is one of the most serious issues affecting our students, yet very little is being done about it.

This impacts more than just students. Behind each sexual assault support centre and advocacy organization are hundreds of individuals working tirelessly to support survivors across the province. It is through consulting these people — the workers, the staff, many times students themselves, members of the community from post-secondary institutions across the province — that we have heard a unified demand. More funding is necessary. In addition to the alarming statistics, the voices and stories of those doing this work insist an increase of continuous funding is the only starting point.

Much more work needs to be done to address the crisis, and we will be the first to say we are not the experts. That is why, through months of consultation and after listening to countless workers and survivors of sexualized and gender-based violence, we are bringing this to you today.

In 2019, the B.C. provincial government allocated $760,000 towards funding sexualized violence prevention, education and response in post-secondary institutions. Since then, these funds have gone towards forums to educate on sexualized violence, resources, plain language, pol­icy development, consultations, the initial stages of a resource-sharing hub, consent campaigns and a per-student climate survey that has yet to be launched.

Although this initial funding has been used to start some incredible projects, sexualized and gender-based violence is far from disappearing from our post-secondary institutions. From our consultations, we were told that students and campus initiatives saw very little of this funding, and if they did, they found it very inaccessible and a complex process to access.

Moreover, these projects and educational tools depend on continuous funding as an entire province moves to­wards unlearning harmful and oppressive ways of thinking and, instead, learning, through trauma-informed and culturally relevant resources, how to be an ally to survivors and those most impacted by sexualized and gender-based violence.

Since 2019, this funding has not been renewed, and we have not seen a guarantee from the province that more support will come. We must do better to support survivors and those who dedicate their time, labour and love to supporting them. We have heard their unified voice and are asking you to listen to those doing this work and to those who are surviving by committing to providing an increased and continuous funding stream to address the sexualized and gender-based violence in our post-secondary institutions.

The Alliance of B.C. Students, the UBC Alma Mater Society and the University of Victoria Students Society jointly recommend that the province of British Columbia allocate $5 million annually to address sexualized and gender-based violence.

Thank you for your time and for your consideration.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Joshua.

I’ll open it up to questions from the committee.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Joshua. A great presentation and great work that you’re doing.

I am a mother of 19- and 14-year-old daughters. One is in university; the other one is getting ready. As you mentioned, it could be anybody — our loved ones. Startling facts that you shared, of the first eight weeks and then many cases not being reported as well.

You have highlighted that with the existing funding that was given in 2019, there are barriers to access that funding. What kinds of challenges are these victims facing when they try to access those funds?

J. Millard: During our consultations, groups that work on universities and other organizations found that…. They knew the funding was there, but knowing exactly how to access it and where to go wasn’t as easy as it should be.

We think that should further funding be provided, we need to make an effort to make it really easy and almost advertise that this funding is available to be used. That would go a long way for folks actually being able to access the benefits.

H. Sandhu: A quick follow-up, Chair, if I may.

Technically, having more education around that when funding is being launched, or an awareness campaign so the victims can apply before it runs out or something.

J. Millard: Yeah. It’s more so the organizations that support the students, I think, who during our consultations were saying they knew the funding was there, but knowing exactly how to access it could have been more clear. It’s so they know: “Okay, this is the amount we could receive. This is what we could use it towards.” Then they could actually take advantage of that to benefit our students and others throughout the province, not just students.

[4:30 p.m.]

H. Sandhu: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation and your work.

J. Millard: No problem. Thank you for listening.

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much for the presentation, Joshua.

Just so I’m clear. Of the $760,000 that was issued in 2019, first off, how much of it was actually used? Secondly, did it end in 2019? In other words, there has been no other funding. And thirdly, the $5 million that you’re asking for — can you give me a sense of how that will be spent?

J. Millard: Yeah. For the first question, I don’t know exactly how much was used. For the second question, it was a lump sum, I believe. It was not recurring year-over-year funding.

The number that we arrive at, $5 million, comes from a few sources. The first is that the organizations we consulted with felt that it wasn’t enough, especially for a provincial amount of funding that’s supposed to be used at universities all across the province. If you think about the salaries of individuals that support survivors, $760,000 is not a lot.

Also, during the pandemic, we know — the numbers are yet to really be confirmed, and the research needs to be done — that incidents of sexual violence have increased, with folks being in lockdown and staying at home. If these incidents are increasing and the organizations doing the work feel that the original funding was inadequate, we feel that it needs to be increased to make up for that, as well as something year over year that organizations can plan for so they don’t have to, say, work on an initiative based on the funding they get one year, not knowing whether there’ll be funding again to continue it later on.

I think, out of everything I’ve said, the year-over-year funding is what, in our consultations, has come up the most. The most important thing is that the funding needs to be every year.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Joshua, thanks for that. Who administered the funding you got in 2019?

J. Millard: It was through the province, I believe. I don’t know who specifically.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Who administered the funds going out the door?

J. Millard: Oh, I don’t have that answer.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Was it given to the individual institutions?

J. Millard: Oh, I see. I believe the funding was made available and that organizations could apply through grant-seeking means to get a hold of it. Sorry for misunderstanding.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I see. Okay.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing any other questions, so on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for presenting to us today and presenting to us so forcefully and powerfully about such an important topic.

I’ll say, in passing and concluding, that just last week, last Friday, I was up on campus at SFU touring some new student housing, and there were posters about this very topic. That’s a lot more than there was in student residence when I was in university, but you’re right. It’s not enough. There’s more that needs to be done to change this.

J. Millard: Of course. Yeah.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Megan. Okay.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:33 p.m.