The committee met at 8:32 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 on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the homeland of Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

I would also like to welcome everyone who is listening to and participating in today’s meeting on the Budget 2022 consultation. We are in the last four days of our consultation and will be holding in-person meetings in communities across B.C. this 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 this Thursday, September 30, 2021, at 5 p.m.

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 the presentation, followed by five minutes for questions from committee members. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted.

I’ll now ask members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with the Deputy Chair.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Madam Chair, for your remarks.

I’m Ben Stewart, and I’m the MLA for Kelowna West, the Housing critic, and I look forward to your presentations today. Thank you for coming.

[8:35 a.m.]

L. Doerkson: Good morning, everybody. My name is Lorne Doerksen. I am the MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin.

G. Kyllo: Good morning. Greg Kyllo, MLA for Shuswap, Labour critic.

I come from the traditional territory of the Sec­wépemctsin-speaking peoples.

M. Starchuk: Good morning. My name is Mike Starchuk, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

That is located on the territories of the Coast Salish peoples, which include the Kwantlen, Katzie and Semiahmoo.

M. Dykeman: Hi. I’m Megan Dykeman. I’m the MLA for Langley East. I’m looking forward to your submissions.

My riding resides on the traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui and Semiahmoo First Nations.

J. Brar: My name is Jagrup Brar. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood.

H. Sandhu: Good morning. I am Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee,

I’m coming to you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Okanagan Indian Nations.

I look forward to your presentation.

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

I’d like to give a special welcome to Jagrup Brar, who stepped in at the last minute to replace one of our members who had a medical emergency.

Welcome, Jagrup.

Assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office, and Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat from Hansard Services. Thank you so much to all of you for your help.

With that, let’s get started. Our first presenter is Janet Morris-Reade, ASPECT B.C., Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training.

Janet, you have five minutes.

Budget Consultation Presentations

ASSOCIATION OF SERVICE
PROVIDERS FOR EMPLOYABILITY
AND CAREER TRAINING

J. Morris-Reade: Great. Thank you very much.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you to the committee on behalf of the ASPECT members for giving me this opportunity to present to you today. I speak on behalf of our 100 member organizations that deliver employment services and supports throughout the province to over 190 communities in B.C.

ASPECT members play an essential role in upskilling individuals and providing them with the best opportunities to find and maintain success in the workplace. They also work with employers within their communities to provide a bridge to a trained workforce and provide training in response to community labour market needs.

ASPECT is a community of organizations, such as Mission Community Skills Centre Society, Horton Ventures in 100 Mile House and Williams Lake, Langley Community Services Society, Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria, DIVERSEcity Community Resources in Surrey, Kelowna Community Resources, WCG in Burnaby and Community Futures in North Okanagan, in Vernon.

If some of these organization names sound familiar to you, it’s because I’ve chosen one from each of your ridings just to demonstrate that we are in every community, and we’re working at a community level. Our members are a mix between not-for-profit and private businesses that provide employment services on contract to both the provincial government and the federal government.

We have three recommendations for you today to remove some of the barriers to employment within our province. Further investment in the province is needed for connectivity. We applaud the government’s investment in the connecting British Columbia program, but further investment beyond the phase 3 $50 million is needed.

Employment services providers throughout the province have responded quickly to the pandemic by redesigning their in-person workshops, services and training sessions to go online. They have created virtual resource rooms, job fairs and one-on-one supports for those looking for work.

With the move to online services, however, we have seen the gap between the have and the have-not communities widening at a staggering level. Rural remote and Indigenous communities need better and more affordable Internet connections to compete and be resilient in the current economy. We need to make sure that everyone has equal access regardless of where they live. Broadband connectivity provides employment training and business development and can help young workers to stay in their communities while, at the same time, providing them connections to the outside world.

ASPECT members have done a stellar job of moving employment services online, but they can only do so much with limited connectivity. Investments by both the federal and provincial governments in the past are appreciated, but I’m asking you today to do more. Further investment in provincial rural remote and Indigenous communities with affordable high-speed access is needed.

[8:40 a.m.]

Recommendation 2: further investment in affordable housing. I’m looking right at you, our critic.

As we have seen from issues raised in the recent federal election, affordable housing continues to be a challenge across the country, and B.C. continues to be the highest-priced jurisdiction. We ask that the provincial government continue to invest in tax rebates and economic supports, especially to those who must pay 40 percent or more of their income on housing.

ASPECT members help their clients find jobs, but that is only part of the picture for sustained employment, personal financial viability and healthy communities.

Our third recommendation is continued investment in daycare. We applaud the provincial government’s efforts in this area and the recent agreement with the federal government to work toward $10-a-day daycare throughout Canada through the Canada–British Columbia early learning and child care agreement.

Nothing promises to reshape the world of work than making it possible for all to be included in it. For B.C. to meet its current and future labour market demands, we must remove daycare as a barrier to employment. We need to make sure that funding for this issue is continuous and that daycare becomes part of the social infrastructure for years to come.

In conclusion, we anticipate that the world of work will look very different in the coming years. As we navigate out of the pandemic, if B.C. is to recover and thrive, moving forward, we must further invest in better connectivity for rural and remote communities, affordable housing, and safe and affordable daycare. We recommend that the provincial government increase its funding in all these areas, over and above what has already been committed.

ASPECT members are in almost every community, delivering crucial employment supports and services, quickly responding to market conditions and employing experts in their field. The provincial government can depend on us to help you attain a resilient and healthy provincial economy.

Thank you for your time today. I’ve cited some resources in my presentation, and I will be submitting that by email.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Janet. I’ll now open it up to questions from the committee.

J. Brar: Thanks for coming this morning, and thanks for your presentation. That was very well done in a short time.

I really appreciate the three things you are saying to us: connectivity, affordability and housing. I just want to understand how…. I understand, in a global picture, what it means to the community. But to your members…. Your members provide services to people, particularly unemployed people. How do these three connect to your members and the services they’re providing?

J. Morris-Reade: That’s a fabulous question. Our members are working with clients that are trying to enter the workforce or those that are looking to change their careers. We’ve seen a lot of that in the pandemic. What they do is work with employers within communities to figure out what training is needed so that not only do they help their clients get jobs but also sustain employment — long-term, meaningful work. They are advocates for their clients and their communities throughout the province.

J. Brar: My second question is, if you can provide us…. You have 100 members providing employment services to the people of British Columbia. I know that right now unemployment is very low, so it’s not difficult to find employment, in my view, in B.C. But what is the success rate overall, in general, of these employment agencies?

[8:45 a.m.]

J. Morris-Reade: They’re not really employment agencies, as in an HR respect. They’re organizations that help people learn to be employable. So example: we’ve talked a lot in recent years about essential skills — for example, if you’re coming to a new country, being able to understand how to work in the Canadian work market and, if you’re a youth who’s never had a job before, learning how to work, how to show up on time and how to do your job, how to write a résumé and how to interact with your co-workers. It’s more for training the clients so that they’re employable.

Although it may feel like the unemployment rate is low, for B.C. to really compete in the future, we have to have full employment. There are not going to be enough workers for the future of work, and we have to make sure that everybody is available and ready to work.

J. Brar: What is the success rate?

J. Morris-Reade: I’m sorry I don’t have…. That’s tracked through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, as well as through ESDC Canada. I would venture that the success rate is fabulous, because everybody who is ready, willing and able to sustain employment, going through the programs, is a winner.

J. Routledge (Chair): The next question is for Harwinder, and then Ben. After that, I think we may be closing in on five minutes.

H. Sandhu: I can attest to Community Futures. In my riding in Vernon, they do wonders. When I say that, they made a lot of very good, positive difference in youth with some self-esteem issues, whether mental health or other. I know they’ve been working very successfully.

You mentioned about investment to improve connectivity. I’m just curious. Have you or your organization identified certain areas? It might be more like rural British Columbia. Or do these issues exist in other areas? In my riding, I know, there is, between Lumby to Vernon…. I’m just curious about if there have been areas identified where we need to pay attention.

J. Morris-Reade: That’s a really great question. Yes, Community Futures in Vernon is doing amazing work. Particularly, the housing crisis in Vernon right now, as you know, is a real problem. As far as connectivity goes, it’s not rural, in the way that it would be in the middle of the forest somewhere. We’re talking about smaller communities like Enderby and Lumby and those communities surrounding Vernon, in that area, that are having problems with connectivity issues.

We meet with our members from around the province every week, and we hear the stories of how they’re having to struggle to deliver services — so much so that entire communities are in a hub system. They’re paying really high prices for very low quality Internet and not able to join the rest of the world in our virtual world. Members are doing things such as loading their programs onto thumb drives and mailing them to their clients because there’s no connectivity in the areas that they’re in.

H. Sandhu: Thank you for highlighting this.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Janet. That was very succinct — those three areas that you’re focused in on. Having tried to fix that connectivity gap, the fact that the quality standards keep increasing makes it difficult for governments to keep up.

You know, point-of-presence isn’t good enough. Now we need to have fibre and stuff like that.

To Harwinder’s question, I think that if there is a way of helping government prioritize where the gaps are most obvious and where you’re finding that…. We’re not going to be able to get all of rural British Columbia, and it won’t be all the same, unless there’s some new technology.

On the affordable housing, you mentioned a couple of things about tax incentives, etc. I’d just ask if, in your submission, if you have suggestions, you could include those specifics.

J. Morris-Reade: Well, thank you. Developing policy for these types of things takes brain power that I don’t necessarily have, in that respect. We’ve seen that any sorts of tax incentives that have been out there have been quite successful for a lot of people, especially the working poor. We’re asking that instead of being a small band-aid, we expand that a little bit more so that people are able to work and live and feed themselves at the same time. Tax incentives are one of the easy ways of doing that, as well as taking a look at the larger scale of how much people are paying out of their monthly salary for housing.

[8:50 a.m.]

We were just talking about how in Vernon — a perfect example — so many employers are looking for people, but even if they hire the people, even if they’re able to find them, there’s nowhere for them to live that’s affordable. They’re not able…. It’s kind of a linchpin of the entire economy when you’re speaking about employment as well.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay, thanks. Well, any ideas are appreciated.

J. Morris-Reade: You’ve got really great….

J. Routledge (Chair): Excuse me, Janet. We’re way out of time. It’s a great discussion, but we’re going to have to wrap it up. There are other people waiting to make presentations.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for your presentation and your enthusiasm and to thank the organization you represent for the work that you do to help people learn to be employable and get the confidence to be employable. But it’s really clear in your presentation that there are issues that are beyond the individual. They’re systemic. You very clearly identified them for us, and we’ll be working with that to address the systemic barriers to employment. Thank you so much.

J. Morris-Reade: Thank you for your time today.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Chris Atchison, B.C. Construction Association.

Chris, you have five minutes. We will warn you when you have 30 seconds so that you know it’s time to wrap up, and then we’ll ask questions. Hopefully, we’ll ask questions that leave you enough time to answer them.

B.C. CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION

C. Atchison: Perfect. Thank you, and good morning.

I’d also like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

My name is Chris Atchison, and I’m the president of the B.C. Construction Association. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak.

The B.C. Construction Association is a non-profit association serving employers in B.C.’s industrial, commercial and institutional, or ICI, construction sector. We represent the whole of industry, regardless of labour affiliation and regardless of membership status. We are non-partisan.

Our industry, as you know, was declared a non–health care essential service at the beginning of our provincial state of emergency more than 18 months ago. Since that time, our sector has been operating safely, proactively and effectively to help keep our economy going.

It’s important to note that of the thousands of businesses in B.C.’s construction industry, most of them employ fewer than 20 workers. Yet, due to the enormity and complexity of the projects we build, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that 90 percent of our businesses are small or medium-sized. These small businesses have really stepped up during COVID-19 to meet their obligations to their families, to their communities and to this province.

By stepping up, I can point to a few of the following things. They’ve adjusted their worksites and have borne those costs. They haven’t had the option to work from home, so they’ve worked more traditionally than most during this time, on sites and safely during the pandemic. They’re adjusting to the new realities of a skilled trades certification requirement. They’re weighing the ramifications of forthcoming paid sick leave. They’re adapting to a skilled worker shortage by diversifying their workforces and implementing policies to support this needed culture shift.

This brings me to my next point, which is exactly what I said to this committee last year. I don’t stand before you today to ask for more infrastructure spending or for additional supports for construction businesses and workers. It’s not because they’re not important or necessary, but because today I must focus on one industry priority: prompt payment legislation.

Too often, construction contractors are not being paid for the work that they do. Small businesses are forced to operate as de facto banks, carrying loans, credit card debt, second mortgages and lines of credit when they do not receive timely payment for the work that they’ve done. They have to keep their payments going, though. They’re paying for their employees, their benefits, their WorkSafeBC premiums, their materials and supplies and other overhead costs. They can’t defer these payments. They must be prompt with their payments, and the money goes out, even when it doesn’t come in.

We’re having very productive and successful businesses where they’re finding themselves extended and at risk simply due to cash flow problems which are completely avoidable. This doesn’t just hurt the contractor, their employees and their families; it hurts the taxpayer as well. We estimate that this lack of prompt payment costs the B.C. government in excess of $3 billion per year and that these risk premiums are a result of the complex construction system that is trying to protect itself from anticipated late payments.

[8:55 a.m.]

Once again, I urge this committee to recommend that B.C. follow Ontario and the federal government and commit to prompt payment legislation. Saskatchewan, Alberta and Nova Scotia are themselves much further along than B.C., and we need sincere dialogue, robust consultation and leadership that understands what’s at stake if this continues to go unchecked.

The industry as a whole is united on this issue, and we have proven this time and time again with multiple letters of support signed by more than 30 industry associations across all labour affiliations. Economically, prompt payment legislation is a meaningful tool to help ensure that the billions of dollars spent on publicly funded infrastructure projects make it into the bank accounts and the pockets of the tradespeople and the small contractors who have earned it.

There is no more essential contribution that our government can make to B.C.’s construction industry or our economy than doing everything it can to help ensure a smooth payment pipeline through our industry, from owners to general contractors, from generals to trades and subtrades, to manufacturers and suppliers, to architects and engineers.

In 2019, this committee officially recommended that the B.C. government look at prompt payment legislation. I stand with you today and ask that we go beyond looking and to doing. There’s no better time, no better reason and no better opportunity than to make this a key priority for our province’s post-COVID-19 response.

Government and industry have a shared purpose that every dollar spent on infrastructure and utilizing our sector is well spent. Prompt payment legislation will benefit everyone, every project and every worker while relieving a layer of financial stress for many of B.C.’s small businesses and their families who experience a cash flow hardship.

Thank you for your consideration.

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

Now I’ll ask members of the committee if they have any questions.

G. Kyllo: Thanks, Chris. Good to see you.

With respect to the impact, you mentioned a figure of about a $3 billion cost to the provincial economy. Where are you getting your data from, or where did that number come from?

C. Atchison: We do a survey of our industry. Basically, it’s a calculation on the dollars that are spent for infrastructure investment. Knowing the consideration that many of our sub-subtrades and trade contractors are having in terms of carrying the financial cost, it’s just a straight-line calculation based on a percentage of that investment in infrastructure dollars.

We know that they’re applying roughly a percentage anywhere between 8 and 12 percent to pad those numbers, in addition to what they’re expecting the real costs to be, for carrying those fees.

G. Kyllo: If I may, Madam Chair.

You said general contractors are padding their bids by between 8 and….

C. Atchison: I don’t want to say generals. This isn’t just about general contractors.

G. Kyllo: Okay.

C. Atchison: This is a complex system where you have dozens, if not multiple dozens, of subcontractors and contractors that are also contributing to bids that allow general contractors to be successful in their bid. So it’s all a calculation.

To add to that, there are many smaller contractors that could be participating with competitive bids, but they’re doing their own thing in their communities. They’re going to the owners, and they’re going to the contracts that provide certainty.

This is the thing. We’re missing out on a whole discussion about…. Where there is uncertainty, there’s an impingement or an infringement on competitiveness. The fewer bids we have, the more likely costs are going to escalate. So we want to make sure we’ve got the maximum number of bids putting in the most competitive bids that they can. That will see that those risk premiums are reduced.

Prompt payment legislation itself will put certainty back into the fact that small businesses are going to get paid for the work that they do.

G. Kyllo: Yeah. I fully agree that…. When you see additional costs being borne by, and risks associated with some of these bids, you’ll have reduced competition. That drives the price up. That’s exactly what’s happened between the existing legislation with the community benefits agreement.

Sorry, Chris. You haven’t identified any concerns with that particular piece of legislation.

C. Atchison: It’s well known that the B.C. Construction Association…. A number of our partners do have significant concerns with community benefits agreements. We are working with our contractor community to identify what community benefit objectives can be accepted by industry. Diversification of the workforce is a good thing. We see that as positive.

The project labour agreement component is a piece that we have significant challenges with. All of those things that I’ve mentioned.

[9:00 a.m.]

The community benefits agreement could have been one of those items that I’ve listed. I’m speaking specifically about during the pandemic time, but that is another thing that our contractors are adapting to.

One of the things that we feel is an easy thing to at least start the discussions on is prompt payment legislation. I could speak all day about community benefit agreements, but I know that the priority of our sector right now is the prompt payment legislation.

J. Brar: Thanks, Chris, for coming. This is, it seems to me, a good idea. I just wanted to ask you…. You mentioned that Ontario has already done it. If any other province has done it, I would like to know what the outcome of that legislation is. That’s one thing, if you can explain it to us.

The second one is: what is the cost to the province? I understand the $3 billion cost, but is there any direct cost to the provincial government on this, if we do it?

C. Atchison: The original question about Ontario…. Ontario is the first province to have gone through it. They are in early days. It’s been in place for just about two years now. By industry standards, we would say it is working. It is providing the effective deterrent to free the payments through the system.

We are getting some resistance from the Attorney General’s office, which is saying that we need more time to review it. In the idea of industry, that’s wasted time. That’s time that is allowing people to go unpaid for the work that they’re doing.

What’s happening in Ontario is that they have a dispute resolution mechanism that they implemented. That dispute resolution mechanism is not being utilized to the extent that they anticipated. So it’s a non-profit entity that isn’t succeeding. But that doesn’t mean that the legislation isn’t working.

I don’t want to mix things up. I think that industry is saying that the fact that that dispute mechanism isn’t being utilized is a great thing. We want industry to be able to have the mechanisms in place to solve its own problems.

The costs right now are consultation. Be at the table. Organize your dialogue. Have meaningful consultation with industry, with lawmakers from Ontario, and start laying the groundwork. We’re so far behind in British Columbia that we’re doing a disservice to the entire industry and, quite frankly, the taxpayers, as well, for all of the infrastructure dollars that we’re committing on their behalf.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Chris. We’re out of time, but this was very enlightening. We thank you for your persistence in keeping it on the table. For sure it’s something that we will be discussing as a committee in our deliberations.

J. Brar: Just very quickly, have you made a written submission or…?

C. Atchison: Yes. A written submission will be on its way.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Jeff Bray, Downtown Victoria Business Association.

It’s now come to my attention that you actually can see the timing lights. You have five minutes. The green light comes on when you have two minutes left. You’ll get a signal from the Clerk when you have 30 seconds to wrap up, and then the red light will come on when you’re out of time.

DOWNTOWN VICTORIA
BUSINESS ASSOCIATION

J. Bray: Thank you, Madam Chair. Actually, it’s interesting to be sitting at this side of the table. I used to sit on this committee.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for the hours you put in, the submissions you hear and the work that you have to do even when the hearings aren’t on. I’ve been there as well, so thank you.

My name is Jeff Bray. I’m the executive director of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. I’m also the community co-chair for the Coalition to End Homelessness in Victoria with the mayor, Lisa Helps. I’m here today to really talk about two key issues that are identified in the prebudget consultation paper.

The Downtown Victoria Business Association’s mission is to nurture and promote the vitality and the vibrancy of downtown Victoria and its business community. Our vision is to really just be the authority of all things that are happening downtown. We are a geographic-based membership organization, unlike a chamber or CFIB, so everybody within downtown is automatically our member. We currently have approximately 1,350 members.

We do a number of different things to enliven our downtown as a placemaking organization. We have our clean team. We host events large and small to bring people into the downtown core. We do a significant amount of marketing of our downtown to the broader region. And we also do advocacy on behalf of our members, many of whom are small and medium-sized independent businesses.

[9:05 a.m.]

We have completed the survey found in the prebudget consultation paper. We’ve also made a written submission. We really want to focus on two areas that the prebudget consultation paper identified. The first is economic recovery.

Businesses need a time for some stability in order to be able to recover from COVID. We’ve had a great summer. Certainly, people are now talking about a lack of staff, which is a nice change from a lack of customers. That was the previous year. But it’s still one good quarter in a really tough 18 months, so stability is critical.

One area where our members and small and medium-sized businesses are really seeing a problem is on the application of best and highest use by B.C. Assessment when they look at assessments for commercial properties. Property owners are seeing huge increases in property taxes year over year, even if there’s no change to the building, no renovations, no changes to the tenants. Of course, these property owners have no choice but to pass on those increased costs directly to their tenants, many of them being small and medium-sized businesses, and many of them simply cannot afford the huge increases they’re seeing year over year. That’s actually leading to business closures.

This is not supportive of economic recovery. Best possible use does not consider long-term leases, heritage concerns around renovation or property easements. It is a highly volatile system that means one redevelopment can significantly impact the taxes of the rest of the neighbourhood. These increases in property taxes are passed on to business tenants. After the strain of the past year and a half, this instability can be one strain too many.

Triple-net leases are not the issue. Regardless of how a landlord and a tenant negotiate their lease, at the end of the day, it’s the end user that is going to be paying the costs. So our first recommendation is that the government consider amending the Assessment Act to allow for split classifications and other remedies to ensure property assessments do not further lead to the death of main street, B.C.

The second area I’d like to focus on from the prebudget consultation paper is supporting people and families — specifically, mental health and addictions treatment for those that we see every day on our streets in our urban centres who are suffering. For businesses and communities to prosper, both the perception and the reality of safety and security need to be in place.

No matter how compassionate an individual response is, there is still the day-to-day reality of cleaning up drug paraphernalia and bodily fluids, listening to screaming and violence, of climbing over sleeping bodies to open a café in the early morning, and the possibility for any interaction to go terribly wrong.

The DVBA annually surveys its members to identify key issues. In the most recent survey, respondents indicated that 62 percent of them had spent more money in 2020 on security and other preventative investments. That’s notwithstanding the fact that we were in the middle of a global economic recession.

Victoria police also run a community survey. The most recent showed 34 percent of respondents believing that crime in downtown has increased, and 56 percent believe that it is just as high as in 2017. This perception can become a self-fulfilling reality.

We would like to recommend — and I’ve got 30 seconds left — three things: first, that the provincial government expedite the establishment of complex care facilities to house and support those with complex health needs and to provide greater security to the surrounding neighbourhoods; two, that the police services division ensures that the Victoria police department has adequate resources to fulfil its role in public safety and that mental health and addictions response teams be funded to deal with the public situations involving persons experiencing a mental health or addiction crisis rather than just calling the police; and three, that the province accelerates the recommendations found within their document A Pathway to Hope.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Jeff. Already people on the committee are indicating they have questions.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. I was just wondering. With your first recommendation, where you’re talking about amending the Assessment Act to prevent main street from continuing to have challenges…. I read through your submission. I was wondering if you could just expand a little bit on that.

From what I gather, if tenant A or owner A fixed up their place, it would have a significant impact, potentially, on the other units — with taxes. Is that your main concern, or are there other concerns in there?

J. Bray: Great question. There are actually several ways in which best and highest use are applied that create problems. One is, yes, there’s a redevelopment somewhere in the neighbourhood, and that new valuation gets applied across the whole neighbourhood.

However, there’s also the fact that there could be zoning opportunities. So what happens is that B.C. Assessment may say: “You have a two-storey commercial property. However, you could have a 12-storey condo building. Therefore, we’re going to assess you as if you have the 12-storey condo.”

[9:10 a.m.]

Secondly, they will say: “Gee, Jeff. You’re charging $35 a square foot to your tenants, but the building next door and the building on the other side are charging $45. So on the revenue calculation, we’re going to assume you should be charging $45.” So it hyper-accelerates the valuations, which all come back down to how the mill rate gets applied.

To give you an example here in Victoria, a four-storey heritage building hasn’t been changed — long-term tenants. In 2016, it was assessed at $2.1 million. Last year it was $4.2 million. The building was assessed at $119,000. So it’s almost 100 percent assessed on the land, which forces people to either charge more rent or forces them to redevelopment.

When you redevelop, of course, the first thing you have to do is evict all of your existing tenants. Once you build whatever it is you need to build, now you have to charge rents that perhaps are not payable from a small, independent candy shop or clothing shop.

So there’s a number of ways in which it’s being applied that really just continues to…. We have a parking lot here, a simple surface parking lot — 100 percent increase, year over year.

M. Dykeman: Thank you. Thank you for the written submissions also.

J. Routledge (Chair): Anyone else?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I’ll say a comment. Jeff, good to see you again.

J. Bray: Good to see you.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks for being so succinct in this. This is the same story we hear in communities all over. I know that in Victoria, when we walk around, it’s unbelievable, looking at the vacancies and just trying to help these people kind of continue with their businesses.

The split classification really has to be dealt with. I know it’s a big issue in the city of Vancouver and no doubt other communities, so thanks for bringing that forward. I look forward to hopefully making a recommendation in that area.

J. Bray: I also sit on the board of BIABC, and this is increasingly becoming an issue. It was a Vancouver issue, now it’s a Victoria…. It’ll be in Nanaimo and it’ll be in Kelowna simply because of the valuations.

On the street disorder issue, again, that’s not a Victoria issue. That’s communities large and small throughout. Complex care is clearly one piece to really help the individuals who are vulnerable on the street but also help the businesses and the residential neighborhoods as well.

Thank you for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Jagrup, did you have your hand up?

J. Brar: That was my comment. I just wanted to say to you: good to see you again.

J. Bray: Good to see you. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Jeff. Yes. The issues you’re raising are emerging as a pattern. Thank you so much for adding your voice to an issue that we need to take a serious, serious look at and make a priority.

Our next speaker is Julian Daly with Our Place Society.

OUR PLACE SOCIETY

J. Daly: Good morning. Thank you for having us here. My name is Julian Daly. I’m the CEO at Our Place Society. Our Place Society is a non-profit in Victoria serving homeless folk and folk living in poverty in the greater Victoria area.

There are three areas I’d like to touch on this morning. Firstly, I want to recognize the significant investment that this government has made in housing. I want to encourage the government to continue to invest in permanent supported housing and truly affordable housing, and also to make two recommendations.

It would be great to see a significant increase in rent supplements as a tool to end homelessness in our province, because the current rent supplements, at $450, come nowhere near meeting rents in many places, if not all places, in British Columbia. Also, in developing the complex care housing — which is great that it is being developed — I would ask that some of that complex care housing be available for involuntary care. Some of the most unwell and vulnerable people on the streets across British Columbia who need housing will not accept or maintain it without some period of involuntary care.

[9:15 a.m.]

Secondly, I’d like to encourage the continued investment in alcohol and drug treatment and recovery programs, but especially for those that offer what, in my mind, are the more effective long-stay treatment and recovery programs and not just the 30- to 60-day programs, which are often ineffective.

Also, it would be great to see enough treatment beds in our province so that when people were ready for treatment, they could get it there and then and not wait. Often in Victoria, we have 90 to 100 people waiting for treatment beds, and the opportunity to go into treatment is often lost as a consequence.

Also, it would be wonderful to see investment in women’s treatment on Vancouver Island. There is not one single treatment — not-for-profit, anyway — on our Island for women. Women have to go to the Mainland if they are wanting treatment, which means that it’s often inaccessible for them, and they’re less likely to access it and to be successful.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the role and support for the non-profit sector as an essential service deliverer in British Columbia. Often the programs and initiatives developed for people we serve are developed without our sector at the table. We propose that all government programs have input from the non-profit sector and representation at the developmental stage and not just at the delivery point. And that has no cost.

Finally, I’d like to recommend that government could really support the non-profit sector by having a standardized, across-ministry administration rate for non-profit contracts. Non-profits need a reasonable administration fee to cover things like maintenance, custodians, finance departments and infrastructure, and these are often not covered by government contracts or by donors. A standardized administration fee is, in many provinces, standard and is usually at about 15 percent. I propose that we would have such a standardized administration fee here in British Columbia.

I just want to thank you for listening, thank you for inviting us and thank you for all you do for those that we serve.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Julian. I’ll open it up for questions.

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Julian. I can appreciate the challenges that your society is facing. You touched on the 30- and 60-day treatments not being extremely effective, so I wondered, I guess, two things. Can you expand a little bit on that and give a suggestion of what could replace that and any cost attached to that?

J. Daly: We operate a treatment centre in View Royal. The men who go there come for nine months to two years. They can stay there. We find that’s really effective. Many of the men that are there have been in the 30- to 60-day treatment programs. Some of them have been in ten or 11 of them.

The reason why it doesn’t work, or not in a sustainable way, is that the demons and the challenge and the things that drive people to that level of addiction are so deep — the trauma and the difficulties in their lives — that it takes more than 30 days or 60 days to address them. You need long-term treatment in order to do that.

I remember talking to one of the men at our centre, and he said: “You know, Julian, I’ve been in addiction since I was 12 years old, when I started drinking. I’m now 24. That’s half my life. It wasn’t until I was here for nine months that I began to really understand what was driving my addictions and why I was here. And then I began to really heal and get better.” That man, to this day, is still sober.

The idea that you can reverse all that trauma that causes those addictions in the first place in 30 days is really unrealistic.

L. Doerkson: I can absolutely appreciate that. Can you give some sense of the success of a 30- or 60-day program? Is it successful at all?

J. Daly: It is successful for some people, and it’s usually successful in the moment. People do get sober when they’re there. But when they come out, they often don’t have the tools to sustain that sobriety. I can’t give absolute facts, but I know that all the men that are in our treatment centre in View Royal have all been through many, many treatment programs, and it just hasn’t worked in any sustained way for them.

Of course it works for some, but it doesn’t work for most, I would say. And it’s standard across our country, the short-term treatment programs. They’re very costly. They add up to a lot of money. If you put someone through ten times, and it doesn’t work…. Although the longer-term treatment is obviously more expensive, at the end of the day, I think you save money because they’re more effective, and they get to the root of the problem that’s driving the addiction.

L. Doerkson: One more quick question, Madam Chair?

J. Routledge (Chair): A quick question. We’ve got three other people that have questions.

[9:20 a.m.]

L. Doerkson: The cost of 30- and 60-day programs — do you know what the cost is?

J. Daly: I don’t.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, next Megan, then Greg, then Ben, and probably we’ll be out of time after that.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. I’m wondering. With the longer-term treatments, the nine months to two years that you’re talking about, are those the standard anywhere else internationally? And then, just out of curiosity, will you be putting in a written submission? That was a lot of information.

J. Daly: Yeah, we have what is called a therapeutic recovery community, and they started, most famously, in San Patrignano in Italy. There’s a very famous one there. They exist in most countries in the world. There are very few of them. I think we are the only one, actually, of its kind in Canada. There are some in the States, and there are several in Europe.

But it’s not hugely widespread, because they tend to be costly, and governments don’t tend to want to support them. But that’s a difference in this province. This government has supported it, much to their credit, actually.

We haven’t put a written submission in, but we can do.

M. Dykeman: Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much.

G. Kyllo: Many of the questions I had have already been asked by my colleagues. But the one piece…. You had mentioned this 15 percent administration fee. Can you cite any other provinces or any examples of where they actually employ that 15 percent?

J. Daly: Yeah. In Alberta, where I was working in Edmonton for the last 16 years, 15 percent is standard on all government contracts. In Ontario, I understand it’s 15 to 20 percent, in some cases, whereas here, in British Columbia, our experience is that it really varies. It can be anything from 7 percent to 15 percent, and you essentially have to negotiate with ministry by ministry.

It does mean that sometimes you get programs to deliver, and you have the money for the staffing and all the parts to do with the actual delivery, but you don’t have the resources in the contract to support your infrastructure, because, obviously, programs don’t happen in isolation. They need an infrastructure to support them.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Julian. Good to hear your presentation. I know your group is doing great work.

You mentioned involuntary care. What do you see, or what does that look like?

J. Daly: That is where the folk who…. Jeff talked just before me about folk on our streets who are so unwell that, you know, when care is voluntary, which the complex care that’s currently being developed is, they simply won’t go into it. They’re not in a space where they even recognize, some of them, that they need care.

Certainly, if they do, they don’t want to go into it and will refuse. Even if they do go in, and sometimes people might go into some housing like that, because of how unwell they are, it’s very difficult for them to maintain that housing. Usually, things fall apart quite quickly, and they end up being barred from it, or they walk out of it because they don’t like the rules or the restrictions that are there.

I know it’s a very tricky area, and folk are uncomfortable with it. But my experience of working 13 years in this field says to me that there are some people who are so vulnerable and so unwell that they need to be taken into care, sometimes against their will, for their own health and their own well-being. Otherwise, we’re just really abandoning them to die on the streets, a sort of slow and miserable death.

One final thing I’d say is that I wrote an op-ed about this in the Times Colonist, the newspaper here in Victoria, and I got more response to that article, that op-ed, than anything else I’ve ever said or written in my whole working life. People I didn’t even know — parents, sisters, brothers — wrote to me, saying: “Thank God someone finally said this, because I have a relation or a family member who really needed this, and they couldn’t get it.”

I even had two people write to me, saying it had saved their life to have involuntary care, so I think we do need that aspect to it, if we’re to truly support the health needs of the most vulnerable in our streets. And the most vulnerable of those are women, too, who are hugely sexually exploited and exploited in other ways on the streets when they’re that unwell.

[9:25 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Julian. I’m so sorry that we’re out of time. I think this is such an important discussion, and you’ve offered some very refreshingly concrete solutions to a problem that has persisted and many of us feel overwhelmed by.

Our next speaker is Dallas Gislason, South Island Prosperity Partnership.

SOUTH ISLAND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP

D. Gislason: Good morning, committee members. My name is Dallas Gislason. I am the director of economic development at the South Island Prosperity Partnership.

It’s an honour to present with you this morning on Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ territory, particularly the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

The South Island Prosperity Partnership is an alliance of municipal governments, First Nation governments, post-secondary institutions, chambers of commerce, industry associations, major stakeholder organizations and about 30 of the region’s major employers here on the south Island.

We are a mission-driven organization, as a non-profit, determined to make greater Victoria’s economy more sustainable, resilient, inclusive and equitable. Through the pandemic, we took a leadership role in coordinating the most robust and collaborative non-government response that you’ll see anywhere in North America. This was overseen by something called the Rising Economy Task Force, 40 representatives across the economy from all levels of government, including the B.C. government represented by MLA Mitzi Dean.

The task force was supported by ten sector committees across the entire economy. Through this process of engaging hundreds of organizations and businesses, we produced a report called The Reboot: Greater Victoria’s Economic Recovery Plan, which was released last fall, containing 50 actions to help our region weather this storm and come out more resilient on the other side.

We learned many things through this process, but I’ll focus on two today. The first is that the pandemic continues to impact different people and different sectors in much different ways. In fact, many people actually gained equity through the pandemic, while others are farther behind. A good example of that here in greater Victoria is that our housing prices increased by perhaps the largest amount of any city in Canada. So for those that own houses, they gain equity, but those who don’t are farther behind. That’s just one example.

The second thing is that the post-pandemic economy will demand new approaches. Hence, it demands innovation as a cornerstone in order to steer our provincial economy toward increased resilience against external forces like future pandemics and, of course, a larger one: climate change.

Today I’ll direct your attention to two of the initiatives that our organization is leading as a result of this robust process. More details will, of course, be provided in our written submission later this week. The first one is around First Nation economic sovereignty. We heard from our Indigenous partners through this process that in order to realize their economic independence, we need to address some of the systemic barriers prevention them from doing so.

One of these is around the capacity to undertake economic development activities and projects. Through a new initiative called the Indigenous prosperity centre, our organization will incubate an Indigenous-led organization designed to help address this barrier for the nations across the south Island. We believe this approach could be scaled across the entire Island and perhaps even across the province. We believe that due to DRIPA legislation, this approach will actually accelerate our economic reconciliation that we all must undertake as British Columbians.

The second project is that we need to embrace, as I mentioned earlier, the innovation economy as the foundation of B.C.’s economic development approach across all sectors. That’s including forestry, mining, technology, health care and life sciences, etc. — even gov tech.

Here in greater Victoria, we’ve created a provincewide agenda to take Pacific Canada into the future of the global blue economy, which is projected to double in size by 2030 to $4 trillion globally. Through a new Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies, or COAST, we will coordinate the growth of B.C.’s ocean and marine industries through a focus on innovation and industry transformation. Industry transformation is a necessity to reduce the GHG impacts and the reliance that the marine and ocean activities have on carbon-intensive fuels. This aligns very much to the CleanBC agenda.

In conclusion, I want to thank the committee members for your time. I’m happy to yield the remainder of my time. I know you have lots of things to consider today. I just want to say thanks. We look forward to submitting a written proposal later this week.

[9:30 a.m.]

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

Now I’ll invite members of the committee to ask any questions.

Well, it looks like you covered all the bases, Dallas. I guess, just in conclusion, I would like to thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the work that you do. I think that it’s become common for us all to talk about coming out of the pandemic to a new normal, but what that new normal looks like takes some work and a partnership. It’s clear that your organization is working hard at looking at what the new normal should look like. So thank you so much.

D. Gislason: Thank you. We are really looking forward to the work of Minister Kahlon and working with Dr. Mazzucato. We’re really big fans of that work, so we’re looking forward to that, too, in the fall.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is George Scott with IATSE.

IATSE LOCAL 168

G. Scott: Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I’m George Scott. I am the president of IATSE Local 168.

For those who do not know, we are the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada. We are the union with the longest union title. Our union has been around since 1893, representing workers first in theatre, then in film, then in television and now in streaming.

Our local here on Vancouver Island represents stage workers and arts workers, with eight employers across the Island, from here in Victoria on Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ territory through to the Tidemark Theatre in Campbell River.

We have three particular asks of this committee coming out of COVID. In March of 2020, our industry shut down, as did all industries. Most industries have come back to work. Ours has not. Filmed entertainment, which is supported by the province to the tune of $856 million a year in labour tax credits, is back at work. There are no labour tax credits for entertainment on the live side, and we would suggest that be something that this committee consider to promote both the fiscal health of our workers and other entertainment workers — singers, actors, dancers — across this economy.

Our business is such that when we go into the Royal Theatre, for example…. Anybody seen an opera? We go in on a Monday of week 1, where an opera opens on Thursday of week 2. We work eight 14-hour days, have a day off and then begin a series of shows where we work seven hours a day.

This standard of work, where we do eight 14-hour days, is standard in entertainment. It becomes a challenge for our workers who have child care, elder care or other care obligations to do this work. Because of the run of the days, we work weekends, and when we go into a show, we work evenings. Child care doesn’t work in the evening.

We would also suggest that this committee, in advancing the province’s commitment to $10-a-day daycare, extend it so that it works for those who don’t work standardized teacher in a classroom, shovel in the ditch types of traditional workplaces and work forms.

We also have challenges with sick leave because most of our workers, and workers in entertainment, cannot be easily replaced. I’m sure we can understand that, within the context of an actor or a singer who is the face of a show, is part of a show. Most of our engagers do not have the means to hire understudies for these positions. So actors, dancers, etc., go on stage sick, injured, recovering from cancer, these things, all the time. Our backstage workers do the same. Because we have learned a track, a set of activities that make a show work, we cannot take that time off.

Most of our employers are quite small. Some of them have budgets under $1 million a year and, at most, provide 800 hours of work a year to a single employee.

[9:35 a.m.]

We would suggest, in building a full sick leave plan, that the province mirror what happened on January 1, 2020, when Medical Services Plan premiums were removed and the expectation grew that large-scale employers would pay a payroll tax to fund the health care system. We propose that a similar tax on large-scale employers pay for sick leave for workers like ours or other entertainment workers who simply could not access a regular sick leave program.

I, myself, in the before times, had worked for six of our eight employers over the course of a year, one of them for as little as four hours in that calendar year. Many of our workers work for multiple employers for shifts that can be as little as four hours. They might see a three-week engagement and then nothing. A standardized sick leave program does not work for workers in that sort of industry and many gig economy industries.

Thank you for your time.

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

I’ll now ask members of the committee if they have any questions.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation.

I’m just going to ask the same question I asked previously to the other presenter. Are you going to be putting in a written submission?

G. Scott: I will be, yes.

M. Dykeman: I understand that 168 represents not film. There’s the IATSE that has the film and….

G. Scott: Yes. IATSE 891 represents film in B.C. and the Yukon.

M. Dykeman: So it’s anything theatre, stagecraft — that kind of stuff within there — that you’re looking at?

G. Scott: Yes.

M. Dykeman: Okay. I just wanted to make sure I was following it.

I really appreciate your presentation. Thank you so much.

G. Scott: You’re welcome.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, George.

IATSE was the first union I belonged to, at a time when projectionists were the hot commodity. They are no longer the hot commodity.

G. Scott: We still have projectionists.

M. Starchuk: Yeah, fair enough.

My question is…. You talked about that you don’t have tax credits. What kinds of tax credits are you looking for?

G. Scott: Well, film, which is a multi-billion-dollar a year industry in British Columbia, does receive a labour tax credit, which is moneys that actually go back to the film producers. So in effect, it supports the workers doing that.

We would propose that those who create theatre, dance and music that is B.C.-based — so B.C. artists, B.C. composers, B.C. choreographers, B.C. playwrights, B.C. directors doing work in B.C. — have access to a labour tax credit as well. Our industry is much smaller than the film business. We expect that this could be funded with $20 million, and it would be a huge support to our industry.

M. Starchuk: Okay. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

J. Brar: Basically, we are consulting, at this point in time, to do a program like that.

I just don’t understand. In your industry, the people who are working back stage and all that…. Are they employees, or are they contract workers?

G. Scott: All of our workers, when they are doing stuff through our union, are employees with our eight employers.

We have roughly 300 workers. Only 20 of them have regular employ with an employer. The other 280 pick up work, as needed. Our smallest crew that we ever sent out is one person. The largest crew we’ve ever dispatched is 138 people to a show at the arena. Some of those people only get those four hours with that one employer once or twice a year.

Yeah. As I mentioned, myself, I’ve worked for six of our employers in 2019.

G. Kyllo: You mentioned, in your presentation, the desire or the intent of potentially having larger employers across the province fund paid sick leave for your industry sector. What I’m hearing from many businesses across the province is just a continual laying on of additional costs, whether it’s the employer health tax or some pretty significant increases to minimum wage, where it’s taking away the opportunity for B.C. businesses to compete in other sectors, especially the manufacturing sector, as an example.

[9:40 a.m.]

I’m really having a hard time. If the societal good is deemed to provide paid sick leave, then the public purse should pay, not necessarily put further impediments on our business community.

You had mentioned in your presentation the potential for about a $20 million fund, and I’d also heard you indicate there’s about 300 employees that actually work. So $20 million divided by 300 workers. That’s about $66,000 per individual. So I’m just wondering where your numbers, statistics, are actually coming from.

G. Scott: Well, there are roughly, based on StatsCan people filing, 27,000 live entertainment workers in British Columbia. It’s not exclusively for our union. That would be a bit gratuitous, obviously. So actors, dancers, singers and various performers in the live entertainment industry are roughly 27,000 across province.

G. Kyllo: Great. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Seeing no other hands indicating that they’d like to ask a question, I’d like to thank you, George. I’d like to thank you for making visible the reality of the lives of the people who work behind the scenes in some of the stage productions that give us so much joy and affect our lives in so many ways. Thank you so much.

G. Scott: Thank you, Madam Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Paul Destrooper with Ballet Victoria.

BALLET VICTORIA

P. Destrooper: Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning, committee. Thank you very much for inviting me and including the arts in this discussion today.

I would like to recognize that Ballet Victoria works on the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ — especially the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

We’ve been in business since 2002. I took over the company in 2007 and built it into a sustainable professional boutique ballet company with ten dancers.

The reason I’m here today is to speak mostly about dance as kind of a microcosm of the arts. It is, essentially, the poor cousin of the arts and has always traditionally been that. However, it is a huge industry, in terms of the private sector, with dance schools, etc. One of the issues is that you have, create and support all of this young talent and develop them, and then there is no outcome. There is no future for them, essentially, in the province.

Ballet Victoria is the only classical ballet company in B.C. There are a lot of contemporary dance companies, and Ballet B.C. is a huge, very international company in Vancouver and is able to create a lot of work for a very small amount of people. Therefore, that means that we import all of the arts, essentially. So if you want to see a classical ballet, you’re going to import Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Alberta Ballet and such.

I’ve built the company with, like I said, ten dancers. So we have gone…. I took it from an $80,000 budget with a $40,000 debt into a $1 million company with no issues in terms of…. We’ve never been in the red. We’ve been in the black the whole time, which maybe makes people think: “Well, you don’t need any help.”

The reason I’m here is because I would like to perhaps even use our little organization as a pilot project to test what a universal wage for artist would be. The reason I say this is because Ballet Victoria employs its artists on a contract, so they’re not employees.

But much like sports, we need a lot of space to practise. It’s very different than contemporary dance or other forms, or even music and opera, where you can practice in a very small space. The art of ballet needs a large space. It’s just like soccer or hockey. If you don’t have an arena or ice, you can’t practice. If you don’t have a large studio with high ceilings, you can’t perform the art. It’s very small. It’s a bit like Olympians.

Essentially, what I’m asking is a parallel supportive wage for these artists. The reason is that our costs are huge. When we perform in theatres, we have massive costs. We generate a lot of revenue and a lot of economic growth just with our little community. If you take our little project and you blow it up to the province, then you’ll be able to essentially exponentially support people.

I lose a lot of dancers that I train, and they’re poached by big companies. So essentially, we have all of this first material, and then we lose it all to other companies internationally and across Canada.

[9:45 a.m.]

Ballet in Victoria, or B.C., does not really have its own company, and it should — like Manitoba, like Quebec, like Ontario — and it could. It’s like losing all our Olympic athletes to different provinces for training, etc. But it’s a little bit different with the arts. We invest all of the money that we make into the community.

We also were able to adapt. We performed and offered performances for free all last season. With the little subsidy we got from the government, which was huge for us, we were able to keep all of the dancers employed for a longer contract than normal, and we were able to bring solace and help people with mental health and to keep the physical education going for a lot of people.

It’s difficult to explain everything in five minutes, but I think there’s a huge value in the arts, and I think the government has made a great investment in the arts, but I’m asking the government to consider making just a smaller investment directly to the artists. That will afford a living a wage for them.

For example, my artists work 20 hours a week. That’s the best contract I can give them, between $450 and $650 a week. That’s the wage for a 40-week contract. Ballet Victoria has the longest contract in B.C. We don’t have the most lucrative, but we have the longest. We need the length of the contract to be able to keep the skills of the dancers, to maintain their body without injury and to be able to produce international work. We tour to Mexico, the U.S. and across Canada as well. We import a lot of goods and economy to Victoria and to the province.

The last thing that I want to say is that a small investment of a stipend of, for example, $400, that we would match, would give, essentially, a dancer’s contract $30,000 a year, which is still below poverty level.

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

I’ll ask members of the committee if they have any questions.

L. Doerkson: I just want to be clear. I think you said, in your last couple of paragraphs there, that these artists are receiving around $450 to $650 a week now. The goal is to get them to $30,000 per year.

P. Destrooper: Yeah, ideally. What I’m able to do is…. Essentially, I take young dancers and I develop them. At the beginning, the base salary is going to $450 a week, and then some of the dancers that have been with me longer are making $600. The way that I currently am able to subsidize their wage a little better is that I’ve developed other skills for them, so they can work, for example, in the administration, in the office, in marketing, and that gives them a very, I think, poor wage, but it’s still a wage, which essentially matches what I do.

The organization is very, I think, equalistic in that way, and the art form, despite people thinking ballet is colonial, has evolved greatly over the 21st century. It’s very relevant, multicultural, multigenerational, and that is reflected in the artists that we have.

The issue is I can’t keep some of the talent, and if you want to grow, and if you want your recognition to develop, you need, just like in any sports team, the talent. I’m just a farming organization right now, and the talent that I take is poached by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, by international companies as well.

We have a great product here, but we have no way of further developing it, and boasting a little bit, and further develop the critical mass of our organization by interesting audiences more without being able to pay.

I don’t have a choice when I go into venue. I pay the crew $60 an hour, and I have to have six crew. I don’t need them, but I have to have them. The theatre costs are very high. That’s about a third of our operation. The dancer salary is barely a third of the organization, with ten dancers. I’m the only staff, with two other people, and they are dancers.

I also lose my staff, because we develop them with administrative skills, and then they get poached by University of Victoria, because they’ve developed very critical skills. The biggest issue is that I am not able to maintain a cost-of-living increase in the wage for the artists. That, to me, is heartbreaking, and it’s unnecessary. It’s a poor investment.

I’ve built the company investing in the artists, and that is what I continue to do. We’re not top-heavy at all. We’re very streamlined. We can pivot. We’ve been able to adapt to even a pandemic. We grew and then developed a business in an economic crisis, in 2008, 2009.

[9:50 a.m.]

That’s a microcosm of the arts. I think, when I say this, I’m focussing on dance, but if you translate that to opera, to music, etc., I think it’s a very sound investment. It’s a minimal investment that, I think, the province may want to consider. It does bring a lot of social benefits to the community, not just mentally but physically as well.

It also measures the success of a society by the level of its artists and what it produces.

So I think it’s a capital investment, and the province has made a great investment. I’m just interested in perhaps trying a bit of a pilot project and then seeing how it can actually support its artists a little bit better.

Much like the presentation about the IATSE, everybody’s working on contract in the industry. B.C. has essentially favoured contract working, de facto. So organizations that are offering a sustained period of work to its artists are not the majority. There are very few. Most of the companies in dance are project-based, so you’re starving people. You’re not providing sustainable employment. You’re not taking care of their longevity. You’re not continuing to develop their artistry and their physical well-being and mental well-being.

I’m not even talking about sick leave or being able to have a family. Those aren’t even on the table yet, and they should be.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have a question from Mike and then Ben. We’re closing in on our time.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Paul, for framing what you’re after like a farm team in a sports organization — how you create the talent, and then they move on to bigger and better things. I look forward to your briefing that you’ll send us with regards to the pilot project.

My question is…. You’ve made a comment that the last subsidy from the province made a huge difference. Can you tell us how much that subsidy was?

P. Destrooper: We have three employees. There’s myself and the director of the school. We built a school to kind of mitigate risk and balance cash flow. We also have a production manager. Essentially, about 50 percent of our wage was covered. I make, in total, $50,000 a year as the executive and artistic director of the organization. And Mako and the other people are about the same.

So there are three of us, and we are essentially the highest-paid people in the company. Many of my artists are making close to that, thanks to the extra work that we’re doing, but they’re not employees. So just that, you’re looking at about $75,000 of subsidy in terms of wages for just three people and, essentially, the rent that we’ve got.

That has made a huge impact. That has allowed me to extend the season for all of the artists. As opposed to having a regular 40-week season, last season, during COVID, we had 44 weeks. We created four full productions. We were able to…. I created a small venue that we could perform at, since all the theatres were closed. That was the flexibility that we had, because we’re constantly investing into the company and we’re flexible in terms of technology and such.

If the government, as a pilot project, would be able to invest in a matching wage or even a partial matching wage of what I’m committed to do, it would allow us to grow and develop. Unfortunately, ballet with ten people is a little bit challenging. If you have 20, then you have a core. It’s like having a team for hockey. If you only have five players, you’re going to kill them. We have…. We call it the iron cast. But we can develop and give more employment to people if we have that subsidy, for example.

But in terms of a $400,000 budget…. I don’t even understand how so many organizations are having a hard time. Because it’s….

J. Routledge (Chair): Paul, we’re way over time, but we have one more question.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Paul, thanks very much. It’s an interesting conversation, talking about the competitors that are taking away your people. Can I just simply…? Organizations like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet — are they paying substantially more, and then that’s what the people that are in Ballet Victoria are aspiring to? They want to move on to that?

[9:55 a.m.]

I guess my question is: what does it take for British Columbia or Victoria to have a ballet that’s on a competitive basis? I guess that’s a whole other topic. You’re dealing with the short-term kind of thing — the gap, in terms of inequity. I guess I’m trying to understand. Does this do anything to get us closer to having a group that is more sustainable in British Columbia?

P. Destrooper: I think so. This is something that’s been…. Like Royal Winnipeg Ballet — I danced there for over 15 years. I danced with Evelyn Hart; I was a principal there. I danced with Alberta Ballet. I danced with Oregon Ballet Theatre. I’m very familiar with large companies and how they work.

They are part of a union. Their starting wage is about $800 a week for the company. That is one of the things I wanted to offer my dancers: longevity of contracts. Here the contracts are broken up. Even Ballet B.C. breaks their contracts. The first thing to go when there’s a problem is the artist. I think that is completely backwards. I think the artists are the product. They should be invested in, if you develop a company that is building a reputation.

I’m already getting international interest in terms of bookings but also in terms of artists. I would like to be able to keep the talent that we develop and that is from B.C.

Just one last thing. For example, I get from the CRD…. We get $45,000 in operating. I give that back to the city — $250,000 every year just to use their venue and hire the staff and everything. It’s a pretty good investment, if you ask me.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Paul. I’m sorry we’re out of time. This is fascinating. I think, on behalf of the committee, I’d like to commend you for your passionate advocacy for your art and for your artists. It’s very impressive.

Our next presenter is Gina Huylenbroeck with Victoria Disability Resource Centre.

Gina, you have five minutes. You can start whenever you’re ready.

VICTORIA DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTRE

G. Huylenbroeck: Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me here this morning. My name is Gina. I am the coordinator of the LEAD program of the Victoria Disability Resource Centre. LEAD stands for “Lived Experiences Around Disability.” It’s geared for youth in the Victoria schools.

In 2019, I developed this program. We entered into the Victoria district 61 schools to present our lived experience to youth. This is to help youth gain a better understanding about disabilities: how to interact, communicate, assist. We provide some hands-on activities for the youth so that they can also experience what it’s like for a brief moment, what somebody who has a disability goes through.

After the kids do these tasks, we have conversations around: how did you feel as an individual after doing that task? Did you still feel like John and Beth and Elizabeth? Just that task was a little bit harder to do. Then we talk about what we could do to make that task easier for our classmate, our co-worker, our grandma, our friend — whoever it is who happens to have that disability.

During these, we talk about invisible and visible disabilities. One in ten kids today has a disability. From the feedback that we collect from the students and the teachers after every presentation, 94 percent of those kids knew a family member or had a friend who had a disability. Approximately two to three kids per class have a teacher’s assistant with them.

Our whole goal is just to help create a more inclusive community by bringing awareness and education to kids who are…. As they’re growing, we talk about accessibility. When you start creating your inventions, building your products, think about building it accessible from the beginning. If you do, you can sell it to everybody.

It’s very exciting and very rewarding for myself. We do work with the teachers. If students in the school living with disabilities would like to speak with us, we’re able to help bring some more awareness to the school around that child’s disability. If the child feels comfortable, they are more than welcome to present with us at that school.

Sorry. I’m a little nervous.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. You’ve got lots of time. If you’d like to hear questions from the committee, then you can elaborate on other points you want to make.

[10:00 a.m.]

G. Huylenbroeck: Absolutely. That would be great.

Any questions?

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Gina. I think your partner sitting back there gave you the squeeze of the hand for confidence before you came up here. Nobody noticed.

One of the things that’s inside of here…. I love the program. I love that you’re teaching the kids how to get into that. Your comment about hiring people and how to deliver those workshops…. I’m curious, though. Are you working with employers so that you’re educating the employers so they understand the value of hiring one of those people that you work with?

G. Huylenbroeck: At this point, we have DAT. It is not up and running, but it is being worked on for employers and also for customer service so that people know how to assist people.

Disabilities are complex, they’re diverse, and no two people do things exactly the same way, even if the disability is the same. We’re all at different stages of acceptance in our journey. We all have different opportunities for purchasing devices and tools that help enable us. Also, having the opportunity for training — not everybody can afford to train. Myself, I had to go to the United States to get trained on blindness, just because of the limited blindness skills we have here.

J. Brar: Thanks, Gina, for coming today and thanks for the exceptional work you’re doing for people. It’s a much-needed help to them.

I want to ask you: is this the only resource centre we have, or are there other similar centres in the province? If there are, are you working in collaboration with them?

G. Huylenbroeck: We are one of 25 independent living centres across Canada. We are the only one here in Victoria, and this is our program that we’ve developed here in Victoria.

J. Brar: So if you can repeat: what do you ask from this committee?

G. Huylenbroeck: We’re asking for funds to help pay to hire people, to help with honorariums for hiring or having people who volunteer come into the schools, to pay for simulators or devices that we need and also all of the material that is necessary for the program.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. I’m just looking through the budget that you provided in writing, in the written submission. Thank you for your written submission. It was very well organized.

I’m wondering. The $108,000 would allow you to run this program for one year?

G. Huylenbroeck: Yes.

M. Dykeman: And that would be the full amount for that? That’s the ask?

G. Huylenbroeck: Yes.

M. Dykeman: Okay. Thank you so much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Not seeing any other questions, Gina, I think, on behalf of the entire committee, I’d like to thank you for making your presentation and thank you for the work that you’re doing in the schools. It’s apparent that not only is your work helping children with disabilities immediately, but you’re helping to create more caring, inclusive future generations who will make different and better decisions in their lives than perhaps some of their predecessors did in terms of equality and solidarity in our society. Thank you so much for what you do.

G. Huylenbroeck: Thanks. We also have one other thing that we do, and I’ll share it with you. We go into the retirement communities around town, and we bring in lived experience. We demonstrate the tools, the devices, the techniques we use to help those who are transitioning with eyesight, hearing, mobility. All of those weaken as we get older.

So we come into the retirement communities, bringing our lived experience and positive attitudes, because really, it is what it is when you have a disability. You’ve got to do what you can do. Living your best life and being able to share what makes life easier and helpful to others is just hugely beneficial. So that’s also part of our LEAD program with the retirement communities.

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

Our next presenter is Chad Rintoul with the B.C. Notaries Association.

[10:05 a.m.]

Chad, you have five minutes. There will be a light. The light will turn green when you have two minutes left. Our Clerk will give you a 30-second signal when it’s time to wrap up.

B.C. NOTARIES ASSOCIATION

C. Rintoul: Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, members of the committee, for your time this morning and the opportunity to meet. Thank you for your service to the province in what was certainly a very challenging summer. I know in some of your ridings, in particular, you’ve been very active in helping deal with many of the crises that we’ve faced this summer. Appreciation to you for your roles.

I’m Chad Rintoul. I’m the chief executive officer at the British Columbia Notaries Association.

Notaries are located throughout the province and provide non-contentious legal services, such as preparing wills and personal planning documents, and conveyancing services in support of real estate transactions. Notaries are educated at Simon Fraser University through the master of arts degree in the applied legal studies program, and they’re regulated by the Society of Notaries Public.

It’s the responsibility of the B.C. Notaries Association to advocate on behalf of our members. In that capacity, we regularly liaise with the Ministry of Finance as well as the Ministry of Attorney General. In recent years, the BCNA has worked very closely with the Ministry of Attorney General to help raise awareness of Make a Will Week. This takes place in British Columbia typically during October of each year.

There’s much more work to be done in this area. Ongoing surveys conducted since 2014 show that only about half of adults in B.C. have a legal will. In 2014, a poll of 502 adults in B.C. reported that 55 percent of B.C. adults have a current and legal will. Six years later, in 2020, the BCNA commissioned an Ipsos survey of 801 B.C. residents which showed only 50 percent of adults have an up-to-date legal will.

It does appear that homeowners and parents of dependent children are starting to act on the awareness created by Make a Will Week. Data show homeowners having a current will at 64 percent, up from 57 percent in 2018, and 49 percent of parents of children 18 or younger have a will, an increase from 34 percent in 2018. Still, less than half of families with dependent children have a will in place. Deficiencies in personal planning create risks for many British Columbians, for their families and, ultimately, for the courts, who may have to settle disputes related to estates.

This is one of the reasons the BCNA continues to advocate for an expanded scope of practice for notaries in British Columbia — so that a notary, as a trusted legal professional, can create a testamentary trust and life estate when preparing a will and provide advice on preparing and filing probate documents in the court registry. Currently a notary cannot provide these services. We believe that British Columbians should have a choice when it comes to their provision of non-contentious legal services.

B.C. notaries are also seeking the ability to incorporate companies and to maintain such companies in good standing by the preparation and filing of standard resolutions, including the preparation of all standard pre- and post-incorporation documents. Do-it-yourself and online companies have become a popular alternative to using a lawyer. There is a need for some middle ground to reduce the myriad of problems associated with unmaintained and improperly documented companies.

Notaries can fill that gap. Notaries would be able to help small businesses by starting up and advising them on filing incorporation documents. Without professional advice, many company owners don’t understand or don’t have the time to keep up with annual filings and adequate recordkeeping. Having B.C. notaries available to assist companies throughout B.C. will create efficiencies for the corporate registry and other government providers.

Any changes to the B.C. Notaries Act will trigger specific educational requirements. Upon completion of a revised program, notaries will be permitted to practise in expanded service areas through a program enhancement at Simon Fraser University in the master of arts program. Current practitioners, to practise in these areas, would also be required to complete a one-year graduate certificate program in applied legal studies to bring them up to their educational standard to practise in these areas.

Notaries carry professional indemnity insurance, commonly known as errors of omission. Since 1950, they’ve done so. In order to be in good standing and practise as a notary regulated by the society, they need to have their premiums and be up to date. The coverage includes $16 million limits on every transaction a B.C. notary handles. This primary coverage is provided through B.C. Notaries Captive.

[10:10 a.m.]

We are here to help encourage the committee as we look to see section 18 of the Notaries Act amended to help make these changes. We seek the support of the Finance Committee to provide capacity in the provincial budget to ensure that changes to section 18 can be carried out.

I’ll provide an electronic copy of my speaking notes to the committee’s administrator. I thank you for your interest.

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

Now I’ll ask the committee if they have questions. Sometimes it takes a minute for people to formulate their questions.

J. Brar: You mentioned about wills.

First of all, thanks for coming. Thanks to you and your members for the services you provide to the people of British Columbia.

To the best of my knowledge, and of course you can make that very clear to us, notaries can write wills now. What difference will it make if you amend that piece of legislation?

C. Rintoul: Thank you for the question. I’ll use a personal example.

Notaries tend to handle the majority of real estate conveyancing transactions — residential — in the province. That triggers a visit to the notary’s office, who commonly says, when you’re making that first purchase of a major asset: “Have you had considerations and personal planning for a will now that you’re a homeowner?”

The current act doesn’t enable a notary to prepare that testamentary trust, which means that the value of your estate would go to whomever you name — in many cases, it’s a child. At age 19, that child would then take responsibility for the estate and its assets. I know in my own case, I wasn’t comfortable turning the estate over to my 19-year-old son — he is 19 now, and I wouldn’t be today either. So the ability to have a testamentary trust is advantageous in that, at a certain age, those funds would be administered up until the child reaches that age that you set as the writer of the will.

Currently a notary has to say: “Thank you. I was happy to help you with your home purchase and to be able to write a will, but I need to refer you now to a lawyer, because I can’t do it.” In my case, it’s exactly what happened prior to my involvement with this association. And I’m a pretty organized guy, but it took me a couple of years to get around to getting into a lawyer and getting my will done.

I think we’re doing a disservice to British Columbians if notaries, who are practised in the areas of non-contentious law, can’t construct that particular trust and have the ability to assist people in the probate process.

Thank you for that question.

G. Kyllo: Has government indicated any reluctance or are there any concerns by any other organizations in allowing this legislation to move forward?

C. Rintoul: We’ve had a very, I think, receptive and productive dialogue with the Ministry of Attorney General with regard to section 18 of the act. There are always requests that we would pursue a conversation with the Law Society on areas in which lawyers currently can practise — areas of the testamentary trust that I referred to. I liken it to a bit of a David and Goliath story in terms of the number of notaries, who often practise in smaller communities throughout the province, which may be underrepresented by legal service providers.

So there is a bit of a challenge there in ensuring that the legal community is comfortable with the suggestion that notaries enhance their education through Simon Fraser University to work in this area of practice.

M. Starchuk: Can you tell me what other provinces have their notaries perform these services when it comes to probate and other parts of the law?

C. Rintoul: Notaries public as we know them here in British Columbia practise only in Quebec. In other provinces, a notary may be referred to as a notary but fulfil the practice of a commissioner of oaths, for example, or a witness of signatures. So it’s fairly unique in British Columbia.

I think it’s a tremendous advantage to British Columbians to have this non-contentious provider of legal services in this role in that it increases access to having legal services, particularly in communities that may be underrepresented. I think it also adds that element of competition to the legal marketplace.

[10:15 a.m.]

So it’s fairly unique in B.C., and I can assure you that, particularly during COVID…. What we’ve seen in the real estate market is that the number of transactions has been extremely, extremely high, as you’re well aware, and notaries have been extremely busy writing those particular services. So it’s definitely a necessary piece for British Columbians to have access to this type of legal assistance, but fairly unique, sir.

M. Starchuk: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. With that, we’ll wrap up this presentation.

Chad, I want to thank you for your advocacy on behalf of your profession. Speaking for myself, I guess I’m not surprised that half of the adults in B.C. don’t have wills, but I do find it quite concerning. I guess wills are something that we don’t like talking about with the members of our family, or maybe they don’t like talking to us about it.

C. Rintoul: Thank you, Chair, for your time, and thank you to the committee.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have one more presenter before we take a break. That’s Coady Webb with Surge Narrows Forest Advisory Committee.

When you’re ready, Coady, you can come to the table. You have five minutes. The light will turn green when you have two minutes left, and we will let you know when you have 30 seconds left and it’s time to wrap up.

SURGE NARROWS
FOREST ADVISORY COMMITTEE

C. Webb: Good morning. My name is Coady Webb. I live in a rural community called Surge Narrows. It’s an off-grid island, water access only, near Campbell River.

I’m not sure if the committee had the opportunity yet to read my submission, so I’ll just summarize it briefly. There are a number of different tenure types in forestry in British Columbia. One of them is a community forest agreement. There are about 100 of them in existence right now, and they’re really interesting and exciting alternative forms of forestry.

Most forestry tenures in British Columbia are owned or are operated by large companies, such as Interfor, Mosaic. The type of forestry that happens on those is generally quite different from what you would see in a community-owned or a community-controlled tenure.

What I’m here to suggest to the committee today is that it would be a worthwhile investment on the part of the province of British Columbia to support the development of further community tenures. Whether they are…. They don’t need to be just community forest agreements. There are woodlots, and there are larger tenures.

I’m not sure all the technicalities of it, but I think that communities being in control of the forests and how they are managed is an excellent way that British Columbia could move towards the goals that the province and the Ministry of Forests have themselves identified as where they would like to see forestry going in British Columbia.

Just as an example of that, I would like to give you a little bit of a picture of how much people care about forestry in my community. If we have a community meeting and any question about forestry comes up, it is very, very strongly felt that forestry needs to reflect more values than simply the value of the timber to the harvester or to the licensee.

This is a very big challenge, because with most ownership, most tenures, the way they’re owned, whether it’s a large company or often even if it’s simply individuals, the incentives are simply to harvest. Forestry’s not an easy thing to do. The licensee that owns the licences for about 40 percent of the island where I live says he wants to include community goals and values, but he doesn’t seem to be able to do so.

[10:20 a.m.]

Community forestry would allow…. Putting the community in control of the situation would allow them to…. They are directly impacted by what happens in their backyard, and they have all the incentives the other way. They want to see it…. They want to see innovations. They want to see value-added manufacturing.

I was reading, this morning, B.C.’s modernization strategy for forestry. They just came out with a recent publication and the goals that they identified, increasing…. Their words are: “Going from high volume to high value.” These are the kinds of things that people in British Columbia in rural areas are really good at. I’m constantly impressed by the ingenuity and resources of my neighbors.

They want to do it, but it is challenging. It is very challenging. The two licences in our community, their value on the marketplace — and this is Crown land; these are woodlot licences — is somewhere from $2 to $4 million. This is a serious barrier for a community to become involved with.

Also, the machinery involved both in harvesting and in setting up value-added operations is not necessarily something that is easy for communities to obtain. Also, there could be a lot of incentives such as fire mitigation that could be provided.

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

Now I’ll ask members of the committee if they have any questions.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation, Coady. I like the fact that it comes with eyes forward. Your eyes aren’t down looking at your notes.

I’ve read your submission. A busy working father developing in an off-grid. That is an awesome comment.

C. Webb: Thank you.

M. Starchuk: I also see that you’re part of the Reid Island co-op as well. There are two documents in our package that are inside of there that really speak to it very well. But what I’m missing is: what is the ask?

C. Webb: Right. Yes. I know. Well, as you can probably tell, this is not the kind of thing I do all the time.

What I would like to see is the province develop more targeted programs for the redistribution of tenures. It’s stated in the modernization strategy that they want to redistribute tenures. Well, a community like mine that is interested…. The current licensee is towards the end of his career. The licences will most likely go up for bid. For us to come up with $2 to $4 million when that happens is a challenge. Some programs that would help with that would be very helpful, as well as just in simply the developing of subsidies or grants for purchasing manufacturing equipment and log-moving equipment.

Things like that, as well as…. I was reading about the wildfire risk mitigation program that currently exists for community forests. That’s $5 million. That’s great. There could be more.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, Coady, I would wrap up this part of the presentation by thanking you for coming and sharing with us a really important perspective. Your presentation was actually quite powerful.

Speaking as a representative of an urban constituency, while the hot-button issues may be different, the notion of building in a system in which the community gets to participate early in the dialogue, early in the conversation, and to feel that it has a stake in the outcome — it really appeals. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

We will now recess until 10:45.

The committee recessed from 10:24 a.m. to 10:47 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Dominique Jacobs, Support Network for Indigenous Women and Women of Colour.

Dominique, you have five minutes. The light will turn green when you have two minutes to go, and we’ll give you a signal when you have 30 seconds so that you can wrap up. The red light will show that you’re out of time. We’re kind of relaxed about that. It’s not like in the chamber where they cut your mic off.

Whenever you’re ready.

SUPPORT NETWORK FOR
INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOUR

D. Jacobs: Hi, committee. Thank you for inviting the Support Network for Indigenous Women and Women of Colour, also fondly known as SNIWWOC, to present to you today. My name is Dominique Jacobs. I am the communications and campaigns manager.

Our board of directors and staff all identify as Black, Indigenous and women of colour. SNIWOC’s work is committed to the empowerment of women through addressing barriers that limit access to health care and full reproductive choice. Our work offers gender-based solutions and directly supports the ministerial mandates of the Health, SDPR, Finance, Indigenous Relations, TACS, JERI and Mental Health and Addictions ministries.

Our head office is located in what is known as Victoria, which sits on the unceded and traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking and W̱SÁNEĆ people. We are very grateful to be allowed to live, work and play on their lands.

Committee, I am here today because we need systemic change, now more than ever. I’d like to share a short story which has a trigger warning of suicide. Please nod if I can proceed. Thank you.

I had an Indigenous trans youth reach out to me, who was suicidal and at the end of their rope after being turned away from psych ward after psych ward and emergency room after emergency room. They had recently lost their partner to an overdose and had also come out as transgender. They had an imbalance of medication that needed to be adjusted and tried every avenue to advocate for themself, until it became completely hopeless.

[10:50 a.m.]

When seeking medical help, they were constantly misgendered. They were told that they were just attention-seeking and drug-seeking, which is a common response to Indigenous people when seeking health care. We know this to be true, especially after the release of the In Plain Sight report. But dear committee, this hits differently when it’s told to you in person. You feel it right here.

After PES rejected them in the midst of a suicide attempt, they were intent on ending their life. Luckily, their roommate found them poised to overdose and called SNIWWOC immediately. There was nowhere else to turn because emergency services had refused to help.

I worked tirelessly through the process of contacting social and mental health services, which took weeks. Finally, through the FNHA mental health intake, we were able to get an urgent appointment. On December 23, two days before Christmas, they finally had a complete psychiatric assessment and were able to get the life-saving medication that they needed. The appointment was held at our little SNIWWOC office because, after being so abused, that is where they felt the most safe.

The youth had set a suicide date, and when they passed that milestone a few months later, we received a message from their roommate, which said: “You have absolutely saved a life. I am so incredibly grateful to you and Boma. There is no way we would have gotten to where we are today without you.” Committee, SNIWWOC saves lives.

As the province moves into post-COVID planning, we need to prioritize BIPOC women to ensure equitable economic recovery. Women, particularly Indigenous and racialized women, have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 economic recession. Previous to COVID, statistically, BIPOC make up the majority of workers in lower-paid, part-time and precarious work. Over the past year, we’ve learned that COVID-19 is a gendered problem. Family violence, women’s economic security and mental health have all been affected in gendered ways, and we need gender-responsive solutions.

We are asking today for a total of $425,000, split between eight ministries strategically, to fund core programs and services which directly benefit BIPOC women across the province.

At our recently launched dental hygiene clinic, there’s a capacity for five patients a month, but 20 signed up within the first week. We are now booked solid for four months. We simply do not have the resources to meet the needs of our clients. Our culturally sensitive and trauma-informed counselling and yoga, our domestic violence, grief and addictions workshops, our peer and career counselling to get women back to work, our free grocery card program and our Elders network have been critical in our communities.

As a life-saving organization in B.C., committee, this is the first time we have ever appeared before you, and we are here today because we have to acknowledge that the work we do can no longer be dependent on fleeting grants or precarious donations. We have to acknowledge now that we cannot leave our clients, our community, without our services and support. Dear committee, this is your chance to come on and save lives with us. Budget 2022 must include funding for SNIWWOC.

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

Questions from the committee?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Dominique. A powerful presentation and lots of energy. I didn’t see a presentation or written submission, and you’ve covered so many bases in what you’ve just discussed, especially in your last paragraph or two there. Will you be making a written submission?

D. Jacobs: Absolutely, yes. It will be submitted by the deadline of September 30 at 5 p.m.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Right. Okay. So you’ll break down where that $425,000, between the eight ministries, would go to help your organization?

D. Jacobs: Yes, sir, absolutely. We have a full proposal written up, we have been presenting it to the ministries that that we’ve listed, and we’ve had a very enthusiastic and positive response. Many of the ministries have let us know that they’re not funding ministries, so they’re unable to support directly. We’re looking at alternative solutions; however, we are hoping that with this budget consultation we can see some of that funding realized through those ministries.

[10:55 a.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Your group, your office, as you mentioned, was in Victoria. Is there a network, though, across…? I mean, this need isn’t just in Victoria.

D. Jacobs: Absolutely.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): What’s the…? Is there a connection between other communities, in some way?

D. Jacobs: We service communities across British Columbia. We even service very remote northern communities. We are connected to an Elders network. It’s connected all throughout First Nation communities in the province of B.C. We’ve also serviced Alberta as well as Ontario, so we’re very stretched. We’re trying to do it all but with very little resources.

M. Dykeman: My colleague asked two out of the three questions I had. I’m glad he caught those.

I was wondering. You mentioned now that you also service Ontario. Do you receive funding from the Ontario government? Or does all of your funding come from donations?

D. Jacobs: Our funding is 85 percent grants and 15 percent private donations. We do not receive funding from the Ontario government. We do not receive funding from the British Columbia government. We do have a grant that we did receive, which was a federal grant.

M. Dykeman: Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much for your presentation.

D. Jacobs: You’re very welcome. Thank you for listening.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Dominique, for your presentation and the power with which you delivered it. My question is also around the $425,000. You say it will be in the report. Just for today, is it one-time or annual?

D. Jacobs: We would be looking for annual support. It would be funding for our core services and programs on an annual basis. That way…. For example, our mental health funding runs out in March of 2022. We have 50 clients who are receiving, currently, mental health support and counselling through our program and who will be left without mental health counselling at that point. We no longer want to be faced with dropping our clients and dropping our programs when we don’t have funding.

H. Sandhu: Chair, my question is answered. It was around the funding amount. You mentioned that it’s annual, and I’ll look forward to your written submission to see the breakdown of that funding.

I just want to say thank you so much for the work you’re doing — a great, powerful presentation. I just can’t appreciate enough how you are saving lives — and that story that you shared. Keep up the good work.

D. Jacobs: Thank you so much. It’s so lovely to see a woman of colour in this room. I appreciate that very much.

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much. I agree — a very powerful presentation. You mentioned working in small, remote communities in northern B.C. Can you give me some sense of what percentage of your clients are served in rural B.C.?

D. Jacobs: Well, during the time when the discovery of the 215 in Kamloops happened, many of the Elders were travelling in Haida Gwaii and some of the other areas in Kamloops and north of there. We were sending traditional medicines from our office. We have a harvester, an Indigenous cultural liaison that works directly as a staff member, and they would harvest the medicines from the land. We’d package them to send to those communities and to Elders — in that way, supporting them with cultural healing.

J. Routledge (Chair): It looks like we’re quickly out of time, but on behalf of the committee, Dominique, I want to thank you for your very forceful presentation and for the work that you do. I want you to know that yours is a forceful voice on behalf of what has become a recurring theme in the consultations. Rest assured that you are not alone.

D. Jacobs: Thank you very much, Janet, and thank you to the committee for hearing me today. I really appreciate your time and look forward to hearing back from you after the written submission.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Vanessa Hammond, the Victoria Community Health Cooperative.

[11:00 a.m.]

VICTORIA COMMUNITY
HEALTH COOPERATIVE

V. Hammond: First of all, thank you very much for this opportunity. It is so much appreciated.

I was at the wrong end of a motor vehicle accident, so I’m a little bit fuzzy in what I can see, hear and think. So if you’ve seen any of my notes, just assume that there should be about 50 percent more brain cells functioning.

I’m particularly grateful to Grace Lore for the interest that she has shown in the Victoria Community Health Co-op. My comments are supported by the Cook Street Village Activity Centre; B.C. Associations of Community and Co-op Health Centres; Fateh Care; and Drs. Pakrasi and Djilali.

I’m speaking as the chair of the Victoria health co-op, former chair of health care co-ops Canada and Canadian rep to the international health co-op federation. What an eye-opener that was. It was wonderful. I’m a great-grandmother very concerned about some of the legacy that we are leaving to your kids and grandkids as well as mine.

Health co-ops are legally incorporated organizations providing a wide range of health, wellness and medical services across Canada and globally. Ours was established in Victoria in 2008 to provide health, wellness and community services for the public good on a charitable basis on and beyond Vancouver Island. We provide physical and mental health support through office visits, home visits and wellness education, and our nursing services are covered by the B.C. CareCard. Other services are either covered by donations, or not covered and we just do everything on a volunteer basis.

We all want optimal health, and the World Health Organization says that this is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. It looks at things like educational, financial and even recreational opportunities, with an emphasis on breathable air, drinkable water, nourishing food and secure housing. These are factors for health.

The things that are done through the Ministry of Health are generally not related to health. They’re related to curing lack of health, and we would like to see more of a focus at the front end. It’s much more economical to keep people healthy than to fix up things that are broken.

Another factor that’s really important is maternal services — and then education, particularly for girls and women. These touch the mandate of every MLA — in fact, every B.C. resident. But to the Ministry of Health, for the work done by that ministry in normal times and particularly during COVID, we want to say thank you, merci, haychka, go raibh maith agat. Go raibh maith agat may be the first Irish language words you’ve heard in here. I’m biased.

So here are my asks. It’s a long list. I hope you’ve got strong arms. Support a healthy environment so that we have fresh air, drinkable water. Support B.C.-grown food, and get those sugary things out of the supermarkets. They are not food. Provide education about positive societal and individual behaviours. And please decriminalize street drugs. Having a criminal record doesn’t cure anything. Particularly, establish treatment facilities for young people who are just starting to use. Help them rather than punish them.

Recognize, please, that teeth and eyes are part of us, and give some additional support. Look at traditional approaches to health and wellness. Ensure adequate pay and safe conditions for all workers, and encourage organizations that are innovative. I’m thinking of the work that’s being done by Dr. Procrassi for various activities. One is an arm band that automatically injects naloxone if the wearer stops breathing. That’s much faster than waiting for an ambulance.

[11:05 a.m.]

A word about seniors. A tax credit for every 200 hours we volunteer per year would be nice.

Please make ICBC user-friendly. Being in an accident is bad enough. ICBC isn’t great.

Please give us long-term funding for our nurses. We’re funded till the end of March, and after that, what’s going to happen? We need to be able to do long-term planning.

Expand the scope of practice for experienced RNs so that they can provide prescriptions and order tests, rather than having elderly, ill people standing out in the rain, day after day, trying to get an appointment with a doctor or an NP.

Urgently address the disaster of long-term care by establishing multi-stakeholder co-ops. These can be led by boards that represent up to nine stakeholders, the residents or families, cooks, cleaners, activity leaders, laundry staff, admin staff, community and funders. Member ownership would remove the deadly profit motive.

Anyone who is interested in any aspect of health co-ops, we would love to talk to you. We always have time for those conversations.

Thank you very much. Go raibh maith agat. Merci. Haychka.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you so much, Vanessa. I’ll now open it up to questions from the committee.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Vanessa. Great presentation and very good asks there.

I agree with you that sugary…. Besides the many other things you recommended, supermarkets having sugary stuff and the junk food, I would say…. There’s way more than the food that we need.

You recommended nurses, or RNs, should be allowed to prescribe certain medications. Can you highlight what kind of medications or the ask? I know that recently the B.C. government has allowed for nurses to prescribe some. which areas you…?

V. Hammond: Particularly any medications where the client, the patient, has been using that medication consistently and where the underlying condition is not about to change. For instance, Synthroid is prescribed on a long-term basis, and nobody’s thyroid is going to grow back again. So might as well just make it easy.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much.

J. Brar: Thank you, Vanessa, for coming today and for your wonderful presentation.

I want to ask you a couple of questions. One is access to the co-op — if you can just tell us who can access and who cannot. That’s one. The other one I just want to ask quickly is if you can elaborate a little bit more on the multi-stakeholders co-op.

V. Hammond: So the access thing is easy: pick up the phone and call us. There is no requirement to be a member of the co-op. That would be absolutely against what we’re doing. If people come in and are obviously fairly…. If they’re coming to see the nurse practitioner, the nurses, there’s no discussion of money at all because that’s covered by the CareCard.

If they’re coming for something else, maybe for one of our wellness presentations, we’ll do a little, gentle ask for money. We’re much gentler with the people who come in than I’ve been with you.

J. Brar: That’s great.

V. Hammond: Then the other…. I’m sorry. I’m really foggy because of this accident. What was your other question?

J. Brar: The multi-stakeholder co-ops.

V. Hammond: Right. Multi-stakeholder co-ops are a little bit more complex than some other kinds, but they work very efficiently. You can a board of between three and nine members.

The reason I’m so passionate about seeing this format used for long-term care is that if you have a board that’s made up of the representatives of the residents or the people in the community receiving service and people like the cooks and the cleaners, you’re going to get leadership and management that’s far more focused on doing the right thing, rather than just making lots of money. I just think that it’s a more humane approach. It’s a doable approach. Let’s try it.

In fact, I have provided, already, a little one-pager on multi-stakeholder co-ops, and I’m going to try to put together another package of information before the end of September, if I get some brain cells back.

[11:10 a.m.]

Well, Vanessa, we’ll let you off the hook so that you can actually get yourself settled. We really appreciate you coming, after having gone through a fairly traumatic experience. We want to thank you. Your presentation — I think I speak on behalf of the entire committee — was very inspiring. Your presentation was specific, clear, practical. Yes, quite inspiring. I look forward to our deliberations to talk about how we can take these ideas and improve our health care system and make it more focused on wellness.

V. Hammond: Thank you so much. That’s way beyond my expectations.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Kevin Harter of Victoria Hospice.

VICTORIA HOSPICE

K. Harter: Good morning. How’s everyone’s day starting out so far? Busy, I’m sure.

We’ve provided some documentation for what we’re asking for. I apologize because I’m going to be boring you, as most of what I have to say is right here in the letter, so I’ll mostly be reading that to reinforce what we think is important here.

What I’m here to talk about this morning is how hospices in B.C. can support their communities and aging and end-of-life care over the next 20 to 40 years and what’s necessary to ensure that that support that they provide is at a level of excellence and coordinated throughout all the hospices.

It’s no secret that the population of British Columbia is rapidly aging. By 2031, almost one in four people in B.C. will be over the age of 65. With this shift, we know that we will see new and increased demands on palliative and end-of-life care programs and services. With over 40 years of providing essential service to their communities, local hospices are uniquely positioned to meet these end-of-life care needs.

In British Columbia, there are more than 66 not-for-profit hospice societies that provide care to adults, youth and children affected by life-threatening illnesses, as well as their caregivers and loved ones who are grieving and bereaved. However, there are currently no provincial standards or accreditation for hospice care. Presently, there is a lack of common terminology, few opportunities for consistent data collection and little clarity around what client outcomes best indicate the successful provision of hospice care.

The Provincial Hospice Working Group, a collective of non-profit organizations, was co-founded in 2019 to coordinate the development of a path forward to improve access to high-quality, fully integrated and sustained hospice care for all British Columbians.

In August 2020, the Provincial Hospice Working Group released The Path Forward report, a ten-step path to building a better, fully integrated and sustainable hospice care sector. One of the ten steps is to establish provincial standards and an accreditation program for hospice care.

If I might say, this ten-step path was developed by polling more than 30 hospice palliative care stakeholders from health authorities, from organizations and from individuals who are served from across B.C., bringing them together for a one-day round table and putting together what these stakeholders and professionals thought was important in order for hospices to better support their communities.

[11:15 a.m.]

The Canadian Institute for Health Information report titled Access to Palliative Care in Canada also highlighted frameworks and strategies that define palliative services and provide coordinated policies, standards and guidelines as one of the key factors that can improve delivery of and access to palliative care.

Victoria Hospice, in partnership with Health Standards Organization and B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association, is requesting $650,000 over the next two years to build and implement provincial standards and to create an accreditation program for hospice care.

One of the things that we wanted to highlight here is that supporting the community is going to play a key role in this demographic shift and the change of our population from being under 65 to over 65. Just to provide a few numbers, if you look at the fact of saying, on average, 75 and older is the key aspect for long-term care.

If we break that just down to Victoria, there are 3,000 long-term-care beds in Victoria. But the 75-plus crowd is going to increase by 250 percent over the next 20 years, which means that by the time we get to 20 years, there are going to be, roughly, 7½ thousand people who are at the level of needing significant care for end-of-life. Yet we’re only going to have 3,000 long-term care. This is where we need the different organizations, and hospice, with over 60 organizations across B.C., are uniquely positioned to be able to step forward and support their communities in these needs.

I appreciate you giving me the time to come here and talk about this. I’ll be honest with you. I’m very passionate. I moved from long-term care to hospice care, and I moved there because I think the real need for the future is going to be supporting people to age and experience end-of-life in the comfort of their home. That’s what we’re here to do.

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

I’ll now ask the committee if they have any questions.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Kevin. Great presentation. Coming from health care, and in community, I did end-of-life as well. I was amazed. Working in hospitals for all these years, I did not have any idea, to be honest, how much hospice helps and how many people still palliate in the community, so I imagine if those resources weren’t there, the outcome or the burden on existing health care in acute care setting….

I also have seen the shift that with advanced medical treatments and options, people go to hospice…. They still receive some treatment — better chemo — and the symptom management that hospice societies help with. Again, that lifts the burden from acute care.

You’ve asked for the $650,000 over three years. Do you know which areas…?

K. Harter: Two years.

H. Sandhu: Two years. Okay. Which areas are you planning or focussing to invest that amount?

K. Harter: Most of the $250,000 would go to HSO, which is the parent company of Accreditation Canada, and they will build an electronic system that is specially designed to support the hospices. As you can well imagine, becoming accredited is a challenging and time- and resource-expensive system right now. Our goal is to build something that’s more designed for these hospices that allows them to utilize and understand the standards of quality care and quality metrics.

So $250,000 would go to them to build that electronic system; $250,000 would go to Victoria Hospice to manage the development of the project — the stakeholder engagement, the education program. And then $150,000 would go to the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care, whose job will be to roll this out and adopt it in the 60-plus hospices across B.C.

Did that answer your question?

H. Sandhu: Yes, it did. I hope that there will be a written submission as well, or perhaps you’ve provided it? Yes. All right.

[11:20 a.m.]

K. Harter: I just provided a brief breakdown. I haven’t broken it down much more than that, but I’m more than happy to provide something that breaks down exactly where the $650,000 goes.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. No worries. Is there any existing amount that’s being provided to Victoria Hospice? Or there is none. Is this the first time…?

K. Harter: For this, no. Not for this. We get a significant amount, both from the community and from the health authority, as we provide 18 end-of-life beds. We have our palliative response team that supports aging in the community. We have our community counsellors overall. We have our bereavement section. We have our education and research department, and we have our volunteers, which help support all the programs.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. I really appreciate your presentation.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Kevin. Appreciate the work that hospices are doing all across the province.

My experience with hospice has been that originally, these were almost not for profit. They weren’t necessarily funded. It’s kind of changed over time. But I guess what I’m kind of wondering is what you see. What’s the reason that we’re now needing to have these standards that you’re asking to develop? Why is it? What’s missing right now that you are hoping to alleviate or correct?

K. Harter: Right now, there is not a coordinated effort across B.C. Each hospice sort of operates at its own structure and desire. We’re looking to create programs that we can implement in all the hospices across B.C., and we want to ensure that they have the foundation, that when we take these programs out to them, they can successfully adopt them in supporting the community.

One of the programs that we’re developing right now is our compass program. That program is designed around using hospice volunteers to support caregivers and find the resources they need to care for their loved one at home. As you may know, many of the reasons that loved ones end up in the hospital and eventually long-term care and other organized places are because the caregiver burns out. A lot of that is because they didn’t have the support they needed, and they did not understand where they could find resources to be able to support it.

As we develop programs that hospices can use to support their community, as anybody develops programs that hospices can use, having an accreditation program throughout hospices in B.C. helps build that foundation that allows them to be successful in implementing organized programs.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Are there any failures that are out there, in the sense that there are probably differences in standards of care between them? I personally just know the one that’s in the Central Okanagan quite well. Is that where there’s like what you see and Victoria Hospice sees — that there are gaps in that?

I understand that there are all sorts of programs. But the way it’s set up, they are independent. They are not necessarily run under the health authorities. I guess, is there a failure occurring currently, or do you just see that we could improve the care?

K. Harter: I would say it’s more or less that we could improve the care. The failures are understanding appropriate standards for how care should be delivered and how it should be monitored. A lot of the failure out there is that there are many gaps within the services that can be provided.

We’re very fortunate at Victoria Hospice. We have a very large organization that can cover many areas. One of the failures out there is understanding those gaps and developing resources within the individual hospices to better meet the needs, and the fact that these needs are going to change dramatically over the next 20 years.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re running out of time. Thank you, Kevin, for your presentation. Thank you for thinking ahead and anticipating what will be a community necessity before it becomes a crisis. Thank you for that.

[11:25 a.m.]

K. Harter: One of the things I learned early on in health care is that the innovations of today will help meet the needs of tomorrow.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Pamela Grant.

Pamela, you have five minutes. There’ll be a light when you start. It’ll turn green when you have two minutes. We’ll signal when you have 30 seconds so you know to wrap it up, and then the light will go red when you’ve hit your five minutes.

PAMELA GRANT

P. Grant: Good morning, Members. This is really weird sitting here because I used to do Stephanie’s job here about 20 years ago. So it’s nice to have the opportunity to say what I think at these meetings, instead of just writing it all down.

I’m here today to talk to you about what I view as the inefficiencies with mental health care in the province of British Columbia in addition to addictions and the treatment thereof. I’m not going to bore you with statistics or PowerPoints. We’ve all seen enough of that, and frankly, they don’t really mean anything to me.

I want to start by asking you a question. How many of you, if you could raise your hands, would say that your lives have personally been impacted by somebody suffering with mental illness or addiction, right? Okay. Thank you.

The government of Canada says that one in five people in this country have those issues. I think we’ve just demonstrated it’s probably a lot higher than that. I have lived experience in both those areas. I’ve lost one sibling who had cognitive issues and another sibling who was an addict and found dead in a shelter in Victoria three years ago.

So I guess I want to say that in 2017, when this government said, “We’re creating a ministry to look at issues of mental health,” I was so encouraged. I was so happy. I was less happy when I saw that it was then being combined with addictions, because I believe that those are both fundamentally distinct issues and have to be treated as such.

I understand the impact that the coronavirus has had on public services — in fact, the entire world. But what happened between 2017 and early 2020 with this mandate? I’ve read the letters of mandate. I’ve read the annual reports. I am, by profession, a researcher no less, and I can’t find any definitive information about what this ministry is actually doing, and that concerns me. In fact, it makes me quite angry.

COVID, I think, really tore off the emperor’s clothes. We have unprecedented numbers of homeless people all of a sudden living on the streets. If you live in Victoria or Vancouver or other parts of British Columbia, increasingly, it’s obvious — the mentally ill, the lost souls in this province. But all of a sudden, boom, they were all there.

What did the province do? The province said housing first, because that’s what the municipal governments said. Housing is important, but that doesn’t solve the problem. Addictions and mental health, though they often coexist, have to be treated entirely separately. There’s no point in pulling an addicted person and putting them into housing when you haven’t treated the addiction. The addiction will always win, every single time. You can’t treat people with mental health issues if they have an addiction until you treat the addiction, because their primary focus is always going to be relieving the symptoms of their addiction.

So what did we do? Well, effectively, we warehoused people. We have motels now filled with the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted and, in some cases, a combination of all three of those things. And guess what. It doesn’t work. I’ve met addicts in the last year who went back to Beacon Hill Park because the motels they were living in on the Gorge were so intolerable that they were concerned about relapsing. These places aren’t managed properly.

[11:30 a.m.]

Nobody wants to say the word “institution” anymore, but there’s a requirement for a model that isn’t staffed by well-meaning people with social work degrees. These are medical issues, and putting 27-year-old sociology and social work graduates on the front lines and expecting them to deal with this, when we have contracted these problems out to organizations like Cool Aid and the Portland Hotel Society, doesn’t work.

We need health care professionals driving this train. We need to treat the addicted and the mentally ill as the separate populations that they are. We need efficacious policy. We need legislative changes and proper oversight.

Evaluation must be made by health care professionals. Clients must be triaged and case-managed. We cannot any longer sustain a model that just says: “Well, we’re going to treat you all the same.”

I don’t know if any of you know this, but people in the province who are designated as a person with a disability — whether that’s cognitive, whether that’s a mental health issue, whether they’re a quadriplegic — are assessed with the same five criteria. That’s absurd — simply absurd. One size simply doesn’t fit all.

We all know that deinstitutionalization in B.C. has been an abject failure. It started in the ’60s with the Socred government, and it has been mishandled by every government over the last six decades, in my view. I want to say that I’m not just blaming the governments. If you sit on the left side of the House, you’re equally at fault, because we haven’t had an effective opposition doing anything about this either in 60 years — nothing personal.

My recommendations. We don’t need more money. We need to target these issues. The expenditure is big enough, but let’s break them down. Let’s make them effective. Let’s provide consistent models of evaluation and care, and let’s stop letting people like contract managers and policy analysts decide whether or not a program is working when it involves health issues.

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

Questions for Pamela?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Pamela. I appreciate it.

I hope that your…. I didn’t find a presentation that you had put forward to the committee. I hope you will, because I think, having been on the Gorge walk, between those facilities that are out there, I completely agree that they’re inadequate for the type of care that’s needed. We do need to make that change, and you have some valuable thoughts that I think we need to review and reflect on. I like the part where you don’t think that we need more resources; we need to make certain that they’re in the right place.

Anyways, I just wanted to thank you for that. Hopefully, we’ll see a presentation that you can put to us that’ll help us bring some clarity to that, because there are lots of other people that have mentioned the same kinds of things — that the care that we’re providing is not appropriate for some of the individuals that are out on the street.

I know what you mean about Beacon Hill Park. I used to live right across the street from it.

P. Grant: Thank you for that. I will put something in writing. It was actually…. The failures of deinstitutionalization and the public policy gaps were something I started as a thesis 30 years ago — I hate to say that — when I was in university, when my sister was moved out of Glendale, and nothing has improved since that time.

It’s hard for me to consolidate it into a short amount, but I’d be happy to try to do that. I would like to talk to you.

J. Brar: Thank you once again, Pamela, for coming and for your words.

The issue you’re talking about is, of course, very sensitive, very complex. There’s no easy solution for that. We all know that. But some of the comments you made…. I just want to go back and ask you a question.

I accepted a challenge to stay on welfare. I spent 31 days on welfare just to listen to people like you and other people who work with them — the people who are homeless or have mental health problems or addictions and all that — and also listen to people directly.

[11:35 a.m.]

One of the comments which was made constantly by everybody — the service providers as well as the people, real people, facing homelessness or addictions or mental health problems — was that you can only treat somebody if you put that person, first, in housing.

P. Grant: If you put that person where?

J. Brar: First, in housing. If there’s no housing, there will be no treatment, whether it’s mental health or it’s addiction. That’s the comment I heard across the board from everybody. I’m talking about, when I say everybody, the service providers and the people who are really…. I stayed on Hastings for 15 days, and Main Street.

I just want to hear back from you. You said it completely the other way around. What would be your model?

P. Grant: My model would be triage. My model would be case-managed. I wouldn’t put 50 people into a building, staffed by non-medical professionals, with disparate issues of mental health and addiction and expect it to be a success. I think we need smaller groups, and I think, in some cases, people need to be institutionalized if that’s what it takes to get them focused again. That’s going to require legislative changes. It’s not going to be popular. But in some cases, that’s going to be required.

What we can’t do is shove all these people together. Have you been in any of the facilities in Victoria? I invite you to take a walk through some of them. They are bloody terrifying — absolutely terrifying. They have no restriction on who comes in or goes out. There’s open drug dealing, violence.

The one on Johnson Street, which was opened after our homeless city at the Burdett Avenue courthouse a number of years ago…. My understanding is that the police will not go there without two separate teams of two: one to deal with the issue that they’ve been called to deal with and the other team to watch their backs while they do it. How does that work?

So housing, if I can just…. I think I see what you’re getting at. Housing doesn’t mean shelter. It means appropriate housing. That’s what people are talking about when they say that.

J. Brar: So where do you start when you’re talking about addiction and mental health services? How do you provide them? Where do you provide that?

P. Grant: You start by having affordable housing for people that are capable of living with regular community supports. With people that need more than that, people that need medical treatment, they need a different model. They don’t get to just live in an apartment on their own. They’re not, you know….

I have a friend whose son is a paranoid schizophrenic. He doesn’t have the same needs as a quadriplegic. He doesn’t have the same needs as somebody with Down syndrome. But if you put all these people together and say they have a disability and all they need is housing, you can see the problem, right?

J. Brar: I hope you can put that in your presentation — the different models — so we can understand what it means.

P. Grant: Yup. I’d be happy to try.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. We’re out of time, but perhaps we can pursue some questions informally.

Pamela, on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for making your presentation and for giving the government candid feedback. Some of it is hard to hear, but it’s important to hear. I think that what is weaving through the things you’re saying is that more assertive interventions are required.

P. Grant: Targeted and efficacious and individualized. We’ve made this into an industry. It’s not an industry. These are individual people with individual problems. We owe them more than that. We owe ourselves more than that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Absolutely. Thank you.

Our next presenter is Adrienne Carter, Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees.

Adrienne, you have five minutes. The light will turn green when you have two minutes to go. We’ll indicate when you have 30 seconds left, which means you should be wrapping it up. The light will turn red when your five minutes is up, and then we’ll ask questions. Whenever you’re ready.

VANCOUVER ISLAND COUNSELLING CENTRE
FOR IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES

A. Carter: Thank you very much for inviting me. We have also submitted a written presentation, but I want to talk a little bit about our organization.

[11:40 a.m.]

The previous speaker already started making an excellent illustration of how difficult mental health services are in our province. She illustrated it with one particular group of people with serious mental health issues and addictions.

I would like to talk about another group that has really never been served by mental health services. That would be refugees and immigrants, especially the ones who do not speak the English language. Mental health services for Canadians are also very scarce. There are very long wait-lists. People who do not speak the language are usually not able to get services.

We started our organization in 2015. It’s a young organization. I have worked for many years oversees with Doctors Without Borders and then with the Centre for Victims of Torture. My last place of work was in Jordan, where the Centre for Victims of Torture has treated thousands of Syrian and Iraqi refugees who have found a safe place in the country. I was a psychotherapist trainer there, assisting and providing training to the Jordanian counsellors. I learned a great deal about how best to work with refugees.

When I came back, there was already, according to statistics, over 3,000 people that the Coalition for Survivors of Torture have reported who have experienced imprisonment and torture but never received any kind of help. There were many reasons for it. There is a lot of stigma for newcomers against getting mental health assistance. They couldn’t get the help because they couldn’t speak the language.

For this reason, in 2015, I put in a proposal to start a very small organization with a couple of counsellors to try and provide assistance. We also recruited quite a few interpreters. Within a very short time, people started coming. They were referred from all kinds of resources. In the six years since we started, our organization has grown quite rapidly. We now have about 25 counsellors. We have about 20 interpreters. We have a social worker, and we have a large group of volunteers.

Now, for the first four years, we had absolutely no money. A colleague of mine and me put in $500 each to get started, and we got enough donations to be able to rent a place in St. Peter’s Church. That’s where we stayed for four years. But we were able to serve the refugees and the immigrants who were coming, and we set up an amazing model that was able to provide services to each member of the family who was coming. This meant sometimes we had to put two counsellors and two interpreters with each family, but everyone who came was concurrently getting services for as long as they needed.

In 2019, we received our first amazing grant of $120,000 per year for a period of three years. We were overjoyed. Then the pandemic hit. By the way, we got larger offices. We moved to our new offices, and then….

Can you tell me how many more minutes? I can’t see that far.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thirty seconds.

A. Carter: Okay. What we have found with this $125,000 is we started paying our counsellors and our interpreters. In the second year, in nine months, we have gone through the whole year of the grant. It just wasn’t enough, because the number of people coming to us has more than doubled.

[11:45 a.m.]

We’re receiving referrals from schools, from MCFD, from many of the government organizations, public health, but none of the referrals are able to attach any kind of funding to the people that they are referring. So we accepted everyone who needed help. We need more funding, and we need steady funding so that we don’t have to worry each time that the funding is going to run out and we have to stop serving the people.

Our modalities are working extremely well. People are getting the services that they need. Now that the borders are open there are new refugee groups that are already coming in, and presumably, several families from Afghanistan will be settled in our country. But how do we keep providing the services if we have no money?

Many of our counsellors are still working pro bono. I work full time pro bono. We are very enthused about the services we are providing. The only thing we need is ongoing funding.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Adrienne. I’ll now ask committee members if they have any questions for you.

J. Brar: Thank you very much for coming today. Of course, very, very heartfelt thanks to you for the exceptional services you are providing to people going through a very difficult time, at the beginning, when they have no language skills and all that. They have no knowledge of the system. The experience you have…. None of us has that experience.

I understand your ask very clearly. I just want to know from you two things. One, are you putting proposals…? You know about the proposal cycle and all that. The government does provide funding in the area you are asking for right now to a number of other organizations. I just want to make sure that you’re putting proposals in. So that’s one question.

The other one will be the mental health. Now, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, the area of mental health is way less…. The awareness of mental health problems is way less among the newcomer communities. First of all, what is mental health and when it starts and all that. Then, of course, there is no knowledge about what is available to help that individual. So if you can comment on that.

A. Carter: We are putting proposals in, many proposals, and we have received extra funding, especially during the pandemic.

What is interesting…. Mental health is quite serious amongst the newcomers, but our country really hasn’t planned for mental health services for new refugees who are arriving. We are the only mental health service for refugees and immigrants on the Island. We are getting referrals not just from Victoria but from all over the Island and from the Mainland. None of the smaller towns and cities around B.C. can offer mental health services to this group of people because they do not speak the language.

They have severe mental health disorders, as Canadians do. Many of them are suicidal. Domestic violence is huge. Alcoholism does exist, not to the same extent that the previous speaker has spoken about, but psychosis is becoming more prevalent. When our clients are hospitalized occasionally, nobody can speak with them. Our beautiful, new hospitals do not use interpreters to speak with clients who are in the midst of psychotic breakdowns.

There is a lot of assistance needed. It’s our interpreters that take the clients and talk to the psychiatrists and talk to the medical doctors because they are not using interpreters to be able to communicate. So that’s a huge issue.

[11:50 a.m.]

MCFD, for example, does not use interpreters. They refer our clients to us, primarily because we do have interpreters but also because the wait-list in child and youth mental health is six to 12 months. That’s the same all over the province. They are taking those kids and adolescents, and we are able to work with them.

We’re also able to work with their parents who have been severely traumatized. We work with torture clients who need time to heal, so it’s not a month or two months of sessions. We work with them sometimes for years until they are better.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, Adrienne, I’d really like to thank you on behalf of the committee for your presentation and your passion and compassion for the people that you’re working with, and for reminding us that those who we help to physically escape torture and terror bring the trauma with them. So our obligation does not end once they’ve arrived here. They’re still not safe. Thank you for the role you play in extending their safety.

A. Carter: Thank you so much for listening to us.

J. Routledge (Chair): Before we break for lunch, our final presenters before lunch are going to be presenting virtually, so we’ll take a five-minute recess to help queue that up. So we have a five-minute break.

The committee recessed from 11:51 a.m. to 11:57 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Erica Mark, TRRUST Collective Impact.

Erica, you have five minutes. Take it away.

TRRUST COLLECTIVE IMPACT

E. Mark: I’d like to start by acknowledging that I’m on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations people.

Thank you for allowing me to present today. My name is Erica Mark, and I’m speaking on behalf of the TRRUST Collective. TRRUST is made up of over 70 organizations and 300 members, including non-profit organizations, government agencies and young people. Our goal is to improve outcomes for youth in, and in transitioning out of, government care in Vancouver.

Young people with experience in government care guide our work. They have identified several gaps and barriers that we as a collective continue to try to address, and that’s why I’m here today asking for your support.

The three largest gaps for youth as they transition out of government care are safe and affordable housing, sufficient income for the cost of living and transition supports that begin early and extend past their 19th birthday.

I’m going to ask that you now close your eyes, and think back to your 19th birthday. Think about where you were. What were you doing? How did you feel? Where did you live? Who did you live with? How much did you pay for housing?

Now, imagine that you had a different reality. You have no parents to rely on for help. You have to move out on your birthday in today’s economy, whether you feel like you’re ready or not. You’re looking for housing in an extremely challenging Vancouver housing market, for weeks, and the only housing you can find is a small room in a basement suite with four strangers. You decide that you’re going to take the room despite having to live with strangers, because you’re running out of time, and you do not want to be homeless. But then you find out the landlord has chosen someone else.

You’re now back to the housing search with less than a week left. You find out from your social worker that you’ve not been approved for the agreements with young adults because the life skills program you signed up for does not meet the criteria. Now you have no place to live lined up and no money coming in.

[12:00 p.m.]

How does this make you feel? If it were me, I would feel sick, afraid, alone, panicked, angry and many other emotions. This is only one potential story. There are many other, much worse, scenarios that these young people are faced with.

According to rentals.ca, in September 2021, the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver, B.C., is $2,167 per month, which is the highest in all of Canada. Currently if a youth with care experience qualifies for an AYA, or an agreement with young adults, they would receive $1,250 per month. This means that for a youth on an AYA to be able to live in this one-bedroom apartment, they would need to have two roommates, and they would still be spending 57 percent of their income on housing. They would then have $527 for food, transportation, clothes, phone service and everything else that they need for the rest of the month.

When we think about living with two other people in a one-bedroom apartment, the best-case scenario would be that the two other people are friends who happen to need housing at the same time. But what happens if they don’t have two friends who need housing? The most vulnerable and marginalized young people are then forced to rely on strangers.

Can you imagine having to move into a one-bedroom apartment with two strangers? Imagine all the potential problems and terrible situations that could occur. Safe housing in their neighborhood of choice is crucial for a successful transition.

To ensure that youth can find and access safe housing, we are asking that there be a financial investment made to increase safe and supportive housing options that are specifically for youth transitioning out of care. We also ask that the amount of funding allocated for youth transitioning out of care be increased to adequately reflect the cost of living.

Finally, young people need ongoing support. They do not magically become completely self-sufficient the day they turn 19, regardless of how many life skills workshops they take. We ask that there be a financial investment to fund transition support workers who can continue to provide support for youth following their 19th birthday.

In conclusion, we recognize that you have many important initiatives that you’re being asked to fund. However, the funding we are requesting will quite literally save lives and end homelessness for youth to transition out of government care. Thank you for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Erica, and now I’ll ask the committee if they have any questions.

Well, Erica, it doesn’t look like there are any questions. You’ve been very clear. Your presentation was actually quite powerful. Thank you for sharing the reality of what it’s like for young people transitioning out of care. Rest assured, you are not the only one who’s presented to us so far who’s made this case. So you’ve strengthened the voice of many people who are looking for more supports to help kids who are transitioning.

Our next presenter, our final presenter before we break for lunch, is Robin Tavender, who is here to represent Standing Water Nation.

STANDING WATER NATION

R. Tavender: Thank you for correcting the presentation as being for Standing Water Nation. It didn’t say so on the agenda.

Bonjour. Je m’appelle Robin, et je viens de la Nation de l’eau permanente. La Nation de l’eau permanente est une nation autochtone souveraine.

Good day. My name is Robin, and I come from the Standing Water Nation. The Standing Water Nation is a sovereign Indigenous nation.

In terms of your government’s services, we have had a letter to the Minister of Indigenous Relations for some months now, including my statement to the committee last year in its previous incarnation, without any response but the automatic email receipt notice. When we were confirming support for UNDRIP, however, a response was quite forthcoming.

[12:05 p.m.]

According to our ancient oral law, we have never concluded any treaty with the Crown. We have not ceded our ancestral right to hunt, to camp and to fish in our traditional territory. We have not ceded the right to take timber, to build fires and to erect structures, both physical and conceptual, including corporations sole and aggregate, especially universities and Indigenous degree-granting institutions of higher education. We have not ceded the right to use waters, plants and minerals.

Prior to the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty over our traditional territory, we were free to travel. If we were stopped, that was an act of war. This never extended to entering another nation’s camp, except to engage in pacific activities, like free trade. We would build our own camps as we traversed our traditional territory. Sometimes some of our nation would remain in a camp they liked, while others would move on to found a new camp. There was no notion of a box within which we were confined. Rather, there were areas occupied by other individuals and nations, and we would respect that.

Grotius, in his The Rights of War and Peace, quotes Cicero, who defines war as “contentions by force,” whether between two individuals or between nations. The purpose of war, Grotius says, is to reduce a duality to a unity. For example, one entity, nation or individual believes a tract of land is theirs to govern exclusively, and they use force to reduce all who enter that self-asserted tract of land to unity with their belief. Whatever arguments might be made about the justice of such endeavours in defence of such belligerence, this way of life is fundamentally warlike and martial in nature.

We want to make clear that Standing Water is a pacific nation. When confronted by belligerent individuals or nations, our practice has always been to flee and to hide if possible, rather than to fight. If we are unable to flee and to hide, our law has always said that it is better to be taken prisoner than to fight.

As a sovereign nation, we have the right to self-government. Many nations, including the British and the United States of America, have drawn lines all over the maps of our traditional territory, which includes, without limitation, the continent of North America and its adjacent waters. The nation’s view is that we have the right to self-government within our traditional territory. Traditional territories may overlap. This doesn’t pose a problem.

We are all familiar with the territorial acknowledgment for some of the Lower Mainland, which includes Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, but I have also heard that it includes Stó:lō. The Standing Water people have never lived in a box defined by some other nation. We have never been subordinated in that way, at least not voluntarily.

Our current focus is on acquiring lands sufficient to house our nation. Due to our housing situation, one of our Elders, my Uncle John, passed away in a parking lot in Abbotsford, where he had been living in his car. That’s not very dignified. We hope that the province would be willing to meaningfully negotiate about providing us with sufficient lands in recompense for the obstruction of our traditional way of using land, which was by occupation.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee, and I invite any questions that the members may have.

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

I’ll now ask if the committee has any questions.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Robin, I looked for your presentation. I don’t see anything on that. I’m trying to square where it is that the Standing Water Nation is, and what it is that the…. You mentioned trying to find land. Could you maybe help me understand what it is that you’re looking for and where that’s located?

R. Tavender: Well, we’ve looked into purchasing land in British Columbia, but what I’ve found when I went to the ministry is that they don’t sell any new residential tenures, and there are numerous areas in the province that would be acceptable to us. Like the Métis Nation, in some regards, although we are a distinct people — we are not Métis; we do not self-identify as Métis. We have not had a land base for which we negotiated with the Crown, at sword point or voluntarily, as many nations have.

[12:10 p.m.]

I’ve looked into the acquisition, even, of parcels that have reverted to the Crown in some areas of B.C. For whatever reason, they aren’t sold anymore. Even if they were parcelled out in, say, the late 19th century, and they’ve reverted, the Crown or the ministry — I’m sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology — simply won’t sell them.

I have a family member who suggested that was because homesteading was eliminated in the 1970s because too many people were just coming and staking claims. And then by the mid-1980s, even the sale of parcels for residential tenure purposes was not available, because there would be other issues with people just coming and buying up vast tracts of land for residential purposes. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.

I’ve investigated being able to, specifically on a free-trade basis, acquire land in the province, and that doesn’t seem to be possible, at least not from the Crown. But anywhere in the province that was arable and we could have gardens and hold livestock and have access to water would be acceptable to us. The issue is really having enough land for us to have the whole nation together so that as our Elders age, which I understand is a problem for everyone, we can have a place where those of us who are younger can take care of them.

It was really difficult watching my uncle age in Abbotsford and not being able to make the trips back and forth and him not being able to make the trips back and forth into the city. With COVID, that really drives home to me that, you know, this is an ongoing problem that could come up at any other time. So what are we to do to all be together to take care of one another? That’s our real focus.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. Understanding and fully respecting your oral traditions, is there a presentation which will be coming in, in writing or maybe a past one that you’ve put in? I know you’ve presented to the committee before. I just wanted to check because you raised a lot of really important points that I’d like to keep at the forefront of my mind.

R. Tavender: I did present last year for Standing Water Nation and the year before for Standing Water Nation, I believe. I’m not sure how the previous presentations were listed. If there’s anything that you could let me know that you would like me to write down and consult with the other members of the nation about that would be helpful for you and that we’re allowed to divulge, because every nation has a right to its own internal and external polity…. So if there’s anything that could help you, could you give me a sense of what might be helpful?

M. Dykeman: Absolutely. With the number of days of consultations we do, I always like to be able to go back and look at what your top priorities are, so whatever you feel would be the most important information that you could provide would be fantastic.

I just want to thank you for your presentation and for taking the time to come out today.

L. Doerkson: I just wondered if I could get a better sense of what the size of your nation is, Robin.

R. Tavender: We haven’t done any formal census. We’re still in…. It’s much like the Métis Nation, where there’s a process of consulting with people who have familial ties based on genealogy or adoption or things like that. But we’re not as large as the Métis Nation.

We would be talking dozens of individuals. And based on, say, King Alfred’s allotment of lands back in England — just to use one barometer — that would be 30 acres of land to 120 acres of land. That was a hide, which was consistent with supporting a family. So we’d be looking at, perhaps, in the current situation, maybe a dozen families, at most.

But then if we’re planning for seven generations, well, how many people would we have in 100 years? How many in 1,000 years? How many in 2,000 years? It seems that many nations get into a situation where they’re told: “Okay, you have so many people.”

I recall something from one of the first Legislative Councils of B.C. I believe I read that each family, called Indian at that time, were allotted ten acres. But then ongoing, as they have children and they have children and they have children, how do those acres then get added onto the allotment?

Many Indigenous people were nomadic. They travelled and camped and travelled and camped. So how does a permanent land base then be allotted to Indigenous peoples on an ongoing basis, if that’s something they’re interested in? I can’t speak for any nation but my own nation.

But we’re not hundreds of people. We’re not thousands of people. We’re, you know, that size.

L. Doerkson: To be clear then, it’s dozens of people that we’re talking about, and your ask is for the government to sell you property, not give it.

R. Tavender: We’d be willing to see if we could provide enough money to buy the land. We’d be willing to look at that. If the government would give it, obviously, who’d say no to free land? But obviously, we see ourselves…. If you pay for something, you tend to care for it more. I think that’s sometimes the way it works out, so we’d be perfectly willing to enter into negotiations, nation to nation, to purchase land.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Robin. That concludes this part of the morning session. Thank you for sharing this perspective with us. I, for one, will be trying to find out more about Standing Water Nation.

Again, thank you for your time.

We’ll recess for lunch until 1:20.

The committee recessed from 12:15 p.m. to 1:22 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We’ll now proceed with the next round of presentations — the afternoon round.

Our first presenter is Casey Edge, Victoria Residential Builders Association.

Casey, you have five minutes. There should be a light at the front of this desk. It will turn green when you have two minutes left. We’ll signal you when you have 30 seconds left so you know to wrap up. The red light means your five minutes is up. Then we’ll open it up to questions from the members for roughly another five minutes. So whenever you’re ready.

VICTORIA RESIDENTIAL
BUILDERS ASSOCIATION

C. Edge: Good afternoon, Chair and committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. My name is Casey Edge, executive director of the Victoria Residential Builders Association, a non-profit promoting professionalism, consumer protection and housing affordability. We have 190 members, of which the majority are contractors on Vancouver Island.

The time has come to admit that the long-standing provincial policy of municipal self-determination has failed an entire generation of millennials trying to purchase a home. All kinds of mythical explanations for rising prices have been used and demand-side taxes implemented, all to no effect. We continue to experience historic lows of housing inventory, and prices continue to spiral upward.

The recent update by B.C.’s Ministry of Finance reports the property transfer tax revenue is up $360 million due to “higher prices and limited inventory.” The increased revenue may be a plus for the government, but it’s all on the mortgages of a shrinking number of young families able to afford a home in British Columbia.

The reason for a short supply is population growth from a large demographic of millennials starting families and a 55 percent increase in immigration in recent years. Most new Canadians settle in B.C. and Ontario, and we have an obligation to welcome them with reasonably affordable housing. That’s not going to happen without responsible regional planning, which does not exist under a governance structure of municipal self-determination.

CRD’s claims of regional growth and housing strategies are also a myth in an environment of 13 official community plans. Recent mandatory housing needs reports reveal local obstruction, including Metchosin with zero purpose-built rentals.

Non-profits report they avoid Oak Bay when developing their affordable housing projects. It is simply not credible to defend municipal self-determination when a core municipality like Oak Bay is able to deem duplex zoning and secondary suites illegal in a housing crisis, especially considering that the municipality shares a border with the University of Victoria.

[1:25 p.m.]

We have had federal election candidates promise to spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars to build government housing while 200 development applications gather dust in the district of Saanich. At a rate of 14 reviewed annually by council, it will take 14 years to get through the existing applications.

As we speak, the district of North Saanich has an influential and vocal anti-development group, some past members of council opposing even a review of their official community plan.

This did not happen overnight. B.C. governments of every political stripe have supported the policy of municipal self-determination and, therefore, undermined responsible regional planning. This is despite the warning in David Foot’s book Boom, Bust and Echo over 20 years ago that a demographic wave was coming. The only solution for boosting housing supply and affordability is mandatory regional planning and prioritizing housing over municipal autonomy. This is necessary for infrastructure such as transportation, sewer and water and is also true for housing.

In 1974, long before the awareness of climate change, Edmonton, in the heart of oil and gas country, started their LRT with a population similar to Victoria’s today. Yet with the knowledge of climate change, the B.C. government and CRD municipalities have not come together to develop a single regional plan for housing and LRT to reduce West Shore traffic. Over the past several years, it has become very clear that we can either have more housing affordability and responsible infrastructure development or have municipal self-determination, but we can’t have both.

Thank you for your time today.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Casey. I’ll now ask members of the committee if they have questions.

M. Dykeman: Will you be submitting a written submission?

C. Edge: I’ve sent the submission in.

M. Dykeman: I’m sorry. I must have missed it. I was looking…. Oh, I see. It was initials. Sorry about that; I apologize. Thank you for putting that in.

J. Brar: Thank you, Casey, for coming and making a presentation about this very important issue to everyone, to the people of British Columbia, on housing affordability. There are a number of things that people are saying. In the federal election, as you mentioned, the promise was made that they’re going to ban the foreign buyers, and other stuff. Other people recommended other things, but you’re recommending mandatory regional planning to deal with this issue.

C. Edge: Yes.

J. Brar: I just want to understand. Combined with, probably, LRT — that’s what you’re suggesting, right? — what will mandatory regional planning…? What do you achieve out of that?

C. Edge: Well, it’ll create the appropriate zoning for more housing. For instance, a municipality like Oak Bay wouldn’t be able to ban duplexes, which in this day and age is an absurd zoning policy — a simple duplex on a lot. It’ll also identify your transportation corridors. In Alberta, as an example, the Minister of Municipal Affairs has the power to amalgamate municipalities in the interests of housing affordability and transportation infrastructure. Having small municipalities with their own community plans is just a non-starter in that province.

This province has promoted municipal independence, and this has been to the detriment of regional planning, especially in greater Victoria.

J. Brar: Are you recommending this for greater Victoria or throughout the province?

C. Edge: Well, I believe that Vancouver has something like 17 independent municipalities as well. The supply shortage is very clear now — the lack of inventory. The property transfer tax is spiralling upward as a result of rising housing prices, and that’s the result of lack of inventory. The inventory is being choked at the municipal level.

As I pointed out, there are 200 development applications in the district of Saanich, as we speak — some for multi-family, simple subdivisions, those kinds of things. They go through this gruelling, expensive process of trying to please small community associations, because that’s where the councillors get elected.

[1:30 p.m.]

Having a policy of increasing immigration by 55 percent in this country…. It used to be about 200,000 immigrants a year; now they’re boosting it up to about 400,000 a year. Most of those immigrants come to British Columbia, specifically Vancouver and Toronto, expecting to have a reasonable, affordable housing supply. As you promote population growth under the existing circumstances of small municipalities dictating housing, it’s not credible.

J. Brar: Just a last question, if there’s nobody else, Madam Speaker.

J. Routledge (Chair): There are some other questioners, but go ahead.

J. Brar: There has been discussion for too long about this in the permitting process — a municipality taking too much time and the province doing something about that. But the mandatory regional planning will not do anything with that.

C. Edge: Well, what will happen is that the municipalities will be told: “These are the appropriate corridors for density housing.” There won’t be a debate in terms of your official community plan as to whether you want to have duplexes or not. If you’re a core municipality, you’ll be expected to have higher density.

So the CRD’s regional planning is not credible, because it depends on 13 official community plans, and they’re all saying: “We don’t want any more housing.” You don’t have a single purpose-built apartment in Metchosin or in the Highlands. This is not an ALR issue. This is an issue of people who don’t want multi-family housing in their municipalities.

J. Routledge (Chair): Mike has a question — and Ben. We’ll probably…. We are out of time, but two quick questions.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Casey. Just for clarity, Metro Vancouver supports 21 municipalities. Their regional growth strategy is embraced by Metro Vancouver, and it’s a 25-year vision. My question is: why can’t that happen here?

C. Edge: Because the so-called regional plan in the CRD is dependant on the agreement of the small municipalities, who will not agree to a regional plan unless it meets their official community plan. The regional plan does not override the smaller official community plans. How is it possible to say that we have a regional plan for housing when Oak Bay deems duplexes illegal?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Casey. That was good to hear somebody speaking out about this.

However, I think that one of the things that we’re up against is the political willpower to deal with this. Having been Minister of Municipal Affairs dealing with the 11 or 13, it is not that easy to get consensus. We tried to do a sewage treatment system here and couldn’t get agreement. But I admire and appreciate that people are thinking like that.

From a cost point of view, there’s a recent report out that CMHC and the province of B.C. looked at, and it did talk about timelines. It’s one of the recommendations that government’s considering. I think that timelines, or timeliness, in the application process certainly will help force the issue and having to make decisions.

But you raise another really valid point about the lack of integration in terms of the longer-term vision of what this is going to look like — the southern tip of Vancouver Island. I think that there are options out there, and it’s going to take the political willpower to get there.

I want to ask you — as a builder — how much the step code has increased costs or is likely to increase costs in terms of new home construction today?

C. Edge: Well, what you have is…. The step code is not a step code. It’s a leap code. That was a misnomer. That’s another myth.

The public thinks that the increase in energy efficiency takes place in steps — that’s what the title tells you — when, in fact, you have municipalities going from building code into step three and then leaping into step five. So you have several municipalities in Vancouver leaping into step five. Step five will add about $100,000 to the cost of your home in this market. We crunched the numbers on step three: about $30,000 added cost to the home.

[1:35 p.m.]

That’s not just our concern. Our concern is that we follow issues such as radon, which is being investigated by the national building code. The B.C. building code has an agreement to harmonize with the national building code. They circumvented that and implemented the step code, while the national building code right now is investigating the impact of radon on very energy-efficient homes.

An SFU prof tested homes in Vancouver — West Vancouver is an example that’s considered to be low radon in British Columbia — and found very high levels of radon. Radon without proper mitigation…. There is no mitigation required in many of these areas. Very energy efficient homes draw…. You create a vacuum, and it draws through the ground, through cracks and holes in the foundation, radon into your home. They have higher levels of radon. It’s the second leading cause of lung cancer.

We’ve already gone through leaky condo, urea-formaldehyde, asbestos insulation. The unintended….

J. Routledge (Chair): Excuse me, Casey. We’re way over time. If you could just….

C. Edge: Well, all I’m saying is that before you increase energy efficiency, do your due diligence on behalf of consumer protection. It’s not just a money issue, but the money issue is very big in British Columbia, with the highest housing costs in Canada.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Casey, on behalf of the committee. We’ve had a lot of presentations about grappling with the issue of lack of housing, and your presentation is a very important piece to that puzzle. Thank you for that.

Our next presenter is M.J. Whitemarsh, B.C. Common Ground Alliance.

B.C. COMMON GROUND ALLIANCE

M. Whitemarsh: This is probably my third or fourth time here representing the Common Ground Alliance, and it is a common problem that we speak to. You do have a written report in your folder, so I’m not going to regurgitate it. I’ll just give you some highlights.

Last year when we were here, we related the increased impact of homeowners during COVID tackling home improvement projects. We call them our weekend warriors, usually, but last year they became everyday warriors. The incidences of damages to underground infrastructure almost duplicated what we had had for the whole year the year before.

This committee determined that they would give a recommendation, and recommendation No. 109 said that it would require all homeowners to contact B.C. One Call prior to digging on their property to avoid any damage to underground infrastructure. For that, we were grateful. However, we’re not sure what’s happened to it since then. But I’m sure somebody somewhere is doing something.

Our recent challenge has been with election signs. We had election signs being pounded into the ground at intersections and also people in their front yard, breaching waterlines and natural gas lines.

People think they don’t have to call before they dig, but they do. Underground pipes, power lines and cables may be closer to the surface than you think. Digging in the wrong place, even with a trowel when you’re digging in your garden, can breach an underground line. You will find out if you talk to Minister Farnworth that that happened to his own dad in his backyard.

Then what happens is it cuts off services to entire neighbourhoods. People have no power. The first thing they do is call 911. First responders are taken from where they need to be, and they’re out checking what’s happened.

As a safety consortium, BCCGA hopes that this practice — calling B.C. One Call first — becomes as natural as wearing a seatbelt when you get into your car. But since I’ve been here four years in a row talking about this in different instances and how it’s growing…. I have colleagues at the table here that have joined me on podiums to speak of it. You’ve got to ask yourself: without government intervention, how are we ever going to get people to comply? What more can we do to protect our underground infrastructure, the workers that work on it, businesses and myriad others that are impacted by damage?

This summer we wrote to six ministries, because ours is not a unique incidence for one ministry. We have multifaceted industry impact. We hit a lot of them. Underground infrastructure hits a lot. So we wrote to six ministers, and we asked them to join us in a cross-ministry task group and see if we together could find a solution to amplify and reinforce the importance of underground safety.

I’ve only had two responses. I can’t say…. I would love to say that it was an overwhelmingly good response, but it was not. We don’t know what else to do.

[1:40 p.m.]

I’m here on behalf of BCCGA to ask if this committee will recommend this year that an intergovernmental task force be set up. Whatever it costs to put it in, we will come with the money and match it as much as we can, out of the bit of money that we do have, to make sure that we get some conclusion to this.

Ten years ago, when we started down this road, we wanted it legislated. We’re not sure legislation is where we need to go, but we do need to do something. It could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, and it can happen next year that somebody is going to break a main line, and you are going to impact everybody’s traffic going home from work one day. Hospitals won’t be able to get ambulances to them. It will be horrible. We don’t want that to happen.

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

I’ll now ask the committee if they have any questions.

L. Doerkson: Thank you, M.J., for your presentation. You said that it doubled — the damage that was done by not calling. Can you give a sense of what that has cost the taxpayers over the last year to make those repairs?

M. Whitemarsh: No. I’m sorry. I can’t. But I will get as close as I can. I could probably give you 2018 statistics, but because statistics that are put in are voluntary, it’s like herding cats to try and get it all together. But it is considerable.

L. Doerkson: I can appreciate the herding cats comment, but I think that that would be a significant selling feature for your project — you know, to be able to show — because I can imagine that the damage is very significant, and I can imagine that it has cost taxpayers a lot of money.

M. Whitemarsh: Well, it would have. Last year, with our presentation, we did give a four-month window of how many more damages had happened during the first four months of spring. Every year in April, we do a Safe Digging Month. We have an event, and we have an MLA breakfast or a lunch, and we go through the statistics and everything that is there. In that four-month window last year, it was about $3.6 million — four months — and that was only homeowners.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, M.J. That’s frustrating — to do what you’re doing and we’re getting worse statistics. How do you see the intergovernmental committee being helpful and effective?

M. Whitemarsh: Well, Ben, because we don’t belong to one particular ministry…. For a long time, Peter Fassbender, when he was the minister here, started working with us, as did Greg. Then Minister Farnworth thought Public Safety should look after it, but we hit so many other different ministries that there really isn’t one ministry that you can say that the policy or the procedure for that particular ministry includes underground disturbance. It’s huge.

On federal government lands, you cannot dig unless you call before you dig in that particular province or area. Provincial lands don’t do that, and it’s hard to get a lot of municipalities to comply either, because they’re so fractured.

G. Kyllo: Well, thanks, M.J. It seems to me that pulling the different ministries together to have that initial conversation and getting some agreement at the outset shouldn’t be too monumental a task. You also indicated that your organization is willing, where you can, to even match and contribute towards some of the funding to these initial consultations.

M. Whitemarsh: Absolutely, yeah.

G. Kyllo: Well, I don’t think what you’re asking is insurmountable by any stretch. I’m hoping that the committee will be willing to….

M. Whitemarsh: It’s all about public safety.

G. Kyllo: Absolutely, and we’ve certainly seen that in other jurisdictions, where somebody happens to hit the wrong line at the wrong time. As you’ve indicated, it can be extremely costly, and the preventative side is something we should certainly be focusing on as a province, so thank you for your presentation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes. Thanks, M.J. This has been very enlightening, and I look forward to our deliberations and to figure out what we can do to promote this kind of safety.

Our next presenter is Aaron Sutherland, Insurance Bureau of Canada.

Aaron, you have five minutes to make your presentation. The light will come on green when you have two minutes left. We’ll indicate when you have 30 seconds left and it’s time to wrap up. Red light when you hit five minutes, and then we’ll open it up to questions.

[1:45 p.m.]

INSURANCE BUREAU OF CANADA

A. Sutherland: If I get to 30 seconds, I’m rambling, so we’ll be lost.

Just in light of today’s different format than we usually do — similar to M.J., I’ve been here a few times; I’ve met quite a few of you — I thought I’d just keep it fairly brief in my remarks, but it’s certainly been a busy time for the insurance industry in the last few years in this province. I’d leave as much time as possible for questions.

I’m Aaron Sutherland. I’m with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. We’re the national association of Canada’s home, business and private auto insurers. Today, when we think about Budget 2022, what we would strongly recommend…. I’ll focus on three things, though there’s many more in our submission.

The first would relate to the province’s climate adaptation strategy. The last time that document or that plan was updated was 2010. To suggest it’s woefully out of date is a bit of an understatement. In Budget 2022, given the increasing impacts we are seeing from our changing climate, we would strongly recommend that a significant focus be on increasing investment in measures to better protect our communities from the new weather reality that we face.

What we’ve seen in Lytton from the wildfires this year and in other communities across the province — in MLA Kyllo’s, Stewart’s and other regions — has been absolutely devastating and is an indication that much more needs to be done to protect our communities from that risk but also to understand that risk.

With the fires having brought so much destruction to our forests, when we think about the rains that are going to come this fall, that is going to bring a significantly increased flood risk and chance of flooding, which is, again, a further challenge for communities. Again, we would also recommend that the province increase its investment in measures to better understand the flood risk facing communities across the province and also redouble its efforts to better protect those communities going forward.

We constantly think about climate change as this future threat. In B.C., we’ve been a leader in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. We believe the province also needs to be a leader in adapting to the climate change that has already occurred. So that’s the climate risk.

The other piece I would mention is that the other big, natural risk we face in this province comes from an earthquake. There’s a 1 in 3 chance a significant earthquake will strike southwestern British Columbia within the next 50 years, and we’re woefully unprepared, particularly in this building.

We think much more needs to be done to better educate consumers and British Columbians about that risk and also just to improve our financial resiliency going forward. We are insurers, so that’s a key piece of consideration for us, and we would welcome a strong voice from the province of British Columbia in encouraging the federal government to, particularly, take stronger actions in that regard as well. Insurers are primarily regulated federally, and we’d like to work closer with the federal government on how we can improve our financial protection from earthquake. I’m happy to dive into the details, if you guys want to.

Then the third thing I would mention just relates to strata insurance. It’s no secret that we’ve seen significant challenges in the strata insurance marketplace throughout 2020. This year, the market is largely stabilizing. We’ve heard reports of premiums stabilizing or increasingly coming down.

That’s a good thing for consumers, but it shouldn’t be any reason for us to take the pedal off the gas as it relates to the important work government has done to bring in legislation last year, looking at how we can improve the risk management of strata corporations themselves. We haven’t seen the regulations to ultimately improve things there, so we would also love to see in Budget ’22, if not before then, really continued effort, continued investment, to reduce the risk facing strata corporations just to make sure that the challenges we saw in 2020 remain in 2020 and don’t rear their head around again in a few years.

There’s quite a bit more in the submission, but I’ll just pause there. Happy to take any questions.

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

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

L. Doerkson: I just wonder if you could expand on the last item that you were talking about — the cost of insurance for strata in 2020. What exactly drove that? I mean, I can imagine it was large claims, etc. Can you be a little more clear about that?

And thanks for the presentation.

A. Sutherland: It’s a complex question. What drove the challenges we saw were multifaceted, but it’s hard. It was a claims problem.

[1:50 p.m.]

We saw too many stratum making too many claims because rather than building out a plan to make repairs to the roof or what have you, they were simply waiting and making an insurance claim.

For a long time, it was a very competitive market. If one insurance company felt you had too many claims and said they were going to raise your prices, you could shop around quite quickly and find someone else who wasn’t. You wouldn’t necessarily see a premium impact for failing to make adequate repairs to your strata property.

In 2020, that all came to a head. Insurers — I think the regulator found — since 2017, if not before then, had been losing money selling strata insurance. So prices corrected about 40 percent. Before that time, prices had remained very stable and relatively flat for about a decade. It was just a simple…. Claims had been increasing, but premiums hadn’t increased to catch up to that. They have now.

Again, we haven’t heard as many challenges…. There are still some stratas facing challenges where they continue to have claims issues. But by and large, we aren’t receiving anywhere near the same number of concerns coming forward from strata corporations.

Again, I think if you focus on the fact that it was a claims problem…. How do you treat that? The best thing you can do is prevent those claims from happening in the first place. That’s where in B.C., our strata legislation has a few more holes in it than other provinces across the country as it relates to the requirements for building repairs and things like that. The legislation has been introduced to allow those holes to be closed, but the specific regulations to do that have yet to be brought forward.

We would, again, just suggest doing so with all urgency.

L. Doerkson: Thank you for that. You did say that they’ve now stabilized or, in many cases, are coming down now for these….

A. Sutherland: Yeah. I believe the regulator is going to do another data analysis either later this year or early next year.

We had Deloitte go out earlier this year and do a bit of an analysis of the market, talking to brokers, talking to strata corporations themselves. They found that premiums had stabilized, yes. We know anecdotally that a significant number are also seeing premium decreases as well, and that’s a good thing for consumers.

L. Doerkson: Thank you.

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

In light of the most recent wildfires that have happened…. I believe everybody in this room heard it loud and clear, whether or not it was their primary residences or their recreational properties. We couldn’t get insurance. Insurance premiums were skyrocketing and various things like that.

We also heard some of the successes with FireSmart programs that are out there that actually save people’s houses, whether or not it was through sprinklers or things like that.

Is there anything on the horizon, from the insurance industry, as to incentivizing — that’s the word I’m using today — somebody’s property for that fire insurance?

A. Sutherland: In terms of the incentives the industry is looking at, a key one is building materials in areas of fire risk. They’re looking at how they can better incentivize people to build with fire-resistant siding, fire-resistant roofing, materials like that, in areas where fire coverage is particularly low. That is certainly underway. You will see insurers increasingly bringing forward discounts to account for those.

I would flag that that’s just one piece of the overall premium puzzle there. We also need to…. As much as…. There’s only so much consumers themselves can do. They also need their community. We need to be, when we think about our land use and how we’re developing, taking that into account, as well, and making sure that these communities have the appropriate fire guards in place, the resources to actually contain what is an increasingly threatening risk right across the province.

As it relates to your comment that you couldn’t get fire insurance…. Insurance is widely available right across the province. There isn’t anyone who couldn’t obtain home insurance, which would include fire insurance, except at a time when their house is at imminent risk from a wildfire. Insurance is for unforeseen risk. So if there is a wildfire coming down the hillside behind you and you, at that point, decide to go out and see if you can find it, that’s a little bit different. At that point, it would be much more difficult.

I think we’ve got six areas under evacuation alert right now. Outside of those areas, you shouldn’t have too much of a hard time getting fire coverage right now across the province.

L. Doerkson: Just along that same line. Not so much a question but a comment.

Certainly, I was surprised at how many people were caught without insurance, not because of unforeseen risk but because they had just closed on a home or a property transfer had happened, right? It’s actually startling to me how many transactions left people very fearful for their properties. I’m not sure that anything can be done about that, but ultimately, all those folks closing during that time had huge risk, of course, to their property.

[1:55 p.m.]

A. Sutherland: I think what was a little bit different this year than in past years is…. Usually we’re able to get these fires under control quite quickly, and then these restrictions ease back off. This year….

Think of the White Rock Lake fire. It was a couple of months before we ever got that thing under control, so these restrictions remained in place for far longer than we would have been used to. When you think about the number of properties that may have seen transactions that would have been caught up in this, it was quite a bit larger.

I do worry that this is just a sign of things to come — how concerning our wildfire seasons could be going forward. I mean, just look at California. I can’t remember a summer where that state hasn’t been on fire.

There are things people can do. We’ve worked closely with the realtors association to talk about the need to try to move home sales, if they live in the interior, outside the months of July and August. Also, if your home has been sold or you have purchased a new one, you can often work with your insurance company to transfer your coverage from your current home to the new residence or take over that person’s insurance coverage. There are some things you can do, if people have problems and that’s one of their challenges there.

One of the things my organization does is help break down some of those barriers and improve that understanding. My contact information is certainly available. If you do have constituents coming forward, facing challenges, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Again, one of the key things we want to do is make sure people have the help they need in their time of crisis.

L. Doerkson: I will reach out, for sure. I think an information piece on something like that for constituents throughout the entire province could be very valuable.

A. Sutherland: Yeah, absolutely.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Aaron. Actually, we are out of time now.

Your presentation has been thought-provoking. The theme that seems to be running through it is prevention — that we need to be thinking ahead, in terms of what the crises could be.

A. Sutherland: Absolutely. Next time you come here. Thanks so much for having me.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Nick Sandor, with the Men’s Therapy Centre.

Nick, you have five minutes. There is a lighting system. The light will turn green when you have two minutes to go. We’ll give you a signal when you have 30 seconds so that you know it’s time to wrap up, and then the red light will tell you that your five minutes are up.

MEN’S THERAPY CENTRE

N. Sandor: Thank you so much. Thank you for your time today and your service to our communities.

I’m here today to advocate for funding for gender-based violence. My name is Nick Sandor, and I’m the executive director of the Men’s Therapy Centre. My pronouns are he/him.

When we talk about gender-based violence, a lot of the work that we’re doing is supporting what happens afterwards, right? We’re not focusing a lot of our attention on how to prevent this from happening in the first place. It’s intervention-based. Jackson Katz, who is an activist and advocate for men really doing better in our communities to stop these problems from happening in the first place, likes to frame gender-based violence as a men’s problem. We need to start working with men.

We’re positioned in this interesting place where we’re supporting survivors of sexual, physical and psychological abuse and trauma, but we’re also working with people that cause harm. We see this in the statistics and the work that we do every day. Men who experience sexualized violence as boys go forward in their lives, when they don’t have support, and they tend to recreate those behaviours that happened to them. We see this in models of cycles of violence.

We’re one of the few agencies in the country that does this work. If we actually want to lower the rates of violence against women, especially Indigenous and trans women in our communities, we have to be working with the men. We have to stop these cycles of violence.

Today I’m going to share a little bit more about what we do and, really, what we need. The financial breakdowns of what we’re advocating for are in the report that I provided.

Our services see about 250 to 300 men a year for trauma-based counselling. Most of that is individual. We do groups. We do victim services and community outreach.

It is very challenging work. When we work with these men, we don’t have access to services like safe houses and other resources for men. We’re going well beyond that counselling role in this work, and we’re exhausted. We have a wait-list of over 100 men. Our therapists are burnt out. They’re volunteering so much of their extra time just to support these men because we’re worried about the men on these wait-lists.

[2:00 p.m.]

We have men that continue to live in abusive households because they have nowhere else to go. There isn’t a safe house for these men. If we can work with these men who are in that space of experiencing violence but also perpetuating violence, we can actually change that. But we need the resources.

We have the skills. We have the drive. We have the capacity to do that work, whether it’s more workshops on consent, whether it is supporting men that have caused harm and creating resources for them to change those behaviours. We have the knowledge, the skills and the capacity to do that, but we don’t have the financial resources.

Currently for most of our operations, our funding comes from fee for service, community grants and private donations. We do have a couple of grant programs through the Solicitor General’s office. But most of it is the work we’re doing out in the community. It would be great to see the government help to provide support for operations costs so that we can really lean into this work and make a change in the amount of sexualized violence and other forms of trauma that are happening in our community.

There are opportunities for program funding and lateral growth, but that’s not what we need. We really need to strengthen our core operations and our counselling services. A lot of this program-based funding…. Organizations such as ourselves are using it to try to prop up our operations. What results is that our operations aren’t run properly. Nor are these programs that we apply for and these grants.

The other thing that I want you to consider is, as one of our clients put it: without places like the Men’s Therapy Centre, these men have nowhere else to go. On a political, social and cultural level, we see what’s happening with the divisiveness in our culture.

When these men don’t have a place to share their stories, when they’re not believed, that’s where they find belonging in places like incel groups, in alt-right groups. We see a growth in these groups. We can, in the work that we’re doing, catch men and offer them a different alternative than more of those, I guess, discourses and ways of thinking that do cause so much harm.

I’m really excited to do this work in the community. We have great community partners, like VSAC and Peers, and collaboratively, we can work together to support diverse people in our community. When we work with men, that also includes gender non-conforming folks, and we do lots of learning and lots of consultation to work with BIPOC folks, our queer and LGBTQ community, newcomers. There’s really a diverse set of how we think about masculinity and masculine-identifying folks.

The other thing I’m worried about is the ability to actually keep these services going in the future. We’re struggling to get by. Without these services, I don’t know where these men are going to go.

On a personal note, I know what this feels like. When I was eight years old, I was sexually assaulted by a medical professional. It took me about 20 years to be able to actually talk about that and find the right supports for that. I’ll say that the effect it had on my own self worth, my intimate relationships in my life…. I had a lot of unlearning to do.

I know for a fact that the men that come in…. I see the change in them every day. I see that people believe them, that they’re supported. I see them acting different in their relationships. We can seriously make an impact on gender-based violence if we start working with men and changing the way we think about masculinity.

Thank you so much for your time today.

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

Questions from the committee?

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Nick, for your presentation. There’s an awful lot of emotion in that presentation, for sure.

My question. You’ve got 100 on a wait-list. You’re coming here with some specific funding, and we have your other partners speaking right after you as well. What time frame…? When we give a certain amount of money, how long does it take to clear off that wait-list?

N. Sandor: I’ve recently been able to hire more counsellors. Our biggest issue is, because we’re a non-profit with very little financial resources, we have a heck of a time keeping counsellors, right? We’ll keep them for a year or two, and then they’ll go to Island Health or private practice.

There’s a lot of interest in working because of the specialized type of therapy that we offer, but we can only usually keep people for two or three years before they’re off. That’s such a loss of knowledge and resources as well.

[2:05 p.m.]

Also, sometimes we have to be really careful about how that impacts the men accessing services, because we’re leaning into a space where we’re working with really inexperienced counsellors because they’re the only people willing to work for the wages that we offer.

J. Brar: Do we have more centres like yours in the province? That’s one thing I would like to know. Second, at this point in time, do you have any funding at all from the province or federal government or any other level of government?

N. Sandor: Absolutely. So provincial funding comes through the Solicitor General’s office, and for long-term funding, we receive about $74,000 through civil forfeitures for youth crime prevention, which is one of our specialized programs. The other funding we receive is about $93,000 a year for our community-based victim services program.

I mean, we do work in collaboration with a lot of folks in the province, kind of catching different areas of this work. But we’re one of the few, I guess, counselling-based services that has the victim services support and the counselling support specifically working with men.

The one other service that I guess I could call our sister organization is the B.C. men’s sexual assault centre in Vancouver. Our organization was actually born out of that organization. They dropped the Victoria branch, and since 2003, the two founders of that organization picked up that work. So we do work closely in collaboration with them.

Otherwise, it’s national bodies, like white ribbon, Next Gen Men — folks that are working to address healthy masculinity — and, of course, our local partners, like Peers and VSAC, that provide support for other types of folks.

Thank you for your questions.

J. Brar: Is there any other province providing constant, annual operating funding for these kinds of programs?

N. Sandor: Not to the best of my knowledge, no. I know there are a couple similar services in Ontario, but that’s about it in Canada that is actually doing trauma counselling with explicitly masculine-identified and non-gender-conforming survivors of sexual assault.

J. Routledge (Chair): I don’t see any other questions. So, Nick, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for your presentation and thank you for the work that you do. We talk a lot about gender-based violence and what we can do to support the survivors of gender-based violence. What you’ve addressed is healthy masculinity, which of course, is key to that and is part of the prevention. And also thank you for sharing your story.

N. Sandor: Absolutely. I appreciate that. Thank you for your time and your service in our community. It means a lot.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Sophia Ciavarella, representing Peers Victoria Resources Society.

Sophia, you have five minutes. There’s a little lighting system. When the light turns green, it means you have two minutes left. You’ll get a signal when you have 30 seconds, which is time to think about wrapping up. And then the red light says your five minutes are up.

PEERS VICTORIA RESOURCES SOCIETY

S. Ciavarella: Hello, everyone. My name is Sophia Ciavarella, and on behalf of the Peers Victoria Resources Society, we are proposing several recommendations that support increasing safety and access to needed violence prevention services for sex workers in British Columbia.

Founded in 1995, Peers Victoria is a grassroots, multi-service and peer-based organization for local sex workers. Sex workers face multiple barriers to accessing justice or support after experiences of violence. In two recent B.C. studies, it was found that sex workers report higher rates of violence compared to other Canadians and lower confidence in the police.

In a 2016 study from Victoria, when asked about the past 12 months, 25 percent had been touched against their will in a sexual way, 20 percent had been forced into unwanted sexual activity, 18 percent had someone take or try to take something from them by force, 13 percent had been attacked while working and 10 percent had been attacked or threatened with a weapon. However, only 14 percent of these cases were ever reported to the police, and of those, only a third ever resulted in an arrest.

In Victoria, 63 percent of sex workers say they have little to no confidence in the police. In a 2015 study conducted by SWAN Vancouver, 95 percent of immigrant and migrant sex workers said that they would never consider talking to the police about violence.

Considering sex workers’ distrust of the police and reluctance to access conventional justice services, Peers Victoria makes the following recommendations.

One, increase funding for a provincial bad date and aggressor reporting system. Bad date and aggressor reporting represents an alternative to conventional reporting. Here a bad date refers to a negative encounter between a sex worker and a client, ranging from harassment to violence.

BDAR systems allow sex workers to report these violent encounters to the community, distribute offender descriptions to the rest of the community and allow sex workers to better screen clients and improve their safety. While sex workers are distrustful of the police and are afraid of stigmatization or criminalization when reporting violence, community-led initiatives such as BDAR are critical to sex workers’ safety.

[2:10 p.m.]

Currently five partners, including Peers, are developing a provincewide BDAR tool. We are pleased to receive provincial funding for this program through civil forfeitures, but additional funding is needed to increase the number of sex workers and community organizations that can participate in the project’s consultation phase, and there is insufficient funding to sustain a project after initial implementation. At such an early stage, funding is critical to launching the project effectively.

Two, increase funding for peer-based services. As an alternative to conventional justice services, research has found increased access, service retention and rates of satisfaction for sex workers when services are provided from a peer-based model. Peer-based models have also been shown to increase trust and disclosure among sex workers, allowing them to better spread awareness in instances of human trafficking and exploitation within the community.

Peer support, advocacy and safe in-circle spaces are also recommended by existing research as key needs for survivors of sexual exploitation. In fact, sex workers’ own successful efforts to prevent and reduce sexual exploitation in their own communities has already been recorded in Canada. Provincial funding would increase the success of and build infrastructure for these initiatives.

Three, increase focus on core funding and funding for ongoing services over pilot projects and new initiatives. Most public and private funding streams that are relevant to violence prevention for sex workers are focused instead on human trafficking. This perpetuates ongoing policy misunderstandings that conflate human trafficking and sex work. This isolates sex workers who are not victims of trafficking, but do experience violence, from necessary resources and services. Moreover, funding which does exist is short-term and emphasizes pilot projects or new initiatives over core funding or maintaining ongoing services.

Without stable funding, sex workers are left in a precarious situation, where life-threatening, and necessary service could end abruptly with the loss of a single grant. Provincial funding for violence prevention services for sex workers would fill a critical gap in supports for a population that faces disproportionate violence. Additionally, options for core funding and funding for ongoing services will create sustainability of services and a continuity of care for sex workers accessing necessary supports.

As established by the second recommendation, a plethora of research exists on violence prevention services for sex workers. Furthermore, local agencies on the ground are best suited to understanding the needs of their own communities. Provincial funding for peer and community organizations will ensure that money is going to initiatives that are already connected with and trusted by local sex workers, the people who best understand what is needed for violence prevention and supporting survivors in those communities.

Thank you for listening.

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

I’ll invite members of the committee to ask questions, seek clarification.

J. Brar: Thank you, Sophia, for coming to make a presentation for this very important group of people. I want to know: is there any help line for the sex workers, or is nothing like that available?

S. Ciavarella: There is not, but as I stated, we are developing a provincewide reporting tool, which could include a help line.

J. Brar: So that would be a help line.

S. Ciavarella: That could include a help line. We’re still developing the tool that it would be.

J. Brar: Do you have funding for that?

S. Ciavarella: We have funding to initially create the tool, but we don’t have funding to sustain it after the fact.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions? I don’t see any other questions, Sophia, but on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for your presentation and thank you for speaking up for sex workers and addressing the violence that they face and offering some concrete solutions to protect them.

Our next presenter is Elijah Zimmerman, Victoria Sexual Assault Centre.

Elijah, you have five minutes. The light will turn green when you have two minutes to go. You’ll get a signal when you have 30 seconds within which to wrap up and then red light when your five minutes is up.

VICTORIA SEXUAL ASSAULT CENTRE

E. Zimmerman: Thank you, Chairperson Routledge. Thank you, Finance Committee, for meeting with us today. I also want to express gratitude to Nick and Sophia for also presenting in a group together, as we do serve this community together in a form of collaboration that I’m grateful for.

The Victoria Sexual Assault Centre. We’re a feminist organization dedicated to healing, prevention and education for all women and trans survivors. I’d like to talk today just a little bit about, most specifically, our direct client services, although our prevention area is growing, and we do see a need for that.

I believe I sent around some things. I don’t know if you’re able to look at those or not. I just want to point out a few things that we offer for direct service, which is our clinic, which is a one-of-a-kind clinic, based here in Canada. I know there are other places trying to model after our clinic. This is something we’ve had in place for the last five years and is really meeting a need in our community.

[2:15 p.m.]

We also have an access line. That was truncated a few years ago from a 24-7 line. It’s just a Monday-through-Friday line now, and the evenings are staffed by volunteers. Of course, our counselling services — we see quite a few people in a year.

One thing I want to point out about our clinic…. It’s 24-7, 365 access. The clinic operates just like any clinic. Forensic nurse examiners come in to meet with survivors. It’s a more comfortable space. It has all the access to tests and any kinds of forensic kits you need.

We see about 128 sexual assault response cases per year in this community, and 70 of those are routed through our clinic. Some of those folks may have wanted to go to our clinic, but if there’s any kind of exacerbated issue with broken bones or any other kind of wound that needs to be attended to in the hospital, they do have to go there. In terms of those 70 folks, each one of those folks saved the province approximately $1,370, about $95,000 a year for the province, going through our clinic versus using emergency facilities in the community.

We also have a police interview room on site. It helps with survivors being able to go from one room to the next, if they want to do it at that time in a private space. They can also come back at another time.

I’d just like to point out that we do have known funding for that until 2023. I think, partly from this committee in the past, funds have been routed through the Ending Violence Association of B.C. and have gone to select sexual assault centres throughout the province.

Also, I want to point out at this time that we are a sizeable sexual assault centre, but there are many other sexual assault centres across the province in urban areas and core rural areas. Many of them are trying to get up similar programs, sexual assault response programs. They’re just getting started, but for them, as well, it’s after 2023. Where does the funding come after that? That’s a big question that we have.

To run the clinic successfully, with all the programming, all the materials, clinic coordination and administration, it’s about $300,000 per year, just to give you a cost on that.

For our access line, we get around 3,000-plus calls per year. It’s often our first point of contact with our services, whether that be for the clinic or the counselling or victim services. We currently have no dedicated funding for that, and that costs approximately $70,000 a year.

For our counselling, this is the bulk of a lot of our direct client services. We see at least 280 clients a year for crisis counselling, 268 for long-term counselling and about 200 clients for victim service counselling.

I do want to point out that we do have 250 people currently on a long-term wait-list. At this stage, even if we got the right funding, it would take us six years to meet all those people. So while we do have funding from PSSG that covers about 80 percent of the cost for this counselling service, and PSAC covers 20 percent, we figure there’s at least a 50 percent unmet need in our community for those long-term services, which we just can’t accommodate.

One of the things to point out in terms of crisis services for the summer…. Over the summer months, we had 12 sexual assault response team requests each month. In terms of different cases coming out, you may be familiar recently with someone who’s a driving school instructor who has allegations of sexualized violence. We get an increasing number of people also needing to connect with crisis counsellors because it has resurfaced trauma for them. We are definitely seeing a greater suicidality and greater homicidality with our clients, which is definitely a strain on our counsellors.

I’d really like to impress on you today, with my partners here from Peers and the Men’s Therapy Centre, that sexual assault is a public health issue. In that sense, we would advocate that the Ministry of Health get involved with some type of funding model for us. In particular, the B.C. health system…. Their priorities are urgent and team-based care, a focus on mental health and trans-inclusive services. That’s definitely what we’re doing, and I know my other partners are doing similar things.

In terms of urgent and team-based care, we have that with the clinic. That would require $300,000 a year.

For mental health care, it would be great to have one FTE, at around $100,000 a year, to ensure that we have some person in place for that.

Also, we are making…. All of us have endeavours for trans-inclusive services. That does cost money as well — to train everyone, to make the services available. To have $10,000 a year or $20,000 a year does not cut that when you need staff in place to run that.

We do have best-practice models. We definitely have the best practice models for a clinic in Canada.

Lastly, I just want to add here quickly that we need to be resourced to develop community-based, peer-based, Indigenous-led sexual assault response and long-term care programs as well. We’re currently working with the network…. We need funding to work with those partners in different band offices and local First Nations to ensure that it’s culturally relevant and culturally safe services for everyone in our region.

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

Megan has a question.

[2:20 p.m.]

M. Dykeman: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your presentation today but also for the submission. I really like the layout of it and how it’s set up almost like an infograph.

I’m wondering. In the part talking about additional funding needed to meet the demand, you start to talk about triaging. So you talk about triage 1, 2, group and long term. I’m wondering if you can provide just a little bit more information about that and what the impact has been and what the impact would be if there wasn’t additional funding.

E. Zimmerman: Thank you for that question. Triage 1 — those are folks who are youth, anyone who’s been sexually assaulted within the most recent 14 days and also Indigenous clients. I want to point out that for our clinic, we serve everyone 13 years and up — so all genders, all people.

Triage 2 are people who are in crisis, but maybe it’s a longer-term sexual assault beyond those 14 days.

Group folks — these are people who have probably already gone through our triage system. We’ve got four different groups set up over a six-month period that people can build skills.

The long-term — this is the only…. Regionally, I think, and provincially we have some funding for people to do long-term, one-year counselling to do deep trauma work.

So if we don’t have funding, what often happens is…. I think currently we have 25 people on our triage list for 2. We try to get everyone in triage 1 within a week, but what often happens is we have two or three access line workers. Once you have sexual assault response coming in a couple of times a week, those people are also working to support those people at the clinic, and it can be difficult to get back to everyone in a timely manner.

This is a main thing that, for us, would be a priority in terms of funding — to ensure that when someone calls, we can get back to them immediately. Just at this time, we don’t have the funds to have all the staff to meet the demand.

M. Dykeman: Just as a point of clarity, are you saying that at triage 1, a child could be waiting up to two weeks to have initial contact made?

E. Zimmerman: Unfortunately, that does happen, although we do, in our triage system, prioritize youth. So those we would get to as fast as we can.

This is a point for my staff that is quite painful, because, obviously, everyone understands the need to meet those folks immediately. We do know from data that with survivors, the sooner they’re met with care, the greater their potential is for long-term health and well-being. So the longer they have to wait, the more layered experience that they have of that trauma and more health care that they need, moving forward, which costs more money.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the in-depth answers. I appreciate it.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any additional questions?

Elijah, I want to thank you for your presentation and the work that you do. The Victoria Sexual Assault Centre is recognized for its leadership in this area, and your presentation has made it very clear why it’s recognized and why it’s important.

I’m certainly struck by the implications of someone going through a trauma of sexual violence, having the courage to make the call for help and then having to wait and the impact that that must have on your staff, of not being able to respond immediately when you know they need to.

E. Zimmerman: Thank you very much, Chair Routledge.

Thank you, Finance Committee.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Isobel Mackenzie, office of the seniors advocate.

OFFICE OF THE SENIORS ADVOCATE

I. Mackenzie: Thank very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon to members around the table. I think that you have a copy of a PowerPoint or a slide presentation I’m going to refer to some numbers in shortly.

As the seniors advocate for the province of B.C., I do thank you for this opportunity to share with you my priorities for the next provincial budget. I do want to begin by acknowledging the tremendous efforts of the past 18 months by all members of the Legislature in raising the issues of concern for seniors who live in long-term care. I know there has been significant investment of financial resources over the past year and a half to stabilize long-term care, and I recognize the impact on the budget.

[2:25 p.m.]

But while budget investments in long-term care are crucial, we cannot forget that 94 percent of seniors and 72 percent of those 85 and older still live independently in their own home, and there’s more we can do to better support their independence.

I will note that in the most recent budget, the seniors supplement, which is provided to the lowest income seniors, was doubled, and it is important to acknowledge this positive progress.

The main focus of my presentation today is an issue that I’ve spoken on before to this committee, and that is our home support program, and the financial anomaly we have in this province, with a system where we provide financial incentive to the individual to move to long-term care while the taxpayer is providing a higher subsidy for long-term care than they would for that person to be in the community.

I’m going to go refer now to these slides that talk about our home support challenge. Currently 67 percent of newly admitted residents to long-term care received no home supports 90 days or more prior to their admission. That’s the context within which we have done this analysis.

Our current client co-payment for publicly subsidized home support would require an individual with an income of $28,000 a year to pay $8,000 a year for a once-a-day visit of home support, which is almost 30 percent of their income. However, in long-term care, we cap the amount you pay in long-term care at $3,400 a month, regardless of whether your income is $56,000 a year or $156,000 a year.

When we look at the home support challenge, we can see that, number one, the co-payment is a challenge. It is too expensive for some who have no financial ability to otherwise provide home support. Care planning is not flexible. Scheduling can be fragmented. The public system does a very good job at delivering some types of home support services and is less successful at delivering other types of home support.

There are staffing challenges within the public system — limited capacity for overnight, live-in and morning services. It is estimated to cost about $44 an hour for each hour of publicly subsidized home support that is delivered.

If we go with client direct funding, which is a program that does exist but has capacity to grow in the province, the cost lowers to approximately $32.74 an hour. It can be flexible to client needs. It can reduce the staffing burden on health authorities, and we do have our CSIL model, or choices for support in independent living model, that can demonstrate the effectiveness of this.

The economics — this is what I really want to hit on here. The average cost of a long-term-care bed in B.C. is $84,680 a year, and that will rise. With the challenges we have committed to meeting, that will rise. Of that, $63,000 is subsidy, and $21,000 is resident co-payment. Eight hours of care in the community for 365 days a year would be about $77,000 a year.

If we calculated a client’s contribution to long-term care, deducted that from the amount of the bed and provided, if not all but a significant portion of, that subsidy for the person to be able to care for themselves in the community, I think we would be able to see some diversion.

Target for client direct funding. We did some analysis of admission to long-term care. So 40 percent of admissions to long-term care co-reside with a caregiver, 34 percent have no aggressive behaviours and 26 percent have what we call an ADL, or activities of daily living, score of four or less. All of those are people who could live successfully with supports in the community or in assisted living.

That is a total of 2,467, or 26 percent of our new admissions every year. If we were able to successfully divert even half of those, we would free up 1,233 beds a year. If we were to divert a quarter of those, we would free up just over 600 beds a year.

There’s another slide with more supporting data. The one I really want to draw your attention to is the distressed caregiver, of people who are admitted to long-term care, the percentage of with a distressed caregiver. When we look back in the client file, we are not finding the kinds of supports for that caregiver that the system is there to provide. We are not finding that they had home support. If they had home support, we’re not finding that they had very much of it, and we’re not finding that they were able to utilize adult day programs.

[2:30 p.m.]

We’ve got supports out there. We’ve got a group out there who clearly need the supports. We’re not connecting them. We need to find a better…. If we do that more successfully, we will increase our capacity in long-term care of much-needed beds and allow us to use revenues that will be needed for additional new beds, to refurbish the beds we have that are old — three to a room, or more, two to a room — and address the fact that not just do we need more staff; we need to pay the staff more. And that is going to be a significant budget pressure in the years ahead.

I’ll leave it at that and take questions.

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

Questions from the committee. I guess we’re a bit overwhelmed.

I. Mackenzie: Sorry. It’s a lot of numbers, and as I say, I would focus on the economic one to understand why we should be making this shift.

J. Brar: I just want to say thank you to you for the exceptional work. It’s very important to hear from you — raising these issues.

I. Mackenzie: Thank you very much.

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much for your presentation. The whole concept of aging in your home for longer periods just makes so much financial sense.

Where do you see the impediments? Why is government late to the table to provide the funding, to provide that extra assistance to allow people to stay in their homes longer? What could be done for those folks that maybe don’t have a voice and are maybe struggling and suffering in silence, so to speak, to make their point? It seems that the financial case is certainly there. We know that the cost of seniors, when they transition to long-term-care facilities, is much more significant and a much higher cost. Why do you see the hesitancy or, I guess, reluctance of government to get ahead of this?

I. Mackenzie: I’m not sure. It’s long-standing. The regulated client co-payment for home support has existed for the entirety of my career, which is 25-plus years. We are one of the few provinces that do it. It’s not done in Alberta, for example, or Ontario. So there’s the regulated…. I don’t understand. There is a reluctance to look at this co-payment. But that, I would argue, is half of the issue.

The other half of the issue is that the system is designed to make the easiest pathway into long-term care. I cannot emphasize enough that if you have 67 percent of new admissions to long-term care effectively going from zero care to total care, there’s a failure somewhere in the continuum. You will have catastrophic events that will trigger that, but they are few and far between. What you should be seeing is a slow progression, and for most people, that progression will end far short of the door of the long-term-care home. But you should be seeing some supports in the home, and then, if necessary, moving into a supported environment like assisted living.

When you look at it, our financial incentives to the consumer are driving them into long-term care. Yet our financial incentives as stewards of the public purse should be to move the money that way. If you do the simple math that says the average subsidy is — whatever I said there — $60,000 a year, think of the families, if you said to them: “We will provide you with $45,000 a year to support your mom at home, or your spouse at home. Could you do that?” Some of them will say yes. Not all — because they’ll have to contribute as well. But some could.

The other challenge is the cap. Regardless of your income, you pay a maximum $3,500 a month in long-term care. There’s nobody in British Columbia who is denied a public bed because they have too much money. That is simply not correct. We do a financial assessment. We take 80 percent of your income. We cap it at $3,600 a month. We do a physical assessment to determine that you physically require the bed, and that’s it. We don’t make a value judgment.

[2:35 p.m.]

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Isobel, for your ongoing advocacy for our seniors. I have a comment and then a question.

Caregiver burnout — thank you for highlighting it. It is a very serious, concerning and bigger issue than many people realize, and we’ve seen that. There is respite care that’s four hours, but I know, from my experience, that you get special permission and whatnot.

What are your thoughts about the recently added — I don’t know if it’s recently now; a couple of years — 24-hour care? I know it’s a patchwork between hospital, transition, while they’re waiting for long-term care. What was the feedback that you received?

Under the Better at Home care model…. Would you like to share some of your thoughts? Coming from health care, I know that was pretty helpful for us when we were trying to transition our seniors who now needed long-term care. Before, they would be waiting in hospital and not getting the care or the activities that they need. What are your thoughts on that program?

I. Mackenzie: The model of 24-hour care at home, which is generally for a short period of time and often accompanies a discharge from hospital, can be very successful and can divert an ultimate admission to long-term care. My office has done some work on that. We’ve got some data from some studies that show it can be effective. Again, not for everybody, but it can be effective.

Better at Home can also be highly effective. It has been expanded and is now in more parts of the province. With the work of the committee that your Chair was part of during the pandemic, we now have the 211 access number throughout the province, which is incredibly helpful. You can just phone 211 wherever you are in B.C., and they can look up how to connect you with whatever local agency is needed in order to provide those services. They can be key to keeping a person at home.

But the nuts and bolts of the caregiver distress comes when…. It’s not about doing the laundry or getting mom to the doctor’s appointment. It is when you cross that threshold and you need some serious help. That’s where I think we could do more.

We would be giving people what they want, and we would be, at a minimum, not spending any more. We could potentially save a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit. Everybody would be able to…. We would have more bed capacity. We could have more capacity in our formal home support program by taking out those people who could be diverted, because of their intense care needs, to direct care funding.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. A quick follow-up, Chair, if….

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re way out of time.

I. Mackenzie: Sorry about that.

J. Routledge (Chair): We could talk about this for a long time. I’m really sorry we have to cut it off. We have other people who are waiting to make a presentation.

I. Mackenzie: My apologies.

J. Routledge (Chair): Nothing to apologize for.

I want to thank you for your presentation. Thank you for your leadership and advocacy on this. I think that probably most of us in this room have loved ones who have been in long-term care, and probably not one of them said: “Oh boy. Can’t wait. I’m going to long-term care.” It’s been a traumatic experience, and we need to figure out ways to keep people at home where they want to be.

Our next presenter is Rick FitzZaland, Federation of Community Social Services of B.C.

FEDERATION OF COMMUNITY
SOCIAL SERVICES OF B.C.

R. FitzZaland: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. It’s a pleasure to be here meeting with you. We sent our presentation in, which I’m sure you have in electronic form. If I read it really, really fast, it takes me 25 minutes, so I’m not. I’m hoping you can read it for the detail that’s in there. There’s a lot of detail in there that’s important. I’m just going to hit a couple of highlights that I want to draw your attention to.

[2:40 p.m.]

First of all, for those of you who don’t know, the Federation of Community Social Services of B.C. is a provincial organization. We have over 140 member community-based community service organizations totalling over 6,000 employees and about $1.7 billion in budgets in almost every community in this province. It ranges in size from little bitty, one-person-with-volunteer organizations to very large, multi-billion-dollar organizations. It’s very typical of community social services.

I’ve been coming to this committee for eight years. If you look back at those presentations for the past eight years, you will see a litany of challenges that this sector faces. Just before the pandemic started, every one of those challenges persisted. Nothing had changed over that period of time. In fact, very little has changed in the positive over the last couple of decades.

During the pandemic, we have now, of course, layered other issues on top of the ones that we were facing up until that time. Now the situation we have is that the pandemic’s not over. The pandemic has amplified the mental health and addictions crisis in this province. We have the issues facing us from the pandemic, the issues that are increased with regard to mental health in this province, and addictions and the overdose crisis. All of these are layered on top of each other.

Eighteen months ago or so, Dr. Bonnie Henry asked me, asked our sector, to stay on the job. Our sector did stay on the job. When other businesses in other parts of the province had to close down and did close down, we did not. In order to stay open, sometimes it meant the executive director of an agency doing front-line work on the Downtown Eastside because we couldn’t get the employees. Either the employees had become sick or they were off the job because they had been exposed, etc. So the staffing shortage and recruitment and retention issues that we faced before the pandemic are now amplified to an extreme level.

Talking about the issues. I heard Isobel speaking, and I totally support her recommendations and know Isobel very well. These are challenging times for the long-term-care sector. But in the health sector, in many job classifications, the pay is as much as 40 percent more than the same job with the same requirements — education, etc. — and same duties as in the social service sector.

This gap in pay, this pay inequity between social services and health, social services and education, makes it almost impossible to keep the doors open. We have, in fact, lost a lot of agencies. We have agencies that many of the services they would like to be providing, they can’t provide, because they have to use the staff they have for the more emergent services that are required.

The other challenge facing us is that we are working very hard as a sector to live into truth and reconciliation and to decolonize this sector. Many of the problems that we see, that we are caring for people for, are the consequence of colonization with Indigenous people but also the impacts on increased sexual violence and other results from colonization. It is important that we decolonize this sector, yet we need government’s participation in that and partnership in that. We need the Indigenous communities and Indigenous agencies to be the leaders in that and not try to decolonize the sector using colonial practices.

These are the major challenges. I’m going to stop now because I’d like to hear your questions.

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

Megan has a question.

[2:45 p.m.]

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. I’ve had an opportunity to read your submission.

My question, I guess, is…. As I read through it, if we had to summarize what you identify as priorities for this report, it would appear that you’re looking for a 5 percent increase across all of the agencies that fall under this. That would be your recommendation to address the challenges. Have I summarized that?

R. FitzZaland: Yeah. Here’s the deal. The list of things that are needed in this sector to shore it up after so many years of neglect is long. What we’re doing is saying: “Okay, there’s one thing you could do. You could do that. That would help. That would get money into the core of these agencies that are faltering. That would be enough to start the process.”

M. Dykeman: All right. That’s great. Thank you.

Then just the second part of my question with that would be: if there was a necessity to look at this in an incremental way, where do you think the most urgent need right now sits? I do get, from your presentation, that there’s a crisis, from your report. But where do you see the starting point right now?

R. FitzZaland: For me, it starts with children. If we don’t start supporting families and children, especially Indigenous families and children, right now, we simply are downstream pulling the bodies out of the river instead of going up and fixing the bridge that people are falling off of, particularly in the area of mental health.

Mental health issues and addictions start in early childhood before there’s any diagnosis or any of the rest of it. It starts with the stress that young people are facing. We need to start relieving the stress that young people are facing.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Do we have any other questions?

It looks like there are no questions. It looks like, probably, most people have read your brief. We’ll spend more time digesting it and deliberating.

Thank you so much for your presentation, and thank you for the passion that you’ve shared, the urgency of us doing something about this. You’ve made it very, very clear that prevention is the best approach, and the importance of the social service sector. So thank you very much.

R. FitzZaland: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, committee members.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have one more presentation before we take a bit of a break.

Emily Rogers is here representing Together Against Poverty Society.

TOGETHER AGAINST POVERTY SOCIETY

E. Rogers: Thank you, Madam Chair. I recognize I’m the only thing in between you and a break, so I will try to be succinct.

Together Against Poverty Society is an anti-poverty legal advocacy organization that serves people on southern Vancouver Island. We represent people in government-decision-making processes as they relate to the Residential Tenancy Act, the Employment Standards Act and the Employment and Assistance Act.

Our work is hard. We often feel as though we are plugging holes on a sinking ship. One of the only things that keeps us going is the hope that we might be able to influence you, the government, to renovate the ship. So we really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and appreciate the invitation greatly. I’ll speak to you briefly about the three areas of work, the three pieces of law that we interact with the most.

Income assistance. We wholeheartedly support recommendation 9 of the basic income report, which would raise the disability assistance rates to the poverty line. We feel that it is a moral imperative to implement this recommendation and feel that it is extremely urgent that you do so.

Similarly, recommendation 25 of the basic income report asks that you combine the shelter and support portions of the income assistance provision and make that payment non-contingent on whether someone has housing. We similarly believe that it is urgent to do this.

[2:50 p.m.]

Finally, as it relates to income assistance, we believe that mental health services should be offered in schedule C of the Employment and Assistance Act for people with disabilities. This would mean that someone on PWD could access mental health services as part of the benefits that they receive. From our work, we know that a large proportion of people on PWD are receiving those benefits because they have a mental health–related disability, and it only makes sense for them to receive health care that’s related to that disability.

In regards to employment standards — I’ll move on to our second piece of legislation — we believe that this current government has made much-needed progress towards improving the legislation and improving workers’ rights in B.C. We’ve looked at the recent service plan, and the commitments in there are promising, including strengthened complaint mechanisms, increased proactive enforcement and developing precarious-work strategies to address the gig economy and workers therein.

We still see that there are significant failings at the branch, and the only way that you will be able to make true on these commitments is if you fund the branch. As it stands now, the branch is only responding to complaints that we made 18 months ago, before the pandemic. In a lot of cases, it means that justice delayed is justice denied. It’s simply not sufficient to come to a complaint 18 months later, especially for many of the most vulnerable workers who we represent.

Additionally, there has been mishandling of complaints at the branch due to understaffing. Regularly, branch workers are prioritizing voluntary resolution, as opposed to making sure that the employer is held accountable to the act and that the worker accesses justice. Time and time again, unfortunately, branch workers are giving our clients incorrect advice in an attempt to expediate the complaint.

We understand. It’s understandable that they would do that, but we believe that with increased resources we could prevent that. Thereby, we’re asking for at least an $11 million investment in the employment standards branch, which would bring us back up to a rate that we saw before, a few governments ago.

Finally, housing. I’m sure you’ve had many presentations on housing, and I will not belabour the point. In greater Victoria alone, we’ve seen 7,000 units of developer private market–built housing over the last five years. Yet my job feels increasingly desperate, urgent and impossible, as people from all walks of life come to us, losing their housing, unable to find housing and, certainly, unable to find housing that they can afford.

I can confidently tell you that many of my clients will die before they find housing. That’s just simply a reality. So a massive expenditure in affordable public housing is the most urgent thing that you can do at this time.

The severity of the housing crisis translates into increased demand at the RTB. At the RTB, it takes weeks for complaints to be processed and months for matters to be heard.

I’m going to move on to my last point. I see that I have 30 seconds.

The most cost-effective thing that you can do is vacancy control. I know it takes political will to do this, but it is the most cost-effective and important thing you can do, and it is the only thing you can do to stem the tide — to stop the bleeding, essentially — associated with this housing crisis. It ties the rent to the unit, rather than the renter, and it takes away the economic incentive for landlords to evict people. That is what we need right now.

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

Questions from the committee?

J. Brar: Thanks, Emily. You have covered a lot on that file. Thank you very much for all that information.

The first question I want to ask you is on income assistance. There’s always a debate as to what the right amount of income assistance is and where we go. You’re saying, basically: “Bring it to the poverty line.” Do we know what the cost will be if we bring it there? That’s one thing I would like to ask you.

The second one, related to that, is you were saying: “Don’t tie it to somebody renting a place.” I would like to know the logic or the argument behind it, if you can explain that to us.

E. Rogers: Sure. I’ll answer your first question, and then maybe ask you to repeat the second one. I’m not quite sure I caught it.

The cost associated with bringing disability assistance rates to the poverty line is included in the basic income report that the government completed a few months ago. I didn’t bring that figure with me, but it is included under recommendation 9 of that basic income report, and it’s fully costed in that report.

[2:55 p.m.]

J. Brar: The second one was that you were saying: “Don’t tie income assistance to renting a place.” I just want to know: what is the argument for that?

E. Rogers: The argument for that is that even if someone doesn’t have stable rent costs, they still have costs associated with living and the support portion of around $400 is simply not enough to survive. It’s simply not enough.

By tying those amounts, you give someone a fighting chance to even have the ability to find a place, to rent a place, to look presentable for those rental appointments, to organize oneself for those rental appointments and to have the resources that one needs to just survive to get oneself to those rental appointments.

J. Brar: My last question is vacancy control. We did put tax on that on the Lower Mainland. I don’t know whether that’s here or not. What do you recommend for vacancy control?

E. Rogers: Vacancy control is different than the vacancy tax. Vacancy control is a form of rent control in which the landlord would only be able to increase the rent by the allowable rent increase, regardless of whether there’s a change in tenants.

Right now, if a tenant is evicted or moves out, the new rent is unregulated. It’s set by the market. Oftentimes that’s 50 percent, 100 percent more than what the first tenant was paying. Rents really do double in between tenants, and that’s really escalating the cost of housing across the province.

The penalty for moving right now is $356. The cost of an occupied unit versus the cost of a unit on the market right now, the difference there, on average, is $356 for a comparable unit. That means that someone’s monthly cost of living increases significantly just by losing their rental housing and trying to find new rental housing. We’d like you to close that gap.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Emily, did you submit a written submission? No. Okay.

E. Rogers: We did not. We’d still like to if there’s time.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): You do. Until Thursday, five o’clock.

I do want to ask you a question. This is something that I heard from people in the Okanagan recently, that the absorption of a lot of the housing, doesn’t matter whether it’s affordable or not, has been taken away by things like Airbnb. I don’t know if you’ve looked at the impact of that in this market.

Obviously, COVID has probably impacted that somewhat, but the claim is that they’re making as much in a week as they’d make from renting and they have none of those controls that Jagrup just mentioned a minute ago. I don’t know if that’s been looked at by groups.

Another thing that I just recently came upon was that some of the landlords where utilities were included, because they don’t regulate them and they’re not their own, are separating those and now entering into a contract where the rent is one thing and the unregulated part is the utilities. I think that that goes with taxes and some of the other things that go along with it.

The rent controls might give that sense of security the rents aren’t going to go up, but there are costs that are outside pressures that the landlords are just passing along. That is a problem.

I don’t know if the vacancy control…. I’d like to know more about how that is, because the marketplace usually dictates. I still think that if it’s going up, that means that there’s not enough supply. That goes back to other, greater problems. The supply isn’t being addressed. That is municipal or provincial, something that we have to help incentify if we can.

E. Rogers: Yes. There’s a lot of content in those comments.

With regards to Airbnb, that is certainly a factor, although during the pandemic, we saw many of those units return to the market, and it didn’t make a significant impact. I will include some more information about that in our written report, so thank you for that cue.

Secondly — I’m trying to remember all the points that you made; they were good ones — cost that the landlord incurs that they’re passing along. Certainly, yes, although I have been in hearings in which the landlord is held accountable for the amount of utilities — residential tenancy branch hearings in which an arbitrator corrects the landlord on how much their costs actually are.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I’m sure.

E. Rogers: So there is a mechanism to address that already. Certainly, it is something that some landlords will continue to try.

Vacancy control is the larger one because there are zero regulations, and the landlord can lawfully increase the rent by whatever they want, which is the number one factor escalating the prices.

Even if we add supply, if there isn’t vacancy control, all of those units will continue to increase exponentially past what most people can afford. It’s the type of supply that we need. If you want to build a lot of affordable housing, then we might not need to have this conversation, but it’s type of supply that we’re really looking at.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, Emily, we’re out of time. I think we probably have lots of questions for you. You are a very credible advocate, and thank you for your leadership on this.

With that, we’ll take a recess until 3:10, and thanks again, Emily. You made a really good case.

We will recess until 3:10.

The committee recessed from 3 p.m. to 3:10 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Enid Elliot.

Enid, you have five minutes. There’s a lighting system. When the light turns green, it means you have two minutes left. We will give you a signal when you have 30 seconds left so you can be wrapping it up. Then the red light indicates that your five minutes is up. Then we’ll ask you questions.

ENID ELLIOT

E. Elliot: Okay. That sounds good. Thank you.

Well, good afternoon. I am Enid Elliot, and I’m an early childhood educator, teaching in the early learning and care faculty at Camosun College.

I’m grateful to be a visitor on the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking territory, where people have loved their children and cared for this place for thousands of years.

I represent a group of educators, practitioners and researchers, the nature-based child care advisory committee, who have actually just finished a Zoom call. I came rushing here from a Zoom call that we had with Katrina Chen. I’m really happy to be here to share a message with you.

Outdoor programs for children are not new. They are common in northern Europe and other parts of the world. In B.C., we have a growing number of outdoor programs for young children, but many of them are not licensed. Currently in our province, we license facilities, not programs, so programs that are outside all day have no regulations and cannot be licensed.

Parents want outdoor programs for their children. Aware of current research that illustrates the many benefits of being outdoors for children as well as the pandemic instructions to go outside, parents are choosing to have their children outdoors. Programs have been popping up to meet this demand.

These programs fill up fast and have waiting lists, and often they’re only half-day, so they don’t meet the demand for child care. These programs are not accessible to all parents, because without a licence, parents who need a subsidy to attend a program cannot apply for one. Also, the program will not be able to receive money that they may need to help support a child with extra needs. Another concern about not having the regulations or licensing is that there’s no oversight of these programs.

We need to move towards creating a category for licensing outdoor early childhood programs. Washington state has recently licensed outdoor programs. Like us, they faced a shortage of child care spaces, and this proved to be one avenue to creating more spaces. Like us, they had more and more outdoor programs that were operating without a licence, with parents choosing these programs for their children. And like us, not all parents there had access to the programs. They began to be concerned that there was no oversight or regulation for these programs.

Newfoundland also is currently looking at how to move forward with the category of licensing outdoor early childhood programs, as they also have realized this is an important issue, because outdoors, children move more — up to 50 percent more: bending, stretching, climbing, lifting, running and jumping. Children’s physical, mental and spiritual health improves outside in a green and alive space. The living, breathing earth is good for all of us, as we have experienced — at least some of us — this past year and a half.

[3:15 p.m.]

As Dr. Stanwick told me two years ago when I spoke to him about this idea, which he supports: “The health of a five-year-old impacts the health of the 65-year-old she will become, which in turn impacts our health system.”

Hopefully, with time outside, children will also come to love the place in which they live. Love of land is particularly important to Indigenous early childhood programs. B.C. Aboriginal Head Start has moved their programs increasingly outside, with recent grant money going to enhancing their outdoor spaces. As a representative on our advisory group says: “Children playing outside, with just a few toys but definitely with lots of soil and rocks and plants, experience an equality among themselves as they learn together from Elders, from the land and culturally land-based stories.”

Land as teacher is a concept we can all begin to embrace. Our group, the nature-based child care advisory committee, invites the government to enter into a dialogue to start a process to move forward to license outdoor programs for young children. We have recently been awarded a small grant to support a symposium to bring together key players to begin a discussion, and we would like some commitment from the government to begin to engage in a dynamic dialogue to move forward in creating this licensing category.

It is possible to go outside with children. It’s possible to have programs that spend most, if not all, of the day outside, in all types of weather. When we have children outside, connecting with the birds, the wind, the rain, they are learning to be members of the larger society. The community includes the life found outside. We all need to listen to these voices.

We live in a beautiful province, and we want to honour this land and the peoples who’ve cared for it and encourage all those who are growing up here to care for it.

Thank you for your attention, and I’d love to answer any questions in the next five minutes.

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

I’ll entertain questions from the committee.

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

So basically, there is no regulation. There is no licence, so where does that process start?

E. Elliot: Well, I think the process starts in recognizing, probably, that there’s a need for this to happen. The way Washington state went about it was that they convened an advisory group that set up some regulations, set up parameters for programs, and then had some pilot programs for two years, at which point they had a set of legislation that they put forward.

Actually, it was interesting. Apparently, the Legislature had no difficulty passing the motion, because, apparently, everybody in Washington sees themselves as an outdoors person. So we’re right behind the concept of this, right? I think it’s similar here in B.C.

M. Starchuk: Just as a follow-up, what other jurisdiction are in Canada that have this or are looking at this?

E. Elliot: Newfoundland is definitely looking at it. The Lawson Foundation actually gave us a little bit of money to start this process. They, also, are supporting Newfoundland, because they are looking into it right now. They are running a pilot program.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Enid. Well, I guess I’m a little surprised that I didn’t think you could do this. I mean, here we are. We’ve got regulations in front of doing something that seems so natural.

My question is: is Washington…? You say that they’ve brought it in. Do you have the information as to what regulations they put around it in Washington state?

E. Elliot: Yes. They actually have put out two reports now about their process of developing the regulations. I think it was just in June that they actually passed the final set of regulations so that people can go ahead and set up outdoor programs that run a whole day.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I guess my only thought is: if you have that information, submit it to the committee before Thursday so that we can….

E. Elliot: Oh, I will. I’ll send the link to those two reports.

[3:20 p.m.]

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Sure. That would be good.

G. Kyllo: Thanks, Enid, for your presentation. I have a niece that actually attends an outdoor school, South Canoe elementary in school district 83. I don’t recall schools having to go through any legislative change in order to offer…. Why is there a need for daycares that are predominantly…? I’m sure that — assuming they’ll still need bathroom facilities and some kind of an indoor facility to run out of. I’m just wondering: why would there be a need for legislative change if they’re just going to spend 90 percent of the time outdoors rather than indoors?

E. Elliot: Well, the thing is…. It is a little confusing, because I was part of setting up the nature kindergarten that now is in its tenth year in Sooke. The school district doesn’t have the same set of regulations that govern early childhood programs. At this point, there is just no category that these programs would fit into. So the need is to look at them.

When I started to think about it, I kept thinking: “Okay, so what’s the difference?” Because what we do now is license the building, right? So many toilets, so many square foot, so many toys, etc. Yet what we really need to make sure is that the people running the program know what they’re doing.

I started to think about…. Well, you know, the thing is we say that when there’s a lifeguard on a beach, you can swim there safely, but when there’s no lifeguard, you swim at your own risk. Maybe we need to start looking at: do we have people who can do these outdoor programs? I think that that’s kind of what Washington came up with, too — the focus on the actual people who are running the programs and the ratio of adults to children.

Anyway, I digressed a bit.

G. Kyllo: Thank you very much. That’s helpful.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing other questions, so with that, Enid, I’d like to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for your presentation.

This is food for thought. Also, I want to tell you that your presentation was very elegant and eloquent. You used some terminology…. Your land acknowledgment. You acknowledged people who have loved their children on this land for thousands of years. That said a lot to me. And the “land as teacher” was amazing.

E. Elliot: Thank you. Yes, it’s actually very important to Indigenous programs. I know the B.C. Aboriginal Child Care Society is very supportive of this process as well.

Anyway, thank you very much. I’m glad it was food for thought.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Our next presenter is Sian Blyth, B.C. SCI Community Services Network. Sian, you have five minutes. The light, apparently, will turn green when you have two minutes left. We’ll signal you when you have 30 seconds left so that you can know that it’s time to start wrapping up, and then the light will turn red at five minutes.

B.C. SPINAL CORD INJURY
COMMUNITY SERVICES NETWORK

S. Blyth: Good afternoon. My name is Sian Blyth, and I am the executive director of B.C. Wheelchair Basketball.

It is a pleasure to be here in Victoria on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people and to present to you, the Standing Committee on Finance.

I am representing the B.C. Spinal Cord Injury Community Services Network, known for this presentation as “the network.” Our goal is to help make B.C. the best place for people with physical disabilities to live, work and be active. Formed in 2010, the network is comprised of the B.C. Wheelchair Basketball Society, the B.C. Wheelchair Sports Association, the Disability Foundation, the Neil Squire Society and Spinal Cord Injury B.C. Together, our five provincial organizations represent over 200 years of service delivery excellence in supporting British Columbians with physical disabilities.

[3:25 p.m.]

Why did we form this network? The simple answer is that helping people with physical disabilities to adjust, adapt and thrive in their lives is complex work. While each of our organizations is known for doing a lot with a little, we all recognize that we could do a lot more by working together. Through the complementary services that we each provide, we help people with physical disabilities to overcome key challenges in their lives, including social isolation and the physical and mental health issues they face as a result.

We help connect them to accessible housing, direct supports for daily living, gaining confidence and skills to be ready to return to the labour market, access adapted technology resources and engage in active, healthy lifestyles through sports and recreation — all of which help them become active and productive members of communities throughout B.C. Our strength is that we connect an individual living with a disability to our joint services even when they might not know that they need it.

In recognition of the value of the network and the work that we have achieved through our collaborative and innovative approach, the provincial government provided a grant of $5 million over five years in 2017. During the last five years, in addition to our ongoing work, we have developed jointly funded projects, created shared service delivery positions in the Okanagan and northern B.C., and worked with Indigenous partners to begin to co-develop programming for Indigenous individuals with disabilities. And we have leveraged the presence of our network staff across multiple areas of the province and collectively reached more than 60,000 people living with physical disabilities in the last five years and more than 80,000 kids through our school education program.

We are here today to request a renewal of this funding of $5 million over five years so that we can continue to build on the success of our networked approach in supporting the full and meaningful participation in society of people with a physical disability and continue our collective role as a vital partner with government, as we work through the recovery from the pandemic.

As we know, the pandemic has affected everyone, but it had a compounding effect on the multi-faceted challenges faced by people with disabilities and their families, such as access and inclusion, isolation, physical and mental health, participation in the workforce, housing and supports of daily living.

The pandemic highlighted the importance of the network’s approach of our collective partnership. The five organizations quickly responded to the rapidly evolving pandemic by transitioning much of our services online, providing timely health- and policy-related information to our members and staff. Over the last five years, over 18,000 people participated in our direct services, and 353 unique visits were made to our online resources.

Through our collaborative work during these challenging times, our members and clients have thanked us for our help. As one of our members put it: “We are the go-to organizations for information and support from people who know what they are going through and how to get back to real living.” This is in large part because 47 members of our employee teams are people with disabilities themselves.

We are thankful for the support from the provincial government that we have been provided to date, and with it, we have made great progress, but our work is far from done. With ongoing support from the provincial government of renewed funding of $5 million over five years, our network will focus on the initiatives that align with government priorities in the areas of access, inclusion, mental and physical health, and employment and Indigenous reconciliation, and will continue to be a vital partner in ensuring that people with physical disabilities are included.

We will continue to build upon our partnerships with our health care, research, tourism and other sector partners to provide unique, educational event hosting and experiential activities for people with disabilities and their families.

The next five years hold many challenges but also many opportunities for us to continue to be a vital partner with government, ensuring that B.C. is the best place for people with physical disabilities and their families to live, work and be active.

I’m happy to answer questions, and we will be submitting supporting documents by the end of the week.

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

I’ll now entertain questions from the committee.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Sian. We do hear a lot about this but maybe not often enough.

In the last five years, since you got the initial $5 million, you had some targets and goals, etc. What are the goals for the upcoming five years? What are you going to do differently? What are you going to invest that money in?

S. Blyth: Certainly, we would like to see those numbers increase. I mean, we did plateau because of the pandemic, but we would like to see us definitely add another 25 percent that we can reach with that funding.

[3:30 p.m.]

A big aim is to employ an individual who is going to help us work with the Indigenous communities to really learn and understand the work that we need to do to help our services reach their communities — that would be a big step — really supporting the accessible legislation, ensuring that the services we provide can actually be operated in some of the facilities that we use.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): I don’t know if I should say this. We had a walkabout in Richmond the other day, and I was with Stephanie Cadieux. Anyway, Stephanie and I were laughing about some of the obvious things. You think that things are accessible, and they’re not. We thought we should have a day dedicated, maybe, to some sort of green or yellow environmentally safe spray paint that identifies all the problems that are out there. I don’t think a lot of us see it, especially the able-bodied.

S. Blyth: No, you’re right; we certainly don’t. Just this week one of my staff was doing a visit to a facility to see whether we could access their gym, because trying to find space to actually play wheelchair basketball at the moment is a huge problem. It was new. They’d taken over a warehouse and built a court, and there was a toilet. They said it was accessible, which it was to someone in a day chair, but the wheelchair basketball chair couldn’t get through the door. So we can’t use the facility.

It’s just a simple thing. Once we got a wheel off and got through the door, we could use the toilet. But I’m sure you wouldn’t want to have to take one shoe off and hop down the stairs without your shoes on.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Sian. I have played that game by invitation once, and I found some of those people very vicious, in a good way.

You’ve got a five-year period from 2017 to today, and you were established in 2010. Do you have data that goes in front of it to show: “This is what we were doing, this is what we were able to do, and then this is what we’re going to be able to do in the next five years”?

S. Blyth: Yeah, we have data from 2010 onwards.

M. Starchuk: That will be in the submission?

S. Blyth: Yeah.

M. Starchuk: Awesome. Thank you.

S. Blyth: I can tell you that in 2010, I know the number there was 13,000 that we reached for physical disabilities.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, I don’t see any other questions, Sian. I want to thank you very much on behalf of the committee for your presentation and for the work that you do. I noted that you called it very complex work. That certainly resonates with me.

Neil Squire Society is in my community, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to go there a couple of times to see what they do and the difference that they make in people’s lives.

S. Blyth: Yeah, it’s huge.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

J. Routledge (Chair): I now would like to invite Tom Hackney, of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, to make a presentation.

Tom, you have five minutes. We have a lighting system. When you have two minutes left, it will turn green. We will signal you when you have 30 seconds left so that you can wrap up. Then at five minutes, it turns red.

B.C. SUSTAINABLE ENERGY ASSOCIATION

T. Hackney: Hello, Madam Chair and committee members. My name is Tom Hackney, and I’m the policy adviser for the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association. BCSEA is a registered charity with a vision for B.C. to meet their needs without harming future generations. BCSEA members are individuals, businesses and practitioners who support a sustainable energy transition.

BCSEA delivers public education and outreach and intervenes in Utilities Commission proceedings on energy issues. BCSEA also participates in B.C. Hydro’s and FortisBC’s stakeholder advisory groups, such as B.C. Hydro’s technical advisory committee for the 2021 integrated resource plan.

[3:35 p.m.]

For Budget 2022, BCSEA urges the government to prioritize these four things: greatly reducing B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions, switching energy use from fossil fuels to renewable energy, increasing the efficiency with which we use energy, and moving our economy to low-carbon, sustainable activities.

The government has begun this work with the CleanBC plan, and it should continue. BCSEA supports the CleanBC for industry program. The government should continue helping industries to move off fossil fuels and on to clean electricity or carbon-neutral fuels. We commend the government for the better buildings initiative, especially those to get homeowners to switch from oil heating to heat pumps. We support the CleanBC building innovation fund.

These initiatives should be expanded to a provincewide program to upgrade the energy performance of the whole B.C. building stock. This would be a truly green investment, improving our efficiency while supporting skilled jobs that build a sustainable future.

We commend the government for its work on transportation, especially transit improvements and the commitments of B.C. Transit and TransLink to electrify their bus fleets. We appreciate incentives like the PST exemption for electric bicycles. The incentives to buy electric vehicles and EV charging equipment should be continued to support the government’s policy actions, including the low-carbon fuel standard, the zero-emission vehicle legislation, and the mandate to B.C. Hydro and FortisBC to build out a direct current fast-charging network across the province.

We support the government’s heavy-duty vehicle efficiency program. The government should increase incentives to electrify heavy-duty freight transportation and should not rely entirely on hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels in this area. We support the work to electrify B.C.’s ferry fleet.

We feel that the government is spending too much on general-purpose traffic lanes and other infrastructure that induce more traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. We urge the government to seek solutions more in keeping with the CleanBC plan and the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change. The planned large-volume replacement of the Massey Tunnel, for example, would worsen our greenhouse gas emissions, as would highway widenings to increase traffic flows.

BCSEA supports government’s initiatives to develop a greener economy, including investments in innovative low-carbon technologies and job skills. This is necessary work. B.C. will need to greatly reduce its heavy reliance on revenues from fossil fuel exports as we and the rest of the world increase our efforts to mitigate climate change. Finally, BCSEA urges the speedy adoption of the draft climate preparedness and adaptation strategy and budgeting to start implementation in Budget ’22.

That’s my presentation. Thank you for listening.

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

I’ll now invite members of the committee to ask questions.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Tom, for your presentation and for your written submission. You mentioned that the B.C. government should increase incentives to electric heavy-duty freight transportation and should not rely on hydrogen and other low-carbon fuels in this area. Can you please elaborate? Why is that a recommendation? What are the concerns if we rely heavily on hydrogen fuels?

T. Hackney: Hydrogen. We appreciate that a lot of effort is going into it, but it’s a largely untested technology. Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket. Electricity for heavy freight also has problems because of battery size. We need to solve this problem and not just punt it to the future.

[3:40 p.m.]

H. Sandhu: Thank you. A quick follow-up. Would you still suggest that we do both, that we explore both options? Or a little bit more towards the…? That was my concern: the size of the electric batteries and all. I’m just curious about that.

T. Hackney: Yes. Well, I think it’s a very big problem. Environmentalists like me have been worrying about it, and many other people, I’m sure.

Yes. Do some of everything. There are many different applications for heavy-duty freight, from short haul, where an electric trolley might work, to the longer haul. There are many ways to design the freight system. We need to keep our options open.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

J. Brar: Thanks, Tom, for coming today to make this presentation.

Now, you’re talking about a very important public policy issue, today and moving forward in the future — the sustainable energy transition. I have broad understanding of the transition concept from fossil fuel to low-carbon energy, but at the same time, when you put that into practice, that is not that easy. You cannot shut down the fossil fuel industry and then start working on this one, because that’s not how it’s going to work.

You did mention one program, as my colleague said here, about the increased electrifying of heavy-duty vehicles. I just wanted to ask you. We have numerous programs under the CleanBC policy. Is there any other province or, particularly, in North America doing different things which we should look into other than the heavy-duty vehicle?

T. Hackney: Any other jurisdiction that is doing something…?

J. Brar: Different and more effective than what we are doing here.

T. Hackney: Not that I’m aware of. I think many jurisdictions are trying to do a whole bunch of things, and I’m actually not a big expert in what other people are doing. So no, I’m sorry. I can’t really give you a very good answer there.

J. Brar: Okay, no problem. Thank you.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Tom. These are challenging questions to answer.

Being that this is the Finance Committee, I guess the question is: what is it that the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association is looking for, and what does it want to use those resources for?

T. Hackney: Well, we’re not here to advocate on our own behalf — for the public interest. I’m sorry. I’m not sure if I understood the question.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, I mean, these are pretty…. They’re very broad objectives. You mentioned the four priorities, as to what you see.

I guess the question is that some of these things…. You just mentioned to MLA Sandhu that you thought the hydrogen solution wasn’t the fully developed answer for heavy-haul vehicles, etc. Are you advocating that more money go into research or something like that? I guess the only reason being is that if there’s…. I mean, with those four stated goals, where do you see us progressing the fastest to achieving those or working to support those?

T. Hackney: Well, I see these as, more or less, co-equal aspects of achieving the overall broad issue of decarbonizing B.C. entirely in its energy use and economy.

[3:45 p.m.]

The example I gave of a little bit of mistrust of hydrogen — I’m not trying to pick a specific winner here but rather to warn against putting too much effort on that particular solution. In general, it looks to me as though the government is trying to simultaneously do a lot of research and development of solutions and a certain amount of implementation of them at the same time, and we simply want the government to keep on doing that, go farther and go faster.

Again, I hope I’m answering your request. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): No, I don’t think so. I just think that everybody wants the magic bullet, and we want to get it done as fast as possible. The problem is that science is what’s going to drive this, I think, and that’s where the Sustainable Energy Association would be coming from — advising about traffic and stuff like that. How do we bridge the gap? You don’t have the solution to that. You just support the idea that the government continue on the path that it’s going.

T. Hackney: We don’t. I agree on the science, but I would also say that political will and determination to achieve the end result are of key importance — and having the government reflect that in its budget.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Tom, for your presentation, and thank you for your leadership in this area, this very important area, and for sharing your expertise.

Yes, I, for one, believe that climate change is something that is a priority — dealing with it — and that we have to get down our greenhouse gas emissions. I haven’t got a clue where to begin to do that, and I rely on the expertise of people like yourself to help show the way and help reinforce the things that we’re doing right and make suggestions about the things that we could do better and differently. So thank you very much for this.

We’ll now take a five-minute recess, so don’t go too far.

The committee recessed from 3:47 p.m. to 3:53 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Kathryn Molloy, For Our Grandkids Victoria.

Kathryn, you can come to the table here. You have five minutes to make your presentation. We have a lighting system to help guide you. The light turns green when you have two minutes left. We will signal you when you have 30 seconds left, just so you can know to start wrapping it up. The red light comes on when your five minutes is up.

K. Molloy: Okay. Thank you. Can I take my mask off?

J. Routledge (Chair): Absolutely.

FOR OUR GRANDKIDS VICTORIA

K. Molloy: Thank you for this opportunity to present today. I’m grateful for the chance to help shape the budget for 2022.

I respectfully acknowledge that we’re on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples, known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, and of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, whose territory I have the privilege to live, learn, work and play.

My name is Kathryn Molloy. I’m a volunteer with For Our Grandkids, which means I’m a nana to six. I know some of you are also grandparents, some to five, some to six. I just want to acknowledge each of you. Thank you, first of all, for being on this committee.

[3:55 p.m.]

Thank you for putting your name forward and being elected officials. I think it’s gutsy — more gutsy than me. I just want to thank you for doing that. I’m here to acknowledge that and support you in the work that you do.

We are a group of grandparents that are based in Victoria and part of a larger network across Canada that believes that the future of our grandchildren is in jeopardy because of climate change. We work to promote climate change education by educating and advocating to politicians and offering courses on, say, things like financial divestment in oil, etc. We even just walk our kids to school instead of driving them.

I just want to say that I also want to acknowledge the work that’s been done on COVID-19. Congratulations for keeping me and my grandkids and kids and the community safe. I know that you’ve done that by adopting kind of an emergency mindset to COVID-19. I just want to urge you to do the same thing around climate change.

On August 9, we heard from the IPCC, their latest report, which is considered to be the most significant update on the current state of the climate. It’s abundantly clear that this update is calling for a sense of urgency. Quoting UN Secretary-General António Guterres, it “is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.”

Climate change is upon us. We all saw that this summer, with 1,556 wildfires taking over 860,000 hectares of our forest. A small fact is that we don’t actually count the greenhouse gas emissions from forest fires in our annual greenhouse gas emission count.

This past June we had the deadly heat wave, where we saw 570 people, sudden deaths due to heat-related causes. In one week, we saw nearly 30 percent of the total number of British Columbians that have died from COVID-19.

Shockingly, also, in the fall of 2020, the B.C. coast recorded the worst air quality in the world, caused by the Washington state and Oregon fires.

I urge, I plead and I beg the government of B.C. to adopt an emergency mindset to climate change. You can start that in the budgeting process. That means we need to implement fast and critical changes now in order to meet our 2030, 2040 and 2050 targets. My kids and my grandkids are counting on it, as are many of yours.

I’m aware that in 2018, the government launched the CleanBC climate action plan with admirable targets to ensure the achievement of CleanBC’s goals. With that in mind, it’s kind of hard to understand why the 2021 provincial spending budget reports say that $2.3 billion was spent on transportation infrastructure. Some of that, a small amount, was spent on SkyTrain expansion, which is sensible, but most of it was spent on expanding highways. Yet for specific actions directly affecting climate change through the CleanBC budget, only $170 million was spent.

On August 18, in the height of fire season, the province announced a new eight-lane tunnel to replace the George Massey Tunnel on Highway 99, with the cost estimated at $4.15 billion. Six of the eight lanes are dedicated to cars, two to buses and a fringe of cycling and walking paths where active transportation enthusiasts can suck the exhausts of the cars and the buses. So less than 5 percent of that budget has been awarded to sustainable transportation options. Billions are spent on highway expansion and only $20 million on emissions.

It’s irrefutable that humans are causing climate change. So what can you do? As a committee and in your role as MLAs, you can make sure the infrastructure budgets align with 2030, 2040 and 2050 gas emissions — ensuring that 10 percent of MOTI budgets go to active transportation, for example. You can make incentives to develop back-to-work climate plans like you’ve done back-to-work COVID plans, like incentives for businesses to encourage and support working from home.

There’s lots that you can do. Don’t just trust technology. Think about the carrot and the stick and the opportunity to give incentive and disincentive. Do what it takes to win. Spend like it takes to win. Create new economic institutions to get the job done. Shift from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures. Tell the truth about the severity of the crisis, and communicate the sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it.

[4:00 p.m.]

I just want to say: be visionary. This is our opportunity, at this point. It’s a lovely vision for me to think of B.C. where all the government staff and all of the elected officials feel empowered to creatively develop and implement climate action plans and create equity and safety that promote health and well-being. You have that power as elected officials and as members of this committee, and I beg that you do the right thing. Make climate and carbon reduction the number one priority in the ’22 budget.

Let’s not be in a state of emergency, but let’s be in a state of vision and hope.

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

Now I’ll ask members of the committee if they have questions.

L. Doerkson: Thank you for that presentation. You touched on forest fires — that we’re not calculating the gases that are being emitted through that. Can you expand on that?

K. Molloy: I did an article in Focus magazine when all those forest fires were happening in 2020, so it was through that. I wish I could find exactly that research detail. It was that we don’t count the greenhouse gas emissions from the forest fires in our annual count of greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia. So we might count transportation emissions and emissions from oil and gas but not from forest fires.

For example, in 2018, I think it was, there were four significant fires that came. And actually, just those four fires emitted 190 billion tonnes of CO₂, and they’re not noted in our greenhouse gas emission measures that we have.

L. Doerkson: Is there a reason for that?

K. Molloy: That’s a good question. Is there a reason for that? I don’t know. You know, it’s the same thing as: can we actually develop a climate budget, like we have a financial budget, so that we look forward in what we’re going to spend rather than looking behind us and conveniently, maybe, not counting some of the things that we didn’t expect?

I would love to see the government take the steps in looking and developing a climate budget so that we say: “These are the emissions, and everything is going to go through a climate lens.” And then when we have these shocking experiences of forest fires and we look at what the emissions are of that, perhaps we can actually say, “Okay. We’ve got to cut back in other ways next year,” just like you would in your spending.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

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

Just on Lorne’s point, talking about that. I’m thinking about ridings like Lorne’s and mine and Greg’s where we’ve been impacted by these huge fires. I guess the question really is: have we…? We may need to do some things to mitigate forest fires around communities which involve doing things like…. Even though you try to extract all the fibre, it’s not always possible. Would you be opposed to the idea that if we had to do some burning or whatever to prevent communities from the disaster that we’ve had this year…? Is that something that we can look at with an open mind toward the idea that we’re trying to reduce that?

K. Molloy: Absolutely. I own a rural property myself, and I did fire protection by cleaning up some of the trees and the debris. I think that’s absolutely critical in terms of forest fires.

That’s an adaptation approach. I want to encourage you to continue to adapt. But we absolutely need to do mitigation as well, still. Mitigation is important. So adaptation and mitigation are key.

J. Brar: I think Kathryn deserves, probably, more questions.

We have seen other presentations, as well, about this. As I said earlier, this is a very important public policy issue, and it’s a complex issue to deal with from a pragmatic point of view. I appreciate your perspective. Ideally, if you think about it, the best support would be to shut down everything that creates greenhouse emissions. That would shut down every car, every bus, every factory, everything. That is not possible.

K. Molloy: For sure.

[4:05 p.m.]

J. Brar: Having said that, we have CleanBC, our policy here. I would like to hear from you. You did give good ideas, moving forward, in terms of framing the budget and all that. Is there any specific thing you see happening in other jurisdictions, here or in North America or even in Europe somewhere, that you think we should really think about and consider?

K. Molloy: Oh, I have a gazillion ideas.

J. Brar: Give us a few.

K. Molloy: Well, I focused just on transportation in this presentation, but there are things that can be done in agriculture, for example, and sort of promoting no-till agriculture so that we don’t release the carbon from the soil and so that we keep it captured in the soil. We also do create more green space with certain types of agriculture, so it’s not monoculture; it’s a variety of different crops that you would have on a farm. That would help to absorb more CO₂ emissions. That would be one small thing.

Housing is another thing. If you mandate municipalities, through Municipal Affairs, to do more and take that burden away from them in terms of their…. They have these big concerns about how we…. Everybody’s complaining that they don’t want it in their backyard, all this densification of housing. But on densification in housing, there’s tons of research that talks about how that helps to reduce CO₂ emissions. So you can spread it throughout.

Yes, it’s going to be challenging, and it’s going to be difficult. You can’t shut down everything that we’re doing, but we have to make some big, critical steps in the directions that are needed. The ideas are plentiful. I think that you have some incredible staff working for the province of B.C. that have great ideas, and somehow encouraging and accessing their knowledge is going to be your success.

I’ll just also say that reduced emission targets are not just political promises but obligations under the Climate Change Accountability Act and the Carbon-Neutral Government Regulation. So it’s your obligation.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Kathryn. We are over time, so we’ll wrap it up.

I want to thank you for reminding us that we actually do know how to mobilize the public to work together in an emergency. We have, actually, quite recent experience in doing that. The comparisons that you make are very important. Thank you so much.

K. Molloy: My pleasure. Thank you for hearing me.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is David Boudinot of Surfrider Foundation Canada.

David, you have five minutes. We have a lighting system. When it turns green, it means you have two minutes left. We’ll let you know when you have 30 seconds left so that you can wrap it up. The light turns red when your five minutes are up.

SURFRIDER FOUNDATION CANADA

D. Boudinot: My name is David Boudinot, and I’m the president of Surfrider Foundation Canada, an organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the ocean, beaches and waves through a network of volunteers passionate about the marine environment.

I want you to imagine the last time you were at a beach in British Columbia, watching the waves flicker in the golden sunlight. The coastal areas of this province look pristine and spectacular. Now I want you to switch for a moment and imagine the last time you were at a landfill. If you’ve never been to a landfill, I encourage all of you to go see where your trash goes. Think of all the refuse piling up at the landfill, generation after generation. Now merge those two images together in your mind — the beach and the landfill — and this is what we’re seeing on the coastline of our province.

It is going to take funding, leadership and policy improvements to protect the waters and extensive coastline of this province. Just this summer over 400 tonnes of trash were removed from the remote beaches on the coast thanks to the clean coast, clean waters project, funded by the province and coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. A staggering amount of debris — including polystyrene foam, plastic bottles, nets, rope, abandoned boats and tires — was removed from hundreds of kilometres of coastline.

[4:10 p.m.]

Clean coast, clean waters supports Indigenous communities, coastal tourism operators and partnering environmental organizations, and it demonstrates that we can all work together to protect the health of our coast. By continuing to fund cleanups on the coast, the province demonstrates a commitment to community and a healthy environment.

Clean coast, clean waters will wrap up in December, and since last summer, 2020, the project is on track to removing over 500 tonnes of debris from the coastline. We applaud the government of British Columbia and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy for funding the clean coast, clean waters project this year and last.

Surfrider Foundation volunteers have been documenting an ever-increasing amount of trash — mostly plastic, as small as a lentil and as big as a boat — accumulating on the shores of British Columbia month after month and year after year. We have a crisis on the coast, and if we collectively ignore the problem now, future generations will be burdened by plastic trash which persist in the environment.

But cleanups alone won’t solve the plastic pollution issue. We must look to the source and start implementing common-sense solutions to halt the flow of plastics and other pollutants into the waters of British Columbia.

The debris Surfrider and other organizations find on the beach tells us a story about industrial pollution going unchecked, fishing and aquaculture industries in need of solutions for when gear is lost at sea or at end-of-life. The flow of plastic is entering the waters of British Columbia from populated areas as single-use plastic items and such.

We can keep throwing funding at beach cleanups, which are important and do have a place, but if we want to get ahead of this issue we must focus on solutions on the land. So what do we need in addition to funding coastal cleanups? I have three asks.

One, our landfills are getting to the point now where end-of-life discussions are occurring. Through partnerships with organizations like the Ocean Legacy Foundation, we must enhance and develop a more robust plastic recycling system. Right now only 9 percent of plastic is recycled in Canada.

Surfrider supports improving extended producer responsibility systems, and it’s time to shift the focus away from consumer recycling and improve industrial recycling. Given fishing and aquaculture plastics are in the majority of the types of plastics we find on the beaches, a marine industry extended producer responsibility system would make an immediate impact.

Two, the province needs to improve funding for environmental monitoring, regulation and enforcement as it pertains to plastics. Plastic manufacturing facilities up and down the Fraser River have been spilling plastic pellets at their facilities for years, which wash down storm drains every time it rains, and environmental enforcement has been scant. Requirements to make sure storm drain covers are properly installed at these facilities would reduce plastic pellet pollution, which is accumulating on our coasts and impacting marine life.

Third ask. I’m sure you’ve heard about the three Rs. The three Rs are reduce, reuse and recycle. We’re pretty good as far as things go on the recycling front, but we really need to focus some funding on the first two Rs — reduce and reuse.

For reuse, the province has an opportunity to expand systems to encourage reuse of materials. Let’s learn from the successes of the bottle reuse systems for beer and milk and expand it out to other single-use products. For reduce, this answer is simple. Let’s reduce the plastic use in the province.

The health of our coast is at stake. Thank you for considering funding for coastal cleanups, improving pollution enforcement measures, creating systems which will lessen the amount of plastic polluting in our province and finding solutions to keep the plastic already here out of the waters and off of the beautiful beaches of British Columbia.

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

I’ll now entertain questions from the committee.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, David. I had the privilege three weeks ago of being on Cox beach in Tofino. I can honestly say that there wasn’t one scrap of plastic that washed up the four days I was there, whether or not it was just that the storm weather wasn’t there or whatever the case may be.

My question to you. We’ve seen all the pictures. We’re seeing them on a regular basis, and the three Rs are definitely there, we just need to get down pat the reduce and reuse.

[4:15 p.m.]

Do you have any stats in your presentation that show where our beaches were 20 years ago, where our beaches are today and where our beaches can be 20 years from now?

D. Boudinot: Yeah, we have been monitoring pollution on the coast over the last few decades, absolutely. I don’t have specific numbers. It depends on each beach.

It is worthwhile to note that the plastic production in Canada in that 20 years is exponential. The amount of plastic being produced and used is through the roof compared to 20 years ago. With this comes a lot of pollution.

I’m happy to hear that you didn’t find any trash on the beach at Cox Bay. That’s a very well-loved beach. The community there does a great job, including the Surfrider Foundation chapter there, of making sure those beaches are cleaned up. But the farther up the coast you get — into the harder-to-get areas, the remote areas — we’re finding beaches just devastated in the polystyrene foam pellets and big chunks of plastic and nets and buoys and that kind of thing that should not be in that environment.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your good work.

D. Boudinot: I can forward, certainly, some stats to the committee for the submission deadline.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, David. I commend the work that you’re doing, but obviously realizing that that’s only the surface. To get down below that….

Having been in an industry that had to adapt to fees that were levied — we used glass in our particular business and things like that — and also part of a government that brought in more heavy…. The idea of recycling electronics and things that people didn’t think that they could do — it’s so easy. I think that that’s part of the thing.

Anyways, I know that we still continue to pay a fee for the administration of that. But I think that these other areas that you mentioned, the plastics, the stuff…. I do see it when I get out on the ocean, some of the things that shouldn’t be there. You’ve got to find a solution that’s going to work, that’s going to make people…. I don’t know about fishing nets, in the sense that I’m sure they don’t really intend on trying to lose them.

D. Boudinot: No, but it happens.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Anyways, I do think you need to keep working on that. Come forward with solutions. I’m sure the government’s very amenable to looking at things that they can put into that system.

D. Boudinot: Absolutely. There are some impressive things happening on the plastic recycling front. Ocean Legacy Foundation is opening up plastic recycling stations. There’s one in Tofino-Ucluelet. There’s another that’s just opened up on the Fraser River that is accepting aquaculture and fishing nets for recycling. They’re keeping that out of the landfills.

British Columbia can be a leader. There are many jurisdictions that are at play here. We’re one of many. We can set a very good example for a coastal community and enact policies which are fair and equitable which will ultimately prevent plastic from getting back in the water.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Yeah. I agree.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we’ll wrap it up at this point, David.

Thank you so much for your presentation and for framing it in the context of a crisis on the coast and that it isn’t just all about cleanup, that we also have to take action that addresses the source of this particular crisis.

D. Boudinot: I appreciate the time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next and final presentation for the day is Zita Botelho, Watersheds B.C.

Zita, you have five minutes. We have a light system. The light changes green when you have two minutes left. We’ll give you a signal when you have 30 seconds left so that you know to start wrapping it up. The light turns red when you’re out of your five minutes.

WATERSHEDS B.C.

Z. Botelho: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and select standing committee members. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Zita Botelho, and I am the director of Watersheds B.C. and the co-director of the healthy watersheds initiative.

[4:20 p.m.]

I respectfully acknowledge that today we’re on the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, which include the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. These two First Nations, and others across the province, are central to the issue of watershed security, which is what I’m going to speak to you about today.

Like many Canadians, freshwater lakes, streams and creeks play a really important part in my life and in my life experience. I spent my early childhood years in northern Ontario, canoeing, fishing, swimming and playing in the lakes during the summer and then skiing and snowshoeing and ice fishing on them in the winter. I moved to B.C. in my early 20s, and experiencing the forests, oceans and the mighty rivers changed my life path. I’ve worked for over 22 years in the environmental sector and more than half of that time in the public sector, directly working on freshwater management, conservation and governance.

At Watersheds B.C., I work with my team to develop capacity for local watershed governance and security, which includes providing training, resources and peer-to-peer learning for local governments, First Nations, watershed organizations and stewardship groups.

Today I’m speaking specifically to you about the healthy watersheds initiative. Watersheds B.C. is working in partnership with the Real Estate Foundation. As many of you know, the Real Estate Foundation is a philanthropic organization that works to advance sustainable land use in B.C. Through their grant-making, research and partnerships, they’ve demonstrated a lasting commitment to freshwater sustainability, watershed governance and community-led conservation. The Real Estate Foundation will be submitting a written submission to the committee.

At this time last year, this government developed an economic response to the pandemic, and it put people and communities first. The healthy watersheds initiative was part of that investment. It was a $27 million investment to be spent across 61 community-driven water restoration and conservation projects across the province.

In the words of your colleague, Hon. Minister Heyman…. He stated that it has been a success beyond his wildest dreams. In just eight months, the HWI has demonstrated that investing in watersheds is a triple win that creates jobs, boosts local economy and protects drinking water and critical salmon habitat along with strengthening relationships with First Nations and Indigenous partners. These projects are helping to advance many of the government’s priorities.

I’m here today to ask this committee to consider a recommendation of $50 million — $25 million over two years — in bridge funding to extend the healthy watersheds initiative for two more years until the government finalizes the development of a watershed security fund in 2023. Here are some of the reasons why that’s a smart investment.

HWI is supporting jobs, training and local economies. Project proponents have supported 697 jobs and counting in trained workers and Indigenous and western techniques for fish and water sampling, water monitoring, field safety, land management and more. They are good jobs that provide paid employment and experience to young workers and recent graduates, many of them in the demographic group most impacted by COVID-19. Because watershed work is place-based by nature, these dollars invested in communities stay in communities. Projects have leveraged their funding to an increased $10 million.

HWI is supporting reconciliation relationships and UNDRIP. Healthy watersheds and ecosystems are critical to the exercise of Indigenous rights to hunting, fishing, gathering, ceremony and land stewardship. Recognizing that, HWI was designed to support the implementation of UNDRIP and DRIPA. Nearly a third of our projects are led by Indigenous organizations or governments, and three-quarters of them are confirming or strengthening relationships with a First Nation.

We’re also supporting ecosystem restoration, salmon habitat and climate action. These projects are reducing flood risk, buffering communities from droughts and wildfires and providing new habitat for salmon fish and other species.

The challenge is that the clock is ticking. The money needs to be spent by December 31. To keep this momen­tum going and the watershed work happening beyond December, we need additional funding in order to support your government to continue these investments in prosperous communities, healthier people, communities, restored salmon runs and enduring partnerships with First Nations.

This is an important bridge to a water security fund. I know that my colleagues have spoken to you about that ask, but the HWI is an important bridge for your government to be able to achieve that objective.

[4:25 p.m.]

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

Questions for our guest?

Z. Botelho: It’s the end of the day.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Zita. I think we all want good water, and we want to achieve those things that you talked about. Tell me about these projects that you’re doing. Can you give us an example of the 60 projects you’re doing? Give us a couple of examples of where this money is going into, besides the people that are working there.

Z. Botelho: I’d love to.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Give me one example now.

Z. Botelho: Well, I’ll give you one that…. I recently was at the site with your colleague, Member Leonard, which is called the Kus-kus-sum unpaving paradise. The project is restoring an old sawmill site and restoring it back to its normal state. It’s over eight hectares of land. The Premier supported the acquisition of some of that land. The community raised a lot of the money to acquire the land.

It was a partnership where the local stewardship group worked with the forestry company that used to own the land. Then the community worked to fundraise, and then the government catalyzed the last little bit of funding. Then this funding has, in turn, supported the work to start on the ground. So there’s excavation of thousands of tonnes of asphalt and concrete that have to come out before the planting can happen and the restoration of the stream that is beside the site.

Of course, it’s a critical area for salmon habitat, and we were able to see salmon in the stream when I was just there recently. So there are people…. It’s employing a variety of types of people — all the heavy machinery folks, the restoration teams, the biologists. That’s one example.

There’s another project that’s happening in the Pitt Lake region, where there is…. It’s a focused habitat restoration site where the World Wildlife Federation is working with the Katzie Nation and the local government to do a bunch of restoration work to open up some stream channels. They’re removing invasives, planting plants.

There’s a project that’s happening on the Sunshine Coast where they’re working on a watershed management plan and watershed governance for the region. As many of you have probably heard or read in the headlines over the years, it’s a region that is consistently challenged by water shortages. They’re working on a planning process to try to avoid that in the future.

I could go on and on, but those are few examples of the work.

L. Doerkson: I’m just curious. How do people go about accessing these funds? I mean, do they apply to you?

Z. Botelho: That’s a great question. This was a very anomalous situation where, when COVID hit…. There have been a number of groups in the watershed community that have worked together closely for quite a long time, and we anticipated that there would be a need for — or likely — some stimulus funding. So we immediately mobilized to send a survey out through our networks and networks of networks to get a sample of shovel-ready projects that could be implemented through some stimulus funding.

We collected 144 project proposals, over $200 million worth of projects, and we shared that with the province when ministries were looking for opportunities for stimulus funding. We worked with the province. They took that list, went through a technical review and sort of prioritized what was feasible in the time frame. Those were the projects that were funded. There are many more that weren’t, that were on that list, and then there are many, of course, that weren’t part of that list and that are eager to have an opportunity to do the same kind of work in their communities.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’m not seeing other questions.

Zita, I’d like to thank you on behalf of the committee and to thank you for your leadership in this area. I think we probably all know intuitively how important watersheds are and also how they’ve been damaged. It’s really important, as well, that you’ve been very clear and specific about the other benefits of this work.

Z. Botelho: Great. Thank you so much.

Also, I do have a summary sheet here with a QR code, if any of you want to…. We have an interim report. It will also be submitted as part of the formal documentation, but I also have this here if you want to do a quick scan, and you can see what our interim report is showing in terms of our results.

Thanks so much, everybody.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:30 p.m.