The committee met at 3 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Janet Routledge. I am 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 this afternoon in Kamloops, which is located on the traditional territories of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, within the traditional lands of the Secwépemc people.

In making this acknowledgment today, I’d like to take time to remember and honour the 215 children who were found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, as well as all the children who didn’t make it home. We have a collective responsibility to learn and face this truth as part of the journey of reconciliation.

I would also like to welcome everyone who is listening to and participating in today’s meeting on the Budget 2022 consultation. Our committee is currently seeking input on priorities for the next provincial budget. In addition to these meetings, British Columbians can 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 this afternoon’s meeting, all presenters will be making individual presentations. Each presenter has five minutes for their presentation, followed by five minutes for questions from committee members.

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

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): My name is Ben Stewart. I’m the MLA for Kelowna West.

I just want to say how humbled we are to be here on the Tk’emlúps traditional territory with the findings that occurred several months back. We look forward to the day of reconciliation being celebrated on Thursday.

Thank you. I look forward to your presentations.

H. Sandhu: Hello, everyone. I’m Harwinder Sandhu, MLA for Vernon-Monashee.

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

I do recognize the devastating discoveries of 215 children, and I’m hoping to have this dialogue moving forward on September 30.

Thank you for being here.

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

This is located on the unceded traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, which include the Katzie, Semiahmoo and Kwantlen.

G. Kyllo: Good afternoon. My name is Greg Kyllo. I’m the MLA for Shuswap, and I’m also the B.C. Liberal critic for Labour.

M. Dykeman: My name is Megan Dykeman. I’m the MLA for Langley East. It’s an honour to be here. I am looking forward to everybody’s presentations today.

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

L. Doerkson: Hi, everybody. I am Lorne Doerkson. I am the MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin and also pleased to be here in Kamloops. I am also the critic for Rural Development.

J. Routledge (Chair): Assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Amanda Heffelfinger and Simon DeLaat from Hansard Services.

I think we are ready to begin our first of quite a few presentations today. The first presenter is Daniel Mills, Kamloops Symphony.

You have five minutes. We will give you a 30-second warning so that you know that it’s time to wrap up.

Budget Consultation Presentations

KAMLOOPS SYMPHONY

D. Mills: Good afternoon. To members of the committee, thank you so much for being here today. As mentioned, my name is Daniel Mills, and I am the executive director of the Kamloops Symphony.

I’d like to welcome you to Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, within the unceded, traditional lands of the Secwépemc peoples.

[3:05 p.m.]

Thank you so much for coming here today. It’s nice to see you in person. I stepped into this role about two years ago and have had very little face-to-face interaction with members of the provincial government, so thank you.

Traditionally, the Kamloops Symphony delivers over 7,000 annual ticketed experiences to those in the interior of B.C. through our core programming and professional orchestral concerts. Led by our own music director Dina Gilbert, we, along with a network of other regional orchestras in B.C., are a major provider of work for freelance musicians in the province and enriching musical experiences for the community.

Like most professional arts organizations in B.C., we are very fortunate to receive provincial operating funding from both the B.C. Arts Council as well as B.C. gaming through their community gaming grants. Both support our core programming in critical ways and allow us to deliver meaningful experiences.

As such, we are very much in support of the government’s continued funding of the B.C. Arts Council to allow organizations like us to pursue relevant programming for our region, particularly programs to better reach all members of the community. Similarly, we also call for the continuation of the community gaming grants program.

This past year, like so many organizations, we made a rapid transition to digital programming, being one of the first in the province to offer online ticketed concerts last fall and converting our traditional season to one that was fully online. Although it took a substantial amount of administrative work and creativity, we were ultimately able to launch nine full concert experiences, the same number as a typical season.

We would like to express our gratitude for the arts and culture resilience supplement, made available through the B.C. Arts Council, in late 2020 and again in the spring of ’21, as we grappled with the transition to online models, where ticketing revenues were about 10 percent of our normal levels. Emergency funding, along with supports from other levels of government, was crucial to our sustainability.

Just this past weekend, we were thrilled to welcome in-person audiences back for the opening of our ’21-22 season, with the help of my colleague Evan Klassen, who will be presenting shortly, from Western Canada Theatre. Although patrons who came were delighted to be there, and were very good at adhering to the multiple protocols we had in place, the experience was also very telling of where we are at as of today.

Even though we are now allowed 50 percent capacity in performance spaces, this does not mean that we can easily fill this 50 percent. Many people are understandably reluctant to return to live group settings, being unable to access them for so long — some because they’re not ready, and others because they’re simply out of the habit,

Thus, our current challenge is how to return to somewhat normal-sized programming, which engages with over 40 artists per concert, when we have limited means to recoup the cost through ticket sales like we did pre-pandemic. This likely means tough decisions ahead in terms of programming and the size and scope of what we can offer.

Thus, we ask the B.C. government to commit to further transitionary support to both arts organizations and individual artists so we can retain cultural workers in the province within the arts industry. We are also advocating for funding and actions towards normalizing attendance at performing arts events to help spread the message that performing arts presentations are a safe place to be.

Finally, COVID-19 aside, the lack of music-specific performance space continues to be a major limiting factor for the Kamloops Symphony and many other arts groups in terms of availability and flexibility of use. A proposed Kamloops centre for the arts was to be a new home for us, both as a concert venue but also home for our outreach programs. Although the municipal referendum in Kamloops for this project in April 2020 was postponed indefinitely, due to the pandemic, I firmly believe this project is still very much needed for Kamloops.

As such, I am highly encouraging that this committee consider future support of major infrastructure spending, particularly towards the creation of cultural spaces, such as the proposed Kamloops centre for the arts. Although performance venues may have gone through a relatively inactive period over the last 18 months, I believe that this industry will be back and that the people of British Columbia will have the need for cultural spaces more than ever.

To sum up my submission, I therefore urge the committee to consider the following four actions in their next budget. One, commit to continued support for the B.C. Arts Council and B.C. gaming grants. Two, offer transitionary support to both cultural organizations and artists to aid with reopening. Three, support the promotion of attending performing arts presentations as a safe activity. Four, commit to infrastructure spending for large projects, particularly cultural spaces.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration and all you do for the people of British Columbia. Together, we can ensure that this province continues offering outstanding artistic experiences to its residents.

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

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

[3:10 p.m.]

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Daniel. I think there’s a bunch of us that are just clawing at your doors, waiting to get inside and actually see something and hear something in person.

The third ask. I want to make sure I’ve got it clear. The communications efforts to promote a safe venue — how do you see that unfolding?

D. Mills: I think this could be in various ways. I realize it’s a little bit out of some of the purview of this committee particularly, but we’re looking at helping spread that message, whether it is funding to help the communications effort or just being champions, yourselves, as people to recommend that the arts are a safe place to go back to.

We believe that word of mouth and ground-level campaigns are probably the biggest ways that we can get people back to audiences safely, as we saw with this past weekend. We’re just encouraging people to get the word out. Having funding and support to do that is a way that we feel that we’ll have the most success.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation.

I was wondering, looking forward as we come out of the pandemic and things are able to open up, what do you project as being the length of time it’s going to take to recover and for finances to, maybe, look back to pre-pandemic levels, if you’re doing forecasting?

D. Mills: I mean, it’s impossible to say particularly, but I would hope that by next September, in 2022, we are looking at something a bit more similar to what we normally offer in terms of the number of artists and the size of our programming as well as the people that are coming back to us.

Of course, we have a lot of changes, with us exploring digital models going forward. Some of those models have definitely changed — for the better in a lot of cases — but I’m hoping that our budget looks a bit more normal in terms of the regular ratios of spending….

M. Dykeman: You didn’t have to dip too much into reserves or anything?

D. Mills: No. Fortunately, with emergency supports we are in a relatively stable financial position. But, ultimately, it was a lot of the individual artists that were the ones who, unfortunately, got the short end of the deal with this. We are okay as an organization, but we weren’t able to hire as many people as normal.

M. Dykeman: Understandable. Okay, that’s good to know.

J. Brar: Thank you, Daniel. COVID-19 has, of course, we all know, impacted every aspect of our lives and continues to do so. We don’t know where the end is. Hopefully, it will be soon, but we don’t know.

The transition back to normal life, of course, is very important to us and bringing back the economy and various sectors are important to all of us. You mentioned one — I think the second or third bullet in your four recommendations — transitional support to cultural associations. If you can expand on that a little bit more that will be helpful as to what kind of support you are suggesting.

D. Mills: I think, whether it is through regular operating funding through some of the other programs or specific initiatives that encourage communication campaigns that we can use to help get that message across that the arts are still here and thriving….

I think it could either be in a general, financial sense, but it could also potentially look like something that is geared toward more of a marketing push. I hate to use that word specifically, but more of an advocacy approach to funding our messaging.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Daniel, for your presentation.

My question was asked my MLA Brar, but I’m wondering: will you be presenting a written submission to us? Perhaps you did. My internet is a bit slow.

D. Mills: I have not submitted, but I will submit exactly what I said today.

H. Sandhu: Okay, thank you so much. Appreciated.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. With that, Daniel, we’ll thank you for your presentation, and thank you for your advocacy.

I, for one, really need to get back to in-person performances. I tried during the pandemic to engage online, and I found it very hard. Your point that we are all out of the habit really resonated with me. I think we all have to pull together in order to get back to creating the energy that is so important to us all in live performances.

D. Mills: Thank you very much. Have a wonderful afternoon.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Evan Klassen, Western Canada Theatre.

[3:15 p.m.]

WESTERN CANADA THEATRE

E. Klassen: Good afternoon, Chair Routledge and committee members. My name is Evan Klassen. I’m managing director at Western Canada Theatre. WCT is Kamloops’ and the B.C. southern Interior’s regional theatre company.

We are grateful to be able to live, work and tell stories on the traditional, unceded territories of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, a territory whose name has greater resonance now, following the discoveries of last June, and especially this week as we approach the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Thank you so much for being here in person. The committee’s presence in Kamloops is always appreciated.

I also bring greetings on behalf of our artistic director, James MacDonald; our chair, Tim Rogers; and our entire board and staff. This is at least the fifth annual submission that we have made to this committee and, as in the past, we are pleased to share this presentation with our colleagues at the Kamloops Symphony and, with us today in spirit only, the Kamloops Art Gallery.

The arts are critical to a vibrant, healthy British Columbia, and throughout this pandemic we have seen British Columbians turn to creative outlets to help with their mental health, physical wellbeing, emotional support and to provide important occasions to come together. As a theatre company with the mandate to gather audiences in the act of storytelling together, we take that social mandate as a call to action.

Yet 19 months in, the arts in the interior of B.C. are struggling. We’re mid-fourth wave. Our venues are slowly reopening to 50 percent capacity. There are ever-evolving health orders. We toil diligently to provide safe environments, and we respond to legitimate audience hesitancy to return to our spaces. Just because we are now able to see 50 percent capacity doesn’t mean that audiences are ready. Activity levels are somewhat low. Organizations are planning and replanning. Artist engagements are down, and we as a sector are still not able to earn revenue in a meaningful way.

Ongoing, sustained recovery funding is going to be needed in the coming months and over multiple years. The B.C. Arts Council’s resilience supplement, major tourism anchor attractions grant and the fairs and festivals and events grant have all had really significant positive impacts on our sector. But there’s a long road ahead, and more significant recovery funding will be needed.

Perhaps an approach that might be useful would be a kind of arts New Deal in which supports to the arts and cultural sector could include three prongs: sustained operating funding; a focus on fostering increased employment and engagement of artists and capacity-building; and a strong focus on arts infrastructure and support to the physical environments that we find ourselves in.

WCT is a grateful recipient of B.C. Arts Council operating funding, and this funding has been essential over the course of the pandemic in allowing us to operate, to engage artists and to create content virtually for our regional audience.

B.C. Arts Council’s strategic plan, with its focus on equity, diversity and access, Indigenous engagement and regional arts development, provides us all, organizations and artists alike, with an essential mandate to aspire to and work towards. It is for this reason that we continue to advocate, as we have in years past, for the completion of the doubling of the B.C. Arts Council budget and to provide sustained, multi-year funding to arts organizations across the province.

A second prong of funding is to build capacity within the arts and cultural sector, especially as we create projects and programs to engage in Indigenous reconciliation and partner with diverse audiences and artists. Arts organizations in the Interior specifically need support to develop leadership capacity to help diversify our staff and artists, many of whom do not live here and have to travel from larger centres.

These engagements can mean significant costs to organizations. We also need capacity-building funding to be paired with that operating funding in order to achieve the specific aims of authentic engagement while ensuring that organizations remain stable.

That third and final approach is around the physical infrastructure of the arts and cultural sector. As Daniel mentioned, it’s no secret that at the outset of the pandemic, we were on the cusp of building a new arts centre, which would’ve been a future home for the theatre company as well as the symphony and gallery. As the project readies itself for another attempt, it is essential that significant funds are dedicated to large-scale capital infrastructure projects such as this, along with smaller-scale equipment and project funding such as that undertaken by the B.C. Arts Council’s arts infrastructure program.

It is our hope that B.C. will lean into these funding needs as priorities in the coming budgets, to get British Columbians, artists and arts workers back into our the­atres; to see our audience returning in droves; and to see a vibrant and healthy B.C. thrive once more.

Thank you so much for your time this afternoon.

[3:20 p.m.]

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

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

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

I would like to know more about the Kamloops centre for the arts. Daniel mentioned that it was postponed in April of 2020. I guess my question is: was there a commitment from government to partner with the city, the arts community? Is that in question right now, or was it never there? If not, what would it look like for the future if it was to go ahead?

The reason I ask that is that both of you mentioned that there’s this hesitancy by the patrons to maybe come out. Of course, if there’s a plebiscite or a vote on this, are they going to be as there for you when you need it?

E. Klassen: Thank you for the question.

We had formed a non-profit society, which was comprised of the arts organizations, a number of community business leaders and the city of Kamloops, to lead us towards a referendum. That was supposed to be April of 2020 and, of course, as you know, March hit, and the referendum was postponed and then cancelled due to the circumstances that the city found itself in as a municipal government. They weren’t prepared to sort of step into that fray.

The sort of court of public opinion has not yet been settled. However, in the course of establishing that non-profit organization to actually advance the cause, we were able to, I think, achieve about 5,000 members — over 5,000 members — from within Kamloops who were in support of that project. We were looking very optimistically to that referendum.

However, in this moment, the point is well taken that there is certain hesitancy right now around coming back to large gatherings. Obviously, we know that we will get there eventually, but to ask the question now is certainly a real debate as to what the timing would be.

Of course, we’re heading to a municipal election in the next fall, so there’s a chance that that might become a question on that ballot for the city’s consideration. But ultimately, the conversations need to start happening at the provincial and federal levels, and both of our elected officials at those two levels certainly have been aware. We have a new MP, of course, in this area to bring up to speed, but we certainly have made our outgoing MP very aware of this project.

It’s just the question of what the next step is and what the case is for support. There were certainly businesses that were in the offing with their support. They just weren’t…. We need the right step to move forward. We need that anchor funding to be in place to move that piece forward. Certainly, if it was coming from the province, I think that would be a welcome step.

J. Brar: Thank you, Evan. Tourism, arts and culture, I think, were the hardest hit during COVID. It continues to be the case, where a significant majority of the organizations actually came to a standstill. There was no activity going on, as you know, because of fear of COVID-19, and there were no customers for you guys.

The government did provide significant support during this phase and continues to do so. I would like to know from you about what kind of support you got, was it helpful, and what are you recommending moving forward?

E. Klassen: Yeah, absolutely. Western Canada Theatre has received operating funding from the B.C. Arts Council. We also received the resilience supplements. I think there were two phases of that that happened through the B.C. Arts Council as well. We did not receive the anchor attractions funding, but our colleague at the art gallery did receive that funding.

Those pieces were very instrumental in keeping us here. I’ve said from the outset that if it were not for those funding pieces and the Canadian wage subsidy that our staff and our organization would not be here at this moment to be able to make this presentation to you.

Certainly, as we look forward, the piece that is most concerning for us now, as we reopen, is that there’s an expectation we will return to normal levels. We are doing full productions starting in late November, early December, but if we’re not able to earn that revenue — if we’re not able to make that money in a meaningful way in earned revenue — it has to come from somewhere, or we’re going to start seeing some significant deficits.

As an organization, like Daniel mentioned, we are in a stable financial picture at this exact moment. But if we start going into seasons of production where we’re going to see handfuls of audiences attending…. Our business model relies on 60 percent of our 700-seat theatre to be full. If we’re barely achieving 40, 30 percent, that’s going to be a real, significant shortfall for us. So I think the resilience funding model that B.C. Arts Council had employed was a really strong one.

[3:25 p.m.]

It certainly was able to reach those clients of B.C. Arts Council like Western Canada Theatre very quickly and easily and readily, and we were so grateful to that support, absolutely. I would encourage a similar kind of approach as we go forward in terms of that ongoing recovery funding being more longer term in nature and maybe less bespoke at the moment that it occurred.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we are out of time, Evan, so I would like to thank you for your presentation.

Thank you for starting your presentation by acknowl­edging that this is where you live, work and tell stories. When you referred to what you’re asking for as an arts new deal, that tells a big story, a very powerful story.

E. Klassen: Thanks so much. Have a good afternoon.

J. Routledge (Chair): You too.

Our next presenter is Danielle Synotte, B.C. Agriculture Council.

Danielle, you have five minutes. We will keep track with our phones, and when you have 30 seconds left, we’ll signal to you so that you know that it’s time to wrap up.

B.C. AGRICULTURE COUNCIL

D. Synotte: Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for having me here today in person.

My name is Danielle Synotte from the B.C. Agriculture Council. I am proud to say that we are the industry advo­cate on behalf of key sectorwide priorities for agriculture in British Columbia. BCAC, as an umbrella organization, represents 26 commodity associations, all farmer-led, and collectively, like I said, I probably sit here representing approximately 96 percent of all farm-gate sales in British Columbia.

Creating a unified voice for our members is at the core of what we do, and we do this by facilitating dialogue between our member associations for the core purpose of advancing public policy to contribute towards an environment where farmers and ranchers can do business.

What I’d like to share with you today is, rather than hat in hand, more some of the things that we are working on in the short term that we feel have some overlap with some of government’s core priorities, and, hopefully, there can be some collaboration efforts in those regards as well. Our key priorities — not to anybody’s surprise, I’m sure — are climate change and environmental sustainability, water security and storage, and farmworker care.

The agriculture sector is continually working on initia­tives related to climate change and environmental sustainability, but there were two that I wanted to highlight today. Newly being developed is called AGCLEAN. This is an acronym for the agricultural GHG commitment to lowering emissions by approaching net zero. This is industry’s strategic plan for how we can sequester carbon or reduce GHGs without putting food security at risk. This work actually aligns quite timely with CleanBC’s timelines, and we are already working with government staff to see how we can collaborate with one another and support each other’s plans.

Secondly is in regards to the federal government’s agriculture climate solutions funding. We — industry — did a joint application, and I’m happy to say that we were successful. We are working together right now to make an application for phase 2 of the funding, which would implement a living labs model here in British Columbia for the first time.

The most important part of anything related to environmental sustainability and climate change initiatives is that it has to be producer-driven and have producer input if, at the end of the day, you want producer adoption. We use that as our mantra whenever we’re looking at these initia­tives, and I encourage government to do the same.

In regards to water, for farmers and ranchers, next to land, water is the most critical resource. And I ask the question not for you to answer but for thought-provoking purposes, and that is: if food security truly is a highly important factor for this government, then I guess we ask why aren’t equal efforts being made to secure water for the purposes of food security?

[3:30 p.m.]

Farmers already are impacted by irrigation curtailment, and hotter, drier summers are only going to mean that we rely more heavily on irrigation, not precipitation, for our crops. In some watersheds, farmers are having to cut off their water in order to maintain water levels to benefit fish populations, and, therefore, threatens food security.

The climate preparedness and adaptation strategy identifies the creation of a water security strategy. Within that strategy, government could ensure that water security for agricultural purposes is prioritized and could ensure that consultation and input solicited from industry is incorporated during its development.

We believe that collaborative efforts can prevent regions from being in a position where they must choose between fish population and maintaining a food supply. Protection of water for fish and wildlife is important. With the proper investment and planning, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an either-or. It could be both.

Last, but certainly not least, is related to farmworker care. First, we would like to thank the provincial government for continuing the centralized quarantine facilities for temporary workers entering British Columbia. This has meant a lot to farmers.

Secondly, before the pandemic our organization was working with the provincial government through a joint working group on multiple labour-related priorities. As a result, we have suggested that a midseason inspection is something for the government to consider. The purpose of this inspection is to encourage both the employer and employees to properly maintain the housing in the condition in which it was approved. All we need right now is a green light on that. We’re happy to support the process.

In closing, thank you very much for inviting comments to support the work that you’re doing for British Columbians. With the last memory, I’ll just say: think back to the empty grocery store shelves. I know it was scary for us, but let’s learn a lesson from that and prepare accordingly.

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

Now I’ll ask if the committee has questions.

Lorne. We all agreed Lorne goes first.

L. Doerkson: Lucky me.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

I, too, am concerned about what’s happening around regulations with respect to water. I just wondered if you could expand on what you were talking about — people or farmers being cut off from that supply. Could you expand on that a little bit?

D. Synotte: Yeah. I can give an example. The Koksilah River was an example of that this summer. There were five fish protection orders implemented in British Columbia this summer.

In the Koksilah, specifically, we did have to curtail water. So they did have to stop irrigating their crops for the purposes of fish protection. There was a drastic drop in water levels just when the heat spiked. We saw that water level drop and the taps got cut off. There were impacts, of course, due to financial impacts. So that is one example.

L. Doerkson: We have seen the exact same thing in the Cariboo, where I’m from, where we had probably some of wettest spring on record and absolutely bone-dry creeks now. It’s a massive concern.

What about the regulation around underground water?

D. Synotte: From my understanding, the red tape on the groundwater licensing and the underground water is being further reduced over the years. Is that specifically what you’re asking about?

L. Doerkson: I guess just how much your members are running into it. Commercial operations need to register their wells now, and I believe that has to be done by 2022. It’s a massive issue in, certainly, the Cariboo and other rural areas. I just wondered where your members were on that.

D. Synotte: In regard to the groundwater licensing, yeah, it has been fraught with challenges. Where they’re at…. I’m sure my colleague behind me will speak very specifically to his respective commodity.

The problem is that the process is so backlogged. The support isn’t there. We still have, I think, 15,000 wells that are not registered. There is not an application in the system for it yet. The system just…. There have been a lot of challenges. I don’t know how we’re going to make the March 2022 deadline. It’s probably not going to happen the way that we want it to.

[3:35 p.m.]

We have talked about a deadline. We have offered our support again to help with communication efforts and we’ve been told there isn’t additional funding to work on communication efforts. So we’re just waiting it out right now to see how it goes.

We’ve been communicating with producers continually, on an ongoing basis, that the deadline is coming. We’re at a bit of a standstill, I’m afraid.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have three more questions, Jagrup, Ben and Megan. We have about a minute and a half left.

J. Brar: I will be quick.

Danielle, thank you very much. The good thing is that we have a good economy and low unemployment. But that causes, of course, challenges. We need more workers. We have a massive inflow of temporary foreign workers into the country, and that creates different problems or issues during COVID-19.

If you can tell me a little bit more about the housing situation you’re talking about. I know there’s a contract between the farmers and the government providing a certain kind of housing to those workers. As you mentioned, that is probably people not living up to that, right?

The second one is that we have a centralized quarantine facility, which you mentioned, which I think we are funding. For that one, do you want to continue that as long as the COVID-19 is around us?

D. Synotte: To the second part, yes. As long as we can continue having those quarantine facilities, that would be excellent, and we would very much appreciate that.

In regard to your first question, the housing inspections…. What’s happening is that a housing inspector comes in initially prior to workers arriving, and it gets inspected. When it is approved, we want to ensure that mid-season, there is an inspection that comes in to ensure that both…. It’s maintaining expectations on both sides, for the employer and for the employee, that the housing is maintained where it was originally approved — that everybody is taking care of it.

J. Brar: You’re looking for more enforcement after approval.

D. Synotte: Yup.

J. Routledge (Chair): Ben and then Megan. I would point out that we’re past our five minutes.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Danielle, thanks for the presentation. You know what? We could talk all afternoon on these types of things here. I commend you just in terms of being succinct on the three items, etc.

I know that the farmworker issue that we had wasn’t just British Columbia challenges. We did speak with the B.C. Ag Council because as a group of producers, there was a wide gap between Ottawa and British Columbia.

The groundwater one. I guess what I’m kind of…. Having been in agriculture most of my life, I know that the use of water is something that…. You know, we could probably always do more with some of the research and stuff like that. I see that in our presentation in Richmond, Ted van der Gulik is speaking to us. I know Ted’s work, etc. I do think that there is a case to be made that we could utilize water, perhaps, more efficiently. I don’t know the answers for the different crops and commodities and stuff like that.

Anyway, I just wanted to…. When you mentioned the 15,000 wells, etc., and the backlog and stuff like that, I can just see the people that are out there that are going to struggle with that. So hopefully we can help you with the answers to some of these things.

I don’t really have a question. I just think that it’s good that you’re bringing those up. We do need to deal with those. Probably, your climate action commitment is a big deal. I think that the government needs to recognize that you’re willing to do what’s necessary. So thank you.

D. Synotte: Thank you. I will be submitting a more formal submission on the other side of this to speak to more of the specifics that I briefly touched on today.

M. Dykeman: I’ll be very brief. Thank you for your presentation. As you can guess, my question is related to the groundwater licensing.

The agricultural water reserve. What conversations have taken place so far with that? Where are you at with that? Will there be anything more coming on that?

D. Synotte: I’m so glad you brought that up. It is actually written in, in the Water Act. It is in the Water Act, and that’s where it stayed. So unfortunately, discussions to…. It was in previous governments. Unfortunately, when it was incorporated into the Water Act, this agricultural water reserve, there weren’t discussions that talked about how we get it to the next step.

[3:40 p.m.]

We would love to do that. We have had submissions in the past in respect to how we could take the next steps in that regard. We do have a plan in place, and we would be happy to have discussions on that.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we’ll have to wrap it up, Danielle. I do, on behalf of the committee, want to thank you for your presentation.

Thank you for the reminder about the empty shelves. You know, in that context, we went through 18 months where we found that we could actually change each other’s behaviour. So we can, perhaps, if we all pull together in the same way, change our behaviour so that we’re making choices that involve local produce.

Our next presenter is Kevin Boon, B.C. Cattlemen’s Association.

Kevin, you have five minutes. We’re keeping track with our phone. We will signal you when you have 30 seconds so that you know to wrap up, and then we’ll have five minutes to ask you questions. There you go.

B.C. CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION

K. Boon: You must know that I get a little long-winded, so those reminders help a lot.

I, first of all, want to thank all of you for the opportunity to present to you here today. B.C. Cattlemen’s Association represents around 1,200 members, cattle ranchers, producers in the province, including our newest addition. That’s a regional on Vancouver Island.

Today I’m also going to present on three topics. I’m going to talk on wildfire recovery and preparedness, investment in Crown range infrastructure, and water storage and safety modernization.

I’m going to start right off with the wildfire. Really, what you need to know that’s very important is that in the past five years we’ve had three major fire events that have consumed over 3½ million hectares of land and have cost the government over $1.7 billion to fight. That’s not including the losses that we’ve accumulated in the resources of timber and forage — forage being most important to us, of course, because that’s the lifeline of our industry.

For decades, we feel that the Crown lands have been managed with a focus on producing as many trees as possible with little regard for the forage and other resources that are on there. We feel that, in many ways, this contributes to the situation that we have out there right now of an overabundance of trees, which creates an overabundance of fuel, which then creates these wildfires that are extremely hard to manage.

We feel that what needs to be done in this situation is a better job of building a landscape-level, right-on-the-ground planning method and situation so that we can build on the ground what we need for going forward to not only manage those resources but to manage for the life of fire.

Right now we’ve got a blank easel out there. We’ve got a blank picture, and we’re holding the paint brush. What we do in this next one or two years in recovery and rehabilitation will set the stage for the next 50 years on that land base. So it’s very important. But it’s also very important that we do this management on the rest of that landscape too.

This means for this that we have some fairly simple requests. That is that we initiate the planning stage. That will mean looking at the stems per hectare that we are doing on there, looking at how much forage is in between and looking at the water resources that are also on that. So we’re building a plan for that whole hectare of land, and every hectare of land, to make the best possible use for timber, for forage, for wildlife. I think that’s extremely important.

It’s also really important for us to understand that while we plant a lot of trees, especially with carbon sequestration in mind, grass is a huge supporter and a huge sequester of carbon. When we look at the stem-to-root ratio in grass, the majority of the carbon is stored in the root, whereas in trees it’s in the stem. So when we have a fire, the grass burns off very quickly, with very little carbon released, because most of it is building the soil underneath, whereas with trees, most of it goes into the air.

[3:45 p.m.]

We feel, too, that with the use of cattle, we’re already doing trials where we’re utilizing cattle to graze that fine fuel and actually reduce the amount of risk that we have for fire out there.

We would suggest that an investment of $10 million be made over five years’ time, utilizing $1 million a year for two years to do the planning; equipment and training for $2 million for two years; and implementation for five years. The training and equipment would be for the other phase in here that we’re recommending, and that would be to train community brigades for first attack and first response on these fires.

Many of these fires do not need to become fires if they are actually combatted before they get a start. We have the people, we have the resources, and we have the ability to do it.

Well, five minutes went quick. I’m going to go really quickly through the next two and not give you the background so much.

We would also like to see an investment in aging infrastructure on the Crown land. The fences and a lot of the waterworks are getting depleted and need to be upgraded. As well, we feel that there’s an opportunity to put land that’s in non-use back into use by rebuilding fences and containing that so we can better utilize that resource. Our recommendation on that is a five-year investment of $3 million a year, for a total of $15 million.

The last one, which is probably, in many ways, the most important, as Lorne was talking, is water and water storage. In climate and climate adaptation, we feel that the only way we can actually do anything is to manage our water. The only way we can manage our water is to store our water. There are many ways of doing that.

We know, with the dams we have right now…. We need to update and modernize these, and we need an investment in that.

We also need to look at new ways of storing water. We need to learn from the beaver and make some small dams on tributaries. We can store as much water in ground as above ground and utilize that. It’s very important for not only the management of agriculture and recreation. Most important to a lot of people is that it creates habitat for the fish and for the spawning of these in the tributaries. We can only manage it if we store it. We feel that this is paramount if we’re looking forward to climate adaptation.

We feel that in this…. We would like to see, for the modernization, an investment, over three years, of $5 million a year, for a total of $15 million.

Being as I got long-winded on the fire, I will thank you very much for the opportunity to come before you and welcome any questions on these or any other topics where you feel that you might have interests.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Kevin. I know there are questions. That will give you an opportunity to add some of the pieces you didn’t get a chance to yet.

L. Doerkson: Thank you for your five-minute presentation, Kevin.

Listen. We talked a little bit…. You touched on range grass, etc. We talked to weed folks earlier today in Prince George that would support everything that you’ve said. What I don’t understand is…. You touched on waiting, or not necessarily waiting…. You mentioned a one- to two-year time frame.

Isn’t this work that we should be doing right now?

K. Boon: Absolutely. We suggest it start right now. On the Crown land…. About 90 to 95 percent of our province is Crown land. It’s going to take more than one year to do the planning. We feel it needs to be planned throughout, not just what’s been burnt but the entire landscape. In order to do that, it will take time. Two years probably won’t be sufficient.

We would like to see it started right away with some of the projects being started. A great place to start is right here at home, where the fires have hit and where we have that. You know what it’s like up in Flat Lake. You know what the fires have done there. We can still work on the fires from ’17 and ’18 in those areas without having to go in and selective log to do it.

We feel that there is an opportunity in that. We don’t feel that the traditional clearcut ways are the way to go. We need to selective log over time so that we can be constantly harvesting, constantly upgrading and constantly keeping that forage coming into play. It also is allowing, in that, the trapping of the snow and proper melt-off so that our freshet does not all come at once, and we can reduce some of that flooding capability that is out there.

[3:50 p.m.]

By planning ahead, we can do a whole bunch of things between resource development but also getting to the crux of trying to help to prevent some of these forest fires.

L. Doerkson: Not a question. I appreciated your comments about the first response to forest fires in the province in general terms. Thank you very much, Kevin.

M. Dykeman: Hi. Thank you for your presentation. It’s great to see you.

The fences that you mentioned that need to be repaired. I remember the last project on that. Are you looking at sort of like over 50 percent, 80 percent? Do you think it all needs to be redone at this point again?

K. Boon: No. There are a lot of things. Fences are constantly coming and going and deteriorating. If we build fences right, we can get 35 to 40 years out of them. If we don’t build them right and we don’t maintain them…. Part of this plan would be a maintenance program on them. It’s a phased program. We always have to be updating.

One of the things, especially, that we find is that we’ve got a lot of land that is in non-use because we have not made the investment back into this infrastructure and these fences. We feel that in situations such as this year, where we’ve lost a lot of that grassland to fires, if we had some of those vacancies fenced, we would have a place to move the cattle.

We also feel that by fencing them — even if we don’t have a fire; I hope we can get ahead of these fires, where we don’t have that situation — and by putting them back into use, we create opportunities for new entrants to come in and utilize this grass as tenures, because what we’re using now is full. We need to expand. We need to have that ability for sustainability. That would give us that opportunity as well.

M. Dykeman: Okay, that makes sense. Just a quick follow-up. With the water management idea you have for storage, do you have a written plan you might be submitting?

K. Boon: Well, we’ve got the basis of a plan. It’s interesting. As I started to put this, I’m beginning to feel like a broken record. I’m really happy to see new members on this standing committee every time, because I’ve presented the same thing seven years in a row: investment into the infrastructure for storage. I get very warm response to it, but we get very little action. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about it and the questions on the groundwater, the surface water and the Water Sustainability Act.

We’ve consumed a lot of time in the last five or six years just trying to get a licence for our wells, which is dismally slow, due to the process. We’ve got less than a quarter of them done. We need to really concentrate on that surface water. Many of you might be aware of Stump Lake out here and the flooding issues we’ve had. There’s a really good example of where we could learn a lesson from the beavers.

I don’t want to reimport the beavers, because they’re destructive, but taking two or three of the tributaries coming into there and building a series of small dams…. The water you see on top is minor compared to the water that the ground stores. That’s self-irrigation of that grassland, so we’re creating riparian areas. We’re creating better opportunities for that. So these plans are part and parcel, but you have to build them according to what is in front of you and where you need to build it.

M. Dykeman: All right. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we’re actually out of time. So on behalf of the committee, Kevin, I want to thank you for your presentation.

I guess, on a personal note, what I’d like to say is that you have reinforced and demonstrated the importance of local community expertise when it comes to addressing the big social issues that affect us all. I learned lots.

K. Boon: I guess it goes to say that some of us guys are getting long in the tooth and older. We do still have a use. That’s the history we bring with us. I thank you for that.

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

Our next presenter is Glen Lucas, B.C. Fruit Growers Association.

Glen, I think you know the drill: five minutes. We’ll give you a signal when you have 30 seconds to wrap up. Then we’ll ask questions.

B.C. FRUIT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

G. Lucas: It’s a pleasure being here again to see the committee, and good to see some familiar faces.

The B.C. Fruit Growers Association represents 350 commercial tree fruit producers in the Okanagan, Similkameen and Creston valleys. We’re starting to move north, so we’re even seeing things around Salmon Arm and Kamloops — some new plantings.

Our vision for the tree fruit industry is a prosperous, sustainable, innovative tree fruit sector in B.C., that grows products that improve health. I think we’ve achieved a good measure of sustainability. We have a sterile insect release program that reduces pesticides. We’re innovative. We have high-density plantings, very efficient irrigation.

[3:55 p.m.]

We haven’t achieved the prosperity that we need to. Certainly, there have been current challenges, as the legislators are aware — the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency — and remember that before all of that, we had the opioid addiction emergency as well.

I will focus on COVID-19 and climate emergency impacts. Going into those two, we had a tough financial situation in our sector. We had a trade war between the U.S. and China, and over a two-year period, Washington state producers — and they’re right next door — received what would have been the equivalent of us in B.C., our tree fruit sector, receiving $20.8 million. I can tell you that the Ministry of Agriculture has told us that our sector has received $30 million over the last 20 or 25 years through various programs, like production insurance, and so on. So $20 million over two years — it was a flood of money south, and it hurt us.

Retail food consolidation. Some good news on that. We have a federal initiative to establish a national food retailer code of conduct. Those rules will go both ways. Sellers will have to measure up as well.

A third thing that’s impacted us, before getting to the COVID-19 and the climate emergency, is the provincial Ag budget. In short, the province of Ontario receives about twice as much Agriculture funding per dollar of agriculture GDP from the province as what we do in B.C. And in Quebec, it’s three times. Those are the next two biggest apple-producing provinces. They have achieved a measure of prosperity. They are growing and successful apple sectors.

Now, on to the COVID-19 impacts. Labour is the big thing. We want to thank the province for the centralized two-week quarantine that the province has provided during COVID-19. That’s been huge. We do need to work on modernizing our labour availability, and we’re developing an action plan for that.

The climate emergency. I did an estimate of the loss for this season, which would be $17.3 million, out of $103 million potential industry revenue — so about 20 percent. We, fortunately, have agriculture insurance programs. We’re thankful for those. They will cover about one-third of the loss. So we have a weakened financial system coming into it, and now that climate emergency has caused us more problems.

I’d like to go to my conclusion and basically go to some recommendations. First, we need some urgent signal from the province that our sector is important and that apple production is important. We’d like to see provincial investment into the SIR program of $11.2 million over the next five years. SIR, because we’ve had a 15 percent reduction in apple acreage, is really under pressure.

A general increase in the Ag budget would be helpful. And the provincial treasury is under pressure, so maybe we could dip into those Columbia River treaty funds that are being renegotiated right now.

We’d like to manage our own marketing a little more closely. That would be to establish a marketing commission or marketing board for apples.

Kevin and Danielle mentioned water. Securing the water supply is very important, especially under climate change. We support the ag water reserve, and the infrastructure storage improvement is huge. We had problems where I live, in Lake Country, about ten years ago and in Summerland about ten years ago as well, and they just built the dams higher. It solved all the problems. We just need that investment.

[4:00 p.m.]

Lastly, we’d like to see some improvements to the agriculture property tax system that would actually incentivize agriculture use. The deferral of the qualification for two years is a mistake that encourages non-agriculture use. We need to encourage agriculture use. That means increasing the taxation on non-agriculture use of ALR land and perhaps diverting that in to the Ag budget or into a trust that would fund ag programs.

With that, together we can achieve the third part of our vision, which is that prosperity for agriculture producers, and ensure food security for B.C.

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

I’ll ask members of the committee for their questions.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much. It’s good to see you here. This is a long way from home. We’re headed there tomorrow.

G. Lucas: I wanted to be with my friends.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, that’s good. Just in terms of the tax exemption. Could you explain that? You’re saying that there’s an exemption for two years right now if you take agricultural land out of production. Like, let’s say you’re replanting, there’s an exemption currently by B.C. Assessment or…?

G. Lucas: No, there was a…. In order to qualify for the lower property tax for agriculture, class 9, you need to have $3,500 worth of sales, essentially, or $10,000 if it’s below two hectares.

That’s too low. All of agriculture agrees that that’s too low. We need to intensify the use of that land and make it less available for those country estates and more produc­tive for agriculture.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): To be more succinct, you’re saying that the $2,500 — I don’t think it’s $3,500; I think it’s $2,500 — between two acres to ten or whatever it is, that number is too low. It needs to go up.

G. Lucas: Yes.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay.

G. Lucas: The minimum level for membership in our association is $15,000 revenue, and that’s probably too low.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Okay.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Glen. Nice to see you in person. A great presentation.

Under your ask, you mentioned one of the things: “manage own marketing.” Can you please elaborate? How would that be different? What are the challenges that we have within the existing marketing strategy?

G. Lucas: We have many packing houses. We have one large co-op that packs about 50 percent of the apples and about 20 percent of the cherries, and then a number of other packing houses. Some of them are big, but many are small ones. They compete with each other, and they get beat up by the consolidated retailers, essentially.

We’d like to have a marketing commission that would gather all of the information and make it available back to the marketing agents so that they would then have good information. Competition is based on perfect information. We have this built-in…. It’s like molasses, the information flowing from one packer to another. There are some competition issues there too. By having a marketing commission, we could share that.

There’s been some talk about setting price targets and quality standards, as well, to protect markets so that we aren’t undercutting ourselves by undermining quality. Those are some of the ideas for a marketing commission.

H. Sandhu: A really quick follow-up, Chair.

I know I still have your presentation from when we virtually met. Would you be submitting the written presentation to the committee? I really like how you had the graph and the comparison between Ontario, Quebec and B.C., where we are. That was really an eye-opener for me, so I wonder if you’ll be presenting a written submission to us as a committee.

G. Lucas: Absolutely. I will be, and I am going to be doing that tonight.

H. Sandhu: Thank you. I appreciate it.

J. Brar: Thank you, Glen. Very quickly. One, I would like to know: do you have sufficient labour available under the circumstances? The second one is, quickly, if you can explain a little bit more about the SIR program. What is the program in Europe recommending, extending it or making it better? If you can speak about that.

[4:05 p.m.]

G. Lucas: Briefly, labour — we don’t have enough. For the larger growers, they tend to focus on the seasonal ag worker program — Mexican and Caribbean workers. This year we’re probably about 80 or 90 percent arrivals on that, which is good compared to the smaller farms that rely on domestic workers and backpackers from Quebec, for example. That’s really dried up, so we’re very short of labour. I had a couple of interviews with the press today on that.

We’re trying to encourage local workers to come out. But you know, you go to the restaurant, and you see the signs on the windows. They’re short of workers too. Everyone’s short. There are some things we can do to solve that.

The sterile insect release program is a partnership between the three regional districts and producers. It’s unique in the world. Local governments and producers have partnered. They raise property taxes. It runs a factory in Osoyoos that rears hundreds of millions of this pest. It’s a codling moth. It’s a worm in the apple. We raise them. We sterilize them with gamma radiation and release them into the orchards. They’re sterile, and it interferes with the wild moths’ breeding. So any of the offspring are…. Well, they’re just infertile.

That’s been a very successful program. It’s been economic. It’s been environmental. Because of our 15 percent acreage reduction in apples in the last three years, we need to restructure that and figure out a new way of operating and doing different things — maybe adding more pests, maybe adding cherries into that. But that takes time, and we need a bridge for that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, Glen, we’re out of time, but I’d really to thank you on behalf of the committee for your presentation. I wrote down that your goal, your mission, is to produce products that improve health. I can tell you, as an urban consumer, I know that B.C. fruit is preferred, but we can’t always get it. And I think you’re telling us why that is.

G. Lucas: Yes. Thank you. Just to promote Agriculture Day that B.C. Ag Council has coming up here, we’re hoping to have apples in your gift basket for that day. Looking forward to that.

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

Our next presenter is Carmen Massey, Shuswap Trail Alliance.

SHUSWAP TRAIL ALLIANCE

C. Massey: Shifting gears from agriculture a little bit. This is my first time to present to you, so thank you very much for this opportunity. I’m the president of the Shuswap Trail Alliance, and I’m here to represent the issues and concerns and needs of our specific watershed but also, in general, the provincial needs of recreation access management support.

Just to give you a little bit of background…. Thank you to Greg Kyllo. He knows quite a bit about this. We’ve talked about this at great length.

The Shuswap Trail Alliance is an organizational body that was formed in 2005 that is truly an alliance of partners throughout our region. We work together to develop trail strategies as First Nations, so all four Secwépemc communities in our watershed; stewardship groups; government agencies, many from the provincial government; industry; businesses; community stewardship organizations; and many individuals. We all work together through this alliance to try to — the purpose, and I think we’ve been very successful in this — develop, operate, maintain and promote a network of non-motorized trails, waterways and hut-to-hut routes throughout the Shuswap watershed region.

One of our main strategies to be effective in this work is to create a round table. The round table meets annually on a larger basis, and then there are quarterly working groups. That round table is comprised of our partner organizations, communities, groups. We address, as a collaborative group, these issues that come up. It has been a really effective model, one that others throughout the province have been trying to follow and, hopefully, are also finding success.

[4:10 p.m.]

We also would like to acknowledge that the province has been an excellent partner in that round table process. We’ve worked closely with Rec Sites and Trails B.C., B.C. Parks and many of the forestry management agencies and individuals. You’ve definitely been a big part of that round table process. Also, the rural dividend fund has been essential in this trail development process.

An important thing for you to realize when you’re thinking about funding is this rural dividend fund. It works for us in the rural communities. It allows us to have multi-year projects — phased project approaches. It’s flexible. It’s proven to be very effective. We’ve been able to get work done, and we’ve also been able to create economic benefit for the Shuswap region. So thank you for that funding. We do want to let you know that it’s been important to us. But there are many areas of recreation planning and management funding that need to be increased.

I think we all understand and agree, especially after a summer like we’ve had with the heat and the smoke and the climate change crisis, that probably the greatest asset that B.C. has is our natural environment. Our parks and our trails and our green spaces and our lakes and our rivers and our coastlines…. They’re essential, all of them, to a future of a robust economy in this province.

The pandemic has shown us how much we value these assets. It really has. The people have gone out in the landscape in numbers unseen before, which is a wonderful thing but also a very big challenge. Our trails infrastructure, our amenities, our people who guard the safety and wellbeing of our wildlife and our species at risk are challenged and underfunded. Due to that lack of funding and staff shortages, especially at Rec Sites and Trails B.C., the Shuswap Trail Alliance and many of our regional partners have had to contribute a lot of volunteer and in-kind capacity to make these things happen.

We’re missing opportunities. We’re not managing the landscape as well as we should. We recommend that with an increased funding to Rec Sites and Trails B.C. to $20 million, you would be able to create capacity for those hard-working employees that you have on the ground out there and that we work with every day. B.C. Parks. Rec Sites and Trails. Those people are amazing, and you have an amazing staff.

We would also like to encourage you to designate some funds for localized collaborative land management. Even $5,000 or $6,000 for a little group like the Shuswap Trail Alliance is a game-changer. It allows us to leverage people — volunteers, individuals — who otherwise just don’t quite have the capacity.

We would also like to encourage you to allocate additional funds for the ongoing development and mainte­nance of trails through programs such as the rural dividend fund.

Thank you for your attention. Thank you for listening. This is the first time we’ve been able to address your committee, so really appreciate it.

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

Now we’ll invite questions.

G. Kyllo: Good to see you, Carmen. I can certainly attest to the great work of the Shuswap Trail Alliance. It is an amazing organization that has really, as Carmen laid out, pulled everybody together — everybody from B.C. Parks, FLNRO, parks and rec, First Nations and community groups. I certainly want to compliment Carmen and the Shuswap Trail Alliance for the amazing work they do in the Shuswap.

We were very successful a number of years ago with a provincial contribution for the Shuswap North Okanagan Rail Trail, a rail trail network that starts in Sicamous and will eventually connect with the Okanagan Rail Trail. That was an investment of about $2.17 million from the province, which was the single largest contributor towards the $6.6 million purchase price for that railbed. I know there’s a lot of work that’s being undertaken now to do the surfacing work and all of the infrastructure required with it. Although that is a large project, it will obviously bring a lot of folks to the Shuswap area.

Many of the other trail networks have seen just a significant increase. I think some of the numbers we were talking about earlier, like a 40 percent increase in actual utilization of many of these trails in the area…. The rural dividend fund was a program that was very successful in supporting some of these small organizations around the province.

[4:15 p.m.]

That, I think, is what Carmen has asked for — maybe having that one reinstituted. It was a very successful program, especially for rural parts of the province.

Carmen, thank you very much for coming in today.

L. Doerkson: Thanks, Carmen. Thanks for presenting.

I noted the rural dividend fund as well. I just wondered if you could give us a bit of a sense of how much funding you’ve actually received over the last little while. I know that you talked in terms of $20 million, but I think you’re speaking to a bigger provincial effort there. What kind of funding would you be specifically looking for, for your projects?

C. Massey: Well, actually, I didn’t come here today specifically to advocate for funding for specific projects, necessarily, for the Shuswap Trail Alliance, because I feel like this is a provincial issue that needs to be looked at on a larger scale.

Of course, if you set up some sort of funding model that would support trail development provincially…. I think the Outdoor Recreation Council and Trails B.C. have put forth submissions to you as well. We totally are in line with their advocacy and believe what they have to say is in the right direction. If those things were implemented provincially, we would be able to access that funding.

The rural dividend fund. Over the past three years, I believe we have accessed — through the Trail Alliance, as a partner in funding — about $300,000. It has funded — Greg referred to the rail trail — the initial study, the feasibility study and the planning. It’s a very difficult thing to get funding for planning. There’s lots of infrastructure funding, but not a lot of planning funding, and that rural dividend fund allows us to do that.

Trails are a funny thing. You’d never think of building a highway network without planning it properly and without funding it well in advance. But trails, which are so important to our communities now and many people’s livelihoods, our tourism economy and just people walking their dog, their quality of life…. It’s so important — especially, COVID has shown us. We wouldn’t leave that up to just little small volunteer groups. We would support them in a real strategic way.

Rec Sites and Trails is doing as well as they can to manage all this on a landscape level, but it’s challenging for them. If they have better funding, and if we have better funding, we’ll all be able to be more effective in making a better trail network for everyone.

L. Doerkson: Thank you very much. I appreciate your passion and your advocacy.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, we’ll wrap up this part of the afternoon.

On behalf of the committee, Carmen, I’d like to thank you. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to describe to us what is working now so that we build on that — so that we, in our deliberations and our recommendations, don’t think we need to make recommendations that start from scratch. You’ve reinforced the things that work and what needs to be done to make it even better.

Our next presenter is Andrea Barnett, who’s making two presentations.

We’ll make a distinction. You can start with your presentation on behalf of Ducks Unlimited Canada.

DUCKS UNLIMITED CANADA

A. Barnett: Yes. I would like to begin by thanking the committee for your generosity with me, in terms of your time.

I wear several hats, including working for Ducks Unlimited and being a rancher. I’m a sessional instructor at Thompson Rivers University. I do some work in collaboration with the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association. I also coordinate the Target One Funders Collaborative, which looks to bring philanthropic match to projects that are in support of conservation.

I want to begin by talking about what Ducks Unlimited Canada’s suggestions would be for the committee to consider in terms of budgetary investments. I really would echo a lot of what we’ve heard previously.

[4:20 p.m.]

Ducks Unlimited would strongly encourage this committee to look at keeping water on the landscape as being a central, core piece — whether we want to look at it in terms of reaching broader policy objectives or “build back better.” This idea of investing in water infrastructure helps achieve so many broader objectives — whether we’re talking about wildfire management, in support of nature-based climate change solutions or industries like agriculture, wildlife more broadly, recreation, human health or public safety. It is such a high-value investment.

I want to sort of break apart the discussion of keeping water on the landscape into three pieces. The first is really very much echoing what many of my colleagues and friends have said here today, which is this idea of encouraging government to recommit and invest in existing water infrastructure on the landscape. Just to give you an idea, at Ducks Unlimited Canada, we either own or cooperatively manage over 600 dams in British Columbia.

Many of these dams are reaching the point where we need to conduct life-cycle maintenance. Recent regulatory changes have switched the parameters. They have made maintaining these sorts of structures much more expen­sive and have changed the liability profile of being a dam owner. Those existing pieces of water infrastructure that are on the landscape do risk being decommissioned or naturalized if there are not new investments.

Whether you’re talking about an agricultural landowner or whether you’re talking about an NGO like Ducks Unlimited Canada, in the absence of new investments, we will lose the infrastructure that we have. That’s the first part.

The second part would be that we think that we should have more water on the landscape. That should be the ultimate aim. We would encourage government to look at opportunities to enhance the amount of water that we store. Enhance the health of riparian areas. Look at existing reservoirs. See if we can add capacity.

Particularly now that we know the outcome of the federal election — we’ve seen the budget that was tabled federally recently and the massive investment in nature — there is so much opportunity to leverage federal funding to this aim. I know that B.C. is in the process of negotiating a Canada-B.C. nature agreement. There’s tremendous, generational opportunity to leverage that sort of funding to make a real difference. Also, look at partners on the landscape, like Ducks Unlimited Canada and agricultural producers that would stand beside that.

The third piece of keeping water on the landscape would be to prioritize having staff looking at different opportunities for this within the ministries, adding more capacity. There’s not enough capacity to do this sort of thinking on the government end. That would be encouraged: additional staff resources, as well as sort of looking at the regulatory and permitting environment. Where water is concerned, it has become increasingly onerous. The liabilities have really increased, such that it really is an impediment to doing this sort of conservation work.

While not a budgetary recommendation…. Looking at regulatory alignment and simplification for these sorts of projects, like keeping water on the landscape — which, we can all agree, are a good idea — let’s all work together to make conservation and water storage something that is easy to do.

With that, I would like to thank you and to take any questions.

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

Questions?

G. Kyllo: With the 600 different dams that you had referenced, what is the typical lifespan? Have you guys done an inventory to determine what the actual costs will be of bringing those up to the new standards?

A. Barnett: What we know is that within the next decade, we need to conduct life-cycle maintenance on at least a third of those, at least 200 projects. The projects vary tremendously in size.

[4:25 p.m.]

The costing of it. On an annual basis, the actual number is hard to predict, but we’re talking about several million dollars a year required to do the infrastructure upgrades that are needed. I’ll just remind the committee that many of these infrastructures were put in place 30 years ago with different construction methods and different construction materials. A lot of those would be different now and might have a longer lifespan.

It also came in when there was that initial infusion of American dollars through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, NAWCA, which is matched funding. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw a huge infusion of that matched funding to put a lot of these projects in place together. Now they are reaching their life-cycle maintenance, their generational kind of maintenance that’s required.

G. Kyllo: Sure. There currently is not a bucket of funding that’s targeted towards assisting with that.

A. Barnett: No, there’s not. In many cases, there are partnerships between the province and agriculture producers. It’s not just Ducks Unlimited that’s doing these. There are management agreements, and in some cases, there was initial funding put in place from various parties.

G. Kyllo: If I may, it sounds to me that you’re in pretty close alignment to the presentation by Kevin Boon with respect to it. It’s not just the surface water. It’s the retention and increase of water retention, I guess, within the groundwater as well.

It would seem to me that the initiatives of Ducks Unlimited and even the agriculture sector are good for the envi­ronment overall. If it’s good for the general society and public, maybe the public purse should be at the table and actually be providing considerable funding towards it. I don’t know that anybody here would disagree with the merits of water retention, especially as we’re dealing with climate change.

A. Barnett: Absolutely. When you look at the stream of benefits that is generated broadly in society at…. For example, Tunkwa Lake and Leighton Lake, which are very famous recreational lakes, those are projects where Ducks Unlimited was involved. Actually, we’re the dam licensees for those dams as the local area ranchers.

Think about the benefits more broadly to society. It does seem an appropriate use of public funds to make sure that these sorts of assets, green infrastructure, are allowed to persist.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have a little less than two minutes left.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Andrea, I appreciate the fact that these dams do need to be well monitored, licensed properly and maintained, etc. Now, back when Testalinden Creek collapsed in 2009, 2010…. I guess the question really is: is that information available at the fingertips of the people that are the regulators? What’s the budget that we’re talking about here? Like, put the order of magnitude on the….

A. Barnett: In terms of all the dams?

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Well, the order of magnitude in the budget cycle that we’re talking about is three years. I mean, realistically, we’re not talking ten years. What does your organization suggest?

A. Barnett: What I think is that we need to look at all of the major dam owners, including things like ranchers, and come together and establish…. I would be hesitant to put forward a number just on behalf of the ENGO community. For Ducks Unlimited, I would say $3 million annually for what we manage, but that’s not all the dams. That’s not all the problem. I think that coming up with some sort of a cost estimate more broadly…. Certainly, if we were looking at just supporting ENGOs, a few million dollars annually would be a starting point.

I would just underscore the fact that the cost associated with these dam upgrades has gone up. We have amended legislation relative to dams for good reason, for public safety, because of things like Testalinden, because of things like Mount Polley. But now what we are asking dam owners to do is re-engineer and rebuild at a much higher standard. That’s one of the issues when it comes to predicting cost. It’s a moving target because things have really changed in terms of the parameters.

Thanks for your question.

J. Routledge (Chair): One more question. We’re a bit over time, and then you have another presentation. So we could….

A. Barnett: I do, yes.

[4:30 p.m.]

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Madam Chair, for your patience.

The question is…. You mentioned 600 dams. I think that people would be shocked, actually, to find out how many dams there are out there. You mentioned a third of them need to be replaced or at least maintained.

I know that we have decommissioned one because of high freshet and because we were worried it might let go on its own. The irony of that is that creek is now almost dry, at this point this year. So all of that water that could’ve been stored is no longer stored.

My question is: how many of that third might be at crisis mode?

A. Barnett: In terms of needing to…?

L. Doerkson: Be done now.

A. Barnett: Well, there are a lot that need to be done now, and I would have to look to our engineers to really decisively answer that question.

In terms of managing our workload, as an NGO, our aim would be to do two or three, three or four projects annually as something that’s manageable with our staff complement. But if there were an infusion of funding, which could also, in turn, translate into capacity, not just materials…. There are many that really need to be re-engineered, even if it’s just about upgrading to meet safety standards.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. We do have a bit of a time pressure, so why don’t you just go right into your next…

ANDREA BARNETT

A. Barnett: Yes. Now I want to present as a rancher.

Our family ranch, which is a fifth-generation family ranch, was really impacted by the Tremont Creek fire. We lost all of our range, and we lost a bunch of cattle. I feel like we have a very up close and personal kind of view around wildfire management. What I want to bring are just a few recommendations as an individual rancher that I think should really be considered.

I would like to start by just expressing gratitude to the province, and also to the federal government, for the extent to which you’ve come to the bar with disaster management. I cannot tell you how important that is, because we would be having Re/Max out to our ranch were it not for that. So thank you, as a starting point.

I would like to talk about three different nodes, one being wildfire and disaster prevention. What I just said on behalf of Ducks Unlimited, in terms of keeping water in the landscape, would be one of the things that I would say needs to be considered as part of wildfire prevention — also management.

I would also recommend that there’s a prioritization on fuel management wherein we develop a robust prescribed-burn regime. Ranchers are asking for this. Indigenous communities…. Our neighbour community, Skeetchestn, who we have a fabulous relationship with, has been trying to lead the way on this for years. This should be institutionalized as an effective means of fire management, because as we know, the problem is only going to get worse. I would echo what Kevin said about this need to take a planning and broader policy view in terms of both how we do prevention and also how we do recovery.

The second node is immediately dealing with wildfire crisis management. I would echo the comments of many people that we heard this summer. There was not enough funding allocated to wildfire management. I was pleased to hear Premier Horgan talk about the idea of going to a 12-month kind of management regime. I think that that makes a lot of sense, as does having more funding.

In addition to more funding, it needs to be allocated differently. Again, to echo a little bit of what my colleague Kevin has said, it’s this idea of engaging local communities, be they loggers, be they ranchers or be they Indigenous communities, particularly on initial attack. That needs to be instituted before there are fires.

There were three fires on our ranch. There’s a sense that for a bunch of those fires, had we had access early on and an initial attack strategy that leveraged our community resources, we could have actioned those fires much more effectively. It would’ve been much less expensive. So let’s create that system.

[4:35 p.m.]

We would say that there are Indigenous communities who have been talking about taking this on as part of guardians programs. You hear the Simpcw First Nation and Skeetchestn. I think that they are really leading the way and are extremely well positioned to take a leadership role, in collaboration with the ranchers and the loggers, to do this. I would recommend…. Again, when looking at the federal budgetary envelope, almost $400 million has been allocated federally to Indigenous-led conservation, including guardians programs. That’s leverage money that’s on the table that could be used to help with wildfire management.

Then in terms of…. The third piece would be disaster recovery, and I would just echo this idea that we need to plan carefully around how we do the recovery, how we do reseeding, how we manage the forest resource. There should be investments made in that, because that will sort of dictate the future playing field and the future of wildfire management and the economics on the landscape.

With that, thank you again for allowing me to present in two capacities, and I would take any questions on the latter.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Great. Here’s another opportunity for members of the committee to ask questions, perhaps questions you didn’t get a chance to ask before.

A. Barnett: Or different questions.

L. Doerkson: Sure. Not so much a question, I guess, but I thank you for your presentation. Because I just think that…. I have seen with my own eyes. I referenced it this morning with the weed folks, talking about Pressy Lake, which was left to its own demise, to be honest. And now, of course, it is just noxious weeds for as far as the eye can see.

A. Barnett: That’s right.

L. Doerkson: I will do everything I can to support your initiative. So thanks for presenting.

B. Stewart (Deputy Chair): Thanks again, Andrea. Just the disaster financial assistance that you said was life-saving — can you just quickly tell me what it is that you received or how it was based?

A. Barnett: Well, there’s a bunch of different programs. Through EMBC, there are the emergency management programs that covered some things like short-term, immediate needs for feed. We had to evacuate over 600 animals. And those were just the ones we evacuated. So there was a feed program and a transportation subsidy that was allo­cated towards that — sort of the short-term funding.

Then there’s also now this…. It’s mostly federal funding, but I think that there’s also some provincial match associated with this, through AgriRecovery, that looks at the next 12 to 18 months and the fact that we have no grass, we have no infrastructure, and we have to continue to support our ranch and find places for our cattle — things like paying for feed in the interim, paying for the transportation of livestock, paying for some of the infrastructure that has been devastated. There’s a whole bunch of different pieces to it. And it’s all….

Paying for cattle mortality would be another one — the cattle that we lost in the fire. We lost over…. I think the latest count is about 70 animals. These are animals that will either not re-breed or not go to market. As people know, the margins are razor-thin in agriculture, right? Every little bit has an impact, and we would not be able to withstand it in the absence of these programs. So again, thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions? I think we have time for one or two.

J. Brar: Andrea, thank you very much. I would like to ask, maybe, a question about the first presentation.

A. Barnett: Yeah, for sure.

J. Brar: As my colleague said here, 600 dams is quite a number.

A. Barnett: It’s a lot.

J. Brar: What percentage of these dams are publicly owned and privately owned?

A. Barnett: That’s a good question. I’d need to have my spreadsheet. In some cases, they’re actually owned by the province, but Ducks Unlimited is the agent of the dam. In some cases, it is a partnership between an agriculture producer and Ducks Unlimited.

In each case, there can be a different kind of a structure in terms of how that agreement works. But in one way or another, either as the owner or the agent, Ducks Unlimited Canada is responsible for 600 of the dams. So I think that by number of licences, Ducks Unlimited is the largest water licence holder, provincially. By volume, B.C. Hydro has us beat, but by number of structures, we’re the largest licensee.

[4:40 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Well, with that, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee, Andrea. The coordination of the presentations and the way you built on each other’s presentations has been really impressive, and the way you’ve built out what previous speakers have said. You’ve given us a lot to work with.

A. Barnett: Awesome. I’ve submitted the Ducks Unlimited one already, and I’ll submit some notes on my personal one, as a rancher. Thanks again for the opportunity.

J. Routledge (Chair): Great, okay.

Our next presenter is Colin O’Leary, Kamloops Chamber of Commerce.

KAMLOOPS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

C. O’Leary: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I’m speaking on behalf of the chamber of commerce, as the vice-chair of the policy and advocacy committee. The chamber of commerce represents an interest in over 600 local and regional businesses within the Thompson-Nicola regional district. We’ve worked on bringing forth policy recommendations to support the needs of our business community provincially and federally.

I should also mention that I am one of the founders, and currently the president, of a non-profit society called STEPS. We actually operate, now, three clinics within the region and actually service 15 percent of the population as a non-profit, completely independently. So I speak from operational understanding, as well, on this front.

Today we want to focus the discussion on the state of health care in the Interior Health region. In our big push on this policy, the idea is that Canada needs to expand the number of players who can collect MSP payment in primary health care. Primary health care is of the utmost importance for most people in this province. There is a massive family doctor shortage, and we’re seeing impacts across the board on a number of different fronts, including for business owners.

What we look to do with this policy is to take something that I worked on, actually, with Terry Lake when he was the Minister of Health five years ago, and that we are implementing right now, and put in force a recommendation, as a solution that can happen immediately, to help increase people’s ability to access primary health care. This has a direct implication on budget, which I’ll get to in a few moments.

The other thing is that this is a decades-old model. Other provinces in Canada actually are allowing for team-based care. If you look at the rest of the world, team-based care results in higher-quality outcomes and cheaper delivery of health care. So we really need to get into the 21st century on this front.

Why is the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce concerned about this model? It’s because the ability to access primary health care and a family doctor is impacting the availability of labour supply, people making decisions whether to start their businesses in communities or not.

Did you know that at one point there was a 30,000-​patient wait-list for a family doctor in Kamloops of a 120,000-person catchment area? This is a huge problem. People cannot…. Some people have been waiting for ten years for a family doctor.

The underlying problem with primary health care and getting access to primary health care is complex. It’s not necessarily directly a doctor shortage. We’re actually getting more doctors through medical school than we ever have before, but we’re losing them, for various reasons. I’m not going to get into those complexities.

What I can say is that the payment structure in the MSP system is something we can tweak. We could have immediate results for access to care for people to be able to access a family doctor’s office.

Currently doctors are the only health care providers that can actually access MSP payment to primary health care. Doctors are actually private businesses that are set up as corporations or sole proprietorships, and they have one client that pays them. That’s the province. This is the fee-for-service system. But they’re the only ones that can actually collect that payment.

What this policy looks to do is to expand that model and say: why are we not allowing nurses, RNs and NPs, to access the MSP system so that when they operate in their own scope of practice in a family doctor’s office, they can get paid for it? We actually did a study where we got very good data. This has happened before. Some doctors actually privately hire nurses to come into their office to help them, and guess what. They can immediately expand their patient panel so that now that one doctor can almost double the number of people that can go to their clinic. So now, more people can have access to a family doctor.

Not only that, what they find is that actually, nurses are better at a lot of things than doctors are on a lot of these mechanisms. Like, if you actually look at suture care, blood pressure, putting in ear stints, we’re not using their full scope of practice. We’re only using them in hospitals, really.

There are just some doctors that have independently figured this out. What they do is get the payment, and they pay as a salary for the nurses. Most doctors are reluc­tant to do that because they think it’s a money-losing venture. In actual fact, most often, nurses more than pay for themselves. So what I’m saying is: why are we not allowing nurses in family doctors’ offices in primary health care to access the MSP billing system? They can already access the codes. They just can’t get paid for it.

[4:45 p.m.]

One valid argument we often hear is oversight, and nurses don’t have the full scope of practice. There isn’t this accountability. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that similar to doctors — the College of Physicians — there’s also a College of Nurses, basically, that oversees all the nurses.

There are actually other programs that are currently operated by the province right now where nurses have this expanded scope and are able to operate within it. They’re pilot programs. These frameworks of accountability have already been identified and put into place. Nurses actually can access the MSP system. They just can’t get paid through it.

Just to put this into perspective, about one in five of all emergency room visits in a year are made by patients, people, who don’t have a family doctor and have a non-urgent, non-emergency issue. Each emergency room visit costs on average — these are the latest stats — about $304 to taxpayers. Did you know that if those people were actually able to access a family doctor’s office, the average cost is $33 — one-tenth of the cost? It’s way more expensive for people to go into an emergency room than it is to go to a family doctor. They also clog up emergency rooms for non-emergency issues because they don’t have a family doctor.

That is literally one-tenth. If you extrapolate the numbers, it’s about $127 million a year provincially, in B.C., with 2020 numbers, that could be saved by getting people to go to a family doctor’s office instead of an emergency room. We could do that by allowing nurses to actually get payment for being in primary health care.

We do this in our clinics. We pay out of pocket for nurses. We were able to expand and look after a larger panel of patients. Our health care outcomes and quality of care are phenomenal. We actually did a patient satisfaction survey. We share data with Interior Health all the time.

This is the future. We should be doing this. It’s something we can do right now to immediately increase people’s ability to access primary care.

What the chamber actually recommends is that the Ministry of Health expand the existing MSP billing code to make it available for RNs and NPs to reflect the services within their provincially regulated scope of practice in addition to the existing limited health authority salaried positions.

Two, that the Ministry of Health expand the membership in the General Practice Services Committee, GPSC, to include RNs and NPs to help further identify ways to reduce barriers and support implementation of team-based primary health care.

These changes would be a giant step forward for Canada to catch up with the rest of the world when we’re talking about providing long-term benefits to team-based care.

Finally, I’ll end by echoing sentiments brought forward by the B.C. chamber and other chambers. If I can leave you with only one message today, it would be this. Budget 2022-23 needs to use the policy levers of government to provide more certainty — certainty for workers, certainty for businesses and for those looking to invest in British Columbia. The pandemic has taken an emotional and financial toll on businesses and their employees, and businesses need certainty to recover and thrive.

Thank you very much. That was very fast near the end. I’m sorry.

J. Routledge (Chair): We do have time for a few questions.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Colin. Really appreciate your presentation. Thank you for highlighting the issue about nurse practitioners. I’m not biased towards my former colleagues, but I’ve heard from many patients.

When you were saying something…. We highly respect doctors and the teamwork we do, but I think maybe one of the reasons….

We’ve heard from patients that they would rather have a nurse practitioner. Again, it’s not a competition, but nurses spend 12 to 16 hours with a patient, when a doctor — two minutes, max. So I think, being a nurse, we develop…. We don’t just get to know about a history. We get family dynamics, even if there was abuse. All day long, the dialogue. So maybe that’s what gets embedded when some of the nurses go for nurse practitioner.

Sadly, in the beginning, when the nurse practitioner program was launched, there was opposition from doctors. You know, we don’t take change — accept it. We always find change threatening. But now, later, they see that it’s complementary to the health care.

I’ve heard this from many of my nurse colleagues, my former colleagues, I must say. They’ve done nurse practitioner, and this billing issue — its inequality, its disparity…. They get salary, and they do a lot of work within the hospitals, urgent primary care centres. For that, I really appreciate you having this dialogue on something our committee should consider very seriously.

[4:50 p.m.]

More and more nurses are doing the nurse practitioner program. They have a master’s. They have 30-plus years’ experience. No wonder the satisfaction survey was very….

C. O’Leary: I should also mention that we are actually starting to attract, now, doctors from other provinces that look to this model. Doctors like the team-based model as well. It’s actually very attractive. So we have actually been able to attract…. We’re going up to half a dozen doctors this year alone, which is pretty phenomenal if you know anything about doctor attraction.

Higher-quality health care outcomes are what comes out of this, and it’s working together in a team in primary health care. It makes financial sense. It’ll save taxpayers a pile of money. It’ll give people access to doctors, and health care providers like it. They enjoy, actually, the environment.

H. Sandhu: A quick follow-up. It’s sad for me to see some of my colleagues…. Recently one moved to the Yukon because of the funding and billing system. It’s something we should consider so we can keep the talent home where we need it.

It’s reassuring for me to see that doctors are seeing nurse practitioners as complementary and good teamwork. It has shifted, certainly, but we have more work to do. So thank you.

C. O’Leary: Absolutely. I should also have mentioned that this policy is built in partnership with doctors and nurses, so it is very operationally based. It is not something that’s made behind a desk. This is actually from on-the-ground people that are doing this stuff.

This is something we can implement very easily, very quickly. They literally can access the system already; they’re just not paid through it. It’s like flipping a switch.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m really sorry. We’re going to have to wrap it up. We’re way behind time.

I want to thank you for making the presentation. Thank you for your leadership on this. This is something that has come to the committee before. So it’s a new idea, but it’s not an out-there idea. I really look forward to our deliberations as a committee to talk about how we can work with you to move forward on what makes so much sense.

C. O’Leary: That’s fantastic. Thank you very much for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, we’ll now recess until 5:05.

The committee recessed from 4:52 p.m. to 5:05 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll reconvene the committee.

Our next presenter is Tangie Genshorek, A Way Home Kamloops.

Tangie, you have five minutes to make your presentation. We’ll keep track. We’ll time it with our phones. When you have 30 seconds, we’ll signal so that you know to wrap it up. Then the next five minutes will be question-and-answer. So you have a total of ten minutes.

A WAY HOME KAMLOOPS

T. Genshorek: I’m the executive director of A Way Home Kamloops. We’re a youth-serving organization here in town. We house and support youth ages 16 to 26 — a variety of at-risk youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness, all the way through youth who are a little bit more independent and just in need of some financial support.

We provide housing, and we provide wraparound supports — life skills, education, employment, connections to community, connections to health and mental health services, addictions services — and we work at meeting youth where they’re at and working with their own intrinsic motivations to develop goals and wellness plans.

We’re really a youth voice–centred organization. We were founded by Katherine McParland, who was a former youth in care herself. She founded the organization in 2018. It started a few years before that and incorporated in 2018. She passed away on December 4. We’re really excited to be partnering with the province to create a really important memorial project to Katherine. It’ll be 39 units of youth housing that will be breaking ground here soon, as soon as possible, probably occupied in the next couple of years. We expect that building to be a huge success.

We would like to advocate for more buildings of that type in our province. Youth housing, like I’ve mentioned, comes in a variety of forms, all the way from supporting youth who are at risk of homelessness, youth who are experiencing a variety of mental health issues, a variety of addiction issues and a variety of social issues. We often require intensive supports for our youth, 24-7 support, for a lot of them.

The youth housing–first practice is a best practice that places youth directly into housing, regardless of what their needs are, regardless of where they’re at in any of those pieces — mental health, addictions or any of their needs. The idea is that housing first is the best solution to anyone’s problems. We work with that, and that means that a minimum of one case manager must be provided for every seven youth. That’s a guiding factor that can really assist youth in finding success, so that we can ensure that all of the wraparound supports are provided, because they have a lot of contact with their support workers.

The case managers are just one piece of the puzzle, though. There has to be a whole host of supports around them, depending on what their own needs are and what that looks like for each of them. Other things that we need to provide in the housing itself are, of course, food, clothing, hygiene items, transportation to access things like recreation, education and employment. Providing a housing unit itself is simply not enough.

While we’re looking at asking for more provision of youth-specific housing all across the province, we need to really remember that that comes with a whole host of supports and 24-7 staffing, in a lot of cases, as well. It’s not just increasing budgets for youth-specific housing but continuing, sustainable, operational funding for those housing units in a really robust, wraparound way.

Those specific supports are, like I mentioned, all the life skills that need to be taught to the youth. Youth need to be, basically, supported in a way that…. A youth would normally have a family around them to teach everything that they learn. All of the life skills around cooking and hygiene, learning to drive — all of the things that we take for granted that our children will learn from us or that we’ll teach to our children — we need to provide those in different forms through our staffing models.

[5:10 p.m.]

They need the life skills training, recreation and social activities, but they also need clinical supports, health-specific services, mental health and counselling services, often addiction services including detox and long-term recovery options that are youth-focused and youth-specific. Adult services, whether they’re detox or other, are not suitable for a lot of youth.

All of these things are really important to young people, but we have been working on one solution — that’s Katherine’s law — that will become a concrete means for ensuring that no one ages out of care. The idea is that we take the COVID measures, which are put in place right now, that have put a moratorium on youth aging out of foster care and make those permanent.

All of the things that I mentioned before…. We can keep providing those on and on and on, or we can look at stopping the highway into homelessness from the foster care system. A big budget piece going into MCFD — extending care, continuing care past the age of majority — and another big budget piece going into B.C. Housing, providing those housing models with operational dollars.

I don’t have any specific numbers on any of those budget items — just more.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Thank you, Tangie.

I’ll invite the committee to ask any questions.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Tangie, for your presentation and for the work you do. It’s life-changing and really appreciated.

You mentioned the recommendation for one case manager for seven youth. What is the ratio right now? Or is there no ratio?

T. Genshorek: I think, historically, it’s been more up around nine. Right now everyone has really limited staffing, and it’s above that. I think a lot of people are sitting around ten — a case manager for ten, even 12, youth at this point, given the restrictions on staffing at this point, given COVID and a number of factors that are making it really difficult for everyone to hire people.

H. Sandhu: In my understanding, you have to take whoever comes in the door. It is complex work — and the resources you have to link these youth with. Thank you.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Tangie. You can’t see a smile behind a mask, but there was one there the whole time for the work that you’re doing.

When we think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, these youth need a place to keep them dry. They don’t need to wonder where the next couch is. That’s the first step in what it is that they need.

My question is around the wraparound services. You’ve probably made great relationships with other agencies out there. It leads me to…. Is there a wait time for the youth to get into your building? What kinds of wait times are there for these youth to get the services that you’ve identified that they need?

T. Genshorek: Thanks for that. Right now we have 35 youth in our housing, and we have 55 youth on our wait-list. Those 55 youth on that wait-list can be waiting up to two years. The housing market is so tight right now, and there’s very little youth-specific housing — very, very little.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, not seeing any other questions, on behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the work that you do.

I also think, on behalf of the committee, I can offer you our condolences for your loss. What you’re doing is an incredible legacy in order to remember what she started and what she did.

T. Genshorek: Thank you so much for saying that.

Thanks for your time today, everyone.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Amber Papou, SelfDesign Learning Foundation.

Amber, you have five minutes. We’ll signal you when you should be wrapping it up, at 30 seconds, and then five minutes for the committee to ask you questions and for you to respond.

SELFDESIGN LEARNING FOUNDATION

A. Papou: Great. Thank you very much to the committee this afternoon for inviting me here to talk about something I’m incredibly passionate about, and that is education in B.C.

As mentioned, my name is Amber Papou, and I’m the president and CEO of the SelfDesign Learning Foundation. I’ve worked over 25 years in a number of sectors in the province, including economic development, tourism, skills training, education and technology.

[5:15 p.m.]

The SelfDesign Learning Foundation has been around for approximately 40 years. We offer programs and services that are based on our philosophy, which is self-design, and it’s focused on how learning happens in our communities and environment with each other and also within ourselves. The philosophy itself is closely aligned with many Indigenous learning philosophies, and as such, our organization is committed to a shared responsibility in reconciliation.

Each year we contract about 2,000 individuals to help support our program, which makes us one of the largest fully remote organizations not only in B.C. but also in Canada. The organization provides services to individuals around the world. We are the first online school in the world to be accredited with an organization called Cognia. Cognia represents thousands of schools and educators and millions of students in 84 countries across the world.

Here in B.C., we are pioneers in online education. We’ve been operating one of the largest independent online schools for K to 12 in the province for the past 20 years. It’s called the SelfDesign Learning Community.

Our school offers a very unique program in the prov­ince. Not only are we fully aligned with the B.C. curriculum and educational outcomes as per the Ministry of Education, but we are fully inclusive. We’re very proud of our support and partnerships not only with SOGI 123 but also with organizations such as the Gord Downie foundation. Our program is tuition-free for B.C. students, largely due to the association with our foundation.

We do offer a program that is online. However, our programs are very focused on project-based thematic learning. So computers are not used as teaching tools. They’re used as communication tools.

We are unique in the province from public, online, brick-and-mortar or independent schools in that we are a school of record for 2,000 learners. Having said that, what that means is that we offer a fully inclusive program for kids that are either gifted in kindergarten…. It’s the same program as offered to adult learners with special needs.

Our teacher-to-student ratio is very small. It’s 1 to 33. To put it in perspective, in a normal, typical high school, that ratio is 1 to about 184 to 200 students.

We have approximately 200 B.C. certified teachers that help support our program. Of those, 65 are specialized in working with children with special needs. That leads me to what makes us truly unique in the province. We are the largest provider of educational services to students with special needs in the province. That’s regardless of whether it’s public brick and mortar, independent brick and mortar or online. Currently there are 3,700 learners enrolled in online programs with special needs, and we provide services for about a third of those.

I’d like to start by saying that I really acknowledge…. I truly do, given my background as a certified teacher. I believe that the ministry does do things in the best interests of families and learners in the province. However, I do have several concerns about changes that have been implemented and/or that are about to be implemented to online education in the province.

First, in 2020, independent online schools received a decrease in per-student funding of 20 percent. For our school, although we have a close association with the foundation for support, we did not have the same impact that other schools had. But to put it in perspective, we operate at 40 percent of what a standard, typical brick-and-mortar school does in terms of student funding.

The second thing is…. There are proposed changes in online education, and there’s a high level of uncertainty on how those changes are going to affect independent schools and, in particular, independent schools that support children with special needs.

In closing, what we’re looking for, and what I’m hopeful for, is that the ministry continues to support online education for all learners and, in particular, for vulnerable learners such as those that are supported through the SelfDesign Learning Foundation, which has supported the most vulnerable learners in the province for the past 40 years. Thanks very much.

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

Now I’ll invite members of the committee to ask questions. The first one who has indicated is Megan, followed by Lorne.

M. Dykeman: Hi, Amber. It’s nice to see you again.

A. Papou: Nice to see you, too, Megan.

M. Dykeman: I just have two quick questions. One is to confirm…. About 700 of your 2,000 students are low incidence — in the enrolment of the entire program.

[5:20 p.m.]

A. Papou: Actually, it’s a little bit more. It’s about 740.

M. Dykeman: Okay. That’s quite significant. Then with your special needs program that has 150 students on the wait-list, is that because of student ratio requirements, because these are students that would have a difficult time in class? Why have you had to run a wait-list?

A. Papou: Generally speaking, the way in which we operate is that right now we have 1,000 learners with special needs, and 750 of those — this is a little technical — are low incidence and receive 100 percent of funding from the province for the challenges that they’re faced with.

An additional 250 are considered high incidence. Those learners are generally children with challenges, behavioural and otherwise, that are not funded by the province. So we need to — and we do — fund them with what we receive in per-student rates, which again are 60 percent less than what a typical brick-and-mortar receives.

M. Dykeman: And you just can’t accommodate the additional 150 that are on the wait-list.

A. Papou: We can’t accommodate. Last year we had a 2,000-student wait-list. This year we tried to go in and out, and we’re about 150 right now, just because it’s the start of the school year.

J. Routledge (Chair): Just before you start, Lorne….

We’re having trouble hearing up here. So if we could close the door, that would help a lot. And if everyone at that end of the room just speaks up more. This is important. We don’t want to….

A. Papou: Sure. I will do that. I can speak loudly.

L. Doerkson: For the last number of days, we’ve heard a lot about connectivity, particularly, of course, in rural B.C. and certainly even in some of our smaller communities. I wonder how that’s impacting you. I know that in my riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin, there would be very many people that would love to use your service, of course, because of lack of access, honestly, to the town, in a riding that’s five or six hours across.

How is that impacting you folks?

A. Papou: Well, Internet connectivity definitely has an impact, I think, on all learners in the province, just given the necessity of computers these days.

In regards to our program, yes, it is online. Very many of our learners are in rural areas with very limited Internet service — or cell service, for that matter. We’ve tried to accommodate them by partnering with different groups, with neighbourhoods and cities and towns that are close to them, to try to allow them to have access.

But yes, it definitely does have an impact. I spent some considerable amount of time in the last couple years working part-time in northern B.C., in the Peace region, and it was difficult for me.

G. Kyllo: Amber, it’s good to see you. It’s been a number of years.

With respect to the reduction in funding, you’ve indi­cated that the funding that you receive is only 40 percent of what a typical student would cost the province for brick-and-mortar school delivery. Is that correct?

A. Papou: The per-student rate, yes.

G. Kyllo: Has government provided any justification or rationale on why they cut funding for the services that you provide that are already at a significant savings over the per-student provincial funding?

A. Papou: The short answer is not really.

G. Kyllo: They must have some justification for taking funds away from those students that don’t have the same opportunity to maybe attend the conventional school system.

A. Papou: Yeah, there wasn’t really anything. In fact, it was a bit of a shock to all independent online schools, because we were right in the middle of the pandemic, and most of us had offered our services to public and independent schools to help in terms of that process.

I can honestly say that other than at that particular time, independent online schools were receiving 63 percent — this is getting technical — of what the public online schools were receiving in terms of per-student funding. The rationale we got from the ministry, as close as I could, was that they wanted to make that equitable to what other independent schools were receiving, which was 50 percent of what the public rate was. That’s what we got.

G. Kyllo: Well, that’s troubling. We all can appreciate the need for providing funding for our youth for education. There’s no more important area of funding in our province, yet funding was cut significantly. You said 20 percent.

[5:25 p.m.]

A. Papou: It was the equivalent of 20 percent of our per-student funding, yes, which did affect and impact our low-incidence learners — not to the same degree, because they receive additional funding to support their needs from the province.

But our high-incidence learners…. Those ones are some of the most vulnerable, that cannot go to public schools for whatever reason — or brick-and-mortars for that matter. That did affect them, because that’s all their funding.

G. Kyllo: Sounds a bit heartless.

A. Papou: It was hard. Our model, and just the way in which we work, we were able to support, so we had no changes to our programs and limited changes to staff, but we are also a charity, so it’s a little different than some of the other schools.

G. Kyllo: Well, thank you for what you do.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, we’re out of time, Amber, but thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you for alerting to us to a situation that we will want to be talking about in much more detail in our deliberations, before we make recommendations.

I think the pandemic has shown us that online learning is something that we need to be exploring in a lot more detail than we have in the past.

A. Papou: Thank you very much, everybody.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Brett Fair­bairn, Thompson Rivers University.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY

B. Fairbairn: y̓ é tək (s)ʕáp, y̓ é tək (s)ʕáp.

I want to begin by acknowledging that we’re on the unceded, ancestral lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is our first house within Secwépemc’ulucw and our partner, and certainly, this week in particular, our thoughts are with them.

Orange Shirt Day, you may know, was originated by Phyllis Webstad from our Williams Lake campus, and has now been kind of taken over by the federal government. But it’s a solemn week for remembrance of residential schools.

I want to acknowledge the members of the committee, particularly MLA Doerkson, who represents the Chilcotin riding, where Williams Lake campus is located. I want to thank all of you for your work. I know you’re putting in very long hours, and you have a lot of meetings.

I won’t repeat the contents of the written submission that I sent from TRU, but there are four points that I wanted to emphasize today. The first one is simply that TRU and other research universities — other universities of all kinds — can help with the challenges that the province faces, including putting people first, building a strong, sustainable economy, achieving lasting, meaningful reconciliation and solving climate change.

Universities like ours have many impacts. One way to measure them is with economic impact. To sum that up for us, we make a $700 million per year impact in our region and a $1.5 billion per year positive impact for the economy of British Columbia.

The second point I want to make is that our leadership role and our economic impact are increasingly about graduate programs. I wanted to bring that to your attention. As I indicated in the materials, TRU has been increasing our number of graduate programs to meet student demand, and we’ve done so with no corresponding increases in public funding. All of our graduate programs at TRU are self-funded entirely by the students through their tuition fees. I suppose the disparity is greatest for our faculty of law, which is the only law program in the province that was created with no increase in provincial funding.

The third point is that I think a strong, sustainable recovery is going to require increased research funding especially. Recovery in the Interior means that we need faculty and graduate students and undergraduate students working on applied and basic research specific to the needs of the Interior. I provided some examples in the materials that I shared. One of the things we’re very excited about is the prospect of developing a tourism research centre that would be very closely related to the economy of our region.

I also wanted to mention that we partner with other universities in the Interior. We’re in an Interior universities research consortium with our colleagues in Prince George and in Kelowna, and through them, we certainly collaborate and seek the establishment of an Interior region research fund to support all of our communities.

The fourth point I want to make is that the emerging economy that we see in the recovery is one that is going to require increased access to knowledge-intensive professions. When we look at health sciences, we see the importance of health sciences in the pandemic right now and in the pressures in our health system. We know as a university that we have excess demand for our BSN program, for health care assistant, for respiratory therapy, for nurse practitioner, and we have much more that we can do in those areas.

[5:30 p.m.]

I would also mention expansion beyond a software engineering program to fill out electrical and computer engineering and to be training those highly qualified personnel in the interior of B.C. to meet the needs of our developing economy.

Those were really the four points that I wanted to share. We’re here to partner, and we’re here to help. Graduate programs are increasingly important for our students in our region. Investment in research is key, and access to the knowledge-intensive professions, the preparation of highly qualified personnel, is critical for the future.

I hope that through this brief presentation, you’ll have some sense of the role that universities like TRU can play in the recovery. I want you to know that we’re motivated by deep care for our students and for our communities, and that’s what inspires us to undertake the work that we do.

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

Now I’ll ask for questions from the committee. Megan has indicated she has questions, and Lorne has indicated he has questions. We’ll start with Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the presentation. I really appreciated the in-depth PowerPoint presentation you provided also.

My question relates to your comment about graduate offerings being something that is more and more important to your student body. Where are you seeing that interest growing mostly? I see you offer quite a few. Is there a pattern or specific ones that are really seeing a lot of pressure?

B. Fairbairn: In many ways, it’s across the board. Certainly there’s a lot of demand for graduate degrees and diplomas and certificates in business, in traditional fields that we’ve offered master’s-level training in, like education, but I would say that we see many of the needs and opportuni­ties in health sciences.

We have not had a nurse practitioner program. We have one that’s designed and has gone through stages of approval and is really ready to go, and we certainly see the urgent need for those practitioners in the Interior.

I would also say that we have a new master’s in social justice that’s an interdisciplinary collaboration between several of our faculties. So it isn’t purely technical or professional areas, but it is a wide demand by students for graduate credentials.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. That’s very interesting. Thank you so much.

L. Doerkson: Thank you, Brett. It’s nice to see you again. You are an excellent community partner in Williams Lake, and we’re very glad to have you.

Listen, we’ve heard hundreds of presentations over the last number of weeks, and there are shortfalls in almost every category. Can you speak to the capacity that you have to grow in your campuses, please?

B. Fairbairn: Thank you very much. I appreciate that the job at the provincial level is to deal with many more needs than there is funding to go around. It’s certainly a difficult challenge.

We have many opportunities. Some of them we can fund by reallocating internally. Some of them, we require outside assistance and partnerships. But I would say our potential to grow…. If I think about student demand, the two top areas of opportunity in post-secondary education these days are professional master’s programs and programs in health sciences, and health sciences broadly speaking.

Of course, we have demand for nurses, and we experience a need for nurses. We hear that from our community partners. But also, the health sciences education at all levels that leads to the many other jobs, beyond the typical ones that we think of, is a big growth area for the future.

Engineering, as well, thinking of the software and computer industries. Those are some of the places where we have demand, we see opportunity to grow, and we see demand for graduates.

J. Routledge (Chair): We probably have time for maybe one more question.

J. Brar: The question I want to ask is…. One of the recommendations you made is to…. In order to develop a strong, sustainable economy, you are suggesting that we should invest some money in the research programs, particularly here you’re asking about a tourism research centre here.

The question I want to ask you is: has there been any discussion among the post-secondary institutions about this research program, and what kind of discussion has that been?

B. Fairbairn: About tourism in particular or more generally?

[5:35 p.m.]

J. Brar: Tourism or overall research funding for recovery and a sustainable economy.

B. Fairbairn: I’d say three things. First, we work together with the Research Universities Council of British Columbia, who will also have met with you, and we coordinate our thinking around research and around priorities. We work together through RUCBC and, in recent years, we’ve been collaborating more and more with all the other universities and colleges in the public system. So yes, at the provincewide level.

In the Interior, we have an especially tight relationship with the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George and with the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna. Our officials responsible for research, our faculty, meet regularly and collaborate and have developed joint plans and proposals.

Finally, I’d say that interesting research projects — especially in the Interior, especially linked to the needs of the economy — involve partners beyond universities. So we’re talking to the tourism industry. We’re talking to Indigenous organizations that are interested in sustainable, environmental and cultural tourism and really building the alliances to support the research.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, Brett, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for taking the time to make the presentation.

You talked about the link between universities and a post-pandemic recovery. Some of us have referred to that as creating the new normal. It’s pretty clear that we can’t have a new normal without new ideas, new research, new knowledge, and that is the role of a university. Thank you for anticipating and rising to the occasion.

B. Fairbairn: Thank you again to the committee for your work.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Leif Douglass, Thompson Rivers University Students Union.

Leif, you have five minutes. We’ll be timing it. We’ll give you the 30-second warning to start wrapping it up, and then from there we’ll proceed to five minutes of questions and answers.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS UNION

L. Douglass: Awesome. That sounds great.

My name is Leif Douglass. I work for the TRU Students Union. I am the campaigns coordinator there. I work there as staff, so I am no longer a student there.

First of all, I just want to thank each of you on the committee for your time today. We really appreciate it. We have four recommendations for the committee today. I believe you have our document in front of you there. I’ll just get right into it.

Our first recommendation is to expand the B.C. access grant in response to COVID-19. First of all, why a grants program? Well, it’s the best form of student financial aid. It’s the most effective at: (1) helping students participate who wouldn’t otherwise be able to, (2) supporting students to complete their education and get all the way through their degree, and then (3) assisting graduates in transitioning from study into employee.

The provincial government implemented a needs-based grant system in fall 2020 already for post-secondary students. I’d like to thank this committee for their consistent support of this recommendation over the last decade or so and to the government for actually moving the program forward. It’s been really important and impactful, I think, to students.

In recovering from the ongoing pandemic, though, access to education and training will be increasingly important. This is why we are recommending that the provincial government mirror what the federal government has done and expand the value of the grants program in the upcoming years to help support people in British Columbia in terms of education and retraining.

Our second recommendation is to establish a provincial jobs program for post-secondary students. This recommendation is also directly related to pandemic recovery. Some provinces, such as Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have already launched their own provincial jobs programs to augment the federal program.

The start of the COVID pandemic revealed how vulnerable, particularly, students and young people are. As of January, Statistics Canada reported that 15- to 24-year-olds represented 45 percent of net employment losses since the start of the pandemic. A provincial jobs program could help to not only mitigate employment issues but also to strengthen our economy here in British Columbia.

Our third recommendation is to create a provincial strategy for international students. Currently, it is up to every university or college in B.C. to recruit as many international students as they think they can accommodate. The challenge is that there’s no real consistency, both for those institutions but also for international students themselves and the type of educational experience they might have here in British Columbia.

[5:40 p.m.]

For institutions, there can also be significant financial uncertainty without that sort of provincial strategy in place in terms of what might be happening with all the different regulations coming from the government. For this reason, we support the provincial government in creating a provincial strategy for international students for here in British Columbia.

Our final recommendation is to restore apprenticeship offices to support post-secondary trades training. This summer the B.C. government announced they’d be bringing back mandatory trades training, starting with ten trades. We support this change, as we believe it will contribute to workplaces having a high level of safety where all workers are appropriately trained and that workers are paid fairly.

But with this change, we also believe there will be some increased challenges as a growing number of British Columbians are either coming back for retraining or maybe seeking trades training for the first time in greater numbers. For this reason, we’re recommending the return of institution-specific apprenticeship offices that could help meet the unique needs of these students, such as connecting them with employers, assisting with financial aid or other issues.

Those are our four recommendations for this year. Once again, thank you for your time, and I’d be happy to take any questions from you folks.

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

I’ll turn it over to the committee to ask you questions.

J. Brar: Thank you very much for your presentation.

Actually, I did this about three years ago. At that time, I saw a number of student union representatives coming to make recommendations. They may have done that now. I just came a day before and became a member of this committee. But the number of student unions was very, very high at that time. There may be some sort of coordination going on which I don’t know.

The question I want to ask you is this. You are recommending the provincial job program for students, and you also mention that other provinces have done something in this direction. What will this program look like? If you can just explain that. What will that program be?

L. Douglass: Totally. I think it looks different in different provinces. Some do it fairly small-scale, others bigger. I think the intent generally is to sort of augment what the federal government is doing and not try to, obviously, compete with that program. The federal government shifted their program so it’s no longer just for post-secondary students. It’s for young people in general, I think to reach a wider base of people.

Our recommendation honestly doesn’t have that much detail in it because we thought it would be important to maybe look specifically at what we could do in B.C., how we could help support students and young people starting their careers and what we can do where the federal government isn’t very active.

Honestly, it’s a little challenging to find data from the federal government in terms of what they do with their jobs program. It seems to shift a fair bit year to year in terms of number of positions and funding and things like that.

It came up out of…. After the pandemic started, there was a lot of concern amongst young people finding jobs, and obviously it’s really hard to start a jobs program if one doesn’t already exist. Our intent with the recommendation would be to look at, hopefully, doing some coordination with the federal government and then have a program in B.C. here that’s specific to B.C. students, to help students find employment, get experience.

Things like that that really, if we have future challenges, if we’re going through future things related to COVID, can be nimble and help students and help our economy — if that makes sense. I wish I had more specific details to give you on that front.

J. Brar: I also appreciate your recommendation about international students. I think something needs to be done there. I don’t need you to make any comments, but I just wanted to make a comment myself.

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

With regards to your comments about institution-specific apprenticeship offices, how many offices do you see happening out there, as opposed to a centralized one or, conversely, some of the unions that are out there that are involved in those ten labour jobs that are out there reaching out to you at the campus level?

L. Douglass: You’re asking how many offices we’d be proposing? I would say our idea around it was to have one for every single institution that’s doing trades training.

[5:45 p.m.]

As I understand it, what I’ve been told — it’s maybe a bit beyond my years — is that that was something we used to have in B.C. Trades students had a lot more support in terms of saying: “Maybe you’re done your second year, and you need to find a job.”

It can be a big challenge. My brother is going through electrical training. It can be a big challenge finding a placement, things like that, and a centralized system just isn’t that effective at helping students with those specific needs to maybe find a placement in their community. Maybe you’re looking for something that’s a work camp where you can fly to, meeting those specific needs. Maybe you have students who have special needs in terms of financial aid to get them through.

Basically to have less of a central approach and more of a “let’s have an office everywhere trades training is happening to support those students,” especially if we’re seeing a bump in enrolment due to mandatory trades training — if that makes sense.

M. Starchuk: Yes, it does. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, Leif, your presentation was very clear, very specific. I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for taking the time to come and offer us some very concrete solutions and things that we can work with. I do look forward to the deliberation.

I will say that as you were talking about the provincial jobs program, sadly, it is not a new idea. I may be one of the only ones in the room who remembers benefiting from a program like that. It was many, many decades ago, but they work in terms of matching students with employers. Thank you for reminding us about that.

L. Douglass: I think it’s only increasingly important, as there are more and more students seeking education, and job experience for students is becoming increasingly important to differentiate or find career paths or things like that. That was what we looked at.

I appreciate the comments. Thank you so much, and thank you to everyone on the committee. I really appreciate your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Heather Grieve, school district 73, Kamloops-Thompson.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 73,
KAMLOOPS-THOMPSON

H. Grieve: I feel like that was a tough act to follow. It was very put-together.

I want to take a minute just to introduce myself. My name is Heather Grieve. I am one of the elected school trustees for the city of Kamloops, which is both an urban and rural district. I’m one of the urban trustees.

I want to say that we respectfully honour and acknowl­edge that we are meeting on the Secwépemc’ulucw, the land of the Secwépemc people.

I understand that members of the committee have gotten a PowerPoint presentation — is that correct? — from our district. Is anyone aware of that?

Okay. Maybe what I’ll do is give a brief overview. I don’t necessarily want to go through a presentation, but I’ll talk about things, and then we can send it and follow up for you.

Our district, school district 73, is located in British Columbia’s southern Interior. We have 27,000 square kilometres. Our municipalities include Chase, Barriere, Logan Lake and Clearwater and many smaller communities, such as Savona, south to Westwold and north to Blue River.

This is a brief presentation, and our big question for our district right now is: how full is too full in terms of our schools? We’ve really been in a situation with our existing buildings and infrastructure to have to try to find space for rapidly growing districts within the urban centre of Kamloops, where our spaces that we might appear to have on paper are really in our rural and remote areas within our district.

For reference, Kamloops to Clearwater is 140 kilometres one way, and Kamloops to Blue River is 230 kilometres. We’re a two-and-a-half-hour drive one way. This is by car, not by bus. Our district is relatively the size of Belgium. If we were looking to move students to places where there are spaces, we would be having our students travel by bus for hours upon hours.

As it exists right now, SD 73 buses over 5,000 students over 9,000 kilometres per day. We have a population that is approximately 16,000 students, as of September 21, 2021. We are the sixth-largest geographical district. We are the 12th-largest in enrolment within our province.

[5:50 p.m.]

Busing kids to our rural municipalities means that students are on the bus for two-plus hours per day. This is not an option. If we were to take our most crowded elementary school — at this point, it is Westmount Elementary, in Westside, here in Kamloops — and travel to Blue River, which is one of the few places in our district, an elementary school, that has space enough to accommodate the number of students that need it, our students would be on a bus for 5.5 hours per day in order to get them there. In addition, our urban area really has limited walkability between schools.

We’ve gone through five catchment area changes just in the last year alone to try to make accommodations. We no longer have easily accessible neighbourhood schools. We are busing more students.

The reason why we’re making decisions to change catchments is in the hopes that we’re finding the right balance of saying: “You know what? We have students right now who are learning through lessons being taught in portables. They get one gym class a week in our elementary schools because they are so overcrowded. So we’re opting to move them to areas outside of their neighbourhoods.” This is not something that has been a very popular decision with a large number of our community members and rightfully so.

We are growing at the rate of one elementary school each year — approximately 250 students per year, which is equal to one medium-sized elementary school. Our district is straight up in an enrolment trajectory. Again, this is why we bring back that question of: how full is too full?

The population growth in the B.C. interior…. We are outpacing districts in the Interior and comparable to the next largest district, which is Kelowna. SD 73 is outpacing all surrounding districts in the Interior, and our facilities are impacted by this growth. We are at 102 percent capacity in our urban schools. So that’s 36 schools in Kamloops proper. We are at 102 percent. By 2026, if nothing changes, SD 73 will have 67 percent of all of its schools over 100 percent capacity, with 30 percent of these schools in Kamloops over 149 percent capacity.

SD 73 urban portables. We have 63 portables that are attached to 17 of our schools within Kamloops right now, which is 38 percent of our schools. Our catchment area changes are not solving our space issues. Again, how full is too full?

Less than 5 percent is left for early learners and fine arts. At the pace that we’re going, there’s less than 5 percent in our district for fine arts, music, arts, specialized supports, computers, early learning, StrongStart, Seamless daycare, daycare and Montessori.

Really, this is in the urban schools. With the mandate letter for 2023 indicating that preschools will be a part of our education’s mandate, we’re not sure how we’re going to accommodate that. Again, we are a rapidly growing urban-rural district. Our urban growth has exceeded the space that we have in Kamloops.

What we are asking for: criteria that are defined and transparency throughout the ministry in terms of its decisions. We can’t meet the bar if we don’t know what it is. Please tell us what that bar is. Again, we ask that question: how full is too full?

Thank you very much.

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

I see there are questions. We’ll start with Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your presentation. It gave me flashbacks to the ten years I was on the Langley board of education. Much the same as you, urban-rural growth.

How many elementary, middle and senior schools in your district — I don’t know if you’re in a middle model; I suspect that you are down right now — will you need in the next five years? Just to be sure that I caught it on the notes, you’re looking for clear criteria to understand, when you do your facilities plan, when and how these would get funded.

H. Grieve: Yeah. That’s exactly it. Right now we’re at a growth of…. We said a medium-sized elementary school each year.

Our secondary schools are extremely overcrowded. In our capital plan, we have both upgrades and expansions. Valleyview is our most recent announcement, which was two years ago. I think the fall of 2018 it was announced, just after the last election.

Our secondary schools, especially on the south shore — so on one side of Kamloops — are extremely overcrowded. The north shore area is overcrowded. On the west side, there’s one sort of high school — we don’t work, really, with the middle school model; we have one middle school — that is under that 100 percent capacity. Again, it would be a significant bus ride for people to travel from or be able to commute to that area.

M. Dykeman: Just one follow-up, very briefly, Madam Chair. I promise.

Do you have a ten-year long-term facilities plan completed?

[5:55 p.m.]

H. Grieve: Yes. We have all of our long-term projections, long-term facility plans in place. We have a fantastic department within our district that has done a great job of projecting, finding out from the city where building starts are happening, trying to anticipate how many students are going to be moving into different areas within our city as well.

M. Dykeman: Thank you so much.

H. Grieve: Yeah. You’re very welcome.

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

You mentioned that you’re currently operating with 63 portables. What is the average number of students per classroom that are in a portable?

H. Grieve: It really depends on the grade. I am not entirely sure of class size and composition. It would depend between elementary and secondary. But I know that it’s some of like Westmount elementary…. I believe we have an elementary school in Westside right now that has seven portables, so almost 50 percent of their students are being taught in a portable.

Again, they don’t have lockers in the portables. They don’t have washrooms in the portables. They don’t have access to any of those things. The 63 are spread throughout very congested areas within our city.

G. Kyllo: Sure. Just trying to get a rough idea on numbers. Like, would there be 20 students, on average, per portable or something like that? Just to get an idea of the total number of students that are actually in portables.

H. Grieve: Oh, I see. So it would be class room size and composition. It’s a bit more in secondary, but I think probably on average you’d be looking at 23 to 25 students per portable would be my best estimate, based on size and composition.

G. Kyllo: So about 1,300 students. Has that grown over the last five years or so?

H. Grieve: Exponentially. We are consistently looking at bringing portables in as a way of managing. There’s not really a year that has gone by that we are not planning for losing more parking lot space to fit more portables in at our schools throughout our district.

G. Kyllo: Valleyview, I think, was the last school that was announced in school district 73. It was in 2018. But even with that new school coming on, you’re still seeing incremental increase in portables year over year.

H. Grieve: Year over year, yes. Valleyview is not at its completion date yet, so the portables are still existing there. They have already been earmarked for other areas within our district. It’s not like we’re not going to put them to use.

We did actually get…. We had an announcement around Pineview having a new elementary school built, but again, that is scratching the surface of our challenges. Our capital announcements to date are not solving our enrolment pressures.

G. Kyllo: Based on the numbers you provided, you’re indicating that you’d almost need to add one additional school every year in order to keep up.

H. Grieve: Honestly, if we had a capital announcement every year for the next five years or six years, we would be maintaining.

G. Kyllo: That would just maintain where you’re at. It wouldn’t even improve it.

H. Grieve: Yeah. We’re not even talking about the age of our infrastructure, right? Those would be new builds and not talking about even the upkeep to our buildings as they stand right now.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re out of time, Heather. I want to thank you on behalf of the committee. I’m also remembering that you started off your presentation by saying that that was a tough act to follow. You did a really good job following that act.

I think everyone…. Regardless of what community that we come from, we’re aware from the teachers’ perspective. We’ve been told by the teachers of the challenge of teaching in crowded classrooms. You have given us an entirely different and additional perspective of that. I took a school bus. The thought of being on a school bus for five hours — my goodness.

Thank you for sharing with us the reality of your crisis.

H. Grieve: Thank you very much for your time.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have one more presenter. That’s Carolynn Boomer, PacificSport Interior B.C.

Carolynn, you have five minutes to make your presentation. We will give you a signal when you have 30 seconds left so that you can wrap it up, then followed by five minutes of questions and answers.

PACIFICSPORT INTERIOR B.C.

C. Boomer: As mentioned, I’m Carolynn Boomer, the executive director for PacificSport Interior B.C.

I’m grateful to live, work and play in the Shuswap territory, specifically Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. I say that in acknowledgment and as a sign of a reconciliation and cultural revitalization.

Thank you to the standing committee. I know you’re away from home. I do appreciate all your time dedicated to the process. Of course, I’m a face-to-facer, so I really appreciate that.

PacificSport Interior B.C. was established as the first named regional centre in our province by the provincial government shortly after Kamloops hosted the 1993 Canada Summer Games. I had the pleasure of being the executive director, starting with a phone and a desk, basically, 26 years ago.

[6:00 p.m.]

Our success really relies on partnerships and relationships. We have formed three main pillars — physical literacy, sport development and sport performance — in 18 Interior-based communities.

I’m pleased to have our entire sports sector collectively united in requesting an additional $12 million over three years. This will allow our sector to deliver on government priorities as outlined in the B.C. sport pathway.

I would like to share two stories to show impact in sport and why it’s a good investment for government.

We have recently come off the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, where PacificSport is one organization that supports athletes and coaches in our region. B.C.-connected athletes contributed to winning an impressive 50 percent of Team Canada’s 24 medals, which was a record for Canada in a non-boycotted Olympic Summer Games. On the Paralympic side, B.C.-connected athletes won 48 percent of Canada’s medals, despite comprising only 30 percent of the team, for a total of 21 medals.

These amazing performances in such trying times, with the pandemic, have truly been an unbelievable feat to come to fruition. The world came together for the power of sport, uniting us in peace and the sheer joy of competition.

One such athlete you may recall is Greg Stewart, from Kamloops, who won the gold medal and broke a Paralympic record in shotput in the F46 category. Greg is 7 feet 2 inches and was born with not a full arm. Prior to Greg leaving for Tokyo, we asked him if he would join us in our Xplore SportZ camps for kids age seven to 12. He agreed, of course.

The children were like magnets to him. While he played games with them, they listened intently to his story of journey, being born without a full arm. He spoke to them about the mental challenges he faced when he was their age and provided realized coping strategies for when you’re having a bad day. He provided an inspirational message to go after whatever dreams you have, work hard and believe in yourself.

There’s a testimonial from a parent that I’d like to share with you.

“My son Reid was so moved and inspired by the camp today, specifically the opportunity to meet Greg Stewart. It was the first time Reid has ever watched the Olympics on TV, and he was blown away to meet a real Olympian. He was buzzing all evening. Well done to you and the team for having him come and interact with the group. Just brilliant. Reid was bragging to everyone that he got to play sports with an actual Olympian. He won’t soon forget it.

“It was a great week, and the concept of trying a variety of sports is so great. Reid loved the rock climbing, and we have now registered him with the Kamloops track and field club. Keep up the amazing work. Robin.”

This is the power of sport, as it ignites generations to try and find their passion.

The second story is about collaborating with our Indigenous communities. We have always had representation on our board of directors to help guide us. With our supportive Indigenous leaders coming together, we are now launching a youth program called Fueling Youth, which specifically addresses the calls to action 88, 89 and 90 for truth and reconciliation.

This program supports the call to action by addressing Aboriginal athlete development and growth for the North American Indigenous Games, promoting physical activity as a fundamental element of health and well-being, reducing barriers to sport participation, increasing the pursuit of excellence and building capacity exclusive for Aboriginal people. COVID has delayed this launch for us. It is a free program, and I’m pleased to say that we’re starting Saturday with 19 youth that represent 18 Indigenous communities in our Interior region. That’s a ten-week program.

These are just two stories that outline the power of sport. Our passion continues in the belief that sport is a powerful vehicle that inspires youth, enriches lives and builds community champions at all levels. Our PSI B.C. acronym reflects our commitment to partner, serve, inspire, build and connect.

Thank you for your support of the sports sector. We look forward to our continued work building healthy communities to inspire and enable everyone to participate, play and perform in a culture where everyone has the right to participate in a safe and inclusive environment. Let’s build back better.

Thank you. I know I have provided our impact report that has some of the highlights, just from our COVID year.

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

Now I will invite members of the committee to ask you some questions.

C. Boomer: Did you see, Greg? As one of many, did you catch the Olympics and Paralympics?

G. Kyllo: Absolutely.

C. Boomer: Fantastic. Great. We’re in school district 83, working with physical literacy and the generalist teachers to help bring that movement along in 15 schools.

G. Kyllo: Excellent.

[6:05 p.m.]

M. Dykeman: Thank you very much for your presentation. I know we heard from your sector of the sectorwide ask. I just want to thank you for your presentation and to hear about the wide-ranging ways that organizations like yours impact young and old alike through their lives and how we have a view in our province of trying to support people at all ages and abilities in sport.

Thank you very much. I wanted to assure you that we have also heard from your colleagues.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation.

I have to say that when Greg does what he does, you just absolutely pay it forward. I hope he realizes that that little effort that he puts out there goes miles and miles for the youth that are out there. I think everybody in this room will admit that sport is something good for our youth, because if they’ve got something to do, it’s taking away from something that they shouldn’t be doing, maybe.

My question to you is: with this funding that’s there, what do you believe it will do directly to your organization?

C. Boomer: Well, I think for us, we have…. Thirty percent of our budget is provincial government funding right now, and 11 percent is gaming. I think it will advance those three pillars that I talked about with physical literacy, the sport development and sport performance sides.

I gave you the example of Greg and how it touches that sport development side. The physical literacy side — we have three school districts that we’re currently working in for advancing that physical literacy side.

It’s really increasing what we’re doing already and being able to go in those rural communities. We have 18 communities, and I wish we could be in every backyard. Sometimes we are restricted by the funding. We try to look to champions in the rural communities as well as the urban. Obviously, our base is in Kamloops. It’s just being able to do more.

Looking at the five priorities, we’re already trying to be affordable. Most of our programs are free or heavily discounted. Equity inclusion is really big on our radar, and our board is fully inclusive with representation on gender and Indigenous, as I mentioned.

I think that it will advance us to really look at those priorities more collectively, and we’re excited about that work.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, I don’t see any other questions.

On behalf of the committee, Carolynn, I’d like to thank you for making the presentation. Thank you for your enthusiasm. Others have presented to us about this, but you have so amplified their message. Your stories are very powerful, so thank you for that.

C. Boomer: I love what I do. Everyone says: “When are you retiring?” Never. I love it.

Thank you, all, for your dedication, because I know it’s not easy. It’s a long process. I have spoken before, and it’s nice to have the face to face.

You were in Kelowna this morning, correct?

J. Routledge (Chair): No, tomorrow. We were in Prince George.

C. Boomer: Oh, you were in Prince George. So Kelowna’s tomorrow. You’ll hear from my colleague Shaunna Taylor tomorrow.

J. Routledge (Chair): Oh, okay.

C. Boomer: Yes, she’s wonderful. Anyways, thank you very much. Am I the last one?

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes, you are.

C. Boomer: Oh, good. You now have earned your wine respectively, right?

J. Routledge (Chair): A good note…. Look. They hadn’t even asked for a motion to adjourn, and here they are voting.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 6:08 p.m.