The committee met at 8:02 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from the government and opposition parties.

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

I would also like to welcome everyone who is listening to and participating in today’s meeting on the Budget 2023 consultation.

Our committee is currently seeking input on the next provincial budget. Our consultation is based on the Minister of Finance’s budget consultation paper, which we will be hearing about shortly. British Columbians can share their views by making written comments or by filling out the online survey. Details are available at our website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. The deadline for input is 3 p.m. on Friday, June 24, 2022.

We will carefully consider all input to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be included in Budget 2023. The committee intends to release its report in August.

Today we’ll be receiving a presentation from the Hon. Selina Robinson, Minister of Finance, on the Budget 2023 consultation paper. Following the presentation from the minister, we will be hearing presentations from individuals and organizations in Victoria.

Minister, thank you for making the time to join us today. I’ll now turn it over to you to present the budget consultation paper.

Presentation by Minister of Finance

Hon. S. Robinson: Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you very much to everyone for having me here.

I do have a presentation, and we do have a slide presentation to go with it. I would ask if the slides could be put up. There we go.

First, I’d just like to begin my remarks by acknowledging that I’m speaking to you from the territory of the Coast Salish peoples — in particular, the Kwikwetlem First Nation. I thank the Kwikwetlem, who continue to live on these lands, care for them, along with the water and all that is above and below.

Just over three months ago we introduced Budget 2022, where we laid out a three-year fiscal plan to continue to build on our environmental, social and economic strengths here in British Columbia. At that time, we were still facing, if you recall, the first wave of the omicron variant on the heels of the devastating floods and mudslides.

[8:05 a.m.]

Now as global economic shifts impact the cost of living here in British Columbia and, frankly, around the world, people are feeling the pain of Russia’s war on Ukraine, strained supply chains and inflation. It’s particularly hard on people who are already struggling to make ends meet and for businesses that were struggling, perhaps, even prior to the pandemic.

Our government is continuing to look for ways to keep bringing costs down for families and improving the services that they rely on. This budget consultation process that you’re embarking on will help us make the right decisions for people in British Columbia.

Since day one, the foundation of our plan as government has remained the same. Through all of the challenges that we face together, we continue to put people first, to focus on reducing costs, improving services and building an inclusive and sustainable future. Within these priorities, our choices are about making B.C. a safe and accessible place to call home, reducing barriers and, frankly, creating opportunities for everyone.

I’m going to give you a brief overview of where we’re at, and as part of that, I want to reflect on your important work. Following last year’s budget, you told us that the number one priority that you heard from British Columbians and shared with government was people’s desire to see their government protecting communities from climate disasters and fighting climate change.

If we go to the next slide, you can see your consultation efforts reflected in Budget 2022, which includes more than $2.1 billion to help us prepare for, respond to and recover from floods, heatwaves and wildfires. We are moving to a year-round B.C. Wildfire Service to ensure that we’re always, always ready in the moment of crisis.

We’re investing in a climate preparedness and adaptation strategy, and we’re helping communities rebuild stronger so that they’re better prepared for future climate disasters. Three years ago our government introduced CleanBC, one of the strongest climate plans in North America. We then accelerated the fight against climate change with the CleanBC Roadmap to 2030. We’re investing an additional $1 billion for CleanBC to help us reach a low-carbon future faster.

Now, while most people want to make the right choice by the environment, it isn’t always the most affordable option, and we’re working hard to change that. CleanBC supports cleaner transportation options, like rebates for zero-emission vehicles and charging stations. We’ve removed the PST on used zero-emission vehicles and created a new fuel tax exemption for the use of hydrogen in internal combustion engines.

We’re also strengthening the CleanBC program for industry to help decarbonize our economy. Our plan includes strategies to help make cleaner options easier for B.C. business, such as the small business venture capital act to support venture capital for clean tech investments, as well as the manufacturing action plan and a new agritech centre of excellence.

We’re investing in clean buildings through CleanBC’s better homes and better buildings program incentives, as well as tax incentives, like a PST exemption for heat pumps, to build and heat cleaner buildings. These incentives have helped northern communities, like Klemtu and the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, save on operational costs, with 20 heat pumps installed in residential and community buildings in the heart of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. Their community-built leaders have told us that they are eager to install more heat pumps and remove all fossil fuels by the end of this year and become one of the greenest communities on the coast. These are the kinds of opportunities we want to make more affordable for everyone.

Local governments and communities are also key to meeting our emission targets, so we launched a new local government climate action program to help communities cut emissions and to support improvements in forestry and agriculture.

Relationship-building is key. That’s why we’re working to support Indigenous-led priorities to build a stronger environment, including Indigenous-led clean transportation initiatives and the expansion of the Indigenous forest bioeconomy program. And of course, we continue to support families through the climate action tax credit.

As you begin your consultations with the people of British Columbia and help us prepare for the next budget, I want to share this slide, which offers a brief overview of what we will be building upon — the incredibly important work of improving access to health care close to home, helping reduce costs for families by advancing our $10-a-day child care plan.

We know that a high-quality, affordable, accessible child care system will support families by helping parents get back into the labour market and enhance our economic strength as a province. Since 2018, we’ve invested $2.7 billion in our Childcare B.C. plan, and today thousands of families are paying less than when we first released the plan. We’ve funded over 30,000 new spaces, with thousands more on the way through Budget 2022 investments, and we are further reducing fees by the end of the year.

[8:10 a.m.]

When Leah Zielinski, a parent in Vancouver, learned that she would be receiving $10-a-day child care, she called it a huge win for her family. Leah now pays $200 a month for full-time child care for her four-year-old daughter instead of $1,200 a month, a life-changing improvement for Leah and her family.

We’re building schools and co-locating child care where we can, building hospitals, transportation infrastructure and more affordable housing. We’re halfway through our ten-year housing plan. We’ve opened more than 11,000 new homes for people, and more than 20,000 are underway. We’ve registered more purpose-built rental homes for construction in five years than the previous 15 years.

Our entire capital plan is creating thousands of new jobs — an estimated 100,000 jobs throughout the province. As we know, in fact, some sectors have more jobs than people. That’s why we’re making a generational commitment to re-skilling and training the next generation of workers.

We’re bridging the digital divide so that rural and Indigenous communities have access to the same opportunities as everyone does in more urban centres. We’ve connected over 500 communities to high-speed Internet since 2017 so that people who live in rural communities and remote communities have better access to jobs, to education, to training, and so much more.

We’re also providing stable funding for those delivering vital services, like sexual assault services, that have gone without stable funding for far too many years.

While it’s critical to track the bottom line, we also have to consider other factors at the same time. We always have to also consider the health and well-being of people and our planet too. That is how we will build a stronger B.C. for everyone.

The Budget 2023 consultation process is one of the important ways we can connect with people to ensure that the needs and priorities of British Columbians are reflected in our focus: investing in people. We’re ensuring people, businesses and communities have the support they need now while we look ahead to more economic opportunities, where no one is left behind. There are opportunities through the year where we can build on our work, check on how we’re doing and review the impacts that it’s having on the people of our province.

I want to thank you. I want to thank you for being part of this important process of listening to British Columbians, of pulling together their ideas and their priorities. I look forward to reviewing the results of your consultations. Thank you very much.

The budget consultation, of course, offers a snapshot of our social, environmental and economic strengths. It is the foundation for Budget 2023, and I look forward to working with you as we deliver a budget that continues to make life better for British Columbians.

I’m happy to take your questions.

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

Now I will open it up for question from the committee.

B. Stewart: Minister, good to see you. Last year, in some of the impacts of trying to move to a clean economy, it was brought to our attention by the energy-intensive industries that the challenge that they face is the competitiveness of their products in the marketplace globally because, as you know, climate change is not being addressed as strongly in many jurisdictions. I wonder if there’s any consideration to working with Canada in terms of trying to find more quality in that area and trying to find a way to incentify.

I mean, we’ve heard from some of them about electrification and some of the operations which have made vast changes in terms of their ability to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint. But it doesn’t always — you know, the rural and remote, in many cases….

I guess I’m just wondering: how would you recommend looking at those organizations that are challenged by our goal to have less emissions?

Hon. S. Robinson: Thank you very much for that question. We’re always engaged with the federal government about how we can work together in order to make sure that we can compete in a global economic climate. We are a small jurisdiction relative to the globe, so it’s always top of mind.

We also recognize that finding the balance is really important — making sure that we are addressing climate change nationally but also globally and working together not just with Canada but across with other nations as well.

[8:15 a.m.]

That’s why Minister Heyman went to Paris and participates in these discussions — so that we can all get on the same page. These conversations are constantly ongoing.

I look forward to…. As part of your consultation, if there are ideas about how to address that, as you go out into community and talk with various stakeholders and British Columbians, I’m always interested in hearing what some of their suggestions are, recognizing that climate change is at our doorstep. We all have to be working together to change how we deliver the kinds of programs, services — and the economy. We need to green our economy as well.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Minister. Yesterday I kind of barged into the Fire Chiefs Association of B.C.’s trade show without my pass and talked to a bunch of old friends. They’re very, very keen on some of the funding that is coming their way, both within that association and FNESS, speaking with the executive director of that organization.

This is more of a comment coming back — that it’s nice to be able to have put the programs and tools…. Whether or not it’s FireSmart, whether or not it’s actually investing into those full-time people that’ll be on the ground, 24-7, throughout the whole year — taking care of that.

My comment or question comes around the clean industry, the home-building PST exemptions for heat pumps, and the land-based measures for agriculture, having a constituent in the business of actually starting an agricultural business from scratch who’s very interested in making it the most modern — putting the heat pump into it, putting the solar panels onto it, recycling and capturing the water that goes into the greenhouses that are there.

The comment that I said I would bring forward is that it becomes a little difficult to navigate at times. It’s almost like there needs to be a concierge service that says, “This is what you do for this end, and this is what you do for this end,” because it crosses industries.

I don’t know whether there’s an answer or if it’s just that maybe we’ll have him call you or one of your assistants to find out what’s there, because they’re waiting to build it from the ground, once the permit is issued, hopefully, this Thursday.

Hon. S. Robinson: We recognize that there are many layers to building out a CleanBC plan and using various tax opportunities, using various opportunities for rebates and encouraging industry to green itself. I appreciate that it can feel very layered.

Contacting my office or contacting the Ministry of Environment might be the other place to go in terms of identifying all of the various opportunities for building as green a business as possible.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions for the minister?

Well, Minister, it looks like you’ve set us off to a really good start on the consultations. I want to thank you for taking the time early on a day where we know that you have many, many meetings and for providing us with such a really focused context.

I’ll want to, again, read the PowerPoint, but I think what’s in there are a lot of gems that will actually anchor our work, not only providing the context in terms of what we’re facing, in terms of climate change and how that can throw us off of our plans, but also the context in terms of what we did last year and framing it in terms of what we can build on. Speaking personally, that will be something I’ll be looking for in the presentations and our recommendations this year.

Will we get the slide deck? We have it. Okay. We will be using it. It will be our framework.

Just before I call a recess, anything else anyone would like to say?

Hon. S. Robinson: If I could just take a moment once again to thank you all. I know it’s a lot of work on the Finance Committee, hearing various presentations, hearing from British Columbians from all walks of life, from all parts of the province, and then crystallizing their comments into a reasonable document that shows us, as government, what the themes are about what British Columbians are needing.

I want you to know that I do read it. It is a valuable piece of work that feeds into our budget process. So I do want to take the time to thank you again for the work that you’re embarking on. I want you to know it makes a difference to the people of British Columbia.

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

With that, let’s call a recess.

The committee recessed from 8:20 a.m. to 8:38 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): First of all, as we’re now moving into the public hearings part of our agenda today, I’ll just take a minute and explain the meeting format. For today’s meeting, all presenters will be making individual presentations. Each presenter has five minutes for their presentation, followed by up to five minutes for questions from committee members. All audio from our meetings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted.

We do have a light system that I can’t see but I totally trust. When one has two minutes left to wrap up, the light turns green. When you’ve hit five minutes, it turns red. There’s a timer on the wall as well, so that will help.

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

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano.

B. Stewart: I’m Ben Stewart, and I’m the MLA for Kelowna West.

B. Bailey: I’m Brenda Bailey. I’m the MLA for Vancouver–False Creek and the Parliamentary Secretary for Tech and Innovation.

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

M. Dykeman: Hi. I’m Megan Dykeman. I’m the MLA for Langley East.

[8:40 a.m.]

M. Starchuk: Good morning. MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m Janet Routledge. I’m the MLA for Burnaby North and Chair of the committee.

H. Yao: Henry Yao, MLA for Richmond South Centre.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’d also like to mention that assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Emma Curtis from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Billy Young from Hansard Services.

With that, we’ll turn to our first presenter. It’s Max Blouw, Research Universities Council of B.C. Over to you, Max.

Budget Consultation Presentations

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
COUNCIL OF B.C.

M. Blouw: Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning, everyone. It’s wonderful to be in three dimensions instead of two, so thanks for the opportunity.

As introduced, I’m Max Blouw. I am the president of the Research Universities Council of B.C., speaking to you on behalf of UBC, SFU, UVic, UNBC, Thompson Rivers University and Royal Roads University. Those are our members. Some of our presidents will also present to you independently of my presentation.

We’ve come with three recommendations for you, as you’ve requested. Our first recommendation concerns student access and talent development. The province has an opportunity to meet the provincial needs of a future-ready workforce by investing in high-demand academic programs and in supports for non-traditional learners.

According to the B.C. labour market outlook, demand for talent will continue indefinitely, and we are unable to meet this demand with traditional approaches. Over 80 percent of new jobs require post-secondary qualifications, and a persistent gap of about 8 percent is projected between job openings and people entering the workforce over the next decade. This amounts to a projected gap of over 80,000 talented workers.

To fill this need, we must increase post-secondary access for groups who have historically not been entering the labour force in equal numbers, such as those in rural communities, Indigenous peoples and racialized minorities. To be successful, these groups must be well supported in their educational journey through enhanced student support services. This includes academic support, on-campus housing, mental health supports and child care.

Our second recommendation concerns the development of advanced talent, which is in very short supply globally. B.C. has been a net talent importer for decades. We produce fewer university graduates per capita than nearly all other provinces, and we import more post-graduate credential holders than any other province. B.C. also lags other major provinces in investments in graduate student support and in research, development and innovation.

Investing less may have let us get by in the past, but it is increasingly risky in a world in which demand for talent and new ideas is sharply increasing. We specifically recommend that the province differentially increase its investments in the learners and programs that are engaged with areas of provincial priority: green technologies, climate adaptation and mitigation, life sciences and health, and the advanced digital technologies that underpin nearly all modern economic progress.

Our final recommendation centres on cooperation. B.C. should invest to better couple together the power of its post-secondary institutions with the needs and opportunities of the private sector and of communities. The business sector of B.C. seriously underinvests both in workforce development and in research, development and innovation. Our communities are faced with tackling complex issues such as climate resilience and adaptation, housing affordability, and social and cultural needs — all issues that benefit from focused, high-capacity approaches and investments.

[8:45 a.m.]

Government has a significant opportunity to bring together and support the private sector, communities and post-secondary institutions to promote solution-finding, collaboration and cooperation. Rather than leave the development of such beneficial cooperation to chance, government should encourage the sectors to identify problems and solutions and then co-invest sustainably to make the solutions real.

Government should also encourage and invest in expanding cross-institutional coordination amongst post-secondary institutions. Examples might include larger institutions supporting the backroom operations of smaller or more remote institutions to better create more reliable services and to support adoption of best practices and inter-institutional learning. There are many successful collaborations already in place. Examples include Study North, an international recruitment and branding venture between the four northern institutions, and the masters of digital media program, awarded jointly by UBC with SFU, Emily Carr and BCIT.

Our post-secondary sector is key to a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable future for B.C. I look forward to your questions, and I note that I am out of time. Thank you.

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

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

B. Bailey: Thanks for that presentation — very succinct. It’s a deeply complex and big issue. Well done.

We’ve made a commitment to fund 2,000 new tech seats in British Columbia, and we’re moving forward with that commitment and consultation. I wonder if you could comment on that. What difference do you think that might make in the talent stream? How might that align or differ from what you’re hoping to see?

M. Blouw: The announcement of those 2,000 tech seats was extraordinarily welcome. As I underscored, we do have a talent shortage in British Columbia — talent shortages are worldwide now — and, of course, the greatest need for future jobs will be very much in the technology space. So I believe the seats are extraordinarily welcome.

They won’t begin entirely to fill…. They’ll begin to fill the gap, but they won’t meet the demands. As I indicated, it’s 80,000 workers that we’ll be short of, over a ten-year period. We’ve got a big hill to climb, and we need to get more people into our institutions that otherwise wouldn’t be there. If we can educate those individuals in those areas that are of highest need, greatest importance and opportunity to the province, that would be our goal, and the 2,000 seats are a very welcome addition to that.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. When you’re talking about…. I think the pandemic has been interesting in terms of your ability to reach out with hybrid models for rural communities, but you’re trying to reach into Indigenous communities and people who would not traditionally come into post-secondary. It’s not just a case of adding seats. Are you looking at kind of a provincial strategy in terms of how to make that shift?

You were saying that the ability for universities to kind of share…. You take up one course here and one course…. But are you looking for something bigger than that in terms of…? How do you actually create opportunity for Indigenous students to come into the program?

M. Blouw: Exactly. Great question; thank you. We do indeed anticipate that what we’ve learned during the pandemic is much more a blended learning approach, capitalizing on the power of the digital world to complement what I think we’ve historically done so well, which is face-to-face learning. The costs are not insignificant, and one of the key barriers to people in many communities is access to bandwidth and access to learning spaces.

If you are in a smaller community, you may be in living conditions that don’t enable a quiet study spot, that don’t enable high-speed bandwidth, and you might not even have the resources to access the Internet. The provincial investment in a provincewide high-speed network, I think, is extraordinarily welcome, as are the 2,000 spaces, but by themselves, I don’t think they go far enough, because students who learn remotely require much different kinds of support. They require more intensive support.

[8:50 a.m.]

Shifting from a face-to-face curriculum to a very effective online curriculum is quite a big job, and it’s not inexpensive. So we are seeking investments. Yes, you’re absolutely right. We hope to capitalize on the knowledge, the expertise of some of our institutions to help bolster those that may have less of that expertise. Collaboration, cooperation is extraordinarily important among us at this time.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): A follow-up. I don’t know if it’s a hub-and-spoke model, but you were talking about the ability for some of the larger institutions to kind of do the back-office work to allow those smaller institutions to focus on teaching. Is that what you were talking about when you had mentioned that?

M. Blouw: It’s potentially a part of the solution, yes, but I think that even smaller institutions cooperating amongst one another may in fact offer opportunities of scale, of learning best practices from one another, bridging distances more effectively. There are many different kinds of models that we could look at.

I think experience has shown that when the institutions themselves drive that kind of innovation, it really does work quite well.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Max. A great presentation. In your presentation, you highlighted a very important piece: affordable student housing. As we know, our government has made a substantial investment in student housing across the province.

What are your thoughts about the existing investments? Are there any other ideas that you would like to highlight and share so that we can continue to move towards this initiative? It’s a big need. How do you see that helping? I know lots is underway, some completed, but I’m just wondering what other ideas you want us to take into consideration.

M. Blouw: A very important area and a great question. Housing is an issue for many people, not just students. However, if we wish to increase the participation rate of those who are disadvantaged in some manner, we need to think about their housing. On-campus housing is by far and away the preferred way to go for many people, whether with families or on their own.

The investments that the provincial government has made — it has enabled institutions to borrow money to actually build student housing — have been very, very important. We have seen, during the course of the pandemic, that we had a lot of students on campus. We were deemed an essential service. Campuses remained open. We had thousands of people living and working on campuses throughout the pandemic, but housing availability in the community was very reduced, because people didn’t want students in their homes. They wanted isolation. They wanted to be separate from the threats of the pandemic.

We’ve been very clear that having increased housing on campus actually takes pressure off the immediate surroundings. The spillover effect from the intensity of population on our campuses is diminished when we have more on-campus housing. We’re also able to support students better when they’re on campus than if they’re off campus.

Finally, I would say that I think it’s important to recognize that students benefit from community. If you have students with similar needs, similar interests and similar outlooks living together, there’s mutual support that comes from that, which I think is critically important. We believe that may be especially important for those student populations that normally haven’t been able to attend. We believe that we can optimize their success by providing that kind of support.

H. Sandhu: A quick follow-up comment, Chair?

It also saves time — I’ve heard from students — tons of time that they can utilize to study. Also, they leave a lower carbon footprint. They don’t have to drive and find parking. Not only that, but I think another benefit is that the student housing we have will free up housing in the town for other people to take. I think it’s a very important area.

M. Blouw: Thank you for adding to my thoughts.

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Max. I’m virtual, away right now. I’m going to add to the question I have for you, sir.

[8:55 a.m.]

Obviously, you’re talking about the difference between 2D and 3D. You talked about connectivity and helping students study from a rural area, to connect with major universities and with non-profits. Unfortunately, with the two years of the pandemic, we also learned that Zoom and MS Teams aren’t a replacement for in-person learning, in-person interaction, in-person engagement. Of course, there’s going to be a component of mental health concerns when it comes to students studying abroad.

Do you have any recommendations on what kinds of strategies our provincial government can explore? We’re reaching out towards the connectivity investment. We’re looking for a way to connect the rural areas to actually handle students. What kind of additional, complementary strategies should we consider to ensure that students have a more comprehensive learning environment, similar to other people who actually have the privilege to be at a university where they can do in-person studies?

M. Blouw: Thank you for that question. Again, an excellent questions. What we’ve learned during the pandemic is that face-to-face learning is truly vivid. I think we have a face-to-face meeting here. It’s much better than a 2D meeting. I think we’d all agree with that.

What we have learned, though, is that a 2D experience, a digital experience, can be very, very effective. Some students and some faculty members in fact prefer it. They may have social anxiety issues. They may have other reasons for not wishing to be in a crowded situation. We’re very keenly aware that the pandemic — that forced experiment, if you like — has enabled us to learn a great deal about how we can deliver, in alternative methodologies, a very effective learning environment.

With student support issues, we’ve also learned to adapt. We’ve done a lot of student counselling now online during the pandemic. Students always have questions about courses, about their curriculum. They may have mental health challenges. Particularly during the pandemic, I think, a lot of people felt stressed. We’ve discovered ways to help support those students, using digital tools, but one thing that is very difficult to overcome, even in remote locations, is a sense of community, a sense of a location where learning is the objective. It’s not living; it’s not being with one’s family. You’re there to learn.

I think of a combination of digital connectedness with some kinds of supports — I’m not entirely clear what they’d look like — within smaller communities. It might be the community library or a community rec centre, if space could be set aside for certain periods of time, where people could go with high-speed digital access, perhaps with a person in attendance who could support those individuals, depending on how many there are.

That kind of model is what we’re talking about a lot within our institutions, trying to figure out how we make that work and how we make it work sustainably. To make it work for a short period of time and then to withdraw it, I think, would be a great disappointment for everyone. We’re actively investigating. We’re discussing this with our more remote learners. I think the smaller institutions in more remote localities will have a lot of ideas to offer to us. We look forward to that ongoing conversation and developing solutions for everybody, in all corners of the province.

B. Stewart: The number that is striking is this 8 percent. When you phrase it that we’re not matching the other provinces, I guess the question really is: is it because of all of the things that you’ve mentioned here? I say that, meaning that most of these are research-based universities.

Is there the population to find and fill that gap that you’ve identified? I know we’ve relied, with Mitacs and other things, on attracting talent to come in here. I guess I’m just kind of wondering. It seems to me that you could build the housing, cross the digital divide — if you want to call it that — but you still might not have the student uptake.

There was another comment you made about high schools and bringing them along. I’m just trying to figure out what we’d have to do, as a province, to have enough willing and interested high school graduates to go into these programs.

[9:00 a.m.]

M. Blouw: Again, an excellent question. Great insights. What we know is that young people — by grade 6, 7, 8 — have made up their minds if they are really interested in going to university or not. Partnering with school districts in areas where we have low attendance rates, low attainment rates — I think that’s one of the keys that we’ll be exploring.

I think of it as a pipeline of opportunity. Education is a great equalizer. It lifts and gives people opportunities for engagement in ways that many other developmental activities can’t equal. So engaging people in education, trying to support their success in education, is one of the most uplifting things we can do as a society. Thinking of that as a pipeline opportunity from a very young age right through to graduate school — if someone has the ability and interest for that — I think, is a good conceptual model for us to think about.

The various parts of that require that cooperation and collaboration that I spoke about as our third priority recommendation. We need to think together about how to accomplish the pipeline objectives that I think would really help us. Indigenous students, in particular, tend not to attend post-secondary in the same numbers as others. But it’s also our fastest-growing demographic. So if we can increasingly encourage Indigenous communities, kids in the early grades, to really think about themselves as potentially being very successful in a post-secondary environment, I think that would go a long way.

It’s going to require a lot of dedicated attention to the barriers, attention to opportunities, attention to role-modelling, peer support, etc. There are just an awful lot of things that we can talk about and explore with our partners as we try to solve these problems.

The 8 percent gap may not be filled entirely by domestic enrolment. We absolutely have to think about the international attraction of students. We have attracted interprovincially for a very long time — many, many decades. You asked: are the gap issues of immediate making? No. B.C. has long underperformed the rest of the country in terms of post-secondary attainment. It’s been cultural. It’s been historical. To turn that around a dime — I don’t think it’s possible. I think we need deliberate, focused strategies and investments to make that happen.

I believe also that by working collaboratively across the sectors — the colleges, the institutes, the universities — together with the K-to-12 system, we really need to have some discussion and try to solve some problems that will enable us to help fill that gap.

The final thing I would say is that some people will likely wish to delay retirements and those sorts of things to enable ongoing employment opportunities. Still, 8 percent is a big, big gap, and we’ll be hard-pressed, I think, over the next decade to really fill all those jobs, especially in an environment where everybody else is competing for talent as well.

H. Yao: I apologize. I should have mentioned it earlier. I would love to follow up some facts in regard to students and the role of communities with more of a satellite office. I know there’s obviously a full-time model. There’s a shared office model, and you mentioned the library use.

Was there any kind of discussion between universities creating, maybe, satellite shared classrooms, where, as you mentioned before, people can come together from various universities, have access to maybe high-speed internet for free or low-cost, and be able to form a community around the area?

M. Blouw: That’s exactly the kind of model that I think might be very useful in some communities. We’re keenly aware that the K-to-12 system is in session most weekdays for certain hours where other people might also wish to learn. That’s why I raised the prospect of libraries or community centres or what have you.

I think we’ll need to be creative about the resources that are brought to bear, but the model that you’ve suggested, I think, is absolutely spot-on.

[9:05 a.m.]

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Research universities are traditionally more difficult to get into. If we’re looking at attracting more students into universities like UBC and like SFU…. If you’ve got…. This last year, to get into science, I think you had to have an average of 96 percent coming out of high school.

Do we need to have more of a move to broad-based admissions in order to be able to engage and attract more of the non-traditional students? Those numbers are very intimidating to even put an application in at a school.

M. Blouw: There’s no question that with the demand for seats, the entrance averages have gone up consistently for many, many years. It’s not an easy problem to solve. Many students…. Universities have different levels of prestige. They have different levels of opportunity associated with their attendance.

A school like UBC will always have a very high entrance standard. In fact, I think that’s appropriate, because quite frankly, UBC is in competition with many, many other universities worldwide for the best talent. That’s good for B.C., in fact.

I don’t think that we should diminish entrance standards simply on the basis of a labour gap. I think what we need to do is try to lift all of the opportunities for all of our learners to enable as many to meet the requirements for entry into whatever schools of whatever nature will serve them best and which will enable them to enter the workforce and also enjoy the benefits of a post-secondary education. This really does open an awful lot of opportunity and avenues of engagement in society that otherwise might not be open to them.

I don’t think it’s a simple matter of asking UBC to lower its entrance standards, quite frankly.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Well, that’s not what I meant.

M. Blouw: I know you didn’t. I think the solution is really a fairly complex one that requires us to think about differentiated roles within a differentiated set of institutions right across the province. I think we already have a fabulous system in that regard.

We are a very strong system of differentiated institutions. Students can move from one part of the system to another very readily. We have the best transfer system in all of North America, perhaps the world, here in B.C. We have long experience. We have great accomplishment, actually, in that others from around the world look at our transfer system as a model.

I think we can be very, very proud of what we have here. Will it meet all of our needs, going forward? I think I’ve given you some cause to think that we need to invest more to ensure that it does meet very, very steeply rising needs in the future.

J. Routledge (Chair): Not seeing any further questions, Max, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee. I also want to say that you are the first presenter in this round of budget consultations. Your presentation and the interaction has set a really, really good tone. This is a really good start. You’ve clearly framed your presentation and your recommendations in the context of what we’re trying to accomplish as a government and what the challenges are. I wrote down here: “Think together.” I think that that is a really good theme.

I also want to say that for many of us in this room — I think I’m speaking for others in this room — when we were post-secondary students, the assumption was that we had to adapt to fit the institution. What you’re suggesting are concrete, creative ways that maybe institutions can adapt to the needs of the students. Thank you very much for that.

M. Blouw: Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a privilege to be here with you. I had thought of bringing a pamphlet with me that is entitled Stronger Together that we produced earlier this year. Perhaps I’ll ensure that you all get a copy of that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Please do. Thank you.

M. Blouw: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Have a great day, and thank you for all you do for us. It’s important work.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll take a quick recess, like five minutes.

The committee recessed from 9:09 a.m. to 9:16 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Greg Melnechuk, CUPE Vancouver Island District Council.

I think you already know, Greg, that there’s a lighting system. There’s also a timer. You have five minutes to make a presentation. When you have two minutes left, the light will turn green, and when it’s five minutes, it’ll turn red. Then we’ll have five minutes to ask you questions.

CUPE, VANCOUVER ISLAND
DISTRICT COUNCIL

G. Melnechuk: All right. Let’s do it.

Hi. I’d like to thank the committee for having me here today to speak to you. I’m here on behalf of the Vancouver Island District Council, which represents 10,000 CUPE members, who are in basically every sector. But for today, I’m really representing those members that work at all levels of post-secondary on the Island and Powell River.

I want to start by describing for you a system in crisis, for maintenance issues, growing numbers of precarious workers, ever-increasing class sizes, lack of funds to support research and innovation, services that can’t meet demand and waning enrolment among our most vulnerable students. These are all symptoms of a crisis caused by the underfunding of British Columbia’s post-secondary system.

To help combat this, our first recommendation is to increase post-secondary funding to restore a majority public-funded model to institutional-based budgets and increase research-funding capacity. Several generations of governments have contributed to a reversal of the funding model for colleges and universities, going from a public-funded model to institutional-based budgets to a system of mostly private funding.

What caused this inversion? Two things. The first and the most obvious is direct cuts to our post-secondary institutions. The second cause is a funding model that really hasn’t accounted for system growth. Limited capital infusions have come primarily as infrastructure spending, with the construction of new buildings that institutions can’t even afford to maintain and operate.

This has created a further reversal, this time of the post-secondary institution’s focus. Short on resources, our colleges and universities focus on competing with each other for student numbers, hiking tuition fees, fundraising, revenue generation and the sale of education to international students. At the same time, institutions are less focused on what they should be: preparing B.C. for the challenges ahead, developing solutions to current and future labour market challenges and supporting student success.

A vibrant, well-resourced and accessible post-secondary education system not only supports individuals by creating jobs, starting careers and supporting families, but also is the ground from which our collective future grows. We face tremendous challenges, not the least of which is the need to shift our economy and prepare our communities to face a climate crisis.

In addition, the post-secondary system is one of our best and most successful tools to fight inequity, address affordability and social issues, advance innovation and build a sustainable, inclusive economy. An investment in post-secondary funding and a return to majority public funding will more than pay for itself over time with these contributions to a shared and prosperous future.

Flowing directly out of this is our second recommendation, which calls for an increase in funding for campus services, support for bringing campus services back in house and additional resources to address deferred maintenance. Chronic underfunding of post-secondary has put im­mense pressure on all parts of the post-secondary system, but cuts have disproportionately been applied to campus services and facilities.

[9:20 a.m.]

Staff workloads are increasing, and work is becoming precarious. When full-time regular staff depart institutions, vacancies aren’t filled, as institutions instead turn to part-time and casual staff who have limited access to benefits and job security. These precarious workers are predominantly found in food, custodial and facility services.

Not coincidentally, these same workers are most hurt by the effects of contracting out, as post-secondary work is outsourced to large corporations. These corporations pay low wages and use pending contract bids as an excuse to maintain poor working conditions. This impacts the state of maintenance and upkeep on our campuses and undermines the overall quality of employment provided by tax dollars.

The B.C. government has supported the repatriation of public sector work in health care. Extending this initiative to post-secondary education would be of great benefit to communities, workers and students alike.

Finally, on infrastructure, what we’re seeing in post-secondary is a focus on new builds, rather than ensuring that current infrastructure is in good condition. In post-secondary, we’ve seen how deferred maintenance just creates more expensive problems down the line. So a fiscally prudent action would be including funding directed at deferred maintenance within increased post-secondary budgets.

I think that’s it. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Greg. I’ll now ask members of the committee to ask you some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. That was interesting.

Can you give me some examples of…? When you were talking about supporting campus services, bringing them back in-house, I’m not sure what that looks like. Has there been contracting out of mental health supports? What kinds of things are…?

G. Melnechuk: I think right now the most pressing example would be at Simon Fraser University, where a lot of the food services and support staff have been outsourced for years. Basically, these are predominantly, again, women and racialized workers. Right now there is a big push on there to try to bring that back in-house and provide those workers with suitable supports.

M. Starchuk: If you wouldn’t mind, Greg, just expanding on that. You said you’re trying to bring them back.

G. Melnechuk: Yeah. I think right now, especially out of SFU…. There’s a campaign going on to try to convince the SFU administration of the wisdom of bringing them back in and making them actual SFU employees, instead of working for this company and then that company and then this company and then that company, which is what seems to happen. The contracts would just be passed along so as to avoid actually paying these people a fair wage.

M. Starchuk: Just to expand, I’m not sure if this is something that’s being bargained or if it’s something that’s being convinced. There are other sectors that have done exactly what you’re talking about, hospitals being one of those.

What’s the bar here? What is the barrier?

G. Melnechuk: The barrier, I think, is institutional. It’s the institution right now. SFU is unwilling to do so.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions for Greg?

H. Yao: Hi. Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you so much for your presentation. Unfortunately, I used to be one of those employees working in the city of Richmond system, where I’m actually what they call a hybrid version.

I think, just echoing back to your comment earlier, when you create a wage difference, you also create a respect difference for an individual who is part of the institution, sort of a level hierarchy over other people who are contracted.

I would just like to really explore which, other than, of course, the custodians, food service providers…. What other aspects of a university’s staffing, when it comes to contracting…? What kinds of challenges are they facing? What can we do as a provincial government to facilitate a discussion where we can create more of an inclusive and a more welcoming work environment for people, especially women and individuals from a diverse background?

G. Melnechuk: Wow. That’s a good question. I guess, really, a little pressure on SFU wouldn’t hurt. I think sometimes SFU needs a little bit of pressure in many areas.

It could be a bargaining issue. As you are all probably aware, bargaining in the public sector is kind of frozen right now. So it could become part of a bargaining issue.

[9:25 a.m.]

I think, perhaps, a helpful nudge from government towards SFU might do it and, also, ensuring that SFU has adequate funds to actually bring them back in-house. I mean, that’s really what we’re here for today: to talk about the funding. Maybe it’s easier to convince SFU to do the right thing if they have the money to do the right thing.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): You talked about full-time staff leaving. So you’re losing FTEs. They’re not being replaced, or they are being replaced with part-time folks who aren’t getting benefits. Where is that data coming from? Where can we look for that?

G. Melnechuk: Right now, for me, personally, that’s anecdotal. I work up at the University of Victoria, so I know just from going down the hallways and talking to my colleagues that trades are a big issue in the universities, because the trades workers can make so much more money out of the institutions, out in the private sector, than they can within the institutions.

UVic, for example, has a heck of a time recruiting electricians or plumbers, because there’s really not much reason to go work…. Even though you have a pension and good benefits, you could make much more money there. So that’s where we really see the shortfall.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

Well, seeing no more questions, Greg, I think you’ve given us a very clear, very succinct presentation and clear recommendations.

On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank you not only for coming here and sharing your insights, but thank you for the work that the people that you represent do at institutions and for reminding us that institutions can do wonderful, cutting-edge research. They can educate the next generation, but only with the help of the infrastructure that allows them to do that. So thank you for that.

G. Melnechuk: Thank you so much for the time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Janine Hannis, Greater Victoria Alliance for Literacy.

Janine, I know that before you came here today, you were told that you have five minutes to make a presentation, and then we have about five minutes to ask you questions. We have a lighting system and a timer, so when you have two minutes left, the light will turn green. Over to you, Janine.

GREATER VICTORIA
ALLIANCE FOR LITERACY

J. Hannis: Wonderful. Thank you so much. You’re also very far away, so good thing we have that microphone.

Okay, well, thank you so much for having me come over and present to you today. I want to explain that the Greater Victoria Alliance for Literacy is an alliance of small literacy organizations in the lower southern Vancouver Island area. Basically, as I say, Sooke to Saltspring.

We created an alliance because we realized that we really needed to band together. Then our motto, ironically — and I didn’t steal this from government — was “stronger together.” I know that that’s your budget motto as well. But that made me very excited to think that what I’m going to propose and tell you about literacy is exactly what this committee and the budget process are all about.

What you need to know — the very most important thing you need to know right away — is that literacy is not a reading and writing issue. Literacy is a poverty issue. Literacy is an economic issue. It is not being represented that way right now, and it is not being funded that way currently, in government.

The shocking statistic is that over 40 percent of British Columbians are operating at a low level of literacy. That has huge, dire economic consequences for this province. The province is literally losing billions of dollars because of people in low literacy. People in low literacy are not getting the jobs that pay a living wage. People in low literacy are working in minimum wage jobs. They are not able to support their families.

[9:30 a.m.]

The gap between a person with low literacy making $20,000 to somebody at a higher level of literacy making $40,000, $60,000, $80,000 is enormous, as you can imagine.

The current funding model is very inadequate, because currently it’s only funded through two ministries. How it’s done is that it’s kind of doled out piecemeal, in very small amounts, and it’s very ineffective.

My proposal is that we would recognize the needs. Some of the major things in the budget being proposed are economic growth and looking into sectors, skills and health technology. Well, these are only going to be achieved through raising the literacy rates. How do you think people are going to be able to get into these positions? These people are not going to be able to get into these positions to do those kinds of jobs without having higher literacy rates.

What I propose is that literacy needs to be funded as a five-ministry funding model. The existing funding, through the Ministry of Advanced Ed and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs — again, kind of the piecemeal little $25,000, $30,000 grants doled out — is great but not enough. It really needs to be recognized in the other ministries that even have the name in it. Social Development and Poverty Reduction — where is literacy there? Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation — where is literacy there?

Literacy is the economic driver for this province. Without recognizing that, you’re going to be losing billions of dollars. It needs to be recognized. My proposal is for all five of these ministries to come together, to work together — stronger together — to really move the needle on literacy and get people out of poverty and into a better economic situation, with all five of them working together in recognizing a literacy continuum, an idea I call innovation hubs.

The innovation hubs would be all five of the ministries working together to take a piece. The first and really important piece is community development organizations doing the foundational literacy piece and the computer literacy piece, because those are not done anywhere else. They are not funded from government anywhere else. They are the first part. They’re the part that people have to attend before they can even get to the school programs.

You can’t walk right into the high-level math you need to be an electrician or an ultrasound person or working in the genome jobs. You have to start somewhere. You have to start with those community organizations, then progress to adult education programs, then progress to the post-secondary and also work with the employers. All five of those ministries are key and need to be involved and have line-item funding for this literacy to create a strong foundation to really propel British Columbia into the future.

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

Our first question comes from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your passionate presentation today and for the work that you do in your community. I’ve had a chance to look through your written submission also.

Just if you could provide a little bit of clarification. My background: I’m a former school trustee. So literacy and digital literacy were major focuses, as time went on, within education. For instance, the government of British Columbia has the B.C. Digital Literacy Framework and has also invested quite a bit in reading recovery and other programs, moving along through the years and then further into some of the options available for upgrading, through partnerships with, for instance, in my riding, the Langley education network.

Is your vision for this to be more targeted towards adults? Or do you see any integration with the existing programs that are funded by the government through the high school and elementary years? I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more clarification on that. I see what you’re saying with many ministries working together. That’s something that’s always a challenge within government — when you have something that reaches many different ministries.

[9:35 a.m.]

Most of these initiatives definitely come through Education and Child Care. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of an idea of exactly whom you would be targeting with this type of program — I wasn’t able to get all of that from your written submission — and how you see the partnership with the existing programs, the framework.

J. Hannis: Yes, that’s an excellent question. Currently children are very well provided for in our excellent education system. I spent 20 years running the adult graduation program in the Ministry of Education, so I have firsthand knowledge of how superior our education system is and how well the children of the future are going to be provided for in this area.

It’s the adults. It’s the 25-year-olds we’re looking at; it’s the 30-year-olds. It’s these people who are living in poverty, not adding to the economy and in fact costing the province money because of having to be reliant on government services. This is why we need to recognize the people who fell through the cracks and the people who didn’t graduate with all the courses they need to now get into these new programs — to get into the trades, to get into the technologies.

They are falling through the cracks, and these are the ones that need to be addressed. It’s definitely, as I see it, an adult upgrading and literacy issue. The shame around literacy makes it so that people are embarrassed to come and admit they need upgrading. Also, the complicated structure for adult upgrading and the limited nature are very tricky right now. That’s why having a concept like an innovation hub would make it an inclusive, welcoming space. Everyone would be coming there for their different reasons.

J. Routledge (Chair): Brenda?

B. Bailey: I think that she answered my question. Thank you, Chair.

B. Stewart: It’s interesting the way that you link literacy to all these other factors. You can see it with people that have recently arrived in British Columbia. I know that it is the government’s stated goal to try to make certain that they do achieve a level of literacy and proficiency — being able to move themselves ahead.

The 40 percent that you mention: where is that measurement coming from?

J. Hannis: There are many, many stats on this. The main one that we would be using is the PIAAC. This is a stat that actually comes out, unfortunately, every ten years, so our latest stats are a little bit dated, but the exciting news is that it’s coming out this year. The Ministry of Education is typically the one which will crunch those stats. Also, there’s lots of information and stats that comes out through Statistics Canada.

If you go to our alliance website, we actually have done a lot of data mining, and we have tons of data referencing both federal data and provincial data. There’s lots of data on the Decoda website as well. Frontier College does a lot of data linking literacy and the economy. There are significant amounts of data that is easy to find, for sure.

B. Stewart: One last question. Oh, we’re out of time. The fifth ministry. You said five ministries. I can only see four in here. What’s the fifth?

J. Hannis: Oh, I’m sorry. I probably assumed one. Municipal Affairs, Advanced Ed, Education and then Social Development and Poverty Reduction and Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation — the big five we need to support literacy.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): The funding that you’re directing us to is not for the alliance. It’s for your member organizations. Do they, at this point, get additional funding from ABC literacy or any of the other larger federal organizations, or is it primarily provincial funding?

J. Hannis: Just to clarify, the funding I’m requesting is for the province. It’s a provincial structure, an innovative idea of how to fund literacy.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay, so not directly to these community organizations that you’re talking about?

J. Hannis: Well, they would hopefully be recipients of that funding, just to clarify how that model might work. They currently would be receiving funding from all of them: foundations, government grants, foundational grants, donations, some social enterprise. It’s a combination.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Brilliant. Okay, thank you.

[9:40 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, Janine, I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for coming and sharing your observations and your very specific, concrete recommendations — and 40 percent illiteracy is a shocking number.

J. Hannis: Shocking, yes.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you for suggesting that that, rather than an issue that we deal with on the side, be central to our plans to meet the requirements of the workforce and of the economy of the future. Thank you for putting that on our radar.

J. Hannis: You’re very welcome.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Gina Martin, with the Victoria Disability Resource Centre.

Gina, I understand that we should give you a verbal cue when the green light comes on. We’re happy to do that. With that, I’ll turn it over to you.

VICTORIA DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTRE

G. Martin: Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me today. My name is Gina. I’m the lead coordinator for the Victoria Disability Resource Centre.

Our program is geared to educate youth in school around disabilities — how those of us do tasks, how we navigate life, and the tools, devices and techniques that we use in order to live independently. I go into schools, and I share lived experiences. All the presenters that come with me share their lived experiences. We talk to the kids about visible versus invisible disabilities, that there are permanent, episodic, temporary disabilities.

We provide activities for these kids to try — simulations for them to gain a better understanding of how it is that we do things. After they’ve done these tasks, I talk to them. I’m like: “How did that make you feel as a person? Did you still feel like Johnny or Joe when you did those tasks? Of course you did. Kids who have disabilities also feel the exact same way as you. Now, how can we” — I say to the kids — “make these tasks easier? What can we do that will…? How can we be a support to our classmates or people in the community that are living with disabilities?”

We problem solve, and we talk about it. Our goal…. We do include kids who have disabilities to speak up, and it is amazing how many kids are coming forth and saying: “I have ADHD. I have autism. I have dyslexia.” Then I’m like: “Great. How can your classmates be a support to you?” All of the kids that are learning about their classmates in school and what benefits them is what’s going to change for inclusion.

We also talk to the kids about accessibility. By them doing these tasks, they really understand how some things aren’t accessible. We say: “When you guys are starting to create your inventions and your devices and all of these things — your guys’ little minds are so brilliant — build it inclusive and accessible, from the beginning. If you build it accessible from the beginning, everybody can use it. Everybody can buy it. You’re going to benefit. The world is going to benefit.”

I presented to 12 schools this year — 41 classes. There were over 748 kids. There were two classes that were K-1 and grade 2 that weren’t able to fill out the evaluation forms that I have every kid and every teacher fill out. Out of those 748 of the forms that I’ve collected, 168 kids identified as having a disability. That is 22 percent of the kids in Victoria, here in our school district 61, that are saying: “I’m having troubles reading. I’ve having troubles focusing. I’m having troubles with the noise going on around me or the lights or things.”

J. Routledge (Chair): Two minutes left, Gina.

G. Martin: Okay. Thank you.

So we need to bring more education and awareness to the world, in general. I think so many people are uncomfortable around the topic of disability, because we don’t want to offend. We don’t want to say the wrong thing. We don’t know how to interact.

Let’s start right with these young kids and say: “Hey, we’re people too. It’s just that some of our bodies and brains don’t work the same way. But this is how you can work with us and we can work with you.”

Every person has strengths and weaknesses, whether you have a disability or not. We’re just trying to normalize it. I’m a normal person. I am a mom and a wife and a teacher and all of these things way before I’m blind. People just really need to know that. Differences are okay. Let’s work together. Let’s figure out how we can be a support to each other and be kind to each other.

[9:45 a.m.]

These kids are really understanding, after trying these activities, how difficult things are. I say: “You guys only did that for two minutes. Can you imagine if you had to do that every day, all day? I’m legally blind. Have you ever woken up in the morning and looked at an alarm clock, and for those one or two seconds, it’s really blurry? That’s me all day. By the end of my day, I’m tired sometimes. My eyes hurt.”

I’m really passionate about this because it’s so important that people are aware that we are human beings too. We’re not always treated the same way, and it’s not fair. With the kids, they’re really receptive. They’re really engaged. The feedback that we’re getting is incredible.

Another question is: how many of you know somebody with a disability, and how many of you know more than one person with a disability? Out of that 748, 168 are identifying with a disability, 314 know one person and 313 knew more than one person. That is a lot of information, and the classes that I’m doing are grades 4, 5, 6 and 7. These kids know that many people living with a disability. It just needs to be more common and more aware.

People with lived experience need to deliver this program. Nobody is speaking for us. We are all different, and all of our experiences are different. None of us are the same, even if we have the same disability.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Gina. There are questions for you.

I’ll start with Brenda, and then Ben.

B. Bailey: Hi, Gina. It’s Brenda Bailey speaking, MLA for False Creek.

First, I just really want to commend you for your incredible passion on this issue. I hear your description of what you’re doing in the schools, and it makes me really excited and happy. I just wanted to thank you for that.

It sounds to me like the primary tool that you’re using in your work is that of empathy. I’m wondering. Do you find that there are barriers connecting with kids in that way? Are kids generally responding when you call for that type of empathy? Do you find that to be a tool of change that’s effective? Does it stick?

G. Martin: Absolutely. On the feedback, it’s like: what did you learn today? What can you teach somebody today? Be kind. Be helpful. Be patient. These are the kids’ responses. That’s what they’re learning from this.

B. Stewart: I’m Ben Stewart from Kelowna West. In your opening comment, you talk about being a disability awareness educator in district 61. Are there people in many of the other school districts in the province that do what you do? Is there a network?

G. Martin: This is my program. I developed it in 2019. Of course, COVID hit. Now, in the beginning of this year, we were welcomed back into the schools.

I’m the only one delivering it, unless I bring some volunteers, people living with disabilities, with me to present. I’m doing it all myself. I knock on the doors of the principals. I talk with the teachers. We’ve been so welcomed by these schools already this year. They want us back in September so that we can talk about it at the beginning of the year, when the new classrooms are just forming.

It’s just me right now.

B. Stewart: You’ve got a ways to go.

G. Martin: Yeah, and it’s going to be great.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. My name is Megan Dykeman. I’m the MLA for Langley East.

I really enjoyed hearing about the work that you’re doing and just wanted to share that in Langley, more in the Fraser Valley region, we have a lady who works very hard to deliver a TOAD program, which is “Try On a Disability.” Each year, she holds an event where she brings politicians in to literally try on a disability. It really raises awareness of the everyday challenges that people who are now living with a disability experience.

At the end of the day, what’s interesting is that often we learn that the changes that could be made to make the world more accessible would benefit everybody. As you said, we all have periods in our lives when certain disabilities, like from a broken leg and other places, are experienced. I just wanted to share that and thank you for the work that you’re doing.

[9:50 a.m.]

If you could achieve anything from the work that you’re doing, if you were to see this reaching the levels that you wanted it to reach…? What would it look like at the end of the day, if this was successful?

G. Martin: It would be across Canada. My program would be in every single school. Kids would be learning from it from the very beginning, and it would be continually evolving, because everybody’s lived experience is different and everybody does different things. So having different presenters, the kids are going to learn from everybody. Something like a disability awareness week in school, I think, would be amazing.

We’d just have different rooms set up. Kids can come around. They can have access. Try playing basketball using wheelchairs as a group. We encompass all disabilities. We’re not just speaking on one. They’re learning about everything.

That’s my goal, that it would be across Canada. We have 25 independent living centres across Canada, the Victoria disability being one. That’s why I think that our independent living across Canada could do that.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the MLA for West Vancouver–Capilano. I just wanted to say thank you for the work that you do and the initiative that you took, because it wouldn’t have been easy to start this. You obviously have a persistence in order to be able to get into these schools.

I have, over the last few years, learned a lot about working with kiddos with autism in school settings, and having young people participating in an inclusive environment in schools, so that other children learn. For them to be able to participate and to…. I’ve seen how important it is to build empathy and to have children experience being a friend with someone who might be a bit different and might be….

It’s not a question, but it’s just to say thank you. I think that this is absolutely the right approach to take and look forward to hearing where this ends up.

G. Martin: Thank you. Yeah, public funding would help, because people with disabilities shouldn’t have to always volunteer their time. They should be able to get paid for their hard work.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Right on. Yes.

G. Martin: Were there any other questions?

J. Routledge (Chair): I think we don’t have any more questions at this point, so I’ll just wrap it up by thanking you, Gina, for taking the time to come and share your passion and enthusiasm for this initiative that you’ve taken.

There is that saying that those of us that don’t have a disability are temporarily abled. It’s important that children learn that at a young age.

G. Martin: I think adults really need to learn it, too, actually a little bit more than the kids. I think we grew up not having disabilities around us as much, so we’re unfamiliar.

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes. For us adults, it would be remedial, wouldn’t it. Thanks again, Gina.

Our next presenter is Enid Elliot with Camosun College ELC, second year class. She has two students with her, Jessie Whitehouse and Rebekah Pavia.

EARLY LEARNING AND CARE PROGRAM,
CAMOSUN COLLEGE

E. Elliot: I was just thinking, as I listened to the last two, that the roots of that are in early childhood — both inclusion and literacy.

First of all, I would like to acknowledge that we’re on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and the Songhees, where children have been loved and cared for, for thousands of years.

I’m Enid Elliot, an instructor at Camosun College, and I’m here with two students who are in their last term of the early learning and care program at Camosun, Jessie Whitehouse and Rebekah Pavia, and three other students who would like to be here, but they’re on work-based practicum right now and could not take the time, as we’re currently in a crisis of shortage of qualified early childhood educators.

Over the past couple of years, our province has made good progress in the creation of an early childhood system of care and learning. So well done, and thank you, but more must be done to meet the needs of children and families, as well as retain early childhood educators.

We’ve come with some recommendations.

[9:55 a.m.]

For many years, there have been too many educators leaving the field for jobs with benefits, pay raises and pensions. The wage enhancement grants have helped slow this drain by raising salaries of educators, but the salaries are still too low for the cost of living, particularly here in Victoria and in Vancouver. If you’re a student who has a student loan, it’s not enough to easily repay that loan. Good salaries will attract and retain early childhood staff.

Currently the government is urging the colleges to take international students. This would encourage and support them, as they pay a great deal more in fees, and would reassure them that it’s a field worth entering. There is some support for students through bursaries, which the Early Childhood Educators of B.C. administer, but this is an awkward system. We would like to suggest a tuition subsidy, administered by the college, as more efficient. Currently this is being done for lab technicians, because there’s also a shortage of lab technicians in our province.

In other fields, such as carpentry or mechanics, students are paid to do practicums. Currently students may do a paid practicum in our field, but they’re considered part of the staff ratios, which are set by licensing, and do not have time to step away from work to observe, take notes, do assignments or meet with their mentors and instructors. The mechanic apprentices do not fix the car by themselves right away, but they learn and are paid to do so. Certainly, children are more important than cars.

A paid practicum also supports and validates the field of early childhood. Programs benefit from having students, as they bring new ideas and provide extra help. By recognizing the value of student learning, the practice of early learning and care is validated, and it raises the profile of work. This work needs to be attentive and thoughtful, and it is complex, even though it looks so simple — especially when done well.

Jessie is going to share with you some of the stress that students face with the costs of the program while having limited resources.

J. Routledge (Chair): If I could just intervene before you start, you’ve got about a minute.

J. Whitehouse: Of course. It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with you today as a representative for the graduating class of 2022. My name is Jessie Whitehouse, and I am one of the many students within the wide demographic of college attendees who have struggled to complete our programs during these difficult years of unprecedented circumstance.

As a student who has had to take four years to complete her diploma, I can certainly speak to the financial difficulties facing our adult students today, and the ripple effect of the financial and academic stress. As a student who, at some points, has had to chose between tuition costs and groceries, I would advocate for funding to go directly to the post-secondary institutions to support lowering tuition costs.

As a student who had to refuse job opportunities within the field in order to dedicate the time required for courses and practicums, I would like to advocate for funding to be provided to post-secondary institutions to support paying students wages for their practicum hours. This would provide centres with additional support, as we face a severe shortage of educators within our province, while additionally supporting students during this financially and emotionally taxing time. These stressors can contribute to severe cases of burnout, which is not how we want our educators to first enter the field.

As we continue to advocate for new educators to join us, we need to ensure that our post-secondary programs are just as accessible and inclusive as we would love our centres to be, allowing graduates to truly feel supported while they’re entering the field.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you very much. I’ll now entertain questions from the committee.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m Karin Kirkpatrick, from West Vancouver–Capilano. That was really…. I learned a lot from you, and I thought I knew a lot about this already.

I’m very interested in what you’ve recommended on these bursaries. I knew they were a bit clunky. I also know that those funds run out and that there are a lot of applicants to that bursary fund that actually don’t receive it. The idea of actually funding, directly to the institutions, so that they can have those tuition credits — I think that makes great sense. Thank you for that.

[10:00 a.m.]

I don’t know if I had a question, necessarily, other than…. You’ve presented some interesting ideas, and I certainly understand the crisis there — looking, also, at the ability to forgive some student loans and some other things when we’re targeting something that is in such crisis.

I can promise you that looking at the work, I never think that looks easy. I think that looks very, very hard. Thank you very much for the presentation.

J. Whitehouse: I just wanted to speak on the bursary there as an applicant and student of the past several years who has applied for the bursary each semester and has not received the bursary at all, with no explanation or transparency as to why and no opportunity to voice my need. It’s just based on first come, first served, and a lot of the recipients that really do need it are not given the opportunity to voice their need in that application.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Helpful. Thank you.

E. Elliot: I think that the feedback we got from informally asking around is that it would be much more efficient to just directly fund those seats. And the fact that the lab technicians — because they also have a shortage right now — are having a tuition subsidy…. It seems like there’s a precedent.

B. Stewart: Could you clarify on the size of what the bursary is? And then, what is the subsidy that the lab techs receive? Is it on all students, like the subsidy to their education costs? Is it across the board for everybody that applies, or are there some criteria?

J. Whitehouse: I can speak to the bursary. If you’re a full-time student attending a full-time course load, it’s about $1,500. So that would cover a bulk of tuition costs, then, in mostly books, but it also doesn’t account for the cost of living.

Being an adult student…. There’s a wide demographic of students attending these programs. It’s not just students right outside of high school. It’s a lot of people with families at home, people that are already working in the field, looking to upgrade their credentials. And, yeah, the bursary is widely inaccessible.

Maybe Enid could speak to the tuition subsidy.

E. Elliot: I think often students have to pay ahead of time, and then they’re reimbursed, so the money comes after the fact.

J. Whitehouse: Yes. It’s assumed you already have it.

E. Elliot: I only just heard a few days ago about the fact that there’s a tuition subsidy. My assumption would be that that would be across the board, but I would imagine that a lot of the students we have definitely need the funding. We are right now being pushed to take….

Half of our cohort will be international students, and they pay considerably more in fees. I would think they also could benefit from…. Some of them are coming from countries where it’s not easy to come up with the kind of finances that are needed, and Canada wants these students. They are excellent students.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any additional questions?

Okay. Well, with that, I want to thank you, Enid and Jessie and Rebekah, for coming and joining us and giving us some insight into what could be a very significant barrier to a goal that we are committed to. You’ve made it very clear, and we will be looking at what we can do to try to make early education more accessible to students.

E. Elliot: Well, that would be great. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Samantha Gambling, B.C. Chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.

Welcome, Samantha. You’ve probably figured out that you have five minutes. A green light will come on when you have two minutes to go, and then we’ll have five minutes to ask you some questions. So over to you.

COALITION FOR HEALTHY SCHOOL FOOD,
B.C. CHAPTER

S. Gambling: Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Samantha Gambling. I’m here on behalf of the B.C. Chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food, which is administered by the Public Health Association of B.C.

[10:05 a.m.]

I’m grateful to be here today on the lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋ­in̓əŋ-​speaking peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, to recommend to this committee that the B.C. government invest in universal cost-shared healthy school food programs for K-to-12 students across the province. I’m sorry to anyone who’s heard this spiel before, because I know a few of you have.

The Coalition for Healthy School Food is a national network of over 200 organizations advocating for public investment in a Canada-wide school food program that meets guiding principles such as health promotion, universality, connection to curriculum and community, Indigenous food sovereignty and more.

Our 50-plus member and endorser organizations here in B.C. include professional associations, school boards, non-profits and community organizations from the health, education, and agriculture and food sectors, many of whom deliver food or meal programs at school and all of whom share the belief that children and youth should have daily access to healthy food at school.

Studies show that in B.C. and across Canada, children and youth consume insufficient and unhealthy diets with low fruit and vegetable consumption. Of course, this negatively impacts a child’s mental and physical health, as well as their academic performance, with long-term public health implications.

Around the world, universal school food programs that achieve food literacy and healthy eating behaviours from a young age are increasingly recognized as a foundational health promotion policy. When combined with poverty reduction strategies, school food programs can also alleviate the burden of food insecurity felt at home, especially with rising food costs, and they can support local economies and contribute to building resilient communities.

Today Canada remains the only G7 nation without a federally funded school food program and ranks 37th out of 41 high-income countries in ensuring children have access to nutritious food. To address this gap, many schools in B.C. have developed their own food and meal programs, run by volunteer parents, staff or community champions. There are some incredibly successful programs across the province, which are well loved by community, but this current patchwork of programming is under-resourced and unsustainable as is, and they reach only a small percentage of B.C. students, even as the demand for programs grows.

Recently there’s been both national and international attention to develop a school food program for Canadian children. In 2021, the federal government committed $1 billion over five years for school meal programs in their platform. With this momentum, we believe there’s an opportunity for B.C. to be a leader in Canada, to showcase what healthy, just, student-centred school food programs can look like.

We’re really grateful for previous commitments from the B.C. Ministers of Education and Agriculture to create more local school meal programs, and we ask that Budget 2023 take the next step in this commitment by costing out and funding the first phase of a universal healthy school food program for K-to-12 students.

Our three recommendations. Number one, to fund school communities to build capacity and increase their readiness to deliver or expand their food programs. This would include funding for a minimum of one full-time school meal program coordinator or the equivalent dedicated staff in every school district, as well as funding for school communities to build capacity and plan for their programs. Building readiness is a really important piece of this work.

The second is to create a dedicated, multi-year funding stream for school food programs distinct from CommunityLINK, which competes for many other priorities, to fund school communities that are ready to build on or expand their programs. This funding should account for regional diversity and the rising cost of food and be flexible to account for diverse local conditions and contexts.

In the first year, we recommend that the B.C. government commit a minimum of $100 million to start funding school communities that express readiness and need. Funding should then increase each year, as additional school communities are ready to deliver programs.

Our last recommendation is to allocate resources to assemble both provincial and local school food advisory bodies to ensure that those that are impacted by the programs are involved in developing them and implementing them.

The B.C. chapter asks that the provincial government approach the federal government to secure matching funds to cost-share these investments. We also ask that the B.C. chapter support the government of Canada to negotiate separate funding and support for Indigenous school food programs with Indigenous partners, nations and leaders.

I’ve sent in a written submission with further details on these recommendations. I’m very happy to provide more information or answer any questions. Thanks very much for hearing our recommendations. We hope to see an investment in school food in Budget 2023.

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

We’ll now invite the committee to ask questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for that. It’s not just…. I mean, the basis is healthy food and healthy eating.

[10:10 a.m.]

Is this something that would also replace or work with those breakfast programs? Poverty is a big part of this as well. There are so many different places where food happens in a school. It’s what they serve in the cafeteria. It’s what kids bring for their own lunches. I’m not asking this very articulately, but where is this targeted? What kind of food is it? How are these children receiving this food, as well as the education?

S. Gambling: Yeah. Those are big questions. We are advocating for a healthy school food program that’s healthy in the type of food that’s served but also in the way in which students are accessing the food and the healthy school food environment. It’s how it’s served and interacted with, not just what’s being served.

We are advocating for locally adapted school food programs, ensuring that these school communities have control over the type of food program that works for their community. In some schools, that might be breakfast. In some schools, I’ve heard that breakfast just won’t work in their school — because they have an early start, and the kids just can’t get there in time — so a lunch program might be better, or a snack program. Many of these schools already have some sort of meal program in place, so it would be a matter of expanding those programs and working with the school community to develop something that reaches all students.

We do want to emphasize that this is a health promotion policy. It definitely would support families who are experiencing food insecurity, but we hesitate calling it a poverty-reduction strategy, because we want to make sure that this is accessible to all students, reducing the stigma of these types of programs and making sure that the success rates of the programs are high.

B. Stewart: When I read this, I couldn’t help but think: how ambitious. I mean, the goals are lofty, and I think that the ask about starting modestly is reasonable to identify. I guess the question I have — we heard quite a bit of this presentation last year, from different programs — is on the equality and accessibility to many of the districts that are outside of the GVRD and Vancouver Island in the south.

You talk about this being like local food programs, that could be grown or sourced from farmers, etc. However, there’s a large portion of the province that has very limited growing conditions. I don’t know how you provide equity and equality in places where it probably costs way more for the food. If I’m in a rural and remote community, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.

S. Gambling: Yeah. Definitely, prices will vary across the province in what it costs to provide food at schools. In some places it might be $5 a day, and some places it might be $7 a day or more. I think making sure that the programs are locally adapted is really important. You see, for example, that in some parts of northwest B.C. they have school food programs that provide stipends to Indigenous hunters, to harvesters, to bring deer into the school, where they can learn how to process a deer. They then include that in their meal program.

There are some really important kinds of locally adapted and culturally relevant meal programs that I think are going to help make this feasible in certain parts of the province. It also is a system. A part of this work is a matter of also supporting the Ministry of Agriculture to grow new famers. A big part of this is agricultural and food literacy. Being a part of this program is to start teaching kids where their food comes from, start introducing them to growing at school.

Through programs like Young Agrarians — being able to land-match and connect them with land across the province to start growing more food — there’s so much of this work that’s already happening. It’s just a matter of funding what’s already out there. I hope that answers some of your questions.

H. Yao: I will make my questions quick because I realize we’re running out of time.

I have done a lot of food security work in the Richmond area. One of the bigger challenges that we face is that Chinese Canadians often have a cultural expectation that kids eat hot meals in the morning. Of course, we’re now asking elementary schools: do they have the capacity to deliver those kinds of heated meals? Do you have any feedback for us in that regard? How can we make sure that the food that’s prepared is not just provided to all students but provided in a way that is respectful to their cultural needs?

[10:15 a.m.]

S. Gambling: Yeah. It’s going to be really important to ensure that there’s cultural appropriateness in the meal programs. That’s why I think having the school communities decide what type of meal program works for them is so important. In some cases, you definitely may see that a hot meal in the morning is the best option for the school community.

Infrastructure is a big piece of this. We’re asking the federal government to match funds so that there is enough funding for infrastructure in schools to be able to provide warm meals. That’s a big problem right now, where some schools have access to that infrastructure and some don’t. Just to reiterate: the local contextual piece is so important.

J. Routledge (Chair): Seeing that we are running out of time, Samantha, I’d like to thank you on behalf of the committee for coming and sharing your vision. It’s very ambitious, and that shouldn’t deter us. It could be, actually, transformational. I’m actually quite excited about follow-up discussions with this committee and with others on how we can support this.

S. Gambling: Yes, the timing is definitely right for accessing federal funding as well. It’s a good time to make that transformational change. Thank you. I appreciate it.

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

We will take a brief recess before we invite our next speaker to make her presentation. She’s on at 10:25.

The committee recessed from 10:16 a.m. to 10:26 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Linda Geggie, from the Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initia­tives Roundtable.

As you know, for your presentation you have five minutes. You’ll get a green light when you have two minutes to go. Then we’ll open it up for questions from the committee.

Over to you.

CAPITAL REGION FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
INITIATIVES ROUNDTABLE

L. Geggie: Great. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here today and to have this opportunity to speak to you.

I’m here on the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples territory today, acknowledging that, the modern-day Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

I’m here, also, representing the Good Food Network. That’s a network of over 100 food and farm education, research, health promotion organizations across the region who are all looking to promote healthy and sustainable food systems. I have some recommendations that the leadership has endorsed. We have a leadership for that network. The network spans the capital region, which is the south Island. There are many similar networks to us around the province.

The recommendation that we want to talk to today, the first one, you’ve heard about before. It’s not a new concept. It’s a game-changer for kids in B.C. That’s the funding, through the provincial budget, with a federal partnership, we hope, for the universal school meal program. You heard Sam Gambling, from the Coalition for Healthy School Food, speak to you already this morning. I’m sure you’ll hear about it from other people.

This is not a new idea. It’s something that we’ve been working on for a long time. We know that one in four kids are not getting three meals a day in British Columbia. As a short-term and long-term health promotion strategy, it’s…. All of the other G7 countries have universal school meal programs, and we think it’s about time that Canada got on board.

As you have also heard, we think that the program, for the model, needs to be regionally focused so it can be culturally appropriate. We’ve talked a little bit about rural and remote communities. I heard you talking about that this morning when I came in.

Oh, I do see that my time didn’t start, and I wanted to check on it there. That’s okay. Or is that your time? I’m not sure.

Interjection.

L. Geggie: That’s all right.

I want to talk a little about the model of the program. It’s really important that it be regionally focused so it can be adapted to the realities and assets in each of the school districts where it’s employed. So it needs to be a flexible program. It also needs to be universally accessible to remove the stigma of the program and to ensure that all kids are having access to good food.

[10:30 a.m.]

The other point about being regionally focused brings me to our second recommendation. That is about investing in regional food systems.

The Ministry of Agriculture, with its Grow B.C., Buy B.C. and Feed B.C. mandate has really been doubling down in this area, and we’ve seen great progress. There has been a lot of work over the years to try and look at how we support the typical…. The type of food growing and agriculture in British Columbia is unique. We have a lot of small, medium and diversified growers and foodmakers. So we need infrastructure that can support these businesses to thrive.

We’ve done some research here in the capital region looking at what it is that is needed to support the development of the sector and have seen a lot of growing support and demand for local food. But there are a lot of barriers to realizing a strong, locally rooted food economy. That’s access to land — it’s very expensive — but also infrastructure.

The Ministry of Agriculture has noted this and launched the B.C. Food Hub Network, which was launched a couple of years ago. We have been developing a food hub in our region. We’re one of 12 from around the province. We’ve partnered up with the Mustard Seed. Not only are we creating a HACCP-certified processing kitchen and food aggregation space that works with over, currently, 30 farmers in the region and 30 processors in the region to aggregate and redistribute local food, but we’ve also been working on the development of this kitchen.

The Food Hub Network is something that is really needed to develop, to create accessible infrastructure to grow that and maybe even grow to be able to support things like institutional purchasing for school meal programs, seniors centres. We’re seeing lots of interest for carrying local food there, but we need to be able to scale up supply in order to do that.

My third recommendation — and I’ll just throw it in at the end; I didn’t want to focus on it — is to consider long-term core support for the non-profit sector, such as the Community Food Action Initiative. It’s a really good model on Vancouver Island, and that is where it funds nine different food hubs with core support over time. What we’ve been able to do with that sustained support is maintain long-term relationships and partnerships to launch really significant programs.

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

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

B. Bailey: Thank you very much for your presentation. I wonder if you could just walk me through, a little bit, the challenge, the rub that exists between universal supply for a food program like this versus a less expensive, targeted supply. I understand the question of stigma is of importance here. If you could just flesh that out a little bit more for my thinking, I’d appreciate it.

L. Geggie: It’s a really good question. What we see happening right now is that there are a number of hodgepodge programs and fundraising and PACs, the parental advisory committees, trying to make hot lunch and school meal programs happen. A lot of those programs are only available to either the kids that have been identified as needing those programs or people that are available to pay.

What this does is that as the programs roll out in the school, it really touches different populations differently. Kids notice this. In the classroom, they notice this. Evidence shows that models where kids sit down and eat together are not only good for the nutritional supplement of that meal, for those health-related benefits, but for cohesion. Breaking bread together…. France is famous for their programs, where kids breaking bread together every day have all sorts of other social and mental health benefits besides that.

The universality of the program is really critical to ensure that every kid has access to good food and that no kid is left behind. It doesn’t mean that there still can’t be fees and user-pay, but those can be hidden behind the administrative processes so the kids don’t see who’s paying and who’s not.

[10:35 a.m.]

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. Inside of your presentation, you talk about farmer Ty James and the success story that’s there. It’s got this huge ripple effect. How many Farmer James stories are there out there?

L. Geggie: Oh my goodness. I love that you read, first of all, my submission. That’s really great. Ty is a really great example, because he’s such a strong advocate.

In our region, the majority of farms are small and diversified. This is true in many different regions of British Columbia. The challenge is the capital-intensive nature of farming. Then adding value to your produce is prohibitive for most of these small farms — to be able to scale and grow their operations into more profitable and long-term solutions.

So when you say, “How many are there?” I can tell you that, unfortunately, because of the barriers there, they’re getting less and less. We’re trying to work with the ministry to counter this by investing in these small- to medium-scale farms. But across B.C., there are the Growing Young Farmers, the Young Agrarians — a number of organizations set up to create the supports for them to become successful farmers.

It takes a lot of not only elbow grease but determination and business sense. You have to kind of be a jack of all trades and do it all as a farmer. It takes a special kind of person to do it. Ty is a really special person from our region and a great advocate, but there are lots more out there like him.

H. Yao: Thank you so much for the lovely presentation. I absolutely just love the concept of a food hub.

I’m wondering. Obviously, you also talked about food access for elementary school students. My question right now is for the non-profit sector. How do you foresee that a food hub can create an environment that can foster the non-profit sector to utilize the commercial — you talked about a HACCP kitchen — to provide services to clients, I guess, if you want to use that term, that might need a little extra support?

We also want to make sure we eliminate the barrier at the food-hub level so the non-profit sector can have less of a financial burden when they utilize the facility.

L. Geggie: The food hubs, as you’ve rightly identified, Henry, are multi-functional. The food hub here in Victoria that we’re working on, that the Victoria Community Food Hub Society and the Mustard Seed are developing, is marrying the infrastructure that’s needed for food rescue and redistribution with investing in processing infrastructure. It’s the same cold storage, processing kitchens, loading and unloading bays, and refrigerated trucks that are needed for both food redistribution as well as for supporting small- to medium-scale growers.

We’ve been able to partner with the Mustard Seed. They own a warehouse that had over 10,000 square feet that was underutilized. We were able to leverage funding through the food hubs network program and also, more recently, with Minister Simons contributing a $350,000 investment into the food hub to be able to support the food security goals of the hub.

By partnering together, the Mustard Seed and the Victoria Community Food Hub Society were able to tap into funding but also programming. We work with Farm Food Drink, which is specialized in providing business development services and marketing services to small processing and value-added producers.

The non-profit sector has always worked in partnership. We’ve always tried to leverage all of the assets that we can to bring to fruition the goals that we have, and I think we’re very efficient at it. We also have that long-term vision that is really driving the bottom line of, in our case, food security and community benefit. By being able to do that, we’re creating a container, like an ecosystem for success, not only for food rescue and redistribution and waste reduction but also for training, skills development. We have lots of youth programs running through the food hub right now.

All of those things are able to be realized in this space, because we can see the big picture. We can see the synergies between the different infrastructure pieces and how we can assemble them together — all of our assets and partners together — to come up with these pretty phenomenal results.

[10:40 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, Linda, we’re out of time. Thank you very much for your presentation and for your answers to the committee’s questions. You have added a significant depth to what is clearly a developing conversation about how we make sure that nutritional food is available in British Columbia.

I think the last couple of years have highlighted…. Be it the pandemic or floods or wildfires, I think we’ve realized that we have a supply chain issue. We have an access issue. I know that there will be other speakers this morning who will add to this debate and enrich it for us. Thank you very much.

L. Geggie: Thanks so much for your consideration. Good luck with your deliberations.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Fatima Da Silva, Nourish Cowichan Society.

Welcome.

NOURISH COWICHAN SOCIETY

F. Da Silva: Good morning, everyone. My name is Fatima Da Silva. I am the cofounder and the executive director for Nourish Cowichan Society. I’m frazzled. We had to fight a little bit on the road to get here on time.

Thank you for having me. I’m here on behalf of Nourish Cowichan and the children we support and as a member of the Coalition for Healthy School Food. Our primary goal in Nourish is to feed underprivileged children from K to 12 in the Cowichan Valley school district. Our program started in 2017 with one school. We now are in 18 schools, providing over 9,000 weekly meals to more than 800 students, completely free of cost to the school district.

We have been, in the past two years, due to the pandemic, operating on a budget that’s $600,000 a year from $200,000 previous to that. With all that, with only two paid positions, the rest of the work is done by volunteers.

I’m here to ask this committee to strongly urge the provincial government to set aside funds, a comprehensive budget, to help us fund a universal school food program. Feeding children in our schools should not be addressed as a privilege. Every child has a right to a healthy school meal. It will help enable them to do better in school — we have seen that in the schools that we work with — and also for a better, healthy life.

I have been a Canadian citizen for, now, nearly 30 years. You can see by my accent that I’m not originally from here. I was born in Mozambique, in Africa. I went to public schools that had school meal programs. We’re talking about a Third World country, in a war zone, that had school meal programs. It is really troubling to me that Canada, as a G7 country, is the only country that does not have a universal food program.

It will probably be surprising for you to hear that we at Nourish are receiving help to fund our program from people all the way from Germany and the U.S. That is troubling for me. The fact that we’re relying on a charitable organization to feed children in school should be really concerning to all of us.

A government investment in a universal food program would not just benefit the children that will directly receive it. It will benefit the community in general, especially also the families that are struggling with food insecurity. It will lessen the stigma that students face every day in school because they do not have food.

[10:45 a.m.]

A universal program will help address food equity for students. The only decent meal that they have on the day is the meal that they’re getting in school.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, the need for food security has considerably increased in our community. We all know that, yes, it is a global issue, but the cost of living is rising at an alarming pace. Most families are seeking help more now than ever. We at Nourish don’t just feed kids at school. We help families at home, also, and we are bearing witness to what’s going on in our community. We’re seeing families coming up every single week, putting their pride aside so they can feed their children.

It never gets easier for us. It is a hard job to do what we need to do every single day to feed those children and their families. We’re not asking for an immediate solution. We know there’s not going to be an immediate solution. We do understand that it’s going to take time to come up with a universal program. But our children need that help now. We need the help and the resources now to keep doing this. It’s $600,000 a year that we have to raise locally. It is a lot to ask for any small organization in a small community to be doing year after year.

We’re asking the government to start somewhere. Create multi-year, multi-million-dollar funding that will help organizations like ours to continue and other organizations to start new programs in the schools.

We’re already doing our part as a community. We started this program, and all we can do right now with the funds that we have is to feed the children at immediate risk. But with that comes discrimination in the school. We have seen that happening. The solution for this issue is so simple: feed our children. Period. This is clearly not rocket science.

I’m here not to ask for money for my organization. I’m here to ask for every single organization out there that can do this job. We have proof that we can do it. So we ask to at least start to match us, dollar per dollar, so we can continue doing our job.

J. Routledge (Chair): Fatima, can you wrap it up, please?

F. Da Silva: Yes. Food equity is not a privilege for children. We would like to see that happening this coming year. Thank you so much for your time.

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

I think our first question is coming from Harwinder, and then Megan.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Fatima. Great presentation. Coming from India, again, I’m also an immigrant. You really highlighted something that I’ve thought about multiple times.

A country like India also has school meal programs where they cook meals there and provide other nutritious meals. What we’ve seen over years…. A lot of kids were being pushed into child labour there, which was absolutely heartbreaking. This incentivized education, so parents would send, even if they didn’t intend to…. Not that they didn’t intend to; it’s just to make ends meet. So kids can have healthy meals. And then a lot of kids came out. Some became teachers and whatnot. Just that little incentive did go a long way, and they still see very positive impacts there.

Also, it enhances their focus. How can we ask…? Children can’t focus when their brain and body are deprived from the nutrients they need. There is no doubt about it. You mentioned about 9,000 meals that you serve.

F. Da Silva: A week.

H. Sandhu: I’m just curious. How big is the need? Because of this limited budget you have, are there kids you have to turn away? What are you sensing there? I’m just curious about that. And thank you for the work you’re doing.

F. Da Silva: Thank you. We, as an organization, have one policy: we never say no. The schools give us the numbers. We have strict privacy policies in place. We do not get involved in the schoolground. We send the food. The schools identify the children that need the meal. We also have a policy in place that it is an open-door policy. We do not ask questions. Whatever child comes and asks for food, they are supposed to give that food.

It is our job to find the funds. We never say no to any child, never say no to any school. We just shake it all and find ways to do it.

[10:50 a.m.]

H. Sandhu: Thank you. This is incredible.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation today. It is so important, socially and developmentally, for children to have access to food. I’ve lived across the country, have worked in other countries, and have seen various food programs. As you’ve mentioned, the disparity in Canada is significant.

I’m wondering if you will be putting in a written submission also, so that as we move further in, we’re able to reference it back.

F. Da Silva: Yes, I will.

M. Dykeman: Perfect. Thank you so much.

B. Bailey: I really want to thank you for your work and your presentation. It’s very important and really valued.

I wonder if you could just share any insights that you might have — what you’ve seen as things have become more challenging of late with the rising cost of living and with supply chain challenges. Have you seen need increase in your community of late? What might that look like?

F. Da Silva: Yes. One of the things we have seen…. We used to have not strict boundaries, but we preferred that the families went through the school. If they needed extra help, they’d ask their principal, teacher or whatever. That’s how we get the numbers, even if we needed to supply extra food to families.

On top of the program in the schools — the children we feed in the school — the most at-risk children get to take home a weekend bag to get through the weekend. On average, right now we’re doing 300 bags every single weekend. Children take those home. But what we’re seeing now are families coming not just through the school but phoning our kitchen directly, in dire need, and asking for help within the 24-hour period. They have run out of food, and they don’t know what to do.

That is becoming quite concerning for us, because we never planned for that. We have a policy of never saying no, and the times that we’ve sometimes asked questions have been heartbreaking for us. For instance, I had somebody that got my cellphone number from another parent and texted me directly. When I asked why she didn’t go through the school, the answer of this mother was: “I am too ashamed.” That is heartbreaking, because we wanted to have policies in place, but we weren’t prepared for all this happening, and we’re seeing that happening more and more.

In the last month, we had seven or eight new families that approached us to come and pick up food and take home for the children.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we’ve run out of time, Fatima, but I do want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for coming and sharing your perspective and your experience, and to thank you for the work that you do. I wrote down food equity; you’ve referred to food equity. It’s a very powerful concept, and one that should anchor what we’re doing going forward.

In conclusion, I also want to thank you and acknowledge that what you’re doing is filling a gap, but gaps should be filled temporarily, not on a permanent basis and not solely by volunteers. You’ve left us with a very strong message — that making sure that children have access to nutritional food, without stigma, is a collective responsibility. Thank you very much for that.

F. Da Silva: We hope you will take us out of business — that eventually we are the food program that will be out of business. It is the dream. Thank you so much for your time today.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll take a brief recess.

The committee recessed from 10:54 a.m. to 10:57 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Welcome, Ryan. We’re a bit early, but we’re ready for your presentation if you are.

You have five minutes to make your presentation. You’ll get a signal. The green light will come on when you have two minutes left. Then we’ll transition into questions from the committee.

B.C. MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION

R. Hunt: Thank you all so much for having me today. My name is Ryan Hunt. I’m the executive director of the B.C. Museums Association. As you may or may not know, there are more than 400 museums, galleries and cultural centres around the province, in communities large and small. We’re very happy today to be able to present some recommendations for funding that would be impactful for our sector.

My first recommendation is that the government fulfil its 2017 promise for doubling the B.C. Arts Council budget. In 2017, the NDP government promised to fulfil doubling the Arts Council budget, which had largely been frozen for about a 20-year period. The province has made a lot of headway in doubling the budget, but it’s still not quite there yet, and as communities are facing rapid inflation and escalating costs of living, it’s more important than ever that that funding come through.

Really, so many of the issues facing the arts, culture and heritage sector come down to money at the end of the day, ensuring that people can be equitably compensated for the work that they do so passionately in communities. That enables stability for organizations. That enables investments in new programs and new ways of reaching and engaging audiences. Really, that funding provides a solid foundation for growth for the entire sector.

The second recommendation would be the establishment of a dedicated fund that supports repatriation. Repatriation, the return of Indigenous cultural heritage, is such a key first step in reconciliation. Museums, university collections and private collectors around the province and the world hold items, property — ancestors, in some cases — that were illegally taken from Indigenous communities. To return those objects and ancestors helps communities to heal, in a very small way but still a meaningful way, the damage done by colonization. Since 2016, the province has put forward around $2 million in repatriation funding, but for one-off grants on inconsistent timelines.

[11:00 a.m.]

If the province were able to establish a dedicated annual fund — even if it was a relatively small amount per year, say $500,000 — that would allow Indigenous communities across the province to plan to do the work, to do the research, to build the connections and start returning their ancestors home.

In 2020, the B.C. Museums Association worked with the province of B.C. to administer $500,000 in repatriation grants. We received more than $1.1 million in requests for that $500,000. Communities can do this work. They just need the funding to make it happen. That would be a very tangible, concrete step that would further reconciliation in B.C.

Then my final recommendation is to continue prioritizing funding for COVID recovery in the sector. COVID has hit arts, culture and heritage organizations unequally. Some organizations are doing very well, because they’ve been able to tap into provincial and federal supports, whereas other organizations are on the brink of collapse. I think it’s really integral that the province keep an ear to the ground, to know which organizations in which communities need the funding the most.

As we look at a very slow recovery process from COVID, as these waves continue to linger on in communities, organizations need funding that supports proper PPE for front-line staff and access to rapid tests. Organizations that present programs to the public need to be able to pivot digitally at a moment’s notice, and I think we all need to be agile so that if the winter or fall or subsequent waves of the pandemic require a tightening of restrictions again, the organizations have the funding support and agility to do that work.

Huge thanks to the province of B.C. for prioritizing the funding that has been put out already into the economy for COVID stimulus and recovery, but we are not out of the woods yet, and there needs to be that funding there so that organizations can draw upon it when they need it the most.

Those are my three points, and I’m more than happy to chat with folks about any questions.

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

Our first question is from our Deputy Chair.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Ryan, for the presentation. Museums hold a very special place in my life. I have spent a lot of time in many museums, and I understand the benefit to community of those places.

Two questions. I’ll just give them to you at the same time. The $500,000 that you did have for repatriation — you had, as I believe you said, $1.1 million or something in applications — what happens to the balance? For those organizations that didn’t get those funds, how do they move forward, and what happens for them?

The other: just in terms of membership of the B.C. Museums Association, is there kind of an average size? Are they primarily community museums? Just to understand the membership.

R. Hunt: I’ll answer your second question first, because it’s a little easier to answer. Of the 450 members that the BCMA has, the vast majority are small museums. Two-thirds of the museums in the province are what we consider small museums. Those are museums that have budgets under $200,000 annually and that have as many as three full-time staff. However, within that category of small museums, the majority are fully volunteer-run organizations. The majority of museums are small and are outside of urban cores in B.C.

To the question about what communities do which don’t receive that funding: they wait, unfortunately. I recently had the honour of participating in a repatriation ceremony at the Royal B.C. Museum with the Heiltsuk First Nation. They had been trying to repatriate those items since 1989 from the Royal B.C. Museum, and it was primarily through the funding that was put out in 2020 that they were able to do that.

Once they had the funding in place and the political will was there with the museum — they’ve been trying since 1989 — they were able to do the actual work required in two months. That’s the kind of thing that…. There are so many things that money can’t solve in our society, but repatriation is something where if money is given, it will help address the problem in really concrete, tangible ways.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation, Ryan. Building on what you just said, I think that as the Finance Committee, we sometimes tend to look at the bottom line, the bottom number.

What you just said, to me, was: if you have more money, you’ll be able to do more things. That’s kind of one of the keys of the Finance Committee: to show that you can do more if you get more money. If you give somebody $1 million dollars more and they don’t actually produce anything, then it makes it difficult to do it.

[11:05 a.m.]

In your case, you’re saying: “If I get some more money, then I’m going to be able to do more things when it comes to repatriation.” The question is: why didn’t you ask for more money?

R. Hunt: If I can respond to that, just to be clear, when I say that funding for repatriation needs to be allocated, I’m pretty agnostic as to where that funding goes. In 2020, the BCMA received that funding. In 2016, the Royal B.C. Museum received that funding. We don’t care where the funding goes as long as First Nations communities have it to access. It could go to the First Peoples Cultural Council. It could go to a new organization entirely. It’s just really critical that that funding gets out there.

In terms of why we didn’t ask for more, the details of the 2020 repatriation grants were one of those end-of-year budget situations where the funding was available and it came up rather suddenly. I think we’ve now demonstrated, through this funding, that there is demand there. There’s capacity on the ground. That $500,000 allowed more than 50 Indigenous communities across the province to repatriate ancestral remains, do the research needed to locate items, and it had a really strong impact for a relatively small amount of money.

B. Bailey: Thanks for the presentation, Ryan. I’m just trying to understand the B.C. Arts Council funding. My understanding was we’re getting quite close to the commitment.

I think, in 2018, there was an additional $5 million, which took it to $29 million. Then in 2019, the funding was announced — $15 million over three years, which takes us to $34 million, 39 and then 44. So we’re quite close to what you’re asking for, I think. So really, it’s $4 million that you’re requesting. Is that correct?

R. Hunt: Ideally, yes. The province is quite close. In an ideal world, inflation might be taken into consideration with those adjustments. They are quite close. However, that funding was not, then, included in the last budget. So it’s important that we still keep advocating for that bump.

B. Bailey: It wasn’t…?

R. Hunt: Yeah. It wasn’t.

B. Bailey: Okay. Thank you.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): When you’re looking at capital investment in different facilities, I understand that most of the community museums are really funded by community fundraising. Are capital requests and capital a big concern for the smaller community museums? For example, Lytton — I don’t know if they’re a member, but they’re not there anymore. How do we help support and rebuild something like that?

R. Hunt: If I had a fourth recommendation, it would be for dedicated funding for emergency recovery and climate adaptation. There has been infrastructure invested into the sector from the province, the community economic infrastructure…. CERIP, administered by Heritage B.C. — hugely impactful, also hugely over subscribed.

There are many, many, especially heritage, sites that are in desperate need of infrastructure investment which are waiting for that funding to come from somewhere. As they wait, their rooves continue to degrade or their collections continue to be in unsafe environments. With climate change making the climate less predictable, I think there will be greater need than ever before for those kinds of investments.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you, Ryan. I think we are now out of time. So thank you for coming and making your presentation and fielding the questions.

I guess, by conclusion, I’d say that one of the things I find interesting to get my mind around is who would have thought 20 years ago that museums would be talking about how to give artifacts back. It’s a profound difference in perspective. Thank you for your leadership on that.

R. Hunt: Thank you for your time today.

J. Routledge (Chair): Paul Destrooper with Ballet Victoria.

You have five minutes. You’ll get a signal when you have two minutes to go. You’ll get a green light. Then we’ll ask you some questions. Over to you.

BALLET VICTORIA

P. Destrooper: First of all, good morning and thank you for an invitation, Madam Chair and select committee.

[11:10 a.m.]

I would like to acknowledge that Ballet Victoria artists and staff do work, live and play on the unceded territories of the Songhees and W̱SÁNEĆ-speaking nations.

The reason I’m here today is, again, to bring forward, I’ll say, the plight of the poor cousin of the arts, which is ballet. We’ve built a company here in Victoria, in Ballet Victoria. We took it from a very small company to an established company and a contributor to not only the B.C. cultural dance landscape but to the Canadian landscape, and we also tour internationally.

During COVID, Ballet Victoria was the only company in Canada that did not lay off any of its artists and kept all of its employees working the whole time. One of the reasons we were able to do this is that we created our own space and that we were innovative in switching to digital and partially live performances. We did this without any incident and with no one ever contracting COVID. We were very careful.

What it brought to light is that we were able to get some subsidies for rent as well as wages, and it had a huge impact on the way the artists were able to work and perform. That, to me, has always been a huge concern. I built the company, and we are sustainable. However, I cannot keep up — it doesn’t matter how hard I work — with the increased cost of living. That is mostly due to a rent increase.

What I’m looking for is for the committee to consider continuing what the CRA is essentially doing at this point with the rent subsidy program, both for arts organizations and the artists. Right now, Ballet Victoria has ten dancers. Each dancer makes around $600 a week. We have a 42-week contract, which is the longest in B.C. and is almost matching the national ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. However, our wage does not match. It’s easy for people to say, “Oh, well, just give them more money,” but I have to come up with that funding.

What I would ask is essentially a top-up that would allow these artists to survive in the market. Even with $600 or $700 a week for 42 weeks, they’re well under $30,000. The rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,500 a month. So you see that over 60 percent of their wages would go towards rent. That is a real concern, because we’re losing people. My dancers get poached by big companies all the time. I cannot keep them here. So it’s a choice that B.C. has. Either we kind of sink into the dismal abyss of culture, or we continue investing a little bit of funding.

What’s different, very much, with ballet companies and classical ballets is that we have to work en pointe. It’s not something that you can pick up, as contemporary dance can do, with artists, and do pickup performances. We need to train them every day, and you can only work 30 hours a week and not kill your artists but maintain a high level of training and a high level of performance. That limits, of course…. They can get side jobs and things like that, but that is becoming unrealistic, whereas professional athletes are subsidized by the government. I’m talking about elite athletes, of course. So I’m looking for something similar to that.

In the same way, ballet, for example, requires large spaces with high ceilings and no pillars in the middle. Those are very hard to come by and also very expensive. So the rent subsidy had a profound impact on our survival during the COVID period, which we are now emerging from, but it’s still going to be an issue as prices escalate.

That is something that I would like to bring forward for consideration: to continue a program that’s already in place and just make it a provincial matter, so that we are able to continue offering a top-professional level of performance to our artists but also to give them a living wage, essentially. Right now, essentially…. We are all in there. It’s not like it’s top-heavy. With Ballet Victoria, we are very equitable in terms of value, but — I feel terrible about this — there is nothing I can do. I feel my artists are undervalued and underpaid.

[11:15 a.m.]

The other issue, of course, is that the cost of theatres is going up. I can only generate so much revenue with our performances, so the margin for making revenue is getting smaller and smaller. It’s not getting any better, and I don’t know what…. At this point, I am asking for help so that we can continue. The prospect of not having professional ballet in the province, I think, is sad.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Paul. I will invite members of the committee to ask some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): It would be devastating to lose an organization like yours. I share the concern that as it gets more expensive to operate, space gets more difficult. All arts organizations, I think, contribute such an important piece to our culture and our coming together.

If I just want to understand what the request is or what the suggestion is in terms of how to do this, it’s those supports that were received during COVID that helped allow you to move forward. Congratulations, actually, on being able to retain your dancers and staff during that time. Something that would continue to help offset wages so that they could be paid a living wage and to subsidize the expense around actual rehearsal space and performance space now…. Is that my understanding?

P. Destrooper: That’s correct. I think it would have a profound impact. Rent is just prohibitive in this province, and I think everyone is facing that. For dance artists, it’s a very small pool, and if it’s tried with the dancers, it can be expanded to other artists, I’m sure. We are very unique in the space that’s required and the amount of training we require to be able to provide our art form. It’s a bit unique in terms of comparing it to other arts professionals.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, and I concur with my colleague about the importance of the arts. I guess I’m wondering: what’s the return coming out to the public, in what the level was prior to COVID? Where are you at now in the events that you’ve recently had?

P. Destrooper: I think that at Ballet Victoria, so far we’ve been very lucky. Our performances, when we returned to live theatre, have done extremely well. In comparison, we’re almost at the same levels we were at prior to COVID. However, our margin has shrunk dramatically.

One thing is that even with the current subsidy, it takes in consideration where you’re at with your profit margin or with your expenses and your revenue. So the top-up we apply for — not quarterly, but every two months — matches what you make. It would be something that would be fluid. If it’s not required and we’re doing very well, obviously it wouldn’t need to be there. But in times — we do four productions — our model goes a little bit like this.

That would provide the security that we can have confidence in moving forward in continuing to offer a solid 42-week contract, as opposed to a project-based contract, which is, I find, not appealing. I think it’s disrespectful to the artists.

B. Stewart: Tell me about how much…. What are the resources that you receive from either the government or local municipalities in subsidies to Ballet Victoria?

P. Destrooper: We receive CRD operating funding, $50,000 a year. We essentially give that back with theatre rental, with $120,000 a year to the CRD because they operate the theatres. So it’s a pretty good investment for them.

We get some support from gaming as well. That has actually been extremely valuable. That’s the consistent funding that we apply for. We receive foundation grants and dismal funding from the B.C. Arts Council randomly. As well, the Canada Council, actually, has been decent.

But for example, we rent a space for over $6,000 a month. If we are renting it, we have to pay provincial and city assessment taxes to the order of $8,000 a year. If you own the space, you don’t have to pay that. That $8,000 a year is a big chunk of money.

[11:20 a.m.]

To give you representation for Ballet Victoria, we spent about $10,000 prior to COVID on pointe shoes. Pointe shoes cost $120, and they last about two to three weeks. Pointe shoes now cost $170. In two years, it just jumped up. My budget went from $10,000 to $16,000 just for pointe shoes, just to keep the performers with that equipment.

So $8,000 is what I pay in taxes. Why? I mean, it would be great if we didn’t have to, but we do. All of the funding that we would receive through the province would go back into the economy automatically, because it goes into feeding, rent and other organizations and living, essentially, in the province. It’s not something that we’d take outside.

Also, for example, the cost of touring in the province has greatly increased. We would go to Chilliwack, spend two nights there, and the hotel costs would be $1,500. We just performed Cinderella there, two weeks ago, and for two nights the hotel cost us, now, $3,000. When we get funding for touring from B.C. Arts Council or from Canada Council, essentially all the funds go straight into tourism and hospitality. It’s transport and then, essentially, hotel, for example. We generate economic growth or economic sustainability with everything that we do.

Sorry. That’s a long answer.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Well, Paul, we’ve now run out of time.

Thank you so much for coming and making your presentation and fielding the questions. You’ve made a very compelling case for what you refer to as the poor cousins of the arts community. Not only have you given us some insight into the concrete economic struggles that you face as a company but what the individual artists face as highly trained members of the community who are looking for a living wage.

Thank you very much for your presentation and that insight and your commitment to the performing arts.

P. Destrooper: Thank you for your work.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Maurine Karagianis, representing Victoria Women’s Transition House Society.

Welcome, Maurine.

VICTORIA WOMEN’S
TRANSITION HOUSE SOCIETY

M. Karagianis: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for allowing me to speak today on behalf of Victoria Women’s Transition House. I sit on the board of directors, and I’m here with our executive director, Makenna Reilly, and our deputy director, Parm Kroad.

As a former member of this Legislature, I am keenly aware of the many years of ongoing struggles that Victoria Women’s Transition House and other transition house societies have experienced. The ministerial mandate letter calls for action to end gender-based violence and for government’s commitment to gender equality in budgets, policies and programs.

Last year we presented to this committee and advocated for predictable, multi-year core funding, and we are here to ask for that once again and also to urge the government to look forward, not backward, for funding models for services.

We have provided an infographic, which I hope you have before you, that captures the current crisis. Demands for women’s transition house services increased alarmingly. Government has fallen behind for over a decade to address gender-based violence. The data before you illustrates the importance of the services that we have provided over the past decade.

In 2021, the impact of COVID remained, and globally it was acknowledged that intimate partner violence increased. We provided 9,630 services to 1,937 women and 463 children, a 254 percent increase from 2011. The 24-hour crisis line alone received over 5,000 calls, an increase of 155 percent over the past decade. The PEACE program that provides counselling for children and youth saw a 219 percent increase, and we still have 57 children on a wait-list.

While B.C. Housing provides the majority of our housing and shelter funding, the Public Safety and Solicitor General gives us a patchwork of funds for those other vital services. That funding has flatlined for over ten years.

[11:25 a.m.]

A PSSG report in 2014 acknowledged contractors’ dissatisfaction with the funding formulas that resulted in not enough FTEs to run programs and not enough funding to meet the demands for service. After an outcry from service providers, that report quietly disappeared. Much to our surprise, that same funding formula has been resurrected again, a decade later, while we continue to struggle with the same crises identified years ago: not enough funds to provide desperately needed services, long wait-lists, families in crisis and, of course, no housing.

We ask the government to review PSSG funding models to ensure that they are updated, transparent and fairly applied. We believe a funding model is needed that recognizes regions — urban, rural and cities — that have vastly different service needs and that applies factors, such as the number of domestic violence reports, population changes, transportation and other essential information, to improve crucial funding decisions.

While we know that the government is keenly aware of the housing crisis, we are here to emphasize that from our perspective. People cannot leave a violent relationship if there’s no place to go. Our shelter has families on wait-lists and families in desperate need of housing. When they come to us in an emergency, they need a place to stay, crisis counselling, legal assistance, safety planning and resources to find a safe place to live in a time of extreme housing shortage. The system is breaking down.

Many shelters are being forced to keep people past the mandated 30 days because there’s nowhere to send them. The goal has always been to assist families to find affordable housing as their next step. We continue to hold to the 30-day emergency pressure, but the pressure is unbearable. We need the space for emergency intake, but with no housing after that point, women and children are in terrific danger of returning to their abuser or becoming homeless.

Today we are again asking government to consider a cohesive core funding approach that captures all of women’s transition house services. We all know that providing shelter for women and children and the supports and services they need to get their lives back on track prevents and reduces long-term impacts and trauma that result from intimate partner violence. Services are complex, with too many factors outside of the control of providers: wages and benefits, increased operational costs, utilities, rising insurance costs, the cost of living.

There is no way of incorporating those external costs into our service contract, so the level of service is hugely impacted. We applaud the core funding that was given to the emergency sexual assault centres, and we know that transition houses throughout the province need the same funding predictability.

We know that our agency — its essential management and administrative staff and resources and a set of core services provided through a single, multi-year renewable contract, including transparent accountability measures…. An explicit provision for those external-driven costs is critical. It would reduce the administrative burden on both the funder and our agency, and enable resources to be maximized. A three- to five-year contract with annual reviews against performance measures would ensure stability and flexibility. We could therefore respond to current and emerging needs.

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

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

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m jumping in first again here.

Thank you very much for that. Very interesting. What I hadn’t realized is that since 2012, those weekly service hours have remained the same. I presume that that also means, probably, a decrease in administrative funding in order to be able to run those programs.

Just so I remember this, is it MPSSG, then, that funds that bundle of the piece in the STV and the CBVS? That’s all MPSSG funding?

Are you funded just for direct service hours? When MPSSG looks at your success at the end of the year, is it focused on just those direct service hours, or do they have other qualifying things that they’re looking for now in terms of what they expect you to do? Was I clear?

M. Karagianis: There’s a lot of questions packed in there.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): There’s a lot to unpack. Sorry.

M. Karagianis: PSSG does give us the funding for all of those extra services that I listed. But it’s really a patchwork, right? Each year, we apply for it. It’s very unpredictable what we’re going to get and how much we’re going to get.

[11:30 a.m.]

Without enough funding for both the personnel — FTEs — and to fulfil those services, we end up having to either reduce services, because of these external costs or…. As you’ve heard me say, there are long wait-lists. In this particular critical environment, wait-lists are appalling. Children who have witnessed or experienced violence in their homes cannot be put on a wait-list for some time further down the road.

The same is with our emergency intake issues. People cannot wait. They cannot be told: “Go away, and come back another time.” As we know, tragedy comes out of that, and there are lots of stories that tell us of the tragic outcomes for families and children.

We are asking that PSSG look at a much more cohesive funding model, much as we have applied for in our discussions last year and this year, so that we have some predictability. We know, securely, we can run our services. We can respond to growing emergencies. During COVID, people were locked in with their abusers, and there was a dramatic increase. I think that that’s recognized right across the country.

We need to be able to respond to those kinds of emergencies. We need to be able to respond to things like the cost of insurance. Insurance has gone through the roof, as you will know from other sectors that you are involved with and from other ministry reports of other Crown corporations. All of those things come at the expense of services.

For us, there is no other place to go for those funds. We are, therefore, required to reduce or try to do more with less or just try and stretch those dollars. Certainly, we do a lot of fundraising as well. We’re looking for secure funding that allows us to provide those services and a growing need for those services.

Did that answer your question a bit, Karin?

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Maurine, thank you very much. Yeah.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the presentation. In your written report that you provided, you talked about ten women on the wait-list, I believe it was, for third-stage housing. Am I correct on that?

Interjection.

M. Dykeman: Third stage is going to market housing. Is that correct?

M. Karagianis: Or affordable. I mean, preferably affordable, long-term housing, longer-term housing than an emergency shelter.

There are three stages, as that indicates. The shelter stage is only to be 30 days. As I mentioned in my comments, many agencies are being forced to go well beyond that. Then they move into second-stage housing, which is temporary, for up to 90 days, generally. Then we’re looking at third-stage housing.

There’s a critical shortage there, and that is pervasive. I’m sure you’re hearing it in all of your communities as well.

M. Dykeman: Yes. Absolutely. Second-stage housing is also much of a shortage.

What would you see as the inventory you would need for second- and third-stage housing in order to have enough provision, understanding that it fluctuates, if it was a perfect situation?

M. Karagianis: How much housing would we need?

M. Dykeman: Yes. You mentioned there’s not enough availability of the third-stage housing. I assume this is probably an issue with second stage also.

M. Karagianis: Yeah. There is, certainly, a dire need for more second-stage housing here. I think B.C. Housing is currently looking at ways that they can address that, whether it’s purchasing hotels, whether it’s retrofitting buildings, whether it’s building new.

The third-stage housing is a bit more difficult. That really is affordable housing, and there are lots of pressures there from more than just families like ours that are seeking housing. That is another thing that B.C. Housing is addressing. They are doing a pretty decent job of it, although, certainly, trying to stay ahead of the curve, trying to acquire land and build to meet the needs of both transition houses and other service sectors that are looking for housing, I think, is quite dire.

One of the things that concerns us the most right now is this companion piece of all of the services that go with it. I think for families who are struggling to find housing…. If they’re unable to get those other services they need for their children, for themselves…. That is a big concern for us. The PSSG funding has, certainly, not kept step with the experience of B.C. Housing or providers like ourselves.

Is that helpful? It’s a bit more complicated a question on building the housing.

[11:35 a.m.]

M. Dykeman: Yes. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Ben. Then we’ll wrap it up.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Maurine. Great to see you again.

M. Karagianis: Hi, Ben.

B. Stewart: Nice to see that you’re putting so much effort into something that is needed in all communities.

What’s the increase that you touched on in your remarks, there? I’m just kind of looking back. We have new opportunities for women that work on transition housing in our area. But I’m just kind of wondering. What’s the number…? What type of year-over-year increase is your organization facing in terms of families?

You’ve given us the wait-list numbers and things like that. I just wonder: how is that tracking…? You said it increased, so can you quantify that in some sort of percentage? It just seems to me that the funding doesn’t seem to be tracking the pressure.

M. Karagianis: No. Certainly, I think when you hear the statistics of what I said over the last ten years, it’s quite shocking. Now, these numbers go up to 2021, so we’re currently looking at the numbers for 2022. I would certainly want to defer to my executive director on exact numbers of intake, but let me just say that during COVID, the pressures have been exponential on the number of families looking to leave and looking to find housing and shelter and support.

If we can’t provide it, they quite often go back to their abuser. It may take several attempts to leave before they can find the services and the housing that are necessary. Without that housing piece, women have no place to go — either to the street with their children or back to their abuser. Too often, they go back to their abuser.

So we currently have…. All of our facilities are full. There are always wait-lists, but the reality is that if someone is experiencing an emergency today, they need emergency services today, not next week, not on a wait-list. So the housing piece backs everything up into the emergency end of it.

I’m certainly happy to provide you…. We can provide you with our year-over-year numbers so that you can get a better picture of it. But Ben, you’ll know from your own community. I’m pretty sure your transition house people have met with you in every one of your communities. They’ve had exponential growth; so have we.

We, today, are really speaking for all transition houses. We want core funding. We want predictable, adequate funding for the services as well as for the shelters and the housing. So it’s a big ask, but it’s a big need.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you, Maurine.

M. Karagianis: Thanks for giving me the extra time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you for your advocacy on this really important topic and for reminding us that while what transition houses may provide is emergency health, it’s not temporary. This is not a temporary problem. It’s a problem that’s not going away any time soon, so the funding needs to reflect that. And thank you for making a link between housing and domestic violence — that for some people in our community, the lack of housing is a life-and-death issue.

Our next presenter is Loc Dao from DigiBC.

Over to you, Loc.

DIGIBC

L. Dao: Thanks for having me, and thanks for being here in person for a second year in a row.

Nice to see you again, Madam Chair. Nice to meet you, Madam Deputy Chair. Nice to see you again, Ben.

DigiBC, as you know, represents more than 250 companies that specialize in video games, animation, visual effects, virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. Our sector generates $2.3 billion in economic activity annually across British Columbia.

B.C. has grown into a globally recognized leader in creative technology thanks to the talented workforce, the education system and the provincial government’s interactive digital media tax credit. Some B.C. companies have earned incredible accolades in the past year.

[11:40 a.m.]

Relic Entertainment’s Age of Empires 4 game was named the Best Sim Strategy game at the 2021 Game Awards and the Best PC Game at the 2022 Canadian Game Awards. Industrial Light and Magic Vancouver, best known for their work on the Star Wars franchise, including The Mandalorian, opened up one of North America’s largest virtual production studios, bringing the cutting-edge technology convergence of visual effects and video game tech to B.C.

Cloudhead Games from Qualicum Beach earned the nod as the Best Indie Developer at the NYX international Game Awards for their VR game Pistol Whip: Smoke and Thunder.

One of our biggest accomplishments is keeping more than 14,000 people working in careers that deliver high-value, high-salary jobs. The skills required to work in our sector transfer easily to both other technology fields and more traditional economic sectors.

We’ve seen people from video game companies take the skills they learned and move to jobs in other sectors such as life sciences. We’ve seen over 60 new companies formed by video game veterans, not just in creative tech, such as the medical application company Ayogo, who won best start-up in Canada, and the broader tech success story Slack, which was later acquired by Salesforce.

All these companies are generating economic activity that is green and sustainable, but our workforce demand has continually outpaced supply, and you’re likely to hear from many witnesses that there are pending or existing skills shortages across the economy. We are already taking steps as an association and as a sector to connect future tech workers with the skills of tomorrow and to support projects related to the Future Ready skills plan. We are part of the micro-credentialing program recently launched by the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training and have six partnerships with post-secondary institutions.

Early signs are that micro-credentialing has been successful and is ready to be scaled up. That is why our first recommendation is to fund further micro-credentialing and similar programs so more people can gain the skills required to enter and thrive in the sector.

As a sector, we’re able to invest in training for the workers of our sector, the wider tech sector and the broader economy because of B.C.’s interactive digital media tax credit. In fact, we could see further employment growth and skills training with a modest increase in the digital tax credit.

Our second recommendation is an enhancement of the interactive digital media tax credit to 20 percent. This will help support the growth of a sector that has an important role to play in the clean economy.

The provincial government can set the stage for growth of the digital media sector and the tech sector through a wide range of education opportunities at the secondary and post-secondary levels. DigiBC’s partnership with the Ministry of Education is connecting 3,500 students in grades 5 to 7 across 110 schools with the possibilities of careers in tech through the play to learn STEM program. This could be expanded to more schools, more students, more grades and other sectors.

In addition, our soon-to-be-launched education-to-workforce pilot project, focusing on work-integrated learning in underrepresented groups, part of the sector labour market partnership with the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training, could be supported to scale it up and replicate it to other sectors if successful.

Therefore, our third recommendation is that the provincial government support these much-needed changes to learning in the province so secondary and post-secondary students are connected with the skills required to work in the broader tech sector and in strengthening and reshaping our traditional industries in the face of global competition, technological changes and climate change.

Taken together, our three recommendations have the potential to strengthen the digital media sector, grow the skills needed for our broader tech sector and support the vision of the Stronger B.C. economic plan to train people for the jobs of tomorrow, to tackle climate change and create opportunities for the people of B.C.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Loc. I’ll invite members of the committee to ask some questions.

B. Bailey: I guess I’ll start. Thanks for the presentation. Your timing was fantastic. I wonder if you can help the committee understand a bit about why micro-credentialing is important in this sector.

L. Dao: We did a benchmark study with the sector labour market partnerships program in 2021, and we discovered that most of our employers hire from private schools. Another observation was that there were skills gaps in people coming out of traditional post-secondary schools that needed to be filled.

[11:45 a.m.]

So we embarked on using that data and working with both the province and the public post-secondaries to see if we could fill that skills gap. We’ve identified a first pass at it. We’ve done a first pilot this year with the six partnerships, and we’re seeing the potential of this to scale and grow.

B. Bailey: What are the six partnerships, if you have them in mind?

L. Dao: The partnerships are with the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr University, Capilano University and BCIT. There’s one more, but I can’t announce it yet.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

Well, it looks like you’ve covered all the bases. I want to thank you for your presentation, for fielding questions and for the leadership you provide in our community and our economy, and for pointing out to us today that entertainment is not something in and of itself but that it gives back to the community and to the economy. Thank you very much.

L. Dao: Thank you for having me.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll now recess for lunch. We’ll be back at 1:05.

The committee recessed from 11:46 a.m. to 1:03 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We will continue with the public consultation with the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Our next presenter is Aaron Sutherland, Insurance Bureau of Canada.

Aaron, you have five minutes to make a presentation. You will get a green light when there’s two minutes to go, a red light at five minutes, and then we’ll ask you some questions.

INSURANCE BUREAU OF CANADA

A. Sutherland: Perfect. Thanks so much for making the time and having me today. As mentioned, I’m Aaron Sutherland. I’m with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. We’re the national association of Canada’s home and business insurers, and we represent about 90 percent of the Canadian marketplace.

Working with insurers, we’re in the business of risk management. In that vein, we have been tracking insurance claims due to severe weather going back to 1983 — things like floods, storms, wildfires. What we have seen as our climate has changed is a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of those events. Where the insurance industry used to pay out just a few hundred million dollars annually for claims associated with severe weather, in recent years we’ve been paying out over $2 billion each and every year. Of course, last year was no exception.

When we think about the absolute devastation we saw in the Interior over the summer and across a broad swath of the province in the fall from floods, we don’t look at that as a one-off event. We look at that as the latest in a very concerning trend going on right across the country and right around the world. We really believe that that needs to be a wake-up call, as it relates to how we protect our communities from these events and from a changing climate, moving forward.

[1:05 p.m.]

Our recommendations today really build on that. When we think about things like flood and wildfire, we have to improve our understanding of those risks. We have to enhance our investment in improved flood mapping and wildfire risk mapping, and then use that understanding to better inform our land use and our decisions around where and how we’re protecting communities moving forward — determining where it makes economic sense to do so and having some frank conversations around strategic retreat, where it simply doesn’t make economic sense to defend some of these places.

We also have to have a conversation around how we want to pay for the reconstruction and recovery efforts after events occur. For wildfire, it’s fairly straightforward, but for flood, that’s a bit more of an evolution in recent years.

Flood insurance for your home is a relatively new insurance product. While it’s available to about 95 percent of British Columbia homeowners, there’s about 5 percent of this province for whom flood insurance simply isn’t available or simply isn’t affordable. While that sounds like a small number, that 5 percent is actually the largest majority of people living directly in harm’s way, directly along our waterways.

We really saw this coming out of the floods of last year. We are working with public safety ministries right across the country to explore a public-private partnership, building on some European models, in terms of how we can create and make flood insurance affordable and available for all Canadians and all British Columbians moving forward, so that if you want financial protection from that risk, you can get it and don’t simply have to rely on government disaster assistance.

The second recommendation we would have for you today. As devastating and challenging as the floods and wildfires were, they will pale in comparison to what will happen if we see a catastrophic earthquake on B.C.’s west coast. It’s a relatively remote risk, but it is very real. We know the insurance industry is well equipped to help rebuild for up to a one-in-500-year event. It’s basically a 9.0 off B.C.’s coast, but there is a likelihood that a larger earthquake could occur, for which the insurance industry simply doesn’t have the financial capacity to help us recover on our own.

We would really call on the province to not just enhance our investment in measures that build our resiliency to earthquake, that educate British Columbians about it, but also continue to call on the federal government to look at a financial solution for this risk, similar to what exists in the nuclear and banking industries, and doing that before an event occurs.

The third recommendation we would have really relates to strata insurance. As you know, we’ve had some significant challenges in past years in the strata insurance marketplace, given some of the claims trends we’ve seen. While those challenges are a thing of the past, inflation and other pressures are building, and we have yet to see reforms that begin to reduce risk, that align British Columbia with best practices across this country. Looking at things that give strata corporations the tools they need to better manage their properties, we would strongly encourage British Columbia to bring those regulations forward as expediently as possible.

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

Our first question is from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the presentation. It’s nice to see you back. I have two questions. I’ll just ask them both at the same time, so that you can answer them right after.

The first one is related to the recommendation with the tax on strata insurance you just mentioned. In other provinces, is there a similar situation? It sounds like maybe not. You were talking about aligning with best practices. I was just curious if, in other provinces, there’s a concern about tax on tax.

My second question is related to the capped loss assessments for strata lot owners. I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on that. That was in your written submission.

A. Sutherland: Sure. The first recommendation you reference relates to the insurance premium tax. In British Columbia, that’s a 4 percent tax. It actually applies on top of other taxes, and it’s not shown to the consumer. We’re not able to put it on a policy, so the consumer doesn’t know it’s there, and it applies on top of the provincial sales tax. So it’s a tax on a tax that we’re not even able to show consumers.

[1:10 p.m.]

When we look at some of the affordability challenges that have existed in the strata insurance space or, frankly, with insurance generally, one recommendation that instantly comes to mind is to either reform or remove the insurance premium tax to improve the affordability of insurance and also to better incentivize people to take this kind of financial protection. Insurance really is what helps people recover. It’s more of an investment in their potential future needs, so we would suggest we either reform or remove that tax.

The second relates to loss assessments. Currently in British Columbia, there is no limit on what a strata corporation can assess on a single unit owner in terms of financial penalty. Other provinces, like Alberta, put limits on that.

It’s a bit of a dynamic between how the two insurance products interact, but when you have no limit on what you could be held liable for, your own insurance policy has to incorporate that and has to have significantly high amounts, versus a province like Alberta, where in legislation they say: “As a strata corporation, you can only apply a $50,000-assessment maximum on a unit owner.” That means that unit owner needs only to go out and purchase $50,000 in insurance for themselves. It helps with the affordability of unit owner insurance.

It’s a recommendation we’ve talked about for many years now and we would, again, suggest that the province bring forward as quickly as possible to align with other provinces.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Aaron, for the presentation. In recommendation 1, you talk about responsibility for building back.

Now, I know you were involved with Fort McMurray, the disaster there. Lytton is not apples to apples. They’re very different communities, but what is the pressure on insurers when there is not fast reaction to a rebuild and getting people back into their houses? What kind of impact is that for you?

A. Sutherland: I don’t think 1 minute 37 is going to be enough time. Look, when I think about Lytton, first and foremost, the residents living there and the challenges they are seeing…. That should be on the top of everyone’s mind. Insurance is…. They were certainly having challenges, as well, but those are secondary to the very real human impact that wildfire continues to have.

Lytton is certainly unique. When I think about the recovery to date, I get really concerned about how long it’s taking, what the future is going to look like. Not just that the longer the recovery takes, the less likely it is that people ultimately return, but also the more likely it is that people meet and breach the limits of their policies.

If you’re living in a hotel, you’ve probably only got 18 to 24 months of coverage for that, because that’s how long a rebuild should typically take. We’re approaching one year, and rebuilding isn’t even being considered right now. We’re still trying to figure out if and how we can begin to scrape the ash off properties. So I worry about people extinguishing those limits, facing further financial hardships.

We are working as closely and collaboratively with the village as we can. It is a unique situation. It’s the first time, I think, in Canadian history that we’re going to have an archeological component as part of reconstruction and recovery. It’s certainly creating challenges, but we’re ready to go, and we’re working with the village to make that happen as quickly as possible.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for being so succinct. I’m going to run you over time here.

The question about the mapping…. Sorry, I forget the term you used — the risk mapping. I guess the question is: who has the capacity to do that? What do we need to do this? Obviously we’ve seen numerous events, forest fires and stuff like that. Is there outside help that could be brought in to kind of say, in a period of time, like 24 months or something, that we could actually map out the risk and start to look at past events and start to do that?

I’m just kind of wondering. I know that government isn’t really probably up to being able to deliver on that.

A. Sutherland: When it comes to flood, APEGBC, the Association of Professional Engineers…. They have given you guys the framework and the requirements of an updated flood map standard. How do you fund it? I think we need to get realistic. A lot of these communities where the flood risk is the highest…. They don’t have the capacity to do it, so we’re going to need higher levels of government to help with that.

In terms of the cost, I think the province…. I would love to see the province increase its investment and support for communities to undertake flood mapping. I think about Mission Creek, in your neck of the woods. Significant risk there, but we really just don’t entirely know about it. I think the federal government has a role to play there as well. But I’d love to see British Columbia take a bigger leadership role in that regard.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, well, with that, then, Aaron, I’d like to thank you for coming and presenting to us. Thank you for recognizing that we’re in new territory now and that climate change, changes everything. There certainly, through your presentation, was a…. What wove its way through your presentation was an emphasis on prevention and mitigation. So thank you.

A. Sutherland: Thank you. Budget ’22 had some really great investments in that, and I would suggest that that really needs to be built on and expanded moving forward.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll take a brief recess, because our next presenter isn’t quite here yet.

The committee recessed from 1:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll reconvene the meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Our next presenter is Lucas Harris, Surfrider Foundation Canada.

You know you’ve got five minutes. We’ll give you a green light when you have two minutes left, a red light when your five minutes are up, and then we’ll ask you some questions. Over to you, Lucas.

SURFRIDER FOUNDATION CANADA

L. Harris: Thank you. As you mentioned, my name is Lucas Harris. I’m the executive director of Surfrider Foundation Canada.

I’m grateful to be speaking with you today from the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people and the Esquimalt, Songhees and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.

The Surfrider Foundation is non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to the protection and the enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves and beaches for all people through a powerful activist network. Surfrider Foundation Canada is part of the global Surfrider community of international affiliates located in countries around the world. We have chapters here in British Columbia in Tofino and Ucluelet, in Victoria and Vancouver, and two student clubs — one at the Ucluelet Secondary School and at the University of Victoria.

Surfrider focuses on several key environmental issues, including plastics reduction, ocean protection, beach access, coastal preservation and water quality. We are a key stakeholder with regards to plastic reduction, and offer a unique perspective, given our role leading grassroots, volunteer-driven pollution prevention initiatives in communities across B.C. for over ten years.

In recent years, the province of B.C. has demonstrated major leadership with regards to plastics reduction. The clean coast, clean waters initiative has been a groundbreaking program, removing hundreds of tons of marine debris from shorelines across B.C. The engagement on preventing single-use and plastic waste in B.C., currently underway, also demonstrates leadership in addressing plastic pollution. However, there are several key categories of plastic that also need to be addressed in order for the province to significantly reduce the impact of plastic pollution in the B.C. coastal marine environment.

For the purposes of today’s budget consultation, I’ve prepared three recommendations for the committee to consider.

Recommendation 1: to develop a program for commercial, fishing and aquaculture gear used in B.C. industry that will reduce gear loss, support recovery of gear from the marine environment, and enable proper processing and end-of-life management of retrieved materials. Time and time again, this material from commercial fishing and aquaculture industries have dominated the results of Surfrider beach cleanups.

The impact of this material has also been documented in the clean coast, clean waters initiative, with early results from several projects showing the volume of fishing gear vastly exceeding the amount of single-use plastics. To fully address plastic pollution in B.C., we need to look at fishing and aquaculture gear.

Recommendation 2: to develop policies and systems that improve the environmental monitoring regulation and enforcement of pre-consumer plastic production pellets, also known as nurdles. Nurdles are being discharged into B.C. waterways by plastic manufacturing facilities. Surfrider has found direct evidence that these plastic pellets are entering the marine environment from plastic production facilities in the Lower Mainland, particularly along the Fraser River.

Nurdles devastate the environment and marine life, but are often overlooked. Environmental monitoring and enforcement of this issue has been limited but needs to increase. This would help reduce plastic pellet pollution that is accumulating in rivers and on the coast and impacting marine life.

Recommendation 3: to develop policies and programs that prioritize the reduction of cigarette butt litter. Year after year, the number one type of plastic pollution found on Canadian shorelines is cigarette butts. Butts are a pervasive, long-lasting and toxic form of marine debris. They contain over thousands of chemicals, many of which are carcinogenic. When they end up in the environment, these chemicals can gradually leach into our waterways, and are absorbed by fish and other animals.

Surfrider chapters have implemented cigarette butt collection recycling programs in several B.C. communities, resulting in millions of butts being recycled. Regardless, butts continue to plague the marine environment across communities in B.C. There are several options available to increase the prevention of cigarette butt waste, including biodegradable filters, increasing fines, EPR deposit systems, etc.

[1:35 p.m.]

Single-use plastic policies that the province has introduced show leadership in addressing plastic pollution, but it’s clear that these materials are only a small component of the plastic pollution found in the B.C. marine environment. More needs to be done that prevents fishing gear waste, nurdle and cigarette butt pollution upstream to truly reduce plastic pollution in B.C.

Surfrider Canada takes pride in its collaborative and positive approach to solving environmental problems, and we look forward to continuing the strong relationship we have with the province of B.C. Together, we have the opportunity to make the coast a cleaner, safer place for all people to enjoy. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Lucas. Now I’ll ask members of the committee to ask you some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much. I just learned a whole lot from you that I was unaware of. I hadn’t realized the extent to which the cigarette butts were an issue.

This may be a silly question, but can you explain to me, again, the nurdles, the plastic pellets? What are those, and where do they come from?

L. Harris: Absolutely. In British Columbia, there are several facilities that take the products and packaging we consume and recycle them. When they do that, they break them down into these pellets that are used to manufacture new plastic materials.

That is a nurdle. They’re a millimetre to two millimetres in size. They vary in polymer type, depending on the application. They are small, and they are pervasive. They can leak into waterways through storm drains and then get into our river systems and out to the ocean.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): So in the process of doing good, in terms of the recycling…. That process itself is causing harm.

L. Harris: Absolutely.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thank you.

H. Yao: First of all, thank you so much for your presentation. That’s you again, from Surfrider.

I have a question about cigarette butts. I know we had a similar conversation earlier. You mentioned about the compostable cigarette butt, with a carcinogen, as part of a cigarette system, if it was biodegradable. That’s still further been an impact on a community or on a waterworks system, even though it’s breaking down in the waterways.

L. Harris: Absolutely. Even if it was a biodegradable cigarette butt, it would still contain all of the chemicals found within a cigarette, but the material itself wouldn’t be plastic. So it wouldn’t be that long-lasting, pervasive type of material that can take centuries to break down in a marine environment.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. I’m wondering. I’m just curious. With everything that governments are doing, with getting rid of polystyrenes and changing over to different containers and eliminating single-use plastics and those other kinds of things, is your organization seeing a difference?

L. Harris: We do see a difference with regard to single-use plastics being consumed in our communities, absolutely. I think the policies that certain municipalities have introduced have made a big difference. It’s probably helped those local governments with regard to their waste management.

The nature of marine debris in British Columbia, specifically, is much more diverse than just single-use plastics. As I mentioned earlier, the abandoned, lost and derelict fishing gear are a major form of pollution. Those results from the province of B.C.’s program, the clean coast, clean waters initiative, are really going to demonstrate how much more of an impact that material is.

I absolutely applaud the single-use policies that have been introduced, but it’s really just scratching the surface, or dealing with the tip of the plastic iceberg, if you will.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Lucas. Again, I learned, like my colleagues, about some things we didn’t know about.

What’s your recommended solution for the fishing gear and aquaculture debris or whatever is getting into the oceans? What do you see as the solution?

L. Harris: It’s a phenomenal question. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of great models out there, which we can rely on, in other jurisdictions.

To begin with, it’s going to be a collaborative approach with government and industry and First Nations, especially, given that a lot of the communities along the west coast are First Nations, and they feel the impact of this material firsthand. We need to all come to the table and think about what’s going to work, whether it’s a producer responsibility approach, like the EPR programs that we have set up here to manage all our consumer waste, or maybe there’s a different model.

It’s an opportunity. It’s a challenging one, but we can really show leadership here in B.C. in ways that other jurisdictions have not yet been able to.

[1:40 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I’m not seeing any further questions, Lucas. So thank you so much for coming and making your presentation. It was very clear. Thank you for the work that Surfrider does to protect our oceans and our beaches.

I think I would speak for the committee in saying that we appreciate that you acknowledge B.C.’s leadership in this area. But you’ve also made it very clear that that’s just a beginning and that there’s a lot more to be done. You’ve given us some pretty concrete ideas. I, myself, can envision what that would look like on beaches. Thank you for drawing that to our attention.

L. Harris: You’re welcome. Thank you very much for having me. Have a great afternoon.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll take a brief recess while we get ready for our next speaker.

The committee recessed from 1:41 to 1:45 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Jill Thompson, who is representing the Cowichan Watershed Board.

Jill, you have five minutes for your presentation. When you have two minutes left, you will get a green light that will let you know you’ve got two minutes. Then when you hit five, it’ll be a red light, and then we’ll ask you some questions. So over to you.

COWICHAN WATERSHED BOARD

J. Thompson: Thank you very much for hosting us today and for this opportunity. I just wanted to reflect that I think this is a fabulous example of democracy in action — to listen to people face to face. So thank you so much.

I am not normally a spokesperson for the Cowichan Watershed Board. My role is the project coordinator. In past years, our co-chairs have attended this committee, and we felt it was worthwhile to come even though neither of our co-chairs was available today.

The Cowichan Watershed Board is a partnership between Cowichan Tribes First Nation and the Cowichan Valley regional district. It is the Chief of the First Nation and the chair of the regional district that are our co-chairs and who I’m speaking for here today. In less than five minutes, we’re not going to get into too many details, obviously, so we plan to follow up with a letter about the three things that are our priorities for the committee.

In brief, we really want to give our wholehearted support for the proposal that you might have heard about already for a B.C. watershed security fund. That is calling for $75 million minimum per year in a sustained fund to support watershed initiatives and watershed governance.

On that, the Cowichan Watershed Board is one of the organizations in the province that has the most experience in that watershed co-governance. We’ve been doing that in that co-chaired way that I just explained for 11 years, and it really pays off.

I just wanted to say that when a project comes forward, if you already have the relationship, the working relationship on the ground between the Indigenous nation and the community and all of the government agencies that come together regularly to pursue a whole-of-watershed solution for the watershed over time…. When those project funds come forward from time to time, we’re ready to act, and we have plans that are long-term plans.

That watershed governance piece of it is about being already walking down the path together towards a sustainable solution together, Indigenous communities and settler communities side by side. That is anticipated in that fund, and I just wanted to give the Cowichan Watershed Board’s urging that we need more of that in the province. It really pays off, and we think it’s a really efficient investment of funds.

Our other two asks — I’ll just say quickly — are around the Cowichan and the Koksilah watersheds, the two watersheds that empty into the Cowichan estuary. Those are our mandate areas. Very low water supply in both places in the summer. So we have concrete projects that are underway in both.

In the Koksilah, there is the province’s first watershed sustainability plan underway. We really want to encourage you to take a whole-of-government approach to that — and a whole-of-watershed approach. That’s already in progress. But we want to see Cowichan Tribes…. The partners at the table should include representatives from all of the ministries because of the whole-of-watershed approach. Agriculture and forestry are two major industries in the watershed. We need those ministries at the table along with the new Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship.

Secondly, we’re rebuilding a weir in the Cowichan to help us save winter water supply for those low summer flows, to keep the low summer flows going. Cowichan Tribes is leading that with the Cowichan Valley regional district and Catalyst forest products.

[1:50 p.m.]

They have $24 million secured from the federal government. There is another $14 million required in order to get that $24 million. I know Cowichan Tribes has that on the table for the province — that they want to see that come forward.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you for your very succinct presentation. I’ll now invite members of the committee to ask you some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Jill. That was interesting.

I just wanted to clarify. So CWB — can I call it that? — is a partnership between the Cowichan First Nations and the Cowichan district. Is this kind of a model for B.C. in terms of how to do this work together? This kind of relationship isn’t happening anywhere else, in terms of undertaking this kind of work? Is that right?

J. Thompson: I’ll just clarify. It’s Cowichan Tribes First Nation. Cowichan Nation is a larger grouping.

I know that we are held up as the most clear and successful model to date and the longest-standing. I don’t know enough to say how other models are going. I know that in the Nicola, there was certainly an effort, and I don’t know how that’s going right now. Yeah, it was unprecedented at the time, and as far as I know, we still often get speaking engagement requests, because we are considered one of the first models of that.

M. Starchuk: If I’ve been asleep at the wheel for a year, I’ll be amazed. But you said that the Ministry of Agriculture was involved with this. Can you just enlighten me on how that ministry comes in there?

J. Thompson: Sure. Sorry, I was trying to say Ministry of Agriculture should be involved in this. Having said that, there is a weekly, biweekly or monthly call about the Koksilah drought in particular, the Koksilah watershed. Over the last four years, I believe, in two or three of those years, on the irrigation licences, the water licences to farmers in that watershed, there has been a stop-watering order because of the Fish Protection Act.

That’s where the Ministry of Agriculture comes in. They do participate in weekly informal calls between the community…. The Cowichan Watershed Board is one of the conveners of those calls along with the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations — I guess Ministry of Forests now. We convene in an informal group that meets regularly and tries to figure out how to make the impact of that less severe. The Ministry of Agriculture participates in that.

A long-term solution is going to have to include the Ministry of Agriculture, because there are major dairy farms in the Koksilah. It is really impacting them that we’re low on water. So they’ve been involved, informally, in those calls.

B. Stewart: Thank you, Jill. Water is a concern in many parts of the province. I know that on the Island, it is important. I’ve got a couple of questions.

One is: is the Water Sustainability Act — I think it came into force on March 31 or March 1, about licensing of wells and things like that, mostly for commercial use — having a positive impact on the uptake of it? I know the uptake has been variable across the province, so I want to ask that first.

J. Thompson: I don’t think we know yet. Overall, I know, the watershed board was helping to promote people licensing their wells. We think it’s important that groundwater is licensed so that we can monitor it. It’ll be impossible to fix the problem without knowing where all the water is going. But so far most of those applications have not been processed, so I don’t think we know yet how it’s going to help.

[1:55 p.m.]

B. Stewart: The second part of the question…. Especially in agriculture, there’s a pecking order, which that all is about. The bigger question about it is the management of water and the use by agricultural operations. I think there is significant improvement, having farmed all my life, that people can…. We cut our water usage by about 83 percent by just changing the type of irrigation we used and looking at how much less we could use, and I’m not certain we’re there yet — that we couldn’t reduce it more.

I do worry that there is still a lack of understanding about agricultural crops. I know that it’s not something that…. I mean, it has been studied, but I think there are a lot of unknowns that could be helpful out there. Anyway, I’m supportive of the fact that you need to manage it, and it’s a finite resource. You need your farms too, though.

J. Thompson: Absolutely, yeah. Certainly, some of the local farms have installed pivot irrigation systems and things at great expense to the farms, but the water in the Koksilah is very low in the summers, so there is still a disconnect there. Even when they do everything that they can on water conservation, they are still being prevented from irrigation. Thus the need for the Ministry of Agriculture to be involved in education and subsidizing, hopefully, the farmers, or whatever is required to help the farmers transition to the effects of climate change — which is what this is, right?

We found ways to help out the farmers who were hit by floods, which are caused by climate change. We also need to find ways to help the farmers who are hit by drought caused by climate change. That’s, I think, where the Ministry of Agriculture needs to be advocating for that.

B. Bailey: I know we’re at time, so please feel free to answer this yes or no. I just am curious about the report that you have on your website in regard to the twinning of the Koksilah River environment flow. Is that a digital twinning?

J. Thompson: Digital twinning?

B. Bailey: I’m guessing that’s no.

J. Thompson: No, it’s just two watersheds that are similar in size and facing similar pressures from climate change and land use. That was the twinning.

B. Bailey: Okay. I just couldn’t understand whether it was the digital twinning — which is used to make predictions, and so on.

J. Thompson: Ah, interesting. The answer is no. Thank you for looking at our website, though. I appreciate it.

J. Routledge (Chair): We are out of time, Jill, but thank you very much for taking the time to come and explain the work you do and explain some of the initiatives that you’ve taken and the model that you’ve established. Water is at risk. Thank you for trying to get ahead of that.

Our next presenter is Tom Hackney, B.C. Sustainable Energy Association.

B.C. SUSTAINABLE ENERGY ASSOCIATION

T. Hackney: Hello, Madam Chair and committee members. I am the policy advisor for the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association. BCSEA is a registered charity, and our members are individuals, businesses and practitioners. We support a sustainable energy transition in B.C. and around the world.

BCSEA delivers education and outreach on sustainable energy in schools and in public venues. We do a lot of intervening at the B.C. Utilities Commission on energy issues. We participate in B.C. Hydro’s and other energy utilities’ stakeholder forums on various energy issues, such as FortisBC’s energy efficiency conservation advisory group.

For Budget 2023, our three main recommendations are to consider lifeline support for access to electricity, to reallocate spending from highway capacity expansions to transit and to move toward an overall cap on fossil fuel production.

[2:00 p.m.]

BCSEA supports the Roadmap to 2030, including the increase in the carbon tax, including extending low-carbon fuel standards to marine and aviation fuels. We strongly support an absolute cap, not just intensity, on the greenhouse gas emissions from the gas used by gas utility customers.

We know that all these measures will tend to drive up the cost of energy, so we also support programs like the CleanBC initiatives to make homes and buildings more energy efficient and to switch them off fossil gas. This should be expanded to cover the entire building stock, including remote communities and First Nations.

In addition to all that good work, BCSEA recommends the government consider funding lifeline access to clean electricity to address energy poverty that causes hardship and that may discourage people from switching to clean electricity from cheaper fossil fuels.

On transportation, we support the commitments of B.C. Transit and TransLink to electrify their fleets. We support the initiatives for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, including the work of B.C. Hydro and FortisBC to build a DC fast-charging network. We support the government’s heavy-duty vehicle efficiency program. As an aside, we suggest the hydrogen fuel incentives should be directed toward the heavy freight vehicles rather than to light-duty vehicles, where electrification is more appropriate.

Our recommendation on transportation is to reallocate spending from highway capacity expansions to low-carbon transit. More traffic lanes induce more traffic, contrary to the roadmap’s commitments to reduce travel distances and to reduce energy intensity of goods movement. The six-laning of Highway 1 between Langley and Abbotsford is going in the wrong direction.

On industry and the economy, BCSEA supports the CleanBC for industry program to electrify industries and minimize methane leakage. We support strategic planning for a green economy and job skills training.

We must also reduce B.C.’s heavy reliance on fossil fuel exports to drive our economy, as we and the rest of the world work to decarbonize. Therefore, BCSEA recommends the government plan for an overall cap on the production of fossil fuels that would decline over time.

Finally, BCSEA supports the continued funding for the climate preparedness and adaptation strategy.

Those are my remarks. I’m ready to answer questions.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Tom. I’ll now invite the committee to ask you some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Tom, for the presentation. I learn so much when I am in this room.

With respect to the initiatives to really push us away from fossil fuels, feedback that I get, even on the tax for heat pumps now, when you are in a northern community…. You used the term “energy poverty.” I think that there needs to be consideration that some of these polices are not…. It’s not the same throughout the province.

Are there other initiatives that you’d like to see government put forward that are actually going to support those northern communities to be able to transition more fairly, I guess I would say — more equitably?

T. Hackney: Yes. On the heat pump problem, I agree that heat pumps are more challenged in northern communities. So they may not always work as well. Insulating one’s home much better and one’s businesses much better works in all climates.

[2:05 p.m.]

Engineering the energy retrofit programs to support building envelope improvements is part of that. I hope that answers….

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

T. Hackney: I agree that it’s a big, difficult, complex problem that is going to have varying solutions in different places.

B. Bailey: I was just wondering — and it might be a little bit of an aside from your presentation, but I’m not hearing as much about solar. Why is that? What is happening with the solar industry? Is it fading in its interest in British Columbia? What is happening with solar?

T. Hackney: I don’t believe solar energy is fading. I believe the costs are continuing to come down, so the economics are continuing to improve.

B.C. Hydro and FortisBC are putting a good deal of good energy into planning how solar energy can be integrated into their system. The latest I heard is that — and it may surprise many solar enthusiasts — the utilities believe it’s actually more expensive to do solar power then to continue with their conventional development of wind power.

I just say: let’s keep trying. People are continuing to be very interested in it. So no, I don’t think it will fade at all.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much for your presentation, Tom. The lifeline support for access to electricity, I’m assuming what that means is that communities that do not have access to B.C. Hydro or Fortis are deficient. They’re running things like diesel generators. Is that what you’re directing that comment to?

T. Hackney: No, but what you described is what I would describe as remote communities needing access to clean electricity. But when I say lifeline rate, I’m talking about just regular people who the energy prices are going up for, and they’re finding it harder and harder to pay to heat their homes and to buy their groceries at the same time.

I know the government has struck a committee to look at the issue of energy poverty and whether B.C. Hydro’s customer crisis fund should be continued or changed around to make it a broader program. That’s what I mean to advocate for.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, Tom, it looks like we’re just about out of time, and I see no other questions. I want to thank you for taking the time to come and make your presentation and for your leadership on sustainable energy.

I just, finally, want to say that your phrase “energy poverty” really resonates. I think that really says a lot about what some people are struggling with and points in a direction of trying to address that. So thank you for that. You’ve got us thinking.

T. Hackney: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the committee for hearing me.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’re a bit ahead of time, but if Sarah is ready, then why don’t you come and join us. This is Sarah Beihse, who is representing the Victoria Hospice.

VICTORIA HOSPICE

S. Beihse: Thank you very much for your time. Good afternoon. My name is Sarah Beihse, and I am the manager of volunteer services and community engagement with Victoria Hospice. I am delighted to be here on behalf of my organization, who is a leader in hospice and palliative care for more than 40 years and an organization who is nationally and internationally recognized for both our expertise in care standards as well as community programming, as well as education and research.

Here on Vancouver Island, you may not know that 75 percent of people express a wish to die at home, yet 45 percent of those individuals still die in hospital environments. The statistics across British Columbia are very similar.

[2:10 p.m.]

There are currently extraordinary demands in emergency departments, acute care beds and in long-term-care facilities across our province. As the so-called silver tsunami arrives, there will simply not be enough resources in our current health care structure to support the increased aging and dying population.

But there is a solution: family caregivers. However, family caregivers are only a solution if they are supported and connected to resources when they are needed at the right time and in the right location. Drawing from our experience and expertise, and in consultation with our patients, families and many community stakeholders, Victoria Hospice has spent the last two years carefully developing a comprehensive caregiver support program delivered by volunteers, called compass.

This is specially designed to support family caregivers as they care for their person or the patient in the home. Victoria Hospice recognizes that a family caregiver is defined by the patient, by their choosing, by relation or by choice.

The compass program has been designed to empower, educate and support caregivers with volunteers as a consistent point of contact as they support the person in the home through the end of their life, if that is their wish.

Compass has four primary areas of support: first, providing emotional support to validate, reassure and encourage caregivers; second, to promote caregiver awareness of their own personal well-being and the importance of self care; three, promoting awareness of the circle of care and supporting the caregiver to navigate through the palliative care and health care system; and four, promote awareness of early signs of caregiver distress and burnout and ultimately facilitate the mobilization of supports that are needed for the caregiver.

There are many amazing caregiving programs in our communities, and for those who manage chronic or acute illnesses, those are available to them. However, we know that the last six months of somebody’s life can be very different and can be much more intense for caregivers, with increased access to emergency and acute care services. It can be very complicated for families who experience their own anticipatory distress. The disease progression can change quite rapidly.

We see this as a program that has outcomes that will include a caregiver feeling more supported through the trajectory of their caregiving experience; that caregivers have facilitated access to the information and services they need at the appropriate time; that caregivers will experience less major crises and those that impact their ability to provide home care; and caregivers will have a greater awareness of what they need through their caregiving experience.

The compass program is really designed to amplify and augment existing community resources, not compete. This is an opportunity to build caregiver capacity and community resiliency, both here in the greater Victoria area and ultimately across the province.

At this time, we are asking for the committee to support this project over three years. In 2023-2024, we’re asking for $115,000 to coordinate the provincial scale-up and train 20 community hospices across B.C. Victoria Hospice has partnered with the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association to be able to scale this program across the province.

I thank you for your consideration of this information and for the recommendation and for your time this afternoon. Any questions?

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

Yes, we do have questions, starting with Harwinder and then Karin.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much, Sarah, for the work you do and for this great presentation. I just wonder how closely your hospice society from Victoria works with community nursing. I know that in our area, we work very closely, because in community nursing, as well, in some of the offices — or perhaps all; I can’t speak to the other health authorities — we have end of life under the portfolios that community nurses have. They provide a lot of support to families, teaching how to inject painkillers and whatnot and even respite for the caregivers.

I wonder how closely you work and if you see any gaps that can be addressed so that both of you can complement each other.

S. Beihse: Absolutely. The Victoria Hospice works very closely with community health nursing here locally. We do so as a comprehensive part of the end-of-life care team. Victoria Hospice has a fantastic working relationship with the palliative end-of-life care program within Island Health.

[2:15 p.m.]

We also work really closely with the community health nursing with our palliative response team. We have a community coordinator who will liaise when it’s most appropriate for a palliative response team to interject versus community health nursing. We work really collaboratively and really consistently.

The community health teams, as well as our palliative response teams, were both consulted in the development of this program, specifically around identifying those gaps where the care by the family seems most appropriate but there may be gaps in knowledge, or there may be areas where they’re starting to see crisis or breakdown. So it’s an opportunity to intervene or come alongside a caregiver’s journey at the most appropriate time.

H. Sandhu: A quick follow-up comment, Chair? Thank you so much.

I was just curious about what gaps you see existing. The other component that comes very repeatedly is that we hear about grief counselling — lack of that, once a person passes away. I just want to share that the amount of work hospice societies do…. I was very naïve when I worked in health care previously. When I went to community — 15 years in acute care, and then I went to community — I did not know how many people, between community nursing and hospice, they keep away from the hospital and in a perfect setting where people want to be.

The other thing I realized is that community nurses felt that we couldn’t do the work we do and vice versa. It’s really important. I’m just curious about the gaps that you see. Are they increased gaps during COVID? If you can share some….

S. Beihse: COVID in particular has been a real challenge. Post-death programming, our bereavement programming, our grief programs, in particular — it’s been really hard to be able to liaise into those things. This is, again, an opportunity where we can warm-transition folks. We’ve been able to support them through their caregiving journey, and then there’s a relational connection right to bereavement services. Again, that’s really important. There have been a lot of gaps.

There’s a lot of research going on right now about the impact of COVID and the crisis around bereavement support. It, in many cases, wasn’t an expected death for people. It wasn’t a known illness that there were expectations around, so it’s been a little bit complicated. We’re really excited to be exploring that as research in our industry currently.

I just want to note that you’re absolutely right. There are 72 hospices across B.C. We support 10,000 patients a month. It’s an incredible workload.

H. Sandhu: Thank you so much.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Sarah, for that presentation. Just for my clarification, the compass program — is it in pilot phase right now? You’re not looking for funding for piloting this project? You’re ready to take the next step?

S. Beihse: Correct.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Is this a model that is seen in some other jurisdiction that you’re looking to as a best practice somewhere?

S. Beihse: You are correct that we are in pilot phase right now. What we are looking for will be for the scaling across the province, correct.

And not to my knowledge, not on this scale. Like I say, there are many caregiver support programs. There are some end-of-life support programs, but not as comprehensive and not scaled identically throughout the province. The closest model that we would see would be the Nav-CARE program, which I believe has received funding before, which is patient-centric and for a much longer relational experience.

H. Yao: Thank you so much for an opportunity to ask a question. Bear with me because this question is a bit difficult, but I would love to hear your feedback.

I know that one of the concerns, obviously, when it comes to family care, individuals, maybe end of life or people facing difficult health issues…. When we come to cross-culture, especially a culture that has more of a collective ideology, there seems to be, sometimes, almost some kind of emotional hijack that requires family members to have to look after other family members, but there’s almost a personal choice or struggle.

I would love to hear, through your program, what kind of steps and protocol would you put in there to make sure that we give individuals who are being asked to look after family members a chance to secretly and privately express their preference, yes or no, in case they are saying yes out of obligation? That’s a personal decision.

[2:20 p.m.]

S. Beihse: Built into the program, there are a number of check-ins with both the volunteer and the caregiver, but there is also a coordinator role where the coordinator is checking in privately with the caregiver.

At that point of connection, there’s a tool called the CSNAT. It’s a tool to assess a caregiver’s readiness or appropriateness and where they’re at. They’re able to complete that CSNAT tool as they go through the relationship of the compass program.

That gives us a measurable tool to be able to check in but also to be able to identify where there may be some areas where there is emotional hijacking, for example, or where somebody’s not feeling as comfortable to speak freely in front of their person or another family member — that we can do some follow-up and explore and dig deeper with.

It is something that has been considered and something that is seen fairly commonly in our work.

B. Bailey: Thank you, Sarah. I want to ask a question about the funding and the model. It might sound a bit barbed. Please don’t interpret it in that way. I actually am really a big supporter of the work that you’re doing, and I’ve experienced it in my life, when my dad was dying. I hold hospice workers and volunteers in very high regard.

Having said that, I do just want to understand the model a little bit more, if I could. It’s $940,000 but primarily a volunteer-based program. If you can help me just fill that gap, I’d appreciate it.

S. Beihse: Sure. The $940,000 over the three years…. A good chunk of that would be spent on that coordinator role, as it is scaled across the province. That role will be held within the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association. There will be training costs, facilitation costs, education and promotional costs. That’s where most of those funds are directed, around those primary areas.

The actual delivery of it would be very low-cost in the sense that it’s volunteer, but volunteers are not free. I say that as a manager of volunteer services. There are operating costs to running volunteer programs as well, so those are built in. That is where that $940,000 comes from.

You’ll notice the first year is $115,000, so it’s a much smaller chunk as we work through the first year, following the pilot.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think we’re at our end of time now.

With that, Sarah, I want to thank you for coming and giving your presentation and also giving us some insight and reassurance about what is, for those at end of life but those helping them with end of life, such a critical, profound period. As you say, it’s very stressful, and you’re working hard to try to address that, but it’s also a time when people feel the stress of wanting to be left with positive memories, and you play a big role in that. Thank you very much.

Our agenda says that we have a recess right now, but our next presenter is here a bit early, so why don’t we invite Anna Hammond, with the Victoria Community Health Cooperative, to make a presentation. Then we’ll take a break.

VICTORIA COMMUNITY
HEALTH COOPERATIVE

V. Hammond: Thank you very much. First, I would like you to read my T-shirt. It really does state what I feel about efficient and enjoyable ways to serve our community. I did bring, also, somewhat of an update on the notes that you already have. I’d be happy if you’d take those later.

I’m speaking as the current chair of the Victoria Health Co-op, former chair of health co-ops Canada and still very much involved with health co-ops around the world. I do appreciate the opportunity, Madam Chair and committee members, to let me come and speak with you.

Three topics: adapt the scope of practice of health and medical personnel; change the delivery model and focus so that instead of waiting until people get sick and need urgent care, let’s keep them healthy in the first place; and encourage the use of multi-stakeholder co-ops for long-term care, whether that’s residential care or in people’s homes.

Scope of practice. Personnel, whether they’re licensed practical nurses or registered nurses or nurse practitioners, all want and need to keep learning constantly. To do this, they need to either reduce their hours of work, which means a pay cut, or increase their workload, which is very challenging.

[2:25 p.m.]

It would be helpful to have a specific way of upgrading that would use a set of identified courses and then, of course, some optionals, and they should be paid to take those courses. At the moment, they lose their salary, or part of it, and they pay for the courses. This just is not good. I’m sure you know that we do have a shortage of health care workers, and we see this as one way to help solve that.

Also, midwives. A young mother who has a seven-week-old baby who gets sick then has to go and find a physician. Really? We suggest that the time period during which midwife services are available should be increased to at least one year. I am speaking as a great-grandmother of a seven-week-old baby, so this is very personal. My granddaughter is an on-sabbatical operating room nurse, so she instructs me about what to say.

The delivery model. We really feel that the focus on medical treatment of problems should be put aside, and we should focus on health. If we look at what the World Health Organization…. I’m sure you recognize the nice logo. If we look at what they say, it’s that health is a state of complete physical, mental, social well-being. It’s not about the absence of disease or infirmity. It’s a human right. It’s a positive aspiration. Let’s really focus on that.

We feel that this focus should be on health. We think that this would be much better achieved by focusing on community health centres, co-op health centres, rather than on urgent care centres. We feel that there should be global funding so that the group, the whole health centre, can decide how those funds should be allocated. At the moment, it’s a bit of a power struggle. I’m sure that you know that.

My last comment is about long-term care. You have in front of you a little bit about multi-stakeholder co-ops, I think. This way, we can have the residents or their families as represented as one category of stakeholder. We can have the food service — please, that should be such a high priority — the cleaners, the activity leaders — all of these things that make up the living environment for people either in residential care or at home. The B.C. Co-op Association or me or the B.C. association of community and co-op health centres would love to help anyone set up this type of organization.

I’ll stop.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay, thank you.

I’ll invite questions.

M. Dykeman: I just want to thank you for your enthusiastic presentation. I know I’ve seen you present before, and the passion and the knowledge that you bring is always appreciated by me and, I’m sure, my colleagues.

Congratulations on being a new great-grandmother. Is this great-grandmother No. 1?

V. Hammond: This is my third great-grandchild.

M. Dykeman: Well, I can say you look so young. Congratulations to you and your family.

I’ve looked at the materials. I’m looking forward to your new materials. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your presentation.

V. Hammond: Can I add one comment? I had the opportunity on Monday to speak to 30 Brazilian doctors who are presidents of co-ops. There are 190,000 physicians in their co-ops. Of course, they didn’t have a number for the nurses, but we have so much to learn from them. It’s remarkable.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

V. Hammond: I’ve silenced you all.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, I’m surprised.

With that, Anna, I’ll thank you very much for coming and presenting this perspective on the health care system. We are at a pivotal point, and I think we will, in our deliberations, have lots of conversations about what you’ve highlighted, warnings you’ve shared and a vision of what our health care system could be, going forward.

I won’t say my position on it, but let me just say I’m a Burnaby MLA. So thank you.

V. Hammond: Okay. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, we will recess until 2:50.

The committee recessed from 2:30 p.m. to 2:49 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): It looks like we’re ready to reconvene. If we’re ready, I’d like to welcome Sarah Erdelyi, who is representing medical radiation technologists.

Sarah, you have five minutes. We’ll give you a signal of a green light when you have two minutes left, and a red light when you hit your five minutes.

[2:50 p.m.]

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF
MEDICAL RADIATION TECHNOLOGISTS,
B.C. DIVISION

S. Erdelyi: Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to thank the committee for providing me with this opportunity to speak on behalf of the CAMRT-BC and the thousands of medical radiation technologists in the province.

Medical radiation technologists are vital to the health care system. Patients from every demographic rely on MRTs, who perform their medical imaging exams. Statistically, chances are that most of you in this room have probably undergone a procedure performed by an MRT. If not you personally, then someone else important to you has gone for a medical imaging exam that held vital information that informed the next steps in your or their health care journey.

It’s estimated that nearly one in every three Canadians undergo medical imaging every six months, where MRTs are responsible for producing high-quality diagnostic information, which is critical for decision-making and patient care. MRTs practising in radiation therapy play an indispensable role in cancer care, with 50 percent of all cancer patients receiving radiation treatment each year.

I know you’ve all heard about the situation in health care right now. Health care workers are struggling with heavy workloads. They’re burnt out. Many are considering leaving the profession. In British Columbia, the number of medical imaging technologists reporting signs of burnout has doubled between 2018 and 2021, with nearly three-quarters, 72 percent, of the workforce now toiling through emotional exhaustion.

Part of what has contributed to this is the continuous growth and demand for these procedures. This demand has been met by adding more equipment, such as MRI and CT scanners, and also by increasing operating hours. This has put more pressure on the MRTs that are needed to staff these machines.

I also cannot speak about burnout in the health care workforce without mentioning COVID-19. Working on the front lines of the pandemic 24-7 has pushed substantial numbers of MRTs to the breaking point. Staff are experiencing fatigue and increased stress levels. This is a result of working more overtime; working short-staffed more often, due to increased sick time; and dealing with the volumes of patients that need imaging, while trying to maintain a high level of patient care.

Unfortunately, MRTs and many other front-line health care professionals do not have the supports they need to address the issues that accompany sustained high stress and burnout. What I’m here to talk about today is that we have to do something about the retention and the recruitment of MRTs to improve their working conditions, which are causing burnout. We also need to increase support for MRTs who are currently struggling.

We know that reducing wait times for surgery and diagnostic imaging continues to be a priority for the province. We know you’re working on a cancer care plan, which includes the opening of new cancer centres in the future. We’re very supportive of government efforts in these areas, and we want to make sure the growth in these services takes into consideration the MRT profession, so that medical imaging is not a bottleneck that’s preventing British Columbians from receiving quality and timely care.

Achieving the greatest value for the health care system depends on how we manage our human resources. That includes how we plan for the next generation of MRTs. That’s why we’re recommending investments in retention, recruitment and improved mental health for B.C.’s MRTs and that we meet the health care needs of B.C. in a way that is sustainable.

We believe that strategies that have been successfully tried with other professions, such as nursing, could help improve the situation for MRTs, especially at a time when many are considering leaving the profession or, possibly, the province. B.C.’s MRTs are experiencing similar struggles, like I mentioned, in terms of workload and staffing shortages, and they need the same sorts of solutions. We’ve noticed that the government is making incremental improvements to support health care workers, and we ask that you please make sure to consider MRTs and that they’re included in these investments as well.

Of course, I can’t do justice to the issue in only five minutes, but I’d be happy to provide more information. On behalf of CAMRT-BC, we thank you for considering the perspective of MRTs, who are committed to improving health care services in B.C.

I welcome any questions from the committee.

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

I’ll now invite the committee to ask questions.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Sarah. I appreciate that. I wanted to ask a couple of questions.

What type of training does an MRT technician have to take? Tell me what it takes, from deciding I want to do that job to becoming qualified.

Then I want to know, secondly, the education programs…. You talk about observing low applicant rates. I’m wondering what’s causing that.

[2:55 p.m.]

S. Erdelyi: In terms of education in B.C., most medical radiation technologist programs are two-year diploma programs. The one exception to that is radiation therapy, which is a three-year bachelor’s at BCIT. In some other disciplines within imaging, you can subspecialize. After completing your two-year diploma, you might take some continuing education, which will increase that time to another year, possibly, or longer.

The main disciplines that are the two-year diploma program we have right now in B.C. are medical radiography and nuclear medicine. Soon there will be an MRI diploma program added. Right now that’s currently an advanced certificate that an existing MRT discipline would complete as a post-diploma program.

In terms of the educational programs where we’re seeing lower applicant numbers, that’s especially happening, I think, as a result of the pandemic. Medical radiography at BCIT, for example, has maybe only a third of the cohort that they’re hoping to have for their January intake. I know that in the North, in some years, they’re having trouble filling their seats as well.

In contrasting this to something like sonography, they’re seeing really high applicant rates. The question for us is: why is it so much lower for MRT? We think part of that is awareness and part of that is also maybe just comparisons in what those other professions have to offer — their working conditions or promotion.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you to the profession. I just went through breast cancer myself, and everyone that I met in all the imaging and everything was just so wonderful and supportive. I understand and appreciate the value of your profession.

Do you know what the shortage of staffing is right now of MRTs? How many more people do we need to train in British Columbia? I don’t know if you have a number for that or an idea of that.

S. Erdelyi: I don’t have a specific number for B.C. on me at the moment, but I do know that the CAMRT at a national level has been doing health human resource surveys.

Looking at specific disciplines like MRI or CT, those who have responded are indicating somewhere around 10 to 11 percent vacancy rates. I know that that will vary depending on the region — or the health authority in B.C., specifically — and, I think, also the MRT discipline itself. We might see that being a little bit higher for certain areas.

B. Bailey: Thank you for your presentation, Sarah. My cousin Lana Bailey here in Victoria is an MRT, and I hear a lot about the pressures that they’re under. It certainly is something I’m aware of, and it’s significant.

We’ve moved to using some of the imaging equipment on a 24-7 schedule — which, of course, makes a lot of sense in being able to deal with backlog, and so on. I’m curious about what the implications were for your profession when that decision was made. Is it something that has led to some of the challenges you’re describing, or is it generally well received? How have you been able to structure that with people who now have to do imaging at 2 a.m., for example?

S. Erdelyi: I think when you go into this profession, you understand, like many other health care workers, that health care is a 24-7 field. We do cover emergency or on-call, so I think having shifts and having the opportunities that it creates in full-time jobs is welcome among MRTs.

I know a lot of graduates enter the workforce on a casual basis. So I think having an actual, predictable schedule and routine is something that’s a positive impact of having more service hours. Of course, there’s a certain point where if there aren’t enough MRTs to fill those shifts, there’s a lot of added pressure there, where juggling around with the schedule can be stressful as well.

J. Routledge (Chair): I think we have time for one more question.

H. Sandhu: Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate and deeply value the work that you MRTs do.

A quick question: do we know the number of FTEs that are vacant at the moment? Or don’t we know? Yeah, that reflects the working of extended hours, the exhaustion, and COVID definitely had a lot to do as well. Then again, I know that surgeries were first postponed, and then we were trying to get them done at speed. With people that were waiting, how much did that impact the overall physical and mental well-being of MRTs?

S. Erdelyi: I don’t have the number of FTEs. That would be more of a health authority question.

[3:00 p.m.]

I think it’s a little bit more challenging to predict, just because some MRTs are working in the private sector as well. Just with added overtime, things like that, depending on whether that’s temporary — and casuals are filling those shifts — or if those are permanent lines, that could be a factor there in the data. I think some of the measures to expand operating hours have impacted that.

Hopefully, that answers your question.

H. Sandhu: I was just curious. We know that COVID had put strain, but there is more to that now that we’re speeding up surgeries and stuff. Cancer rates are also, unfortunately, going up — or other diagnostic needs.

S. Erdelyi: Definitely. I think some of the strain is just even in the work flow and having to adapt with infection control protocols and doing things differently. It’s just pulled a lot of resources in different directions, and some MRTs have to be redeployed to different areas to fill staffing needs. Those are just some of the impacts.

H. Sandhu: Thank you for coming today.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Sarah. With that, we can wrap up your presentation.

I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for shining a spotlight on what may not be as apparent to users of the medical system, as you’ve made clear to us. Given modern medical technology, doctors and nurses can’t do their job unless you’re there doing your job. As we try to speed up and make the system more efficient, reduced wait times have an impact on the people that you represent. So thank you for drawing that to our attention, and we will remember that.

Our next presenter is Janine Theobald, GVCEH.

Maybe the first thing you can do is tell us what that stands for.

GREATER VICTORIA
COALITION TO END HOMELESSNESS

J. Theobald: It stands for the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness.

Good afternoon, members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. Thank you for this opportunity to present to the 2023 annual budget consultation.

We’re here on the homelands of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples.

Each year 20,000 women in British Columbia experience relationship violence. Up to 90 percent of women who’ve been in a violent relationship have received at least one brain injury at their partner’s hand. In March of 2021, it was recorded that there were seven women in British Columbia killed due to femicide in seven weeks.

The Greater Victoria and the Aboriginal coalitions to end homelessness have completed a five-phase national housing strategy, a CMHC-funded solutions lab called surfacing our strengths: co-creating strategic solutions with women+ at risk of violence and homelessness. Lab participants included 43 organizations across 11 sectors and a team of experiential peer researchers with lived experiences of gender-based violence and homelessness.

Today I bring you three recommendations that will enable much-needed sector capacity building and sustainability. Recommendation 1: provide outcomes-based, multi-year funding for agencies working on solutions for women+ at risk of violence and homelessness. Recommendation 2: provide three-year funding for peer navigator positions. Recommendation 3: provide funding to resource an experiential women+ council.

These recommendations complement and support this government’s implementation of a multi-year, cross-sector gender-based violence action plan. We applaud this government’s recognition of the intersectionality of these experiences and creation of cross-government mandate commitments.

Community participants were dedicated and passionate about the lab. However, many were unable to commit to the full process and potential of the project, since this, like many other projects, is done off the side of already piled-high desks. Consistently seeking project funding while delivering services in an overextended system makes doing this work in a thoughtful, collaborative way almost impossible, despite the deep knowing that cross-agency and sector collaboration is key to effective systems change. Silos are created not by gatekeeping but due to staff needing to focus on immediate needs and maintaining project funding.

[3:05 p.m.]

Our research found that women+ who use substances and who are currently experiencing homelessness are under-resourced in our community. Many of these women are living with acquired brain injuries, and a disproportionate number identify as Indigenous. We recommend outcomes-based, multi-year funding for agencies working on solutions for women+ at risk of violence and homelessness.

A key leverage point to move the dial on this challenge is a need for structures and support for system navigation. Our systems-mapping process identified bottlenecks and gaps in the system and also noted there’s not a clear pathway to the resources that are currently available. A system operations and safety peer navigator prototype was developed, tested and gained traction as a viable and effective solution for system access and navigation.

These positions would also act as key informants in system improvement and transformation. This prototype was identified by peer researchers and sector partners as an immediate and effective intervention. We recommend three-year funding for peer navigator positions, specific to supporting women+ at risk of violence and homelessness.

The lab focused on honouring and centring the voices of women+ with lived and living experiences of homelessness and violence to listen, to learn, to co-develop and implement new solutions that address health, well-being and housing challenges for this population. The process itself became a lab prototype, a women’s+ coalition, or council, if you will — women+ who are supported through their respective journeys through peer support and peer navigation and are included in solution, program and housing development as equal partners.

They are looked to by operators, funders, government and service providers for input and advice. We will know we have achieved our collective goals when these women+, the wisdom holders, state they feel safe and at home.

We recommend ongoing funding to resource an experiential women’s+ council. If we can come together, build capacity and support, and be resourced to work from the centre of our desks, rather than the sides, we will no longer have to ask: “Why are women+ at risk of violence, unable to find safe, affordable housing and supports in greater Victoria?”

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

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

I’ll now invite committee members to ask questions.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. You had spoken about funding for peer navigator positions. What would that specific role be? I’m making an assumption on what it is — kind of a concierge service for those people that are in that position at that time.

J. Theobald: Thank you for the question. I think that’s a great way of framing it. It’s, in essence, a multi-agency position, where, of course, there would be one identified employer. But in the prototype that we developed and tested, this person would be at the various locations where support services for these individuals are being provided, as well as a resource in the sector to be called upon to support.

When we use the word “peer,” we’re also acknowledging that many of these folks will have a lived experience of navigating the sector and would be able to walk with people on their journey, provide those supports and, again, provide the feedback around where the blockages and gaps are in the sector as they’re approaching accessing services.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

B. Stewart: The name doesn’t reflect the women+ that you’ve referred to several times. It does. It encompasses it, but having been the Housing critic for a period of time, I know that there are lots of issues. I’ve been to many of the different sites. Attempts to find a solution, which…. I’m not certain that they’ve all been very successful.

The study that CMHC helped…. Can you just maybe go back for a second and give me a little bit…? What do they tell you? Out of the recommendations that I don’t have written down in front me…. I just want to know what the recommendations from that work was.

J. Theobald: The solutions lab was a five-phased development process, including partners from across the sector and leadership team from the Inter-Cultural Association, the capital regional district, Victoria Native Friendship Centre, Peers Victoria Resources Society and other community service providers. The outcome of the project was to develop some prototype ideas as solutions, and we were able to do that. It was a bit of a challenge, as we wrote this proposal in advance of the COVID pandemic.

[3:10 p.m.]

A lot of it was around engagement. We did mange to do a lot of engagement online — a little bit in person. We came through looking at different leverage points that were challenges that we’re experiencing and developed five different prototypes as a result of the lab. So we found the challenges were the gaps and bottlenecks and looked at silos and inability to network across both the homelessness-serving sector as well as the temporary and transitional housing sector to meet the needs of this population, particularly women who are experiencing both violence and homelessness.

B. Stewart: Is that online — that report?

J. Theobald: Yes. How do I send that to you? To the email that I…?

B. Stewart: Just to the committee. Thanks very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Do we have any other questions?

Well, Janine, I think your presentation was pretty straightforward. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for those that you represent that do important work.

I think you’ve reminded us that gender-based violence continues to be a central issue in our society, as does homelessness. You’ve reminded us that if you have to spend time chasing grants and doing it off the side of your desk, it is an impediment to solving what we would all agree is a huge, central problem. So thank you for that.

J. Theobald: Thank you for the opportunity.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Carrie James, representing Emergency Communications Professionals of B.C.

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
PROFESSIONALS OF B.C.

C. James: Hello. Thank you for having me today. I’m presenting on behalf of the Emergency Communications Professionals of B.C., which is CUPE Local 8911. Our union represents more than 500 911 operators, call takers, dispatchers, IT and support professionals, employed by E-Comm 9-1-1, Emergency Communications for B.C. Our members take 911 calls for 99 percent of the province, and they call-take and dispatch and handle emergency and non-emergency calls for 33 different police agencies and 40 fire departments.

E-Comm is the first point of contact for British Columbians in crisis. For those seeking paramedic services, their calls are transferred to BCEHS. For those from municipalities with in-house dispatching, their calls are routed back to their communities. For those whose communities use E-Comm’s dispatching services, which is much of the Lower Mainland and south Island, our members stay on the line with them throughout their emergency.

E-Comm is facing a serious financial and staffing crisis that started before the COVID-19 pandemic. A report commissioned by E-Comm from PricewaterhouseCoopers outlines the scale of the problem and what is required to repair the situation. E-Comm needs a sizeable increase to its annual operating budget to hire more call takers, provide better mental health supports for staff, adjust wages and working conditions to be aligned with industry standards, undertake a more strategic recruitment and training process, and prepare for the introduction of next gen 911, which is a federally mandated upgrade to the entire 911 platform across Canada.

In addition, reform is needed to address ongoing funding issues. Funding structures need to evolve to include mechanisms for automatic inflationary increases plus proactive funding models for capital infrastructure training and regular technological advancements. E-Comm’s current funding model is reactive and doesn’t provide excess resources for inevitable call surges, large-scale events, unforeseen disasters or innovation as new ideas, platforms and technologies emerge. In this sector, funding challenges have life-or-death implications, because underfunding and understaffing delay the response to emergency and non-emergency calls.

As the B.C. government undertakes conversations with the province’s municipalities about how resources are shared, the increasing costs of the 911 system and the system’s potential to better serve our communities should be considered. While E-Comm is a municipal entity, its creation and mandate are evidence that emergencies like extreme weather events do not respect local boundaries. Instead, they intersect with regional and provincial systems.

[3:15 p.m.]

The provision of provincial funding is consistent with the recommendations of the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act’s calls for greater financial support for municipal services. Accordingly, our first and primary recommendation is that the 2023 B.C. budget introduce direct financial support to municipalities to assist with the growing costs of the 911 system.

Many callers reporting an emergency are in a state of mental health crisis. In some cases, the crisis is the cause of the emergency, and in other cases, the mental health effects of the caller’s situation are a compounding factor in the acuteness of the emergency. E-Comm is not equipped to properly support callers with mental health issues, nor to address the mental health aspects that are present in almost every call. This gap in capacity is a large oversight for an entity devoted to providing aid to citizens in distress.

This matter was considered by the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act. In their April 2022 report, the committee called on government to appropriately fund a continuum of response to mental health, addictions and other complex social issues with a focus on prevention and community-led responses and ensuring appropriate first response.

It specifically included increasing coordination and integration across police, health, mental health and social services and integrating mental health within 911 call options. If fulfilled with necessary resources, this recommendation would make a substantial difference to the level of service provided to society’s most vulnerable.

In keeping with this recommendation, our second recommendation is that Budget 2023 include dedicated funding to E-Comm to expand its scope to include providing mental health supports to British Columbians in crisis.

The universality of access to the 911 system makes our emergency communication system a great candidate to provide universal mental health support. However, E-Comm’s ability to fill this much-needed role requires dedicated funding and requires that the ongoing funding and staffing challenges at E-Comm are addressed.

Thank you again for this opportunity. I’m happy to take questions and hear your feedback.

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

Our first question is from Mike, followed by Karin.

M. Starchuk: Thank you, Carrie, for your presentation. I liked how you cleared up the mental health part at the end, because I was recently talking with one of the B.C. municipal safety associations about the stressors that are there for dispatchers and the types of psychological injuries, so to speak, that they have.

I like that. I think it’s something that should be involved with all dispatchers in the whole province. E-Comm is Lower Mainland, but we’ve got Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna, Surrey, Campbell River, other places like that.

My question goes back to recommendation No. 1, that the B.C. budget introduce direct financial support to municipalities to assist with the growing costs of 911. I understand the NG911 system and how it will be able to take a text, a picture or a text, or something along those lines to enhance the ability to get people moving. But what follows after that is just funding for E-Comm. I’m sure the municipalities, when they read this, are all going: “Great. We can get this. That’s coming here.” Your text that follows behind it is specific to E-Comm, but the headline is to all the agencies.

C. James: I’m speaking on behalf of the union representing the employees of E-Comm, so I think that it’s definitely something that would be within your scope to look into, as far as dispatchers, call-takers, 911 operators across the board. But definitely there’s a need at E-Comm. I know with certainty that there is that need there.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you so much for the presentation. Two of us here were on the Special Committee for Reforming the Police Act. I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that your employee group is supportive of those recommendations. Everything we heard as we went through this is the stress that is put on E-Comm and the operators with the increasing number of mental health calls and trying to kind of integrate the ability to dispatch to Car 67s or to those other things.

It’s not a question. I just wanted to say thank you very much. I like where you’re going, and I’m glad you’ve read these recommendations.

B. Bailey: Thank you, also, for your presentation today. I have a question in regards to something you referred to as next gen 911, and I wondered what that is and what the implications are for the people you represent.

[3:20 p.m.]

C. James: I don’t know a lot about it, aside from the fact that the technology will change. It has to do with a number of things, some of which are more on the IT side.

But for, I guess, what we refer to as the first, first responders, who are taking the calls, who are dispatching the calls, they will potentially have exposure to pictures, videos, sound clips, things like that from their callers, rather than just the phone call itself. At this point, we have no idea how it will be implemented, but it’s something that we anticipate could have a pretty significant effect on the mental health response of the call takers themselves.

B. Stewart: Thank you, Carrie. I think this whole business about the diversion, mental health, etc., is an important part.

One thing…. Recently there was a presentation by one of Canada’s cell phone providers here. It came up that most people have gone away from land lines. That’s where 911 was originally funded — with a surcharge on land lines.

I don’t know if that’s something…. It’s federal, I would suspect, being that that technology is not provincially mandated. But I do think that that’s where part of the gap is. I appreciate you raising this. I like your approach. So thank you.

C. James: Thank you.

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Chair, for the opportunity to ask a question. First of all, thank you so much, Carrie, for actually taking us through all the challenges. I’m wondering. If somebody calls E-Comm…. I know you only represent a union. You don’t represent all the staff on the front line. But if somebody calls E-Comm and they’re having a mental health breakdown — more for the phone calls — is there somebody else you guys can refer the number to, or does E-Comm just have to stick it out till the end?

C. James: We are not able, at this time, to refer them elsewhere if it’s a crisis where there is potentially a safety risk. Once the police are dispatched, they do have the ability to respond by bringing in other services or referring people, but for the staff out of the dispatch centre, they have to stay on the line, create a call and have police dispatched in response. That’s our only option at this time.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, we’re out of time now, Carrie. But thank you so much for taking the time to come and making this presentation and giving us some important insight into the work of E-Comm. You’ve reminded us that emergencies are no longer rare occurrences. We need to put our resources and our priorities towards something that is becoming more central to how we function as a society.

Another point here I wanted to make. Thank you for representing the people who support us when we are at our most vulnerable.

C. James: Thank you. I do have some packages that we prepared for our municipal agencies. If anybody is interested, I can leave these behind. If I just leave them on the desk there, is that all right?

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes.

C. James: Perfect. Thank you so much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Melissa Moroz, Professional Employees Association.

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION

M. Moroz: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to come here today to present to you.

I want to start by acknowledging that I am on the lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ people, and I am grateful to be here today.

My name is Melissa Moroz. I work for the Professional Employees Association. This is a labour union in British Columbia. I am specifically here today to speak to you in regards to our government-licensed professionals. I’m here to talk about how those professionals are understaffed and overstressed and how this inadequate staffing and compensation of government professionals is hurting B.C.

Our members are the professionals that we put our trust in every day. They are the scientific experts that keep the province safe. From professional oversight to emergency response, professionals in the public service are critical to the work of the B.C. government.

[3:25 p.m.]

But positions are sitting vacant, and the government is unable to fill them. Our members are leaving the public service with offers of higher wages. Without increases to their compensation, the province will continue to face challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified professionals. The province needs these professionals now more than ever.

The challenges we have filling these roles and retaining people have a real cost, not just for public safety but for our economy as well. Their work encompasses a variety of projects. They provide government with the knowledgable oversight of forestry, mining, fossil fuel projects. They ensure that they’re safe, environmentally sound and in the best interests of British Columbians.

They plan ahead to ensure that B.C.’s infrastructure, forests and farms are resilient to the impacts of climate change. They are the professionals that are called upon to respond to a variety of severe weather emergencies, like floods and fires. They are the engineers who oversee the rebuilding of bridges and highways and other infrastructure damaged by fires and floods. When we think of the extraordinary speed that our severely damaged infrastructure got rebuilt in, we can think of government-licensed professionals. They were the ones that flew out to remote communities to rebuild bridges and restore access.

They’re the geoscientists who carry out flood forecasting and assess the risk of slope stability. They’re the ones with the expertise unique to the B.C. environment. They’re the agrologists who work with farming communities. We think of evacuations and people who are supporting farmers and communities to come back from the impacts of these weather disasters. They’re the foresters who, with the help of firefighters and others, anticipate and respond to wildfires as they happen.

In their 2018 report on B.C. flood and wildfire review, George Abbott and Chief Maureen Chapman highlighted the need for a B.C.-first model for employment during emergencies in their recommendations to government. They recognized that training locals and tapping into local and traditional knowledge and Indigenous ways of knowing would allow for the best and quickest response when B.C. communities are hit with an emergency.

The same principle applies in the case of B.C. government professionals. By ensuring that staffing levels are sufficiently high within the B.C. government, providing training to members of the public service and supporting those members to be engaged in B.C.’s emergency response, we can improve our responsiveness, benefit from on-the-ground knowledge and better integrate the provincial and local response.

In the early 2000s, the B.C. government sought to aggressively reduce the amount of regulation within government. They set a goal of one-third reduction of regulation, and, alongside that, drastically reduced the number of professionals within the public service. In the resource sector, B.C. government professionals were reduced by approximately 25 percent.

In 2001, there were 1,500 government-licensed professionals in the PEA. Today we still have fewer than 1,300, despite the province’s growth in that over 20-year period. We are recommending that the province step up and allocate necessary resources to recruit and support professionals in the public service. Thank you.

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

I’ll now ask members of the committee to ask some questions.

B. Bailey: I noted in your submission there was some concern about the implication of…. I think it was called appendix H. I wonder if you could just flesh it out a little bit for me. It sounded, I think, if I understood correctly, that the tool itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. It was, perhaps, the timing of the invoking of the tool. Did I understand that correctly?

M. Moroz: There are a number of issues with how professionals are compensated in response to emergencies. One of them is how compensation is triggered. It’s when the deputy minister responsible for the provincial emergency program activates a clause in the collective agreement. Then members are compensated.

[3:30 p.m.]

What this means is that when the province calls out for volunteers to respond to the emergencies, people put up their hands without knowing whether or not they’ll receive compensation. In some cases, they can be working for weeks without knowing. More recently, in the last flood situation, people were working, and it was cancelled retroactively. They were working for a couple of weeks, and it got cancelled.

There are also issues with the level of compensation. They’re paid for straight time for all of the hours they work, even when they work 14-hour days, for example, or on weekends. So there are a few different areas where the union is seeking improvement and that we think will help more people volunteer and allow the province to draw from that pool of very knowledgable professionals who have connections to their communities, versus bringing in outside-of-province, sometimes outside-of-country, emergency responders, which are costly.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Melissa. This was very helpful for me. I didn’t really understand the role of PEA and which professions that it covered. You’ve got lots of different professions in there. So I know there’s not one answer to this, but compensation is clearly an issue.

Is there a significant pay gap or compensation benefits gap between the professionals you represent in government and the private sector, and is that one of the reasons that you’re losing people?

M. Moroz: Absolutely, yeah. I would say there’s a pay gap between professionals in the public service versus the private sector but also compared to the municipal sector, the federal sector and even when we look at other provinces. The issue now, as well, is that people have lots of opportunities to go work for all kinds of employers.

The demographics of our union are also changing. That baby boomer generation is moving on. The province is trying to attract professionals. That’s becoming increasingly difficult. I think of a young professional graduating maybe with student debt, trying to buy their first home. A job in the public service used to be a good job, and that’s less and less the case. People are making tough decisions. When a different employer is going to offer you more money, we’re all concerned about what the future holds here if we don’t reverse this trend.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Again, it’s so broad here, but do you have a sense of the vacancy rate? How many professional positions are open now that are not being filled?

M. Moroz: It’s different ministry by ministry, but there are areas I know. In the Ministry of Transportation, I think it’s close to one-third of positions that are vacant. I know that even the engineers — I was talking to one of them — sort of go: “Anything that you can contract out, do it.” There are certain functions of government that can’t be contracted out, but there are not enough people, in-house professionals, to oversee the projects that so critically need to get done.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much.

B. Stewart: I just wanted to thank you and the people that are part of the professional engineers. I was working through the wildfire season. I really got involved at the start of August.

At the end, I started finding out the difference in…. I mean, these people were working long, long days. I was on the phone with them at nighttime and first thing in the morning, and I found out that they just basically got regular compensation. I didn’t quite see the equity in that. Anyway, I’m glad you brought it forward.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Melissa, for your presentation. Thank you for your insights. I think there are a lot of British Columbians — many of them may be in this room — who are frustrated by how slow our response times seem to be sometimes as government and how long it seems to take to implement what everyone thinks are good ideas.

[3:35 p.m.]

You’ve reminded us that we, as government, can make commitments, but in many, many cases, it’s the skilled professionals in government who implement those commitments, and that you have a challenge doing that.

Our next presenter is Rick FitzZaland, representing the Federation of Community Social Services of B.C.

FEDERATION OF COMMUNITY
SOCIAL SERVICES OF B.C.

R. FitzZaland: I’m pleased to be here, meeting with you, on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people.

All of you have received, I’m sure, the written presentation. There’s a lot of detail in that written presentation. I don’t read fast enough to be able to get through the whole thing in five minutes, so I’ll trust your reading for that. I’m going to hit some of the highlights.

Our three recommendations. The first one is to continue to demonstrate a commitment to reconciliation and decolonization of social services by working to address the funding inequities that exist for Indigenous off-reserve service providers. The government has made a commitment to truth and reconciliation and to decolonization, a commitment which we fully support. They’ve been working with rights holders, First Nations, but the overwhelming majority — over 80 percent — of the Indigenous people in this province live in urban areas off reserve.

Most services they receive are from agencies in those communities where they reside, many of those being Indigenous organizations, such as friendship centres and other Indigenous agencies. There is a huge gap in how those agencies are funded versus how the non-Indigenous agencies have funding. You’ll hear, in my recommendation 3, that the non-Indigenous agencies are not funded well, and the Indigenous agencies are funded worse. That’s our first recommendation: that that gap be addressed immediately. We can’t say that we are working towards reconciliation and improving services to Indigenous people if we continue to allow Indigenous organizations to be so significantly underfunded.

The second recommendation is to continue to demonstrate a commitment to reconciliation and decolonization by making new investments in services and supports for children in care. We are working with the Ministry of Children and Family Development — all of our agencies and our association — to address some of the long-standing issues in services for children and families. We recognize the investment that has been made with regard to child care. We recognize the investment that has been made with regard to children and youth with support needs. All of these we support and commend.

We have seen a lot of progress in the planning and in the development work of a different approach to residential care for children and youth, but as yet we have not seen any funding. We’re here to say that we support the direction we’re working with the government to go in, in reforming these systems so that they work well, but we want to see funding to make sure that they actually happen. There’s no money that can be shifted around in order to fund these services.

[3:40 p.m.]

In funding these services, paying attention to the family supports and that aspect of service is important. We’ve focused on the protective aspect of child support for a long time, and we’ve had no meaningful change in the circumstance for kids as a consequence. So we need to refocus on supporting families and on that aspect.

My last recommendation — which is one of my favourites, but anyway: continue to invest in the sustainability of the social services sector by addressing the rising costs of business pressures that organizations are facing, and build this into base contract dollars. Over two years ago, Dr. Bonnie Henry and Premier Horgan asked the social services sector to stay on the job, and they did. There was no additional money, no additional resources provided, unlike health. We were asked just to stay on the job, and they stayed on the job.

Nurses were able to go to the emergency room because there were people taking care of their children in child care facilities. People were able to be at the grocery stores, making sure that we all had food in our home. They were able to go to work because they didn’t have to worry about their senior mom who needed support at home.

All these services that the sector provides are critical to the economic recovery of this province and have been critical to survival over the last couple of years. Yet there has not been a single increase in the base funding for these services in 20 years, and there’s been a bit more inflation.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Hi, Rick. How are you?

A couple of questions. Recommendation 3. This is a comment, and I’m going to leave it after I say it. Without calculating or looking at the low-wage redress impact in terms of salaries and costs, I think it’s difficult to talk about addressing the rising costs and the wages.

A couple of years ago I made a recommendation to CEO Network and, I think, to the Federation, as well, to actually do kind of a Canadian-wide scan on administrative percentages on your contracts. If you look at Ontario or you look at Alberta, you’re looking at a 15 to 20 percent admin contract on some of the social services, very similar to the work that’s being done here.

Have you advocated to government to look at that with the appreciation…? Or is that what you’re talking about with respect to baseline funding? You want an increase in what you’re able to do outside of direct service hours funding, your administrative funding.

R. FitzZaland: Karin, we have advocated that. We have advocated many different possible solutions. We’ve gone with this 5 percent increase to the base as…. How simple is that, people? We can calculate that. We know what the cost of all those contracts is. We know what the cost of 5 percent of them is. It’s a simple thing. Give an immediate bump.

It will not fix the problem, but at least, given how desperate many of our associations are…. Many of our organizations are truly desperate. We’ve seen some, over the last couple of years, close their doors, and that is not helpful to the people who depend upon their services. Given how desperate they are, just a little bit of relief would be nice to see.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your comments. You need more money. I know that. And the social services sector needs more money. That administrative layer needs to be valued. I appreciate your advocating for that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions at this point? Well, perhaps that’s a good note to wrap this presentation up on.

Rick, thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you so much for your advocacy. I think there are many of us that feel that we’re part of a system, or we’re seeing a system, in transition. But you’ve reminded us that that transition can only happen with the appropriate level of funding and funding in the right place. Thank you so much for that.

Our next presenter is Randy Baerg.

[3:45 p.m.]

Randy, you have five minutes. When you have two minutes left, the green light will come on, and when your five minutes is up, a red light will come on, and then we’ll ask you questions.

MOTION

R. Baerg: First, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to share. Motion is Canada’s leading provider of equipment support for Canadians with disabilities, including mobility equipment such as wheelchairs, scooters and seating supports; and home accessibility equipment, such as stairlifts, powerlift recliners, adjustable beds and aids to daily living.

We have been serving our clients in B.C. since 1988, with 12 locations serving more than 50 communities across the province. We’re also a proud service delivery partner of the government of B.C. I’ve been in the industry since 1992 and with Motion for 25 years, so I have a bit of experience in the industry.

I’d like to briefly address three topics of funding in B.C. that impact seniors and persons with disabilities. The first one is to increase funding for seniors with disabilities by expanding the home-renovation tax credit for seniors and persons with disabilities to include coverage for the cost of mobility equipment and to provide a broader provincial refundable tax credit up to $2,500 for seniors for home health care.

One of the most significant gaps in funding for persons with disabilities is among seniors. Existing programs provide some assistance for seniors with disabilities to assist with the costs of certain accessibility home improvements. However, these programs have limitations. The home-renovation tax credit only covers up to 10 percent of the cost of home improvements to a maximum of $1,000. Also, home accessibility supports such as ramps, stairlifts and elevators, qualify, but mobility supports such as wheelchairs, vehicle lifts and vehicle adaptations do not.

For the majority of B.C.’s seniors who do not live in long-term-care facilities, they must pay for at least 90 percent or more of the cost of home accessibility improvements and receive no assistance at all for mobility equipment supports, such as wheelchairs and vehicle powerlifts. The gap in these supports is challenging in light of the cost of equipment. A power wheelchair can cost over $20,000, while equipping a vehicle with a powerlift can exceed $50,000. These costs are more than the average senior’s entire annual income.

The gap in mobility supports also results in significantly increased health care costs for government by prematurely forcing seniors into more costly long-term-care situations and increasing the need for health care intervention. Mobility supports that would empower seniors to live independently and age in place for longer at home are a fraction of the cost of long-term-care facilities yet are simply not available to most seniors.

In addition to reducing the strain on our health care system, suitable mobility equipment also protects the health and safety of home support workers and care aides by reducing the risk of injury due to a lack of effective equipment.

The second point is to improve the funding caps — actually, I swapped the order there; that is No. 3 on your sheet — for the amount paid by ministries for mobility and home accessibility equipment purchases on behalf of persons with disabilities to help offset inflationary pressures, which have significantly increased the cost of equipment, and to help address inequities in the amount paid for similar equipment by different ministries. Like so many things these days, the cost of mobility and home accessibility equipment has risen steadily over the last several years.

Unfortunately, the funding for certain categories of equipment has not. In fact, the funding caps for equipment — like ceiling tracks, which are used for transfers and for care in the home; wheelchairs; adjustable beds; and scooters — provided by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction have remained unchanged for the last ten years. As a result, many people are forced to either go without appropriate equipment or search for additional funds to make up the increasing gap between the funding cap and the actual cost of equipment.

Fortunately, some ministries, like the Ministry of Children and Family Development, have updated their funding limits to bring them more in line with the actual cost of equipment. However, these increases have not been applied across the government, resulting in significant inconsistencies between the ministries. We respectfully recommend these funding increases be extended across the government so that there is a fair and consistent level of funding for people with disabilities, regardless of which part of the government they interact with.

[3:50 p.m.]

Finally — I know I have not much time — the third one is to increase the equipment funding for lower-income, working British Columbians with disabilities who are not on income assistance. This could be done by expanding the income and disability assistance supports to provide a basic level of mobility equipment assistance with a graduated assistance based on income, instead of just on income assistance. I’ll leave that one, because I’m out of time.

Just a concluding statement. With the inflationary pressures and the cost of living climbing, British Columbians are struggling with affordability issues on many fronts. For persons with disabilities and mobility constraints, the added cost of equipment that they need to function as full members of society is far too often out of reach, and assistance is often not available.

We thank you for your time and for consideration of the recommendations in addressing these needs.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Randy. I’ll now ask members of the committee to ask you their questions.

B. Stewart: Randy, I don’t have a question, but I just thought it was great that you could bring this to light. I happen to have a constituent who is a friend that’s gone through this very late in life, and I’m shocked by the cost of all of these stand-up wheelchairs or whatever and just the changes around his house.

Fortunately, he has enough resources to fund it, but it is expensive. For people that are without, they need help. Thank you.

R. Baerg: Thanks. They are expensive.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

B. Bailey: Thank you very much for your presentation, Randy. I appreciate learning about this. I was curious about, maybe, two questions, if I might tag them together.

First, the number $2,500 — I wonder if that particular number represents…. Is that the right amount to buy a lift? Or is it a number that represents a particular opportunity to purchase?

R. Baerg: We are currently at $1,000 in B.C. Just looking across the country, Ontario is at $2,500 for the tax credit. That will start, and it’ll help people to install certain equipment in their homes for safety and function. It would pay for a portion of a stair glide, as an example, for people to get up and down stairs so that they can enter and exit their home safely. It would help. It’s not a magic amount that would pay for a lot of equipment, but I think it would help a lot.

B. Bailey: My second question…. I note that the request, recommendation No. 1, is for a tax credit, not an advance payment. I wondered: does that particular model provide any challenges for folks who might not be able to afford it up front? Do you see that being an issue?

R. Baerg: I would say it would be a challenge for people who can’t afford it up front. I think the reason we put this one forward is that there is an existing program already, and it’s just increasing that amount, as compared to establishing a new policy for funding. But, for sure, it’s a difficult thing for seniors to stay in their own homes.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing any other questions, Randy. On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to give us a presentation and give us some insight. I think for anyone who reaches a point in their life where they need mobility assistance, it’s devastating in many ways and for many reasons.

What you’ve stressed for us today is that, on top of that, it can create financial ruin. This is something we need to address. Thank you.

R. Baerg: I appreciate the time. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next presenter is Tessa Seager, Council of Canadian Innovators.

COUNCIL OF CANADIAN INNOVATORS

T. Seager: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the members of this committee for meeting with us today.

We’re here on the unceded traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples, where we are grateful to live, work and play.

I’m Tessa Seager. I’m the B.C. lead for the Council of Canadian Innovators. We represent more than 150 Canadian-headquartered scale-up technology companies, including 15 here in B.C. Once a company successfully moves past the start-up stage, they start growing rapidly. We call these companies scale-ups.

[3:55 p.m.]

Scale-ups are selling market-proven products or services, making millions in annual recurring revenue, exporting abroad. They have positive cash flow, pay taxes and employ thousands of people across Canada. Most importantly, they are growing, meaning they can scale in revenue from millions to billions, providing valuable returns to the economy, but only if they have the right public policy supports. Today I want to focus on three of those supports: talent, procurement and marketplace frameworks.

First, on talent. Last year I appeared before this committee and said that Canada’s tech sector is facing a skilled talent crisis which is threatening to suffocate innovative companies and slow their growth. A year later the situation has only gotten worse. Our labour market has been fundamentally transformed by COVID-19 and the subsequent shift to remote work. Competition for top talent is more intense than ever before, with Canadian tech companies now competing against Silicon Valley giants seeking to hire experienced talent remotely. This is a challenge for our scale-up companies, which can’t just maintain their workforce but need to grow rapidly.

Our companies know they must offer competitive wages and incentives in this new labour market, but there is also a significant onus on policy-makers to adapt their frameworks to reflect the needs of the 21st-century economy. To that end, our first recommendation is that Budget 2023 contain consideration for two talent-related pieces:

(a) Co-ops. B.C. does a commendable job of facilitating co-ops, but more money needs to be directed towards these programs to allow for both longer placement periods and sector-appropriate salaries. This will integrate students in B.C.-headquartered companies at an opportune time, fuelling a self-sustaining talent pipeline for years to come.

(b) Company-sponsored training programs. Innovative B.C. technology companies, like AbCellera and Thrive Health, have recognized the talent shortage and taken matters into their own hands, developing new skills generation programs that are, by virtue of being company-created, exactly aligned with their labour market needs. To incentivize the further adoption of these programs, the government should offer funding and support to B.C. businesses that develop internal upscaling and retraining programs that enhance the domestic workforce.

Secondly, procurement is government’s most powerful economic development tool. If used strategically, procurement can fulfil public sector needs with unique solutions, stimulate key sectors and lead to sustained economic growth. Our current system of procurement does not work for domestic technology companies. It is too risk-averse, too rigid, too cumbersome.

That’s why our second recommendation for Budget 2023 is that it earmark a set amount of money to develop a technology-specific procurement fund, administered by Citizens’ Services, that can be tapped into by specific ministries when appropriate.

Recognizing that buying and selling software is different than buying and selling bridges, this fund should be given the authority to move fast and to take risks. It would allow for a procurement process that is agile, iterative and collaborative. As should be done with all provincial procurements, this proposed fund should evaluate bids, in part, by how much value they bring to the province as a whole.

Finally, our innovators need the province to update its policy frameworks. The world has undergone a huge shift from the tangible to the intangible economy. Our new economy is no longer fuelled by capital assets, like machinery and physical plants, but instead is now driven by intangible assets like software, data and patents. Despite this shift, governments have maintained a stubborn reliance on 19th- and 20th-century policy strategies, ones that have nothing to do with how wealth is generated today.

Our third recommendation is that Budget 2023 pave the way for the development of both a provincial intellectual property strategy and a provincial data strategy. A provincial IP strategy is needed to incentivize our tech companies to create IP and to establish frameworks to keep publicly funded IP here at home. A provincial data strategy is needed to ensure that we are harnessing the power of data as an economic asset, better serving citizens and businesses across B.C. Only by building this critical, 21st-century policy infrastructure will B.C. be positioned for success in the years to come.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. On your first recommendation, looking at talent and education…. When you talk about consideration for an expansion of co-op programs, are you talking about it as part of an existing post-secondary education, or is this something separate to that?

T. Seager: Yeah. I think the government already supports co-op programs through universities and placing them at domestic tech companies.

[4:00 p.m.]

In speaking with our members, I think if more money were directed to those programs, they could have more success, both through lengthening the term of the placement and, maybe, providing a bit of a salary top-up so that the salary is more commensurate with other opportunities.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Great. That makes sense. Thank you.

H. Yao: Thank you so much for your presentation. I would like to even ask a bit more about what you’re talking about. Obviously, I really am a big fan of co-op programs. I think it puts students through not just education but learning opportunities and really puts education into actual work experience. It’s phenomenal.

You’re also talking about industry actually training employees. I heard earlier about micro-credentials. Is there any kind of discussion around industry saying: what we can do to maybe help students or help employees from different tech sectors to have some kind of channel to connect with post-secondaries so that when employers offer this kind of training or micro-credentials, it can reconnect them with institutions, maybe for some additional post-secondary recognition?

T. Seager: Thank you for the question. It was a bit mumbled, but I think I got it on my end.

A lot of our CCI companies are already creating internal micro-credential programs themselves. They recognize that there’s a talent shortage, and this is what they’re doing to address it. Some of those are doing those solely on their own, and some of them are doing it in partnership with universities.

We have a Quebec example. A Quebec company, FX Innovation, partnered with the University of Ottawa, and they built the CloudCampus program, which bridges the gap between current skills of cloud computing and then the future skills that will be required.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Me again. I found it very interesting when you were talking about the transformation of the labour force with respect to COVID. We all know people are working virtually. I actually had naively thought that that would be a benefit in some ways, because you, your sector here in British Columbia, could access talent from outside of our borders. It had not even occurred to me that we would now be losing talent, here, to the Silicon Valley.

Is that more that it could happen, or are you seeing that it’s happening now?

T. Seager: It’s already happening, and it’s happening in huge numbers. We often hear anecdotally from companies about companies losing employees who are taking job offers at Silicon Valley companies for double the pay, at minimum. They’re able to pay just a huge amount more. It becomes an easier decision when you can stay in your living room in Kitsilano rather than moving to the Bay Area.

This is really top of mind for our members, so thank you for the question.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Very interesting.

J. Routledge (Chair): I guess our last question is from Brenda.

B. Bailey: I have two.

J. Routledge (Chair): Last two questions.

B. Bailey: I really appreciate your submission. We’ve had the opportunity to meet a number of times, and I’ve found myself really appreciating you highlighting these issues that are of such importance to the sector. I wonder, though, if I could ask you to flesh out a couple of things. These are hard questions, but I know you’re incredibly smart, so I’m giving them to you anyhow.

Gosh, it’s hard to look at procurement and to consider procurement being non–risk adverse and fast. Having worked in technology, I really do see the opportunity that’s being missed there. I wondered if you could just share any thoughts you might have that might help us consider that huge challenge of these two very different ways of being. So just to collect your thoughts on that.

Then my second question, if you don’t mind, is if you could just say a few words about why an intellectual property strategy matters to our province.

T. Seager: Sure. Thank you. I might take a bit of a pass on your first question, because we’re planning to supplement this appearance with a written submission and really dive into this procurement issue, mostly by looking at a jurisdictional scan. The Scandinavian countries are doing a really good job on technology procurement and have developed some really interesting, innovative funds that are specifically directed towards technology. So we’ll get all into that in our submission.

Then just quickly on an IP strategy. I mean, from my perspective, if there’s one thing the B.C. government can do to show that it wants to foster and nurture the innovative economy, it is to develop an IP strategy. Thank you, Parliamentary Secretary, for your work on that. I’m looking forward to our initial consultation later this week.

[4:05 p.m.]

For far too long, governments have failed strategically to consider IP creation and IP retention. What that has done…. It means that all too often, we wind up actively funding the creation of ideas that foreign companies commercialize, with economic benefits flowing out of Canada.

Our favourite example to quote is the Tesla partnership with Dalhousie University. Despite $20 million in public NSERC funding fuelling a slew of patented inventions that are the basis for Tesla’s million-mile battery, Tesla owns all that IP and R and D. Actually, Canadians, having paid once for the development of it, are now paying again to buy those commercialized products being sold back to us.

It’s a huge economic loss for the province and the country. I think if we can get smart on IP, then a lot of other pieces will fall into place.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, Tessa, I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for coming and presenting to us and for having what is such an obviously clear idea about what the economy of the 21st century should look like and helping to create a roadmap so that we can get there, so that we can follow you there, and for having pointed out some of the roadblocks that we need to address. Thank you so much for that.

Our next presenter is Geoffrey Morrison, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

You’ve got five minutes. You’ll get a green light when you’ve got two minutes to go.

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION
OF PETROLEUM PRODUCERS

G. Morrison: Thank you for having me here today.

I would like to recognize the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ people, on whose traditional territory we meet and live.

CAPP represents companies, large and small, that explore for, develop and produce natural gas and oil in Canada. We are a solutions-oriented partner, working with governments, stakeholders and Indigenous people to meet the world’s need for affordable, clean, safe and secure energy.

CAPP is dedicated to advancing reconciliation and committed to ensuring that Canada is positioned to help meet global climate commitments. The industry is an important part of B.C.’s economy, directly employing 12,000 workers. This year the industry is forecast to invest $4.1 billion into the province. The Ministry of Finance forecasts direct government revenues from production to be $911 million this year.

I will briefly highlight three recommendations, and CAPP will also provide written input, using the committee’s submission form, to further support these recommendations.

Recommendation 1. The budget should identify ade­quate funding for reconciliation and the necessary policies, systems and resources to address the outcomes of the 2021 Yahey v. B.C. court decision. The court’s findings in the Yahey decision have created regulatory uncertainty, which is having ongoing impacts on industrial activities in northeastern B.C.

After nearly a year since the ruling, a survey of oil and gas companies indicates that the ongoing unpredictability of the regulatory process risks stalling investments in the billions of dollars in 2022, stranding hundreds of millions of dollars of capital from previous investments and putting multiple thousands of jobs at risk and may result in tens of millions of dollars of forgone royalty revenues to the province.

Industry remains hopeful, however, that an interim framework can be agreed to and put in place while a long-term framework is developed between the government and First Nations with industry input. With the establishment of an interim framework, there is opportunity to return stability to the investment climate and balance growth in northeastern B.C.

Recommendation 2. With respect to competitiveness and EITE protection, we ask the government to ensure that tax policy and other policies are drafted to safeguard against carbon leakage to prevent capital redeployment. There’s a golden opportunity for British Columbia to help achieve climate commitments and support sustainable growth here at home.

The most recent IEA world energy outlook forecasts a 30 percent increase in the global natural gas demand by 2040, and we know that LNG will play an increasingly important role in meeting that global demand. LNG trade is forecast to nearly double, from 358 million tonnes per annum in 2019 to 700 million tonnes per annum in 2040. With our proximity to growing Asian markets, our low-carbon-intensity commodities and world energy security concerns due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, B.C. is poised to play an important role in the global natural gas trade if we can attract the needed investment to develop our resources.

[4:10 p.m.]

Recommendation 3. B.C. should reinvest the zero to $30 per tonne portion of the carbon tax paid by industry into predictable programs to help further decarbonization of trade-exposed industries. We would also include expansion of the GHG-offset protocols and markets as part of this recommendation.

The reinvestment of all of industry’s carbon tax into emissions-reduction programs will support progress towards B.C.’s emissions targets and support sustainable economic growth. Modelling shows that EIT policy solutions outperform a carbon-tax-only approach in the oil and gas sector, and the results of this approach deliver improved economic outcomes to support job growth and improved industry emissions intensity performance and increase absolute emissions reductions. Greenhouse gas offsets can allow for emission reductions at a lower cost than the carbon price and achieve reductions that may not have otherwise occurred and will lower the overall cost of both industry and society.

To recap CAPP’s recommendations: (1) budget for the outcomes of the Yahey v. B.C. court decision, (2) ensure all policy is assessed to safeguard against carbon leakage, and (3) make the zero to $30 per tonne of carbon tax paid by industry available to industry to reinvest in decarbonization.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

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

I’ll now entertain questions from the committee.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Geoff. That was a lot. I don’t know enough about the Yahey decision. I’m not the critic for that, but I’m sure that our critic does know about it.

I do want to just talk to you about the EIT. That’s energy-intensive industries. Is that what you’re…?

G. Morrison: Emissions-intensive, trade-exposed.

B. Stewart: Oh, emissions-intensive, trade-exposed. Okay. Thanks very much. We’ve had other presentations on that from other sectors.

I guess the question we heard last year from one of the sectors was that there was some discussion happening at a federal level about some national approach on that. Is that something that you could explain to me?

G. Morrison: The issue at play here a little bit is the idea of ITMOs. I can’t remember what that stands for, but internationally traded offsets. So how can we take our low–carbon intensity commodities in B.C. and Canada, whether it’s natural gas or lumber or even copper, and trade that globally to offset emissions in other jurisdictions that might use…?

For natural gas, we would say we would offset, perhaps, coal in China for heating and electricity use. We don’t need all of those offsets, but the offsets are going to be more than all of the emissions that B.C. might produce. So if we can get a portion of those back through these ITMOs, there’s an opportunity for B.C. to really help reduce global climate emissions and help our economy. That rests with the federal government, however, not the B.C. government.

B. Stewart: Right. The request was to have discussions and work proactively on that.

The last one, the zero to $30 of carbon tax — you’d like that reinvested where exactly?

G. Morrison: Into programs to help companies invest. We have a program now for the above $30 a tonne. We are paying a fee or a tax that other competing jurisdictions don’t. There’s an opportunity….

If the carbon tax is really incented, it should reduce emissions. So if we could find a way to recycle that money that’s paid by industry back to industry to invest in emissions-reductions technology or abatement, that would help B.C. compete, and it would further lower our emissions intensity.

B. Stewart: I see. Okay. Thank you.

B. Bailey: Thank you, Geoffrey. Notwithstanding the previous answer, which touches on this also, I’m just struggling a little bit to understand…. Maybe I don’t have the right information. But according to the news and so on, petroleum companies have made greater profits in the last couple of years than before — so a tremendous ton of wealth in the industry, from what I understand. Pardon me if I’m wrong.

So I struggle with their request to access the funding from our carbon tax to incentivize a change in the direction of lower emissions when I would think that these corporations would have access to funding to make that transition on their own, where the carbon tax can have a huge implication on other government programming. So help me think that through.

[4:15 p.m.]

G. Morrison: We are a small, open economy, and we compete globally for investment. If we don’t compete successfully in that space, our products will not be developed — our resources will not be developed — but other jurisdictions’ will.

I agree. We have a commitment and an obligation to help invest in that. We’re asking to share in that with the resource owner, which is the people of B.C., to make sure that we can continue to attract that investment.

We don’t have enough capital in B.C. or in Canada to develop the resources that we own. We really need foreign investment. So if we can’t compete internationally for that, other places will produce that natural gas, and it may be of poorer quality in a carbon intensity sense.

J. Routledge (Chair): Are there other questions?

Well, with that, Geoff — Geoffrey…

G. Morrison: Geoff is fine.

J. Routledge (Chair): …we will thank you for your presentation. You’ve given us a lot of food for thought. This topic was a topic of quite a bit of debate and discussion last year, and I’m sure it will be again this year. Thank you for giving us some insight into where you’re coming from.

G. Morrison: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

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

Over to you, Jeff.

DOWNTOWN VICTORIA
BUSINESS ASSOCIATION

J. Bray: Thank you, Chair. I used to sit over there, some years ago, so I know these are long days. I appreciate the rapid-fire of all this, so I will keep to five minutes.

I am the CEO of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. We have over 2,000 members, mostly small- and medium-sized independent businesses that you see throughout downtown Victoria. Our mission is really to nurture and promote the vitality and vibrancy of downtown Victoria and its business community, and our vision is really to be the authority of all things happening in Victoria’s downtown core.

We do that through a number of activities. We have our clean team that augment the city’s work to keeping the city clean, removing graffiti. We put on events. We promote events to bring people into downtown and add energy and vitality. We do a lot of marketing. Most of the ads you’ll see this summer, if you’re in town for your meetings, will be from us.

Increasingly, we do quite a bit of advocacy on behalf of our businesses, many of them, again, being small, independent…. The vast majority are one to five employees. They simply don’t have the capacity, so we have increasingly become a voice for those small businesses.

In reading the 2023 pre-budget consultation paper, I’m going to address a couple of areas that were raised in the paper. The first is in the section of strengthening health, and in particular, mental health services. Our first recommendation is that the government expedite the establishment of complex care services to house and support those with complex health needs, and to provide greater security to the surrounding neighbourhoods.

The current model of low-barrier supportive housing concentrates the challenges faced by these individuals in a way that diminishes their success in the housing provided, and has a significant negative impact on the surrounding neighbourhood. In downtown Victoria, several motels were purchased by B.C. Housing and quickly occupied by persons with, in many cases, severe and multiple challenges.

Businesses and nearby residents to these facilities have been negatively impacted. Daily adverse interactions occur between facility residents, and, in many cases, those that congregate around these buildings, with customers and staff of local businesses. Rampant graffiti, garbage and pop-up encampments are the number one issues raised by our members in this year’s business survey, along with the general street disorder.

We spoke to this last year, and we are very pleased that the government is moving forward with complex care, but we really feel that it needs to be expedited, and it must be decentralized and provide secure care, both for the individual residents and for their surrounding community. A sole focus on harm reduction has not stemmed the issues faced by the intendant clients, and has created more harm in the surrounding community. Enforcement, treatment and prevention — the other three pillars of the four pillars approach — must be equally supported.

The second recommendation from this area is that we recommend that the provincial government resource Crown counsel, the courts and B.C. Corrections to adequately deal with the chronic repeat offenders. As identified by the B.C. Mayors Caucus and acknowledged by the Attorney General, there is a challenge in communities like Victoria regarding prolific offenders.

[4:20 p.m.]

This is a very small but impactful group, whose criminal behaviour affects our businesses, their staff and their customers. These individuals and their actions fuel the negative narrative regarding downtown Victoria — and indeed, downtowns and main streets across B.C. This narrative has a direct and harmful set of consequences for our local economies. As we outline in our submission, we support comprehensive supports for those with chronic mental health and addiction challenges, but we also call for comprehensive responses for those whose repeated criminal actions cause distress to the rest of the community.

It’s not about criminalizing homelessness but about public safety and holding people accountable for their actions. The DVBA supports a safe and welcoming community for everyone, including the unhoused, but that means that those who engage in serious and repeated criminal behaviour need to be managed better than the current revolving door of catch-and-release. Otherwise, we have a community that is not safe and welcoming for anyone.

The second area of the consultation paper, about reducing costs for British Columbians, was an issue that we and others raised last year. The recommendation is to amend the B.C. Assessment Act to allow for split classifications and other remedies to ensure that property assessments do not further lead to what some people call the death of main street, B.C.

The best and highest use principle imposes significant pressure on existing commercial buildings to pass on, in many cases, significant property tax increases to their tenants, or it forces them to redevelop. This is a highly volatile mechanism that means that one redevelopment can significantly impact the taxes on the rest of the neighbourhood. Again, in many cases, it’s the small and medium-sized independent business that struggles.

Finally, I’ll say that this is not an issue about triple-net leases. Most of our members strongly support triple-net leases because it allows for transparency on the costs that they’re being charged by their landlord. It is about making sure that the tax system is fair for buildings that have not been redeveloped.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Jeff. I’ll now invite members of the committee to ask you some questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Jeff. That was interesting, and there are similarities, obviously, with so many BIAs in different communities.

The street disorder, the rampant graffiti…. Are there challenges in the community with accessing insurance for multiple claims for window damage and graffiti? Are all of those things compiling at the same time?

J. Bray: Absolutely. Again, I want to be clear, because I know that in five minutes, I painted a very dire picture. There are a lot of great things that are happening. There are a lot of great things that are coming on board in this region with respect to housing.

The reality is that we’ve had, in the last two years, a significant increase in the number of people faced with these challenges — in particular, with the toxic drug supply — and, to some extent, a normalization of behaviours that five or six years ago we simply didn’t see on the streets. For the committee’s knowledge, I’m also co-chair of the coalition to end homelessness, with Mayor Lisa Helps, and have been for some years. I used to work in the Ministry of Human Resources, so I have some social policy background as well.

For our businesses, what has happened is that repeat smash-and-grabs and broken windows have led to many of them simply not making insurance claims, for fear that they’ll lose their entire content and building insurance. We have generated some funds with the city. We provide some grants. I know Prince George and others are as well. It used to be that parking was the biggest problem for our members, but this is the number one problem. I can tell you that we just had our BIABC conference in Coquitlam two weeks ago. This was the topic for every BIA, whether it was Vancouver, Victoria or Quesnel.

With the International Downtown Association, this is the number one impact. You’ve had two years of very low revenues and, in many cases, a rapid rise in this type of criminal behaviour. If you sell hats and someone busts your window and it’s a $1,000 deductible, you have to sell a lot of hats to make up that $1,000. It has become the number one problem, but it’s a small group that is really creating a lot of this. For many who are unhoused, they’re not creating this challenge. This is really mental health and addictions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): On the split assessment, I can’t support you more on that. Thank you for making that request. I’m hearing from many communities and small businesses. I’m West Vancouver–Capilano. I’ve got a lot of small districts there with small businesses. It’s a real issue, and it’s driving businesses away. Thank you for your work on that.

[4:25 p.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing other questions. Jeff, I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, for coming and making a case on behalf of small businesses, reminding us that things have changed, that what may have been priorities at one time are entirely different priorities now, that we need to respond to that and that this is a context of mental health.

Our final presenter today is Bill Irving.

BILL IRVING

B. Irving: Thank you for this opportunity. I guess you saved the best for the last. Or you’re anxious to get out of here, and I’d better hurry up.

Just a couple of things I want to present as an introduction. I’ve been mayor in Ucluelet and a councilperson for many, many years. I’ve got my badge from UBCM. Through all that process, I ran across a whole bunch of important issues. I’m going to turn the focus a little bit more on rural communities than on the urban areas, but they’re all tied together. We’re all one province.

When I was speaking with the staff, they recommended that I submit this form. I hope you all have it there — the three topics that I want to speak to, but I did have a broader paper. Hopefully, it’s okay that I leave it behind. If you can circulate it, I’d appreciate that.

Rebuilding rural B.C. I’m just going to highlight the recommendations, particularly time-wise. I think there has to be a major rethink of how we deal with natural resources. First Nations have brought it to everybody’s attention — that the resources adjacent to a community are fundamental to their survival, and that principle applies clearly to non-native communities. Speaking as a mayor who has sat in this room, probably many times, pleading for this, I think there have to be significant alternate streams of revenue for municipalities.

We rely heavily on property taxes and fees on services — not good enough with the huge issues. You cannot imagine the amount of money we’ve spent on both treaty negotiations and the Clayoquot war, and none of that was redeemable. We lost 200 jobs and a lot of income, and there was no alternate. We pled and begged for a timber sale and finally became a community forest after 20 years — a huge, huge bonus to the community as a revenue stream. Just a recommendation that all of B.C. timber sales should be refocused on adjacent communities, not just on timber supply.

The decentralization of government services is huge. I’m going to beat a dead horse here, but we had significant federal jobs on provincial land through the Coast Guard in Ucluelet. They disappeared overnight, and they were centralized in areas that really meant nothing — Prince Rupert and Sidney. It was a huge impact on the community. Anything that’s done in the sense of centralizing these services from the government has a huge impact on small communities, and I think, in the past, decentralization has been a huge economic boost and bonus.

Moving on, then, from rural communities to housing. You’ve had, probably, a lot of presentations on this. We’re just finishing off a housing project in Tofino that I’m involved with. I guess the key recommendation I thought I would have is to not try to capture all the issues of affordability under one umbrella program.

We’ve found, speaking with folks in the U.S. and in Amsterdam, as an example, that big-city policy that ties underemployed people to subsidies for transportation and housing, work, education, has moved people from being dependent to being independent very quickly. Two years is their cycle — a huge bonus. The government needs to think carefully about subsidizing that kind of opportunity. It doesn’t draw from new funds. It just amalgamates all the funds that go from those different packages into one client-based process.

[4:30 p.m.]

Around the community, we would encourage, in the housing programs, that the government seriously consider streamlining the B.C. Housing application program for affordable housing. Right now, for example, we were given a contract for B.C. Housing. Their lawyer looked it over, and we were charged…. The grant that we were given was reduced by the fee to use the B.C. Housing lawyer. We were encouraged to get our own lawyer, for $2,000, to look at what B.C. Housing’s lawyer had already looked at. We asked for some changes. They said: “No, that’s not the process.”

There’s duplication in there that just is wasting money. It’s coming out of administration and not going into the actual building of houses.

The last one I wanted to speak to was emerging economies. I really encourage, in the sense of economics, that they would need champions for emerging economies. B.C. is well positioned in the sense of cellulose-based products, which is a renewable and, also, compostable material. A huge market. We’re just sitting on the sidelines.

Thank you for that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Bill. I’ll now invite the committee to ask you some questions.

B. Bailey: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Irving. You mentioned…. One of the recommendations that you have is to decentralize some of the government services so that municipalities can have the benefit of those jobs and people living there and vitality, and so on. The example you gave was the Coast Guard. Of course, they’re federal.

I’m thinking…. Are there particular examples that would be a good fit that you think of? I was trying to bring something to mind.

B. Irving: For provincial services.

B. Bailey: Yeah.

B. Irving: I mean, from the Tofino and Ucluelet area, the influx of seasonal workers…. With that brings all sorts of issues — crime, drugs, etc.

The contract that the province has with the RCMP is not a community-based program. It’s just efficiency. Anyway, I won’t go down that road too far, but that is one that I think can be retailored. The province does negotiate that.

The other ones that are important to me are fishing and forestry. I believe Minister Osborne now has got a package going on there. I think we can become world leaders again in both fishing and forestry by using partnerships between First Nations communities and universities to develop innovative products — and industry. Bring them all into…. There’s a real role there for both the resource management ministries and, also, for the ministry that is looking for innovation and technology to boost our….

I think there’s a huge…. The key, I think, is…. I’ll beat the federal fisheries drum again. Their office is in Ottawa. I don’t know if there are any fish left in the river there even. The same applies for forestry in B.C. The offices are no longer near the forests. I think that’s a huge detachment that can be replaced and rebuilt.

J. Routledge (Chair): Any other questions?

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Bill. Thank you for taking the time to come from Ucluelet all the way here to Victoria and tell us about your community. Having visited there years ago, a long time ago….

B. Irving: You weren’t form tested, were you?

B. Stewart: No, I wasn’t. I didn’t even know that they existed.

I wonder. In the days when I was there, Mac-Blo was the main timber owner there. Are there B.C. timber sales in that vicinity that would benefit…? I just ask that only because many of my cousins worked for Mac-Blo and stuff like that. So there are B.C. timber sales in that area.

On the housing, you mentioned that the…. What were the things that are…? What types of regulations or application restrictions that you see that maybe were not as applicable to your community as other ones?

B. Irving: Two things. One, just to spill the beans, I no longer live in Ucluelet. I live in North Saanich. Time for a change. It was beautiful living out on the west coast but wonderful living where we are.

[4:35 p.m.]

The reference you made to Mac-Blo — I want to touch on that. They partnered with UBC, and you can see MacMillan’s name is on a couple of…. They did that to create new products so that they could be worldwide.

They were innovators. They were phenomenal. It went downhill when they just went after the timber rather than a service to the province and the community. But I think there’s an encouragement in the Ministry of Forests to really seriously look at those kinds of partnerships, again, to put B.C. back in the running as far as the use of the stewardship of fibre — is a better word — that I think we need to apply. Sorry. I’m just trying to say too many things in a hurry and just watching the clock.

B.C. Housing, that program. I, quite frankly, sat in many housing meetings where government ministries said: “We live in a silo. We’re not really sure what the agenda of our partner is.” That’s not a healthy process. They all agreed, but they just never opened those doors.

B.C. Housing, I believe, could sit down with a group like M’akola. Most of you know that they’re a non-profit, building housing all across B.C., First Nations’ based but working in non-native communities. If B.C. Housing sat down with them and said, “We want 250 units built on Vancouver Island this year; we don’t want to get into the muck of it, but can you do that, and what would be the cost?” then fund them, let them run with it….

They have one lawyer, one application process. They know the ground, and all B.C. Housing has to do, rather than monitor and vet and approve and then inspect — they just, at the end of the year, bring M’akola back in and say: “Hey, what have you done?” It eliminates so much of the administrative cost that is built into each project and refocuses it on housing.

J. Routledge (Chair): Megan gets to ask the last question of the day.

M. Dykeman: Oh, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for coming to make this presentation today. I have a quick question, and I’m hoping, perhaps — I know that you’re leaving some materials behind. Maybe you could provide a bit more materials in this area.

When you talk about integrating client-based services like All Star into schools and communities to challenge youth to live independent of chemical assistance, the hub model where I’m from, which is Langley, we had actually done a little bit of that in some of our city schools, especially where we had high needs of people who were new to the country. So we had Big Brothers, and we had the StrongStarts and everything all in there.

Then we have another school up in Willoughby, where there are a lot of services for families within the schools too. Both of those are elementary schools, though. They’re very sort of that K-to-5 sort of a start. I’m really interested in your thoughts on recommendation 2 and what that would look like. I haven’t heard of All Star before either. I was wondering if you would be sending in some more information, or when you send in that information, if you would be willing to send in a bit more or share a little bit of your ideas.

B. Irving: For the package that I’ll leave behind, I see I do have enough for everybody who remains. It sort of expands on that a little bit.

I will just mention a couple of things. A few years ago, we were at a conference in Vancouver, and the fellow speaking was President Obama’s Housing Minister. He had just come from the Netherlands, where they have a program where they take a client in. They say: “Let’s do an assessment on you. Here’s what you need.” I’m talking everybody from 14 to 30, basically.

Then they start building a program to move them from where they are, very dependent, suffering from low self-esteem and often using drugs as an escape from the stress of so many trials and pressures, and then leading them carefully on. If they go to night school and learn a second language, they get a better job. They get better housing. You know, there’s a whole process where they become fully engaged.

So that’s one part of that program, but in that is a program where they send well-known people, not politicians like myself but through sports or entertainment or whatever, into schools and speaking to them about the wonderful opportunities that we have in life and how the stress of career choices and the stress of social pressure can so much destroy young people. They take a very progressive and active program.

[4:40 p.m.]

We used to have those years ago in schools, where they would bring in athletes or scientists and say: “There are all these wonderful opportunities.” That sort of dropped out of the picture, for a number of reasons. I’d just encourage the rebuilding of that sense that our youth are significantly important and worth the time for athletes, scientists and even politicians to go visit them.

M. Dykeman: I appreciate your presentation.

B. Irving: You’re welcome. I’ll leave this behind for you.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, Bill, we’ll wrap this up. Thank you so much for sharing with us your wisdom and experience. You are a very eloquent champion of rural economies and rural communities.

I’m really struck by your turn of phrase, “stewards of fibre.” That represents quite a shift in attitude, and it’s something that I’ll be thinking a lot about. Thank you very much.

I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:41 p.m.