The committee met at 8:32 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 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.

We are grateful to be meeting to day on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ -speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Welcome to everyone who is listening to and participating in today’s meeting on Budget 2023 consultation. Our committee is currently seeking input on the next provincial budget. British Columbians can share their views by making written comments or by filling out the online survey. Details are available on our website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. The deadline for 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.

I’ll now just say a few words to remind us of the meeting format today. The public hearings today are being held virtually, with presenters organized into small panels based on theme. We’ll be hearing about advanced education and K-to-12 education, with presentations from post-secondary institutions, faculty associations, student associations, school districts and other organizations. We will also be hearing about libraries, arts and culture, and sports.

Each presenter has five minutes for their presentation. To assist presenters, there is a timer available when in gallery view. Following presentations from the panel, there will be time for questions from the committee members. I also ask all presenters to please put themselves on mute, and wait until you are recognized before speaking.

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

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

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

B. Stewart: Good morning. My name is Ben Stewart. I represent Kelowna West.

B. Bailey: Good morning. My name is Brenda Bailey. I’m the MLA for Vancouver–False Creek and the Parliamentary Secretary for Technology and Innovation.

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

M. Dykeman: Good morning. My name is Megan Dyke­man. I’m the MLA for Langley East.

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

[8:35 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Emma Curtis from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Billy Young from Hansard Services.

We can start with our first panel today, which is advanced education institutions. We’ll be hearing from Dr. Philip Steenkamp, Royal Roads University; Kevin Hall, University of Victoria; and Brett Fairbairn, Thompson Rivers University. We’ll have three panellists to begin.

Each panellist has five minutes, followed by an equivalent amount of time for questions from the committee. So it will be 15 minutes of questions.

With that, I will turn it over to Dr. Steenkamp.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 1 – Advanced Education (Institutions)

ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY

P. Steenkamp: Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning, committee.

It’s a great privilege to join you here from the traditional and ancestral lands of the Xwsepsum and Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ families and ancestors.

My name is Philip Steenkamp. I’m president and vice-chancellor of Royal Roads University. I wanted to thank you, really, for the opportunity to be here today.

As many of you might know, Royal Roads has been working over the past four years in collaboration with the University of Victoria and Camosun College to develop a business plan for a new campus on the West Shore of southern Vancouver Island. I would like to begin today by extending our thanks to the government staff who have worked so closely with our team to pull the business case together. Their professional expertise, guidance and advice have been invaluable.

This proposed new campus will support learners along the road of higher learning, whether that is completing a Dogwood diploma, pursuing a professional certificate, earning micro-credentials or getting an undergraduate degree.

As many of you might know, Royal Roads was launched with a forward-looking mandate to develop applied and professional programs and research, delivered in a blended format so that it’s on campus and online. We became experts in remote learning and working from home long before anyone had even heard of Zoom. While the height of the pandemic may be behind us, the lessons of the past two years are still very much on our minds. Now more than ever, it is critical that we remove barriers to lifelong learning.

A significant barrier to post-secondary education is access. As part of the feasibility study that we completed in 2019, we found that post-secondary participation rates on the West Shore were much lower than the provincial average. In fact, direct entry to university was 50 percent of the provincial average. Clearly, proximity to a campus matters, and having a local training option is an important support not only for students but also for sustainable community growth. It can provide the upskilling and the re-skilling opportunities needed for a prosperous future.

Reducing commute times and increasing access to both programming and student supports is, in our view, an excellent way to ensure that more students make the transition to post-secondary, that is to the jobs and skills of tomorrow. In this very rapidly changing world, we need to ensure that everyone has access to the skills that they need to survive and to thrive.

To that end, Royal Roads has gone ahead and bought a piece of property in downtown Langford for a new West Shore campus. This is a sign of our commitment to this project. We’ve also secured significant funding commitments from local government to support this initiative. As you might know, the West Shore is one of the fastest-growing regions in Canada, and many of the new residents in the West Shore are young families.

Our business case is now in front of government, and we are seeking support for the first phase of the capital project and operating funding. We’ve been working on this business case, as I’ve mentioned, for the last three years, and it is a detailed and rigorous business case.

Flexible, modern learning options from Royal Roads and from our other education partners — including Camosun College, the University of Victoria, the Justice Institute of B.C. and school district 62 — will come together under one single roof. It will be possible for a student to complete their Dogwood, get the skills for a first job and then return, if they wish, for a university degree, all while living and working in the West Shore communities.

[8:40 a.m.]

In addition, the West Shore campus initiative will advance reconciliation with Indigenous communities. We’ve been engaging with the local Indigenous communities to ensure that the programming as well as the building design offers a welcoming space to support Indigenous learners. We have support from all of the Chiefs on the West Shore and all of the mayors as well.

This is a unique initiative that would foster unprecedented post-secondary collaboration. There’s a lot of interest in this across the province and across the country. It could become, in my view, a model for others across Canada or even beyond.

We are deeply committed, then, to providing lifelong learning opportunities for all members of our community and helping to build a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable British Columbia. I am hoping that the committee will continue to endorse this initiative. I know we’ve presented before.

I do welcome any questions. Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to present to you.

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

Our next presenter is Kevin Hall from the University of Victoria.

UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA

K. Hall: Good morning, Chair, vice-Chair and committee members.

I wanted to start also by acknowledging that I’m talking to you today from the university campus, which is located on Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ lands. I’d like to pay my respects to Elders, past and present.

As a relatively new British Columbian, I wanted to really recognize the hard work of the MLAs that are serving their constituents across B.C. and really thank the government for their contributions in ensuring that B.C.’s post-secondary education sector remains the strongest in the country.

At UVic, we’re in the process of building a new strategic plan, so we’re out listening to campus. More importantly, we’re out listening to the broader community. We’re asking people: where should UVic go next? What does the community need from us in the next 30 years? How can we play a role in social, environmental and economic change in here in the capital regional district and across the province?

The opportunity to reflect, engage and look ahead will really ensure that we’re responding to the needs of now and the future. I think one thing that’s become absolutely clear is that business as usual is just not good enough. We have to take bold steps and make fundamental shifts in how we imagine every facet of life and be unafraid to experiment with new ways of thinking and doing.

Today I’d like to bring forward three recommendations for your consideration.

First, I really encourage you to see universities like UVic as partners in addressing the rising cost of living. Families and young people are feeling the burden of the crisis and are really being squeezed out of our communities. Last fall, I heard directly from students about their experience, about living in vans, living in tents. It’s really clear that we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to really solve this crisis. The choice between a roof over your head and an education is a choice that no one should have to make.

Stable and affordable housing is a critical component to everybody’s success, health and happiness. Thanks to this government’s support, UVic will open the first of two new student housing residences — which will provide spaces for 782 students this fall — but more has to be done, and more has to be done quickly. We’re committed to finding creative solutions with all partners to ensure that students in communities have access to affordable and stable housing, which will provide a solid foundation for our continued social and economic prosperity. We’d welcome new government investment in housing on campuses like UVic, and we’re poised to help.

Second, I wanted to emphasize that an inclusive and accessible education is a cornerstone of a strong and prosperous society. As the first in my family to attend university, I know that education serves as an equalizer and provides people with the skills to build better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.

Over the coming decade, B.C. will have over one million job openings, 80 percent of which will require some degree of post-secondary education. To meet this challenge, UVic is providing cutting-edge, high-quality programs that produce graduates who will get good-paying jobs. We’re pushing ourselves to respond to business and industry needs by providing flexible programming through micro-credentials to help people upskill and reskill in a rapidly changing world.

It’s also important to share that UVic is home to one of Canada’s largest cooperative education programs, allowing our students to move into their field right away and earn while they learn, so to speak. We’re not done yet, and we continue to be ambitious in our efforts to meet the skill and talent demands of the B.C. economy.

The B.C. labour market profile projects that the greatest demand for talent in B.C. will be in the professional, scientific and technical services areas, which require advanced skills, postgraduate degrees and competency in research, development and innovation. We can and will do more when time permits, and I’m eager to hear your thoughts on what more can be done to ensure that investments are made to meet the challenges ahead.

[8:45 a.m.]

Finally, I mentioned off the top that UVic is engaged in setting a new direction. That includes asking where we’ll be in 30 years. My hope is for a collaborative, knowledge-based economy that’s positioned as the global exemplar for clean technology, innovation and equality, highlighting that clean and inclusive growth. It’s our obligation as educators and researchers to make impacts not only in our local communities but across the globe.

At the heart of UVic, we’re deeply committed to walk the path to truth, respect and reconciliation. We’re already partnering with government to support our collective efforts. The province’s new DRIPA plan provides us with a roadmap and a sense of urgency to live up to our commitments.

One area where the community has stepped up is the recent graduation of 23 inaugural students of the world’s first Indigenous law program. These trailblazers are setting an example that we must follow. There’s an opportunity for strong and purposeful investment in research, innovation and learners’ programs that align with the government’s key priorities of green and clean tech; addressing climate change; and supporting our life and health sciences sector.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you this morning.

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

Our final speaker on this panel is Brett Fairbairn, Thompson Rivers University.

THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY

B. Fairbairn: Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for your work to engage the public of British Columbia and gain input for the Legislature. Like my colleagues, I want to thank the Legislature, thank the committee for this work and thank the government for past support.

I acknowledge that I’m joining from the beautiful, unceded lands of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, a close partner of our university and our first house within Sec­wé­pemc’ulucw.

I’ve been around universities for a number of years, and I can certainly attest that all universities are unique. Each university plays a distinct role, and we collaborate with each other based around our distinctive areas of strength. I’d like to use my few minutes with the committee to acquaint you with some of the distinctive ways in which TRU contributes to the talent challenges facing British Columbia and really supplying the province, concentrating in our region first, with the talent it needs for the society and economy of the future.

TRU is the largest university in the Interior, with about 30,000 students by head count. One of the things that’s very important to us is an inclusion mandate. Our outreach to community, our supports for learners and the upgrading programs we offer really support students to succeed, no matter what their background or level of preparation, whether they’re pursuing trades, academic programs or professional master’s programs, including law — a wide range of programming.

We’ll take in students and help prepare them to succeed and recognize their credits from past experience. TRU has a mandate to be an open learning arm of the post-secondary system in British Columbia. We do that by offering a wide range of online classes through our open learning platform but also by being very flexible and innovative in how we recognize credits from other institutions.

We’ll supply the courses online that students may need to complete their degree at a different university in B.C., or students can bring to us their assortment of credits from other institutions and their experience in relevant areas of business or work. We’ll assess their prior learning and can package that and fill it out to make a degree from TRU. It’s a very flexible model based on piecing together credits from different institutions and upgrading. Important parts of that are also open education resources, keeping down the cost of education for students.

Indigenous engagement is very important to us. About 10 percent of our total student body are Indigenous. We support Indigenization of the curriculum across all of our programs through our Indigenous education office. In addition, we’re establishing institutional learning outcomes that will require all graduates of TRU to be competent in areas that include intercultural understanding and Indigenous knowledge.

We’re also committed to community-based research. Some examples of that would be our early childhood education research network, with faculty members engaging early childhood educators across British Columbia. Also, our researcher-in-residence program with the city of Kamloops, which is an award-winning approach to community-based research that has recently won a national award. We work together with other universities in the interior of British Columbia through the Interior Universities Research Consortium.

[8:50 a.m.]

I apologize if some of the renovations in our building here are coming through in the background.

Given all of that, I certainly want to stress that we’re working hard to prepare British Columbians for the jobs of the future and to help the province meet its challenges in talent. Whether that’s our women in trades program or whether it’s our law and master’s programs, we’re really responding to community needs.

In terms of the recommendations I’ve included, very briefly, in terms of support for these important activities for British Columbia, I would add support for graduate programs and graduate students. Certainly, of the range of talent needs that we respond to, we have had demands from communities for new graduate-level programming and are looking for ways to address that.

Of course, like everybody, we’ve been responding to new challenges in recent years, whether it’s environmental sustainability, mental health for students, indigenization, and appreciate all support that the province can provide to deal with those challenges.

I’d like to thank the committee for meeting with us and thank you once again for engaging British Columbians.

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

That concludes the presentations for this panel. The committee now has about 15 minutes to ask some questions.

B. Bailey: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Nice to hear your presentations this morning.

Brett, nice to see you again. I appreciate hearing the noise in the background. I have that going on in my condo, and it’s usually me, so it’s someone else having that issue this morning.

I appreciate hearing about the different visions you have. It’s an exciting time, I think, in post-secondary, with the opportunity. It’s a great challenge, our talent shortage, but it’s also a huge opportunity, and it’s very interesting to see the innovative ways you’re looking to solve that.

A question for Kevin Hall, if you don’t mind. I was curious about the opportunity to have more student housing. I know that there’s been a large commitment of student housing to UVic. I wonder: do you happen to know what level of demand will remain after that, I think, 782 new units? Does it address 50 percent of what the need is, or…? I wonder if you might have that. If you don’t, perhaps it’s a follow-up.

K. Hall: Thanks for the question. I would say, typically, at universities, that we provide housing for our first-year students, and then the expectation is that the students go out in the communities. There are two problems with that now. Of course, going out into the community means a very expensive housing proposition for some of those students, but it also takes away housing from people that live in the community and need low-cost housing. In my mind, we could easily house up to half of our students, which is 8,000 students, on campus. We’ll currently have around 2,000 beds with the new addition.

I think what we’re looking for is also a little bit of flexibility, because we do have, for example, some outlying lands, and we could work with developers in providing low-cost housing or subsidized housing for students. But there are some issues with carrying debt on our books. It gets carried on the government’s debts, and I don’t think we’ve managed to figure out exactly how that works. I believe at UBC, with their development, they’ve figured out the process.

We could certainly look at working with the private sector in building some housing on some of our outlying lands. We struggle with our municipalities. We have one municipality that works really hard to look at secondary suites in houses, to allow infill housing. We’ve got another municipality that says there’s no way to that. So the availability of housing is a big, critical issue for students that aren’t housed on our campus.

It’s hard to put a percentage on. I’d say out of first-year students, we’re at about 50 percent of the students now, so that’s fantastic. But I think there’s more and more requirement for our graduate students and our upper-year students to find low-cost housing on campus.

B. Bailey: That makes sense. Thank you.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the presentation. Post-secondary is near and dear to my heart. What I particularly like about your institutions is that accessibility for people who may not have traditional educational paths coming into post-secondary.

[8:55 a.m.]

I just have one question to Brett. You talked about the community asking for support for graduate programs, graduate students. Can you be more specific? What are those graduate programs that are in demand that are being asked for?

B. Fairbairn: Thank you very much for the question. I was thinking particularly of two things that we’ve heard from different parts of our community. One is regarding health sciences programming and advance preparation for nurses — so thinking about nurse practitioners in particular. We have an existing master of nursing program, but there’s certainly room for more specialties there, including nurse practitioner.

The other one, really, actually, just last month…. I mentioned our close partners, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. They have come to us and really outlined a deep and long-term need for counselling in their community. That’s a result of the discovery of the 215 unmarked graves last year. Also, as the community has struggled with that over the last year, it’s become apparent to them that each new discovery of any residential school site triggers the same kinds of responses for survivors and their descendants.

It’s also going to be a very long process of dealing with the remains and figuring out how to honour or repatriate them. So they’re concerned about acute and long-term mental health impacts throughout their communities and have asked us about masters and PhD programs in areas related to counselling and social work. We have just received that request from the community and are studying what we can do with our current resources and mandate.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for the presentations today. I just have a question related to…. Although your projects are so exciting and I look forward to watching them progress as they move forward, I’m curious. When we met last time, we were still dealing with a lot of the challenges coming out of the restrictions with the pandemic. I’m wondering how your institutions are doing now.

Are most students back? Are they feeling comfortable moving forward? I know there were quite a few times where you had to move out of restrictions and then back in, and there was a lot of flux. That question is for anybody who’d like to answer it.

P. Steenkamp: Thank you for that question. I would say, indeed, that most of our students are back. Of course, we have a blended delivery model here, so we have on campus and online. Just generally, speaking to colleagues, most students are back on campus. Most are comfortable, I think, with the current arrangements that we have in place.

I think we’re only beginning to understand the kinds of cumulative impacts of the last two years as well. We’ve seen a significant increase in mental health issues with students. We just generally, I think, are all experiencing the stress and anxiety of the last few years and trying to work our way through this.

A big challenge I think we all collectively have is how we continue to offer the flexibility we were able to offer during the pandemic to students on an ongoing basis. We do know that students who, for instance, suffer from, say, social anxiety or issues like that really enjoyed an online environment. But we are challenged to be able to offer both online and on-campus offerings in every instance.

That is something, I think, that we are taking a close look at, and I know my colleagues are taking a close look at that as well.

Perhaps I’ll hand it over to Brett for input on this one as well.

B. Fairbairn: I think you said it, Philip. The long and the short of it is that our students have been back in person since September. That’s been very well received and very successful. We’ve managed through the omicron wave of COVID — but a lot of lingering stress on our communities.

I would add that in an hour, I will be at our first in-person convocation celebration in three years. This is a convocation celebration for our graduates of 2020 — so students who missed out the opportunity who are coming back to do that this morning. That’s an exciting sign of return to in person.

K. Hall: If I could also add…. Students, of course, are the important piece of the university, but we’re also suffering significantly with our staff and faculty, from burnout for the last couple of years and also the associated mental health issues — to deal with that.

[9:00 a.m.]

We’re also struggling to recruit, particularly on the staff side, staff into positions that normally we would get 300 or 400 applications to, because a university is a pretty good place to work. But we’re now getting five or ten applications, and by the time you interview people, they say: “Well, we’ve got a job already.”

It’s a really tough labour market to continue to keep our full complement of faculty and staff and keep them healthy as well. We can’t forget those in the equation.

J. Routledge (Chair): We have a question from Ben and then Mike. I think that will probably be all the time we have.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. It’s good to hear from three campuses of advanced education that are not the ones that we think of first. I say that by brand.

I do think of the challenge, Kevin, that you mentioned about the community in terms of the access to housing in the community for those students that are second year. I do think….

Philip is talking about Langford. I know they’ve been very progressive and trying to advance getting new, younger people into housing, etc.

I’m thinking about the communities that you represent and the specific challenge in terms of housing and what you think the government could do. I know that there’s been lots of talk. At the end of the day, the government wants more housing, and they’re not very receptive — and I don’t blame them — to communities that are pushing back and suggesting secondary suites or whatever. We’ve got to have more development.

Actually, to Kevin, your point about the partnership with private, I do think that that’s…. It’s got to happen. It can’t go onto the government’s debt and their balance sheet.

If you’ve got any specific recommendations, each one of you, about your communities — Kamloops, Victoria….

Philip, I’m not really quite certain whether you’re going to be Langford or out on the West Shore, where I know where the campus is right now.

What do you think could be done, with local government…? What would be a recommendation to government that you have?

P. Steenkamp: Maybe I could begin.

Nice to see you again, Ben.

The campus proposal I mentioned…. Kevin addressed this housing issue. We really believe that if you build closer to home, that will help the housing issue. A lot of the students from the West Shore commute into UVic. If they’re able to stay at home and go to a campus much closer to home and take UVic programs there or Camosun programs or Royal Roads programs, that will help. So supporting that closer-to-home option is really important. Some students are looking at a two- or three-hour commute, given the traffic issues here, which is incredible.

That’s one thing. The other thing is…. We have purchased this four-acre piece in downtown Langford. Langford has been very, very supportive of the project and I know will assist us in zoning. The first phase of this will be a campus building, but there’s room on that site for student housing.

Like Kevin has said, we would really be urging government support for building more housing and dealing with this debt issue. Some of our institutions actually have the capacity to build. If we could get into partnerships with private developers, I think that might be helpful too.

We also committed, for instance, to looking at including child care in all of these developments as well, which is a critical need.

I’ll hand it over to my colleagues.

K. Hall: Ben, if I can just kind of build on Philip.

I actually think it’s…. Although we’d love government investment into on-campus student housing, I don’t think it’s a wise…. It’s not our top priority in terms of what we would need for infrastructure. So the ability to actually work with private developers to utilize some of our land to build housing for students, staff and faculty, quite frankly, which would really help lessen the burden on the housing market here in Victoria, would be fantastic.

I think that’s, hopefully, a relatively simple accounting procedure that would allow us to carry the debt. We could work on a land lease, for example. We could actually generate revenue from that. I think there are a lot of developers really poised to step in and work with the university. I’ve had a lineup of people going: “Hey, if you ever think about doing something on this piece of land, let me know; we’re here to provide the capital and the know-how.” So I think that’s the important part.

Transportation. We can’t do enough with transportation. As Philip said, a lot of our students come from the West Shore. They then get frustrated. Sometimes it’s an hour, an hour and a half to get to campus. The highway is congested. So I think working in conjunction with some infrastructure work in transportation would be fantastic.

[9:05 a.m.]

Finally, I do think…. We do have a municipal-based system of setting bylaws for housing. I’m not sure where the government could put pressure points on the municipality. I know Minister Eby has talked about this a number of times. But it seems that we’re all in this together as British Columbians, so we all have to build the solution. That includes the private house owners who want to do something and want to build secondary suites on their properties. How do we create a mechanism that allows that to happen?

B. Fairbairn: I want to support what Philip and Kevin have said. Until two years ago, I wouldn’t have said that we experienced housing pressures in our communities in the Interior, but that has changed dramatically. That’s an effect of what’s going on in industries. It’s an effect of people moving in from the Lower Mainland and of the impact of the pandemic on things like the homestay programs we used to rely on.

It has become an acute crisis in Kamloops, but I would also say that the city of Williams Lake has talked to us about housing pressures there and what we could do with our campus to open up additional housing.

It is about developing our lands to make housing available. We certainly have been working on that. I want to share that we have had a number of very innovative projects. We have market condos and rentals on our main campus in Kamloops. We have students right now who are in trailers, like the work camps up north, that we have located on a parking lot. We’re hoping to construct new, modular-style student housing in short order.

Municipal regulations have been a hindrance. I do want to stress that. The red tape, the ambiguities about what’s required for permitting, the way that that delays our progress — those have been very, very significant barriers to responsive and flexible and innovative solutions.

M. Starchuk: Coming from local government, I feel your pain when it comes to zoning and OCP and those kinds of things that are there.

Dr. Steenkamp, I believe it was you that mentioned that there was a consideration taken into place for child care, which is incredibly important to some of those students that are there.

More to my point, I think you mentioned that as part of your partners, Dr. Steenkamp, you had the Justice Institute in there. I was just curious as to the role of the Justice Institute. What was the curriculum that was there at your school?

P. Steenkamp: The Justice Institute was a later partner to this project. UVic and Camosun were there with us from the beginning. But I started a discussion with the Justice Institute. They lease a facility in downtown Victoria, so they’re looking to move to a more permanent home.

The West Shore would be a very good location for them. What they would offer would be public safety training generally, including paramedic as an example. Again, a fantastic model — a unique model in Canada — where a student could come in and take programming from any one of those four institutions, including really important public safety training as well.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you, everyone. I’ll conclude this panel by thanking you for taking the time to meet with us, engage with us, share your visions with us. I think that one of the things that came through strongly as a theme in all of your presentations is your responsiveness to a changing world and your attention to the lived reality of students and the commitment to make sure that advanced education enriches the lives of your students but also the lives of the communities that they’ll be returning to.

Thank you very much for your vision.

We’ll now take a break.

The committee recessed from 9:09 a.m. to 9:22 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good morning, everyone. We’ll now proceed with panel 2, advanced education. We’re going to hear from the faculty associations.

Our first presenter is Dr. Daniel Laitsch, representing the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 2 – Advanced Education (Faculty Associations)

CONFEDERATION OF UNIVERSITY FACULTY
ASSOCIATIONS OF B.C.

D. Laitsch: Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to provide this commentary.

I am Dr. Dan Laitsch. I’m president of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations, or CUFABC. I’m also a faculty member at Simon Fraser University.

I’m joining you today from the unceded, unsurrendered territories of the Coast Salish people, including the Katzie, Kwantlen, Matsqui, Qayqayt, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Tsleil-Waututh and Stó:lō First Nations.

CUFABC represents more than 5,500 faculty members, including professors, academic librarians, instructors, sessional instructors and lecturers at B.C.’s research universities — Royal Roads University, Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, University of Northern British Columbia and University of Victoria.

Budget 2022 did well to support our province in recovery, and I want to thank you for listening to us and incorporating many of our recommendations in your report last year. We bring to you now a proposal for consideration that builds on the momentum of last year’s budget, to see through the collective vision for an economic future that is inclusive, sustainable and innovative.

There are 72,000 workers in B.C.’s public post-secondary institutions, 39,000 of which are at institutions of CUFABC’s member faculty associations. The research universities and the faculty who work within them are an incredible powerhouse of economic growth and opportunity in this province, as employers, as contributors to the research and understanding of our geopolitical time and as skilled educators leading the way in comprehensive skills training to the population.

In recent years, we have been asked to play a bigger role in the just recovery, as we continue to educate the population for the jobs of tomorrow and support British Columbians in making life better for everyone. Our submission today offers a pathway to an economic and policy environment that we think will continue building a strong, educated future for British Columbians, one that affirms the value of public education and strategically invests in B.C.’s future.

We urge you to support people at B.C.’s research universities to strategically reinvest in the human infrastructure at our universities at a time when we can best contribute to the economy and the just recovery for all.

[9:25 a.m.]

We urge you to restructure the funding model to focus on people and, most importantly, to assert the primacy of public funding to universities by reducing an overreliance on precarious employment and international student tuition. I’d be happy to talk with you more about this important issue.

We urge you to create a stabilization fund to offset the huge impacts of inflation and the subsequent consequences on the currency exchange that impact teaching and research materials at our universities. Money doesn’t stretch as far as it did, even compared to last year. The reality of inflation is that institutions and individuals are falling behind as purchasing power erodes.

We need to focus on recovery and expansion of faculty personnel and strengthening of health plans and comprehensive mental health initiatives for faculty and all the campus community members. A stabilization fund would also focus on reduction of institutional budgetary risk caused by an overreliance on international student tuition. It would also help offset fluctuating currency exchange rates, which can substantially increase university costs for resources that are priced in U.S. dollars. This includes textbooks, journals, software and other licences, and lab supplies and reagents for research.

We urge you to support research by creating a provincial transitional research grant, open to all disciplines, to support researchers in fields negatively impacted by the pandemic and rising inflation. Universities require a targeted infusion of resources to support research until grant monies and inflation levels return to normal, personnel are rehired and trained, labs are fully restored, and research collaborations are rejuvenated.

Last year’s record climate disasters, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic response and the huge impact of income inequality highlight just how important university research in STEM but also in the humanities and social sciences is as a tool to understand and address the core problems our society faces. Research supports are also one of the best ways to help students, because they are often hired under these grants to manage projects. Through these projects, students further develop the skills that feed into innovative developments and public-private start-ups.

We urge you to continue to support truth and reconciliation, equity and inclusiveness. More than ever, Internet access is an essential service, and we urge you to continue to invest in provincewide Internet access.

We urge you to implement the calls to action of the post-secondary education community made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — and specifically, calls 11, 16, 62, 63 and 65. It is an ethical imperative that government provide ongoing support to B.C.’s universities in creating degree and diploma programs in Aboriginal languages, hiring Indigenous faculty into permanent positions and financing research programs aimed at dismantling systems of racism, discrimination, criminalization of poverty and state-sanctioned brutality.

We’ve seen our universities and colleges stepping up to support their communities over the course of the pandemic. With the right investment, we think that universities can continue to play a critical role in an economic and social recovery of our province. Investing in students and research will pay dividends long into the future. Our priorities address your priorities in the goals of the 2023 budget by catalyzing innovation, sustainability and inclusiveness.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

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

Next, we’ll hear from Brent Calvert, Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C.

FEDERATION OF
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATORS OF B.C.

B. Calvert: Great. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. It’s my pleasure to be here giving input on the 2023 budget. My name is Brent Calvert, and I’m the president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia. We proudly represent over 10,000 education workers at 19 public colleges and universities and seven private institutions right across British Columbia.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining today from the territories of the Stó:lō, Sts’ailes and Cheam peoples.

I wanted to start out with a compliment, and that compliment is the work that’s being done with Ravi Kahlon, in the Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation. I truly believe that the work of Mariana Mazzucato is challenging us to put the problems of our time front and centre and bringing sectors together about how we can work with problems around climate change, sustainability, inequality, gender parity and how each sector can collaborate together to help solve these problems.

I think this is a great focus for the government to have taken. I applaud that work. When we elevate these problems to our primary points, we’ll have long-lasting and different changes than we’ve experienced in the past.

I’ve got a couple of recommendations I wanted to make. The first one is a keep doing recommendation. That keep doing recommendation is to continue to improve access to B.C. post-secondary education through the student access grants. This is a real difference-maker, and it provides opportunities for students and reduces barriers for them to achieve post-secondary education.

I’d like to take a minute of your time just to have you reflect back on the difference that your education has made in your lives. We have the opportunity to expand this to as many people as we can. I think that’s a great thing.

[9:30 a.m.]

The second “keep doing” piece is the work that’s being done with the employment standards branch and the Labour Relations Board. These are both important for supporting workers and making sure that the work that’s going on in the post-secondary education sector and others has a fully functioning Labour Relations Board and employment standards group that can respond to situations, monitor and make sure that the work is being done in a fair and equitable manner.

On to the post-secondary piece specifically, my second recommendation is to really have an examination of the post-secondary education budget. The budget currently has a very ambitious capital plan in it. What it also has is the promise to strengthen tuition limits. However, what’s missing is the reality that we have dead, flat enrolment numbers. As a result of that, there’s a projected 13 percent jump in international student tuition projected out.

It really raises a question of ethics and an over-reliance on one source of potential revenue. University administrators have become very reliant on this. It’s something that really needs to be examined with a different lens, and it needs to be said out loud.

The other part is that the over-reliance on international students is also paralleled with an over-reliance on contract faculty. Contract faculty are often paid at a much lower rate, and they’re not able to contribute to the full functioning of the university, which does dampen and lessen the experience within the post-secondary sector for all involved.

My third recommendation is, again, to reinvest and look long-term at the investment in the citizens of British Columbia that can be achieved through post-secondary education. The Future Ready economic plan talks about over 100,000 job openings to be filled. Post-secondary has a very dramatic and impactful role to play in that.

Again, I’d ask you to reflect back on the doors that education has opened for you in the pursuit of the work that you do and the opportunity that we do have to provide that for more people.

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

Next we’ll hear from Gara Pruesse, Vancouver Island University Faculty Association.

VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

G. Pruesse: Thank you. Honoured members of the Finance Committee, I speak to you today about meaningful accessibility to post-secondary education for British Columbians with disabilities.

Thanks to previous accessibility programs, B.C. has made great strides towards the increased physical accessibility of our campuses. But let us acknowledge that in the world of education, access to ideas and skills development is what it’s all about and is what an accessible campus is there for.

Faculty are the front-line workers, enabling students to acquire knowledge and skills. I want to illustrate some important characteristics of faculty work, particularly faculty at teaching-focused universities, such as my own, Vancouver Island University. In general, we can categorize work assignments as time-assigned, mission-assigned or task-assigned. These categories refer to different ways of defining what full-time means.

For example, for some people, full-time means doing 35 hours a week, if it allows, and that is your commitment to your employer. Such workloads are time-assigned. If the work your employer wants done is more than that, then you will be….

J. Routledge (Chair): Sorry, Gara, you’re a little far away from the microphone.

G. Pruesse: Sorry. My other mike is out of power. It’s not going entirely according to plan. My mike is not responding.

If you have more than enough workload, then what happens is your employer hires somebody else, and the work gets assigned to another person.

Other people, like university deans or government ministers, are mission-assigned. The work forwards the mission. When it looks like the work is more than one person can do in the work week, then, again, more human resources are deployed, and you hire, say, a deputy minister or an associate dean or an executive assistant.

[9:35 a.m.]

Then there’s another kind of assignment, the task-assigned work. Piecework falls into this category, such as a factory worker paid for every shirt that they sew. Another example is the university professor in a teaching-focused university, for which your workload is maybe eight courses. So you have the 35-hour bag of work, and you fill it with your eight courses.

Now, if eight courses define your work, the dean is free to give you other tasks and stuff them into your bag of work until it’s overflowing, and you’re now working 45, 50 hours a week.

Now, at this point, you may be…. Your work is all assigned. The term is starting. At this point comes to you a student with special needs. That student has a disability accommodation. So here’s your student, and you better hope that they are robust and resilient, because you’re going to take that student and stuff them into your already-full bag of work.

That’s what we do with students who have a disability accommodation. We have to stuff their needs into an already-full day of work.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we want true accessibility, we will provide faculty with time to work with students who need accommodations.

Furthermore, students and faculty could be more effectively supported by disability and accommodation staff who could be repositories of best practices, and who should be networking provincially to continually raise the bar and share information.

B.C. has been so forward-thinking in establishing provincewide articulation committees and the online B.C. Transfer Guide. Why can’t we do something similar in articulating ability and disability? Why shouldn’t we be the leaders in universal design for education?

We could and should do this, and you should resource it. Introduce funding associated with each student with a disability. Develop ability articulation centres, where people develop effective enabling tools and practices, and disseminate best practices by establishing networks and a provincewide ability articulation committee.

Thank you for your attention.

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

Next, we’ll hear from Lynelle Yutani, Camosun College Faculty Association.

CAMOSUN COLLEGE FACULTY ASSOCIATION

L. Yutani: Thank you so much. My name is Lynelle Yutani, and I’m the descendent of Ainu Indigenous people of Japan and Anglo-Europeans, all of whom became colonizers.

I’m a settler woman residing on the unceded and traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples of the Songhees, Esquimalt, W̱SÁNEĆ Nations, now known as the Inner Harbour of Victoria, B.C., where I have been privileged to reside uninvited since 2010.

I’m speaking here today as the president of the Camosun College Faculty Association and the over 600 post-secondary faculty members we represent. My pronouns are she and her.

While it is a pleasure to once again provide my input for the 2023 budget, despite the good work that’s in progress, sadly, I can’t say it actually seems like the recommendations my colleagues and I made to you last year really made an impact to the students and communities I serve.

Fortunately, I don’t give up easily, and I’m back to provide you with recommendations of a more sweeping and radical nature, in the hope that you will have trouble dismissing them without at least entertaining them.

My first recommendation today is to halt the concerning trend towards commodifying our education system. You heard from Brent how important it is to immediately increase direct block grant funding to each institution funded through the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training to address that long-standing asymmetry and also pandemic shortfalls.

Most of our organizations cannot wait for the overdue funding review, and, with respect, my own organization has referred to our projected deficit as 500 international student enrolments and pressuring faculty to excessive workloads and has already begun to create efficiencies, which we’ve come to interpret as a euphemism for cutting services, courses, programs and jobs at our local.

[9:40 a.m.]

Commodification will have a chilling effect by reducing services and programs vitally needed by local communities and our province. Education should never be seen as a product in and of itself. We are told this is at the behest of the government. As instructors, when our working conditions suffer, so too do students’ learning conditions and, by extension, the true products of our labour, which are the successful graduates who are skilled and ready to perform the over 100,000 future jobs identified, that we need, in the B.C. labour market outlook.

My second recommendation is to eliminate salary from all collective bargaining for all public sector employee contracts in the province after upwardly adjusting wages to reflect regionally and nationally competitive rates. Thereafter, all future contractual increases shall be permanently tied to cost-of-living and inflationary adjustments, exclusive of step and scale increments.

College and university instructors in B.C. earned the lowest wages nationally, and everyone in this room can agree that B.C. wages are behind our regional and national comparisons — sometimes by as much as 30 percent. Our highest-skilled workers and graduates leave B.C. to pursue greater economic stability and housing affordability elsewhere.

From our perspective, employers councils have been intentionally and artificially suppressing wages under the guise of budgetary constraints — a factor that has contributed to what some call a labour shortage but which in reality is merely a shortfall in fair compensation.

Economies grow most when money circulates, not when it’s sequestered. This is true even for governments. Rather than a contrived, complicated scheme to suppress the rising cost of living, put our taxes to work by investing directly in all of us, and see the effect it has to build things back better.

My third recommendation is to immediately expand the successful tuition waiver program for former youth in care to include Indigenous persons and those of other marginalized equity-seeking groups and expand funding for education programs which support, teach, promote and advocate for justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization, anti-racism and human rights. This may be the most important recommendation that I make here today and, honestly, the one that has the potential to do the most to further B.C.’s commitment to not only honour truth and reconciliation but to craft our future as a just society.

One of my own students — who had aged out of the foster care program and who as a child had experienced abuse and poverty — through the tuition waiver program was able to break that cycle, to graduate in a desperately needed health profession, and has become a leader for their peers and a beacon to their patients and clients. This is how we decolonize the fabric of our province and our nation and reconcile with the horrors of our past: by uplifting those who most need it and investing in the programs that help us to celebrate our stories.

I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

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

Next we’ll hear from Victor Villa, Selkirk College Faculty Association. After we’ve heard from Victor, we’ll open it up to questions for the entire panel.

It turns out that Victor has not joined us yet.

That concludes our panel, and we’ll open it up for questions.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’m going to ask Brent…. Actually, I will say that I heard quite consistently here a concern about the overreliance on international student tuition. In looking at alternative ways of funding public education, I’m not hearing of a replacement for that.

I did want to just clarify…. Brent, you had said that in the examination of the post-secondary budget, there’s an aggressive capital plan and a commitment to strengthening tuition limits, which is good. Did I hear you say that there was stagnant enrolment in post-secondary? I am unclear about that. Can you explain where that comes from?

B. Calvert: Sure. If you look in the budget, under the Advanced Education and Skills Training area, you’ll see that the projected enrolment number doesn’t change over the three years of the projected budget. The term I used was “dead flat.” Looking at the demographics for the province is one way you can interpret that.

[9:45 a.m.]

Facing the skills gap that we talked about with the Future Ready plan, what it also suggests is that it’s not just looking at high school numbers. It’s looking at people who have been displaced through work, potentially through COVID and these kinds of things, that may have to return — adult learners and people looking to transition in careers.

But the projected numbers in the budget are flat for three years, which is very concerning. It points a finger, again, back to the reliance on international education as the saviour here. It would be quite disturbing to me if you take the reliance on international students as a de facto standard at this point. We haven’t had that before.

I’ll be very blunt. Our public education system is on the verge of becoming private. That’s on the government. We pay taxes, as citizens, into this. The amount of government funding has fallen. I would hazard a guess that it was in the high 80s when I was a student and went to school, and to now, in some cases, it’s below 50 percent of what the institutions are receiving. The reporting requirements for government are increasing, but the funding is falling. That’s a potential trap that we have to really watch out for.

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

May I ask a second question?

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes, please do.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I’ve got a question for Dr. Laitsch. You had said, in the research category, that there needs to be an infusion of money for research until grants are restored. I’m paraphrasing. I just want to make sure I understand that there has been an interruption in your NSERC and other funding sources for research since the pandemic. Did I understand that correctly?

D. Laitsch: One of the challenges that research faculty face is generally having their research interrupted — not being able to get into their labs and not being able to do the kind of research that they were doing before the pandemic hit. What that means is it delayed the work they were doing. Now, SSHRC and NSERC and those organizations were very good about automatically extending the access to the funds that we had. But what that meant is that we weren’t applying for new funds, we weren’t completing the research that we were doing, and we weren’t moving our research agenda forward.

What we’re hoping to do, or what we would really like support to do, would be to return to advancing that agenda, because of a reinvestment in funds that are made available to faculty members. Simply just continuing the current funding stream doesn’t address that interruption to the research that was caused by the pandemic. Additional funding could help support filling that gap.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): In a way, it’s bridge funding until…. Okay. Thank you very much.

D. Laitsch: Yes, exactly.

B. Bailey: Thank you for the presentations today. My question is in regards to the move that we’re seeing towards micro-credentialing in many places — trades, technology and elsewhere. I’m wondering what the implications are for the people you represent in the faculty associations.

Anyone.

L. Yutani: I’m happy to jump in on that. I have some positive comments about micro-credentials. They can bring education to people at exactly the moment that they need it.

For example, photovoltaic is a growing part of electrical engineering, but it wasn’t part of most electrical engineers’ education, especially those that have the 20 and 30 years of expertise in working in the field. For them to be able to return to school at a time and a price that’s convenient to them and to build onto their current credential portfolio is a really wonderful opportunity.

The challenge and problem that I personally have experienced at our local is the reluctance to acknowledge that that is faculty work. It’s instructional work and should be unionized employees and not precarious ones.

Whenever you build…. For example, organizations are seeking to take a host of micro-credentials and stack them together and have them be equivalent to credit.

[9:50 a.m.]

The unfortunate reality is that while it is less expensive on the individual course or, perhaps, it is affordable for a single individual course at a time, by the time the student completes the entire program of equivalence, then they will have paid, sort of a rents-to-own situation: “I’d love to have this really lovely TV, but I don’t have enough money today to do that, but over the course of the five years that I pay for it, I’ll pay ten times the sticker price, because I’ve done so in dribs and drabs.”

That is the unfortunate reality that I see happening to students. They’ll do it, because they can only afford to do it a little tiny bit at a time, but in the end, it will have absolutely cost them substantially more, and it will create, I think, an unhealthy competition between organizations to recruit that particular kind of student, where their investment as an organization is low, but their profit is maximized, and the student is the one who suffers.

D. Laitsch: If you don’t mind, I’d like to jump in and comment on a really key point I think Lynelle made: that these programs need to be academic programs with academic oversight. That means that academic senates control the micro-credentials from the university side. I think it’s still very important to have the partnership with private sector employers and to make sure that the product is focused on melding that pathway between university and employment. The academic quality needs to be overseen by academic faculty.

The other thing that concerns me in the micro-credential discussion is when it becomes something like offsetting or off-loading organizational professional development because you think it would be cheaper or easier for universities, colleges or other people to do that training. Training at the organizational level is really critical in understanding the organizational culture, the work that gets done there, and we don’t want to lose that kind of nuance by simply ceding it to these kinds of micro-credentials.

I think micro-credentials show interesting possibility, and it will be fascinating to see how they roll out and how employers embrace them and how academic institutions embrace them, but I am a little bit concerned about the academic oversight and the academic quality of those programs as they roll out.

M. Starchuk: I think this goes to Brent as well. You had mentioned a reliance on the contract faculty. I was curious whether or not your organization had put together a business case to show how it would make a difference.

B. Calvert: Sure, we have. We’ve actually submitted material on this, over the last five or six years, to the B.C. government. I’m happy to reshare those if needed. I’m going to try to weave together a couple of comments on micro-credentials with your question about contract faculty.

The numbers are grim. The rate of what we call non-regular or contract faculty has grown and is surpassing the 50 percent mark at a number of the institutions in British Columbia. The situation we’re creating is where we have non-regular faculty having to work at two, three or sometimes four institutions to be able to piece together enough to survive in British Columbia. These are people that have done graduate work and have advanced degrees, and we have students coming into classrooms being taught by these people. If only they knew the struggle that they faced. It’s quite disturbing.

For the employer, the tuition or the nut or whatever for the class stays the same. Having the lowest-cost delivery mechanism, through a contract faculty member, creates that revenue gap — where they budget at top of scale for a regularized faculty member but deliver with a bottom-of-scale contract worker, then slide the revenue into general revenue and use it at their institution for capital projects. I mean, it’s a pretty straight-ahead piece.

The pairing that alarms me is that when we look at micro-credentials combined with contract faculty, we’re really getting into a high-stakes efficiency game. It’s a very attractive concept to think that you can take a micro-credential, three months of part-time studies on a course. Boom, it sets you off on a new career direction.

[9:55 a.m.]

It may do that, but it also comes along with the challenges that we face with numeracy, literacy, problem-solving and teamworkin the workplace, which can’t be solved through a micro-credential. The broader competencies are what we need to remain focused on. Dan’s comment about academic oversight is key.

Currently employers are setting up micro-credentials to be delivered through continuing studies programs. Continuing studies in British Columbia generally falls outside the unionized workforce area. Courses don’t run unless enrolment is full. So we are creating the conditions of a perfect storm. The opportunity for B.C. is to sort of tactfully integrate micro-credentials into what we’re already offering and use them to potentially open more doors. Those adults in transition with work would be a key part, where they can rediscover: “Yes, I can undertake some continuous learning.”

We could really push the envelope here and get into things like family access grants. In communities where people are from, why not set families up with vouchers for post-secondary education? Let them assign them as they would through their families. That would be a really progressive move, and that would be right in line with the economic plan, as I read it, and some of the indicators that we’re looking for, beyond GDP, as measures of communities and happiness in our society.

B. Stewart: I’m going to ask Daniel first. You’ve described that there’s a dependence on international students. I’d like to know what the percentage of international students is at the different institutions you represent. I’ve got a second question after that.

D. Laitsch: Thanks for that question. We can get you the information on an institution-by-institution basis. I don’t have that in front of me.

At SFU, somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of our students are international students. I’m afraid I’m might give you wrong information, but they supply a very large portion of the student tuition, much more than the 20 percent of their population would dictate. What that creates is this storm where if international student enrolment is not met, it creates a drop in the budget that is disproportionate to the number of students.

For example, looking at the pandemic, in general, many of our institutions initially weathered the enrolment of international students fairly well. But I think what we’re seeing now is a dip in international student enrolment as a result of the pandemic and the slow return to in-person education, as well as students finding other options for education in their home countries during that time.

To me, that creates a risk on the government’s side that you’re going to be running into budget shortfalls at institutions because of the dip in international student enrolment, which is completely separate from the block funding that is given for domestic student enrolment. I just think it’s something that government needs to be aware of and to think about from a risk standpoint, rather than simply as an opportunity to get more funding to offset flat or decreasing support from the public sector.

B. Stewart: Okay, the second part. What you describe is that the threat, either perceived or real, is a result of what has happened post-COVID. We don’t know if it’s a long-term trend. I know, having worked a bit on international education, usually the problem is in trying to keep it under the government’s mandate. I think it’s around 25 percent.

You’ve confirmed the number. It’s kind of in that bailiwick. I guess what I’m trying to understand is where the threat to the faculty is. They’re not really…. The resources that they take away is if the numbers decline. Okay.

D. Laitsch: I can expand on that as well. One of the things that happens at universities is that we are governed by the PSEC mandate, PSEC regulations, in the costing of faculty salaries and positions. Institutions come in, and they get about half of their budget now from government, and that falls under the PSEC mandate, as far as investing in faculty.

The other half of their budget they get to spend however they want. Generally, what that creates is a situation where they invest it. I think Brent mentioned construction and facilities, but they also invest it in administrative staff.

[10:00 a.m.]

What we’ve seen at SFU, for example, is an increase, over the last decade, of 600 administrative positions where, at the same time, we’ve seen less than 100 faculty positions added to the roles. So it creates this artificial incentive to hire outside of faculty ranks. It becomes very difficult, as unions and as faculty members, to actually ensure that we have the quality teaching and the quality researchers that we need to, again, contribute to the welfare of British Columbia.

B. Stewart: Okay. Well, obviously, I haven’t managed a university, but I do know the former chancellor there pretty well. I would have thought he would have been very much aligned with balance in that area.

Thanks very much for explaining that. I appreciate that.

B. Calvert: Can I just hop in on the tail of that, please? How we see this manifested, with that 25 percent number — and I think that’s pretty accurate — is that we see programs that are created entirely only for international students. We have that happening in the province. We have priority registration only for international students. We have faculty being told: “Don’t fail this person, because they’re an international student.” I mean, these are some horrible optics. This is a really difficult position to be in. We have a lot of students who are underprepared.

Now, the real onus of the responsibility here isn’t on the student. It’s on the institutions — the underprepared institution — for being able to take people in, with where they’re at, and helping them progress from that point and not feeling the financial pressure that comes with it. Alex Usher refers to this situation as something called “the hustle.”

Our eye is straying off of our academic mission and our academic focus and our legislative focus that comes through the acts that we fall under with our post-secondary institutions. It’s shifting to getting into the recruitment and marketing game. More and more dollars are being allocated to that, either through administration or recruitment or chasing the international money. That’s the privatization that I’m talking about. We’re entering into the global game of education. It’s a massive business.

By us shifting that focus, I really think government needs to rethink their role. The part that’s being played is…. There are no restrictions on the money that comes in through international students. It’s available for the institutions to use to do what they need. But you have to look beyond what’s happening and see that the reason why they’re doing this is because we don’t have adequate public funding for what’s taking place. So it’s a survival game.

There are lots of ways to improve and fix this, but we have to be clear about what it is first, if we’re really going to make some moves.

B. Stewart: Can I ask one more question of, I think, probably, either Lynelle or Gara?

I can sense that the faculty staff, coming out of COVID, with the hybrid model and all the challenges that they’ve faced…. Forget about the things we’re talking about on international students, etc. It seems to me that we’ve heard consistently in other groups about mental health challenges. Are there enough supports at the institutions for people to have that support?

L. Yutani: Absolutely not, just to be quite frank. Support comes in many, many ways. I think that some of the faculty would feel very supported and their mental health would improve if their workloads improved. If the lessons that we learned and that we were telling our employers are the best ways for us to teach and the best conditions for our students to learn under, whether they be hybrid or highly flexible classroom situations….

We’re not being listened to. We’re being ignored and disenfranchised in terms of the collegial governance of our organizations and the autonomy to teach in the way that we, from an academic perspective, believe to be genuinely the most effective way for students to meet their outcomes.

[10:05 a.m.]

Couple that with dismally small mental health resources in terms of the average number of appointments a family…. Through the benefits systems that many of us share through common agreements, there are less than ten visits total for an entire family for a certified counsellor. If you have a family of four, you can’t even divide that amongst everyone evenly.

It’s really difficult in terms of not only not being able to pay for those visits, but there are not enough certified counsellors and psychologists to actually serve our needs. Even our students are suffering. Counselling services are being contracted at our organizations as well, even though the demand for them is higher than ever.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you for that. I’m sorry to say we’re going to have to wrap it up now. We have other panels waiting to present to us.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to meet with us and engage with us. You have reminded us that when government makes choices, which then can impact on your administrations making choices, those choices have an impact on I think what one of you referred to as the front-line education workers. You’ve been very eloquent, building on what each other has been saying about the impact that it’s had on you as educators and on your lives. You even presented us with a visual of how overstuffed your share of the work has been. We’ll remember that. So thank you again.

D. Laitsch: Thank you for the opportunity.

B. Calvert: Thank you. Have a good day.

J. Routledge (Chair): You too.

We’ll break. We’ll take a break now until 10:30.

The committee recessed from 10:07 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): This morning we’re hearing from panels on advanced education. Our next panel is student organizations. We have three different presentations.

Each of you will have five minutes to give a presentation. Then at the end of your presentations, we will open it up to questions from the committee.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 3 – Advanced Education (Student Organizations)

KWANTLEN STUDENT ASSOCIATION

D. Obera: Good morning, everybody. My name is Diamond Obera. I am the policy coordinator at the Kwantlen Student Association. I first of all wanted to say a big thanks to the committee for letting me speak today. Much appreciated.

First and foremost, I also wanted to make a land acknowledgment. I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking to you from the traditional, unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory of the First Nations people.

I am just going to go right into it, then. My first recommendation I have to present to the committee is relating to the international student tuition cap. We ask that the B.C. government move to cap the international student fee increase at 2 percent annually. For many international students studying in Canada, studying in Canada provides an opportunity to access a world-class education that not many people get to experience.

In most of Canada and B.C., international student tuition fee increases are unregulated, while domestic student tuition in B.C. is capped at 2 percent annually. In 2021 and 2022 alone, the average tuition fees for international undergraduate students in Canada rose 4.9 percent from a year earlier, to $33,623. We feel that B.C. has a chance, on this matter, to stand out from the rest of Canada and to significantly support the efforts that international students make in Canada to contribute to the economy financially, culturally and in other ways too.

In the interests of time here, I’m just going to go to my second recommendation. We ask that the government move to offer more funding for local non-profit organizations that support sexualized violence victims, specifically on campuses across B.C. Sexualized violence continues to be an issue on post-secondary campuses across the province. On average, as many as one in four women will, sadly, be sexually assaulted while obtaining a post-secondary education.

We feel that that is an immense issue and a significant problem, to say the least. We’re calling on the government to consider providing more support to post-secondary sexualized violence survivors and victims through the work done by non-profit organizations. More research suggests that approximately 60 to 70 percent of on-campus sexual assaults occur in campus residences and that most of the victims of campus sexual assaults know the perpetrator. Again, that’s in relation to the second recommendation that we are putting forward.

Moving on to my third recommendation. It relates to student grants specifically for mature students and students with disabilities. We ask that the government move to increase the funding for students with disabilities and remove some of the requirements to qualify for the federal student loans program.

[10:35 a.m.]

Facing ever-increasing student tuition, as well as the higher food prices that all Canadians have been subjected to, especially Canadian students, students have had a difficult time through the pandemic in basically making ends meet.

This is especially the case for students with disabilities, as they are made to pay extra for services and tools that they may need to function as every other student does. We believe that there is a need for the government to double the money for eligible students with disabilities under the B.C. access grant program for students with disabilities.

Right now, under the B.C. access program for students with disabilities, there’s a requirement for students to be eligible for a federal loan program. Also, to be eligible for a federal loan program, you do have to pass a credit check. Right now with debts that Canadian students are going through, it’s even more difficult to pass a credit check, given that fact. We’re asking the B.C. government to remove the requirement for students to be eligible for the federal loan program too, under the B.C. access grant program.

I’m sorry I went over time, but that’s it for me right now.

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

Next we’ll hear from Izzy, UVic Students Society.

UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
STUDENTS SOCIETY

I. Adachi: Hi. My name is Izzy Adachi. I’m the director of campaigns and community relations, acting on behalf of the University of Victoria Students Society. I’m also a labour activist and board member with the Worker Solidarity Network.

My first recommendation is to increase investments to support hybrid and accessible learning on university campuses. This is something that the UVSS and the Society for Students with a Disability have been advocating on for many years, launching the #Access4All campaign in May 2021. The need for hybrid learning materials, lectures, tutorials and classroom resources is an equity issue for many marginalized members of our community. We believe that education should be provided in a format that makes attending either in person or online equally viable options.

Giving students flexibility in their education by including both online and in-person attendance options will ensure students are able to excel academically in whatever way is best for them. This budget support should include professional development for all instructors on universal design for learning, assistance in implementing online learning tools and software, support for classroom hardware to support hybrid learning and additional funding for teaching assistants to help with hybrid education implementation.

Our schools are not equitable or accessible learning environments until everyone has the equal opportunity to learn here, and solely in-person course delivery is a major barrier to equity. Especially as we cope with the continuation of this pandemic, we should not be exiling our immunocompromised and disabled students from our campuses. It’s completely inappropriate.

My next recommendation is increasing investments in affordable and accessible student housing. The cost of living in Victoria is of the utmost concern for students. Rent has risen by 14 percent here in Victoria in the past two years. Students have been forced into unsafe or illegal living environments just to keep a roof over their heads, if they’re even living with a roof over their heads. Many students have been relegated to tents or living out of their cars just to be able to afford a place to live during their education.

We are subsidizing our landlords’ luxury lifestyles with our student loans, and it is not sustainable. We are completely lost in terms of our plans for the future. Nobody plans to own a home. We just seek to sustainably rent at this point. That is a very sad state of affairs for our province’s youth and our students.

We need funding for affordable, publicly owned residences for students in order to soothe the housing crisis. These should be accessible by public transit. The province should consider the reinstitution of a rental freeze and rent control based on units rather than on tenancy.

[10:40 a.m.]

My final recommendation is on increased investments for grants for students on practicum. Students in essential fields like nursing, education and social work are expected to do an unpaid practicum as part of their degree. This is meant to be a learning experience, but it winds up being unpaid work, in the opinions of our members. This antiquated and inequitable system has disproportionately negative and harmful effects on the people in these fields, who are, by a large majority, women.

This system has placed a huge financial, mental and physical burden on students who must work and meet their other responsibilities on top of their 40-hour unpaid practicums, where they often work 12-hour shifts without pay. Students in nursing have expressed that these practicums often put them in the position of working harder than their actual jobs as employed student nurses.

In an internal survey, 90 percent of respondents felt that the cost of tuition should be lowered, and 77 percent felt that practicums should be paid. This was a survey done by our nursing course union here at UVic, who have been doing excellent advocacy work on practicum reform.

These students are critical to the future of care in our province. They should be compensated for the work that they are doing through financial support. Failure to do so means that marginalized students face higher barriers to success in fields like health care, social services and education, which further reinforces the structural racism, classism and ableism found within these fields.

I see that I’m running out of time, so I just want to say thank you for having us all on, and thank you for your presentation, Diamond. I didn’t hear a single thing that I didn’t agree with in your presentation, so thank you for that.

With ten seconds left, I’m just going to wrap up here. Hopefully I didn’t talk too fast for you all.

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

Next we’ll hear from Eshana.

SIMON FRASER STUDENT SOCIETY

E. Baran: Hi, everyone. My name is Eshana Baran. I’m the VP of external and community affairs for the Simon Fraser Student Society, also known as the SFSS for short.

I’m calling in from the stolen and unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

The SFSS is a student-led, non-profit organization that represents over 26,000 undergraduate students. The SFSS represents membership across our three campuses, located in Vancouver, Surrey and Burnaby. We aim to provide services for our student membership and advocate for student needs that build upon student power.

Today the SFSS has three recommendations they would like to share with the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

Our first recommendation is to increase financial access to post-secondary education through the implementation of a tuition freeze by 2023. We ask that the government increase access to grants, scholarships, bursaries and subsidies for BIPOC, migrant, international and low-income students that ease the burden of unaffordable post-secondary education and precarious housing. Students are relying more on grants now than before.

In the 2020-2021 year, Stats Canada reported that tuition for domestic students rose by 1.7 percent, and 4.9 percent for international students. Data shows that domestic students pay an average of $6,000 to $7,500 in tuition, while international students pay around $32,000 in tuition.

Increasingly, Stats Canada further reported that post-secondary institutions have relied on income from international students as part of their revenue stream. With this in mind, we encourage the government to find measures to decrease the reliance on students via their tuition funds. We cannot be relied on to make up for the lack of public funding for post-secondary institutions.

International students are especially vulnerable to these tuition hikes, as they do not have a cap on their yearly increases. While we thank the committee for providing a 2 percent cap on domestic student increases, international students still do not have this advantage and are left paying for university operating costs.

Ultimately, tuition increases, paired with hikes in the rental housing market, affect the quality of living for students. As most would agree, being a student is hard. Not only are we responsible to find the means to fund our education, but we are also responsible to keep a roof over our heads. This is especially exhausting for marginalized groups, who directly face the impacts of systematic barriers on the constant.

Should the government establish a tuition freeze and create more financial access for marginalized groups, we may be able to take the first steps in easing the burdens that students experience.

Our second recommendation is to provide expanded access and health services, including counselling and other key mental health services, dedicated funding towards equitable academic accommodations, and physical and technical infrastructure for universal design in the campus environment, in the online and in-person classroom.

[10:45 a.m.]

In 2020, the SFSS conducted a COVID-19 mental health survey based on a sample size of 2,474 respondents. Our findings showed that students lack adequate support in areas related to financial burdens, loss of employment, substance abuse and a significant decline in mental health. While we thank the committee for implementing a three-year plan to invest $10 million for mental health supports within post-secondary institutions, allocating funds to institutions in general is still not an adequate enough solution.

Instead, post-secondary institutions need streamlined funds. That incentivizes post-secondary institutions to implement a universal design model of learning. This includes providing monetary incentives for institutions to hire professionals who carry the knowledge and lived experiences to support marginalized students.

Our third recommendation is that the government work towards providing inclusive housing options for post-secondary students that are affordable, accessible and pet-friendly. We highly encourage the government to look into creating rent subsidies solely for students, with a strong emphasis on student rental protection both on and off campus.

Students cannot keep up with rent increases due to tuition hikes and the rising cost of living. In the 2010-11 year, Stats Canada reported that the cost of rent averaged between $4,000 and $5,500 per month. Within the decade, Stats Canada further reported that the average cost of rent increased to $6,000 to $11,000 per month. When rent increases, students lack the capacity to prioritize their education. In other words, these barriers to rent incentivize students to focus more on making the means to cover their basic needs, such as food and housing.

This challenge is amplified for international students, who are already navigating new and complex systems. International students are also limited to working 20 hours per week, which does not leave extra money for students to live comfortably. All these barriers limit students of their university experience — of networking, attending university socials and engaging with diverse perspectives.

The SFSS would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present these recommendations.

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

Thank you to all of you. The committee now has about 15 minutes to ask questions. They may ask questions of all of you. They may ask questions of individuals, but it doesn’t mean that you couldn’t all chip in and offer your answers and perspective.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I just want to thank you all very much for your presentations. I don’t know if I should say things like this, but you are some of the strongest presenters that we have, very succinct and very clear in what you’re asking for. There’s clearly some consistency there.

I actually just want to say that with the majority of what you’ve said — absolutely agree. It is just heartbreaking how difficult it is for students to find accommodation. Some of the numbers that you gave us there, Eshana, just at the end there — quite shocking.

I am getting to a question here. I have heard…. I think it was just Diamond who had said this. The issue with funding for more programs for victims of sexualized violence on campus — one in four females being victims of sexualized violence while pursuing their post-secondary education. I find that that statistic is shocking.

Maybe I’ll make this to Diamond, but anyone also can answer. What would that support look like? Are you looking for on-campus counselling centres? Are you looking for something that might be operated as a co-program with law enforcement? What would that look like to you?

D. Obera: Thank you for the question. Support — what it would look like for, at least, our members, and what we’ve talked about is essentially funding through the non-profit organizations that already exist. I know in our case in Surrey, we do have a lot of really good local and regional organizations that do that work not just in the larger community but also on campuses, so essentially more funding to those non-profit organizations.

[10:50 a.m.]

And also, essentially, education — education in relation to law enforcement in how they deal with those calls and those situations would very much be ideal.

At least for my members, we are very much appreciative of the work non-profit organizations do in relation to this issue. We’ve thankfully gotten the chance to work with them on a couple of these.

Essentially, more funding for them so they can, first, increase their resources and support and, also, just education as it relates to local police. Also, just for them to essentially gain more research, to be able to come to our campuses even more often than they do to share these resources with us and, essentially, educate us and other members of the community about these issues. But, yes.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for that, Diamond. I’ll just open this to any of you.

UBC has got — I believe it’s still operating — a model which is a co-location of RCMP and victim support workers for victims of sexualized violence. Is that a model that would be envisioned here? I don’t know if they’ve got it at SFU. I don’t know if they’ve got it on other campuses, but I am curious if that co-location with RCMP or with the local detachment is a good thing or if that is a measure of kind of intimidation, to actually access services that way.

D. Obera: I’m just going to go on that first.

First, I will say that I’m not completely familiar with the UBC program, but I do appreciate the concern. For some of the marginalized groups of students that are already on our campuses, it’s even difficult for them to have those conversations with the RCMP officers or their local police officers.

I know in Surrey, obviously, that the new Surrey police force is still relatively new. But we do see a model like that where we have officers essentially on campus to not just address these, perhaps, more violent situations but also where we have officers having open conversations with students. Perhaps students are not completely familiar with them. We certainly think that would be a big step in not just creating awareness of this issue but a big step in perhaps bridging the gap between marginalized groups and also, essentially, police officers.

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes. We see that you want to jump in on this, Eshana, and then I’ll point out that we have less than nine minutes left and three more questions.

E. Baran: Okay. I just wanted to add onto what Diamond has said.

In terms of creating a coalition with the RCMP, I don’t think that would be the best for students, talking as a student. There has been a precedent of students, first of all, not being believed by the RCMP.

Also, what Diamond talked about in terms of marginalized groups, there have already been so many instances of people not being treated fairly or even with respect. So I would say talking to groups and organizations who have knowledge and the lived experience to talk about how students can be best supported in this way…. For example, creating surveys for students, seeing what the students want and need in support of how it best suits them.

That’s what I wanted to add. Thank you, Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Izzy, I see that you would like to jump in on this as well.

I. Adachi: Yeah. One thing I just wanted to add was that I think the best way for additional funding, specifically to deal with sexualized violence on campuses, would be to provide student societies with money to provide staff representatives for students that have experience in providing trauma-informed care and support that is impartial to the university.

Right now, when students seek support, they get it from EQHR or some other university-operated branch, and those don’t have the students’ concerns at heart. They are there to protect the university from liability. So students do need an independent support person, and I think that the best people to provide that would be the student societies. I just wanted to say that.

[10:55 a.m.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Our next question is from Mike.

M. Starchuk: I guess it goes to Diamond and maybe to anybody else that has similar comments.

Diamond, you talked about B.C. access grants for persons with disabilities and having to pay extra for services. Then I think you added on to that that for the federal loan program, they face a credit check. I’m not sure if that’s standard across the board or if that’s what you’re finding out. I’d like to hear a little bit more.

D. Obera: Yes. Specifically, from one of our members with a disability…. She is also a mature student. She has had, unfortunately, not a great experience with StudentAid B.C. In relation to that, essentially, to qualify for a B.C. access grant, you do have to, I believe, also be eligible for a federal loan from the government of Canada. But to be eligible for that federal loan, you do have to pass a credit check.

What I was referring to in my recommendation was that, obviously, with the debts right now that Canadians, especially students, are going through and with inflation hitting Canadians really hard right now, having more debt on your credit report essentially makes you less likely to be eligible, potentially, for the federal loan program because of the debt that students are carrying right now.

J. Routledge (Chair): Next, Henry, and after that, Brenda, and we’ll probably be out of time by then.

H. Yao: First of all, I want to thank and express my gratitude to Izzy. She shone some light onto my lack of understanding.

I appreciate that you helped me appreciate the gaps between the university interest versus the student interest. It’s something that I never heard of before. I should have learned about it. I’m appreciative for your educating opportunity.

I really would like to talk about the challenges when it comes to financial sustainability for students studying on campus. You guys mentioned about, obviously, housing affordability and tuition affordability.

I guess my question, also, would be: is there any student access actually through banks as well? Also, what can you identify as the challenges when it comes to transportation? Do you guys have any kind of data? Obviously, we are talking about even the next ten years.

There should be about one million new jobs becoming available, and with one million new jobs available, 80 to 85 percent of them will require post-secondary education. So government has done a lot, obviously, at this point, to encourage students to continue to secure their post-secondary education lessons.

I would love to get more information on what else we can do to really strengthen the students’ opportunities to access post-secondary education.

J. Routledge (Chair): Anyone can jump in on that question, I think.

D. Obera: I’m just going to jump in on that. Specifically, as a former international student, I think I can give a little bit of perspective as it relates to, perhaps, international students.

I can’t speak so much for local students, but I will say that I do believe international students, as it relates to opportunities in Canada and the economic impact they create…. I do believe there’s a stat that showed that international students within B.C. specifically…. I believe that B.C. contributed about $4.5 billion or something to the economy, and with that, they support about 33,000 jobs, which is obviously significant.

[11:00 a.m.]

In relation to B.C. at least, one of the recommendations I had at first was to basically put a cap on the international student fee increase, which — as they look forward to, perhaps, their graduate studies and settling down in Canada — essentially sets them up for better success as they settle into the Canadian economy.

I’m sorry if that specifically didn’t answer your question. I just felt like I wanted to give some perspective there, as a former international student.

J. Routledge (Chair): Henry, did you have a follow-up?

H. Yao: Actually, yes, I do. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Chair.

My other follow-up…. Obviously, we’re now talking about financial challenges. Some of the presentations were also talking about students being distracted from the actual opportunity to network, to socialize, to connect. Of course, the reality is that we want students to have a full mental capacity when they study and learn, and socialization is one of the best ways to help them to recuperate and rejuvenate when they are preparing themselves for further education.

I want to ask you a question right now. Based upon your experiences with your colleagues and fellow students, is anyone dramatically suffering a lot from grade deterioration or inability to catch up because of a financial burden, and what kind of challenge are they also facing? What can we do, as government? Basically, a recommendation to increase mental health support, but not even so much as…. I guess sometimes we talk too much about clinical services. Really, other stuff such as recreation, socialization — all of which can also help students to stay preventatively with stronger health and more resilience.

E. Baran: I can jump in here, if that is all right. I just wanted to say that in terms of the support that the government can give, for mental health supports so students have a better support system, it would be to bring institutional change, so making preventative measures in the system, incentivizing post-secondary institutions to have hybrid learning models.

I know we’re at a second here.

H. Yao: Chair, can we allow her to continue?

J. Routledge (Chair): We have a bit of time. So yes, please….

You kind of cut yourself off there, Eshana. We’d like to hear the rest of your thoughts.

E. Baran: That is so amazing. Thank you so much for your time.

What I’ve heard from students, as well, is change at the institutional level. So instead of providing money to institutions, which we are very grateful for…. Provide that money in a way that tells institutions how to use it. For example, tell universities that this specific money is to make recorded lectures easier to access for students. Make it so that counsellors are also on campus. Hire more counsellors, in terms of…. Give the ability to students to access those counsellors at any time, not only once their mental health is starting to deteriorate.

What we’ve noticed is that once mental health starts decreasing, those supports aren’t there. So to build upon that, it would be providing those preventative measures. With that, of course, there needs to be more research, seeing what students want and really just listening and providing those funds and making it accessible for all groups.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next question is from Brenda.

B. Bailey: Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Eshana, Izzy and Diamond, for your really excellent presentation and your advocacy on behalf of students. We really appreciate it.

I think it was in, perhaps, Izzy’s submission, in regards to highlighting the challenge of unpaid practicums and internships. I was struck by the reputation of UVic being very…. They really are a leader in regards to co-ops. I thought of those as paid co-ops. It sounds like there’s somewhat of a distinction between a paid co-op and a practicum. The paid co-ops I associate with things like engineering and the practicums with nursing and social work. Also, there’s a gender component that comes to mind there.

I just wanted to provide an opportunity for you to sort of flesh out a little bit some of the challenges there. What is it like as a student, as a paid co-op person or an unpaid practicum person — and how that affects your life? Just help us think that through a bit further.

[11:05 a.m.]

I. Adachi: Well, I think you’re exactly right when you point out the gendered component.

Yes, UVic is a leader of paid co-ops, but paid co-ops aren’t offered to students in health care or in social work or in education. They’re required to do an unpaid practicum, which was left out of the ban on unpaid internships because it provides you with an academic credit. But that just means that students are paying to work, essentially, which is incredibly inequitable. A large part of it comes from just…. This is how it has always been done, so this is how they’re keeping it.

I’ve heard from many students. They were having difficulty, essentially, just managing their lives. They’re working 70 hours a week. If they weren’t…. Student aid would only give them $2,000 per semester, after all of their fees, in order to survive, and that’s including rental costs and food. So they would only have $2,000 to pay their rent for four months, which is impossible at UVic and in the surrounding areas.

Yes, it is a hugely inequitable area, where students are really struggling with burnout already, at the beginning of their careers. These are people who we’re supposed to be supporting as the future of care in our province and as essential heroes and workers. That was what they were being called two years ago.

It’s very…. Honestly, it’s abhorrent to me. As someone who advocates on behalf of these students…. I actually was someone who tried to do an unpaid practicum and was not able to do it. I could not manage the barriers of working and doing my practicum in social work. I was doing 60 hours a week, and my mental health was not able to take it. So I wound up having to switch programs, which was very unfortunate.

Yeah, it is something that has been expressed. Exploitative, oppressive, racist, sexist have been some of the words that people who have experience in this system have used to describe it.

B. Bailey: I have a follow-up. Do we have time?

J. Routledge (Chair): Yes. We do have time for a follow-up.

B. Bailey: Okay. Great.

Izzy, thank you very much for sharing your experience. I’m really sorry you went through that, but I appreciate you using your experience to help others, going forward. Thank you for that.

I wonder. The other students that are on the call today…. Is it true in your universities, as well, a similar scenario?

D. Obera: Hi. I’m just going to go in on that.

I haven’t heard, so far, in my conversations with our members, similar cases on our campus. I will say, especially as it relates to the broader mental health issue and how much it has really kind of taken a toll on students…. I’m actually, currently, in Ottawa for a student union conference, and I’ve had to talk to a lot of students from different schools across Canada. I really do hear a lot of that same sentiment — how difficult of a year it’s been and how students, especially international students, have had to navigate that landscape.

Again, just to bring it back to B.C. here, I haven’t heard from my members directly. As it relates to the mental health issues, yes, it has very much been a huge burden, especially given the effects of COVID.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I could wrap it up here, but I see Harwinder also would like to ask a question.

We have a bit of wiggle room, so go for it.

H. Sandhu: All right. Thank you, Chair.

A quick question. Great presentation. My question is to Izzy, just a follow-up.

You mentioned that in health care there is no paid practicum. I’m just curious. Does that apply to other health care courses? From the nursing point of view, I know that there is a program, by the time they’re in third year, of doing a practicum for six to eight weeks. They get paid. It used to be $25 to $27, maybe a little bit more now.

[11:10 a.m.]

In the initial stages, I could see, when they are getting trained, from my years of experience, and not working, they’re learning lots, not only from…. Their instructors have to follow, which I could understand…. The institutions have to pay, also, the nurses from the front line. We also have to support…. At that time, they need double the support.

I’m curious about the other health care courses, because what I’ve seen is that when they’re not getting paid, they’re still learning. They’re learning a lot, and it takes more people to train. By the time they have some experience under their belt, which is third year, then they get paid, which is close to $30 but somewhere from $25 to $28, if I’m correct. I’m just curious about which health care courses you alluded to.

I. Adachi: Most of my data actually comes from the UVNSS, which is the nursing student society at UVic. You’re correct. There are programs that students are able to access where they are paid for their practicum. But many students — actually, I believe it was the majority of students at UVic — are left out of those. Some are working as employed student nurses and are able to use part of those hours to sort of…. I think it’s prior learning assessment.

The issue that they’ve been expressing is that they’re actually working harder on their practicum and doing more work on their practicum, and they’re not learning anything from people on their practicum anymore. I know that that was the intent of the system: to be an education in the workplace. But it’s not been that, according to my members. I’m just relaying what has been expressed to me, to you. Yeah, many of these issues are coming from and being raised by nursing students.

H. Sandhu: I see. Thank you for the clarification. It’s enlightening to know that it’s not accessible to all students. I really appreciate your feedback.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, everyone. With that, I’m going to draw this panel to a close. I want to thank all of you for presenting to us and for working collaboratively with each other so that we get a really good picture from a student point of view.

As you know, we, as a government and as a society, rely on post-secondary education to create and support the economy of the future. We’ve created new seats to that end. But I think what you’re reminding us of is that for students to actually take up those seats and be successful in those seats in post-secondary, the environment — the institution — has to be welcoming. It has to be inclusive. It has to be affordable. It has to be attractive to students to make that choice, and it has to be safe.

You’ve alerted us to that problem, and you’ve given us some really good practical solutions. Thank you so much for that. With that, we’ll bid you goodbye.

Our next panel is K-to-12 education, and we’ll be hearing from some school districts and boards.

Hello, everybody. First up is Jen Mezei, who’s representing the Burnaby school district, school district 41.

I think as you know, but just to remind everybody, you each have five minutes. You’ll get a green light when you have two minutes left — two minutes to wrap up. You have a total of five minutes each, and then the committee will ask questions. In some cases, they may be questions to individuals, which doesn’t preclude others of you from chipping in with your perspective. In some cases, the questions will be just general, and you can all chip in with your answers.

Over to you, Jen.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 4 – K-to-12 Education
(School Districts/Boards)

SCHOOL DISTRICT 41, BURNABY

J. Mezei: Hello. It’s nice to be joining you from the unceded and traditional territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓- and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-speaking peoples.

I’m going to be focusing on three recommendations. One is on anti-racism funding, and one is on funding for refugee students and newcomers to Canada. The third is on capital planning support funding.

[11:15 a.m.]

I’m going to start with anti-racism. As a board, we’re recommending that the provincial government provide additional funding to districts to fully cover the costs of assessment and engagement at the local level — determining what resources are required — and the development of an anti-racism strategy and adequate funding for implementation.

While the Burnaby board of education commends the provincial government for its commitment to anti-racism, a significant level of funding is required to support districts to do this important work at the district level. Addressing systemic racism is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

In June 2020, the board of education unanimously passed a motion that the district use a consultative process to develop a district anti-racism action plan that respects and honours the voices and lived experiences of those affected by systemic racism. In addition, it was directed that an ad hoc working group be formed to support the development of an engagement process to provide meaningful, safe and culturally sensitive opportunities for students, staff and families to engage in the consultation and dialogue.

Since that time, work has included the development of a broad engagement strategy, including a survey, focus groups and outreach, utilizing the services of a third-party firm to work with the community and ultimately provide a report and recommendations. The district’s anti-racism, equity and inclusion survey was launched in May 2021 and saw a large participation of over 11,000 respondents.

Addressing systemic racism is not a tick box. It is a commitment to deep, reflective work that will affect all students, staff and families connected to our schools, now and in the future. This work cannot be done off the side of one’s desk. Our teachers, administrators and district staff have taken on more in the last few years and done a commendable job.

The Burnaby district estimates that our costs are approximately $350,000 to date to be ready to collect the data and have those deep dialogues. This doesn’t even include the cost of development or implementation of the plan. These costs have included hiring a district principal of equity, diversity and inclusion to lead this work, engaging Co-Lab in the second phase of the engagement process to lead a process of listening and learning in order to action change, and engaging a consultant to review our hiring processes to make recommendations to inform updated HR practices. This is work that all districts are going to need to do.

I’m going to quickly go to funding for refugee students. It’s recommended that the provincial government provide additional funding to support the significant educational needs of refugee and newcomer students to Canada. Although the federal government provides financial support for the SWIS program, which provides important programming for newcomers to Canada, the current provincial education funding supplements to newcomers and refugee students are not meeting the complex educational needs of students today.

So 45 percent of newcomer families’ students who settle in Burnaby and receive support for our settlement workers in schools are refugees. Refugee families have complex needs which, from a perspective of students in the school system, include huge gaps in education. Students who have lived in refugee camps arrive to schools having never sat in a classroom or held a pencil, many times. Their academic needs are significant, as teachers work to help students acquire literacy and numeracy skills, as well as social skills required to work and play safely in a school environment.

Many refugees arrive with mental health issues, with post-traumatic stress disorder, having witnessed the death of family members, experienced war or abandonment and isolation. They are battling poverty, lack of employment. Parents are struggling with language barriers themselves, and older students are expected to hold out-of-school jobs just to try to put food on the table.

I’m just going to quickly go to the fact that with our current funding for refugee and newcomer students, it is not meeting the educational needs of students. Adolescents who come to our schools may not have the language skills or have the time to graduate with a Dogwood, because they won’t have graduation credits.

Our funding system is also not set up for continuous intake when refugees come to our schools. We have funding that comes in at certain times of the year, and a lot of the year when they first come is not funded. These are gaps that are in our system — that refugee populations have educational needs that the funding system has just not been updated to meet the needs of the refugee students that we have today.

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

Next we’ll hear from Maria Hampvent, board of education, school district 46, Sunshine Coast.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 46, SUNSHINE COAST

M. Hampvent: Good morning, ʔiy te kwiyskiy in the shíshálh language.

I bring this message from a district that is honoured and blessed to educate the youth on the shíshálh and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations’ unceded swiya, or land.

[11:20 a.m.]

My name is Maria Hampvent, and I’m the vice-chair of school district 46.

As I was reflecting on the key messages that have faced our board since last year, it is clear that all of the growing needs of our district — and, frankly, most districts in the Lower Mainland — are undersupported and completely and heavily influenced by one key driving factor: inflation. That is what I’m here to address this morning.

From 2011 to 2021, the Vancouver CPI increased by almost 18 percent. In the past year, from April 2021 to 2022, the Vancouver CPI increased by an additional 6.6 percent. Yet throughout this period, the funding formula for schools has remained static, except for unionized wage increases, despite these monumental increases.

On the Sunshine Coast, however, the numbers are far more drastic. In an interview in December 2021, it was found that between November 2020 and November 2021 housing prices have seen a 26 percent increase on the Sunshine Coast. If we go back three years, prices have increased by nearly 40 percent.

As you undoubtedly know in your esteemed positions, all throughout society we hear of increased demands on capital projects, aging infrastructure, high building costs, supply shortages, drastic increases to all types of utility sources as well as labour shortages. These extreme increases at all levels of society put tremendous pressure on school districts.

For our district, approximately 75 percent of our budget is directed towards unionized staff salaries and benefits, leaving the remaining 25 percent to fund utilities, supplies and other supports for our students and facilities. When additional funding comes into our district, it’s generally directly associated with the growing number of students we support and negotiated staff wages for our unionized staff. We predict the small amount of funding available for discretionary spending soon will evaporate due to inflationary pressures, and that is when we are left with tough choices to make.

Our board was encouraged to see the Premier cite the importance of food supports in his ministerial mandate letter from November 2020 but disappointed to see little to no change in funding to support such programs at the time.

During the pandemic, we witnessed firsthand a dramatic increase in food insecurity in our student population of 400 percent. As a result, we allocated a significant part of our discretionary budget and surplus funds to support food programs, despite not receiving any additional funding from the government. With the steep rise in inflation on food — the largest increases being fresh vegetables, 10.6 percent, and fruit, 10 percent — these limited funds are being stretched to the maximum.

Our school district is considering a districtwide food program and reached out to families to get their thoughts. We had an overwhelming response to our survey, with 1,032 responses received, roughly half of all of our families. One parent noted: “I believe feeding children is a society responsibility and should be paid for by the entire society.”

Inflation is making the gap between wealthy and poor wider. The growing number of working poor families in our district with food scarcity has reached crises levels, as confirmed by the recent alarming statistics reported yesterday by CTV News. “Cynthia Boulter, CEO of the Vancouver Food Bank, said that about 400 to 500 people a day were coming to the bank’s Vancouver location last year. Now they’re seeing ‘close to 700 people a day, many days a week.’”

Demand has doubled in quantity and frequency for need in less than one year. This cold reality is felt at the deepest level, with our children, and the schools are one place they have food security. We urge the province to provide specific directed funding to ensure that nutrition programs are in place at schools.

Finally, salary increases for non-union staff, which includes school principals, superintendents and other professionals, are linked with provincially negotiated union wage increases but remain an unfunded cost for districts to bear. This creates a hollowing out effect and creates a structural deficit that results in resources being removed from the classroom. All districts would benefit from funding that is tied to the inflationary increases unique to our districts.

In conclusion, the impacts of the dramatic recent increase in inflation in just these two examples hopefully gathers your attention towards what is to come. The shortages are increasing, and our budgets are already precariously close to maximized at so many districts. Without addressing the extreme increase in inflation since 2021 in the education budgets across the province, we fear that the result could be provincewide deficits.

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

Finally, we’ll hear from Michael Thomas, school district 43, Coquitlam.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 43, COQUITLAM

M. Thomas: Good morning. Thank you.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional territory and honouring the ancestors and all relations who walked this land long before we gathered here today. We would like to acknowledge, with gratitude, this beautiful place where we live, work, play and learn, the Coast Salish nations.

[11:25 a.m.]

School district 43 believes that the K-to-12 education funding has not been sustained on a yearly basis, resulting in significant funding shortfalls. There should be adequate, predictable and sustainable funding to ensure that we are providing the best opportunities for K-to-12 students. As an outcome of this consultation process, we look forward to having a robust B.C. K-to-12 education system that is adequately and equitably funded.

Major concerns have been arranged under three major themes: supporting vulnerable students, sustainable and equitable funding, and limiting school district contributions towards capital projects.

Increasing funding to support vulnerable students, including those with special needs, additional mental health supports, learning loss and CommunityLINK. To try and meet these needs, the school district is redirecting significant funds intended for the classroom. The funding formula for students with special needs and CommunityLINK is significantly underfunded and not consistent across B.C.

Funding for early identification of special needs students is crucial, in addition to the adequacy of support programs. The funding for students is significantly inadequate. We recommend that standards of appropriate support be established for students with special needs and that the standard be made transparent and fully funded without undermining overall funding.

There has been an increased trend towards the downloading of health services onto the education system, and this has been increased due to the pandemic. There is an urgent demand for additional mental health supports for students. The rise in students struggling with anxiety, depression and other struggles is well documented. We are concerned that without supports, these students will continue to suffer.

As a result of the pandemic, many students have faced challenges in achieving academic success and have fallen below established benchmarks. These impacts are expected to last well into the future, but could be mitigated with additional funding and supports.

Most recently our CommunityLINK funding, which had been stagnant for years, was actually cut by more than 15 percent. Also, per-capita funding based on a social services index from five different school districts compared to SD 43 shows a fairly large variance, which further diminishes the purpose of this grant.

SD 43 has grave concerns over sustainable and equitable funding with respect to our district’s ability to meet the needs of students. We have experienced continued underfunding of provincial collective agreement labour settlements and, most recently, the unfunded changes to the paid sick leave requirements within the Employment Standards Act.

SD 43 was required to redirect classroom funding in the amount of $1 million annually due to the Employment Standards Act changes and an overall annualized shortfall of $5.5 million for next year. Shortfalls in collective agreement and labour settlement funding translate into reduced funding for the classroom, and other cost pressures continue to accumulate, including exempt staff compensation increases.

With inflation hitting a 40-year high in the ’21-22 school year, the non-funding of inflationary pressures is becoming a significant issue for school districts. Overall, the lack of sustainable and equitable funding further drains the education system of funds that would otherwise be directed into the classroom.

School district contributions towards capital projects should be limited. Requiring school districts to contribute classroom dollars, which should be to support students’ needs, into capital projects undermines our education system.

Most SD 43 schools are full. Our region is growing, and several schools have high seismic ratings. SD 43 has been required to commit funds towards several capital projects to address our district’s growing needs. This is now even more urgent due to class size and composition requirements, which have also minimized the space available for on-site daycare, right at a time when the urgent need for increased access to daycare services has been identified in our communities.

Over the past two years, our work to meet the best-efforts compliance has added over 70 classroom spaces, including approximately 20 portables. This expense has been borne solely by the school district.

SD 43 has recently been expected to redirect $25 million toward a new proposed secondary school in a rapidly growing community with not enough schools. These funds are being subsidized by redirecting operating funds and capital dollars. The contribution becomes even more concerning when you consider that of the $13 million, $7 million is coming from future-year dollars which we do not currently have on our balance sheet.

I see my time is up, so I will end it there.

[11:30 a.m.]

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

We now will open it up for questions from the committee. I think we’ll have about 15 minutes for that.

B. Bailey: Michael, if I understood your comment accurately, you mentioned that the funding formula was inconsistent across the province. I think you were speaking about supports for kids with special needs, specifically. Could you just help me understand that a bit further, please?

M. Thomas: I believe that specific point was around our CommunityLINK funding, which is intended to provide things such as meal programs and additional supports for those parts of our community which have more challenging socioeconomic conditions.

Our CommunityLINK funding had been frozen, I think, for about a decade — no inflationary increases or anything like that. Most recently it was actually reduced by 15 percent, which ultimately means that we need to subsidize it even more out of the classroom.

H. Yao: This question is directed to Jen. Thank you so much for bringing up such an important point about anti-racism. I’ve had quite a few conversations with my school district as well. One of the comments was that if we give a progressive initiative, it needs to come with a dollar value to complement the progressive initiative.

If the opportunity were given to you to create a comprehensive system to strengthen our anti-racism and to eradicate systemic racism from our school districts, what kind of staffing would you be looking at? What kind of financial support would you be looking at? Can you maybe give me a bit more detail, so that we can bring some more information back?

J. Mezei: When I said the $350,000, we’ve hired a district principal for equity, diversity and inclusion to lead the work of the district. We’ve engaged Co-Lab to do the second phase of the engagement process, to lead the dialogue with the community, especially with affinity groups to really understand their lived experiences. Also, we are engaging a consultant to review our hiring processes to make recommendations to inform those practices as well — basically, to look at how we can improve and have more diverse teaching and district staffing, so that it’s reflective of our community.

I think, really, all that’s the part to get to the place where we can do the work. There’s so much more that we’re going to have to do once the plan is developed. I think that’s what all districts are going to be facing, with not just the development but also the professional development piece.

Anti-racism isn’t something that we just teach people; it’s deep conversations to change the way we think, to understand our community better and to really see things from their eyes. That’s where the difficult conversations to have are going to take a long time. There’s going to need to be staffing. It’s not something that our current staff are going to be able to do off the side of their desks.

If I look at, for example, our SOGI policy, our cost to support SOGI in our district is close to $150,000 a year in direct staffing. I would assume it would be something similar to that.

H. Yao: Chair, may I have a follow-up question?

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

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Chair.

Jen, you can probably just continue. You brought up SOGI, which is a perfect segue to my next question as well. I think anti-racism, when we’re talking about SOGI 123, we’re also talking about gender equity right now. There’s a lot of potential need to educate the students and our future generations about anti-hate and how we promote inclusion and diversity.

Do you foresee any kind of complementary working together to allow the system to create more…. How do I explain this? To help SOGI 123, anti-racism…. Of course, when talk about diversity and inclusion education material, do you foresee those things working together so that they can complement one another? Or do you think they have to work individually, due to the unique characteristics of the self?

J. Mezei: I think you’re talking about intersectionality, and yes, they do all work together. I think that when we look at things through an equity lens, it’s work that districts are all doing. I think the point I’m trying to make is that that work is really important work. It’s how we make our system more inclusive, how we make it more welcoming, but we can’t take from educational dollars to put towards other things.

[11:35 a.m.]

When we’re adding to what we’re expecting our sector to be doing, we need to be adding additional dollars. As Michael mentioned, with special needs, we need to have dollars that fully support and fully fund what we’re asking our system to do. It’s something that every district is facing and is challenged with.

M. Dykeman: It’s great to see you all again. I do have a question for you, Michael, related to the capital contributions. I know that those do vary across the board depending on the district’s situation.

One of the parts that you mentioned at the end was the inequality, looking at this, say, $25 million that you’re being asked to put in versus, say, $3 million in the other district contribution. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on that. As I recall, a lot of it went down to what the capital reserves were, and then that would change as a district moved forward, and those capital reserves weren’t there.

Is it possible for you to provide a little bit more information on that? It’s something that has long been a problem, definitely, with school districts.

M. Thomas: Thank you for the question, Megan. Our district had about $12 million in capital reserves, and $10 million was already previously allocated towards an addition to Scott Creek Middle School, which is an addition that is desperately needed. When the request for a $25 million contribution came along, that was kind of one of the only pots of funds that we could pull from. So we reallocated that $12 million out of Scott Creek Middle, as well as an additional project. I can’t remember off the top of my head what it was.

The really big challenge is the operating dollars that we’re being expected to pull — $13 million over the next four to five years, I guess. They were generous in letting us split it over a few years, but $7 million of that is from future years. We have not realized those dollars yet, so that creates a liability for us, moving over the next few years.

Of course, as many people know, we have long had a fairly robust international education program, but with the pandemic, that took a pretty big hit, and it’s going to be many years before we’re able to rebound to maybe back where we were. That’s having a fairly significant impact on our budget. When you add in the other factors that we’ve mentioned, it’s a pretty dire situation. The cupboards are bare.

J. Routledge (Chair): Jen, you wanted to jump in on this?

J. Mezei: Yeah. I think that in addition to what Michael mentioned, the capital contribution piece is something that all districts are facing. It’s not something that’s sustainable. It’s not funding that we have set aside for when projects get announced.

In Burnaby, we also have had to fit in close to $12 million in capital contributions and Burnaby North, with over $5 million in capital contributions for a seismic project. A lot of seismic projects…. Seismic projects were supposed to be funded fully. So having capital contributions to a seismic project is something we weren’t expecting.

B. Stewart: There’s a common theme. You’ve done a great job of advocating and talking about the areas where you’re coming up short. What I’m just kind of wondering about is that…. We don’t see the balance sheets of the individual school districts and the reserves that may or may not be on hand. I’m just kind of wondering, trying to square this up.

Are there reserves that you have on the Sunshine Coast that you mentioned you have? Maybe the others have similar or dissimilar kinds of situations. I’m just wondering: where are we at today? We’re hearing it, loud and clear, that there’s a funding gap. The question is: do you have the dollars to…?

[11:40 a.m.]

I’ve even heard, from my own district up in the Okanagan, that essentially, there’s this gap, and I don’t know how they’re going to fill it. I’m just wondering if you, as a district, have a plan to get through the next 12, 24 months. Can you go longer than that?

M. Hampvent: I believe our reserve is roughly 1 percent of our overall budget, not more than 2 percent. I also believe that there are repercussions to having a reserve be too high. We’re expected to use all of our funds, and we’re definitely using all of our funds.

That was last year’s budget. This year…. Usually we have feedback from the community on items from our strategic plan that we can use our extra funding on. This year, all of our reserves went to extra custodial, extra food and extra counselling.

In past years…. I’ve noticed, over the years, being in the district — I attended, as well, as a child — that there might be something that would happen, some great project that could be funded or some extra thing. This year, we’re struggling to stay consistent with custodial demands, food demands and counselling demands because of the crises with mental health. Like my two esteemed colleagues said, it’s much the same.

Then we have capital projects. The aging infrastructure problem with the capital projects is a huge issue because, typically, they’re coming in over budget. No matter how well we do with our consulting processes, the capital projects are coming in over budget. Luckily, we’ve been able to add a daycare centre. But what’s added on to that, because our housing prices have increased so much, is that there’s a crunch on daycare staff. Our ECE staff and our EA staff are all the same pool of people, and their living wage isn’t enough to afford where we live.

If we have a handful of EAs, and we’re short staffed for our EAs, and they’re being pulled over into ECE because it’s a similar skill set and a similar desire, because of our new child care centre that just got opened, and a change to the ministry, then we have a problem attracting staff.

Sorry for over-answering.

J. Routledge (Chair): Jen.

J. Mezei: When we plan for our operating budget, we look at our surpluses basically for a year and a half. We only have enough surplus to have our current status quo services and supports for an extra year.

When it comes to the capital funding, the capital contributions, there are only so many places that we can generate dollars. In Burnaby, we’ve sold one school to the CSF. We sold our old board office lands to pay for the renovation and the build of a new board office. Those are things where we just don’t have the dollars and the properties. We were able to sell some public lands for public good.

For example, when we have current projects that are underway, and costs are coming in over and above when they were approved, we’re having to look at ways to cut. What was promised in the funding…. When it comes to what the facility would look like, the project gets smaller and smaller, and there’s less and less that gets put onto that piece of land. I think that’s something that…. What people expect and what people get is maybe not going to be the same.

J. Routledge (Chair): I see no further questions. I don’t see, from here, any other hands up.

Michael.

M. Thomas: Just adding to the conversation about operating reserves. We’ve had a fairly robust operating surplus policy for the last number of years whereby we take any year-end surplus, and three-quarters of it is automatically split over the following three years. It goes directly back into operational staffing, and then that last quarter is spent on technology initiatives and facilities maintenance.

When government and Treasury Board are looking at our balance sheet, they go: “Oh, you have all that money just sitting there.” But the reality is that money has all been allocated into staffing for the following years.

[11:45 a.m.]

We’ve found it to be tremendously successful to have those funds allocated because we’re able to smooth out the budget. We get off the roller-coaster ride of adding and then cutting and then adding and then cutting. We’re able to stabilize our staffing, which creates a better education system for all of our students.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you to everyone. Thank you for taking the time to present to us, and thank you for working with each other to engage with us and provide us with a lot of important information. I think it’s very clear from your presentation, in this panel discussion, that we, as a society and as a provincial government, expect a lot from our K-to-12 school system. As Jen said, we expect you to change the way we think. We expect you to change the way the next generation thinks.

We have a lot of ideas about how people should be thinking and how they should be more inclusive and equitable in the future, and you’ve reminded us that those thoughts and those ambitions cost money. In the meantime, you’re having to shift your budgets around to pay for that. So thank you. We will take that into consideration for sure.

Our final presenter for the morning is Ellen Bornowsky, representing the Langley Teachers Association.

Whenever you’re ready, Ellen.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 5 – K-to-12 Education (Teachers)

LANGLEY TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

E. Bornowsky: Thank you very much. In the interest of time, to respect the five-minute presentation, I will limit my recommendations to the first two.

One is that the Ministry of Education increase operational funding for districts beyond what’s required for inflation and enrolment growth and that operating grants are based on the identified needs of districts.

Langley is experiencing unprecedented growth. Last spring the district’s projected increase of 200 students was far surpassed when we welcomed 1,000 new students. Finding space for them and their teachers is a challenge. Every possible location is being used, and we have ELL teachers working in staff kitchens, hallways and storage rooms.

Even though our district has class-size-and-composition language that benefit the students, most classes are not in compliance, which increases teacher workload and, in turn, affects mental health. So 43 of our 44 schools are currently at or beyond capacity, and the district is projecting an increase of an additional 500 students each year for the next ten years.

We’ve identified mental health as an area of need, not just that of our students but also that of all the adults in the system. Coming out of the pandemic has highlighted many of the gaps in services we’ve long had to contend with. Teachers are seeing the results of increased isolation, conflict and abuse at home, financial challenges and increases in substance use on a daily basis.

It has become abundantly clear that we need more school counsellors. The district’s ratio of one counsellor for 598 students was established in 1998, when the world was a very different place. So 11 of our elementary schools currently have one day of counselling per week, and six of our 12 elementary counsellors serve three different schools.

Counsellors describe feeling defeated, because they’re working in an impossible situation. Before they even make it inside the school, they’re approached by classroom teachers in the parking lot worried about students. Counsellors report being afraid of Fridays. They shared stories of carrying the weight of a child with no support at home. They worry all weekend and hope to see them back at school on Monday morning. Counsellors working at one school are regularly called to another school to support a student in crisis.

We note several barriers to accessing community services. There simply aren’t enough free or low-cost counselling services available in the community. Langley Youth and Family Services reports a three-to five-month wait-list, and there is a nine- to 14-month wait-list for child and youth mental health services.

[11:50 a.m.]

Our school counsellors have become de facto family therapists because so many of our families can’t afford to pay for private counselling. As a result, families turn to our school counsellors because they are the first point of contact and readily accessible.

Recommendation 2: that the Ministry of Education provide targeted funding to support the early identification and designation of students in kindergarten and grade 1, so that appropriate interventions and programs can be put in place. There’s a wave of kindergarten and grade 1 students currently overwhelming the system. Classroom teachers are reporting developmental delays in the areas of expressive language, listening skills and the ability to focus on tasks.

Growing up surrounded by people wearing masks has affected children’s ability to interpret facial expressions and to mimic and create the sounds that form the basis for language. Physical development has been further hampered by the amount of screen time they’ve been exposed to. This group is presenting with delays in their ability to regulate emotions and interact appropriately with peers. This is not surprising, given the two years of missed opportunities for social interaction, closed daycares and cancelled community recreation programs.

We need targeted and sustained funding in order to take a trauma-informed approach to working with students. Langley has a successful alternative education program for our youth learners. They get regular referrals from middle schools, because we’re seeing higher numbers of students, at younger ages, who present with more complex histories.

We have one school where the class has had 11 room clears so far this year. The room clear happens when a student is triggered by something or someone and exhibits behaviour that escalates quickly and unpredictably. One adult has to escort the students to a safe location, while the other stays to monitor the student in crisis so that they don’t harm themselves.

This growing group of especially vulnerable learners needs specialized programs with appropriately trained and caring staff. We owe these children and youth a better response than calling a parent or guardian to take them home because we don’t have a program that can support them so that they can be successful alongside their peers.

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

Our first question is from Megan.

M. Dykeman: It’s wonderful to see you, Ellen. Thank you for your presentation today. I have a comment and a question.

Langley is obviously growing at an incredible rate. Those numbers of 1,000 students per year — we saw it, year over year, and it was just absolutely shocking how fast the community is growing. I appreciate everything that teachers and other support staff in the district do to address our rapidly growing and complex situation.

I’m wondering if you’re going to be submitting a written submission — I didn’t see one in here just with those points — because, as you know, as we go through it, there’s quite a bit of information.

E. Bornowsky: The answer is yes, absolutely. I’ve just been putting the finishing touches on it five minutes before presentation time, and I will be submitting all three recommendations, with the rationales, for your review.

M. Dykeman: Okay. Thank you so much.

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

B. Bailey: Thanks very much for your presentation, Ellen. I was interested in what you were saying in regard to the potential impacts — or perhaps its measured impacts — on children because of the pandemic and the massive disruption we all experienced. Of course, it impacted children with their learning and language acquisition, and so on.

Perhaps this is in your submission, but I was just curious about where that research comes from, or where you might direct me to that research. I would like to read more about it. I found that quite interesting.

E. Bornowsky: These are stories that we’re hearing directly from the kindergarten and grade 1 teachers and the elementary counsellors. They’re reporting daily on what’s happening. One teacher used the expression: “The playground at recess is like Lord of the Flies.” It’s just quite wild, and it’s through no fault of their own, but the teachers are the ones having to step in, to intervene and teach the prosocial behaviours, and to help gently guide students in the right direction. We can’t do it on our own; we do need more support.

B. Bailey: May I have a follow-up?

Comparing that to…. I guess I wonder. Is kindergarten usually like Lord of the Flies in the playground when they first come in, or is this something different, do you think?

E. Bornowsky: It’s definitely different. I had a conversation with one of our school counsellors first thing this morning, and she said that it’s taken until this point in the school year, since September, for there to be sort of a semblance of routine and order, where the little ones know how to line up, to go outside for recess, to go to use the bathroom, or to play appropriately with one another.

[11:55 a.m.]

All of my teacher colleagues at all of the schools that I’ve spoken with — I’m fairly well connected, because I’ve been around for quite some time — have said that they’re seeing it across the board. These are experienced educators with 25, 30, 35 years of experience in the primary classroom. This is unlike anything they’ve experienced in their careers.

B. Bailey: Wow. Thank you, Ellen.

E. Bornowsky: You’re very welcome.

J. Routledge (Chair): Ben.

B. Stewart: Actually, Brenda took, kind of, the area I wanted to go into, but I’m quite intrigued by it.

I do think you’re the first that’s brought it up. I think that it’s something that I hadn’t really thought about, but you’re right. Of course, most of us — we’ve already had that experience, but if you’re just coming into the world or you’re two or three years old and you’re just kind of getting ready, this is a totally new experience. You don’t necessarily have the coping skills, or it’s just not the same.

Anyways, that’s very interesting. I’d like to know more about it, too.

E. Bornowsky: I think this would be a fascinating project for one of our education researchers, to look at a longitudinal study and the rates. The other thing that was interesting to me was the animated characters in the programming that the kids have access to now. Those of us, my vintage and generation, probably grew up with Mr. Rogers on TV — or Mr. Dressup, certainly, as the Canadian version.

Most of the little ones now are watching animated characters. There are not the same facial expressions. There’s not the same range. The body language and the emotion of the animated characters mimics real life, but it’s not a substitute for human interaction.

B. Stewart: Hmm. Maybe we need the Friendly Giant back.

E. Bornowsky: Absolutely.

J. Routledge (Chair): With that, Ellen, we want to thank you so much for taking the time to share your perspective. It’s apparent as I look around the table….

I know, myself, I feel what you’ve shared with us about the impact on kindergarten students and grade 1 students of masks and screen time, and the impact it has on their learning, their communication skills, their social behaviour, is quite significant. I think all of us want to really pay attention to this. This could have long-term repercussions that we should attend to now.

Thank you very much for that.

E. Bornowsky: Thank you so much for the opportunity to present. It’s been a great honour.

J. Routledge (Chair): We will now recess for lunch.

The committee recessed from 11:58 a.m. to 1:11 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We’re in the process of consulting with the public about Budget 2023.

Our next panel is on the topic of K-to-12 education, specifically inclusion. We have two speakers. Each of them will have five minutes to make a presentation. Because it’s on Zoom, our presenters will get a green light when they have two minutes to go and a red light when it’s time to wrap up. Then the committee will have about ten minutes to ask questions.

First on my list is Tracy Humphreys, representing BCEdAccess Society.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 6 – K-to-12 Education (Inclusion)

BCEDACCESS SOCIETY

T. Humphreys: Thanks for inviting me today.

Thanks, Cynthia, also, for coming. I know you’re going to share some really important thoughts and do the storytelling that you’re so excellent at.

My name is Tracy Humphreys. My pronouns are she and her.

I’m joining as a settler on the stolen lands of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.

I’m the executive director of the BCEdAccess Society. We’re an organization of parents, guardians and caregivers to children and youth with disabilities and complex learning needs in K-to-12 education from all over B.C. We advocate for equitable access to education.

People are coming to the committee with specific dollar amounts, but the needs of the education system are really complex, and we’re a volunteer-run organization. But for 14 years now, your committee has recommended changes that benefit inclusive education, and very little action has been taken by government. This needs to change. The crisis that families are feeling has worsened through the pandemic in all areas, from education and child care to affordable housing and homelessness to mental health and even climate change, and much of it is tied to the approach to supporting children and youth in this province.

Today I’m just going to really quickly repeat three of our recommendations from past years, because they remain the same.

The first one is to establish education assistant standards of practice. There are currently no standards for education assistants, who are the key supports for students with disabilities in schools. This recommendation was highly detailed in our submission last year. The EA Standards Working Group representative Cindy Dalglish has also come for at least a couple of years and made those recommendations. These standards would foster greater inclusion for disabled students.

The second piece is to conduct an audit of the education of K-to-12 students with disabilities, and complex learners, in the B.C. public and independent school systems, similar to the audit that was completed in 2015 called An Audit of the Education of Aboriginal Students in the B.C. Public School System. That audit did bring some improvements for Indigenous students and a general trend towards a focus on them as rights holders, and we’d like to see the same care and attention for disabled students as rights holders.

[1:15 p.m.]

This would also tie in well with informing the current work on standards under the Accessible B.C. Act, and it would give us a place to start, to create a plan. How can we create successes, pockets of success? How can we do better? Can we address the issue of the continued exclusion of disabled students? That is outlined in our exclusion tracker survey reports, which we’ve run for the past four years to establish data on the exclusion of students with disabilities.

Our current system was built for students who don’t exist. There’s no typical student. In implementing recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we should be following Indigenous ways of teaching and knowing so that we can better include all.

The third piece I wanted to touch on was expanding the mandate of the Representative for Children and Youth to include the Ministries of Education and Child Care and Health. The representative can better support children and youth if she has a mandate over all of the intersecting ministries.

We need this independent oversight. The only accountability right now for disabled students is graduation rates, and that comes far too late. These students are generally excluded from the foundation skills assessment and from parent and student satisfaction surveys, the only other accountability measures that exist in our current education system. We did raise this back in 2017 with the Premier and then Minister of Education Rob Fleming. We haven’t seen any accountability measures added back in.

The Supreme Court of Canada stated that when governments provide benefits such as education to the general population, they have an obligation not just to provide law like the Accessible B.C. Act but also to take positive steps to ensure that members of disadvantaged groups, such as persons with disabilities, can benefit equally from those services.

Funding remains a major issue, a major barrier, in ensuring that education is accessible for students with disabilities. Education spending has generally declined over past years as a percentage of the overall B.C. budget, and it needs to be reprioritized. Education spending is a cost-effective, proactive and preventative use of our tax dollars and will promote inclusion.

I know I talked pretty fast there. I think I squeezed it all in.

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

Cynthia.

CYNTHIA LOCKREY

C. Lockrey: I’m Cynthia Lockrey. I’m speaking to you as a mom, a mother in the Cowichan Valley of two diverse learners and a child with autism and complex medical needs.

I speak on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people.

Every year I come. I present to the Finance Committee about the lack of funding and supports in our public education system. These are supports for kids with autism, anxiety, mental health challenges, dyslexia, Down syndrome. The list goes on.

The first years I presented, I have to tell you, I had hope. I really did. Hope that this committee would see the sad state of affairs of what’s happening in education in B.C. Hope that the provincial government would, each budget, look at how they could help kids. But I don’t have any hope anymore. It’s my kid who is struggling.

The lack of funding from the Ministry of Education has a horrible trickle-down effect — to the school districts, to the schools and, ultimately, to the kids and families. The education system, quite frankly, is in crisis, and it just seems like our government does not care about the most vulnerable children.

Here are some great stats from school district 79 in Cowichan. The reading proficiency rate in grade 7 overall is 60 percent. It comes down to 40 percent for our diverse learners. The five-year graduation rate overall is 86 percent. For diverse learners, 56 percent. Children in care have a 25 percent chance of graduating. These are your most vulnerable kids.

The Ministry of Health, B.C. ministry, in June 2020, did a survey of parents and found 70 percent of respondents reported impaired learning. A journal article by the University of Ottawa found vulnerable children were most impacted, with a stark increase in disengagement, chronic attendance problems, a decline in academic achievement. It’s not getting any better because there are no supports to help build them back up to where they should be.

[1:20 p.m.]

My son is going into grade 5. He’s reading at a grade 1 reading level. I’ve had so many meetings with the school. They say: “We know he needs more supports. We don’t have the resources.” My kid goes to school five days a week, and nobody can teach him to read. He’s not in the assessments Tracy is talking about because he can’t read the grade 4 paperwork to do the assessments. So we have the privilege of driving half an hour once a week and paying thousands of dollars out of pocket to hire a tutor to teach him to read because nobody in the school has the time to teach him.

In September, we threw the towel in with our oldest child and pulled her, for her own mental health, out of public education when she transferred to grade 8. We did not win the lottery, but the only option for our child, at a 56 percent graduation rate, was putting her in private education. It has been remarkable to see the difference when a child has support and resources, when she has access to an educational assistant, when she has an individualized education plan that we asked for, for years, in public education and that she should have gotten, from her diagnosis.

When she was in public education, she was bullied almost every day. She came home with welts and bruises over her body. She had bruises to her soul. When she started in private school, she said to me: “This is the first time I’ve ever felt safe in school.” It’s not because the teachers don’t care, but there aren’t enough resources to help these kids that fall through the cracks.

Her last report card, so you know, was straight As. She is seen as a leader at her new school. She arranged a Ukrainian day yesterday to raise money for the Ukraine. They can’t believe what an amazing kid she is and where she was last year versus this year. The difference is support. I’m on day-by-day pulling my youngest out of public education. I tell you, if I had the money, he would be gone, because he isn’t getting supports.

What happens to all those kids whose parents can’t pull them out of education, that can’t drive them to tutoring? There are not enough resources — speech therapists, occupational therapists, counsellors, EAs — to help these kids go from surviving to thriving. And you should care, because for every dollar you spend on prevention, you save $10 in treatment. So if you could help these kids today, you would save in unemployment, underachievement, housing instability down the line.

I just hope that, one year, our government will actually realize we have a massive crisis in B.C., and we’re not doing anything about it.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you to both of you.

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

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for what you’ve said to us today. It is heartbreaking.

Tracy, we’ve spoken a little bit in the last little while. I’ve learned a lot in the last year and a half in terms of inclusion and exclusion in education. There really needs to be something done.

I will, Tracy, just say to you that in terms of expanding the mandate for the representative, that’s a recommendation that has been made since, I believe, 2018 and has not been acted upon. I’m hoping that that recommendation, as they’ve opened the legislation again this year — that they’re going to be able to actually make that happen.

I see, over and over again, that intersection between a young person who is not being supported in MCFD and is also not being supported in education. Or they’re being excluded from education because their child is too difficult for the teacher, so that child is then sent home, and that child is not having access to education. This isn’t a question. This is just saying that I understand that requirement, and I know that the representative does as well. I’m hoping that that can be a change to the legislation.

I also had a question. You had talked about exclusion tracker reports. I’m not sure what those are, and I’m wondering if I can have access or where we might be able to find those.

T. Humphreys: They’re all on our website. We’ve been tracking the exclusion of students with disabilities for the past four years. We allow families to report any type of exclusion of their child, and then we write reports at the end of each year. So they’re all on the website, but I can send them to you directly if you’d like.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Tracy, I can go to the website. That’s great.

I just wanted to say to Cynthia that I’m glad your daughter is doing well now. That’s super exciting. I’m sorry about the challenges that it took to kind of get to that place. Thank you so much for sharing the story.

[1:25 p.m.]

C. Lockrey: Thank you. Tracy can tell you. They’ve done a report on how many kids are exiting the public school system right now in B.C. There’s a mass exodus for all the reasons my kid is. It’s not because we all won the lottery over the summer or over the year. It’s just the reality if we want our kids to even survive.

T. Humphreys: Thank you, Cynthia, for mentioning that, because that’s also a report that we did, gosh, six years ago now. Then we redid it again this year, because we were curious to see what the trends were after the pandemic. The numbers are really big, and the numbers go into the independent system. I think we have about 12 percent of all students who are in an independent school, but a significant percentage of that are students with disabilities. Then some are leaving the system altogether to home-school.

Recently the trend I’m seeing is people leaving the province, which is something I’d like to collect some data on, because that’s been a really heightened thing just in the last few months.

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Me again. Hi.

I’m wondering. You talked about an audit, Tracy, of education of children with disabilities in school. I’m not saying that the same way that you said that, but can you explain what that is — what you’re actually asking for in terms of an audit? What are we looking for? Are we trying to figure out what kinds of measures we should be setting, other than those graduation rates?

T. Humphreys: Yeah. The audit of the Aboriginal students back in 2015…. There’s a report that government has from that. From that, they took recommendations, and they started implementing them in the system. As you can see, it has been — what? — seven years now, and there have been a lot of measures taken to specifically address the outcomes for Indigenous students.

That’s what I’m interested in — looking at the outcomes for students with disabilities. They do an annual audit of IEPs, but it’s basically a financial audit to make sure that they actually should be getting supplemental funding, if they do. That’s not helpful to looking at what the challenges are in the system and how we can fix them.

M. Starchuk: Thank you to both of you for your presentations.

Cynthia, I, as well, am glad that your child is getting some help.

Mine goes back to the beginning, Tracy, when you were talking about the standards for EAs. I mean, we see an awful lot of presentations, and I don’t have the specific knowledge from the 347 presentations I listened to last year. You said that it’s been presented — three or four years ago. But what standard was it based on? Or was it a created standard?

T. Humphreys: To create standards, I mean, there are lots of…. Early childhood educators, for example, have a set of standards of practice, so there are basics around the education that they need to have and ethics and different pieces that make them a professional in the education system. Education assistants do not have standards of practice. I mean, even nail technicians have standards of practice, right? But education assistants who are responsible for the most vulnerable children in our education system do not have standards of practice.

You can have an education assistant program at Douglas College which is two years long and quite thorough, and you can have a program in the Victoria school district…. Forgive me, Victoria school district, because I know you’re working hard to improve things, but it’s only three weeks long. You can’t possibly tell me that those two programs are teaching people the same thing. So we have people with wildly varying degrees of experience and skills working in the system.

Yeah. We need standards.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing any additional questions, so with that, I’d like to, on behalf of the committee, thank you for persisting. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. Thank you for reminding us that we have made these recommendations before.

We do hear your frustration, and the stark difference that you’re seeing in one school system compared to another is quite affecting. So thank you for your bravery.

T. Humphreys: Thank you so much for listening and taking the time.

J. Routledge (Chair): We’ll take a brief recess, because our next panel is at 1:35.

The committee recessed from 1:30 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Welcome back after our recess, everybody. We’re continuing with the theme of K-to-12 education. The next panel will be addressing the school food programs. On my list, our first presenter is Alexa Pitoulis with Fresh Roots.

Alexa, you have five minutes. I think you’ll be able to see, on your screen, the timer. We also have a light system here. When you have two minutes left, it turns green. When you’re out of time, it turns red, and then we go on to the next speaker. The committee will have an equivalent amount of time at the end to ask you questions, and you can further deepen your presentation.

Over to you, Alexa.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 7 – K-to-12 Education
(School Food Programs)

FRESH ROOTS

A. Pitoulis: Good afternoon. My name is Alexa Pitoulis, and I’m the executive director of Fresh Roots Urban Farm Society. Fresh Roots envisions a world where everyone has access to healthy food, land and community. Thank you so much for your time today. We are a non-profit organization that cultivates educational farms and programs on five different sites across Metro Vancouver in three school districts on ten acres of land.

It’s all on the unceded and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

On these sites, students dig into meaningful connections with the land, food and each other, conspiring communities to build just and equitable food systems. In 2021, we supported over 4,000 kids and youth in close to 20,000 learning hours.

I’m here today to recommend that the government of B.C. commit to multi-year investment to fund healthy universal school food programs in Budget 2023. As an active member of the B.C. chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food, Fresh Roots fully endorses the B.C. chapter recommendations. These recommendations are the result of years of research and discussion with organizations and stakeholders, working on the ground to pick up the slack of our current education system.

I think using the term “investment” is really important. We know that in Canada and B.C., we are really not doing very well at feeding kids in schools, which, to me, is frankly unacceptable and confusing, as the research clearly shows the significant return on investment in school food programs.

The 2016 cost-benefit analysis tool of the World Food Programme found that in a sample of ten countries providing school meals, take-home rations or biscuits, it showed that every $1 U.S. invested brought a $3 to $10 economic return from improved health and education among school children, as well as increased productivity when they become working adults.

Furthermore, in 2020, Frontiers in Public Health published research by Stephane Verguet and others that found across the 14 countries studied, they estimated that total program budgets reaching $11 billion U.S. per year translate to an estimated annual human capital return of $180 billion.

These are both short- and long-term gains in health and nutrition, education, social protection and gains to local agricultural economies. The numbers speak for themselves.

Fresh Roots has seen firsthand the incredible benefits to students, families and communities of school food programs that not only provide access to nourishing food but also develop the skills to cook, grow, eat and share. I’d like to highlight our innovative school food program called LunchLAB that in 2019, together with our partners at Growing Chefs!, we launched in two Vancouver schools as an example model for what school meal programs could be.

LunchLAB serves over 200 students lunch twice a week, and we source from local food producers and suppliers, engage students in food literacy learning by having them work with our chef-in-residence to prepare, cook and serve their peers. It provides a universal meal program, allowing students of all socioeconomic backgrounds access, regardless of the ability to pay for the program.

[1:40 p.m.]

LunchLAB is about more than just getting good food in bellies but building lifelong relationships with food, strengthening the school community and supporting local food systems.

While we’ve not been able to fully calculate the new cost this past year, prior to COVID our LunchLAB program cost approximately $7 per meal, including food, chef labour and some minimal operating costs. This cost does not include overhead for our organizations to administer the program nor the equipment and start-up costs that the program may require in some schools, nor does it include staff time of the teachers at the school who help and facilitate LunchLAB.

Imagine a province where every school community has access to a schoolyard farm for learning everything from science and math to art and leadership. Kids plant, grow, harvest and forage for food that they take into the school to prepare meals that are cooked, served and shared, all with student engagement. The exciting thing is that you don’t have to imagine this. This is already happening. There are innovative programs and approaches happening across the province. What is missing is the financial investment to ensure that these programs can be spread and all students have access across the province.

I sincerely thank you for your time today and for the important work you do. Come visit us. Come and experience what a school food program could be.

J. Routledge (Chair): Next, we’ll hear from Ryan Baker, Breakfast Club of Canada.

BREAKFAST CLUB OF CANADA

R. Baker: Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for your time today.

I am joining you from Vancouver, the traditional and unceded land of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh people.

An estimated 200,000 students in British Columbia are at risk of going to school hungry each and every day. Studies show that between 25 to 50 percent of students do not eat breakfast regularly. In B.C., Breakfast Club of Canada has been delivering programs and providing healthy food access to children and youth for over 15 years. Currently, Breakfast Club reaches a total B.C. school population beyond 60,000 students, supporting more than 270 schools. However, the need is still great. Over 200 B.C. schools are on our waitlist, and we know that countless others are unaware of our program and hopeful to join our waitlist.

We’ve provided two recommendations in our witness submission, the first being that the British Columbia Ministry of Education commit $15 million over three years to provide more than 37,000 students with access to healthy food every single day. This option provides a full-service partnership to develop full breakfast programs at more than 115 schools across the province.

Schools that are supported by Breakfast Club of Canada benefit not only from funding for food and kitchen equipment to ensure that they have the infrastructure necessary to manage their meal programs but also a wide array of supports from our programming team, who work directly with schools in communities to ensure that those schools are able to manage their programs and provide the best service possible to the students that they serve.

The second recommendation was that the government of British Columbia leverage the Breakfast Club of Canada’s unique expertise at delivering student meal programs across the country and identify the club as a strategic partner to support them with the expansion, coordination and sustainability of school meal programs in the province. As a strategic partner with the government and other stakeholders, we would support the sustainable development of school food programs across the country.

This model has worked very well in the province of Quebec. In partnership with the government of Quebec, the Ministry of Education and a number of other stakeholders throughout the ecosystem, we have been able to build partnerships in a fulsome roundtable to ensure that students across the province have access every day to healthy school meals.

Our national advocacy and reach means that we’re the ideal partner to support the provincial government in the development of a universally accessible school meal framework throughout the province — one that is sustainable and replicable across the province in schools and communities both large and small. Currently, today, we’re partnered with a number of organizations throughout the province to ensure that local communities and schools have the best support possible and to ensure that their students receive healthy school meals every day.

[1:45 p.m.]

We’re partnered with School Food Shift in the capital region. We’re partnered with the Rainbow community kitchen in Victoria, to ensure that meals are cooked, prepped and delivered to schools every single day of the school year. We’re partnered with Food For Thought, Hope for the Nations and the Central Okanagan Food Bank in Kelowna to ensure that breakfast is prepped and delivered to schools throughout the city of Kelowna every single school day of the year.

We want to be a part of this strategic conversation to ensure that sustainable school food programs are a reality for students across the province. Thank you very much for your time today, and thank you for your support of students across B.C.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Alexa and Ryan, for your presentations. I’ll now ask members of the committee to ask you some questions.

B. Bailey: Thank you very much for your presentation and the excellent work that you’re doing on behalf of kids in the province.

Ryan, this question is for you. I was interested in your recommendation for $15 million to fund, I think you said, 115 schools across the province. Is this thought to be a pilot project, or is it a situation where you’re targeting schools where you know there’s a particularly high level of need? What I’m really getting at, in trying to help me with my thinking about this challenging issue, is the pros and cons of it being a targeted program for specific areas, rather than a universal program. Of course, the cost to government varies dramatically in those two scenarios.

Should this come across my desk, I’d like to have just a little bit of pre-thinking done in regards to what might be the negatives to starting in a small way, and perhaps growing out, or whether that’s worth doing. Perhaps your colleague, Alexa, might like to weigh in on that as well. I’d be curious about your thoughts.

R. Baker: Absolutely. One of the key components of programs that we support, regardless of what community they’re in, is that the programs are universally accessible. What this means for us is that there’s no stigma attached to a student who needs breakfast in the morning. The program should not be tied to socioeconomic realities within the family. Ultimately, we want to ensure that every student has breakfast every single day so that they can be their best selves at schools.

The 116 schools that we’ve targeted in discussions with the Ministry of Education are not meant to be a pilot, but rather to expand upon the support that we already provide in the province and will continue to provide in the province. We want to see that support grow.

Ultimately, we know that Breakfast Club cannot solve this problem alone, and we would be foolish to think so. We know that it’s going to be a partnership between the provincial governments, federal government, non-profits in the eco-system, such as ourselves, and school districts and schools themselves, to ensure that the support that we can provide best meets the needs of those local communities. So I wouldn’t call it a pilot. Rather, an expansion of our current support.

H. Yao: I asked this question before to a different presenter. I would like to ask you too, to hear your feedback.

Obviously, being a Chinese Canadian, we are always talking about the cross-cultural background when it comes to providing a breakfast club for students. I would love to hear your experience, and what kind of challenge you experienced and how you overcome them, so we can maybe learn from your experience.

R. Baker: Sure. One thing we try to do is engage local communities in the programs that we support, knowing that it can never be a cookie-cutter model that we implement in communities across the country. Obviously, communities up north will have very different needs from those in the south. Large, urban communities will have very different needs from more rural communities.

We really do encourage local schools to take ownership of their programs, tell us what they need, and we do what we can to provide support for those needs. When we’re engaging with other non-profits or community stakeholders, the schools and the school districts are part of that conversation, to ensure that they’re getting the support that they need, not what we think they need.

H. Yao: Chair, may I have a follow-up, please?

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

H. Yao: Thank you. I wanted to ask a question of Alexa.

I just want to first emphasize the fact that you’re using food to teach and to learn life skills. Phenomenal concept. I love it. I know, as a youth worker in the past, I used to teach kids how to prepare their own fruits by how to peel and how to cut out the core and everything.

Thinking back on what I asked Ryan earlier, obviously, in a city like Richmond, which I’m representing, there’s a huge amount of diversity.

[1:50 p.m.]

For the use of teaching, we do want to understand what kind of strategy you come up with to ensure that your training program can diversify and almost cater to the diversity and inclusion of our community, to ensure that every kid be able to learn something that’s meaningful or useful for their cultural background and their community.

I hope you don’t mind me asking this question. I know it’s a bit challenging, but I would just love to hear your answer.

A. Pitoulis: Thank you so much for the question, Henry.

I’ll use the example of the lunchtime program which runs at Lord Roberts Elementary School in Vancouver. It’s a school community of about 600 to 700 kids. We have 45 different first languages. So a very diverse school.

What we’ve found is…. I would say…. This is where the opportunity of using the lunchtime as an educational segment of the day is…. The kids actually get to be involved in talking about what the menu is and bringing their own backgrounds and their own ideas into that.

There is one famous story where there was a child from a Filipino background who came into LunchLAB one day and saw a traditional Filipino dish that was on the menu for the day. A bit obscure, maybe. We don’t even see it in restaurants. He just was elated to see that there.

I think the other stories of having LunchLAB be the hub for lunch…. We’ve got a pastry chef mother who has come in, a sushi chef father who has come in. The community, from all cultural backgrounds, gets to be part of creating this, the whole feeding experience. They get to share and celebrate the cultures across the school.

Come visit us.

B. Stewart: Ryan, I want to start with a question for you. You mentioned that Quebec has adopted Breakfast Club on a provincewide basis. Is that correct, and if so, for how long?

R. Baker: Yes. We’ve been partnered with the province of Quebec for four years now.

The province has helped come up with an equation to ensure that any school they deem as…. They have a ranking of one to ten in terms of socioeconomic need within the community. Any school from seventh and above who wants a breakfast program has the funding available. They can reach out directly to us, and we provide a full turnkey model service, where we deliver food to those programs. Or they have the option of taking the money for themselves to develop a locally sourced community breakfast program for their school.

B. Stewart: Could you just elaborate, Ryan, as to how that funding works? Is it on a per-pupil basis? You just talked about the ranking. How does that work there?

R. Baker: They provide us funding on a per-student basis. When I say per student, it’s the number of attendees to a breakfast over the course of a year. They provide us with about $1.20 per meal to ensure that we can purchase food locally, within the province of Quebec, and deliver that food directly to communities in a manner that suits their community needs.

B. Stewart: Okay. Thank you.

Alexa, I wanted to ask you…. You said something about…. You had a ten-acre plot, and you were supplying — I think you said — 4,000 students. Now, I might not have quite got that. Is that accurate? Where is this ten…?

A. Pitoulis: Yeah. It’s a total of ten acres. So much smaller, usually half acres.

We run four different school yard farms — two in Vancouver, one in Delta and one in Coquitlam. The food produced from those farms does go into the food programs, but there are current barriers to getting some of the food produced into cafeteria programs because of procurement policies, etc. The potential is there, and we’ve had lots of progress on those four sites.

There are also other school yard farms that are being piloted, in slightly different models, through Farm to School B.C., in other parts of the province that are also interesting and testing the model of having a viable financial farm operator working a school yard farm that is very focused on production for the school food programs.

B. Stewart: Another question. Just to look at the viability, to where you got to today…. Obviously, it appears that you have some volunteers. You ask for donations on your website. Where does the funding come from, and what’s the percentage of volunteers in the organization?

[1:55 p.m.]

A. Pitoulis: We do have volunteers, a student-run…. We do have a staff team. Our summer team is largely funded by Canada Summer Jobs in terms of farms.

We have been less focused on just pure food production. We also do generate revenues through summer camps and selling produce at markets. We have invested more, through grant funding, into educational programs. We learned early on that we were doing something very different that hadn’t been done before in Canada.

There’s more work to be done to explore the different models that could be very focused on food production for schools. There’s lots of good data, and we have now ten-plus years of experience.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our last question will be from Megan.

M. Dykeman: Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll be really quick.

My question is for Ryan at the Breakfast Club of Canada. I have had the privilege of touring some of the centres that you’ve serviced in Langley and having presentations when I was on the board in regards to the program.

One of the questions, though, that I’m wondering, as we’re moving out of the pandemic…. During the pandemic, our district was feeding a large percentage of students. We had no idea what the need was for families that were struggling in order to provide nutritious lunches and breakfasts during the pandemic. We had students coming to the schools and picking up while the schools were closed.

Out of that, I’m wondering: have you seen an increase in pressure — using that, I believe, one to ten rating you used? For instance, in Quebec, have you seen where schools identified as needing the program?

Secondly, many organizations, coming out the pandemic, have indicated that they’ve had a hard time retaining volunteers or people who would be willing to sign up to help administrate things. I’m wondering if you’re experiencing that with the partners that you partner with in the communities — identifying people that would be willing to take the work on.

Generally, what has shifted in that time period? I know a lot has changed in the education world.

R. Baker: Sure. Thank you for the question.

We haven’t seen more schools than typical join our wait-list. Typically, in B.C., we’ll see about 40 programs per year join our wait-list — more when we on-board more schools. The word gets out.

What we noticed coming out of the pandemic was that more students per school were accessing the school nutrition programs. At a school where we used to help a school serve between 30 and 40 percent of the students, they were up to, say, 60 to 70 percent of the students.

Ultimately, that’s a great problem for us to help schools solve. That means more students are getting the support that they need at school. For us, that’s a big win. It did put a lot of pressure on the volunteers in schools, whether they be principals, teachers, counsellors or parents, who actually are cooking and preparing the food for students every day.

Some of the program shifts…. Because students were cohorted into their specific classes, they weren’t able to come into the cafeteria, let’s say, to eat a big group breakfast. Instead, a lot of schools shifted to a model where breakfasts were delivered to each classroom every day, and the first five to ten minutes of the school day or class day was breakfast. Kids were free to grab food out of their backpacks if they brought extra food for snack time, or they could get food out of the breakfast bin.

Those breakfast bins would include full breakfasts of protein foods, fruits and vegetables, and whole grain foods. Students are encouraged to take as much as they need. Some kids just want an apple, and other kids will grab a full breakfast out of the breakfast pack. For us, that’s just a big win. We know that those students need the support, and this is just a new way for schools to help reach those students. So it’s been a really big shift.

The Langley schools foundation has been a really great partner for us in ensuring that the local Langley students are getting that support. Anything that we can do to help support them so they can reach more students…. We’re happy to partner with them to do so.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for sharing the innovation you’ve undertaken during this difficult time and for all you do.

J. Routledge (Chair): Just before we wrap it up, Brenda has the last question.

B. Bailey: Thank you, Madam Chair, for letting me sneak in a second question.

[2:00 p.m.]

We’ve heard from a number of different organizations in regards to this important need for children to be able to access food, particularly in challenging times. Some speak about providing school lunches, and others, breakfast. I wonder if there’s any research that can help us look at which of those options is best — whether it’s really six of one, a half-dozen of another — or if it makes a big difference which one of those meals is provided in a school setting.

I’m not directing it at anyone, if either of you would like to take a stab at it. Otherwise, I’ll go research it later.

A. Pitoulis: I’ll take a stab. I don’t have specific research at my fingertips here. I think from the work and the research and what we’ve seen on the ground, what I would love to leave the committee with is a sense of….

There’s a choice. You can choose to do just a very specific feeding program. Then there is a choice to look and say: “What is the potential of using feeding kids at school to be an integrated and critical part of every child’s education?” And what is the return on investment of that approach?

For me, it’s less about pitting breakfast versus lunch. It’s more about working with the local schools, the districts and the communities around need and cultural diversity and sovereignty. It’s saying that there are really fantastic examples of other countries where they’ve integrated curriculum and feeding in a wonderful way that just adds multiple ripple-effect benefits throughout.

I think it’s not breakfast or lunch. I think it’s like: what is the opportunity to use feeding kids to its maximum potential — for benefits to families, communities and kids?

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, thank you to both of you, Alexa and Ryan. Thank you for your presentations, and thank you for the work that you’re leading.

As you were speaking and giving us the details of what you do now and what you would hope to do, what was going through my mind was the whole issue of food security and how, in the last year or so, it has really been brought to our attention, with the extreme weather, about food security in terms of having enough to eat but the supply chain as well. What you’re suggesting, what you’re asking from us, is something that would address both of those issues.

So thank you very much, again, for your leadership on this. We’ll bid you goodbye now.

We’ll take a brief recess.

The committee recessed from 2:03 p.m. to 2:07 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Welcome, everybody. Our next panel is libraries. We have four presenters, and we’ll hear from each one in turn.

You have five minutes each. I think the timer is on your screen to help guide you. We’ll hear from each of you, and then we’ll open it up to questions from the committee for about 20 minutes.

Our first presenter is Kevin Millsip representing the B.C. Libraries Cooperative.

Over to you, Kevin.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 8 – Libraries

B.C. LIBRARIES COOPERATIVE

K. Millsip: Thanks very much, Janet. Thanks, everybody, for the chance to speak with you today. My name is Kevin Millsip. My pronouns are he and him.

I’m calling in today from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

I’m the executive director of the B.C. Libraries Cooperative and the volunteer co-chair of the B.C. Public Library Partners. Now, the B.C. Public Library Partners is made up of four organizations, all represented on the call today. Collectively, we advocate on behalf of public libraries.

First of all, I want to heartily thank the provincial government for the $8 million in COVID recovery and relief funding that recently came to this sector. These funds are a very welcome respite from what has been, for many of our members, an ongoing annual exercise in belt-tightening, in looking for more efficiencies where none exist because of previous rounds of belt-tightening and, in too many cases, cuts to programs and services.

In terms of the co-op where I work, we’re a non-profit that helps libraries help people. All the public libraries in B.C. are members of our co-op. We provide a host of services related to technology, online infrastructure, consortial purchasing and services for people with print disabilities.

Our COVID recovery funding will go towards ensuring greater access to electronic resources for folks across B.C., to strengthening and upgrading the technology and the infrastructure that lets libraries work well in an online environment. For many in our sector, ourselves included, the COVID recovery funds are basically helping us catch up to where we should be after years of underinvestment in a range of services and areas.

Here’s the challenge. Once the one-time funds are gone and utilized and spent — and they will be spent well — we will, as a sector, be in danger of falling behind again in terms of being able to keep pace with the kinds of investments, human, technology, digital infrastructure, that our communities need, for us to deliver the kinds of services that they deserve.

[2:10 p.m.]

In order for us not to fall behind again, I have one simple ask, which is that we need a permanent increase to the annual operating grant from the provincial government to the public library sector, and we need a lift, a small lift from the current annual amount of $14 million a year to $23 million a year, linked to inflation.

Now, $23 million a year is about what the annual provincial grant would be today had the grant amount not been cut over ten years ago from its high at $17.9 million to the current amount of $14 million and had the annual amount kept pace with inflation.

As I mentioned, we’re immensely grateful for the $8 million in recovery funding. As I said, this money is going to be spent well, and it’s helping us catch up to where we should be today. But in order for us not to fall behind again, we’re asking you to lift the floor from the $14 million to $23 million per annum for public libraries in B.C.

I’m going to hold it there and pass it back to the Chair. Thanks for your time.

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

Next we’ll hear from Leigh Anne Palmer, Association of B.C. Public Library Directors.

ASSOCIATION OF B.C.
PUBLIC LIBRARY DIRECTORS

L. Palmer: Thanks very much for having me. My name is Leigh Anne Palmer.

I have the privilege of addressing you today from the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

I’m here today representing the Association of B.C. Public Library Directors in collaboration with the B.C. Library Trustees Association, B.C. Library Association and the B.C. Libraries Cooperative.

I’m going to set a little bit of context, as I’m a bit blurry. Sorry. In a world that is increasingly unaffordable, where citizens feel isolated from each other and where the future looks uncertain due to the climate crisis, libraries play a critical role. We’re a community hub open to all, providing free spaces and services that build skills, nurture a sense of belonging and provide a refuge from climate emergency events. Libraries are essential. We’re one of the few places where you don’t have to buy one thing to be in there. And as the costs for everything soar, we’re busier than ever.

Over the past ten years, we’ve expanded our services to meet the many and diverse needs of our communities. We offer a safe and confidential space to explore new ideas. We make referrals and create connections for people struggling to emerge from poverty, abuse or addiction, and we provide space for civic engagement and discourse on the issues that challenge our society.

Libraries are open to job seekers and small business owners, providing access to computers for job searching and resources like LinkedIn Learning that help them develop the skills they need to land a position, build a business and provide for themselves and their families.

Libraries are open to newcomers. We provide connections to services that support immigrants as they navigate the complexities of settlement, connect with the community and build lives in Canada.

Libraries are open to families, providing safe spaces for youth to gather and build literacy skills that will benefit themselves and their communities as they move through their lives.

Libraries are, finally, open to everyone. When our province has been rocked by climate emergency events — wildfires, heat domes, floods — our doors have been open, welcoming British Columbians in from the elements, helping them connect with the services they need to stay safe and to rebuild their lives. We are truly privileged to be that constant resource, welcoming everyone and making them feel at home while we connect them with the information, technology and the community they need to survive and thrive.

While over the past ten years we’ve expanded our services to help more people connect with more services, we’ve had to do this with less funding. In 2009, public library funding was cut by 25 percent to approximately $4 million. Since that time, we haven’t seen an increase in our base grant funding.

We’re grateful for that one-time CRR funding that the province provided to help lessen some of the costs we’ve incurred over the pandemic, but that funding is only a temporary support. The fundamental gaps remain and, indeed, grow each year as operating this critical social infrastructure becomes more and more expensive.

Libraries across B.C. — small and large, urban and rural — are all facing challenges. Some are struggling to keep buildings and services open due to skyrocketing costs of operating, staffing and providing collections. Other are facing significant challenges in equipping their staff with the tools they need to help those struggling with mental health and addiction issues while still providing a welcoming space for others in the community.

[2:15 p.m.]

The events of the last two years have demonstrated the ways in which we have been stalwart partners working tirelessly to meet the priorities of government and citizens across the province. Adequately funded, think of what we could do.

I think we all agree that British Columbians shouldn’t have to buy a cup of coffee to access high-speed Internet. No child in our province should go without a new bedtime story because of the cost of a book. Everyone in our province deserves a place to go free of charge to weather a storm.

With that in mind, it’s increasingly difficult to understand why libraries haven’t warranted an increase to our base grant funding in 13 years. We ask you to think about the value derived from the government’s existing contribution to B.C. public libraries and all that we do to support British Columbians.

With this in mind, we ask for your commitment of $23 million in 2023 as well as ongoing incremental increases so that we can continue and improve our ability to meet the needs of individuals, families and communities across the province when their need is greater than ever.

We are here asking for your support. On behalf of the Association of B.C. Public Library Directors, I thank you for this opportunity to share what libraries are doing for their communities and for considering an increase to our funding in 2023.

Thank you, and I’ll hand it back to the Chair.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Leigh Anne.

Now we’ll hear from Rina Hadziev, representing the British Columbia Library Association.

B.C. LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

R. Hadziev: Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about libraries. They’re one of my favourite things. I’m Rina Hadziev.

I’m coming to you from the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, specifically the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

I’m pleased to be presenting on behalf of the B.C. Library Association and as the volunteer co-chair of the B.C. Public Library Partners. The B.C. Library Association represents libraries and library workers from across the province. Our members are individuals, both unionized staff and non-unionized staff, from large and small libraries.

We represent B.C. libraries with institutions ranging from the biggest university libraries to the smallest public libraries. We’re privileged to represent many library stakeholders in B.C. as well, including publishers, literacy organizations and library vendors. We were founded over 100 years ago, and we’ve had a steady, progressive and relevant role to play as an essential part of the infrastructure of B.C.’s library environment.

First, I want to join my colleagues in expressing thanks on behalf of our members and our sector for the one-time COVID recovery and relief funding. At BCLA, this funding is going to be used to support libraries to increase their capacity to provide accessible services and meet the diverse needs of their communities. It’s also going to be used to increase the accessibility of the B.C. Summer Reading Club, ensuring that every child in our province has a fun and memorable summer reading experience that meets their needs.

We’re proud to be part of such a vital sector in our province and particularly proud of the work our members have done over the past two years. During the pandemic, libraries and library workers have evolved and stepped up and supported their communities in new ways. But we’re hearing from our members now that their communities have greater needs than ever before, and they’re no longer to meet all those needs.

While provincial funding to libraries was cut and then frozen for the past 13 years, unfortunately, the cost to provide library service has been increasing. I sometimes find a small example can be helpful when talking about such a large scale, and I’m a librarian, so I wanted to share information on the average cost of a few different kinds of books, from the fall of 2009 compared to the fall of 2021.

In 2009, an adult hardcover fiction book, a bestseller — you might see a John Grisham, something like that — was $31 and change. In 2021, it was $35 and change. In 2009, an adult non-fiction book was $32.37; in 2021, $38.46. In 2009, a board book or a baby book was $10.54. In 2021, it is $3 more than that, at $13.53. The dollars just are not going as far as they used to.

Another issue libraries face is excessively high prices and restrictive purchasing models for digital audiobooks and e-books from the big-five publishers — they control 80 percent of the trade book market — and Amazon and Audible. So libraries lend digital copies just like physical books, on a one-to-one basis, but the prices we pay are exponentially higher for the digital.

This material is popular. It has the capacity for improved accessibility. It allowed libraries to continue offering collections when they were shut down due to the pandemic, and it allows them to provide access 24-7, 365.

[2:20 p.m.]

In addition to offering collections, libraries are a vital part of the social safety net, as my colleagues have said. They are open to everyone, and that is wonderful and essential, but it’s also challenging. It means libraries are deeply impacted by all of the issues playing out in society.

Our members are individuals who work in libraries. We’re hearing from them that their work is being impacted by the opioid crisis, by the lack of affordable housing and trying to support people living with homelessness, by the climate crisis and by mental health issues in their communities.

These people who work in public libraries do the work because they believe in what libraries do. They believe in the importance of community, and they desperately want to meet the needs of their community members. We’re starting to hear from them that it is hard, and at times heartbreaking, to do their jobs, as they’re having to decide what cuts to make, knowing the impact that it’s going to have on their community but not having the funding they need to maintain, let alone increase, services.

Our request to you is to invest in communities across B.C. by investing in public libraries. We provide both tangible and intangible contributions, but we can only continue to do that if we have the funding we need.

Thank you for considering, supporting and increasing provincial funding to libraries. They can do even more to meet the increasing needs of our communities.

I’ll hand it back to the Chair.

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

Finally, we’ll hear from Jerrilyn Kirk, representing the B.C. Library Trustees Association.

B.C. LIBRARY TRUSTEES ASSOCIATION

J. Kirk: Hello. Hadih. I know you’re hearing a lot of really compelling presentations, so I thank you for accepting this submission from BCLTA. We are the provincial association that represents over 700 community leaders and local government officials who understand the importance of, and govern, B.C.’s public libraries.

I am speaking to you today from the unceded traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, part of the Dakelh Carrier people’s territory. The Carrier and Sekani Indigenous people have walked gently on these diverse traditional territories, which I am grateful to live, work, learn and play on as an uninvited guest. I am committed to building and nurturing relationships with Indigenous peoples. We acknowledge their traditional lands and thank them for their hospitality.

I would like to begin by saying that BCLTA’s members are grateful to Ministry of Municipal Affairs for the annual grant libraries receive each year, as well as the one-time technology grant, which was received in 2020. We are more than grateful for the one-time $8 million grant that was received in 2022, which will help with many issues caused by COVID.

All of these funds help support communities across B.C., providing increased access to digital and hard-copy resources, as well as providing libraries the ability to serve a plethora of other community needs. As each community is different, so are each community’s needs and so is each community library.

There are 71 public libraries across B.C., which serve rural communities of 400 to urban centres of over 600,000 and many more people. Provincial funding for public library service funding has been frozen since 2010. On top of that, B.C. libraries have not been eligible for federal pandemic support, such as CEWS, CERS or CEBA, but bear the high cost of new and ongoing safety measures.

As low-barrier social infrastructure, libraries promote belonging and equity for those they serve. They support traditional and technological literacy, which supports economic development for all. Libraries provide well-trained and compassionate staff, providing connection to essential social and government services in an environment without stigma, as Leigh Anne had mentioned.

Built on a history of collaboration, libraries advance collective progress on connectivity, increased sectoral action on the climate crisis and promote deeper progress on accessibility, inclusivity and reconciliation.

Did you know that there are 71 public libraries, 249 service locations and six federations serving 99 percent of B.C.’s population? Did you know that we have 22 million active cardholders provincially? Did you know that approximately 45 million physical items are borrowed from libraries every year? That’s 45 million.

[2:25 p.m.]

Libraries see 60 million annual library visits, in person and virtual, each year; 74,000 library programs per year; and 1.7 million people attending library programs per year. These stats are mind-blowing. Public libraries are truly the only public institutions that are equitable in providing services for all community members so that each British Columbian is able to participate in and benefit from the social and economic development of their communities.

We know that public libraries significantly contribute to the government’s goals for making life more affordable, improving services and building a strong, sustainable, equitable, reconciliation-focused and innovative province for all British Columbians. We also know that this committee is aware of the important role of public libraries from things like the annual UBCM resolutions.

We appreciate the provincial government’s recognition of the public library funding issue. We see that they understand what we’re saying.

I’m going to end this with a quote from one our trustees who serves on the Tumbler Ridge Public Library board. This is why she’s proud to be a library trustee. Her name is Amber. I don’t know if you can see this, but this is Amber and her little family. “Our library means so much to my family and I. Our older kids grew up using it. They spent endless hours in there enjoying programs offered throughout the year. Some of their favourites were the free snack programs and LEGO club.”

Anyways, she goes on to explain how important libraries are to her family, and that’s why she’s a library trustee.

I thank you for this opportunity, and back to the Chair.

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

Now, we will open it up to questions from the committee.

The first hand I see is Ben’s.

B. Stewart: Thank you for all of your presentations. Just as you’re talking, I’m thinking about my own library experiences, back in the community — that the library has grown, and it’s not near the same size or location.

Anyways, my more important thing. With the diversity in British Columbia…. I’m just wondering about how communities, the libraries, are addressing different cultures and making certain that the selections that are there attract new immigrants that are here in British Columbia to the library system.

L. Palmer: Thank you for your question. Meeting the needs of every British Columbian is something that is critical to our libraries and to our collection development librarians, who are specialized in finding the right resource for the right person at the right time.

In doing so, what we do is we focus on a diversity of collection — in multiple languages, multiple formats — to ensure that everyone has access to something that meets their specific needs.

This isn’t cheap. It’s getting more and more expensive, but one of the interesting things is, depending on your neighbourhood or your library, if you have a specific culture or a specific immigrant population, those libraries or those branches really invest in creating a deep and rich connection, let’s say, in South Hill, where my neighbourhood is, in Urdu and in Punjabi languages, because that is the ethnicity and the ethnic background of many of the people in their community.

We’re trying our hardest. One of the important things is recruiting a really educated and invested staffing that have access and have the skills and the knowledge of the language and the connections to the community. So diversifying our workforce is also a really important part of meeting that need.

J. Kirk: Could I just…? May I speak to that too? The whole Indigenous library usage as well — in the North, that’s tremendously important. Being from the North, I just wanted to speak to that a little bit and say that we also provide books in First Nations languages. So we do try to reach everybody in the province.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you.

Our next question is from Henry, followed by Mike, followed by Megan.

H. Yao: I feel like I should say something about that too.

[2:30 p.m.]

I do want to say, first of all, thank you so much. I remember the Richmond library when we were dealing with pandemic, when we were dealing with issues. I used to do community dinners too. I’d see the whole family hanging out in the library during the regular hours. It just reminds us that the library is not just a place of literacy; the library is a place for a community hub when we’re looking at 3D printers, when we’re looking at LEGO sets, when we’re looking at a community room where people can study together in a quiet space.

Of course, the regional libraries are one of the fastest at pivoting for culturally appropriate materials. They are way ahead of everyone else with regard to preparing the staff, preparing the quality materials, preparing the services to ensure individuals from various cultural backgrounds can be serviced.

I want to say kudos. I just want to throw that out there, because everyone is talking about a crisis, for a second.

My actual question is…. Correct me, Kevin, if I heard it wrong. You mentioned something about $17½ million when the first budget froze. Then you talked about when you guys were only receiving $14 million, and you’re looking for an $8 million top-up, at this point, to match the $17½ million projection, which is what you would have shared, probably, by today’s standards.

Was there actually a cut that happened for a period? Is that the reason you went from $17½ million to $14 million?

K. Millsip: Yeah, very briefly, Henry, in 2009-10, the provincial operating grant to the sector was at a high of $17.9 million, and then that got cut back to…. It settled at $14 million. There was a little bit of up and down. We’ve been at $14 million per annum for about a decade.

Our ask is to bring it to $23 million, which would…. If we had stayed at $17.9 million and that had grown with inflation, we’d be in the $23 million per annum range.

H. Yao: Obviously, I know the library does hire a lot of great staff because of all the resources. I apologize that you guys have to shoulder the financial differences.

Can I ask what kind of strategy you guys have to implement just to make up the differences so you can ensure your staff get a proper wage, so you can have proper supplies for the general public? It sounds like our librarians, our boards of directors, our governance bodies, as Jerrilyn was mentioning earlier, probably had to put in a lot of extra effort just to tighten the belts, as Kevin was mentioning earlier, and find resources elsewhere to match the differences.

K. Millsip: Leigh Anne, it looks like you’re ready to speak.

L. Palmer: I can do that. Yeah. Thanks.

Over the past decade, when provincial funding for the library was cut — in, let’s say, 2009 — we went from 7 percent of our funding coming from the provincial government to about, in 2019 — it’s gotten even worse — 4.5 percent coming from the provincial government. In that same period, the municipal portion, then, has risen from 72 percent, at that time, to 80 percent. Those gaps have really only increased.

A lot of it has been doing more with less. So tightening our belts, trying to find as many efficiencies as possible, trying to be as collaborative as possible to save funds and harness collective purchasing. But that can only take you so far.

While both levels of government have multiple increasing service demands, municipalities have much more of a restricted revenue, in terms of their options, than the province does. So that’s really one of the reasons why we’re looking for the province to return to and keep up with the funding that we had in 2009 and then, moving through inflation, get us to $23 million in ’23.

R. Hadziev: I’ll just add, really quickly, that at the time when that cut was made, libraries took different paths.

I was a librarian at that point. Some of us stopped buying new materials for the rest of that year. So there are gaps in collections, where there’s just a chunk of material that was never purchased. Some laid people off. Some cut service hours and didn’t replace positions. I think a lot of libraries — we would probably all acknowledge this — have started doing things where…. They reduced staff by attrition.

[2:35 p.m.]

They are buying less. Where you might have had 15 languages because you would invest in a language when you started to see growth in a community, now you wait until you have enough people to actually justify, which is unfortunate. Part of making you feel like the library is the place for you is having you come in and see some of your language.

It used to be that a library might say: “We’re starting to see a Tagalog community. We’re starting to see a Filipino community. Let’s build a Tagalog collection so when they come in, they’ll see a collection.” Now it’s: “Let’s wait and see. Once there’s a big enough group and we’re getting demand, we’ll do it.”

Again, that sort of ability to be proactive and create shared space is…. Now you’re having to make tough decisions. Do you offer a storytime? Do you have the staff to do that? Or do you offer a new language? Do you offer downloadable material or not? These are some of the tough decisions.

K. Millsip: There’s an equity piece. I’ll be very quick.

The ability of a larger library system to absorb those kinds of cuts might be a bit better or more resilient at one level than in a smaller community. There’s absolutely no doubt that one of the things…. You know, a smaller municipality might simply have less fiscal room to be able to support its local library than a larger one. Then we start to get bigger distortions between the more metro areas of the province and once we get outside the metropolitan areas.

Again, that’s something we want to try to recalibrate, if that makes sense.

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next question is from Mike, followed by Harwinder.

M. Starchuk: Thank you to everyone. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me that the libraries have just completely evolved into something else. The library in my city — you can go grab a cup of coffee while you’re inside of there, where years ago, you would have been told: “Shush. Push that away.” They’re absolute places of activity.

My question, though, is…. It just struck me as odd. I think it was Rina. You were talking about the prices of the books that were coming in when you’re adding more stock. You had said that digital was exponentially higher. I’m just taken aback by it, because as a person who reads digital books as opposed to the conventional books, I just find that odd. So maybe we could understand why.

R. Hadziev: Yeah. I can expand a little on that. In a nutshell, when we buy books, we’re buying them under the Copyright Act. So libraries can buy a book and then, under copyright, whoever buys a physical item can then lend it to whomever they want. Really, the legal opportunity for libraries to lend things is no different than your ability to lend a book that you buy.

The difference is that with digital, that does not exist. So we are not, in fact — and you are not, as a consumer — buying a digital book, nor is the library. What you’re doing is licensing it. Again, this is generally not B.C. publishers. This is the big multinationals, Amazon and Audible, but they are where almost all the books come from. They are licensing the books, which means that they choose to do a different kind of licence for a consumer than for libraries.

What they have decided, many of them, is that libraries are their competitors, not their partners. So they will charge us anywhere from two to five or six times what a consumer would pay, and they generally put a licence term on it of, usually, either a number of uses or a time, usually one to two years. What that means is that a book that you might, as a consumer, spend $15 on as an e-book might realistically cost the library $60. They have it for one to two years, and then they have to rebuy it.

This will also be why you might look at your library’s e-book collection and wonder: “Where’s all the older stuff? Why do they only have Nos. 7, 8, 9 of the series and not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 like they would have on the shelves?” The answer is that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 have expired. They cannot afford to buy those and keep buying the new ones and keep rebuying No. 1 every two years.

In addition to the cost to rebuy and the increased costs — we’re paying far more for the digital than we would have paid for a physical, where we get a significant discount — you also have the staff time it takes to be trying to monitor all of that and decide: “Do I rebuy No. 1 of this popular series, or do I buy a new book?”

There are many factors at play, but it really comes down to licensing. There is advocacy happening at a national level in Canada and the U.S. about this, but there is no solution coming soon.

At the same time, it is sort of unrealistic for libraries to not have digital content, for many of the reasons I mentioned. It’s not just about popularity; it’s about equity. There’s also more and more material only being published digitally, and there is some material that publishers will not even sell to libraries.

[2:40 p.m.]

We are actually ending up in a world in which, if you do not have the money, there is some information that is not for you. Part of the role that libraries have always played is in levelling that playing field. You might have to wait, but you will get the material. We are now struggling to get the material so that it’s not an information elite and everyone else.

M. Starchuk: Thank you.

H. Sandhu: Thank you to all the presenters. It’s a comment and then a question.

When I think about the library, in going through your presentation, or every time I look at my local library, in Vernon, I think about a place where you don’t need to have change in your pocket. It promotes equality and equity. Anybody can go in and get treated fairly, equally. As we speak, my older daughter is sitting in the Vernon library, where lately she’s spending hours of her day preparing for her medical college admission exam.

Not only that, it’s entrusting…. My younger one, who is 15, went with her one day. She just had no choice. She had to wait there for her sister, when she picked her up from school. She always gets distracted with studies. She has a different academic level than the older sister, but she came home and told me how focused she felt in the surrounding in the library and how quickly she was able to finish her homework. Now they both go there.

I talk about diversity. A few years ago, a while ago, in Vernon, my mom happened to walk in the library. She was walking through one corner, upstairs, and there were Punjabi books. My mom came running to me. Her eyes just lit up with so much joy. You wouldn’t think that there would be Punjabi books in Vernon five, six years ago, and I thought that was very thoughtful. She was able to grab a few and read and felt included. So little things, and the emphasis you put on, thank you for that.

Last year, we all know, libraries across the province — certainly in my riding, Vernon-Monashee — also provided cooling centres during the heat dome. My question is: has the conversation shifted to focus more on emergency response as climate is changing? Have the libraries felt supported when you were doing this incredible work to support community? Somebody never realized…. They always think it’s about reading books, and I thought that was incredible. Libraries do step in to do that, so thank you.

L. Palmer: Thanks for this question. It is definitely on the top of libraries’ minds across the province, especially as we enter into those summer months, right? We feel very much supported in that we are turning our minds — like the rest of the province, like all of the services — to try to figure out how we can support our communities during climate crises and what we can do to help individuals prepare.

There are programs for individuals — FireSmart programs, more programs around how to prepare for those kinds of emergencies — the patron-facing front, let’s say. On the business front of libraries, we ourselves are really grappling with how we can work to afford to maintain spaces that can be used in the multiple ways in which our communities need them to be used during whatever climate emergency faces us — heating shelters when it’s really cold, cooling when it’s blisteringly hot, clean air during forest fire season, and some place dry during floods.

Part of this one-time funding has been really dedicated to trying to think through and do some of that kind of emergency preparedness work. It will give us some information so that we can plan, moving forward. That being said, it will not solve the problems that we’re facing.

As we all know, hazards like heatwaves and climate emergencies where we have air quality issues are really affecting people, disproportionately, who are already vulnerable and face systemic inequality. Libraries are well positioned to really support those people. However, with our very tight belts, as Kevin put it, we don’t really have a lot of flexibility in our budget to meet all of the needs going forward. I’ll give you a few examples.

[2:45 p.m.]

During the heat dome of last summer…. We heard that many of these libraries across the province had had to cut back hours over the past ten years. That meant that at 4 p.m., when one library had to close, the cooling centre had to close, or we needed to find staffing and operational funding to keep libraries open. That’s not to say just the weekends and staff holidays. There is no buffer. Many of our libraries have no buffer, so it is hard to plan for those kinds of contingencies.

We also don’t have — let’s say many of us — the infrastructure in order to support our communities and the needs that they have. So while many have air conditioning, we don’t have HEPA filtration in many, many of our buildings because of the aging infrastructure. There’s a real gap there and a real opportunity for us to be able to invest in our libraries so that they can more adequately support the communities with whatever the climate throws at us, and we know how much we don’t know, in the next few years.

B. Stewart: I couldn’t help but think of a library joke. The other day I was listening to CBC, and I found it there. This fellow, Ted Sams, of California, got his diploma 60 years late because he hadn’t paid his library fines when he was in school. Hopefully, we don’t go back to that.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, I want to, on behalf of the committee, thank this panel. What you’ve shared with us has been very informative and very instructive. As you’ve been describing your situation, I’ve been thinking about the library in my community, and it definitely is a hub. It’s definitely an equalizer, and it knits our community together.

We hear you when you talk about the changing needs of communities and how it is more difficult — their needs are more challenging — and how it is more financially challenging for you to meet the very needs that you are clearly so passionate about. So thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

We will now take a recess.

The committee recessed from 2:47 p.m. to 3:10 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our next panel is on arts and culture. We have four panellists. We’ll hear from each of them in turn. They each have five minutes, and then, at the end, the committee will have 20 minutes to ask questions and get any clarification.

Our first panellist, if he’s ready, is David Stocks, Juan de Fuca Performing Arts Centre Society.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 9 – Arts and Culture

JUAN DE FUCA PERFORMING
ARTS CENTRE SOCIETY

D. Stocks: Thank you very much for this opportunity to address the committee. I’m grateful, also, for the staff who work to make this happen.

I represent the Juan de Fuca Performing Arts Centre Society. We’re registered in B.C., and we have charitable status. We have a single aim, which is to create a performing arts venue on Victoria’s West Shore — the communities of Colwood, Langford — and that sort of thing.

Various studies have identified a regionwide lack of facilities that are appropriate, accessible, affordable and available. By appropriate, I mean appropriate for the groups that we wish to serve — people like the Sooke Philharmonic Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Theatre for Young People, Four Seasons Musical Theatre, dance companies and teachers of voice, piano and other instruments.

These groups can sell between 200 and 400 tickets to one of their performances or recitals. They don’t want those 200 people looking ridiculous in a 1,000-seat theatre. They need something more appropriate. They don’t need the sort of gold-plated dressing rooms that opera stars might want. We’re talking about something that is community-sized.

Now, the solution that we’re proposing is, as I say, appropriate, accessible, affordable and available, a venue with spaces for performances, rehearsals, teaching, producing graphic art, galleries and community gatherings.

We are advised, and have been advised, by similar community facilities in Nanaimo, Chilliwack and Kelowna. The Kelowna facility is particularly relevant. There are three performance spaces in the Kelowna arts district: an arena that can hold about 1,000 people, a large hall for about 800 people and the Rotary Centre for the Arts, which holds 325 people. The Rotary Centre for the Arts does not compete with the other spaces. It complements them. The Rotary Centre for the Arts is directed towards the same kinds of community groups that we need to serve on the West Shore.

Obviously, the facility would…. We would attempt to have it financially sustainable, with revenue sources such as a restaurant, a coffee shop and a gift shop — that kind of thing.

We need capital inputs. In particular, we would like the province to come forward with a very substantial capital input, which would provide the fundamental funding, the base funding. That would, then, trigger grants and other funding from other levels of government, particularly the federal, of course, and private sector sources. There are private sector sources of funding for facilities such as the one that we’re proposing. Recommending is what we’re doing.

We all know that the arts contribute to health. Physical health. The book Palaces for the People brings out the fact that places such as a theatre can reduce actual, physical deaths of people in events such as big heat waves. Mental health. The arts are used in mental therapy. The COVID experience, when people had been deprived of performances, shows that people are eager to get back to performances. Ticket sales are going very well now.

Our proposal — our recommendation, that is — is also aligned with government priorities. The mandate letter to the Hon. Melanie Mark asks her to support the creation of dedicated arts and culture spaces. We, of course, were very pleased to see those words.

First Nations have been involved in planning to date and will also be involved in planning and operating and performing in the facility that we’re planning.

Another way in which we’re aligned with government priorities is…. Our proposal, our recommendation, will get people back to work. There will be dozens of millions of dollars in construction for building the facility and about $2 million annually for good jobs to operate the facility.

[3:15 p.m.]

We propose that we are part of the solution for what the government is trying to accomplish. We recommend that you provide us significant capital funding for our facility on Victoria’s West Shore.

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

Next we’ll hear from Dusty Kelly, Performing Arts and Live Events Labour Coalition of B.C.

PERFORMING ARTS AND LIVE
EVENTS LABOUR COALITION OF B.C.

D. Kelly: Madam Chair, Deputy Chair, members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

I’m speaking to you today from the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Thank you for providing this opportunity to present on behalf of the Performing Arts and Live Events Labour Coalition. We are live entertainment artists, technicians and cultural workers based in B.C. We are members of Canadian Actors Equity, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Associated Designers of Canada and Canadian Federation of Musicians. We are singers, musicians, actors, designers, lighting and sound technicians. We are on and around the stage.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed to all the precarity of the working lives of arts and cultural workers. Workers with little to no full-time employment opportunities. Underfunding in the sector. Jobs are gig to gig, production to production. The shutdown from the pandemic was swift and long.

We’ve submitted three recommendations through the online portal. One was on housing. Arts and cultural workers are faced with two intertwined issues concerning housing security — securing stable, affordable housing due to escalating housing costs and securing that housing because of the lack of stable employment. We recommend a designated rent subsidy targeted to qualifying residents, resident artists and cultural workers.

In child care, we applaud the implementation of the $10-a-day child care program. However, this program must recognize and accommodate the children of arts and cultural workers, whose hours of work are outside the traditional nine-to-five framework.

Today, given the limited amount of time, I’d like to speak to our first recommendation — for financial investment in the theatre sector in the form of live performance employment incentives.

Recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, in the live arts sector, has not yet been realized. Companies are saddled with budget deficits or cutting back on production expenses, minimizing hiring and, in these times of high inflation, are experiencing the expectation of artists and technicians demands for wages that rise above the colloquial living wage.

A living wage is based on near to full-time employment, employment which is non-existent in the original gig economy, with its limited opportunities and large unemployment gaps all adding up to make precarity for cultural workers an ongoing reality.

A live performance employment incentive that would subsidize sector wages by 25 percent would boost employment by increasing production and increasing wages. This has been demonstrated elsewhere and, notably here in B.C., with our own motion picture industry. A labour incentivization of B.C.’s film and television sector has resulted in an unrivalled base of B.C. film and TV talent, the second-largest in North America.

The performing arts mirror the film and TV industry crafts in many ways — hair, costume, makeup, set design and construction, sound and lighting, writing and scoring, music and acting — yet there is no similar tax program in Canada. Programs do exist elsewhere, though. In 2014, the U.K. government introduced the theatre tax relief — for non-touring and touring productions, 20 and 25 percent respectively.

Producer Patrick Gracey said: “Theatre tax relief drives economic activity and job creation in the theatre sector nationwide by incentivizing private investment, amplifying the value of existing support mechanisms directed towards the not-for-profit sector.”

In 2021, to support theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries to recover from COVID, they doubled the TTR incentive until 2023.

Louisiana, Illinois, New York have all enacted various forms of theatre production and employment incentives and have boosted their levels respectively. New York City has also introduced one in order to help their industry and tourism and entertainment recover from the pandemic.

The Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology, the B.C. arts alliance, the Creative Industries Coalition and others have broadly supported the enactment of such an incentive. The incentive would be tied to direct employment, with minimum production budgets. No production, no incentive. An inclusion of equity and diversity eligibility rules strengthens our collective commitment to a better life for all. The incentive would increase employment and earning potential, thereby having a strong mitigating impact on employment precarity, stabilizing company losses and boosting economic activity.

[3:20 p.m.]

Wages are spent in B.C., increasing expenditures in tourism, retail and hospitality, stimulating the multiplier effect. It’s important that the government step in with a fund of $100 million, which is small compared to other subsidies offered to other sectors throughout the province.

In closing, we would ask the government to begin consultation with our sector on the structure and enactment of the live performance employment incentive program.

Did I talk fast enough? I got it all in.

J. Routledge (Chair): And you have it in writing as well, right?

D. Kelly: Yes, I do.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. Thanks, Dusty.

Next is Daniel Mills, Kamloops Symphony Society.

KAMLOOPS SYMPHONY SOCIETY

D. Mills: Hello, dear members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance. My name is Daniel Mills, and I am the executive director of the Kamloops Symphony.

I’m speaking to you all from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, within the unceded, traditional lands of the Secwépemc peoples.

Thank you so much for having me here today, virtually, and to my colleagues that are sharing their thoughts as well.

Traditionally, the Kamloops Symphony delivers over 8,000 annual ticketed experiences to those in interior B.C. through our core programming of professional orchestral concerts. Led by our music director, Dina Gilbert, we, along with a network of other regional orchestras in B.C., are a major provider of work for freelance musicians in the province and enriching musical experiences for the community.

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

My first recommendation today is to commit to increased support for the B.C. Arts Council and B.C. community gaming grants, particularly considering the rising costs of operating regional arts organizations.

As a regional orchestra, we face numerous unique challenges to securing the professional artists required to deliver our art form. Because of the low number of professional musicians that live in Kamloops proper, we must bring in over 75 percent of our musicians on any given program and are thus required to pay the related travel and accommodation expenses.

With rising gas prices and lack of affordable accommodations in Kamloops, expenses associated with artists’ travel have increased dramatically. Unfortunately, without finding additional ways to support these increases, we will eventually have no choice but to reduce our programming either by the number of concerts presented or the number of musicians with whom we engage on any given program, both of which would reduce our overall impact as an organization.

We know this crunch we feel is not exclusive to Kamloops, and thus we request the B.C. government look to ways they can further support regional arts organizations who face this similar issue through existing funding bodies that already exist.

Our second recommendation for today’s presentation is to support the return of live audiences to performing arts events through additional funds for marketing and promotion. Although we are thrilled that performing arts organizations are now able to perform for audiences at 100 percent capacity, we have undergone a period of more than two years during which many of our traditional audience members have opted not to engage with our programming.

Over 40 percent of our previous subscribers have not attended a concert since we began offering in-person options in the fall. Some are simply out of the habit, having filled their time with other activities, while others are still uncomfortable returning to larger crowds for personal reasons.

As ticket sales are crucial to our sustainability and are a direct indication of the people we aim to serve, this concerns us greatly. Thus, we request the province support the return of live audiences, either through promotional means or by added resources to organizations to ramp up our marketing efforts. Ultimately, the more people who attend and appreciate the arts, the happier and more fulfilled the community is.

Our final recommendation for today’s presentation is to commit to arts infrastructure spending for both large and small projects, particularly cultural spaces, which you’ll have heard David elaborate on previously. The lack of music-specific performance space continues to be a major limiting factor for the Kamloops Symphony and many other arts groups in Kamloops, in terms of availability and flexibility of use.

A proposed Kamloops centre for the arts was to be a new concert venue for us and many other entities in the city. Although the municipal referendum for this project in April 2020 was postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic, we firmly believe this project is still very much needed for Kamloops. As such, we are highly encouraging that this committee consider future support of major infrastructure spending, particularly towards the creation of cultural spaces, such as a proposed Kamloops centre for the arts.

Furthermore, although plans for a new performance venue are in the works, a smaller existing building is currently being renovated to become a future space for our offices and music school. As such, we expect the need for support for several smaller capital projects to outfit the new facility appropriately upon completion. Thus, infrastructure programs both big and small are requested and would be of use to the community.

[3:25 p.m.]

To sum up my submission today, I therefore urge this committee to consider the three following actions in our next budget: (1) commit to increased support for the B.C. Arts Council and B.C. gaming grants, considering the rising costs of operating regional arts organizations; (2) support the return of live audiences to performing arts events through funds geared towards marking and promotion; and (3) commit to infrastructure funding for cultural spaces and projects both large and small.

Thank you kindly for your time. I will give you back your 25 seconds.

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

Next we’ll hear from Rainbow Robert on behalf of the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture.

B.C. ALLIANCE FOR ARTS AND CULTURE

R. Robert: It’s my pleasure to join you today. Thanks for having me. My name is Rainbow Robert. I’m the recently appointed executive director of the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture, a provincial art service organization with over 425 members — arts, cultural and heritage organizations, and individuals from all disciplines.

I acknowledge that I am humbled and honoured to live and work on the ancestral and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people.

I’d like to begin by recognizing the invaluable supplementary funding that the government has provided during this unprecedented time of unique challenges, in addition to the ongoing supports which are essential to the health and vitality of B.C.’s arts and cultural sector and to the wellness of all British Columbians.

I’d also like to acknowledge the degree to which the B.C. Arts Council has gone above and beyond over the past two years to re-envision their work and to broaden the scope and the impact of the supports that they deliver. The current board of the B.C. Arts Council is an inspiration, and the degree to which the board and the dedicated staff have been genuinely communicating with an ever-increasing number of voices in the community is a testament to their commitment to grow, adapt and evolve.

Arts and culture are common languages that dissolve the barriers between us, galvanize community and are one of our greatest resources as a society. Through prioritizing resource allocation to the not-for-profit arts and cultural sector, we greatly enhance our ability to bring people together to achieve the loftiest goals, which would be impossible without collaboration, enhanced mutual understanding, respect and support.

Investing in arts and culture is vitally important to the ongoing wellness and inspiration of people working in all sectors of B.C. Creating new methodologies for a holistic approach to strengthening the arts and cultural landscape is one of the most urgent tasks at hand. There are countless untapped possibilities that are within our grasp, all of which will require increased levels of collaboration.

We must ask ourselves at this time: how can arts and cultural organizations work more closely with the health care sector, with educational institutions, with green economy organizations? How can collaborative research initiatives, if properly funded, bring the greatest minds from all of these sectors together to problem-solve as a group and to create innovative, new tools to help us emerge from the current challenges far stronger and more mindful than we once were about the degree to which the success of all economic sectors is inexorably intertwined?

Investment in arts and culture ensures that community members across the province are infused with inspiration to collaborate and able to operate in new ways that will allow all British Columbians to thrive and to innovate. We need to recognize the fact that an entirely new approach is essential to overall economic growth. Innovation is a commodity that’s highly prized in all areas of business.

Arts and culture are critical tools that are also much needed for us to reach reconciliation, equity, diversity and inclusion goals. We mustn’t underestimate the work that needs to be done nor overlook the fact that making investments that cultivate a vibrant arts and cultural landscape is one of the greatest tools that we possess.

Our three priorities: to double the budget of the B.C. Arts Council, long-term recovery funding, and guaranteed basic income and affordable housing. In order to briefly elaborate on these key areas identified above, it’s important to emphasize the fact that continued investment in the B.C. Arts Council is one of the best ways to directly address the current needs of the arts and cultural sector.

Across the province, we’re faced with the necessity to re-envision the ways that we support our creative industries. This work is being effectively undertaken by the B.C. Arts Council, which underscores the need for continued funding increases, which will properly support the long-term goals of their current action plan, and increased investment in their equity, diversity and inclusion goals.

[3:30 p.m.]

We must continue to do everything in our power to consider the value of providing continued recovery support to artists from all disciplines. Artists have been exhibiting exemplary levels of perseverance in what was already a challenging mode of existence prior to the current global situation. The organizations who tirelessly serve artists throughout B.C. and work to sustain their livelihoods through these innumerable challenges are equally in need of our support.

Although these may seem like overly ambitious goals, we must consider the impact that the arts have on the overall quality of life for people and communities across the province. We must recognize the fact that investment in the arts is a commitment that serves the well-being of all British Columbians and supports the immeasurable possibility for increased levels of innovation and overall prosperity in every economic sector in this province.

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

I will now invite members of the committee to ask questions. They may ask questions of individual members of your panel, which should not preclude other members of the panel from jumping in and elaborating, or they may ask questions to all of you.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you to all the presenters. Culture, arts, music — it’s all such an important part of our society, and it’s something that we need to invest in, so I appreciate your presentations. I’ve got several questions. I’m just going to ask one, and then we’ll go around here, and I’ll share the air.

David, with the Juan de Fuca Performance Arts Centre Society, have you done a case for support yet in terms of what funding you’ll be looking at yourself? For fundraising, what other sources of funds are there going to be? And can I confirm that the ask is $15 million, and on what size project?

D. Stocks: The size of the project I think I’ve tried to describe. Right now we’re targeting 350 seats, which is a bit larger than the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna but small enough that the audiences of our performers will not look ridiculous sitting in a huge barn of a place that seats 1,000 people. That’s the size of the project.

The $15 million was recommended by other people. We have talked to professional fundraisers who have deep knowledge of how these things happen. We have to get somebody to put in foundational funding. It could be an enormously wealthy person. It could be a level of government. We are asking the B.C. government, particularly the Hon. Melanie Mark, to provide the foundational funding which will then, we hope, cause an avalanche of extra funding from other levels of government.

Now, did I answer your question?

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): No. When we’re looking at the size — I should have been more clear — is that the dollar value of the project? What are you looking at? I think that it’s hard for government to come forward with funding if there’s not more of a developed case for support — so, really, to understand community impact. It sounds to me like you’ve got somebody helping you with putting that together. But the overall dollar value — you’re asking for $15 million out of a bucket of how much?

D. Stocks: Well, the bucket has been recommended to us by a theatre consultant from Edmonton — but now living on the Island, I should point out. His work is now being reviewed by a team of three highly experienced consultants, a project funded by the city of Colwood, to bring it up to date with the latest figures. The number $60 million has been kicked around. A lot of people say it’s way too much. I don’t know. It depends on what extra facilities are tacked on — what we can cut, what we can add, that kind of thing. But we’re using it as a talking point now — $50 million or $60 million, which ought to give us room for compromises that will inevitably be necessary, in my view.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay. That’s great. That’s really helpful, David.

I can come back if other people have….

J. Routledge (Chair): Other questions?

[3:35 p.m.]

M. Starchuk: I guess this is maybe for Daniel, when we talk about support for live audiences. There was a municipal referendum that was supposed to come up in 2020, and due to COVID, it didn’t come forward.

I assume that there was a business case that was ready to go in 2020, and I’m just curious if the business case is still the same and if you will be using the October dates for municipal elections to put your referendum back on the table.

D. Mills: Sure. I can answer that. I do sit on the board of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts Society as part of my role with the Kamloops Symphony. In April 2020, we had a business case professionally done by KPMG that led us through the process that we were using to gauge support and do the door-knocking for a “yes” campaign. Unfortunately, just with the timing of the referendum, it was cancelled.

At that point, we were proposing borrowing up to $45 million from the municipal government to go toward a centre for the arts in Kamloops for a $70 million project. Now, two years later, the latest word is that we’re looking at somewhere about $90 million, so it has gone up in price. We decided to add some parking infrastructure to the project.

It is not likely to go on the referendum in October, at our municipal election, for some strategic reasons around the timing, where we’re at with the project and the optics of returning to live audiences and all that. There are currently other strategies happening and, hopefully, winding up other funding sources in the meantime.

Ideally, we’ll eventually either go to a stand-alone referendum that’s not associated with the municipal election or a counterpetition proposal depending on what that figure is from the city of Kamloops in terms of funding, borrowing. Ideally, when that happens, there could be alignment between levels of government for supports that would be matched in three parts.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Dusty, I think that theatre tax relief is really interesting. I hadn’t been aware of it. I don’t have a question with respect to that, but I do think that’s quite interesting.

The question is around housing. You had referred to housing. I had been involved when we were doing funding for the PAL housing for senior performing artists in Vancouver. When you talk about housing, is that what you’re looking at, or are you looking at more, kind of, supported or subsidized housing for people in the performing arts?

D. Kelly: Well, during the pandemic, the government put forward a rent subsidy piece. That was absolutely instrumental in stabilizing those particular arts and cultural workers who had lost pretty well all of their employment because everything had been shut down. It looked like an easy…. It was an easy thing to deal with. It was easy to access. It made the difference between going without food, etc.

Putting more affordable housing is absolutely a necessity as well, but part of the thing that I also said was that because cultural workers have intermittent employment, it’s often the case that people don’t want to take them on. They don’t see them actually having the money to be able to pay the rent. So there are a couple of things that are going on there. That’s why we proposed the subsidy, because that would be something that they would know they would qualify for — their potential landlord — etc.

I live at the PAL building. I know it very well and support it.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Oh, do you? That’s great. Thank you very much.

One quick question, actually, to Rainbow. Are you going to be providing us with a written submission? I don’t think I have….

R. Robert: Yes, absolutely.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

B. Stewart: Both to Daniel’s and David’s point about building new infrastructure.

You mentioned, David, the Rotary Centre for the Arts. I was fairly intimately involved in the process of getting that off the ground. The city of Kelowna and Mayor Walter Gray, at the time, were highly instrumental in acquiring the property, and the community stepped up. There was a lot of community support. I was trying to find the numbers, and I can’t remember what the numbers were, but I could easily provide that for you. I’m regularly at the RCA for events.

[3:40 p.m.]

I think that the province as the lead is the least likely lead on it. My experience has been that it’s much more often that the community leads and comes up with a business case and plan and what they think the community supports. I can certainly introduce you to some of the people that worked on that project so that you can get firsthand knowledge on it.

D. Stocks: That would be very kind. I have spent time on this, along with Bill Redmond, who I believe you are well acquainted with, explaining the process they went through. It was very handy, with the city giving them land and buildings.

B. Stewart: It makes a big difference.

D. Stocks: Yes. We will accept land and buildings for the city of Colwood.…

By the way, Dusty, we want to employ your people.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’m not seeing any other questions. Any other questions?

With that, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us and to present a very compelling case on behalf of the arts. Thank you for the work that you do.

I’m one of those people who returned to the audience for live performances as soon as I possibly could, but I did notice that there were a lot of empty seats. Perhaps, in some cases, it was because of planned social distancing, but maybe, in other cases, it was that people aren’t quite ready to go back. I think anything that we can do to encourage that…. I was really also struck by Rainbow’s observations about a collaboration between the arts and other important sectors that hold our community together. I think that is very intriguing.

Again, on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for taking the time, and I want to thank you for your representation of this very important part of our community.

We’ll now take a recess.

The committee recessed from 3:42 p.m. to 4:04 p.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Our final panel today is on sports. There are three panellists. Our first panellist is Rob Newman with Sport B.C.

You each have five minutes. We ask that you watch the timer on your screen. After we’ve heard from each of you, then the committee will ask you some questions. It may be a specific question to a specific panellist because we need some clarification, which doesn’t prevent others of you from jumping in as members of the team, or they may have questions for all of you that you can then just engage in a discussion with us about.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 10 – Sport

SPORT B.C.

R. Newman: Before I begin, I’d like to maybe mention that Jennifer Walker, who was a presenter for today, from the Hazelton region…. Unfortunately, there were some power outages, and she’s not able to present. However, if the panel so wishes, Katelynn Ramage can, certainly, provide her presentation, or we can send it to you. So just to inform you, if you don’t know already.

I’ll begin. Good afternoon. My name is Rob Newman. I’m the president and CEO of Sport B.C. and the president of the Aboriginal Sport Circle, Canada’s national voice for Indigenous sport. It’s great to see some familiar faces around the table. I’m excited to share information about Sport B.C., and our efforts, with those of you that I’m meeting for the first time.

I would like to respectfully acknowledge that while the work of Sport B.C. and our members takes place through­out British Columbia, the office of Sport B.C. is on the unceded traditional terri­tory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. I am a proud Indigenous sport leader. I’m joining you from Treaty 6 territory today, homeland of the Métis.

Sport B.C. is a membership-based organization representing 73 provincial, multi- and disability sport organizations. We provide four main services to our members: operational support through payroll services and insurance, philanthropy through our B.C. Amateur Sport Fund and KidSport, and over the last three years, we’re proud to be focusing on the efforts of advocacy for the amateur sport sector.

As you may know, our sector actively participated in the budget consultation process in September of 2021. We were pleased to receive a formal recommendation from the committee for our request for a $12 million increase, over three years, to the core funding for amateur sport. Specifically, this is to implement the 2020 Pathways to Sport: Strategic Framework for Sport in British Columbia.

The Pathways to Sport document was developed in consultation with the B.C. sport sector. Our sector is eager to move towards full implementation. COVID delayed implementation, but this period emphasized the critical role the sector plays for B.C. citizens to live active and healthy lives and stay connected to their communities. While we are pleased with the recommendation, as it demonstrated an understanding of our collective work and the need, it was disappointing that the core funding for sport did not increase when the budget was presented.

On behalf of the amateur sport sector, we are proud to be here today to resubmit our ask. We are seeking an additional $1 million per year, over the previous year’s request. Today’s request reflects the financial challenges facing organizations and individuals due to a significant increase in costs of living, making the decision to participate in sport simply not possible.

The Pathways to Sport document presents critical goals for affordability, reconciliation, inclusion, diversity and safe sport. To make strides in these areas, our members need to be able to plan, with sustainable funding, to implement strategies to achieve these goals. Recovery and program funding is needed and appreciated, but the specific goals of government and the sector require increases committed to core funding. During this consultation period, we will again hear from our members, emphasizing their successes and how, with additional funding, they’ll be able to better support the strategy laid out in the government’s Pathways to Sport plan.

[4:10 p.m.]

As Sport B.C. supports a wide range of governing sport organizations, I personally believe that an increased investment in sport will yield significant social and economic benefits, including improved physical and mental health, critical during this continued time of recovery.

Collectively, our sector is seeking additional base investment from the province of B.C. of $15 million over three years to invest in initiatives that will improve the affordability of sport; inclusion, diversity and accessibility; reconciliation; sport safety; support for our next generation of high-performance athletes; and support for communities to contribute to their local economy through sport hosting.

Our key objective is to further expand KidSport, which was created by Sport B.C. over 30 years ago to grow sport by including more children and youth. Through our regular consultation with our 40 chapter leaders, we know that our KidSport volunteers are nervous about the ongoing challenges of fundraising. Their ability to raise funds does not appear to have been returning to pre-COVID amounts. Our own KidSport golf tournament, coming up on June 20, has proven much more difficult to source donations, golfers and sponsors for. We know that the impact of COVID on fundraising is continuing and real.

Next, you will hear from one of our dedicated KidSport B.C. ambassadors, who is fully versed in the program and the needs of families supported through Sport B.C.’s signature program.

I would like to end by thanking the province of B.C. for its investment in sport, and the steering committee for taking the time to hear our case for enhanced investment.

Again, we appreciate your specific recommendation to support our previous request. It is our collective hope that we will be successful this year.

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

Next, we’ll hear from Jane Blaine, B.C. Blind Sports and Recreation Association.

B.C. BLIND SPORTS
AND RECREATION ASSOCIATION

J. Blaine: Thanks for the opportunity to present to you on behalf of British Columbia Blind Sports and Recreation Association.

I respectfully acknowledge that the work and play of B.C. Blind Sports takes place on many traditional, ancestral territories throughout the province of B.C., and that I’m presenting to you from the shared, unceded, traditional territory of the Katzie, Semiahmoo, Kwantlen and other Coast Salish peoples.

My name is Jane Blaine, and I’ve been involved in programming, education and administration of para and blind sport for over 40 years. My involvement spans from grass roots to the international levels. In addition to many volunteer roles, I’ve been the executive director of B.C. Blind Sports for over 30 years.

We help a diverse range of people in B.C. who are blind or partially sighted become engaged in physical activity and sport. Our programs span from early movement for infants, school programs, high-performance programs, through to programs for seniors who have lost or are losing their vision.

In support of the Sport B.C. ask, seeking an additional $15 million over the next three years to be invested in sport, I ask you to consider the following three recommendations.

Provincial sport organizations are the backbone of the amateur sport system in B.C. Increase their core funding. Invest in an amateur sport system, which is working towards inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, reconciliation, affordability and COVID recovery. Through that, also ensure that there are legacies from hosting.

Please consider, thirdly, the benefits that accrue to the province of B.C. and its population from quality sport and physical activity programming and the cost savings that the province accrues from that.

Firstly, provincial sport organizations are key — the backbone of the system. They are the link to the local sport organizations in communities throughout B.C., as well as the link to national and international federations governing amateur sport. Technical, safe sport governance rules and standards are all coordinated through this system, and demands have increased in both operations and programming on the PSOs.

B.C. Blind Sports understands the need for a solid PSO system, as we partner and work with many of these provincial organizations. PSOs invest a great deal to ensure that quality and developmentally appropriate standards are in place for programming and that sport is delivered in a safe manner — working for the prevention of harassment as well as prevention of physical, emotional or psychological injury.

We also acknowledge and appreciate the leadership of Sport B.C. and other multisport organizations in the system.

[4:15 p.m.]

Secondly, diversity, equity, affordability, reconciliation, COVID recovery — investment in the B.C. amateur sport system is essential. COVID brought to light even more some of the inequities and barriers in society, and B.C. Blind Sports works with a diverse range of individuals in all roles in our organization, as do many of our partner organizations.

We connect with other organizations representing other underrepresented populations, as we also recognize the intersectionality which exists. We, as a sport system, are all concerned about the increased costs to participate, whether that’s fuel, travel, equipment. We don’t want to see participation levels decrease due to this.

We compliment the government on their investment in hosting the Invictus Games and the ongoing discussions regarding other events. We note that supporting a strong B.C. amateur sport system will ensure participation by B.C. athletes in these events and, we hope, strong legacies for the province of B.C. and its population.

Thirdly, there are a number of benefits to participation in physical activity and sport, and they will result in cost savings for the province. The program, for example, that B.C. Blind Sports provides supports the education system through delivery of physical education and the health care system by educating participants of all ages about healthy practices. We support people throughout B.C. with, again, quality programming and qualified staff, as do many other organizations.

Last week, I attended an elementary school in Langley. Tomorrow I’m leaving for the World Para Swimming Championships as a volunteer for World Para Swimming. From that broad system perspective, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a strong, well-funded amateur sport system for B.C. and to help government achieve its goals.

Thank you very much for your time.

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

Now we’ll hear from Katelynn Ramage, representing KidSport B.C.

KIDSPORT B.C.

K. Ramage: Good afternoon. My name is Katelynn Ramage.

I would like to acknowledge that I’m speaking to you today from the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

I grew up in a single-parent household, on income assistance, with a parent that struggled with mental illness and addiction for my entire childhood. I nearly ended up in foster care when mental illness almost took her life. Most months were a struggle to pay bills, rent and keep food in the fridge. I have strong memories of eviction notices and trying to think, at a young age, what not having a home would mean.

My journey to sports started later than most. I don’t have the memories of being young and going to the soccer pitch or a hockey rink on weekend mornings. In 2002, the B.C. Summer Games came to my hometown of Nanaimo. I remember seeing all the athletes, and at that moment, I wanted to experience what they were. I didn’t realize that to get there, my biggest obstacle was money.

I was fortunate to participate in school sports through elementary school and high school, although my skills were far from being on par with my peers. Despite challenges and participation, sport became an outlet for me and allowed me to be a kid again, even if it was just in that moment.

It was in high school that a family suggested I apply to KidSport so I could continue to pursue track and field more seriously. I am grateful to have received KidSport grants for two years during high school. Not only did it allow me to feel like a kid again, but the opportunities in sport allowed me to attend university on an athletic and academic scholarship, to have the opportunities to compete on provincial and national teams in track and field and now as a program administrator with KidSport B.C.

KidSport is a program founded by Sport B.C. to reduce financial barriers to get more kids involved in sport and off the sidelines. KidSport provides an average grant of $400 per child, per year towards sport registration fees. The program is administered through 40 community chapters, supported by dedicated community volunteers and our provincial fund that supports all the communities in B.C. that do not have a local chapter.

The provincial fund alone supports over 70 communities each year across B.C., from suburban communities such as Chilliwack, Salmon Arm and Campbell River to the more rural and remote communities of Hazelton, Kaslo, Fraser Lakes, Fort Nelson and Gold River.

Over the past three years, KidSport chapters and our provincial fund have distributed more than $4.55 million to help 14,919 kids participate in 52 communities across B.C., and 25 percent of those grants in the past three years have gone to populations facing multiple barriers to participation — Indigenous, new Canadians and individuals with a disability.

[4:20 p.m.]

Our top-funded sports across B.C. are soccer, hockey, gymnastics, figure skating, baseball and taekwondo. KidSport B.C. is currently working towards increasing grant awareness in a broader range of sports such as ringette, wrestling, canoe and kayak, speed skating, rugby and cricket.

As we work on coming through the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the largest barriers that our KidSport chapters and provincial fund face is fundraising to keep up with the growing need for support in our B.C. communities. Many of our community chapters and our provincial fund have had long-standing fundraisers, and COVID has changed the landscape of fundraising.

New low-income cut-off guidelines from Statistics Canada mean that more families fit within the KidSport eligibility criteria for funding. With a 3 percent increase in the low-income cut-offs in the past year, our chapters are deeply concerned about sustainability as the need for support for KidSport grows.

A 2022 Ipsos report found that lower-income households are more likely to say that their child is not playing sports. B.C.’s current child poverty rate is 18 percent, with higher rates of poverty seen in populations that, once again, face multiple barriers to participation, nearly 45 percent new Canadians that are youth and children and over 35 percent for Indigenous children and youth living on reserves, which means that less than 5 percent of those children and youth have so far been able to access KidSport grants.

Our sector is seeking an additional investment of $15 million over three years. Affordability is a key component. An additional investment in KidSport would improve and reach more children and youth across B.C. so all kids can play.

Thank you for listening to my story this afternoon. I know without the sports and KidSport that made it possible, I likely would not be the person I am today nor presenting in front of all of you. I know that with increased investment in sport, we are truly changing lives, allowing people to grow, thrive and have new, positive experiences, all though the power of sport. Thank you.

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

Now I will open it up for questions.

Megan has indicated that she has a question, and then Karin will go next.

M. Dykeman: Thank you. I’m thrilled to see all of you. I know how long you’ve been advocating for sports and what an amazing job you do in your respective organizations. It’s just really great to see you again.

I know, Rob, you mentioned the Pathways to Sport, which you did talk about in the last consultation. You touched a little bit on it, but I was wondering if you could sort of give a little bit more information on where that is right now and what is going on with that implementation since the last time.

R. Newman: Thanks a lot, Megan, for the question. Great to see you again.

Certainly, we’ve been delayed in the processes of implementation of the pathways because of COVID. We’re just now, nicely, beginning to get back to sport, so a lot of these initiatives that are indicated, those five main initiatives that we talked about, are just starting again. The challenges that we have with regard to implementing a lot of that has to do with the fact that we’re struggling with registration numbers in sport. Again, that drives a lot of the financial horsepower to the delivery.

We’re thankful for the core funding through government to help us along with this process. However, again, it’s a challenge with all the adversity that we have in front of us. Certainly, it’s now just nicely starting, so we’re hopeful we’ll be able to drive to those initiatives that are outlined in that pathway.

M. Dykeman: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for the presentations. Very interesting. Every day I learn more.

Katelynn, I want to thank you also for sharing a very personal story. Stories like that are really…. It makes it much easier to understand the value of the work that you do.

A question I had: how many kids each year do you support? I don’t know if you base that on how many grants or how many kiddos come through. The other piece is: do children in MCFD care have access to these funds? Does it have to be a parent that applies for them, or is that supporting them as well? Do they have access?

K. Ramage: Over the past three years, it’s almost been 15,000 kids. Our pre-COVID numbers were a little bit higher. I think we’re about 7,000 kids a year. Past two years, since COVID, we’re just over 4,000. I think we were 4,100 in 2021, and we expect that number to continue to grow.

[4:25 p.m.]

We do see applications from kids who are in care. We are trying to connect with more social servicing agencies and trying to reach more of those kids to make the program more aware. I mean, those are the kids that we really do want to be reaching out to and really giving them the opportunity of sports.

Obviously, they’ve experienced some pretty difficult challenges in life, and to allow them, like me, to have those experiences that kids should have is definitely something that we’re looking to grow more.

H. Yao: Thank you so much. I’m actually going to piggyback off of Karin’s question earlier. I know we recently had the RISE grant program. I’m wondering how involved that is with Sport B.C. I believe that’s supposed to be $3.6 million that goes up on average. So $1,000 annually for youth to participate in sports, specifically youth in care. Maybe Rob knows more about it and would like to share his experience?

R. Newman: Okay. Thank you very much, Henry, for that question. It’s just announced that that program will work with one of our member organizations, ISPARC, that will be delivering the granting for children to be able to apply, and families. The typical KidSport grants that we handle through Sport B.C. and KidSport have to do more with what would be deemed as organized sport. That’s more of the PSO-delivered and DSO-delivered sports that we have in the province.

I believe that more of the funding for the program that you’re talking about is going to be more targeted to get kids active and involved. Again, part and parcel of that is probably taking sport to community as opposed to community to sport. Because, again, there are challenges with that also in getting the kids to the actual practices and events. But for the most part, it’s a great initiative that the government has put forward. We’re very excited about our partner administering that through ISPARC. It will provide, for many of the kids that never get a chance to experience sport, the opportunity to play.

H. Yao: Chair, may I have a follow-up question?

J. Routledge (Chair): Go ahead.

H. Yao: Thank you so much.

This a completely different path. Obviously, Katelynn, it’s the perfect example of how, with young people getting involved in KidSport and Sport B.C., they become lifelong sports participants. It invests in health. It invests in engagement, which is great.

I guess my next question for you, Rob, if you don’t mind, is that I know for some adults, such as myself, who didn’t grow up with that much privilege to be able to connect to sports when I was a kid…. Often, we don’t have the physical competency to participate in some of the more — even amateur sports, where people are participating along with the community members.

I’m wondering if there’s any kind of discussion around how we can engage adults who are maybe a bit disconnected from sports or recreation and find a way to help them stay connected with, as you mention, organized sports opportunities so we can invite more participation as well.

R. Newman: Again, another very good question. Certainly, as a federation of sport, Sport B.C., through our membership, works very closely with many demographics within the sports sector. Certainly, youth are a priority. However, our adult and master sport components are very important and are certainly, again, a key to the success of our PSOs, because it’s part of the modelling that they build their business off of.

Again, it boils down to this core funding that they receive and their ability to engage the general public to be able to offer the appropriate programming that you’re talking about to keep adults active and healthy, which, again, is a risk management tool for the health industry, right? We want to make sure that we are able to do that. But, again, that boils back to what Jane was talking about. Having a healthy, vibrant MSO, PSO and DSO structure is key to being able to deliver those programs to people that want to be involved.

[4:30 p.m.]

B. Stewart: I just want to clarify here. It appears that the three groups that are here today….

Rob, you might clarify this. It appears that you’re kind of the parent organization. We don’t have documents that show what your current level of funding and this $15 million, which we recommended last year…. Can you just give us the baseline now? Katelynn mentioned $4.55 million distributed over the past five years. What’s the breakdown into these areas? Can you just go over that and where the $15 million is going?

R. Newman: Okay. Thank you very much, Ben, for that question. Sport B.C. is the federation for sport. We have 73 different members that we represent. The most recent member is Pickleball B.C., which has just joined up and organized as a sport. We are the democratic voice for these organizations that we represent.

Their core funding…. Don’t quote me exactly on this, because the funding goes through a funding agency called viaSport. The government provides funding through them that then gets apportioned to the PSOs and DSOs and MSOs throughout the province. But I think it equates to about $16 million of annual core funding. Then it gets broken out between the different organizations.

From that, we receive from the province of B.C. $400,000 for the KidSport program, directly to Sport B.C. From that, typically, pre-COVID, we would then go out and leverage that through our fundraising through our 40 chapters within the province and expand that to grant out about $2 million a year to kids.

That core funding of KidSport is very important to Sport B.C. and our ability to leverage that and derive more dollars to provide these grant opportunities to, as Katelynn said, about 7,000 kids annually. So we’re very proud of that and very thankful to the government for providing that support to us.

The rest of that funding — I talked about that $16 million — is then, like I said, divvied up between the 73 organizations throughout the province. That funding has not been increased since 2010.

Last year that was our push through this committee — to drive home the importance of this core funding and the need to have that increase — and we were very grateful that the standing committee made that recommendation. Unfortunately, because of many other priorities within government, we weren’t able to see that lift that we promoted. However, certainly we’re hopeful this year — and especially through these difficult times for sport — to be able to again get your support and recommendation moving forward.

I hope that answered your question, Ben.

B. Stewart: Yeah. Thanks very much, Rob.

Will you be putting in a written submission? Just to maybe…. We’ve got the one from Jane Blaine, but we didn’t get any of the other ones.

R. Newman: Well, certainly we can do that and make sure that we get that documentation in front of you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Next, Harwinder has a question, and then Megan has a follow-up question.

H. Sandhu: Thank you to the presenters. A quick question.

Rob, I remembered that last year there was conversation about girls’ participation declining in sports. I wonder if that has picked up and if the Pathways to Sport program by the government did help, because it did have criteria to promote inclusion and encourage girls. Have you seen any particular trends between genders if that is still an issue, or are we pretty much equal and doing good there?

R. Newman: Maybe Jane or Katelynn could add to my comments. It’s early on. We’re just starting sport again because of the issues around the pandemic and the orders around that. It is a priority, obviously, of the Pathways to Sport to increase the priorities around girls in sport. We also are prioritizing that through KidSport and driving more focus around that on our granting processes.

It really is a priority of Sport B.C. to make sure that that happens. But it’s very early on, and we haven’t seen, really, any kind of data at this point in time since last year that would indicate that there has been any sort of movement on that.

I don’t know if Jane or Katelynn want to add to that.

[4:35 p.m.]

J. Blaine: I would just say quickly that I know within B.C. Blind Sports, we’ve had some really neat programming, virtual programming, during the pandemic specific to girls and women who are blind. Older women who are blind are often very isolated, in particular during the pandemic. So we have seen an increase, and we are hoping that that’s going to translate into some in-person programming.

H. Sandhu: That’s awesome. Thank you. That’s encouraging to hear. I know last year they were saying one out of three girls are not coming back to join or are dropping. So it’s really encouraging to hear.

M. Dykeman: Jane, I just have a quick question for you. It’s great to see you. You talked, in recommendation 1, about the challenges with the core funding. You talked about the technical sport safety and governance rules and standards which are coordinated through the system and how the demands have increased on both operating and programming.

The demands that are increasing — is that related to additional costs you’re incurring through costs associated with something, like you would have to pay for additional memberships or provide additional things? Or is it that the core funding is not providing the labour that would be needed to comply with all of these? What type of financial demands are you experiencing from those increasing requirements?

J. Blaine: Very good question. The answer is a little bit of both. As we know, costs are increasing for everything. I think the key thing, in terms of core funding, is that good, qualified professional staff is so important and so difficult to keep in this day and age. That’s really the key piece and why I am advocating for core funding for sport. The people power is the important thing for us.

M. Dykeman: Okay. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Well, our time is now up. On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank all of you for your perseverance and your commitment to sports.

Katelynn, your personal story was very moving, and it really underscores the importance of what you do and how life-changing it can be — and life-affirming.

Thank you very much to all of you.

Now I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:38 p.m.