The committee met at 8:38 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Mike Starchuk. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

We’re grateful to be here meeting today in Campbell River in the territory of the Wei Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum, Homalco, Mamalilikulla-Qwe’Qwa’Sot’Em Nations.

I’d like everyone here to take the time to reflect on their nations where they reside and where they work and where they play.

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

Our committee is currently seeking input on the next provincial budget. British Columbians can share their views by making written comments. Details are available on our website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. The deadline for input is two o’clock, Friday, June 16.

[8:40 a.m.]

We are also hearing from British Columbians in person.

All audio from our public hearings is broadcast live on our website, and a complete transcript will also be posted. We will carefully consider all input to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be included in Budget 2024. The committee intends to release this report in August.

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

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’m Tom Shypitka. I’m the Deputy Chair and MLA for Kootenay East.

A. Walker: Adam Walker, MLA for Parksville-Qual­icum.

S. Chant: Susie Chant, MLA, North Vancouver–Seymour.

R. Leonard: Ronna-Rae Leonard, MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

G. Chow: George Chow, MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview.

I’m on the Coast Salish peoples unceded territory.

B. Stewart: Good morning. My name is Ben Stewart. I’m the MLA for Kelowna West.

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

B. Banman: Bruce Banman, the MLA for Abbotsford South.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Assisting the committee today are Karan Riarh and Emma Curtis from the Parliamentary Committees Office, and Amanda Heffelfinger and David Smith from Hansard Services.

The format for today is that each participant will have five minutes to speak, followed by up to five minutes of questions and/or comments from the committee.

We will now call up Carissa Wilson, North Island Students Union.

Carissa, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed up by five minutes of comments and/or questions.

You have the floor.

Budget Consultation Presentations

NORTH ISLAND STUDENTS UNION

C. Wilson: Good morning. Thank you so much for doing this work. I hear you have a bit of a hectic schedule, and I know you had a cold start, so thank you so much for being here.

This is really exciting work. I know, hearing from folks from around the province, that it’s really meaningful. Thank you for taking time from your regular duties for this work. I really appreciate it.

I’m Carissa. I’m the executive director at North Island Students Union. North Island Students Union represents all credit-earning learners at North Island College. We’ve got campuses in Courtenay, Comox, Campbell River, Port Alberni and Port Hardy, and a learning centre in Ucluelet.

We have the largest catchment area of all public post-secondaries in B.C. We have 35 distinct Indigenous First Nations that we have the honour of working with — the Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw and Coast Salish First Peoples. Of the nearly 7,000 students that NISU represents, over 1,000 are Indigenous, 253 are dual-credit earners that are at our education facilities while also in high school, and almost 400 are international students.

The mandate letter from the province to the institution speaks to five founding principles: putting people first, lasting and meaningful reconciliation, equity and anti-racism, a better future through fighting climate change and a strong, sustainable economy that works for everyone.

The base operating grant from the province is 45 percent of the funding for the institution, $25.2 million. Of the $9.8 million that comes directly from tuition, domestic students provide 60 percent, while the 400 international members bring in the other 40 percent. It’s hard to see how that as an equitable approach to education. Relying on our vulnerable learners to offset funding shortfalls year in and year out doesn’t come across as putting people first.

Domestic students benefit from the tuition limit policy, which dictates that tuition can only increase by 2 percent annually. So students can make plans from year to year, which is really important when you’re planning your degree. International students have no such protections. Students at Emily Carr spoke out loudly against increases this year — 10 percent for returning students and 30 percent for new students. These students aren’t able to contribute to a strong, sustainable economy, as they instead focus on making every dollar count, including working precarious jobs, working several jobs and needing more and more supports from our local food banks.

From around B.C., international students represent 24 percent of our learners, yet they are paying 54 percent of tuition. The recent experience where travel has impacted us shows the risks of relying on this export of education to fund the system. In acknowledgment of these pressures, we ask for the international students to also have a tuition limit fee policy.

We also ask for an increase in base funding through a fulsome investment in post-secondary education to provide the necessary resources for the future-ready action plan. The recent funding review by Don Wright highlighted the shortages institutions are facing, which influences staff and instructor recruitment and retention with impacts on the wraparound supports for students. In order to get through to the other side of nursing and trade shortages, we need consistent investment in education.

That’s it.

[8:45 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you for your presentation.

H. Yao: Thank you so much. I just want to make sure I get some of the numbers correct. I apologize for that.

Did you mention that 24 percent of students are made up of international students?

C. Wilson: Across the province.

H. Yao: They make up 54 percent of the tuition. If I remember correctly, I think international students sometimes pay six to ten or six to eight times more. Maybe the number isn’t reconciling in my head in that way.

C. Wilson: The six to ten is about averaging over the province. At North Island College, for example, our international students are paying about four times more, whereas at UBC, they’re paying about ten times more. That six is an average of them all.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Carissa. Just to clarify, you said the students at Emily Carr, the domestic ones, paid a 10 percent increase. We did hear that….

C. Wilson: No, that was for the international members. The domestic students benefit from the 2 percent tuition increase cap.

B. Stewart: Okay. That’s what I was going to ask. I thought there was a cap, and I misheard you.

C. Wilson: Our international members at Emily Carr.

B. Stewart: I thought we heard that in Vancouver, they’d raised the international student tuition by 30 percent.

C. Wilson: That’s for incoming students, students that started fresh. The returning students that are at year 1 or 2 of their degree at Emily Carr saw a 10 percent increase from year to year, and then our new students that are coming in brand new, fresh, are a 30 percent increase.

B. Stewart: Thank you for clarifying that.

C. Wilson: That impacts the recruiting. The recruitment and things have already provided all the information at a much more modest tuition, and now these folks are already deep in planning and have a fairly rude awakening.

B. Banman: This committee has heard similar things from other student unions, but I wanted to drill in on…. You said that some of the students deal with precarious jobs, which I agree with. Do you have any data on how many foreign students actually participate in the workforce?

We also heard that their hours are limited, and they would like a lift on that as well. Do we know how many foreign students participate in work outside and/or go to food banks?

C. Wilson: At North Island College, the vast majority of my members are also working. Almost every single international student I talk to also has a job.

I don’t have data on the food banks, but I’m happy to look into that and provide some more back. We know that our members are approaching the food banks more often. Of my board of six students, four of them are international. I just got to spend the weekend with them. We went to a summer camp situation, and I heard from several of them that they are accessing those services, as are their peers, so I know, firsthand, real data.

Our food bank services are just so on the rise in all the communities that we serve. The students union donates $600 a year to each one of the food banks in our communities in recognition of the fact that we know our members are accessing those services.

The limit on hours is currently temporarily no longer in place. Previously international students could only work 20 hours a week in the community, and that has been lifted. They can work more hours a week while in education. It’s hard to have…. Our international learners are taking five-credit courses, typically, so they have many hours of education. Trying to work more than 20 hours on top of their education hours is a struggle. The amount of students that are not sleeping and really struggling to make ends meet and to enrich and add to our communities…. Yeah, I feel like we’re taking advantage of our international members.

R. Leonard: Thanks very much, Carissa. One of the things that we hear…. There’s the cap of 2 percent, but we also hear that there are alternative ways of gaining more from students through fees.

Can you expand on that a little bit? What kind of fees are we talking about?

C. Wilson: Ancillary fees can be added into the institution at different times. NIC hasn’t done that in a while. I can’t remember the year. I apologize. There was a fee added for the library and learning commons. That was a common one. Now students are directly paying for the services, for accessing the library services.

[8:50 a.m.]

Then another fairly common thing is to close a program and then reopen it, because then it doesn’t face that 2 percent increase. It’s now a new program. It’s not an awesome way, but definitely a way that institutions are getting around the 2 percent cap.

G. Chow: Thank you, Carissa, for your presentation. Do you have figures for your college, North Island, in terms of the percentage of fees that are contributed by the foreign students, which are 400, you mentioned. So the percentage — contribution by international student percentage, contribution by domestic students. The rest comes from the government.

C. Wilson: So $9.8 million is coming directly from tuition: $4.1 million from our international members, which is 40 percent of the overall revenue, and the other $5.7 million is coming from our domestic learners, so 60 percent. These 400 students are carrying 40 percent of the tuition funding.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation, Carissa, and taking the time out this morning to present to us.

Next up is Ben Hyman, Vancouver Island Regional Library.

Ben, you have five minutes for your presentation followed by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours, Ben.

VANCOUVER ISLAND REGIONAL LIBRARY

B. Hyman: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone, for your work and your time this morning. Good to see you. I really appreciate this opportunity.

My name is Ben Hyman. I’m the executive director of Vancouver Island Regional Library. I’ll just call that VIRL, to save us all some time, for the rest of the presentation. I just want to provide some context and background about VIRL and its services, and then I’ll be making three recommendations for Budget ’24.

We’re celebrating our 87th birthday as a regional library district this year. We’re a public library serving some of the fastest-growing urban areas and some of the most rural and remote coastal communities in the country.

Essentially, VIRL offers library as a service to 38 local governments, making it one of the largest boards on earth, as I like to say, and we operate on the traditional territories of 53 First Nations across 42,000 square kilometres on B.C.’s coast, including here in Campbell River on the unceded traditional territories of the Liqwiltokw people, and from Haida Gwaii in the north to Sooke and Sidney in the south, and Tofino and Ucluelet in the west, all the way over to Bella Coola in the east.

It’s essentially the population of Surrey served over the entire mass of every freshwater lake in the province. It is an enormous challenge to offer equitable public library service across that expanse.

Our communities are in transition. Reconciliation is perhaps the region’s greatest opportunity. Economic diversification, climate change, the toxic drug and opioid crises, housing and affordability challenges are all profound; so, too, are low literacy levels.

According to Decoda Literacy earlier this year, 45 percent of British Columbians aged 16 to 65 have difficulty accomplishing some daily living tasks due to limited literacy skills. That is absolutely shocking. As someone that’s worked in the education sector and library sector for 25 years, I had hoped that the literacy rates would go up, not down, over two and a half decades.

VIRL is an impact organization in an impact sector. On average, a third of the population that we serve is an active library user. Our collective services are in continuous demand and under constant pressure, and we are actively and demonstrably contributing to rural economic development, reduced social isolation, newcomer supports, skills training and development, climate response, affordability and livability, student success and supporting complex needs. We are engaged deeply in the work of truth and reconciliation.

On behalf of the VIRL, I’m bringing three recommendations to the committee for Budget 2024. First is to commit to public library funding stabilization. Provincial funding for the library sector is entirely discretionary, and funding formulas have remained unchanged for more than a decade. It is time to signal unambiguous support to the sector for multi-year planning.

[8:55 a.m.]

Second is to prioritize equity, support public library services to rural, remote, and First Nations communities in particular. It is time for policy change.

Third is to commit to collaboration. The challenges facing communities across the province and across our region require cross-governmental and cross-sectoral perspectives and solutions. It’s time for deep collaboration. Thank you.

R. Leonard: Thanks, Ben, for coming and presenting. As a former board chair, I recall very much how challenging it is to have a board of 38.

I’m just hoping we can dig a little deeper into your three recommendations, starting particularly around prioritizing equity. How do you see that being supported?

B. Hyman: Thanks for the question. The base funding for public libraries at the moment is bottom loaded, so the formula favours rural and remote in terms of the dollar per capita, but that amount hasn’t been adjusted in decades. I think it’s the continuation of a bottom-loaded approach that recognizes that services across a greater expanse or to rural remote populations carry an additional cost compared to urban.

R. Leonard: And equity?

B. Hyman: Sorry. Inequity?

R. Leonard: Yeah, you were speaking particularly around First Nations communities.

B. Hyman: Yes. Public libraries as community hubs and, in many cases, as the only third space in many communities but particularly in rural remote communities, if lucky enough to have a public library…. There are 244 communities in the province that have one. The equity piece comes, especially in rural remote, where there aren’t other spaces to access public services, whereas in an urban or metropolitan environment, there could be many places.

That’s the equity component. I think addressing it through bottom-loaded funding helps to see that inequity across different communities of different sizes.

A. Walker: Thank you for the presentation. I, too, was on the board briefly, and it’s an incredible organization that serves many people in our community. If you’re not directly using it, you don’t really know all the services that are offered, so I appreciate all the work you do.

Carrying on with Ronna-Rae’s question, I’m wondering if you can expand on the third recommendation: working together, collaboration. What does that mean between VIRL, the province and other agencies?

B. Hyman: It’s a great question. Thank you. To give some examples, we’re engaged in some conversations presently with the four health authorities in our region, the First Nations Health Authority included, about common cause, specifically around the social determinants of health and literacy being the key indicator for them.

How can we work together collectively across publicly funded organizations and institutions to improve health outcomes? How can we start by focusing on literacy and not think of it as just something for K to 12 or K to 16 and beyond? That’s one example.

I think also working across government…. If we think about rural economic development or even housing affordability, how can we bring public libraries to the table, into the design of approaches that can address some of the key challenges facing the province?

Again, in the context of VIRL, we are in conversations with some of our local governments, who’d like to see new libraries, and we’re interested in working with them to see if there’s a missing middle housing component that could be appended, some mixed-use instead of legacy stand-alone approaches, if we can expect conditions of scarcity in some communities over time. Maybe it’s time to be more creative and be at the table having those discussions from the outset.

M. Starchuk (Chair): We have two minutes and four speakers, so obviously we’re not getting to all four.

B. Stewart: I just wanted to ask you about the statistics that you mentioned about the literacy rate. I want to ask you: in your professional opinion, what’s contributing to that or what’s driving that?

B. Hyman: Those statistics are alarming. I think part of what’s driving it is it’s taking an expansive view of literacy — so basic numeracy and reading but also digital literacy as well. I think there are assumptions, increasingly, that because we all have a smartphone in our pocket that we can solve everything and anything.

[9:00 a.m.]

Perhaps what’s missing is some of the analytical skills. When I unpack that number, for example, a key challenge is that 45 percent of individuals apparently struggle with interpreting data from a graph or a table or a chart. If we think about the health reporting that occurred a lot over the last three years, for obvious reasons, and the various interpretations about that, it’s quite interesting to reflect on that literacy gap, that challenge and what that means for outcomes.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Yeah, thanks. That’s exactly where I was going to go with the literacy rate.

What programs can you provide? What should we be focusing on, with the programs that you provide, that can address what Ben was talking about?

B. Hyman: A great question. Thank you.

Public libraries in B.C. focus their work specifically, primarily, in the summer months for the K-to-12 and the pre-K-to-12, and that’s to address the drop in literacy that occurs over the summer holidays. So with support from the province of B.C., historically, over the years the Summer Reading Club, Reading Link Challenge and a variety of other opportunities around…. Those are two key interventions that do support retention of literacy skills through the summer months and prepare students to be back in the fall.

I think there’s more to be done, though, beyond the K-to-12 space, and it’s continuing to offer flexible space to support tutors and the reading reluctant of all ages, as well as new Canadians. I think all of that would show up well in the statistics.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, Ben, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

Next up is Andrea Craddock, CUPE Vancouver Island District Council.

Andrea, you have five minutes to make your presentation, followed up by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

Andrea, you have the floor.

CUPE VANCOUVER ISLAND
DISTRICT COUNCIL

A. Craddock: Good morning. My name is Andrea Craddock.

I respectfully acknowledge that we are meeting today on the unceded territory of the Wei Wai Kum people.

I’m here on behalf of CUPE’s Vancouver Island District Council. We represent 38 CUPE locals and 10,000 union members across Vancouver Island and Powell River. Our members provide high-quality public services across several sectors, including post-secondary institutions, public schools, community social services and municipalities, and work in a wide variety of occupations. Thank you for your opportunity for me to represent them here today.

First, I’d like to talk about the opportunity right at the government’s fingertips to provide a public child care option for B.C. families.

Despite historic investments by the B.C. government, families continue to struggle to find reliable child care. Without access to affordable child care, parents are forced into long commutes and multiple child care transitions. Alternately, they face the anxiety and uncertainty of unlicensed care spaces, unsure of the facility or the provider.

These challenges persist because B.C.’s child care model is provided by for-profit and not-for-profit providers with no public option. The negative effects of relying only on a market-based model get downloaded to parents, unable to find affordable, reliable care. Precarious child care workers, who are not paid a living wage, have few benefits and no access to a pension.

What British Columbia needs is a reliable and stable public option for child care. The integration of child care from the early years through to school-aged care into the public education system is that public option. Public child care in schools means fewer transitions, better care for kids, better jobs for workers and better access to the reliable and affordable spaces for parents. Budget 2024 should invest in the creation of integrated child care operated in-house by school districts to create thousands of new child care spaces in public schools across the province.

The most obvious first step to creating public child care in schools is to provide school-aged options for B.C. families. We can address that gap at the same time that school districts are experiencing historic difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified education assistants. The common solution, integrated before-and-after-school care provided by the existing education assistant workforce, is why the second recommendation is that the province increase hours for education assistants by delivering school-aged child care publicly via school districts.

[9:05 a.m.]

School district 72, Campbell River, received a government grant for seven stand-alone structures for child care. Construction is behind schedule, so we will launch a before-and-after child care program in existing school spaces this September. EAs will work beyond their current work day, up to eight hours, at the same rate of pay. Most education assistants work between four and six hours per school day and only have work nine months of the year. Frequently, these workers are left struggling to make ends meet and work second and third jobs.

The seamless day pilot projects provide integrated before- and after-school care in kindergarten classrooms and have been highly successful but leave out the need for school-age care. Let’s build on the seamless day by expanding access to integrated school-aged care to children up to age 12 in every B.C. public school. The standing labour force of education assistants within our school districts is highly skilled, able to provide the care and education required and has been calling for increased access to full-time hours for decades.

School-aged care is a crisis throughout B.C. Investing in publicly delivered before- and after-school care leverages the advantages of the existing public education system, governance and public oversight, administrative structures, age-appropriate physical spaces and a highly qualified workforce. This is a win-win solution that provides the child care families need and the additional hours K-to-12 workers have been seeking.

Our final recommendation is that Budget 2024 find solutions to the structural issues forcing staff out of K-to-12 work. One issue is wage fairness for skilled trades workers. Data shows that trades wages in the K-to-12 sector are 9 to 12 percent lower than those paid for the same positions in the municipal sector. This puts school districts at a disadvantage in the competition for skilled trade workers and will lead to much higher costs as districts are forced to contract externally.

Equally critical to addressing the wage inequity is wage equity for education assistants. Challenging working conditions with some of our province’s most vulnerable learners, low incomes, high workload, less-than-full-time work and the seasonal nature of most EA jobs creates great hardship.

Without significant reform, EAs will continue to leave the profession faster than they can be replaced, and districts will continue to experience shortages. Providing the full-time hours for EAs will not only stabilize the workforce and recruitment and retention challenges; it will better support families, support students and precarious workers.

Thank you very much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Andrea.

H. Yao: Thank you so much, Andrea. I do want to insist that I’m asking this question out of a conflict and observing, more than questioning, the situation.

Especially when referring to increasing hours for school EAs, initially I thought it was a great idea, but I actually had a meeting with the Richmond school board, including the union representative, including the superintendent. When I brought up our EAs in the Richmond school board looking to expand, so that way they can match…. Some are looking at before-and-after child care. They all looked a bit confused and replied back to me, saying: “There is no such issue in Richmond school district.”

So is this a district-to-district difference? Or am I observing something that’s maybe beyond my understanding?

A. Craddock: Yeah, every district is very different. We actually do have, in Campbell River right now, some before- and after-school care providers. I think we have two that are non-profits, and one of them came very close to closing last year for various reasons. So every district has a mishmash right now, currently. Quite honestly, I think most communities provide a lot on unlicensed care — so family daycares, which aren’t licensed. There isn’t oversight.

Again, there are so many transitions for children. As they’re moved from one place to the next, it becomes an issue as far as creating stress, extra stress for the family and for those children.

H. Yao: I do apologize. Maybe my question wasn’t clear, so I do apologize for that. I’m actually talking about EAs in need of a full-time position.

A. Craddock: Oh sorry. Yes.

H. Yao: That’s the reason I was asking this. This is a….

A. Craddock: Yes, there is a wide variety of hours, but typically, it is between four and six hours a day.

S. Chant: Thanks very much for the work that you do and the folks that you represent do, because it’s a lot.

My question is around…. In Campbell River, my understanding is that you were piloting, or you’re working towards piloting, trialling this. Did it start this past year, or is it coming in the coming year?

[9:10 a.m.]

A. Craddock: Unfortunately, we had two false starts, which has created a lot of…. Unfortunately, we have lost EAs as a result, because they were anticipating that they would have these extra hours, and they continue to leave to find jobs that are full-time.

Unfortunately, it has been delayed. We had high hopes that we were going to have our structures, but due to supply chain issues, it slowed down. I’m anticipating that we will see those structures built sometime during this next school year and be able to open them the following September.

S. Chant: Very good. Thank you.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks. What’s the wage for an EA right now?

A. Craddock: Typically it’s about $28, $29 an hour.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thanks.

R. Leonard: Hi, Andrea. I’m glad you could come and present.

We’ve done a lot to increase the education level of ECEs, giving them opportunities to grow into that profession, and EAs are different. What is the challenge of moving from being an EA to also encompassing early childhood education? Are we seeing a lot of EAs who haven’t changed, trained?

A. Craddock: We have filled all of our child care spaces for the fall, and it is going to be a transition. However, many of our EAs come from an ECE background. They’ve worked in the field prior to becoming an education assistant.

I think the biggest challenge is going to be that transition from working, potentially, in a high school and working with elementary-age students, and the energy is very different. I think people are going to be really tired for the first little while, but it will also be very refreshing to have that mix of students that you’re working with throughout your day.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

Next up is Gillian Anderson, Save Our Forests Team, Comox Valley.

Gillian, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed up by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

SAVE OUR FORESTS TEAM, COMOX VALLEY

G. Anderson: Thank you so much.

Good morning, everyone. I’m speaking to you on behalf of Save Our Forests Team, Comox Valley. We would like to suggest the following two budget allocations. The first one would be funding to implement the old-growth strategic review’s recommendation for logging deferrals for B.C. old growth and a fundamental change to the management of forests in B.C.

As we close in on the final months of the three-year deadline the government imposed for full implementation of the recommendations of their old-growth review panel, it’s appalling to note that none of these recommendations have been fully implemented yet, even as logging of B.C.’s near-extinct old growth has continued. Major conservation groups, such as the Wilderness Committee and B.C. Sierra Club, are recommending the immediate allocation of $100 million to assist with the deferrals of critical areas of old growth.

Many First Nations and rural communities are being asked to stop logging old growth in proposed deferral areas without being offered compensatory funding for that cessation. Such funding is critical if there is to be any old growth left to be put into permanent management and conservation areas. The province cannot take credit for deferrals without providing the funding for the suspended logging activity. These funds need to be earmarked specifically for old-growth deferral conservation, not for assorted somewhat related projects.

This money is not a new ask. This money is a long-overdue commitment to a fundamental change in the way that forests are managed in B.C. That was a campaign promise that the NDP made in 2017, and for years, they did virtually nothing and put virtually no money toward it.

It’s the government’s promise to the people of B.C., who treasure what is left of our old growth and want to see it saved and managed for biodiversity. We have 2,000 species at risk of extinction in B.C. and still no species-at-risk act, as promised in 2017 by the government. If that promise isn’t accompanied by cash, it’s another meaningless promise, in a line of meaningless promises, to protect old growth.

[9:15 a.m.]

The federal government has committed at least $50 million for old-growth conservation, and there are current movements on committees to raise that to at least $82 million, if the provincial government matches it, but this generous offer has been ignored to date. Why aren’t we leaping at this opportunity?

In the longer time frame, the Wilderness Committee and B.C. Sierra Club state that we need $300 million from B.C., $300 million from the federal government, and another $300 million to be raised privately, to conserve the remaining old growth. Again, this needs to be specifically earmarked for conservation.

If that seems like a lot of money, we should remember the value of conservation. Every old-growth tree saved keeps carbon out of the atmosphere, helps protect salmon habitat, mitigates wildfires, drought and other climate change effects. The value of these functions is worth a great deal more than a one-time stumpage fee when we log and ship an old-growth log to a pellet factory to go to England.

B.C.’s super, natural tourism is worth $14 billion annually, but tourists don’t come to barren rivers and clear-cut forests. These economic benefits are never considered — while, paradoxically, the negative economic cost of environmental destruction is usually ignored in the narrow mantra of jobs and output. As budget experts, you will understand that the cost of a ruined ecosystem can be billions of dollars’ worth of damage. The destruction from a single flood or wildfire season can easily run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Our second ask is for funding to save community forests and wild areas. The province is putting tremendous pressure on cities and municipalities to speed up the development process, to build more residential units in B.C. Many local natural spots, long cherished by the community and its children, are vanishing. We run the risk of losing what wild places and forested areas currently remain in our towns and rural areas.

Our group, for example, is trying to save remnant forests in Comox, but developers can easily outbid community groups. Municipal politicians are bound by budgetary constraints that often prevent public land acquisition. These small patches of wilderness are critical to healthy and attractive communities. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever and our community has changed. There should be regular, substantial annual funding set aside for the specific retention of these remaining wild areas in towns and rural areas, which is critical as B.C. continues to grow.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our concerns.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you very much, Gillian, for your presentation.

A. Walker: Thank you, Gillian. I appreciate your passion for this. I know it’s one shared by all British Colum­bians. We want to make sure that our forests and our ecosystems are as protected as possible for future generations.

Recognizing, of course, that there have been significant financial investments — just recently $25 million for forest landscape planning, working with First Nations — I’m wondering how that $300 million you had proposed was calculated for the federal, private and provincial governments.

G. Anderson: Unfortunately, I’d have to get back to you with that. This was an old-growth webinar that I attended late last week, and I myself was trying to get that information from the organizers. I guess they all went away for the weekend, but I’d be happy to get that information to you.

A. Walker: Sounds good. Thanks.

H. Yao: Can you explain a bit more about your recommendation 2, just educate me a bit more? We have a conflict in trying to preserve the environment and create a sustainable future, and also trying to tackle the housing crisis at the same time. Obviously, we should try our best to resolve both, as much as possible, in a balanced manner.

First, going into a bit more detail to help me appreciate it a bit better, do you have, maybe, additional recommendations so that we can find a solution that can satisfy the needs of both?

G. Anderson: Well, part of the big problem is that municipal politicians, I believe, have to have a balanced budget. It’s very difficult, from what I understand, for them to do long-term planning — to buy, say, a forested area or whatnot. I’m sure it’s happening in many communities, but in our communities, we’re getting down to the last little forested area here and a little wetland there — that kind of thing. It’s very difficult for community groups.

It’s really part of community planning. We don’t want to end up in a place where it’s just wall after wall, a sea of houses, without greenbelts and little places where kids can go run a truck in the dirt and that kind of thing. Of course, we understand the need for density. Density can be achieved, but we do need…. It’s critical that we save these areas.

[9:20 a.m.]

Otherwise, a city and a town is not a livable place, if you can’t go out for a walk, if you have to walk along a highway instead of walking through a greenbelt of trees on a walking path.

I do understand it’s a difficult issue. I’m sure there are planners and whatnot who could provide you with far more expert detail than I could. It’s simply a concern that we’re seeing as we’re seeing these areas vanishing. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

B. Stewart: Gillian, I wanted to ask a similar question. I think there’s responsible environmental protection. Certainly, that is part of the OCPs that municipalities are expected to work on. There are fairly strict rules around watersheds in these areas that you’re talking about.

I want to better understand what you see as to how we deal with the density. On the one hand, you’re saying you don’t want the walls of cities, etc. Give us a vision of…. How do we increase the accommodation for people that want to live in British Columbia? Actually, they’re here already, and they’re continuing to come. How do we address that, in your view?

G. Anderson: It is a difficult question, as you say. Of course, municipal planners are always trying to wrestle with this.

I guess the flip side of that is…. If we do not make the effort to make sure that there are greenbelts and local areas where people can view wildlife…. We want wildlife to have a place in our cities as well. If we don’t plan for that and we lose it, we’re no richer for that. I really do believe that, with good planning, it is possible to conserve these areas and to have both.

Some of our legislation is, in my opinion, woefully lacking. Here in the Comox Valley, we’ve logged virtually all of our watershed. That sort of thing shouldn’t be happening. Watersheds should be places where people can retreat to hike and whatnot nearby.

People shouldn’t have to get in a car and drive an hour or two to go for a walk in a wooded area. We need to incorporate these into our cities so that our cities are livable. The vast majority of people are not going to drive an hour to have a walk. It sort of defeats the point of it, if everybody piles in their car.

We need to make it so that people can live in an area where there is nature. Much more experienced minds, I’m sure, could facilitate both.

Big cities are doing it now. They’re rewilding areas. Paris and Amsterdam, all of these big cities, are trying to bring these green areas back by closing down roads to cars and putting in bike paths and meadows and whatnot. London is still creating parks. If they can do it, we can do it. It requires us to shift, I think, from that mindset that wetlands and local woods are just obstacles to development.

We recently had a development in Comox. The vast majority of the trees…. Often developers will just clear the place wholesale. It’s so much easier than leaving a greenbelt.

If a greenbelt is left around a development where people can walk and ride their bikes…. We are trying to get people out of their cars, and we want our kids on bikes. If the bike path is on the side of a busy highway, no one is going to send their kid out on a bike. They need to be in separated bike paths.

If we ask developers to leave a little bit of a green ring instead of just coming in and, wholesale, taking down all the trees…. There are other issues. When you disturb one set of trees, you affect the drainage. You can affect the roots. It’s a complicated issue.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I hate to interrupt, but we’ve gone a little bit past there.

G. Anderson: Yes, of course.

M. Starchuk (Chair): You have hit the nail on the head. You need to have planners that understand development, green infrastructure networks and setbacks, riparian areas. Then you can have that community built.

G. Anderson: Without provincial oversight…. If you have a municipality that’s not interested in that sort of thing, it’s not going to happen. We really need provincial….

Anyway, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you today.

[9:25 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Jesse Ketler, from the Comox Valley regional district.

Jesse, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes-ish of questions and answers.

The floor is yours.

COMOX VALLEY REGIONAL DISTRICT

J. Ketler: Okay. Thank you so much.

Good morning.

It’s an honour to be invited to speak today on the traditional territory of the Liqwiltokw people.

Thank you for allowing the opportunity for the Comox Valley regional district to contribute to the Budget 2024 planning process.

The CVRD is made up of the communities of Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland and electoral areas A, B and C. Together, we have a population of more than 72,000.

The mental health, opioid and visible homelessness issues are not just big city problems. The number of people experiencing homelessness in the Comox Valley has doubled since March 2020 and is estimated to be at over 300 at this time. Our local resources are being challenged as the number of people in crisis continues to grow. Provincial support is needed.

The CVRD established a homelessness and support service in 2015. The service is funded by a tax requisition implemented for that purpose. We invest about $500,000 per year directly in social service non-profit organizations for their capital projects. These dollars are used as leverage for additional partner funding. The CVRD also has an emergency shelter and a supportive housing land acquisition service, which all jurisdictions participate in.

In the medium and long term, the board is looking to focus the investments from these two services as part of our strategic plan. Understanding how the Comox Valley may benefit from the province’s Homes for People action plan will help us to better leverage these dollars. We are looking forward to meeting with Minister Kahlon for further discussion.

In the short term, the most urgent need is in Courtenay, where the majority of the Comox Valley’s unsheltered population is located. All supportive and transitional housing in Courtenay is full, with significant wait-lists. We are seeing an increasing number of seniors needing to access these services as well.

For this reason, the CVRD’s first recommendation to the standing committee is that the government of B.C. support the city of Courtenay’s request for funding and/or support to invest in safety net beds and units in order to address a growing homelessness crisis in the Comox Valley.

The CVRD’s next priority is the climate crisis. We have made many positive steps forward, from the establishment of our performance monitoring dashboard, a corporate greenhouse gas emission inventory and work towards the establishment of a community greenhouse gas inventory. We’ve also committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 2030 and have recently created an internal cost of carbon at $160 per tonne, which will go into a reserve that will support further carbon reduction initiatives.

However, we are challenged to plan and resource these initiatives when we have to chase grant funding as the main source of provincial support for these programs, all of which are integral to delivering the CleanBC Roadmap to 2030.

The CVRD supports the new local government climate action program and joins calls to grow this program as a sustainable source of funding. As such, the CVRD’s second recommendation is that the government of B.C. establish a new contribution model similar in size and structure to the Canada community building fund in order to accelerate local government climate-related investments.

Our final priority is emergency management. Local governments are impacted at the ground level by the province’s work to co-develop and modernize emergency management legislation. However, the province’s current funding structure does not support us in this work, which is integral to meeting B.C.’s commitment to the Sendai framework and the implementation of DRIPA.

As such, our final recommendation is that the government of B.C. provide stable funding for emergency management programs that does not require local governments to depend on grants, which restrict our capacity and ability to plan for disaster response, and meaningfully consult with Indigenous partners.

[9:30 a.m.]

Finally, if I have some time left, I’d like to put in a plug for an important coastal community asset, the Island Coastal Economic Trust. The recommendations coming from the trust around the inclusion of First Nations and the ability for all local governments to build economic resilience and prosperity together are fully supported by the Comox Valley regional district.

Thank you for your time.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Jesse.

S. Chant: You said a word I didn’t understand: Sendai framework.

J. Ketler: Yeah. It’s a type of emergency management structure that the province is supporting.

S. Chant: Okay. I’ve got to learn more.

J. Ketler: There are four pillars to emergency management.

S. Chant: Oh, okay. All right. It’s a model.

J. Ketler: Yes, exactly.

S. Chant: It’s probably that I’m familiar with the model, not the name. Thank you.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. On point number 2, you mentioned something about an internal….

J. Ketler: Cost of carbon?

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Yeah. Cost of carbon of $160. Can you expand on that?

J. Ketler: Yeah. At the board, we were finding that it was hard to understand all the externalities of the climate crisis when we were making decisions about what we should do with busses, for example. Should we move to electric? Should we go with renewable gas engines? Those kinds of things.

It’s hard to know what those externalities are, so to prevent us from leaning towards the status quo, you have an internal cost of carbon. We did some research and found out that $160 per tonne is sort of the average out there right now. We can sort of balance those currently external costs with our internal costs.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): As a follow-up, is that a cost to the providers, or if it’s a local bus or anything like that, they have to adhere to of $160 a tonne? Who bears that cost ultimately?

J. Ketler: As you know, within regional districts, each service has its own participants. So within that service, we would make that call as to how much offset is needed for that internal cost of carbon, and the participants of that service will have to pay that internal cost of carbon.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Sorry. Go ahead. Too much to go on that one. I’d like to know more about it.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Jesse, there was a comment you made about emergency management program funding and the shortfall that was there. Can you just tell us: if there was the funding that was there, what would the program funding get us? What would the programs be, and what would be the end result? What would be the tangible outcome of funding whatever these programs are?

J. Ketler: Well, I think during COVID, we saw that it was really great to have a regional approach. Everybody could, of course, declare their own state of emergency and deal with the province in that way, but having that regional approach really helped us all collaborating and working together. I think that is key moving forward. We could use more stable funding to incorporate everyone’s needs in that — for example, cultural humility and understanding how to help our First Nations partners more, planning evacuation routes and flood mapping.

There are so many things that fall under this category. If we’re kind of searching for funding for each of those things, it makes it really difficult for us to have that coordinated approach, whereas stable funding would provide that.

G. Chow: Thank you, Jesse.

If my operation in your regional district produces one tonne of carbon, then I have to pay the district $160. Is that it?

J. Ketler: Right. Yes. For our recreation centres, for example, if we’ve determined that it’s X number of tonnes of carbon that goes into that, that cost gets incorporated into that service, and it drives us forward to make those changes that we need to reduce our carbon and hit our goals and the province’s goals for greenhouse gas reduction.

R. Leonard: Thank you so much, Jesse. I want to say congratulations, too, to the regional district for taking on a lot of topics that are integral to creating healthy communities. Sometimes folks think some of the work that you do is outside of the scope of local government, but there’s been a good vision there.

[9:35 a.m.]

The other part of it is that all of the different jurisdictions are working together, and that’s so important. It really shows in the recommendations you’re making, and an interest in spreading it out to make sure that everybody is participating in the solutions. I appreciate you bringing these.

I’m a little bit…. I’m still struggling with that understanding around the emergency management piece, because I know it could be…. It’s huge, what we need to do.

I’m hoping you can respond to…. We have a whole new ministry to try and deal with climate readiness and emergency planning. I’m just wondering if you could just comment on how that may be helping get to that comprehensive planning that you’re looking for.

J. Ketler: Well, I think local governments are dealing with so much with emergency management, and now we are dealing with warming centres and cooling centres. Last year we actually made our boardroom into a warming centre.

I mentioned some of the other issues with emergency management, our evacuation route planning that we’re just going to talk about at our board meeting tomorrow. It’s a grant application for the entire region to plan evacuation routes and also to receive other communities, Powell River and Campbell River, if there are issues in those communities and how to do that.

There’s a lot to plan, and it is hard for our staff. We’re very few staff, actually, in emergency planning. We are actually just increasing our service, because it was only the areas that were paying into that service originally. Now everyone is going to be joining onto the emergency management services. I think it was after COVID that we all realized that it’s a better collaborative effort than going it alone.

Funding for us as a region, with all of us saying, “Yes, let’s do this together,” is going to help a lot. Thanks.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Jesse, thank you very much for your presentation. The point I’ll leave you with is, for years and years, either emergency managers or emergency planners with regional districts, cities, municipalities, always did it off the corner of their desk, because they really, really didn’t think it was…. COVID has taught us one real thing: it has to be a well-thought-out position.

J. Ketler: Yes. We’re putting it front and centre, and I think that’s why we need the help financially. Thank you so much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thanks, Jesse.

Next up we have Jenn Halldorson.

J. Halldorson: Wow, no one ever pronounces my last name properly. Well done.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, I got a funny feeling. I got a funny feeling. Wait for the bolt of lightning.

Jenn, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours.

JENN HALLDORSON

J. Halldorson: Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that I should have printed something and followed it, so I’m just going to wing it.

The first three things, the only three things, that I wanted to talk about…. The first one is cycling infrastructure. We have it in some areas — specifically, I’m from the Comox Valley as well — but it is not well cared for at all. There is no real plan for maintenance, cleaning, repainting, and there seems to be less regard for safety than there should be.

The vehicle infrastructure that we have, the vehicles themselves all have had millions and millions of dollars in research, testing, all of that stuff, for safety. For bike lanes, our city, for example, threw down some paint, and it’s “good enough.” It’s not good enough. Several cars in several areas drive over the paint because there is no possible damage to their vehicles. There’s no deterrent of any kind to stop them from going over it, and, shock of all shocks, several sections now have no paint anymore because so many vehicles have driven over it.

Well how is that safe for us? It isn’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it except harp on the city. “Hey, can you redo this? Can you repaint this? Give me a paintbrush. I’ll do it for twenty bucks. Like, come on. It’s not that hard.” They just don’t prioritize it. So relying on political will is not working for us.

We need more funding. We need…. I don’t even know exactly what else we need, but what we have right now isn’t enough. The vast majority of people who would like to cycle don’t, because it just isn’t safe at all for any of us.

[9:40 a.m.]

The other thing I wanted to talk about was housing density. The B.C. building code desperately needs to be redone. The last time it was updated was 2018. That was five years ago. A lot has changed in that time.

One of the main things I think would help density-wise is to actually address tiny houses. There is nothing in the code right now that states whether we can build them, what they can do for the environment, whether or not we can subdivide houses, maybe put them in someone’s backyard. It’s always about coach houses and mobiles or that kind of thing, but not tiny houses. What I would like is to have something specific that says, “This amount of height is okay. This amount of building materials being reused is going to end up in a tax break,” or whatever.

We need to start incentivizing people to use their land rather than constantly, as the previous lady said, killing trees and all of that to get these houses built. There’s too much of a grey area and too many people saying: “Well, I mean, maybe we could do this, but it’s not really clear.” We need to clear that up immediately.

The final thing is climate change. Everyone is talking about it because it’s a big deal. It’s not a thing that we need to solve in ten years. We need to solve it now. Transportation is a major part of that just because of fossil fuel use and all of that. We’re lucky because we have B.C. Hydro. That works really well for us compared to other provinces, but, personally, I think we could be doing a whole lot more.

I would just like to have a lot of the red tape removed for all municipalities in B.C. to start throwing more money at things. Grants are great. Grants are really great. We use our grants, but there’s a lot of red tape. It takes a lot of time to write the proposal, to do the research, to do all of that stuff. I think it would be easier for all of us if that red tape was removed and they just said: “Here’s a couple of hundred million. Do what you can.” I know that’s crazy, but it’s time we get crazy because we haven’t been doing it yet.

That’s all I’ve got.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you, Jenn, for your presentation. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it, but “time to get crazy” will be the catchphrase in the back part of my head for the rest of the day.

J. Halldorson: If I see it on the MLA website, I’ll consider that a success.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Note to self, yes. I’m partway there.

Jenn, could you, if you don’t mind, just touch on the bit around the cycling infrastructure that’s there. I mean, I’m a cyclist. On the proper days, I take my bike to work. I’m in a metropolitan city. I know what it means to have a painted line, and somebody says that that’s your space, but they don’t respect it. So can you explain the cycling infrastructure that you’re talking about here?

J. Halldorson: Yeah. For example, when you’re heading towards Ryan Road, off of 5th Street, that’s a right-hand turn, and there used to be paint there. They just did it eight to ten months ago. There’s no paint left, and they have no plan, it appears, to repaint it. It’s just, “Oh well, you can keep using the lane; we’re not telling you not to use the lane,” but there’s nothing there. There are no bollards.

For a specific way of adding safety, I suggested to the city: “Why don’t we take old tires, cut them up, and then do a thing like this on the road: paint them bright yellow, so you can see them, and then attach them to the asphalt.” They said, “Well, because we’d have to put a hole in the asphalt.” Uh-huh. Well, you’re not doing anything else but putting paint on it, so why does it matter. Why don’t you put some concrete down? Why don’t you put planters down, something that could eat up the water, not that we have much right now? There are so many different things we could be doing that we’re not.

The bike lanes we have don’t connect to the other bike lanes in town, so if you want to get to East Courtenay, good luck. That’s not happening — safely, anyway. There are areas that have no bike lanes at all. In some areas that we do have bike lanes, they just end with no warning. You’re just suddenly dumped out onto the street, and you’re like: “How did I get here?”

The vehicles…. I heard about that one-metre width thing that’s happening. Is that actually into law? Is it? How come we haven’t heard about it? Why isn’t ICBC screaming about it?

[9:45 a.m.]

I work for the RCMP — I’m not here on their behalf; I just want to make it clear — and I didn’t get a single email about that. Yet when there’s a major change, they tend to tell everyone about that so the officers know what’s been recently changed. Why don’t we have an email about that? I checked every single day. Where’s my email? I have nothing. We need that. We need better communication all over the province for that kind of thing because nobody knows it happened other than those of us that are passionate about cycling.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. I like your approach.

I want to ask you more about the building code that was changed in 2018. I’m not familiar that it excluded tiny houses. I know that tiny houses, certainly, have been deployed in many communities, but not… They’re community-driven, and it’s about the communities. I really want to know what you see in terms of the impediment with the building code. What is it you see that’s stopping that?

J. Halldorson: Some of the conversations I’ve seen, online and just in real life, have sort of surrounded around the fact that there is nothing that specifically says that a tiny house that is on wheels, or maybe not on wheels, is allowed in these areas. For someone to take their house…. Say they have a huge backyard, and they only use one corner of it. If they put a tiny house on there, it’s almost impossible to go into the building code and say: “Oh, these are specifically what I need to do to make sure that it’s safe, that it’s not going to sink into the ground.”

If I want to put a little concrete pad under it, what is legal about that? How high up can they go? Some people would like to build one, but ceiling height…. Something about the building code with the ceiling height prevents them from doing that. A lot of people would like a loft bedroom and can’t, because of that ceiling height.

It’s that kind of thing. There’s no clear information saying: “This is what you’re allowed, this is how much you’re allowed to use, this is how high it is allowed to be, and here are the areas where you allowed to go.” I don’t think there’s specific zoning for it either, but again, that could be a local municipality problem.

B. Stewart: Really good point. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Not seeing any other questions or comments….

I know with the tiny homes, at least in my city, local government always considered them as a contained unit, and they needed CSA standards to apply to the entire unit. It’s a good point of asking for a review of the B.C. building code because prior to that one, it was 2012 to 2018. I know it takes time to make sure that covers off everybody.

Thank you very much for your presentation. I did take the liberty to use the Google machine with regards to your “it’s time to get crazy.” There is a Prince song that’s out there that’s called “Let’s Go Crazy.” We can adopt that as a theme song later on.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I was going to suggest that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. Jenn, thank you very much for winging it during your presentation.

Next up is Dylan Heerema, Ecotrust Canada.

Dylan, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes of questions and comments.

The floor is yours.

ECOTRUST CANADA

D. Heerema: Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Dylan Heerema. I’m a senior policy advisor at Ecotrust Canada, in our community energy team. Our work is dedicated to reducing the financial and health burdens faced by households facing energy insecurity, also known as energy poverty, due to a combination of inefficient and unhealthy housing, lower incomes and rising energy prices.

It’s become all too clear, I think, that everyone understands that a lack of stable access to heating and cooling is now having profound impacts on British Columbians’ health and lives. We need only look at the 2021 heat dome as proof positive, and more such events are inevitable, unfortunately. On top this new threat, many people in communities that we work with are still forced to choose between paying their utility bills and feeding their families on a regular basis.

We recognize that the B.C. government has taken steps to address energy insecurity, in particular, introducing the CleanBC income qualified rebate program and proposing cooling provisions in the 2023 building code. However, these measures remain insufficient, particularly as other provinces leapfrog ahead of B.C. in their approach to equitably decarbonizing homes.

It’s critically important that all British Columbians are able to access clean, affordable home energy services without hardship. With that in mind, this year our three recommendations focus on bolstering support for these families and individuals, and we believe the first two may be achieved at no net cost to government.

Firstly, the CleanBC income qualified program needs to align its approach with other provinces, providing a 100 percent free heat pump to lower-income households.

[9:50 a.m.]

This program needs to align with basic principles of equity, as well as following the lead of provinces such as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, all of which are now offering free heat pumps to their income-qualified households. These are the families and individuals who are currently paying some of the highest energy bills in the province and who are at higher risk of disease and death due to their outdated gas furnaces or baseboard electric heating systems.

The current 95 percent cost coverage to the income qualified program, which I’ll call the IQP, leaves last-mile costs that are unaffordable for many residents. Additionally, the funding limit, which is currently $9,500, has not kept up with inflationary price increases and might only cover up to half of the cost of a system in 2023.

Heat pumps save lives by improving air quality and providing cooling during extreme heat and wildfire smoke events, make life more affordable by lowering energy bills, and achieve dramatic reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. These life-saving devices also lower the burden on our health care system, so this measure will actually more than pay for itself in reduced hospital admissions and health care costs.

However, we believe costs can also be covered by reducing the level of incentive currently available to wealthier British Columbians, incentives that we know have a demonstrably high rate of free ridership.

Second, low-income retrofit programs should help British Columbians stay safe and comfortable in their homes, not merely save utilities money. The utility-run energy conservation assistance program, or ECAP, is not achieving meaningful results because it is constrained by the BCUC’s outdated regulatory scope. Budget ’24 should plan for the integration of this program into an expanded CleanBC income qualified program, or IQP.

Some basic stats: only around 5 percent of the households eligible for ECAP have participated in it since its inception 15 years ago, and of those that do, the average bill savings are usually less than $100 per year. This program simply isn’t making a difference in the lives of families.

We believe ECAP should be scrapped and the utility funds for it paid into an agency that understands the realities faced by lower-income households and that has experience delivering social programs, i.e., the government. We support government taking over this ineffective program, using the ratepayer funds that utilities collect, and merging it with the CleanBC IQP, so a consolidation.

Finally, our third recommendation. Budget 2024 should introduce and fund an ongoing electricity bill assistance program for those that need it most, replacing B.C. Hydro’s customer crisis fund, which has also been ineffective, again due to the BCUC scope of regulation.

This is basically a backstop, and a backstop is needed to make sure that folks can continue to afford their hydro bills, because we know it will take years to retrofit all homes and reach everyone with a heat pump. B.C. Hydro’s customer crisis fund doesn’t currently fill this gap, because you already have to be in arrears and facing disconnection to be eligible for it.

We believe that such a program could follow the lead set by Ontario, California and the Atlantic provinces. Particularly, Ontario has an excellent program that provides monthly bill credits of between $35 and $100 to their low- and moderate-income ratepayers.

In closing, these three recommendations would consolidate and more effectively fund B.C.’s programs to support households that face energy insecurity in a way that could help us solve overlapping crises, including the climate crisis, health care crisis, housing, creating more jobs and making life more affordable. Thanks.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Dylan.

R. Leonard: Thanks for your presentation. I’ve heard from you before, so it’s given me a moment to consider some of the recommendations you are bringing forward again today.

The notion of 100 percent heat pump coverage for low-income households sounds appealing, but the concern I have is people move a lot. When we talk about the people most in need, it’s usually renters who are living in less-than-energy-efficient homes. In effect, you’re not necessarily supporting the low-income families. You’re supporting the landlords who own those properties. I’m just trying to square that hole so you can comment on that.

The other part of it is…. Have you got some kind of a formula where you can say, if every home in British Columbia was covered with a heat pump, how much that would save us in energy so that we wouldn’t have to build more infrastructure, costly infrastructure, like another dam or two or three?

[9:55 a.m.]

D. Heerema: Excellent questions, both of them. They’re sort of different. I’ll try and tackle them differently.

The renter’s piece is a really, really important one. We’ve been doing, actually, a lot of research and working with academic institutions and folks with lived experience to figure out how we can reach more tenants through these programs. There is a big issue around getting landlord consent to do retrofits in rental suites, generally speaking. So there are a couple of pathways to address that.

Actually, one of the things we’re looking into is creating provisions within the Residential Tenancy Act that would tie into the new building code provisions for maximum indoor temperatures — that a landlord would actually have to provide a safe living suite by having a suite that provides active cooling. Actually, most of the folks that died in the heat dome did die in their homes. They were disproportionately…. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say that. They’re about an even split, renters and owners, because there are a lot of seniors who died in the heat dome.

So provisions through the building code and the Tenancy Act are really important for renters, and then there are still a lot of owners that face energy insecurity as well, so this is a good start, I think, for those folks.

Ultimately, the worst thing that we do is give out a bunch more free heat pumps, but realistically, we pretty much need to reach every building in B.C. with one of these systems in the next 20 years anyway. So there may be a little bit of spillover, but I think that there are plenty of low-income owners who could take advantage of a program like this.

On the infrastructure and electricity demand question, this is a big question, I think, in terms of energy supply and demand.

One thing that we know for sure is that we’re still connecting 10,000 new buildings to gas every year, and that ultimately, we can only meet, at most, 17 percent of our natural gas demand by 2050 with RNG. So we are going to have to transition a whole bunch of homes from gas to electric, and we are going to have to deal with the supply issue either way. So using our electricity in a way that’s more efficient, i.e., phasing out these baseboard electric and electric furnaces, and things like that, is going to be super important to keeping our overall demand picture down.

I think the first thing we need to do is to stop connecting folks to gas that are ultimately going to have to then pay more to convert later on, because we just don’t have the supply of renewable gases to supply all of our building energy demand that way.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Dylan, we have three people that would like to ask a question, and we have 70 seconds left to go.

B. Stewart: We hear the discrepancy with heat pumps not working outside of places north of Hope during colder weather. I can speak from replacing my furnace this year. The heating company absolutely refused to put a heat pump in. I said: “What are you talking about? Everybody is putting these in.” They said: “They don’t work below these temperatures.”

I guess I’m trying to square that — meaning that it’s good technology, and it works in the vast majority of B.C., but it may not work everywhere. So can you tell me why we’d be promoting them, I guess, if they’re not working in those areas?

D. Heerema: Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a contractor…. Contractors are used to working with what they know, and they like putting in what they know. So we hear a lot of this kind of talking point repeated, but it’s actually ten or more years out of date at this point.

Our cold-climate heat pumps actually work down to easily minus 25, if not minus 30. So it’s actually not a B.C. problem. In the Yukon or Nunavut, there are some arguments for having backup systems that have gas hybrid, but for B.C., the tech is simply there. The cold-climate systems are incredible.

It’s just that contractors need to learn more about what’s out there and get used to installing new things. I think we need to support folks to transition from gas fitting to HVAC tech and all these things. The reality is that there are plenty of good systems out there that work down to minus 30. It’s just not that big of an issue anymore.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Out of respect to the other presenters that are behind us, we will go one more question. Just one more.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’ll make it as quick as I can.

A lot of talk about decarbonizing homes, heat pumps, free heat pumps, crisis fund and trying to make it more affordable for people at the same time. Would you be in favour, then, of scrapping the residential conservation rate?

You talk about heat pumps right now, and right now, the conservation rate is about 22 kilowatt hours per day. Heat pumps, on average, are going to take about 36 kilowatt hours per day, depending on where you live and what kind of heat pumps you’ve got. That would certainly reduce the costs, because right now, you’re paying nine cents for step 1 and 21 cents per kilowatt hour once you get above that threshold.

Would you be in favour of scrapping the residential conservation rate?

D. Heerema: Really, really good question. I’ll try to be brief, because that’s another big topic.

In short, yes. I am in favour of scrapping the conservation rate for a flat rate with a caveat, and that is that a lot of lower-income folks that live in smaller units — so apartment-dwelling, low-income folks — would actually pay more under a flat rate because of the equalizing that would take place. If we flatten the rate, we need to make sure we’re introducing protections for the low-income ratepayers.

[10:00 a.m.]

I would suggest that using a basic electricity subsidy would be the best and most effective way to do that, but there are a few ways around it. You could also have an opt-in rate for electric heating. So right now, we’re proposing an opt-in rate for time of use. We could do the same thing for folks that have a heat pump to offset — basically put an offset on the rate.

In general, yes, the conservation rate doesn’t encourage electrification, so I think it is time to phase it out but in a way that we can protect against those folks that would see a bill increase from that flattening, if that makes sense.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks. Yeah, it makes sense.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Dylan, thank you very much for your presentation.

D. Heerema: Thanks, everyone.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Michelle Waite, school district 71, Comox Valley.

Michelle, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed up with five minutes of comments and/or questions.

You have the floor.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 71, COMOX VALLEY,
BOARD OF EDUCATION

M. Waite: Thank you. Ǥilakas’la.

I’m Michelle Waite, trustee and board chairperson for the board of education for school district 71, Comox Valley. On behalf of our district, we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee today.

Thank you for the government’s continued recognition of the importance of public education. We have noted the increases to capital funding, per-student funding and the additional mental health, food and affordability grants. These increases certainly help the sector achieve the Education and Child Care Minister’s mandate. However, what is essential is long-term, predictable, sustained funding.

Today I’m going to touch on two areas of our sector’s mandate, child care and climate change, and requests related to the cost pressures of a growing district.

Child care. Our district values and understands the importance of child care in school connection. While we acknowledge per-student funding rates were adjusted for negotiated labour settlements, one of the challenges we face is there was no specific funding for operating cost escalation or operating funds for child care centres.

With the addition of child care to the education mandate, the ministry and government are asking districts to take on an unfunded mandate or to spend educational-focused funds, which is a barrier to creating and expanding much-needed child care spaces in our district, as districts just cannot stretch the current K-to-12 funding any further to include zero to 12.

Recommendation 1 is that the Ministry of Education and Child Care engage districts in a collaborative conversation discussing operational challenges associated with child care facilities within the education sector.

Portables. Global cost escalations and demographic changes in B.C. have put additional budget challenges on our growing district. Our schools are already nearing capacity with over 50 portables in service, let alone the significant growth projected in the next ten years.

This issue is twofold: the use of portables and the cost of each portable at $350,000, which are only allowed to be funded from operating dollars. Portables do not provide many positives in terms of learning and teaching environments. You may have heard some of this already from some of the larger, growing districts. In terms of the per-student capita ratio, Comox Valley schools currently have more students in portables than Surrey schools.

We have projected an additional 2,000 students, which means 30 more portables at a cost of over $10 million. We either need five additional elementary schools and one high school or access to funding for modulars or a combination of the two.

The second recommendation is to consider, as a first step, adding a new capital fund for portable classrooms similar to the bus purchase program.

Next, greenhouse gas emission reductions. Our board of education’s current strategic plan includes a goal of fostering environmental stewardship and an action plan of reducing carbon emissions and the district’s environmental footprint.

[10:05 a.m.]

Districts need help electrifying schools and switching to heat pumps — sounds like a bit of a common theme today. This is the most significant act we can take to lower our greenhouse gases.

Our direct funding from government for carbon-neutral projects per year is approximately $350,000. The cost to electrify and change one school to heat pump ranges from $750,000 to $2.2 million per school, and we have 22 schools.

Our third recommendation is to consider funding additional resources in districts to support operationalizing the provincial government’s mandate by increasing the available envelope for projects in the carbon-neutral capital plan.

Under the School Act, trustees are responsible for the improvement of student achievement — full stop. Each of these issues today, and many others, creates the push-pull for boards of education and their school districts as we all strive to balance the many competing and important issues surrounding education of our students and awareness of the world around us. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Michelle.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation, Michelle.

First of all, it’s good that you identified that the operational costs for portables come from operational costs, not from capital costs. It’s kind of something I asked right at the beginning. It went from a school district that said: “We don’t know.” The last one said: “I think its operational.” Now to you saying it is. So it’s good that we’ve identified. That’s a huge draw.

The person before me…. We were talking about power consumption for heat pumps, and I identified it’s about 36 kilowatt hours per day for residents, on average. You probably don’t know this, but maybe you can take this back. What is the power draw for a school? I would like to know that. If you can find that out for me, that would be great.

M. Waite: Okay. I have a great document that, somewhere in it, might have it but not within the five-minute Q and A that we were offered the opportunity to have.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I didn’t expect it, but if you could send that to us, that would be great.

H. Yao: Thank you so much. I’m just trying to wrap my head around all the asks you have so far.

So far you have about 50 portables at about $350,000 each. You’re expecting an additional ten needed. Is that correct?

M. Waite: We need an additional 30.

H. Yao: Sorry, I apologize. I remember that now. In order for us to replace it…. You mentioned five elementary schools.

M. Waite: With the additional 2,000 students with the portables that we already have on site currently, to move all of our students out of portables and into the bricks-and-mortar schools or the traditional school layouts, our community would need an additional five elementary schools when we have those additional 2,000 students plus a high school.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Michelle, on that note, what would you consider the enrolment in a traditional elementary and high school?

M. Waite: Per school?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Yes.

M. Waite: It all depends on when the school was built.

M. Starchuk (Chair): No. I’m moving forward.

M. Waite: I don’t have the answer to that question. I’m happy to try to find that out, but I don’t know the answer.

R. Leonard: Nice to see you, Michelle. Thanks very much for your presentation. It’s interesting to hear. You’ve really articulated some of the challenges that you’re having to providing things like readily accessible child care and also creating learning environments that we really need to see for our future workers of British Columbia. Thank you for those things, especially to bring it home to what it looks like on the ground.

The notion…. It’s astronomical — the costs that you’re talking about for climate action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.

[10:10 a.m.]

Do you see an advantage, perhaps, of more collaboration to look at…? Maybe heat pumps aren’t the way. Maybe it’s going to be community heating systems, geothermal, something like that where you’re able to collaborate and partner with others to achieve the outcomes that we need but in a more cost-effective way.

M. Waite: I’m not near an expert of probably any of the other presenters you will have heard over your time going through communities. I think maybe one of the challenges or one of the pieces is where our schools are located and what they’re connected to. I’ve heard there may be opportunity, depending on where a school is located. I would say urban versus rural or if it’s next to a facility that may be off-putting heat that a school could take on. I know that there’s been discussion about that. I don’t know what the answer is.

Our challenge is that as we reach the important goal of reducing the greenhouse gas markers and the costs to organizations to offset their greenhouse gases through dollars, we’re then giving back funding we could utilize or that could be reallocated. It feels like it’s a no-win. We don’t have the money to do the important work that needs to be done, and then the money coming out because we haven’t done the work.

How can we find that solution, recognizing for a district our size, the 22 schools, and how much it costs — maybe not for all of them, depending on where they’re located, but certainly for many of them — because they’re stand-alone in a neighbourhood or in a rural environment?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Michelle, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

Next up is Brodie Guy, Island Coastal Economic Trust.

Brodie, you have five minutes to make your presentation and five minutes for questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours.

ISLAND COASTAL ECONOMIC TRUST

B. Guy: Good morning. Wonderful to be here. My name is Brodie Guy, and I’m the CEO of Island Coastal Economic Trust. Thanks very much for inviting me to present to the committee today here.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge the Liqwiltokw people, the We Wai Kai, the Wei Wai Kum, the Kwiakah First Nations as the historic owners and stewards of this land that I’m speaking to you from today. I recognize the Liqwiltokw people’s generosity in sharing their territory with many people who now make this home today. Ǥilakas’la.

Founded by the province in 2006, the Island Coastal Economic Trust works to build a diverse, innovative and sustainable island and coastal economy and reciprocal relationships with First Nations and local governments across Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and the islands and inlets from the Salish Sea up to Cape Caution. Serving over half a million residents, the trust partners in the development and financing of community infrastructure and diversification efforts through a unique structure that’s led by and accountable to island and coastal communities.

Since inception, the trust has approved more than $59 million to economic development initiatives that have attracted over $322 million in new investment to the coastal region. These investments have created over 2,750 permanent jobs and countless positive impacts across the coast.

In 2022, an independent review of the act governing the trust made key recommendations to the province with respect to the governance and sustainability of the trust. In addition to recommending the transformation of the trust, the independent committee reported that it is past time that Indigenous governments have a defined role in trust governance and that, after 17 years, the time has come to make a significant investment in the trust.

I wish to acknowledge the government’s commitment to contributing $10 million to each of B.C.’s three econo­mic trusts later this year. For the Island Coastal Economic Trust, it will be a welcome near-term investment that will avoid coastal communities losing their only regional trust from imminent dissolution this year. Yet local and First Nations governments recognize that we still have work to do in partnership with government to realize the trust as a sustainable and inclusive regional development organization that can drive real, long-term economic impact.

The trust has provided government with a comprehensive business plan for a one-time investment of at least $150 million to transform the trust in a number of meaningful ways based on the direction government and the trust have received from coastal communities and the three independent legislative reviews since our founding.

[10:15 a.m.]

We’ve been working with the government on our business plan, which outlines the direct economic impact that will result from the trust’s transformation in communities across Vancouver Island and the coast and for the greater provincial economy. Based on our trust’s strong track record as well as my prior experience as a long-serving CEO of Coast Funds, a provincially funded, Indigenous-led organization where we grew a $56 million fund to a $100 million permanent fund and growing, our trust can be a catalyst for more than $1 billion in total investment in communities every 25 years in perpetuity through a long-term investment strategy.

As the province considers this transformation, the trust is also asking the government to work with the trust and First Nations in the region pursuant to section 3 of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act to align the Island Coastal Economic Trust legislation with UNDRIP and provide First Nations governments with the defined role in trust governance.

We continue to seek to transform the trust from a local government institution to be the first regional development organization in Canada that is led and governed by the First Nations and local governments we serve. While the current legislation offers no opportunity for First Nations governments to participate in the trust decision-making, transformational changes to our governance structure will empower First Nations to be full and equal participants in the trust decision-making — creating a new three-way partnership between First Nations, local governments and the provincial government. This work requires a significant one-time investment by government to achieve.

Reconciliation calls for greater engagement by First Nations in regional economic decision-making and in charting a sustainable economic future for their communities as well as influencing economic development throughout their traditional territories. There is a very unique opportunity with the trust in our region based on the vision that coastal communities have formed that is now enshrined in the trust’s new strategic plan.

Communities have unwavering commitment to the trust’s transformation as their top consensus priority with government and in our specific know-how in relationships to realize how vital regional economic organization is a three-way partnership between First Nations governments, local governments and the provincial government can be.

In closing, on behalf of the elected and appointed leaders in more than 100 coastal communities I work for, thank you for your time today and for your consideration of our recommendations to transform the trust as a financially sustainable regional development organization that is inclusive of, and led by, First Nations and local governments in close working partnership with the province. This is our region’s trust, and there’s so much more we can do together.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Brodie, thank you very much for your presentation.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Brodie.

You know what? You mentioned something about your previous experience at Coast Funds. I think you said where you had taken an amount and grown it. I know with the other two economic trusts, NDIT and SIDIT, whatever it’s called now…. I think it’s SIDIT. Anyways, the point about it is that their approach has been very different than the Island Economic Trust.

Where is it at today in terms of the overall capital that it was given by the province? In terms of you asking about $10 million, but you asked for a much larger number? Are you proposing to change the strategy, the way that ICET has worked in the past 17 years?

B. Guy: Thank you very much, MLA Stewart. Wonderful questions. With Coast Funds, it was a combination of a permanent endowment fund and a sinking or spend-down economic fund there that I managed for almost ten years.

The strategy that the leadership of the island coastal region is looking for at ICET is to transform it into a permanent, sustainable model — such that the business plan for the $150 million one-time investment would see that should government decide to do it, committed permanently within the trust to enable it to engage in a long-term investment strategy.

At the inception of the trust…. As you mentioned, each trust took a different pathway. I worked on the start-up of the Northern Trust. I lived in Prince George and worked on that at the beginning of it. The level of capital in the island coastal region and the need in the region at that time, the direction, was: “Let’s start deploying the capital to see the meaningful economic change.”

Of course, that’s a sinking fund strategy, and then you have to think about recapitalizing it. The trust is not looking at that as a long-term solution for financial sustainability, nor as a solution when you talk about close working partnerships with First Nations and local governments over the long term.

So the idea is, should the government decide to invest in the transformation of the trust as a long-term, sustainable organization, that it becomes much more like the Northern Development Initiative Trust approach where we will invest the funds or, as we did at Coast Funds, invest the funds, grow the capital. We would realize a $7 million to $10 million minimum impact into the region every year from earnings.

[10:20 a.m.]

Rather than the model now, where we take the money that’s invested in the trust and we spend it out wisely, we actually retain that, invest it long term, and generate wealth and value for the region, and never deplete the capital.

A. Walker: Nice to see you again, Brodie. I’m just wondering if you can give us an update on what that $10 million fund has provided to you.

Then, also, what is the future of this trust if we don’t provide a larger capitalization?

B. Guy: Thank you for those questions, and great to see you too.

The commitment for the $10 million was announced in March. It’s anticipated, and the minister provided a letter to us, that there would be legislative changes coming in the fall session later this year. That’s because there is a one-time limit on funding for any of the three trusts in British Columbia, the three economic trusts. So the legislation of all three will need to be tabled.

Subsequent to that, the plan for the trust is to continue business as usual — like, continue the good work of the trust. The average amount of funding that the trust has been putting out from the last $10 million the government committed in 2017 is around $2 million a year. So we would be looking at sustaining that and continuing that.

Then the greater question just becomes: what can we do around that actual transformation of the governance and inclusion of First Nations, recognizing that there are 35 local governments within the composition of the trust governance? There are 50 First Nations governments in the work that we have, and it’s a commitment in the DRIPA action plan to find a pathway for greater inclusion of First Nations. The view that the trust board has and the communities have set is full inclusion, equal participation.

R. Leonard: Good to see you too, Brodie. Your hair is getting longer. I appreciate you coming today and talking to us about the future of ICET.

This is the first I’ve heard about the numbers that were involved when you were working for the Coast Funds. It strikes me that there’s an initial ask for that base funding to grow and it’s going to…. It’s kind of like a sliding scale. The more you ask for, the more you can earn, the more you can put out. You have a certain population base.

So $56 million has netted you $7 million to $10 million after it grew?

B. Guy: The Coast Funds example was the grow in the capital. There, we started with a $56 million endowment, no touching the capital. We generated and invested $70 million over 15 years into First Nations projects on the coast. That’s the Great Bear Rainforest fund I was leading. Then the fund also, additionally, grew to $99 million. So it was quite an impact in terms of almost doubling the capital value.

In terms of the Island Coastal Economic Trust strategy, when we’re talking about a $150 million investment to permanently capitalize the trust and have this region capitalized in that manner, the capital would not be touched. The investment strategy…. We have the same actuaries that work with BCIMC and the pension funds of British Columbia. They have advised us that we can generate $7 million to $10 million a year from that $150 million, never touch it.

Perpetually, going through the future, that is the level of investment impact in the Island coastal region’s economy.

R. Leonard: Right now you’re spending approximately $2 million that you’re putting out, but you want to be able to grow it to $7 million to $10 million.

B. Guy: Yeah, that’s really the difference. Rather than taking government’s contribution and then allocating it $2 million per year, we would take a one-time investment, never touch government’s money, create wealth from that investment for people in the region, and it would generate $7 million to $10 million perpetually through an ESG investment strategy.

It’s just because it’s enough capital to be inclusive of all the communities and governments of the region, have the right amount of impact that’s needed in the region, as the leadership has determined, but then to not be needing to maintain such high liquidity. Once it’s a long-term, permanent fund, you’re able to invest in renewable energy projects. We’ve had success doing that over the years, where you generate a 9 percent return but you can’t get your capital back. Because you’re a long-term investment, you don’t need the capital. You leave it locked in, and you generate sustainable returns from that.

Sorry if I’m over time.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Oh no, no. We’re still good with time.

[10:25 a.m.]

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation.

I come from the Kootenays, and, of course, we’ve got a great model there with the Columbia Basin Trust. I think they took their $200 million or whatever it was back in ’95, and they’ve grown that to over $2 billion now. It’s a great benefit to our region for sure.

Certainly, part of their strategic priorities or some of their sustainable priorities, I guess, would be to reinvest. They’ve got substantial capital projects with some hydroelectricity projects and things like that. Also, they’ve got an investment component. Then, of course, within that, they’ve got their grants and their loans and stuff like that.

Going back to Ben Stewart’s question on how do you make yourself sustainable, do you have a breakdown on those pillars of what percentage? You mentioned getting $7 million back out of $150 million, which is about 4 percent, 4½ percent, rate of return. Obviously, all that’s not going into it, but what percentage of that would be a breakdown on that $150 million to capital projects, reinvestment, loans, grants? Is there anything there?

B. Guy: There is, yes. In our business plan that we’ve provided the Ministry of Jobs, we have a breakdown, say, on the actual spending or investment into the community’s side of it for that $7 million to $10 million.

In terms of programming, one of the things that doesn’t exist in our region is economic development staff. There’s not really, consistently across very small communities, that level of capacity in communities. You’re thinking of communities like Tahsis, thinking of Indigenous communities, Quatsino, places like that where that one person is writing grants, engaging with government, engaging with philanthropy, industry, etc. It can create a lot of wealth, right? Those are small amounts of money.

One of the pillars of spending would be to create, because we’d be a permanent fund, the opportunity for communities to staff an economic position. To have the capital, not fully funded but majority funded, from the trust is essentially like a dividend-type model.

Also, we have mapped out in there a number of things. Really, the trust has been a catalyst around major infrastructure like the Nanaimo Airport. So 10 percent of the trust capital, $5 million, was placed into the Nanaimo regional airport back in the very early years of the trust. That’s generated half a billion dollars of economic activity directly. It’s more than paid for the trust just from that one project if you look at it that way.

We would want to continue, when we’re looking at the $7 million to $10 million…. Perhaps it’s $3 million. Perhaps $4 million of that would go into climate-resilient infrastructure, thinking about long term. How are we building resilient communities that are going to face the changes around energy changes, around sea level rise, climate, etc.?

Again, diversifying the economy, sticking to economic development, that’s going to be one of the critical things, just being that…. The thing about the trust is that it’s not government funding. The government established the trust so that it’s not actually part of the government funding stacks. So we end up being a real strategic partner for government, both federally and provincially, to be the communities’ own equity into projects.

When you’re doing those major infrastructure projects, it’s really decreasing…. If you’re in Tahsis somewhere, you’d have to raise debt, and then how do you service that debt, especially with declines of forestry and industry on the Island? The trust plays a pivotal role in that economic transition for small communities that don’t have the tax base to then still engage with government.

Hopefully that gives you a few ideas.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, Brodie, thank you very much for your presentation here today.

That concludes our hearings here in Campbell River.

To the people that showed up in Campbell River: thank you very much.

A motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 10:29 a.m.