The committee met at 3 p.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Good afternoon, 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.

I’d like to acknowledge that we’re in Dawson Creek today. We’re gathered today on the traditional territories of the Treaty 8 Nations.

I’d ask everyone else to reflect on those lands on which they work, live and play.

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

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 on Friday, June 16.

We’re also holding a number of public meetings to hear from British Columbians about their priorities.

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

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

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

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

B. Stewart: Ben Stewart, MLA for Kelowna West.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

This afternoon speakers will be providing us with their comments and their presentations. Each participant will have five minutes to speak, followed up by five minutes for questions from the committee members.

Starting off today is Donald MacLeod, from Pacific Canbriam Energy.

Donald, you have the floor for the next five minutes. Welcome.

Budget Consultation Presentations

PACIFIC CANBRIAM ENERGY

D. MacLeod: Good afternoon. Thank you for hearing me today.

I would just like to start off with a territorial acknowledgment on the territory in which we operate. This is the traditional and ancestral territory of the Dane-zaa, Nehiyawak, Anishinaabe and Métis people.

Just a quick bit about Pacific Canbriam Energy. We’re a natural gas producer in northeast British Columbia. We own and control all field infrastructure, processing facilities, midstream gathering assets, water-handling assets and camps. We also control the roads within our main development area. This approach is a major commitment to enhance operational safety and sustainability.

PC acquired the Haystack Bridge after an acquisition from Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. PC has estimated that the cost of replacing this bridge is $7.5 million Canadian. PC is requesting provincial funding for the construction of this bridge.

In the presentation that I emailed, there should be some mapping that should be available to you. That will become quite helpful.

The location of the Haystack Bridge serves as a primary access across the Upper Halfway River. It benefits First Nations communities — Wonowon, Hudson’s Hope, Chetwynd — and other stakeholders looking to access the areas west of Highway 97. The bridge is located on the Haystack FSR, approximately five kilometres southwest of the Halfway River First Nation office. Project construction is slated to take place between Q4 2023 and Q1 2024.

The original bridge, which is currently there, is closed to anything over three-quarter-tonne traffic. The bridge is in need of repair and overhaul. A new bridge will be placed to the east of the existing one. The cost is estimated at $7.5 million Canadian and will allow for L100 GVW or 90,000 kilograms of weight.

The benefit to the communities and the province is primary access in the area. It’s used by Indigenous community members, farmers, industry and many other stakeholders in the area. The approximate drive time from the Haystack Bridge to Hudson’s Hope is about one hour and 13 minutes, depending on road conditions.

The Haystack Bridge and road are in need of replacement and repair in order to maintain their current functionality. Without intervention, communities in the area could lose access to this bridge crossing. The life of the bridge is nearing an end.

[3:05 p.m.]

Concrete blocks have been put in place to stop heavy traffic from using the bridge. Stakeholders in the area continue to move the blocks and to use the bridge. This is a significant safety issue, as the bridge is not rated at this time to allow anything more than three-quarter-tonne traffic.

There was alternate access across the Graham River Bridge. CN Rail has decommissioned that bridge, and there is no longer access across the Graham River. The only other alternate access is up the Upper Halfway to Kobes and then down the Alaska Highway and take Highway 29 to Hudson’s Hope. The total trip time is two hours and 14 minutes, a detour, or 179 kilometres.

The reasons for the bridge repair. Number one is fire egress. During the Cameron River fire in 2023, this bridge served as the only egress for the Halfway River First Nation and communities north of the Alaska Highway during the Alaska Highway closure earlier. Google Maps and, also, DriveBC sent them to our bridge, and we had to have monitors put out to be able to turn the heavy traffic around during the evac situation.

The Halfway River First Nation and other Indigenous communities have expressed an interest in the bridge. It would benefit the community. Letters of recommendation can be made available from First Nations.

Also, shorten travel time. The bridge will cut travel time across the Halfway River significantly for heavy traffic and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Again, reduce traffic on the major highways as well. Allow industry to stay off major accesses through the area. Reduce maintenance costs and major repairs of highways. Reduce public complaints of industrial traffic operating during peak times. Reduce heavy traffic to schools and communities.

It also benefits the Halfway River First Nation and other community members. It would allow improved access for First Nations communities and the agricultural industry. Youth and seniors would have better access to critical resources such as health care, youth crisis centres. Allow business more opportunity through increased traffic and tourism. Community members would also have improved access to sports, libraries, music programs, etc.

The benefits to the province. Approximately 25 kilometres of Haystack Road will be upgraded to allow for heavy traffic. Increased revenue for the province from industry. Development of the area through BCER and FLNRO. A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Safety in the form of better access and egress throughout the area. Beneficial local communities and stakeholders.

The ask here is the total project cost. The total project cost is $7.5 million Canadian. We’d be looking at any funding the B.C. government can provide.

We worked with….

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

Are there any questions or comments?

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. Without this infrastructure in place, what type of industry…? Natural gas, I would imagine, is the most prevalent. What industry would be held back by not supporting this replacement?

D. MacLeod: Basically, what would happen if this bridge no longer existed is…. It would cut the area in half and have that industrial traffic travel, about 176 kilometres, through the area, on highways, and through communities. This bridge basically prevents that from happening. You can cut in within the area.

Companies like Petronas, forestry companies and other producers in the area would have access and stay off those highways and communities.

B. Banman: From an emergency perspective, keeping…. We saw wildfires on the way in. Where would you rank this as an evacuation route or an alternate evacuation route?

D. MacLeod: This would be the primary access, as illustrated by the Battleship fire in the fall last year. The evac order was for Hudson’s Hope. There were also several other fires to the east. We allowed light traffic to head up, but we couldn’t allow heavy traffic access through that bridge.

The same this spring through the Cameron River fire. They were happening in the North. The Alaska Highway was closed. So Google Maps and DriveBC diverted heavy traffic down to our bridge, and we had to put road monitors in place to turn around the heavy traffic. They didn’t know where to go.

Our road monitors were trying to assume a secondary route. Unfortunately, it was back up the Alaska Highway, around the large fires and then back down. It hampered emergency access in that area quite a bit, just from the fact that the bridge has been downgraded to three-quarter-tonne traffic.

B. Banman: If I may…. It hampered both getting access with equipment to fight the fires and, importantly, for people evacuating. It just created nothing but mass confusion.

D. MacLeod: That’s my understanding from the field personnel. It didn’t help.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. The history of this bridge…. I’m not exactly certain about the ownership, yourself or your company.

[3:10 p.m.]

I’m looking at it here. I didn’t see the maps that you sent. They were not included in our documents. It shows as a forest service road. Is that what it’s classified as?

D. MacLeod: It was a forest service road, and it was taken over by private industry, namely CNRL. It has changed hands several times, and that’s why the maintenance has not been kept up on it. We purchased the bridge — I don’t know the exact date — a couple of years ago, and we’re looking to upgrade it and maintain it. Again, it might change hands again in the future and continue along the same path.

B. Stewart: So who built the bridge?

D. MacLeod: I believe it was a forestry service road beforehand, and it was purchased by CNRL once that road was decommissioned.

B. Stewart: Okay. But what I was getting at was: did the province build the bridge, or somebody else?

D. MacLeod: I don’t have those answers for you.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): The people that are impacted, the residents in that area: do you have a number of population?

Then also, second to that, what kinds of costs would that incur on agriculture? I’m sure there’s agriculture out there as well. What cost would that have on industry, whether it’s agriculture or natural gas, with this extra 180 kilometres that you’re talking about?

D. MacLeod: I wouldn’t have those numbers for you, but the Halfway River First Nation would be affected. As in the presentation, there are several landowners, agriculture, the town of Hudson’s Hope. Any access for the northern communities to get down to Prince George for the hospitals down there…. Especially with the Alaska Highway closure, it would be a substantial impact.

S. Chant: So if the Alaska Highway is not closed, this bridge does not see the traffic that you’re describing. It was only when the Alaska Highway…. It was sought to be used as an alternative to the Alaska Highway.

D. MacLeod: That’s correct. The main route from the North is to come through the Alaska Highway and then down Highway 29. That’s the major route, but in case of emergencies, this bridge serves that purpose — to allow access.

S. Chant: We’re talking that it’s an emergency route only. It would never become a primary route.

D. MacLeod: Not a primary access, but for the communities such as the First Nations, it’s used quite a bit.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, Donald, thank you very much for your time and your presentation this afternoon.

D. MacLeod: You’re welcome. If anybody has any further questions, you do have my email, and I can get those numbers for you or try to. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Gerry Paille from the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

Gerry, you have five minutes to present, and then five minutes of questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours.

B.C. WILDLIFE FEDERATION,
PEACE-LIARD REGION

G. Paille: Thanks for the opportunity, Mr. Chair. I’m Gerry Paille from Fort St. John

It’s Treaty 8 territory, Doig River and Blueberry River First Nations specifically.

I’m actually speaking on behalf of the Peace-Liard wildlife association, which is one of the regions of the B.C. Wildlife Federation. I’m the president of that region. We’ve got five clubs and about 3,000 members up here, Dawson Creek and Fort St. John being the largest of the two.

I think this is the third time I’ve presented to the committee, starting in 2016. Unfortunately, things haven’t gotten any better for wildlife. We continue to be on a spiral where we don’t have legislation that looks after wildlife. Funding is inadequate, and we’ve got wildlife problems and fish problems all over the province. The natural resource budget, as part of the overall budget, kind of peaked in around the mid-1980s at around just under 6 percent. Now it’s about 1 percent. So it’s pretty abysmal.

I’ve got a few recommendations. Obviously, we need to increase funding. All parties have said they would dedicate all licence fees from wildlife. That hasn’t happened. It goes into general revenue.

We need to increase licence fees. Hunters are willing to pay if those fees are dedicated. We think it’s about a $200 million-a-year job. It’s hard to find out what the actual number is because it’s hidden in a whole bunch of different budgets. We think it’s around $70 million right now.

[3:15 p.m.]

We need to increase capacity for all participants. Government doesn’t have enough staff, First Nations don’t have enough people and neither do stakeholders and organizations like ours.

We are asking for wildlife fines to be increased — they’re totally inadequate — and be dedicated to wildlife management.

Site C compensation. Hydro gets to decide how much it’s going to be five years after the dam is running, and they decide whether or not they did a good job in predicting what was going to happen to fish and wildlife. That’s a bit of a conflict.

It’s also interesting to note that the Minister’s Wildlife Advisory Council has a subcommittee looking at alternative funding sources, and their goal is to achieve increased, permanent and dedicated funding for the management of wildlife.

Capacity is a big part of it. We have a bunch of management decisions being made without science. We’ve got a whole bunch of plans and frameworks — I’ve listed them in the document I sent out — that are doomed to failure unless they are adequately funded. The support is needed from the minister’s level to make sure those plans get implemented fully. Without the money, those are just words on paper or in somebody’s computer.

Up here we’ve got all kinds of processes going on. We’ve got Together for Wildlife regional wildlife advisory committees coming on board, Northeast Roundtable, Northern Rockies stakeholders group — a lot of commitment from a lot of people, and government needs to make sure there’s capacity to look after those things.

Chronic wasting disease and WildSafeBC are both being funded out of Together for Wildlife now, and that’s not what that money was created for, set aside for. Those are programs government should be funding every year, at a high level.

We need to have capacity and money to create legislative objectives. Unless objectives are legislated, they will not be held up. They won’t be enforceable. Managers won’t be held accountable to reach the objectives. The Wildlife Act review has just started. There might be an opportunity there to put some of these things in the Wildlife Act.

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

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Gerry. Great presentation. Something, obviously, I’m very involved with.

You touched on all the great points here. I’ve said for a long time that we need the four pillars. We need, obviously, the funding. We need science-based decision-making and data collection. We need regional representation from not only First Nations but also from our local stakeholder groups. Of course, we need legislation that actually puts some teeth into it and puts a value on wildlife.

You can have all the money in the world and throw it at something, but if you’ve got overarching pieces of legislation, whether it’s FRPA or the Mines Act or anything else, it overrides the value of wildlife. We put a value on timber, coal, natural gas, but we don’t put anything on wildlife. So everything you identified is great there.

Fortunately, there’s a private member’s bill. Would you be in favour of an independent funding model? You said that all the stakeholders would be willing to pay three to four times the fee — I’ve seen the surveys; I mean, it’s overwhelming — as long as it goes 100 percent back into that industry or that value.

So would an independent funding model similar to the freshwater fisheries society act be of value if we can leverage that money that government puts in, whether it’s with a form of taxation or industry buy-in? I’ve talked to lots of folks at Teck and Canfor and those places that said they’re willing to put in…. Would that funding model be attractive for what you’re looking for?

G. Paille: Yes, it would. As long as stakeholders and the people that have a legitimate interest in wildlife, and not just campaigns against hunting or angling, are involved and can see themselves in the process, and a focus on on-the-ground actions that really make a difference.

[3:20 p.m.]

We can fly around and count the last moose. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t help moose. We spend a lot of money doing inventory, but we don’t spend a lot of money up here actually doing things that will help moose out.

You know these fires we’ve got right now? We’ve been after government for years to help us do some prescribed burning to help wildlife — and they’re totally funded. My gun club has totally funded projects on the Tuchodi River that government can’t see their way to get us to do them.

R. Leonard: My understanding is that the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund is majorly supported by the hunting licences. I’m just curious about it. What I don’t know is what percentage of those actual licence dollars are actually part of that 6 percent. I’m not sure what I’m hearing from you in terms of where funding does go.

G. Paille: There’s a surcharge when you buy a hunting licence or a species licence that goes into the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. It’s not the whole amount. It’s about $13 million a year in terms of licence fees in total, but only — I can’t remember what it is — maybe 20 percent of that goes to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.

They’ve got other sources of income. Sometimes judges apply fines specifically dedicated to HCTF, but we want to see all the money from licence fees, just like the fishing licence fees all go into the Freshwater Fisheries Society. But they don’t from hunting. Some of it, the bulk, goes into general revenue, and it’s by no means enough. I’m not saying that if you did that, we’d have enough money. We definitely don’t.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just basically on the enforcement piece, always a tough one to handle, conservation officers in your region here, 7B…. What would you like to see as far as conservation officers? What do we need to beef it up a little bit?

G. Paille: Well, we need more. But actually, the biggest problem is vacancies. People come up here, and they leave. It’s the same thing with fish and wildlife staff. If we could have incentives to keep people up here, that would really help — whether it be monetary or living allowances or things like that. You talk to the…. We just had a presentation last week, actually, from the inspector here. They’re almost fully staffed now, but that’s rare.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, Gerry, thank you for your presentation and the time that you took today to speak on behalf of your organization.

G. Paille: Thank you for the opportunity.

I guess I have a question for you. Successive committees have recommended an increase in the wildlife budget, and it never happens. So how do we move to get your recommendations — hopefully, from this round — to actually be realized?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Helen Gilbert, school district 60, Peace River North.

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

SCHOOL DISTRICT 60,
PEACE RIVER NORTH

H. Gilbert: Good afternoon.

In Peace River North, we work, live and play on the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa and Treaty 8.

We’re a vast, diverse district serving just over 6,000 students and their families. We have 23 schools and a provincial online learning school. We have both small rural schools and large urban ones. We are proud of our accomplishments, but we want to have equity of opportunity. Current funding practices do not provide this.

Geography and climate result in higher northern costs. Our district spends 14.2 percent of our funds on operations, and the provincial average is 11.5 percent. Our ’21-22 transportation costs were 5.53 percent of the operating budget, while the provincial average was 1.6 percent.

[3:25 p.m.]

We are expected to reduce our carbon footprint to meet climate change goals, and 78 percent of our buildings have a poor or critical facility condition index. The annual facilities grant does not allow the necessary upgrades to improve energy conservation.

Equity for students with disabilities and diverse abilities is a ministry focus. Provincial assessment wait times are long, but more so in the North. Northern Health’s current wait time for an autism assessment is two years, and a complex development assessment is 18 months. Early intervention provides better life outcomes, and assessments are a gateway to appropriate interventions.

Improved rural connectivity is also important. During recent wildfires, social media mobilized help for those whose homes, equipment and livestock were threatened. Those without cell phone coverage or Internet connections did not get evacuation alerts.

The service plan for the Ministry of Education and Child Care identifies that there have been long-standing recruitment pressures in rural communities, which impact equity in terms of access and quality of student education and outcomes. We have been highlighting the concern for many years, and finally, a northern recruitment pilot project occurred. The project helped four rural communities, but follow-up on the findings needs to happen for other areas of the North.

We would like to see the ministry and BCPSEA work to develop a plan of differentiated salary points based on the recruitment challenges a district faces. It would also be helpful to have mid-contract modifications, where teachers that go to northern and rural remote areas start higher up on the salary grid. Northern Health has their own recruiting incentives. We need similar ones for education. Alberta offers the northern student bursary, which involves a three-year return-service commitment in a northern community.

We currently have 32 teachers on a letter of permission in both rural and urban schools in a wide range of assignments. Even with the use of non-certified teachers teaching on call, we face staffing shortages. As of May 21, we had 209 full-time-equivalent days, where schools had to use backup plans that involved shuffling non-enrolling teachers, administrators or educational assistants from their regular assignments to fill in as TTOCs.

This shuffling takes a systemic toll, and there is a loss of service to students that cannot be made up. Recruiting efforts are costly, as are supports for international applicants, out-of-province teachers, letter-of-permission teachers and non-certified TTOCs.

Inflationary pressures must be factored into the overall budget allocation a district receives. When districts are given increased expectations, funding should come to allow those expectations to be met. Our ’23-24 budget allocations do not reflect inflation and corresponding increases in delivery and supply costs. We especially see this in our transportation and custodial departments. Percentage increases for standard bus parts are as high as 39 percent. No part, no bus. The alternator that was $338.57 in 2021 was $416.76 in 2022. Costs are well above inflation.

The latest shock is that we did not get full funding for our exempt staff, and we’ll be looking to cover a $213,000 shortfall in order to give them the same wage increase that our union staff receives.

Given all the budgetary pressures we face, we hope to maintain existing levels of service to students, but it is increasingly difficult to do so.

Thank you for your time.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Helen, thank you very much for your presentation. I have a brief question that was up here. Have you researched, for lack of a better term, starting a teacher at a higher salary level — what that will actually recruit?

H. Gilbert: It’s one of the things that I believe has been talked about as an incentive through the northern recruitment pilot project that our superintendent was very active in. We are a medium-sized northern district, so we take a leadership role sometimes. That was one of the things that was discussed there.

Some of the specifics I can’t give you, but I could go back to him and try and get why they thought that was something that would matter.

[3:30 p.m.]

A. Walker: It’s interesting. It’s great being here, to hear stories from northern communities. The challenges you face are, in some ways, very similar to rural communities on the Island, but very different.

H. Gilbert: Absolutely.

A. Walker: I’m just wondering what communication you have had with other rural school districts about advocating for this type of thing. This is the first I’ve heard of this, and it seems obvious.

H. Gilbert: I’m part of the northern Interior branch of the B.C. School Trustees Association. I’m currently the vice-president. We have had recruiting and retention initiatives and motions before the BCSTA numerous times.

The one thing I forgot to mention is that supplemental supports for housing also is an attractant to people living in the North, and I missed that part. I didn’t get everything in.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Apparently, you didn’t miss that part.

H. Gilbert: I snuck it in.

A lot of the things we’re talking about are things that we feel would work. Some of those, the four areas that came up in the pilot project…. One of them didn’t open their secondary school for two weeks at the beginning of September, because they didn’t have any bodies to put in it. That’s why those areas were picked, and the hope would be that some of the letters of understanding that have been negotiated with the BCTF — they’re allowing incentives in those four places — could now piggyback into looking at incentives more broadly for the province.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Helen, if you don’t mind, could you just expand upon that housing component?

H. Gilbert: Well, for example, we provide, for our rural schools, teacherages, and their low-cost rentals. That sometimes helps us attract people to some of our rural schools. There isn’t necessarily housing there. We just hired a new vice-principal, out of Coquitlam, for one of our rural K-to-12 schools. We’re hoping that we can help her find some accommodation, because it certainly was something that was very important to her in wanting to come this far north.

Housing costs in Fort St. John are no different than housing costs in other places. They’re quite high. We’ve done some other interesting things. Prespatou is a K-to-12 rural school. We have a van. The school district has four or five teachers that hop into it every day and drive out there directly to help. We don’t have enough teacherages in Prespatou for the full complement of staff, but we have some. One, I think, we just turned into a daycare.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Any other comments or questions?

Well, Helen, thank you very much for taking the time out of your afternoon for your presentation to the committee.

Next we have Jerimy Earl from the city of Dawson Creek.

Thank you for being a wonderful host to us here today. Jerimy, you have five minutes for your presentation, and then we have five minutes left aside for questions and/or comments.

CITY OF DAWSON CREEK

J. Earl: Thank you very much, and thank you to all of you for coming. My name is Jerimy Earl. I’m a councillor with the city of Dawson Creek.

I am pleased to be addressing you today on the traditional lands of the Treaty 8 First Nations.

Before I begin, I just want to register my appreciation for the opportunity to come — as somebody who has been to a couple of public budget consultations where one person has showed up for the free coffee. It’s always nice to…. Whenever I get the chance to come out and say something, I try to do so, even if there’s nothing I’m going to say that you’re probably going to find super surprising. I do appreciate your being here. I’ll try and be brief.

My first recommendation focuses on the ongoing need for upgraded transportation infrastructure here in the rural north. Our roads and our rails are our lifelines to the rest of the province and the world. By and large, how we earn our living is through primary resource extraction — be it agriculture, mining, forestry or what have you — and our ability to realize the full value of our work and leverage it to diversify our economy and grow our community is only as effective as our ability to reach markets throughout Canada and around the world.

Previously, there was a commitment made from the province to twin the highway from the Alberta border to Fort St. John. Over the last few years, it was humming along, and it does seem to have somewhat tapered off or stalled out in the last few years. Similarly, much of our rail infrastructure throughout the region seems to be maintained on a piecemeal or as-needed basis, with the intent of keeping it serviceable enough but without much of an eye towards modernization and expansion.

[3:35 p.m.]

My first recommendation would be to remedy that situation, if at all possible, and restore the funding for the twinning of the highway but also to have a more comprehensive plan around what the long-term modernization of our regional rail would look like.

My second recommendation has to do with increasing the resources and support available for immigrant settlement services and credential recognition and upgrading. Between 2016 and 2021, the immigrant population of Dawson Creek has doubled, from approximately 600 to 1,200, which means about 10 percent of our population now comprises people who have come here from other parts of the world. Maybe by Lower Mainland standards that’s not terribly impressive, but it is downright cosmopolitan for us.

We’re very, very happy to have them. They’ve been a wonderful addition to the community and have enriched our local culture. It has also become clear, through engagement efforts…. There are a lot of people with skill sets that aren’t easily transferable, and those skills are being allowed to atrophy on a shelf. When it comes to hospital staffing or education staffing, in a region that needs those specialized skills, it would be very, very helpful to ensure that they have the resources they need to get credentials.

Whatever funding is available does need to be responsive to their needs. A nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday academic schedule doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of somebody who is oftentimes working more than one job and has family obligations. That would be my recommendation: that whatever resources are available be directed with an eye towards responsiveness.

My final recommendation, as a municipal government representative, is for the province to fulfil the commitment, which was made several years ago, to share the revenue gained from the legal sale of marijuana with municipalities throughout B.C. As municipalities, our ability to raise revenue is limited to taxes and fees. Based on much of what I hear from constituents, they’re pretty tapped out. Between us and the province and the feds, there’s not a lot of blood left in that stone.

Unfortunately, our costs continue to escalate, as do our obligations, most pointedly the ongoing crisis with addictions, homelessness and mental health taking place throughout B.C. While these portfolios have historically been primarily the purview of the province, we’re finding, more and more, that we’re having to fill that gap and take an active role.

Whether it be through additional support for bylaw protective services or logistical support for non-profits — like Citizens on Patrol, Rural Crime Watch, warning centres, things of that nature — being able to access new and stable revenue streams, from moneys already being collected, would be a great help to us and allow us to stay on top of our obligations and contribute where we can.

Those are my three recommendations. They kind of span a broad array of things. As a municipal government, we’re into a lot of stuff. Thank you very much for your time.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Jerimy, thank you very much for your presentation and for the work you do as a city councillor. Some of us that are sitting around this table come from local government as well.

G. Chow: Thank you, Councillor Earl. You mentioned you have increased, doubled, your immigrants settling here. Are they immigrants, permanent residents, or are some of them foreign workers? What is their status?

J. Earl: There are some foreign workers here. Most of them, having immigrated here from other countries, are permanent residents on their way to citizenship. The biggest single demographic would be Filipino and then, through the college and their international student program, South Asian students as well. In this last year, we’ve seen a huge influx of people from Ukraine. It’s pretty broad-based.

G. Chow: You also mentioned regional rail. Your products for export go west to Rupert via CN, right? The other way would also be by CN.

J. Earl: By and large, agriculture and forestry might. We do have some manufactured products made here at our local mill and LP. Manufactured siding is one of the things that has kept our mill as resilient to the turbulence in the forestry industry as it has been. There is potential for them to access markets. Anywhere vinyl siding is sold, they can compete with it. It’s a matter of access and having those corridors available.

[3:40 p.m.]

Also, I’d note that the condensate which comes off natural gas is used to thin out bitumen in Alberta, in Fort McMurray. The bulk of things are going to the coast, to ports, but there are exceptions.

G. Chow: What’s the idea of the regional rail, like, say, between B.C. and Alberta, or just…?

J. Earl: Well, if you can collaborate with Alberta to get a more robust system in place, I don’t think anybody would be opposed to it. For instance, a few years ago, when the mines started coming back up around Tumbler Ridge, the restart of the mines almost fell through. It was significantly delayed because the rail around that area had been left to degrade to the point where it was no longer safe or functional.

There was a big push to get that back up to serviceable levels. But over the long term, when you’re talking about generational investments by businesses, it goes, I think, towards confidence in the ability to invest in a region. If it doesn’t look like there’s much faith in what’s next-generation, are we going to be able to get our product to market?

I don’t see a comprehensive plan. I see, as I said, kind of a piecemeal, as-needed approach.

B. Stewart: I was just looking up something. The skills gap you were talking about, with the settlement services, of some of the people that are here…. I just wondered if the Northern Lights College is able to — whether there isn’t the funding…. What’s the gap in terms of helping these people, who may have skills, in getting certified to do the things that you just mentioned — nursing and other…?

J. Earl: Well, I think, with respect, there are a couple…. It’s kind of a complicated beast. But one thing is that, obviously, when people come here, sometimes they come here with families. As I said, they are keen to work more than one job at times. The nursing program, such as it is, is a full-time day job in and of itself. So somebody who’s already got kids to support when they get here — they’re not going to be able to go back to school full-time for two years.

In a lot of instances, they don’t necessarily require two years of full-time schooling to certify their skill sets, because they’ve already got work experience in the that field. In some cases, it might just be a bit of coaching. Realistically, they need someone to spend a month shadowing them on a job and saying: “Okay, this person is good. There are a few areas where there’s a deficiency, where they need to get some hands-on experience before they can get a certification.” I think that’s a much more practical way.

My wife is the assistant general manager at Louis Dreyfus. Right now she’s got someone shovelling grain who’s got a master’s degree in nursing, and a Ukrainian gentleman who is a petroleum engineer. The biggest barrier for them is a bit of a language barrier, which I think is certainly surmountable with a bit of effort and direction.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, Jerimy, thank you for your time this afternoon and for the presentation that’s there, and the cup of coffee that you can go away with for being here as well.

Next up we have Margaret Little and Jim Collins with Save Our Northern Seniors. I’m not sure who’s going to start off, but whoever it is….

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

The floor is yours.

SAVE OUR NORTHERN SENIORS

M. Little: Good afternoon. I’d like to say thank you very much for allowing us to have this opportunity to present to you for the 23rd time. It’s the 23rd year we’ve been making presentations to the select standing committee or whatever other committees happen to come along. I am the president for SONS, or Save Our Northern Seniors, and I’d like to introduce Jim Collins, who is the vice-president. We are very passionate about making a difference for our seniors.

We have three recommendations. One is facilities, one is support system, and staffing. Jim is going to speak about facilities.

[3:45 p.m.]

J. Collins: Good afternoon. In 2013, two facilities were built, along with our hospital: a 124-bed care home and a 24-bed assisted-living unit. At the time of the opening, both were filled completely, and then there was a waiting list. Not very good planning for our community. That was 11 years ago this July, and we’re still lobbying for an expansion, both for the care home and assisted living. It’s most important for us in our community.

In a time of crisis, some of these seniors that should be in the care home end up in the emergency rooms and fill the beds in emergency or in the main part of the hospital. We now have 11 people in the hospital who should be in a care home. It’s a significant challenge for the hospital and staff to deal with this, especially in the emergency.

For ten years, we’ve been waiting, and we have put forward proposals. Northern Health has supported our recommendations, but the Ministry of Finance…. At this point, our understanding is there has been no approval at this time.

M. Little: Thank you, Jim.

I’m going to talk a little bit about staffing. I want to tell you a little story. We are now the proud great-aunt and -uncle. We had a little boy born on Friday. My great-niece lives in Fort St. John. There was no staffing at the hospital, and they would not take the risk with her and the baby’s health, so she had to come to Dawson Creek. That is not unusual. People from Fort Nelson have to come all the way down to Fort St. John or Dawson Creek, and it’s not acceptable. Lack of staffing, lack of space.

We recommend that there be a streamlined process to encourage people from other countries and from across the provinces. We have people who live in Alberta who have credentials that could work in Fort St. John, but the credentialing process is way too long, and it’s expensive as well. We want to know why that can’t happen here in Fort St. John.

As far as staffing goes, staffing is a real issue. Our emergency room last Saturday, a week ago Saturday, was full. Standing room only. The upstairs, the acute care, was absolutely full. They had to turn people away because we have a lack of staffing, a lack of nurses, a lack of LPNs, home care workers, etc. The list goes on. I’m sure you’ve heard that a thousand times already. However, I do believe that we can…. The government of the day should be able to do better.

Our last recommendation was for a better support system. We have a wonderful Better at Home group in Fort St. John. They have over 200 people on their list for caring, and they see them on a regular basis. That list is growing. The Salvation Army is taking more and more people coming into their facilities for food. They’re not just young people. They’re seniors as well. We need a better way of doing a support system.

I know I can’t go over. I just want to say that I sent our document to you twice, I’m afraid. Sorry to the staff, and I appreciate the staff’s patience with me. But we have lots of ideas that we could present.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Margaret and Jim, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon.

B. Banman: Thank you very much for the advocacy work that you do on behalf of the seniors in the North. I’ve got two questions. One is: what is the waiting list? How many people are on that? You mentioned a waiting list.

For those that are listening at home — I worked in Fort Nelson for a short, brief period of time — explain to people, if you are pregnant, how long that drive is so that they get an idea as to how long and crucial it is to make sure that we have these services in place.

[3:50 p.m.]

M. Little: Right now if you want to drive from Fort Nelson to Fort St. John in really good weather, four hours maximum. In the wintertime — winter conditions, blizzards, you name it — it’s a lot longer. It’s very dangerous if you’re sick and need to come down as well.

B. Banman: Your waiting list?

J. Collins: It’s 32 for the care home and 13 for assisted living. Those are up-to-date statistics from Northern Health.

M. Little: And there are over 200 people on the Better at Home list, where they are receiving care at home so that they can remain in their own home. That’s the whole goal: to be able to stay in your own home. Better at Home needs to be given more funding, as well, to make it stronger so they can service more people.

S. Chant: What is your census at your hospital? You said 11 beds are being held by seniors awaiting placement. What is the census at your hospital? How many beds? How big is your hospital?

J. Collins: There are 44 beds.

S. Chant: So that’s a good 25 percent of your beds being held by folks waiting for placement.

M. Little: Just to go along with that, there’s a maximum 55 beds. Those beds cannot be filled because we don’t have enough staffing.

S. Chant: So you’re 44 beds because of staffing. You’ve got 55 actual beds. Okay. Got it. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): If you don’t mind, Margaret, could you just expand on Better at Home? You’ve said you’ve got 200 clients that are there. Do you have a waiting list for it? How many more people are asking for it, and specifically, the type of service that it is?

M. Little: I can’t give you how many are on the waiting list, but I can just give you the ones that are on the list. It changes daily when they’re doing it. The Better at Home people go in and help people with meals, snow removal in the wintertime, grass cutting in the summer, providing anything that the senior might need.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Any other comments or questions?

Well, Margaret and Jim, I will say on behalf of the committee, thank you for what it is you do for the people that are out there, our seniors of the North. Your program that you spoke of just makes so much sense because it has a ripple effect in the right way. Thank you very much for your part.

S. Chant: And for your persistence of 23 years. That’s impressive.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Our next presenter is Chad Anderson, school district 59, Peace River South.

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

SCHOOL DISTRICT 59,
PEACE RIVER SOUTH

C. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity.

Welcome to the school district 59, Peace River South, on beautiful Treaty 8 territory, where we serve students of Saulteau First Nation, West Moberly First Nation, vibrant Métis communities, and rural and urban communities — our version of urban — made up of families who have lived here, some for several generations, some for just a few years and, as you heard earlier, some for just a few weeks.

My name is Chad Anderson. I’m honoured to speak to you on behalf of the board of trustees of school district 59, as board chair. I’ll warn you that after a long busy day, I’m about to give you a jolt. Our problem is not a lack of money. I don’t know if the Finance Committee hears that every day. Our problem is not a lack of money to hire the people to educate B.C.’s leaders of the future in our communities. It’s a lack of people to whom we would pay the money. I’m sure that theme is more familiar.

For nearly a decade, we have had difficulty in hiring a full complement of staff to provide maximum educational opportunities to our students. We believe we need an all-of-the-above strategy for creating new educators.

In our district, we connect with a variety of teacher education programs, partnering with the Alaska Highway consortium on teacher education here in the northeast between Northern Lights College and Simon Fraser University. We have relationships with the University of Northern B.C., University of Calgary, University of British Columbia and Vancouver Island University. We attend virtual and in-person job fairs for graduating teachers from across the country, from Vancouver to Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Thunder Bay and Toronto in the last year alone.

[3:55 p.m.]

We believe we need to reduce financial barriers and processing delays for out-of-province certification of teachers, which would sometimes even benefit B.C. residents who have completed their education outside of this province and just want to come back without going through heavy paperwork.

We need to enhance accessibility to teacher education in northern, rural and remote communities through further expansion of online and hybrid teacher education programs. We need incentives that are constructive, not corrosive.

There is much discussion in our sector, within the province right now, about teacher recruitment incentives. Our concern is that some incentives seem to be aimed at moving teachers from one B.C. school district to another. If bidding wars among school districts, signing bonuses and moving expense supports were the sole strategy, we would be wasting our time. That would only serve to move existing professionals back and forth across the province in a pointless shell game.

Certainly we do need the flexibility to cover the high cost of moving teachers and skilled education staff who wish, for many good reasons, to move to our northern communities and for new teachers from elsewhere in B.C. or Canada who may be under real financial stress upon graduation. Strong financial incentives may be decisive and helpful, but we’ll be working with our sector organizations to ensure that when relocation incentives are designed, they must be carefully calibrated to ensure that they resolve, not exacerbate, the deep workforce problems that northern and remote school districts are facing.

To echo my colleague Chair Gilbert’s request, we believe that we need return of service bursaries. The province of Alberta, through the Northern Alberta Development Council, has proven the benefit of substantial incentives for student teachers to plant and grow their careers in the North. The Northern Student Teacher Bursary currently provides teaching students in northern Alberta with $16,000, soon to be $18,000, over two years of their education for those that commit to teach in northern Alberta for three years. So maybe I did bring in the money topic after all. I apologize.

Students and staff in northern school districts were the first ones who experienced the strains and pressure of a shortage of teaching staff. But there’s no need for us to be the last ones to come out of the education staff shortage. Carefully targeted return of service bursaries could be part of the solution that British Columbia needs. Today you’re sitting 18 kilometres from Alberta in this room, but British Columbia and Alberta are $18,000 apart in how they encourage students to become northern teachers.

I’m happy to take your questions.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right, Chad. Thank you for your presentation. Could you just expand on the return of service bursary? What it’s attracting, and why did you choose three years?

C. Anderson: That’s in the Alberta approach. They have two options. One, I believe, that you get funding for half the amount I quoted there for the last year of their education, and then they come and serve two years in the North. If they take the funding for the last two years of their education program, in that case, they commit to three years of service in the North. By that stage, they should have set down good roots and started families and be off to the races here for great careers.

A. Walker: Just on that same program. Can you measure the success of that in Alberta? Do you know how many teachers have gone through that program?

C. Anderson: I have seen some of the numbers. I’d be happy to submit those to the committee after the fact in more detail. But Alberta has had this program running for, I think, almost two decades now, and they’re adding money to that program in terms of the amount offered. I trust they’re seeing success.

B. Banman: I’m just picking up on what my colleague said. If we were to travel 18 kilometres, would we be hearing the exact same rationale and frustrations from there that we do here, or are they doing a better job of it than we are with regards to recruitment?

C. Anderson: I don’t speak for Peace Wapiti public school board in Alberta. My mom is a trustee, or was a trustee, over there. I should be able to relay that. I don’t think their situation is as serious as ours in terms of the number of teachers teaching on letters of permission. I don’t believe it’s as serious. However, the teacher and education staff shortage, certainly, is not unique to British Columbia or the North, and we’re just seeing it grow. So this is one approach that we see could turn the tide.

[4:00 p.m.]

B. Banman: Are they educating more teachers, then, per capita than we are? Is that part of the solution — that we need to open up more spots for…?

I see a bunch of nodding, for those that are listening at home, in the background.

Is that what the secret is — that we actually just need more seats in schools to train teachers?

C. Anderson: It could be. Again, that’s not my field of expertise. Certainly we have seen, in the last ten years, with the BCTF Supreme Court decision, that a lot of new teaching jobs were created. I don’t know whether the teaching education programs ramped up to fill that need, and that that need has just grown since then.

R. Leonard: This is, like you say, the challenge of the times: getting staff. We’ve heard, particularly around health care positions: train them where they will work. You don’t have a big pool of people here, so the notion of training somebody somewhere else to come to a place they haven’t been to before is…. Would it be better if the College of the Rockies…? Is that what it’s called?

C. Anderson: Northern Lights College is local.

R. Leonard: Northern Lights College — if the teaching program there was expanded, and the incentives were brought to the places where you hope to recruit and maintain their services?

C. Anderson: Yeah. As I mentioned, we partner with a number of different programs, primarily because — the short acronym is AHCOTE, the Alaska Highway consortium on teacher education — that program is part of the solution. We have a number of teachers that have come through that.

Sometimes that program is based in Fort St. John, and sometimes it’s based in Dawson Creek, although I think in recent years, it has been more often based in Fort St. John. So again, that trip across the bridge and over the valleys and hills in the winter is not convenient, necessarily, for local residents here.

It’s part of the solution, but our district also has a great partnership with the University of Calgary. I regret to say that Alberta has a more convenient program than B.C. has up to now, although I know that a number of the B.C. universities are making progress in this area. The Werklund School of Education in Calgary offers a program that allows more of the work to be done online so that our….

Some of these are teachers teaching on letters of permission in our schools right now, doing that teacher education program online in Calgary and moving through that program. Then, as I mentioned earlier, they face the process of proving themselves through the teacher regulation branch as becoming B.C. teachers and going through the paperwork involved there.

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

I also thank you for recognizing…. I mean, you refer to it as a shell game. You know, it’s like moving chairs around on a deck — that you’re not taking from one area to put in the other area. You’re actually trying to plug that hole, not create another one.

C. Anderson: Yes. We’re on the Prairies, so we don’t make deck-chairs-on-ships references up here. They’re foreign. But thank you for your time.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. Thanks for putting me in my place. I know the crowd.

Michele Mobley from Dawson Creek Literacy Society, you’re up. You have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

Michele, you have the floor.

DAWSON CREEK LITERACY SOCIETY

M. Mobley: All right. Thank you so much.

As you know, I’m Michele Mobley. I’m an English language instructor with the Dawson Creek Literacy Society, and I’m also the literacy outreach coordinator for Dawson Creek Literacy Now.

I just wanted to add that I am grateful to live, work and play in the traditional, unceded and shared territories of the Treaty 8 Nations.

Thanks for the opportunity for us to share our stories and talk about the importance of literacy. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, the provincial literacy organization Decoda Literacy Solutions and our community partners are working together to provide community-based literacy programs and services. These programs and services support people of all ages and help to plan for, develop and maintain literacy and learning programs in over 400 communities throughout the province.

[4:05 p.m.]

In Dawson Creek, Literacy Now funds have supported book share programs, providing free books, games and other literacy support materials to families for free; and resources and materials to support English language learners and their children. We provide literacy-based workshops and family literacy packages for English language and adult learners and their children. We provide year-round book walks, as well as a community newsletter, to try to get everyone engaged in our community.

Community networks and partnerships are integral to our success. We’re really excited to continue working with school district 59 and South Peace child care resource and referral as part of a summer fun in the park program, which is an interactive outdoor preschool program for families throughout the community.

Literacy service providers are constantly trying to do more for the communities that we serve. The need for community-based programs and services which put people first is even more important as communities rebuild from the effects of the pandemic. More often we are seeing an increase in mental health issues and an increase in addictions. As always, we continue to see talented and educated individuals who aren’t able to work in their field due to the arduous credentialing process.

That said, financial literacy has helped to build family health and resilient communities. Literacy is a key component in poverty reduction, equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility. One of our CALP learners has overcome a lifetime of barriers to work towards their adult Dogwood. In this journey, they discovered their passion and their potential when it was suggested they publish one of their papers. They’re now committed to lifelong learning and working in a career where they can help others.

Another learner first came to see us as a newcomer a number of years ago. We were able to provide English language support, community connections through referrals and activities, right through to college support. This individual has gone on to serve on non-profit boards in the community and become a teacher in our school district. This serves as an example that when we can fully support our learners, we’re better able to retain those newcomers in our community — and they are desperately needed.

Decoda Literacy Solutions and the provincial literacy network continue to seek stable multi-year funding for literacy in British Columbia so that literacy programs can meet the increasing needs of their communities.

We ask the province to increase funding for community-based literacy work to a minimum of $3.5 million for literacy outreach coordination and $4.5 million for adult literacy programs. This funding will help us reach all parts of the community — adults, youth, children, families, seniors, Indigenous people and immigrants. It will allow us to deliver the community-based services that people have come to count on.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Michele, thank you so much for sharing your story — or stories. There’s a part of me right now that wishes there was the other audience that was here to hear that story of how that person ends up being a teacher in the school system. That is an amazing, amazing story.

Questions?

A. Walker: Yes, this is great to hear. I guess two questions. One is the request for additional coordination and literacy supports. Just wondering what the financial commitment is now and what that difference is.

Then also, we heard from another presenter that over the last six years there was a doubling of new Canadians into this community. I’m just wondering if you can talk about what that means for this beautiful community.

M. Mobley: First of all, I believe the previous level of funding was $3 million per year for literacy outreach coordination. CALP, I believe, was $3 million, but I’m not 100 percent sure. I’m sorry.

M. Starchuk (Chair): We’ll go with 99.

M. Mobley: Okay, 99.

As far as the number of people that we’ve seen, it has been incredible. Over the pandemic, of course, we saw a drop in newcomers into the community, but we saw a crazy increase…. Of course, we were holding classes on Zoom and trying to keep everybody connected. What that unintentionally did was open the door for people from a little bit further afield. Folks from Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge, who normally would not make the drive in for a class, were able to attend.

[4:10 p.m.]

Now we’re able to offer blended classes, which has been nice. We’ve had…. One of the people who joined us during the pandemic, just by coincidence, lives in Ukraine. When the war started and they left and came to Canada under the CUAET program, she came to Dawson Creek, and she brought her family.

There is a Facebook page dedicated to Ukrainians in Dawson Creek, and word spread. Our tiny little community…. We are up to about around 50 individuals, which is pretty huge for a tiny little place. Our classroom swelled, and the demand for services swelled. The number of hours that goes into helping individuals file paperwork, apply for provincial health care, get drivers’ licences or help them get to the provincial office so that they can get some B.C. ID — all of those little things have added up in hours and hours of work.

B. Banman: Thank you so much, and thank you for what you do.

There are two things. What you speak of last…. My grandfather escaped from the Russian Revolution, from Ukraine, and my grandmother. He was privileged enough to be able to write and speak six languages, so he used to fill out the forms that you described for many, many individuals.

I want to circle back to what you learned from Zoom classes, which is the phenomenon of COVID. I try and look for the silver lining in any disaster that I can. For me, this hybrid model — you’re able to service more people.

M. Mobley: Yes.

B. Banman: That has to come with…. There are savings with Zoom, but they have to come with a cost. Do you have any idea what those additional costs would be?

M. Mobley: Just the setup cost alone for the equipment that we needed was in the neighbourhood of close to $10,000 which, for a small non-profit with only four staff, is an incredible amount of money. Well worth it, absolutely.

We’ve also had the benefit too…. We’ve had a couple of folks…. One lady has gone back to Guatemala for a few months, and she’s still able to join. She can still participate. We had a couple who have moved back to Ukraine — for how long, we’re not sure — but again, they can still join and maintain that connection.

R. Leonard: Quickly, are there immigrant settlement services available here, and what is your relationship, partnership with libraries and organizations like that?

M. Mobley: We offer settlement services at our office. We have no one specific dedicated to that. We all just have to share everything, because there’s just so much — whoever is free at the time someone walks in the door.

R. Leonard: So you don’t get much funding for settlement services?

M. Mobley: We do. We have BCSIS, yeah, but it’s just been so overwhelming, just people coming. We help whoever comes in the door in whatever way they need. We try to connect people to the community, like you said, to the library.

The newsletter that we do, we share with all of our clients on a regular basis. We talk about what’s in there just as part of the English language program too. “What types of things would you be interested in? What types of things would you attend?” We can sometimes help get them there. Just community connections, making people feel comfortable and well received has been really important.

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

You closed off by saying you make people feel comfortable. I think I can speak for everybody. I think we all feel way more comfortable now.

M. Mobley: Well, good. I wish I did. For all the years, I know that you are always friendly folks here.

Thank you so much for listening, and I will probably see you all again next year.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Keep up the good work. Thank you.

[4:15 p.m.]

Duncan Malkinson, Dawson Creek Chamber of Commerce.

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

The floor is yours.

DAWSON CREEK AND DISTRICT
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

D. Malkinson: Thank you, MLA Starchuk.

I’m honoured to come after Michele. She’s a wonderful community advocate. There are so many great leaders that we have in the community. I’m further privileged to speak to each of you.

This is my first time engaging with a format like this. The romance that I have for democracy — it’s wonderful to see how it’s reflected here today. It feels like this is a great dialogue for candid and honest conversation.

To that end, I am here from the Dawson Creek and District Chamber of Commerce. Chambers of commerce, obviously, pursue their missions in a variety of different ways. For ourselves, and under the leadership of my board, we’ve received some examination of our mission. We like to sum it up, in a pretty succinct sense, as where we’re trying to strengthen the economy of the South Peace.

We do that through networking. We do that through providing direct supports and services to businesses. We do that by trying to connect businesses and local organizations to supports that might exist for them. We also try to advocate for our members where we can, and that feeds into some of the priorities that I had prepared to speak to.

When I reflected on what might be effective or productive to engage with each of yourselves on, there were three key things that I wanted to highlight. First was that the priority of continuing to build out infrastructure in the South Peace is of key importance, of vital importance, to a lot of our service, retail, all the different sectors that we have in Dawson Creek and the South Peace.

That can include road access. We recall a project — from, it seems, ages ago now — to potentially twin the lane from the Alberta border all the way up to Fort St. John. The fatalities experienced on that stretch of highway are heartbreaking, annually, to hear about. Surely that’s contexted within traffic statistics, budgetary conversations, etc. As a chamber, it’s key, we believe, to making sure that we’re internationally competitive and that we’re able to take part in the global economy. That’s pretty important to our membership.

Next is a pretty broad one, but this is strengthening the economy of the South Peace. I’d be remiss…. I’m sure you folks are certainly no strangers either to the challenges being experienced with vulnerable people in British Columbia and across North America, right now, particularly in regards to the fentanyl crisis.

It’s quite a challenging issue because we’re fighting against some of our worst demons as a society. Society is so complex now that it’s hard to rally all the relevant partners together to make progress. But we’ve been trying to approach this in as positive a way we can, and that’s through the community action initiative, in partnership with many other agencies locally, to try to port a number of the provincial supports for vulnerable persons into Dawson Creek.

There’s been some awesome leadership that we’ve seen from so many different service agencies in Dawson Creek. I could probably take 15 minutes talking about that, just applauding each of the different groups that we have that are trying to make things better.

Another element is Criminal Code reform. I shopped around, a few weeks ago, some of the…. We had heard comments about Eby potentially introducing funding and supports for businesses that were having to cope with some of the disproportionate impacts relative to encampments and certain kinds of uses that are propping up next to businesses. I got a pretty stern comment back, saying: “Make sure that we focus on the actual problem here.” The supports are valuable, but it’s also important to make sure that those key things are taken.

I’m going to blow through the rest of it, okay? You guys ready? No more flowery language here.

CEBA loan forgiveness has been an issue that’s been talked about with the chamber recently, the B.C. chamber. That’s a key issue given the stats on the number of businesses that are at different states of repayment on that.

Talent is a huge issue, probably one of the number one issues that we hear about for northern businesses. For what it’s worth, from ourselves, investment, reinvestment, recruitment, retention in skilled teachers in this area is a key issue. Again, I know you have your own channels with your own professionals, but that’s a key one that we hear about from our members.

[4:20 p.m.]

PST impacts. That’s a challenging one to build policy around, but that’s quite impactful to our members and contributes to retail leakage in the area as well.

I really breezed through that. Sorry, folks. But truly, it is wonderful and an honour to address each of you. Thank you so much for making the trip up to, in our opinion, the best part of the province.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, and on top of all that, thank you for making a comment about a timer, because we’ve only been looking for timers for a number of years. So yes, it does suffice in what’s there.

Comments or questions?

A. Walker: Thanks, Duncan. I’m just giving you an opportunity to expand on the PST leakage, if you could explain what that means, so close to the Alberta border.

D. Malkinson: Yeah, that’s a fair comment. It has been an issue for quite a few years. I recall advocacy initiatives as far back as the mid-’90s to try to establish some kind of special zone in this area, given that there’s so much retail that goes over the border, or retail activity that goes over the border, in terms of shopping, etc., in Grande Prairie.

That’s been an issue that we’ve heard about from our retail members for quite some time. In terms of how exactly that can be tackled by the province, the initiative that we had heard of in the ’90s was, like I mentioned: some kind of special zone. I’m sure there are a number of other initiatives that might achieve the same end or at least soften that. That’s just an issue we hear about from our members, which we’re carrying forward today.

R. Leonard: Thank you so much. I hope it’s okay for me to quote you about your romance with democracy.

D. Malkinson: I do believe in it. I do. It’s hard sometimes, but it’s awesome today.

R. Leonard: It’s one of the things that excites me about this process that we’ve undertaken.

D. Malkinson: Mutual.

R. Leonard: I wanted to ask you to expand on the seed loan forgiveness. Where’s the money coming from for these seed loans? Just some details.

D. Malkinson: This was a federal COVID business loan program. I think there was a…. I’m just trying to pull this up here. I think it was federally administered, like I mentioned. Some of the advocacy that the B.C. chamber had taken on relating to that was the province’s advocacy to the feds to say: “Hey, these are what the repayment stats look like on this program. Maybe there’s an opportunity here to extend the timeline.”

The figures that we heard of recently were — and this is a couple of months postdated now: about 14 percent or 17 percent repayment on these COVID-related loans for businesses. If we project or anticipate to year-end, it looks like there might be a bit of a crunch coming for a number of local businesses that did take advantage of this program. But this is the CEBA loan, the Canada emergency business account loan, and 13 percent is what I have here.

R. Leonard: So 13 percent…?

D. Malkinson: To date, only 13 percent of businesses have repaid their CEBA loans in full.

A. Walker: Again, with the discussion you mentioned about the impacts of encampments and some of the street disorder and going after the source — what would that look like here in this part of the province?

D. Malkinson: That’s, again, a complicated question, but perhaps it’s simple as well. It’s us collaborating to make sure that we’re providing a supportive model for folks that are down on their luck and needing support. It’s us working together as a community to make sure that we’re…. Sometimes the compassionate thing is taking that more proactive or direct approach to say: “Hey, you look like you are in need of support. Let’s see if we can connect you with that.”

I apologize. It’s pseudo-cultural too, right? So if you come out with all these prescriptions or all of these policy demands, then you can end up causing consternation as well. The first step is through dialogue. It’s us getting together as a community. So the community action initiative has been awesome, to that end. We’ve identified….

Another one of the hats I wear is that I work for the Dawson Creek Art Gallery. We just submitted a grant to the B.C. Arts Council to try to get vulnerable persons through the program administered in partnership with Northern Health, for vulnerable persons — to get folks involved in mural painting in town, to try to create connection and meaning for folks under the leadership of some of our great local mural painters.

[4:25 p.m.]

I don’t know if it’s any one thing. The Criminal Code reform. Support for vulnerable persons. Making sure that there’s prompt support provided to vulnerable persons is key, but again, it’s tough for us to dictate.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. Well, Duncan, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon and for your true interest in the community that’s out there.

D. Malkinson: I appreciate that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Our next presenter is Mitchel Chilcott, Fort St. John Chamber of Commerce.

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

The floor is yours.

FORT ST. JOHN AND DISTRICT
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

M. Chilcott: Good afternoon, everyone. As said, I’m Mitchel Chilcott, representing the Fort St. John and District Chamber of Commerce. The chamber of commerce in Fort St. John represents about 450 members across a diverse group of small, medium and some very large businesses as well as several First Nations.

I’m sure every presenter has assured you how unique their interests are and how insightful they are. Having lived in the Fort St. John area for two decades and having had a career dealing with small and medium-sized business, I know they are unique as well. They’re entrepreneurial. They’re ambitious and willing to take a risk for a reasonable return.

As a resource-based community highly dependent upon natural gas production, forestry and agriculture…. The Fort St. John area has one of the highest percentages per capita of self-employed and small business people. A high percentage are contractors in oil and gas and forestry. They work as independent contractors.

Opportunity is what makes them tick. They’re often contracting and generating their own economic spinoff. Opportunity, once again, is what makes them tick. But where is their opportunity today?

There’s a dangerous frame of mind we hear in the North sometimes about how “the northeast makes all the money, and we don’t get anything back.” I don’t buy into that. I think that is a dangerous frame of mind. Businesses are here because they want to be here. It has to be worth their while to be here.

We’re in an area with a surprising number of multigenerational businesses and a lot of two-, three- and five-year-old businesses as well. How do we get them here, and how do we get them to stay?

This is where we break into the meat of the discussion: the permitting process.

Predominantly, our resources are put, basically, into everything. Site C is nearing completion. It’s one of the last large infrastructure projects on the slate. It has been great for our communities. It’s been a real boon, but we can’t expect those types of projects to be continuing. Our future really lies upon ongoing, sustainable development.

There has been a lot of angst and disruption over the last couple of years. Between a hard downturn in oil and gas in 2016, a price collapse, the bang-on effect of COVID-19 and now the hesitancy and, I guess, the pause around the Blueberry First Nation decision…. As we move forward, if we can move into a — they’d say predictable — standardized time frame around permitting, of doing all sorts of things….

Right now, in this time of flux, a lot of investment isn’t happening in northeast B.C. The companies are investing, just elsewhere. Some in Alberta; some in Australia. The money is flowing elsewhere.

As we move forward in the permitting area…. That means not forcing through but finding a timely manner to bring all the stakeholders in to meet. They have an outcome that everybody supports for everybody’s long-term benefit. This is really pulling in the meetings of the stakeholders.

I’m sure this will work out, over time, but the people who are here now are depending on what’s happening today and what’s happening tomorrow. They’ll fall between the gaps between now and when it works out eventually. That’s where I encourage you to be a help or to make it a priority to smooth out or standardize the permitting process so there is some predictability for all stakeholders. The randomness is very detrimental to all involved.

[4:30 p.m.]

I’m not talking about forcing things through. I’m talking about setting up standards, service level agreements. Pick the acronym you want. All people involved need to know the pathway, from where they are to where they want to go, and the consequences of going down that path. Have that high degree of transparency for all involved.

Maybe I better talk faster.

Transportation: planes, trains and automobiles. It’s more than a movie from the ’80s. There have been numerous studies on Taylor Hill, Taylor Bridge. Without that road system, without air systems, without all those transportation systems, we can become, in essence, a landlocked area. We have one main artery of things going in and out of our area. It creates a huge barrier.

Eight minutes to talk about taxation. Tax isn’t a bad thing. Yeah. You heard me right. It’s not a bad thing. There has to be enough profitability, though, to be able to pay the tax and find that continuity. The continuation and stabilization of work for the self-employed and for a small business is a huge thing. Nobody minds paying a tax when they know they’re still making a profit. There are always tough times. Tough times weed out some individuals.

The modelling of a tax…. I guess the impacts are…. Where is it being modelled to? Once again the mindset of…. We do a little work here. The money goes somewhere else. The area feels isolated. No. That’s not the scenario we want to be living in or the mindset we want to be in.

You come to the northeast and say you want to introduce something. Where is it modelled? How are the impacts judged? Is it modelled against Alberta, in oil and gas? Is that the right comparison? Should it be Saskatchewan? Should it be Western Australia, which is a sparsely populated natural gas producer? How is it made relevant to our area and tested, proven up, before it’s implemented?

Having buy-in, even, for taxation is very important. Having buy-in, in accomplishing anything is very important, be it with a small business, a medium business or a large business. Once again, being able to see that path.

Resource-based communities. I’ve worked in them all my life. I know a lot of the ups and downs. Each runs on its own cycle. There’s a lot of turmoil. Whatever can be done from a provincial level or a federal level, not to subsidize, not to, I guess, float but to help stabilize some of those aspects.

Stabilization. I’ve worked in regimes where it’s refunds and tiered taxation, those aspects. Those are highly disruptive. It adds another layer of burden. Find the means to promote the engagement and increase production, in addition to the GDP, the profitability of the sales.

Luckily, I’m stuck with nine seconds left here. It could be a long nine seconds. How is your clock?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Thanks for the extra nine seconds.

Mitchel, thank you very much for your presentation and your representation of the 450 members.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks for the presentation. I don’t think British Columbians really realize the connection they have, from the northeast to the southwest. The issues you said, which happen today and affect you today, such as investment leaving, permitting being stalled, transportation networks not happening or evolving, impact the folks here immediately. Those are jobs lost.

The impacts that you’ll feel tomorrow will be commodity prices, higher delivery, not existing. Then you get some major push-back. Why is my natural gas…? Why does it cost me so much to heat my home? Why am I not getting delivery? Why do we have brownouts with our electrical grid?

In the permitting process that you have here…. In your opinion, what is the biggest roadblock? What do we need to really zoom in on? Is it more staffing? Is it more capacity-building and consultation with First Nations? What do you see as the biggest barrier?

[4:35 p.m.]

M. Chilcott: Of course, it’s everything. I think a big part is…. Possibly it’s the consultation, not with one body or one stakeholder but helping come together to find the common benefit, the common good.

If the, I’ll say, energy companies are working for their maximum profit only, a lot of things slide. If the secondary contractors, which do a lot of work, work for their maximum profit only, a lot of things slide. If the specific First Nation that may be involved is looking for their maximum benefit only — notice I didn’t say “profit” on that one but “their maximum benefit only” — a lot of things will slide.

Put a focus on how to bring not just those parties but any parties involved in the future together to realize what a beneficial outcome is to all parties. If there is a party that doesn’t benefit, they won’t be engaging again or engaging in the same beneficial manner.

A long answer saying nothing.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): No, no. It’s perfect.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Any other comments or questions?

A. Walker: You mentioned taxation. It’s the first time somebody has presented with, potentially, more revenue potential instead of more expenditure potential.

I’m just wondering. In an environment like this, where you’re almost in your own…. This part of the province is almost like its own province unto itself. On a taxation level, what’s working? What’s not working? What are some other jurisdictions that maybe we should look at?

M. Chilcott: That’s where I come offering the questions, not the answers, to a great degree.

I know, just on a casual basis, there’s always outrage around the carbon tax. Frankly, nothing is going to happen with that. I think people have to come to terms with that. Finding the ability to earn revenue to offset the carbon tax on a consistent basis will get us there. When you can’t control some of your expenses, you can potentially…. Increasing your income will net it out.

I talked about infrastructure and landlocking the area, potentially. Three of the First Nations bought substantial properties within the city of Fort St. John. Why have they done that? Because they’re looking for an economic return as well.

I talked earlier about everybody getting benefit out of a decision, even a permitting process. As we move forward, hopefully we’re going to find that virtuous cycle of everybody getting benefit.

First Nations investing in an industrial community. How are they going to benefit by doing that? Property values. They’re engaging in the industry themselves and having that not buy-in and blind support of what’s going on but that involvement and participation and stake in what’s going on.

I think it’s very important…. What’s in the term “stakeholders”? I hope nobody is making check marks every time we use the term through this. But truly believing in the benefit to the stakeholders.

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

I’m going to just let you know one thing. As you were making your presentation, as you were responding to the questions that were there…. You have two people that are behind you that are nodding, smiling and smirking. Thank you for your time this afternoon and for your presentation.

M. Chilcott: Thank you very much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Now, I’ve used a couple of analogies that have really, really flopped. There is time for one more, our last speaker of the day.

I will put you in the cleanup spot in the batting lineup. There we go.

Mayor Lilia Hansen, the city of Fort St. John.

CITY OF FORT ST. JOHN

L. Hansen: Good day. I’m Lilia Hansen, the mayor of the city of Fort St. John. It’s nice that we have a seat instead of having to sit or stand at a big microphone.

I have to say that the delegations that came before…. We’ve got some amazing ones that are on this agenda. The amazing work that the literacy society does. I’ve seen Save Our Northern Seniors on here. I’m a chamber champion. What they do is a good investment.

I have to say that B.C. is a beautiful country. I agree with the executive director of the Dawson Creek Chamber of Commerce. The Peace region is glorious, not only for its beauty but for its job opportunities.

I know you guys are busy. You probably want to have the rest of your day returned to you.

Thank you for this opportunity. I have three things I want to talk about. The first one is the RCMP funding model and downloading the salary cost to municipalities.

[4:40 p.m.]

We appreciate what our RCMP and our enforcement does for us. Nobody is questioning that they deserve a good wage. We would be appreciative if there was something that we could work with the province and, through you, to the federal government. When they were negotiating wages, the municipalities weren’t at the table. How do you negotiate when, with the responsibility for paying the salaries of our RCMP members, for our municipal component, we don’t have a say in it?

I will take full ownership, going forward, because we know what it is now, but going back to 2017 and having to come up with that sum of money — it does affect our taxpayers. In the city of Fort St. John, we have a population of 20,000 plus. That means we pay 90 percent of our municipal police force salary.

That’s the first one.

In addition to the RCMP funding model, I’d also like to talk about unintended consequences of legalizing the 2.5 grams of hard drugs and ways that we can work around it. I’d be glad to go into that more, but I know time is of the essence, so I’ll just do little highlights.

When it comes to the RCMP funding model in general, I would request that the whole model has to be relooked at. We have what the municipality pays and then a small, little portion of what the rural areas pay. We would like to see it levelled out.

Right now in Fort St. John, I am blessed. I have a full component for municipal RCMP. But for those servicing the rural area, that’s not the same situation. If they need…. If they’re attending a call and it’s serious, that means my municipal RCMP are going out as backup, which I applaud and would like to see. But we have to really look at how we calculate it.

When I’ve looked at it, there is a complete disconnect of what municipal taxpayers pay and rural taxpayers pay. It is on their notice, so they go: “Oh, no. I pay for RCMP.” It’s like: “Yes, you pay to the province for the RCMP portion, but it’s not coming to the municipality, so we’re offsetting the cost on that.”

I would also like to talk about, request…. What can we do to help the unintended consequences of the legalization of 2.5 grams? Can we look at, possibly, a downtown ambassador program, requesting grant funding for that in the downtown core? We’re hearing from our businesses. Their profitability is being affected, their sense of security and safety for themselves, for their customers.

The downtown core is our hub of our community, and we’re requesting, with these additional changes that have been presented and opened up by the province, that we at least could try a pilot project of an ambassador program where we would have individuals in high-visibility vests walking around, just being another set of eyes in the community.

It would give more confidence to those accessing the services in the area, as well as potentially cleaning up if there are needles that are there or, late at night, when staff is going to their vehicles in a back parking lot. Just to say: “Hey, I’m leaving the office. Would you mind swinging around with your car and just making sure I get into my vehicle safely?”

Another issue that we’d like to talk about is funding for rehab and recovery beds in northern B.C. We do realize that in Prince George, there are beds there, but we’re five to six hours…. When you’re going through the Pine Pass in winter, that’s pretty scary. And when somebody is ready to get into recovery, they need to have that bed now. Plan B was when we would go to Grande Prairie, but now, as we know, it’s not so easy to get health care over into Alberta.

We also need to have a seniors facility, assisted independent care. I’m sure Margaret Little, with SONS, also talked about that. I sit on the board of North Peace Seniors Housing Society, and too many seniors are in the wrong level of housing, so they don’t have the adequate support. And they’re there because there’s not room at the next level that they have to go to. So whether it’s those with mobility issues or Alzheimer’s, we need to have the space for them to go into.

I’ll just circle back, seeing as I’ve got 13 seconds.

Funding for our rehab recovery beds. It’s the non-profits that are really carrying a large load of the work. We’re very grateful for Northern Health and all that they do, and they have good intentions. They know their profession well. That being said, in order to have recovery, we need to have the pillars in place. We need the bedrock.

[4:45 p.m.]

How do we stop the cycle from continuing? We need to have recovery, addictions services, so that we can get people off of these harmful drugs, because it tears apart our communities and our families on that.

Our non-profits — whether it’s Salvation Army, the women’s resource centre, the friendship centre….We have a new non-profit that’s called North Wind. They have a location right now just outside of Dawson Creek, and they’re looking over towards Pouce Coupe as well. They’re looking to build a 40-unit addictions recovery treatment centre, and Northern Health has, with gratitude, put money towards a feasibility study.

But there’s a difference between having a feasibility study…. I can tell you, as city council, we’ve got reports, but I want to see shovels in the ground. We need to have….

How are they going to come up with the capital for this? You know, operations…. They come and talk to us at the regional district. They do have a plan. But how do we get the shovels in the ground and to have the beds here?

We’re asking for the same service that is offered throughout in the larger sections. We need it here as well, in the rural. When it comes to addiction recovery, that’s also mental health. What is the reason that people have started into this long road of addiction? Is it because of pain, whether it’s physical, but is it mental pain? Is there something…? Why did they get into the drugs? We have to address that, and often that is with mental health.

I thank you so much for the extra time that you guys gave me.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I’m not sure what you were talking about. I think you still have about ten seconds to go.

L. Hansen: Okay. Thank you on that, because I was just…. I looked over and was like oh….

M. Starchuk (Chair): We’ll start off with Tom.

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

Well, it’s 4:46.

L. Hansen: So technically, I’ve only been here a minute, because….

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Yeah. At bottom of the ninth, the Chair put you in the cleanup spot, which means you batted fourth. I would say that was a walk-off grand slam. Thank you for the presentation. It was awesome. Just to build on that analogy, just to help you out as much as I can.

You mentioned about police, RCMP, rural versus municipal. The benefits don’t seem to go back and forth the way the municipality would like.

L. Hansen: Who’s paying for the services? I do understand that there was a committee that was formed on RCMP, so maybe this is already in the works. I believe our MLA Dan Davies sat on that committee. We’re just looking…. How can we level who’s paying for what?

We’ve got a beautiful community, Charlie Lake. It’s a ten-minute drive from Fort St. John — a really nice place, a great pub, as well, out that way. Their population is growing, but they are not paying the same amount of taxes as in my municipality, yet their population has grown. They’re not incorporated, for example. We’re not trying to push a community into something they’re not ready for, but we are asking to have…. The funding model has to be looked at again just to make sure that everyone’s getting a share of it.

Then, in our rural area, our crime stats. Unfortunately, much like every other community, we do have our crime. We have our 300 days of sunshine, but we also have our crime. We need to make sure that we have adequate cars and vehicles and officers that are servicing our area. As we are so close to Grande Prairie, we do have a lot of traffic going back and forth across the border.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): My question was going to be the offset. Sometimes it’s municipal RCMP that go out to calls for a rural issue, and sometimes it’s vice versa.

L. Hansen: I cannot speak as to it being so much as vice versa. When my numbers on a watch…. If I have six for municipal, chances are I’m going to have my municipal…. It’s going to be more that I’m going to have my municipal RCMP going out on the highway. If there is an accident and you see more than two cars, you’ve got municipal RCMP out there.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): That was going to be my question. So it’s more the other way?

L. Hansen: It’s more the other way.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Okay, good.

The second one was on the ambassador program, a pilot program.

L. Hansen: Wouldn’t that be awesome?

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’ll just ask you the question first. This is a pilot program for a pilot program on decrim? Is this volunteer-based, or is this RCMP support?

L. Hansen: No. Not even that. In Fort St. John…. One program we did have in town…. I believe it was Northern Health that initiated it. We used our community action team. It’s people with lived experiences, or it would be a paid position.

We need to have people that we know are going to be there from, say, nine to five in the downtown core. No. This would be a paid position. We need to have people that have some experience with working with the vulnerable sector.

[4:50 p.m.]

We’re not asking them to be cops. We’re asking them just to be a second set of eyes, be able to call 911 if necessary, whether it’s for ambulance or police.

When you have more diverse people in an area, you can have mixed uses that are down there, whether you’ve got families, whether you have…. I call them my downtown residents. When you blend it and you have more people down there, the more eyes you have, the more safe people feel.

We’ve got some beautiful park space, but we need to have families that feel confident to use it. With the legalization of the 2.5 grams of drugs, now it’s open use. With that, how do you take your kids to the park and have them see somebody using something, and you would not want to have to explain to your kids why they are? If you have seniors out for a walk, and they sit down on a park bench, and beside them there’s a needle…. God forbid they poke themselves on that.

Seeing as how this is a new initiative, I am appreciative that the government really are trying to make a stance. What can we do? We need to change things. We’ve been trying for so long going one way…. You’ve got to try something else. You’re not going to get a better result if it’s not working one way. You have to try something else.

This would also help our downtown community with our businesses, because they’re really concerned about keeping their doors open. The more we shutter up our downtown, then the more it gets…. Businesses leave, and then other people move in. Sometimes they’re looking at whether to set up a tent or things like that. It’s not the welcoming community or inviting for investment on that.

I hope I answered your question on that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, Mayor Hansen, on that baseball analogy, thank you for not taking us into extra innings. I appreciate the passion with which you speak to this committee. As I said to Mitchel when he sat there, the same smiles and smirks and the head nods are behind you as you speak as well.

L. Hansen: They are things that I think all of our communities throughout the province…. We’re all dealing with homelessness, mental health. How do we keep our businesses going and strong? There are a lot of similarities on that.

With the literacy society, who spoke before me, whether it’s South Peace or North Peace, it’s tremendous work that they do. But they do not have the funding for their capacity to bring in more people to help with the settlement and recruitment. I really regret that I didn’t come earlier in the day, now that I see the lineup of who is presenting, There’s tremendous insight, I hope you found, that was brought forward to you.

Thank you for visiting the Peace region.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Before a motion to adjourn for our listener out there….

Interjection.

M. Starchuk (Chair): It is actually a phrase. It’s okay.

We will be leaving this part of the province and heading out this evening so we can start first thing in the morning tomorrow in Cranbrook.

Motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:53 p.m.