The committee met at 9 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

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

I would like to acknowledge that we’re meeting today in Cranbrook, which is located in the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa peoples.

I would ask everyone else to take the time to reflect on the lands which you come from and where you work, live and play.

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

Our committee is currently seeking input on the next provincial budget, and 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, and a complete transcript will also be posted. We will carefully consider all input to make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be included in Budget 2024. The committee intends to release its report in August.

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

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Welcome to the greatest riding in the province. My name is Tom Shypitka. I’m the Deputy Chair and the MLA for Kootenay East.

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

B. Banman: I would be Bruce Banman. I’m the MLA for the riding of Abbotsford South.

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

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

H. Yao: Henry Yao from the best riding, Richmond South Centre.

B. Stewart: Ben Stewart, the riding of Kelowna West.

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

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.

Today’s format is that each participant will have five minutes, followed by five minutes of questions from the committee. I would also like to take the time to note that it is a full agenda. We would be asking committee members to make their questions as brief as possible and the presenters to answer as brief as possible so that we have time to answer everybody’s questions.

Presenter 1, the first one of the day, is Paul Vogt, College of the Rockies.

As I said, Paul, you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours.

Budget Consultation Presentations

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES

P. Vogt: Thank you very much, and good morning. As mentioned, my name is Paul Vogt. I’m president of College of the Rockies.

I want to start by acknowledging that all of our seven campuses are located on the traditional, unceded territory of the Ktunaxa people.

In our region, we are also home to a community, the Shuswap Nation, and have five Métis chartered communities. Those are relationships which are very important to the college and to our mission.

I want to be as brief as I can, as required. I’ll start with a quick snapshot. Our college is the major provider of post-secondary education and labour force skills for the East Kootenay region. We provide career pathways and upskilling programs that meet the need of all public and private sector employers. We operate, as I mentioned, seven campuses. We have an extensive catalogue of online and hybrid courses. I think, in a nutshell, we offer the benefits that rural colleges bring, really, to all parts of British Columbia. We provide a local option for advanced learning and very close connections to communities and employers in the K-to-12 system.

We also share the challenges that all colleges in our system face but in particular the rural institutions. With the very wide range of program offerings, from adult upgrading to full degree and university transfer programs, and the range of our offerings, our career pathways — from health, education, social service training to trades, business, Indigenous languages — that means that our resources are always stretched very thin.

[9:05 a.m.]

In addition, by comparison with post-secondary institutions in larger centres, our students often have the barriers of distance and relatively fewer community supports. Because we operate with smaller cohorts in every program in every course, we do not have the economies of scale that urban colleges do, yet we are increasingly seeing the same challenges as urban areas in our region, as MLA Shypitka will know — in particular, housing shortages, cost-of-living increases; and also growing needs, as I’ll be speaking about in a moment, from employers, students and from communities across the region.

We have very solid data to show that we are carrying out our college’s mission effectively. That’s a tribute to the dedication of our employees. I’ll acknowledge Sheena Svitich, who will speak after me on behalf of our faculty union.

It’s also a testimony to the strength of our partnerships, especially given the changes and the stresses that we all went through during the pandemic. Our enrolment held steady during that period, and this year we’re up slightly. We’ve also managed to balance our budget this year, although we had projected to run a deficit. That’s in part due to some year-end funding additions that I’ll also take note of in my presentation.

Our student experience surveys indicate that well over 80 percent of our graduates would recommend the college and their specific program to prospective students. When I talk to employers throughout the region, as I’m doing right now as we get ready for a new strategic plan, they tell me that they are happy with our graduates and the skills they bring. Mostly they’re just telling me that they want to see more of them.

That demand captures our immediate and long-term challenge in a nutshell. There are expectations on the college that we simply don’t have the capacity to meet. There are skill shortages in every sector — in particular, in health, education, trades, IT — and those are acting as a bottleneck to growth. The provincial labour forecast for our region indicates that the demand for skilled workers will be increasing across all sectors in the coming decade.

Students’ needs are changing as well. We’re seeing a steady increase in the need for student supports, especially around mental health. We’re also seeing a demand for new ways of delivering education: online, in hybrid formats and on more flexible schedules. There’s more of a need to update curriculum more frequently, in response to changing workplace technologies. And while employers value the technical skills that our graduates possess, many are asking for an added emphasis on soft skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and so on.

That’s a quick snapshot. Now, with about 30 seconds left, I want to quickly summarize some of the elements of the budget and recent policy decisions that are helping our college to achieve its mission in the current context, and then I’ll end with some suggestions on what might help us meet our challenges into the future.

First, I want to acknowledge the very significant impact that the collective agreements, negotiated under the provincial mandate, made. The salary increases and improvements in health and other benefits for employees meant a great deal for people who had kept all of our programs running and meeting our student needs through the pandemic.

The region and the people we serve will also benefit from targeted increases to Aboriginal services for work-integrated learning, to dual-credit pathways and, most recently, to adult education. We also are getting funding for specific added programming in early childhood education and computer systems.

I’ll go into more detail, perhaps, because I’m into overtime already, in answer to questions.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I’m going to say that more detail will come from a question.

P. Vogt: Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just very briefly, then, I’ll skip over….

I think that there’s no doubt that we have been helped by some of the initiatives, particularly the future-ready plan, in the recent budget. Looking forward, we do see real pressures on our capacity and our ability to meet the needs of the region, which of course is the mission of the college.

Maybe I’ll stop there and see what questions there are.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right. Well, thank you very much, Paul, for your presentation.

No surprise to all the committee, Tom, you’re first up.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Paul, for the presentation on my alma mater — although it was East Kootenay Community College at the time when I was there. Now it has expanded. It’s quite a job you’ve done there. We’re recognized throughout the world as the number one international program. It has done some amazing things.

You mentioned skills shortages and also how we fill that gap to provide the education that we need to provide for skills in the area. On micro-credentials, is there a program that works with industry to do that? Can you expand on that, perhaps?

[9:10 a.m.]

P. Vogt: Sure. Well, there is funding in the new future skills grant program. The college has put forward a number of micro-credentials that will help get people into career paths more quickly. I think that’s part of the answer to the skills shortages.

We still see and I think we anticipate that, given the labour force projections for the province and for our region, that we’re still going to see a huge demand on our full credential programs. I think, going forward, the real challenge is to make sure that those micro-credentials are stackable, that they lead into many different pathways, including acquiring the kinds of credentials that employers…. Particularly, I mentioned health care, trades, IT. It still is the full credential program that most employers are looking for, for their new hires.

S. Chant: So if you were to ask us for something, what are you asking for?

P. Vogt: There are two things I think we want. We need the ability to expand our programming in that area where the need is greatest, both from employers and from students, given the labour force projections.

I think purely from a student perspective, we need stable funding for the ancillary supports that we offer. There’s no doubt that during the pandemic, young people really did experience some very difficult situations with isolation and having to learn in different ways. We’re now seeing that in the demands for mental health supports, student advising.

It’s not just in the college. I think we need to really develop a strong partnership with the secondary system, as well, so that career advising and some of the supports students need kick in a lot earlier.

B. Banman: Thank you for your presentation. Based on your regionality and the fact that you are helping with a lot of micro-credentials, as has been mentioned, do you have a need or a pathway to become a university, or is being a college the niche which you think serves the region better? Do you think you should move on to that next step?

I say that because I come from Abbotsford, which has the University of the Fraser Valley, which started off as a college as well.

P. Vogt: That’s right. Actually, I think that right now, our planning would just be to be the best small college we can be for our region. As I mentioned, within that college context, we offer career pathways to all employment that exists within the region.

We also offer the two-year start to a university pathway, so students can take their first two years at home, in a lot of cases, or close to home, in a way that’s affordable and with very small cohorts. Then they can transfer into the university system. Students who do that, who start that way at College of the Rockies, do very well subsequently.

At this point, we’re not aspiring to be a university. I think we want to concentrate on making sure that for the pathways we provide, we’re doing it the best possible quality for everybody.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): I’m just going to…. Maybe expand on the soft skills you were talking about. Share with the committee what you’re talking about.

P. Vogt: Sure, yeah. I am talking to a lot of employers right now. I mentioned that we’re gathering input for our next five-year strategy or strategic plan.

The main feedback we’re getting, and overwhelmingly…. I’ll put the soft skills second, because right at the top is: “We need more people.” I’ve heard this several times. In every single conversation I’ve had with employers, the skills shortage is top of mind.

When I ask about the graduates that they’ve employed from College of the Rockies, typically, the answer we’ll get is: “We’re very happy with the technical skills, but in the workers that we’re hiring, we’re particularly emphasizing now….”

I mentioned communication skills and problem-solving. I think another aspect of soft skills is ability to collaborate and adapt. I think that comes from the fact that a lot of employers are seeing their own business models change very rapidly because of changes in technology. They’re looking for the kind of worker that is able to continuously learn and adapt on the job. I think that’s probably the main area of emphasis when we ask: “Is there anything else that we should be adding to our programming?”

[9:15 a.m.]

Maybe I should add, too, that all of our programs have advisory bodies that are made up of local employers. This isn’t an episodic thing. We’re in continuous conversation with employers, and that’s the feedback we get.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, Paul. Thank you very much for your presentation and your time this morning.

Next up is Sheena Svitich, College of the Rockies Faculty Association.

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

The floor is yours.

COLLEGE OF THE ROCKIES
FACULTY ASSOCIATION

S. Svitich: Thank you very much. Good morning.

Welcome to Cranbrook on the traditional, unceded territory of the Ktunaxa people.

I’m Sheena Svitich, vice-president of the College of the Rockies Faculty Association and an office administration instructor at the College of the Rockies. COTR faculty are members of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, or FPSE. Locally, our association represents about 200 full- and part-time instructors at our seven campuses in the East Kootenays. Programs at our college include trades, health, business, arts and science, English language training and adult basic education.

Funding for post-secondary institutions in B.C. continues to be a struggle. For many years, post-secondary unions and administrators have lobbied for a review and adjustment of the funding formula. Last year a review of the funding model was launched, and many, many hours were put in by union members and administrators in hopes that recommendations would be forthcoming. It’s quite disappointing to hear that this project is no longer a priority. We note that it was not part of Minister Robinson’s mandate letter.

We were particularly supportive of equity initiatives and the indigenization of COTR becoming a part of the funding formula. Absent that funding, these critical initiatives remain dependent on project-based funding.

College of the Rockies is a rural college that is significantly underfunded compared to other rural colleges in B.C. We have seven campuses that are dispersed across a wide geographical area and are expensive to operate. However, serving rural and remote communities is a core element of our mandate, and we feel a need for a renewed commitment from the province to meet those needs.

Ongoing government grants contribute to approximately 50 percent of our total annual revenue. The institution relies on international students and for-profit continuing education or contract training to balance the budget. Public post-secondary in B.C. should be valued so much higher within our provincial budget, and relying on international students is not a viable long-term strategy.

It’s been stated numerous times by different ministries that the majority of jobs in the near future will require post-secondary education, and it’s time we prioritized funding. Measured against inflation, core funding for COTR has actually declined over the past 20 years. While PSEC does cover wage increases, many of the costs for a small college like ours run well above inflation.

We note that the government has devoted $480 million to its future-ready plan. While we do applaud this historic investment, we were disappointed that only four programs at COTR will be funded under this new program. We believe COTR is well positioned to meet the flexible learning envisioned by the future-ready program.

Frozen net assets of the institution are another challenge we face at COTR. Since COVID, we have been able to submit a deficit budget and access the reserves. However, we do expect that to change in the next couple of years. When things return to normal, we will have about $20 million frozen. We can’t access it for deficits. We can’t access it for capital projects. We can’t access it for anything, really. We can’t even save up for a project over several years. As soon as a surplus is realized, you’re in, the funds are locked up. Reviewing and revising the rules around frozen net assets is as important as revising the overall funding formula.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the unique challenges of College of the Rockies and the commitment of our members to serve our students and our communities. We look forward to discussing our exciting work and how it fits into the province’s vision for a well-funded system of post-secondary education open to all.

Thank you for your time.

[9:20 a.m.]

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

B. Banman: There are two things that stood out for me on what you said there. Let me see if I heard you correctly.

One, 50 percent of your operating budget relies on grants, which you have to reapply for — and you have no guarantee, or there’s no certainty, because it’s a grant, not stable funding.

Two, if you’re efficient with the moneys that you have and somehow manage to actually save money, we then freeze that for you so you can’t ever use it.

S. Svitich: Correct.

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

Can you expand a little bit on the equity part of the funding that you haven’t seen an increase on? I think you mentioned something in there about that.

S. Svitich: That’s something I might get Paul to respond to. He knows the details. I know that equity and indigenization are very important, mostly based on year-by-year funding — not stable, regular funding.

Is that correct, Paul?

P. Vogt: That’s right.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): A quick follow-up to that, piggybacking off Bruce’s question on frozen net assets. I’m not familiar with this. Any revenue generated or any surplus from the budget gets held in some sort of an account, I guess, and you cannot access that funding. What is it you’re asking?

S. Svitich: To be able to use it.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Yeah. To be able to use it. You’ve got about $20 million right now. What’s the rationale behind not using it? I don’t understand.

S. Svitich: The province won’t let us.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): So it just sits there in perpetuity?

S. Svitich: Correct. We want to be able to use it.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): That’s interesting. I did not know that.

M. Starchuk (Chair): If I may, with the policy in which the funds are not accessible, does that exist provincewide? Do other colleges and universities have the same issue that’s in front of them, should they actually have a surplus?

S. Svitich: Yes, that’s provincewide.

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

A. Walker: It just seems so strange to me. Do you get to use the interest borne on this, or is it just completely locked up?

S. Svitich: It’s completely locked up.

Right, Paul?

P. Vogt: Yes, that’s right. It doesn’t apply to universities. It is only colleges that aren’t allowed….

Now, we could access it if we get Treasury Board approval to do so, but normally, with those funds, we’re not allowed to do multi-year budgeting based on acquiring surpluses over years.

G. Chow: To clarify that first question: about 50 percent of your funding is coming from government sources, not from grants. For grants, you have to apply year after year. So approximately half of your funding comes from government sources, not just grants. I just wanted to make a clarification on that.

S. Svitich: Yes, that’s right.

R. Leonard: Just to get a clarification: it has always been this way, correct? This is the way that colleges are set up. It’s about how accounting works for colleges and the relationship with the province. Thanks.

B. Banman: I just want to go back to the 50 percent of your funding. What’s the population of your foreign students, then? In most institutions, that accounts for over 50 percent of their funding. What’s your percentage of foreign students, and how much of the funding is from them?

P. Vogt: I don’t have the exact figures, but because rural areas attract fewer foreign students, our percentage would be below 10 percent, currently, of students within credentialed programs. It makes up somewhat more of the student tuition revenue, but still less than 5 percent of our overall revenue for the college.

[9:25 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right, Sheena. Thank you very much for your presentation and the somewhat coordinated effort that was presented to us. For everyone, thank you for sharing. There were a number of questions that were asked, and the answers were quite amazing to us.

Next up is Lareena Rilkoff of Selkirk College.

To note, Lareena, I thought it was important to mention that while the presentation was being done by Sheena, behind you there was a bunch of head nodding and smiling: “Yes, that’s correct.”

SELKIRK COLLEGE

L. Rilkoff: Good morning. My name is Lareena Rilkoff, and I represent Selkirk College, from the West Kootenay region of the province. Thank you for this opportunity for rural community members and organizations to provide input into the budget development process.

Selkirk College would first like to recognize the support we receive from the province and the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, and the staff within the ministry. We have received tremendous support, over the past several years, for numerous special projects, student initiatives and capital projects. We have our team currently stacking prefabricated units at our Silver King and Castlegar campuses so that we will have 150 new student housing beds in early 2024. This massive investment by the province will help us provide secure housing for students and help to reduce this big barrier to education that many students face.

The three recommendations we’d like to present to this committee are, firstly, to increase funding to meet the goals and requirements of the minister’s mandate letter priorities on a long-term basis. The second is to enhance rural college funding to meet the challenge of providing access to education and student services in a larger region. The third is to increase investment in B.C. transit within rural areas — specifically, the West Kootenays.

Our first recommendation is to provide longer-term funding for the minister’s mandate letter priorities. Selkirk College has been the recipient of many generous short-term funding grants to focus on provincial priorities such as work-integrated learning, the Aboriginal service plan and the health care assistant partnership pathways funding for students working on their health care assistant certificate. These types of funding are generally presented as one-time and then are renewed on a short-term basis over multiple fiscal periods.

While we greatly appreciate the support that this funding provides to student programming and services, it becomes difficult to hire and retain staff to complete this important work on a longer-term basis. The move to provide ongoing funding for health expansions is an example of a model that is more sustainable for colleges, especially in rural communities.

The province recently approved the $3,500 StrongerBC future skills grant. This is an excellent opportunity for British Columbians to receive short-term skills training at B.C. institutions, but it comes with an administrative cost for colleges. The current administration model is to provide 10 percent on every seat that actively enrols. While this administration funding is helpful, it’s unpredictable. What it does is make it more difficult to hire staff for this additional work to track the students through that program if students are taking advantage of the opportunity through multiple institutions.

What ends up happening with unpredictable funding is that our team must spread their time between existing student services and programs and new priorities, which leads to overall lower student support. We could use longer-term funding support to build capacity to ensure that these excellent priorities are sustainable in the long term.

Our second recommendation is for specific funding to provide student support and services that are difficult to offer without the economies of scale that are seen in larger centres in the province. Colleges — particularly, rural colleges — operate in a different manner, in focusing on providing accessible education. Selkirk College has campuses that stretch through our vast West Kootenay region, but this leads to our operating grant being stretched further to provide this access to education throughout our rural areas. We have fewer services in our community than areas like Kelowna, Kamloops, Victoria, and Vancouver, but we still must provide a valuable student experience to our learners.

Student life is one of the most important parts of the post-secondary education journey. It’s something that has been challenging for us to provide with fewer overall students than larger institutions, and a significant number of campuses spread across our region. Funding for counselling and advising services provides students with supports to navigate our complex post-secondary system and is an effective way to provide a powerful education experience.

Our third recommendation is to increase investment in B.C. Transit in rural areas, specifically within our West Kootenay region. A large number of students use B.C. Transit to travel between Nelson, Castlegar, Trail and other communities.

[9:30 a.m.]

There are ongoing instances of students and other community members being left at bus stops due to full buses. These bus stops are often between our communities on the side of highways, with highway speed limits. It can be hours before another bus is available, which has a negative impact on students.

Imagine waiting for transportation to your college and having a bus drive by, leave you in the cold, and then worrying about how you’re going to make your exam on time. These situations put up barriers to education within our region.

Thank you so much for your time to allow Selkirk College to provide these recommendations for increased investment in B.C. Transit in rural areas, enhanced rural institution funding for student services and initiatives, and increased funding within our annual operating grant to meet the goals and requirements of the post-secondary mandate letter.

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

I have a question with regards to…. You had spoken at the beginning about the 150 new beds. What does that leave you, or what does that give you right now?

L. Rilkoff: It increases our housing by 71 percent in our region. Much like Cranbrook and other areas through the province, housing has almost no vacancy in our communities. This really does help our students have more secure, affordable housing. That’s one less thing for them to worry about when they’re attending post-secondary.

Thank you so much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Just as a quick follow-up, what students would be using this housing?

L. Rilkoff: Domestic students are where the housing is set for. That’s part of the provincial priority. There is still a challenge with our international students that make up a large percentage of our student population having to try and find housing, but this is created for domestic students.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Great. Thank you.

Bruce.

B. Banman: Thank you very much. I saw you nodding your head with: “If you’re efficient and you save money and put it away and you put it away and you save it for something like, oh, I don’t know, student housing, as an example.” You’re not able to access those funds, so am I going to assume that you have the same frustration with that particular rule?

I wanted to really zero back into…. The second part of my question is the transit. How often is this an occurrence where a bus goes by? It’s not like the Lower Mainland, where it’s just miserable. This could potentially be life-threatening, based on how cold it is. How often does that happen, if you could put that into…?

L. Rilkoff: Several times throughout the school year, and it certainly is concentrated within our September-through-April periods when there are lots of students in the region. We really could use a solution there with an increased investment. I know that’s B.C. Transit’s job, but we’re just here to advocate for the support that this then shows students.

What ends up happening, too, is between our communities, and sometimes they’re 40 minutes apart between Castlegar and Nelson, students and others are actually standing on buses at 80 kilometres an hour. It’s quite a challenge.

R. Leonard: Thank you for your presentation and describing graphically what your students are experiencing.

During COVID, Zoom became a thing for education. I’m curious what the costs were involved with that and if that is still being employed, and if there are cost-benefit advantages here.

L. Rilkoff: Zoom has been extremely helpful, and our institution was in a good position to move very quickly. It does help with the fact that we have ten campuses spread across our region. But there are services that need to happen in person as well, so while it does provide benefits through instruction and having hybrid models, it’s a challenge. It is a cost to us that wasn’t added in, so we had to find it from within our operating grant. That means then making choices on other things that don’t happen.

R. Leonard: Like?

L. Rilkoff: Like other student services and supports, and that tends to be the area where there are downward pressures when you have to make difficult decisions. Many of us across the province are experiencing deficits now because of COVID.

As was mentioned in the last presentation, we have a lot of international students that help fund our budget, but there have been challenges with those students working and studying in Canada.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I have one quick question before we go to Tom. With regards to B.C. Transit, has the bus issue about being full and leaving people at the sidewalk been there for a long time, or is this something new after COVID?

L. Rilkoff: No, it was before COVID. We even went through the process of making a decision to try out a shuttle. We had a very generous vendor that assisted us with that, but it wasn’t sustainable in the long term for us. We did try that model, and it was extremely challenging, but knowing our students needed to get to class.

[9:35 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. Tom.

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

Thanks, Lareena, for the presentation. A couple of things here.

Percentage of international students, if you could give me approximately…. Then, also, is there an issue with retention of keeping those international students, with tuition increases the way they are? And then the third is: on counselling services, are you seeing a net increase in demand for counselling services post-COVID?

L. Rilkoff: Yes, absolutely. International students are between 25 and 30 percent of our full-time-equivalent students. But it’s making up about 65 percent of our tuition revenue of our overall budget, so it’s quite substantial. Those students are expressing their concern with the rising tuition rates, which goes with costs and things like that, but it’s very difficult for them to do that and work to live.

Then, on the counselling services, yes, and particularly…. It was happening before, but with COVID coming in, there are a lot more mental health challenges and supports that students need. So, yes, the increase in requirements has been substantial.

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

L. Rilkoff: Thank you all very much.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Galen Olstead, Key City Theatre.

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

The floor is yours.

KEY CITY THEATRE

G. Olstead: Thank you very much. My name is Galen Olstead. I’m coming here today from Key City Theatre, located here in Cranbrook.

It’s on the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa peoples, centered in ʔa·kisk̓aqǂiʔit.

I work for Key City Theatre, a charity that supports live performance, arts and visual arts and has a regional East Kootenay region impact. I’ve been in this role for nine years, before which I worked and lived in performance arts in Vancouver, as well as having grown up on Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan.

My work aligns with the objectives and focuses of the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and Sport, along with the B.C. Arts Council. The B.C. Arts Council has an annual budget of $30 million that is delivered to communities and organizations through core operating funds. This would be largely delivered to arts councils, along with highly competitive project grants.

This year, the B.C. Arts Council received an additional $30 million — this would effectively double its budget — which was then delivered through resiliency funds. Key City Theatre received no direct funding from the B.C. Arts Council in 2022 and 2023. Why did Key City Theatre miss out?

One, arts-presenting organizations like Key City Theatre are currently not considered for operating assistance by the province.

Two, only operating clients were provided resiliency funds, which were internally delegated to recipients, meaning that Key City Theatre had no opportunity to apply for or demonstrate need for support.

Three, a 30 percent success rate on project funding means the majority of organizations are not funded. One troubling aspect of this competitive system is that some organizations can receive every grant they apply for while others are declined. What we see is that communities and organizations that have historically lost in this competitive format continue to lose.

Our organization is facing the same inflationary challenges that our peer organizations that received operating, resiliency and project funding face. We are a recognized core contributor to the ecology of arts, culture and tourism within Cranbrook and southern B.C. But the lack of stable funding or, at best, the year-over-year competition for funding means provincial resources are not stable. Our staffing capacity is now facing substantial challenges, and the need for stability has become a critical priority.

The following recommendations are to establish an equitable relationship that will allow the government to provide necessary supports for our and several other communities to be successful.

One, establish a multi-year designated fund for rural, not-for-profit, charitable community arts organizations that do not fit the Arts Council model.

[9:40 a.m.]

Two, equalize funding with operating clients with an investment of approximately $800,000 per year. This would help create sustainability for approximately 15 larger arts organizations, like Key City Theatre, and approximately 20 smaller community-based organizations, all of whom currently do not receive provincial operating assistance, yet they are the lead resource for arts, culture and tourism for the communities they serve.

Three, establish a refined definition of rural and remote that would recognize greater geographic and demographic challenges. In the current model, a community like Cranbrook is held as equally rural as Nanaimo — so this becomes a challenge.

In closing, over the past three years, Key City Theatre has been a model for the notion of pivoting. We have championed resiliency through closures. We have been a key resource and leader for live performance organizations across the province. We are again leading our community with a successful return to audiences and to live performance, so much so that we are now projecting our second-best year of attendance ever — just behind the high water mark of 2019.

Yet those same projections show that our financial position, at best, will be break-even for this year. So supports are greatly needed. My message today is simple. While the government has recognized the need for sector supports, these supports are not being delivered evenly — and, in our case, not at all. My hope is that we can take intentional steps to correct access to community arts funding to ensure that all communities can succeed. Thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Galen, thank you for your presentation this morning.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Galen, for everything you do. You’ve been through the worst of times and the best of times. You came in through here through COVID and also through some major renovation challenges. You’ve been taxed quite a bit as far as the labour and everything else is concerned as well. Good on you for keeping it afloat.

We talk about falling through the cracks. This is a prime example of an organization that’s so vital to our community that has fallen through the cracks and hasn’t been identified through resiliency funding.

Can you maybe explain how organizations are assessed for resiliency funding? Obviously, we’re missing the mark here, and you’re talking about bringing together…. What I also like about your ask is that you’re not just asking for yourself. You’re asking for others, as well, that have also fallen through the cracks. How do we bring parity in resiliency funding?

G. Olstead: The current system essentially focuses on operating clients, so you have to be recognized as an operating client through the B.C. Arts Council to receive resiliency funding. There are specific requirements to be considered an operating client, and what we deliver to the community does not contain the components that would have us be operating clients. This is a year-over-year assessment. As long as we’re not operating clients, we won’t be considered for resiliency.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up, can you define operating client then? What is the criteria to be an operating client?

G. Olstead: Key City Theatre is a presenter. It means that we hire and present artists for the community. Operating clients, by and large, are organizations that are involved in the creation or development of artists.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Galen. This is new information to me, and I’ve been on this committee for three years. I do think that definition you just described to Tom is important in understanding being a presenter, or the difference. I’m assuming that’s why the B.C. Arts Council is not looking for presenters but looking for that other definition. Is that correct?

G. Olstead: Historically that’s correct.

B. Stewart: Yeah, okay. What do you have to do to become not a presenter? What’s required, and why aren’t you doing that?

G. Olstead: This is something that we’re undertaking at the moment. But we would have to change our staffing, and we’d have to change our focus. We have to in-build different programs that match up with the objectives of the B.C. Arts Council’s definition of what an operating client is.

We would have to start to…. We’d do things like residencies, or we’d start in-building artistic creation into our work. The challenge that we have in a rural and remote community is that we don’t have a strong base of artists living within the community, so drawing upon that to balance out access to funding becomes a challenge.

[9:45 a.m.]

B. Stewart: I see. That’s where the definition comes in that you were asking for. I’d encourage you to make certain that you do a written submission. You’ve got a lot of information. It really does need to be understood so that we can look at the status quo and find out how we could maybe make a recommendation. Thank you.

R. Leonard: Thanks for presenting. You don’t get away yet.

I’m curious about the population that you serve and what kind of pickup you have, how successful you are. Is it cyclical? Does it relate to what artists you have in the community? How much support is there locally?

G. Olstead: We are centred in Cranbrook, so our major reach is based here in Cranbrook. Overall, about 60 percent of our attendance comes directly from Cranbrook. That translates to about…. The population is 28,000, but we can demonstrate reach from throughout the East Kootenays, which is approximately 58,000. We’re seeing people in from the Elk Valley. We see people coming in from Golden. It’s quite a distance that people are travelling to attend.

R. Leonard: Can you describe what that distance is? Is that a two-hour drive? Do they come and stay in the community overnight?

G. Olstead: They do. We’re seeing people travel upwards of four hours to attend. We’re seeing, actually, quite a few people also coming in from Alberta. We’re getting regular attendance from Lethbridge, mostly people travelling east to attend, and we are seeing one-night stays on a regular basis.

You asked about local support. Our local support over the past ten years…. The city of Cranbrook is our major funder. We’ve seen supports increased four times in the last ten years — so substantial increases. I think we’ve reached a point now where there just isn’t more support that we can keep asking for.

Did that answer your questions?

R. Leonard: Yes, thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, great. Thank you, Galen. I think it was good advice, from one of the members, to consider the questions that were here and ensure those are accentuated in your report that will be coming later on.

Next up is Kevin Atherton, Kootenay Library Federation.

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

KOOTENAY LIBRARY FEDERATION

K. Atherton: Thank you very much.

Good morning. I am the vice-chair of the Kootenay Library Federation, comprising 20 member libraries. As described in B.C.’s Library Act, library federations exist to expand “the cooperative provision of library service” in different regions.

We’re grateful to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs for the annual operating grants to library federations. We’re also grateful for this year’s one-time enhancement grant from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. This will allow the Kootenay Library Federation to maintain our services to our member libraries.

Our recommendations. One, acknowledge through funding that libraries are delivering important societal and community services. Our member libraries still loan books and an ever-increasing range of other materials. We still provide reference information.

Our facilities also often act as cooling centres, warming centres, clean air centres. We help citizens access digital information and government services such as filing homeowner grants and printing vaccine cards. We provide services to individuals and families experiencing poverty, and they rely on their library for accessing information and government services.

We also support, communicate, deliver and enhance government programs and services. Forty-five percent of our member libraries serve citizens in remote communities without a Service B.C. office. Public libraries rely on library federations to act as resources that support and enhance their work.

Two, commit to consistent core operating funding instead of one-time grants. Insufficient operating funding, tempered by occasional crisis or specific-purpose grants is not a viable model for delivering library services to British Columbians.

[9:50 a.m.]

One-time grants cannot reliably support programs and services. When programs are initiated under one-time grants, they risk becoming discontinued. The Kootenay Library Federation and our member libraries need budgeted, ongoing, annual operating funding.

Three, introduce annual increases tied to inflation. Since 2010, funding for library federations and public libraries has remained at $14 million per year. Costs have gone up since 2010. Library federations and public libraries have been struggling to maintain services without any increases in funding. In fact, we’re being asked to do more with less. As library federations serve multiple municipal and regional governments, and our funding is solely from the provincial government, we do not have alternate funders.

In conclusion, our recommendations are that the B.C. government (1) acknowledge, through increased funding, that libraries are delivering important societal and community services; (2) commit to consistent core operating funding instead of one-time grants; (3) introduce annual increases tied to inflation.

Thank you for your time.

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

B. Banman: Thank you very much for your presentation. I had the privilege and the honour of sitting on the Fraser Valley Regional Library board, so I know it’s not about books and being told to go “shhh” in a library. You are so much more than that.

The Fraser Valley Regional Library had music programs. They had those tiny, little robot programs that kids would take home. It was amazing what they did and how they were able to deliver it.

I’m surprised to hear that there has not been an increase due to inflation since 2010.

K. Atherton: Yeah. Isn’t that nuts?

B. Banman: You know what? You said it better than I could. I’m going to wholeheartedly, fully agree with you. Yeah, that’s nuts, especially when you consider that a good portion of what you do in the regional system is to drive things back and forth between libraries. I think fuel costs have gone up.

Just as a partisan thing, taxes might have been increased since then, too. But that’s another thing.

I hear you loud and clear that sustainable, predictable budgets so that you can continue to serve people that, as you say, sometimes have nowhere else to turn…. They do not have the resources themselves, or the capability, quite often, especially with seniors, to be able to go through the programs, to be able to print things, such as a vaccine card.

So thank you for the work you do under trying circumstances.

G. Chow: Whether it’s in big cities or rural areas, libraries are funded by municipalities themselves, with sporadic funding from the province or grants. Is that it?

K. Atherton: There are municipal libraries, which have a different funding model. Our 20 public libraries are funded through the province, the regional district and the municipality they serve.

I can speak to Elkford Public Library. I’m very familiar with it. It gets a grant from the regional district of East Kootenay and the district of Elkford, as well as the province. The Kootenay Library Federation, which I’m representing here today, gets its funding solely from the province.

G. Chow: Yes, that’s what I thought when you talked about a sole source of funding to the Federation. So can you, then, describe a bit of your federation, like scope of operation? How many staff?

K. Atherton: We have one staff member, we have 20 member libraries, and we provide subsidies and/or centralized purchasing for things like online services, like LinkedIn Learning, the Ancestry database. We provide a single source….

We provide a forum for all the library boards to get together and work together and discuss things. A certain part of our budget goes towards providing those forums and allowing library boards to get together and meet together.

[9:55 a.m.]

G. Chow: So all your money comes from the province.

K. Atherton: For the library federation, all the money comes from the province, yes.

G. Chow: How about your member organizations? They don’t contribute any funding to the federation?

K. Atherton: No.

S. Chant: I’m a little bit confused, so please help me out here. Thank you for your presentation. Also, thank you for the work that you do.

There are 20 member libraries in the federation, but each one of those libraries is also funded by its municipality. It’s the federation itself, which isn’t actually a library per se, that you’re talking about.

K. Atherton: Yeah, it’s hard for me to not talk about the libraries when I talk about the federation.

S. Chant: Yeah, I understand that. It’s an overarching organization versus the actual places that do all these services that you’re talking about.

K. Atherton: Yes.

S. Chant: Okay. So it’s a support organization for these libraries, and it’s a way of working together so you can maximize….

K. Atherton: The federation is established under the B.C. Library Act.

R. Leonard: Thank you for presenting. It is a complicated system because it’s multifaceted. It looks different in different communities.

What’s the population that you serve as your 20-member library federation?

K. Atherton: The Kootenay Library Federation? Oh golly. We serve the East and West Kootenays. Our member libraries go through the Elk Valley, Elkford, Sparwood, Fernie, Cranbrook, Creston, Castlegar, Golden, Invermere. It’s quite a wide range. I just can’t think of the population that the federation serves, but we’re…. And Penticton, strangely enough.

R. Leonard: Okay, why not? Do they share resources?

I come from Vancouver Island Regional Library system, 38 communities from Bella Coola to Sidney. The books are moving all the time, all the resources.

K. Atherton: Interlibrary loans are moving all the time, yes, throughout the province, actually. The interlibrary loans work throughout the province.

R. Leonard: B.C. OneCard.

K. Atherton: Yeah.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Well, thank you for your presentation and your time this morning, Kevin.

Next up we have John Bergenske, Wildsight.

John, you have the floor for five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

WILDSIGHT

J. Bergenske: Good morning, hon. Chair and members of the Finance Committee. Thanks for allowing me to appear today in front of you.

We’re here in Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis, the unceded traditional territory of the Ktunaxa Nation.

As you’ve heard, my name is John Bergenske. I’m the conservation director at Wildsight, which is a conservation organization that’s been active for 36 years in the Kootenay region. I’m a member of the minister’s wildlife advisory committee. Wildsight is part of the British Columbia fish and wildlife coalition.

I’m here today to advocate for adequate funding for wildlife conservation, in line with the province’s commitment to its declaration on the rights of Indigenous people and its commitment to protect 30 percent of British Columbia’s lands and waters by 2030.

Wildlife are valued by Indigenous and non-Indigenous British Columbians alike. Respect for all living things and their right to existence is a basic tenet of the Indigenous peoples way of life. Fish, wildlife and habitat provide jobs, revenue, viewing opportunities, recreation and sustenance. Our way of life in British Columbia relies on healthy and abundant ecosystems and biodiversity.

British Columbia is Canada’s most biodiverse province and has the opportunity and, I would argue, the responsibility to be a world leader in wildlife conservation. There are several laudable initiatives underway, including Together for Wildlife, the old-growth strategic review and the biodiversity and ecosystem health framework. All of them will require ongoing funding.

I’d like to thank you for addressing one of our previous requests for funds for highway fencing and overpasses. The region had some of the highest motor vehicle collisions with wildlife in the province. Addressing this issue is one of both public safety and critical to maintaining healthy wildlife populations.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has initiated actions to address this problem in both the Elk Valley and Radium areas. I want to thank you and the province for the funding that has spurred partnerships with several funding agencies and industry to get the work underway.

[10:00 a.m.]

Maintaining fish and wildlife habitat in the face of a climate and biodiversity crisis and an ever-increasing human footprint on our planet requires protected areas and connectivity across the landscape.

The province’s commitment to 30 by 30 will be realized in partnership with Indigenous nations on their territories. British Columbia has significant opportunities to work with the government of Canada to reach the objective, including partnering with Canada through the nature agreement to fund conservation financing and Indigenous protected and conserved areas.

It has been estimated that a $1 billion fund will be necessary, including $400 million from the province. We strongly encourage that you provide the necessary support. That would be a first ask.

Another piece of the protected areas system that requires your attention is the conservation lands program that includes provincial wildlife management areas and wildlife habitat areas as well as areas managed by environmental non-government organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Nature Trust of British Columbia, both of whom bring both federal and private funding to the table.

This program requires funding annually from the province to continue to purchase private lands and manage both provincial and private conservation lands for the future of wildlife and their habitat. These are often in low-elevation areas that are inadequately represented biological hot spots. An annual allocation of $50 billion plus 25 percent for land management would continue to secure critical landscapes and help the province meet its protected areas goals.

Wildlife require that habitat be both protected and connected. The biodiversity and ecosystem health framework now being worked on in the province aims to address this issue, acting as a charter of rights for biodiversity and Indigenous knowledge. The initiative seeks to prioritize biodiversity and ecosystem health across all sectors, drawing upon both Western science and Indigenous knowledge. In order for this to be covered, this priority will require $200 million for fish and wildlife restoration — in other words, the whole program — to hit the ground.

Increased funding for wildlife benefits all British Columbians and plays a significant role in reconciliation and Indigenous peoples. I urge the committee to provide the necessary funding for Indigenous protected and conserved areas, conservation lands, and fish and wildlife restoration in line with the implementation of the biodiversity and ecosystem health framework.

Thanks for listening. I had to cut off there and rush because I was watching your timers. I thought I had it down to exactly five minutes at home, but….

M. Starchuk (Chair): It was. John, thank you for your presentation. I have a question.

You talked about the money that was there for protecting wildlife corridors. Can you let us know how many kilometres of protection were provided for, and how many are remaining, as far as protecting the traffic lanes that it crosses?

J. Bergenske: You mean the highway corridors?

M. Starchuk (Chair): Yes.

J. Bergenske: Well, I can’t give you…. Basically, the fencing in Radium…. It’s approximately 3 kilometres just outside of Radium. But the big piece that’s yet to come is an overpass. The ministry, MOTI, has dedicated funds, and then there have been funds from both private industry and from the community that have gone forward towards that. My understanding from latest communication with MOTI is that right now, a lot of that funding has gone forward.

The other piece is in the Elk Valley. That is a whole stretch between the Hosmer area…. They’re in different sections, but each one of the sections would be a few kilometres, and there’s one overpass planned for the area right near Crowsnest Pass. Tom will know lots of details on that too, because he’s been working on it.

M. Starchuk (Chair): He may know.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Chair. Yeah, in Jaffray, Fernie, those overpasses have wildlife underpasses as well.

Thanks, John, for the presentation. The 30 by 30 goal is a bold one. I’m just wondering how we can manage wildlife populations and habitat by reserving land alone.

[10:05 a.m.]

What I mean by that is we look at different protected areas such as Banff National Park, Kootenay National Park, Glacier National Park — all protected. Yet we’re seeing some declines in population there. We’re seeing some of our bighorn and some of those other ungulates that are moving closer to communities and then, of course, getting hit on the highways. Obviously, land alone isn’t going to solve the issue.

You talked about funding. I’d like to go through this a little bit more in detail later — what your ask is here. It’s quite substantial, but it’s definitely necessary. Luckily for you, you know that there’s a private member’s bill in front of us that would dedicate independent funding for these kinds of projects.

J. Bergenske: I wish we had time to talk about how all that can work together.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): How can we co-manage…? Not land alone, but also proper wildlife management.

J. Bergenske: That’s why there are the requests. Out of three requests, two are actually for the land — the protected areas and the conservation lands. Then, thirdly, it’s for fish and wildlife habitat, the $200 million, which would be for exactly what you’re talking about, for management outside.

The thing about wildlife, too, is that provincial funding often can leverage funding from both industry and from foundations. We do a lot of work trying to get that money in both from foundations in Canada and the States, because British Columbia is recognized as so important and because we are seeing significant decreases in wildlife populations that people all over the world care about. So we do need regular, dedicated funding.

We could go on and talk about Tom’s bill and the idea of having independent funding initiatives so that the province can contribute, so that we can also get contributions from other sources to basically multiply the province’s contribution. I think that’s where we’d like to go. It’s to make sure there is actually regular funding on an annual basis and a means that’s independent enough that people can contribute to it who are not government itself.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): As a final comment…. Thanks, John. We don’t always agree on some things, but I think, fundamentally, we’re aligned pretty good, especially on this topic.

It’s critical. It’s absolutely essential that we protect our greatest natural resource in the province, which is wildlife. We put a price on everything else. I say it time and time again. We’ve got a price on coal, timber, gas, oil, but we don’t have a price on wildlife and habitat. So thank you for your efforts, and thanks for your comments today.

M. Starchuk (Chair): John, thank you for your presentation this morning and the time to do it and, as Tom said, the commodity that you protect. Thank you.

Next up is Wayne Stetski, Elders Council for Parks in British Columbia.

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

You have the floor.

ELDERS COUNCIL FOR PARKS IN B.C.

W. Stetski: Thank you very much for coming to Cranbrook.

It’s the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa people.

Mr. Shypitka is my MLA, and, of course, will agree with everything I’m presenting today. I actually have six priorities, but of course, three have to be in the report that we’ve asked for.

I’m here on behalf of the Elders Council of British Columbia. The Elders Council is a group of primarily retired federal, provincial and municipal managers, directors, ADMs, mostly, that still care passionately about what’s happening with parks and protected areas in British Columbia.

As you know, the province is committed to protect 30 percent of British Columbia’s land and water by 2030, primarily through Indigenous-led conservation. Achieving this goal as quickly as possible leads to land use certainty that is critical to a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Across the province, of course, in British Columbia, it is quite challenging right now to get many objectives from an economic perspective and others put forward because of the uncertainty around land use planning.

Our first recommendation is that government triple the land use planning budget to $24 million beginning in 2024 and continue to evolve the land use plan program policies to clearly identify how government will proceed to getting to 30 percent.

[10:10 a.m.]

Government goals without adequate resources or well-understood strategies to achieve the goals will create public mistrust. It is really, really important for land use certainty. It’s important for the economy and important for social well-being and, of course, the environmental well-being of British Columbia. Currently it’s about $8 million a year, so it’s tripling the budget.

The second recommendation is around the relationship between the federal government and the province of B.C. The federal government actually has about $450 million available to British Columbia, and $200 million of that is to move forward with parks and protected areas in conjunction with First Nations. Of course, this relationship with First Nations is really important to meet the legislation around UNDRIP as well. It’s important for conservation but also important for our relationship.

So $200 million of that $450 million is part of the nature agreement, which, hopefully, British Columbia will sign with Canada and the B.C. First Nations Leadership Council. It’s a tripartite agreement. It’s due to be signed, hopefully, this summer or early fall. That frees up about $200 million towards achieving the 30 by 30 goal.

In addition to that, there’s another $50 million that Canada is offering for old-growth protection and then another $200 million, actually, for planting trees. So that’s $450 million available through the federal government.

The province should take a leadership role in bringing about, finally, the creation of the Okanagan-Similkameen national park. In 2019, a memorandum of understanding was signed to establish this park reserve. It’s not a national park; it’s a reserve. B.C. can take a leadership role in doing that.

The third recommendation is that the 2024 budget for B.C. Parks be increased to a minimum of $100 million, or $7.14 per hectare. That is still far below what is provided for managing parks in Alberta, which is about $20 per hectare, and national parks, which is $25 per hectare.

In 2001, the annual allotment for B.C. Parks was about $41 million. That was cut to $31 million in 2002, and it stayed there for 15 years. It’s now up to $69.6 million for ’23-24. But remember that there are over 1,000 protected areas, covering 14 million hectares, or 14.4 percent of the province, that are in provincial parks. So increasing it to $100 million, from about $70 million, would be great.

The other three recommendations, just quickly.

Parks Foundation. Last week the government gave an additional $10 million to the Parks Foundation, which also contributes to 30 by 30 by buying private land. We would like to see that continue in 2024.

Ecological reserves are another important part of protection in British Columbia. The last one was created in 2009.

Thirdly, there are some unique areas we’d like to see included in the protected areas system. Of course, the Flathead Valley here in southeast B.C. and the Great Caribou conservation area north of Clearwater.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Wayne, thank you very much for your presentation and for squeezing in a couple of extra recommendations.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Wayne, for the presentation. The 30 by 30. I made a comment to the previous presenter. Once again, a bold plan with, probably, some growing pains attached to it, I would imagine. You mentioned achieving it as quickly as possible.

What are the regions or other jurisdictions, which you’re aware of, that are already making this happen and that we can take an example from?

W. Stetski: In terms of getting there…. It’s an objective across Canada. It’s a national objective to reach protecting 30 percent of Canada by 2030. Of course, British Columbia, through the mandate letter to Mr. Cullen, put that as an objective for British Columbia as well. It’s quite challenging.

There was a proposal call held by the federal government. There were something like 75 First Nations across the country that said they wanted to be part of this. In B.C., there are currently eight First Nations that are being worked with, which would add about 8 percent to the 19 percent that is currently protected in British Columbia, depending on how you count that 19 percent, in terms of whether it’s actually protected or not. That would take us to 27 percent. There’s still at least another 8 percent to go.

[10:15 a.m.]

The challenge right now is…. How do we get there? Without modernized land use planning and expanding that from $8 million to $24 million, it will be very, very difficult to actually get to 30 by 30. You need a group sitting down, as we did back in the ’90s, with land use planning, through an actual table, and then working very closely with First Nations. These are potentially going to be Indigenous-protected and conserved areas.

Government has made it very clear, in a meeting I had with some ministers a few months ago, that getting from where we are, about 19 percent, to 30 percent will be filled through Indigenous-protected and conserved areas. Right now the staffing is not in place, and quite frankly, the processes are not in place to get there. That’s why we need to go from $8 million to $24 million.

Just a sidebar. Government allowed $25 million, starting in 2022, for forest planning. So $25 million just to plan for forests. But $8 million to plan what should happen across the entire landscape, which is what these land use plans do, including forests.

We need to move quickly. As you all know, it’s tying up a lot of things that are important to the economy in British Columbia and in moving B.C. forward. We have to get these land use plans done and in place to really move British Columbia forward in a positive way and in every aspect, not just for conservation.

R. Leonard: Thank you for presenting. Thank you for your service over the years to this community and to this country. I really appreciate you continuing on by being part of this council and bringing your expertise to it. It’s demonstrated in your understanding of the depth and breadth of what we’re dealing with here.

The land use planning piece, the forest landscape planning, is dealing with Crown land. It’s already owned by the Crown. It’s talking about preserving land within that, as you say. Does that contribute to the 30 percent, or is the intention to actually add more land base that’s publicly owned by the Crown?

W. Stetski: It’s collective. That 30 percent is a combination of provincial land protected in various ways, federal land that’s already in place in British Columbia and, perhaps, adding the Okanagan-Similkameen national park and municipal parks as well.

Collectively, the objective is to reach 30 percent by 2030. So what they’re doing through the forest stewardship plans absolutely would be a contribution, potentially, depending on how you define “protected.”

M. Starchuk (Chair): Wayne, thank you for your presentation this morning, for the time that it took out of the day to get here and for the work that you do for your organization that’s there.

W. Stetski: Thank you for taking the time to do this. It’s a big undertaking.

I see your suitcases are packed. You’re ready to head on to the next spot.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Revelstoke awaits.

W. Stetski: It’s a great community.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up is Rob Gay, the regional district of East Kootenay.

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

Rob, the floor is yours.

REGIONAL DISTRICT OF EAST KOOTENAY

R. Gay: Thank you very much.

Good morning, Tom.

Thank you, all, for the work you do as MLAs, as Wayne just mentioned. The travel and all the time you put in are much appreciated.

Good morning. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to present today.

My name is Rob Gay. I’ve been an elected official for the rural area called area C, which is outside of Cranbrook. I was first elected in 2005, and I’ve been on the RDEK board ever since. I’m currently the longest serving chair, a position I’ve held since 2010. I’ve also served on the East Kootenay Regional Hospital district since 2005. I have acted on a number of provincial and regional committees, including the Recycle B.C. provincial advisory committee. I’m a trustee with the Municipal Finance Authority of B.C. I chair the southeastern B.C. regional connectivity committee. I’m a director on the MIABC, the insurance corporation of B.C.

I share that with you just to give you a context for my experience and my understanding of the issues facing our local governments in the rural parts of British Columbia.

I want to start today with gratitude. It’s rewarding when you see, on the ground, the difference that grants or investments can make.

[10:20 a.m.]

On behalf of the residents and businesses in our region, I want to thank you for your $830 million from the province. In conjunction with the federal partners, you’re investing in rural broadband. These funds are not only allowing critical connectivity for rural residents; they are critical in allowing our businesses and our economies to thrive.

Broadband connectivity has helped strengthen services to rural communities, created new important opportunities in health care, connected rural students with access to remote learning and new technologies, and has enabled residents to make our communities home while contributing to remote rural work.

This is a huge rural win for British Columbia, and it would not be possible without the province’s commitment and financial support. We remain committed to bringing rural broadband to all our communities all across rural and remote B.C. While we’re not quite there yet, we are well on our way thanks to your provincial support.

At this time, we, and all levels of governments, face so many challenges that are indefinitely complex — I’ll speak to one of those in a moment — and then funding won’t solve the problem. But currently broadband connectivity is not one of them. It’s a problem that can be solved. It’s a financial problem and, by your commitments, we’re making a difference.

While tangible wins are important, the investment by the province in more complex problems is equally important. There’s not a corner of this province that isn’t being touched by the growing homelessness, housing and the opioid crisis. Housing, health and mental health services are under the jurisdiction of the province. Our vulnerable populations are not being adequately supported and our communities are all feeling the impact of that.

I am not here before you today because I profess to have any answers in these complex issues. I’m here today as a local government that is feeling the effects of the lack of funding and the lack of action taken by the province to address these issues. We are now in the position of small regional and municipal governments of trying to fund some kind of extension and outreach services when we have no jurisdiction or services to fund this work.

Because our communities and our citizens can no longer wait, regulations, creative thinking and new partnerships and extensive change are needed to move the needle on these issues. None of this is possible without funding to make this happen, and there is no time to waste. We need the province to take action now and not only for those who are vulnerable and struggling but for all our citizens. So a very, very difficult problem, and I know you’ve heard this in other places.

The third issue today is one that is affecting us all. It’s interesting. Today it’s going to be 31 degrees, probably about the same in Revelstoke. We heard on the news, this morning, the first leading line was that Ottawa is suffering from the smell of campfire smoke. Well Ottawa could have come here for many, many summers, because we’ve faced that so many years.

Our Augusts are basically smoke months. Ottawa complained: “We’re off the cycle.” It’s a scale of one to ten, and they’re way off.… We’re always off the cycle. The Okanagan’s off the cycle, so the fire indices…. The rating for Southeast centre shows the danger increasing to high this early in June. Last night, the Global News reported that it is shaping up to be the worst wildfire summer in history. Climate change and its effects are having an effect on all British Columbians.

While continued investment in climate change adaptation and mitigation are critical, I want to speak to the other side of the impacts that deserves your attention. RDEK staff, along with other regional and local government staff around B.C., are increasingly called upon into emergency management roles to support citizens when fires and floods ravage the Crown lands around them. Our emergency operations centre….

I’m out of time. Can I just sum up that our operation centre used to be open about two or three weeks a year. Now we’re north of 100 days a year. We don’t see any end in sight, so it’s critical that the province is aware of the needs and the increasing needs in rural B.C.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Rob, thank you very much for your presentation. My one comment that I wrote down was wow, when I take a look at the committees and boards that you serve on and the length of time that you’ve been there.

R. Gay: I’ve got to learn the no word.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Yeah. I’m not sure what you do on weekends. Thank you for your public service.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much, and thank you for your service. That’s a long time. They must like you to keep you in the chair.

[10:25 a.m.]

I wanted to mention I really appreciate your comments around connectivity. We’re learning more and more about how that’s bringing opportunity to every part of B.C., and it’s good to hear that.

The question I have is around mental health and substance use. We have increased the budget to $1 billion. I’m curious about what relationship you have with the health authority of the area, in terms of expressing the need, and what kinds of partnerships you have with the health authority.

R. Gay: Not that much. What started it was the provincial government’s support. For all our areas, we did housing needs assessments for all the regional districts, so we had those numbers. What we started to find — and Tom can talk about it — is that these tent cities started in Cranbrook with a few people. We knew there were about 42 people homeless. Now I think it’s north of 300. We tried….

It’s not really…. We don’t understand that. We don’t have staff dedicated to it. The way regional taxation is done, people vote on the services they get, so we have no money. What we’ve done is we’ve found some money. We partnered — I don’t know if Wayne is still here — with the city of Cranbrook, and we’ve hired somebody to try to help us.

We’ve had a discussion with the community. We all know the problem, but we don’t know the solution. I don’t know if Interior Health has the money, but we certainly haven’t been funded, nor do we see that as our role. But our citizens are demanding help. As I say, it’s a complex problem.

R. Leonard: Do you have housing agencies, people who are working with the homeless, that would be able to apply for housing dollars?

R. Gay: Certainly, there are a number of groups. Part of the work of a new administrator is to try to facilitate having those groups work together. But because they all almost…. I don’t want to be crude about it, but some of their success is keeping people in poverty almost, in my view.

There are not options to get people out of poverty. So this group works to provide supports to them, but it’s not moving them to what I would think would be work or whatever — a new lifestyle. We’re all over the map on this. We just don’t understand the issue, but it’s growing all the time.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Rob. I had the honour and privilege of sitting as a director of the best, hardest-working regional district in the province. I mean that sincerely; there’ll be some that argued.

When we’re in times of need, when there’s emergency around us — as Rob has told us, it’s happening more and more frequently — the RDEK comes to the rescue every single time. I’ll give a shout-out to Loree Duczek, who heads that communications team.

And you, Rob, are leading that board that brings us the safety that we need during these times. You’ve highlighted a whole bunch of stuff here and that we hear time and time again: everything from homelessness to climate change.

What is it going to take for sustainable provincial funding to keep you well armed as a regional district to address and tackle some of these challenges you’re seeing? Is there a specific ask? Is there a dedicated, sustainable amount of money that you’d like to see come forward?

R. Gay: Around the emergency management, the way it works now is that if an incident happens, you go to the province, you get approval, and then you may or may not get the funding, depending on the severity of it. That’s very cumbersome.

Today I brought an example of a situation report. That’s what we do. We had an emergency in Fairmont in May. This is report no. 22. We’re early in our year. So it goes on. I would suggest somewhere in the neighbourhood of about $250,000 per regional district to set aside for when these things come up. You go ahead. There’s money in the bank. You don’t worry about it.

We’re taking all our staff — be it, as Tom said, our communications people, our finance people, our emergency people go to the EOC. We had one of our people up by Dawson Creek last week, helping Dawson Creek with the fire situation. This is a provincial thing that all the rural areas are trying to get together. Once we have an incident number, the province does look after the funding, with some guidelines. So we’d like that freed up a little bit.

Probably $250,000, Tom, for each regional district would get everybody going.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Susie.

S. Chant: That was actually my question, so thank you.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right then.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): To add to that, when you get resources pulled away to Dawson Creek or somewhere like that, that means it’s a resource lost here. It’s whether it’s out of your mines office or your forestry office or wherever, and it’s just got that cascading ripple effect that just affects us all, so a $250,000 ask for each regional district. That’s money well spent, because we know that it’s not if, it’s when the next disaster hits, and we need to be well armed for that.

[10:30 a.m.]

R. Gay: I think really, as a society, we need to sit back. There’s new legislation coming forward. We hear of these new regulations. But some of this…. There may be a bigger role for the province.

We saw this province take a positive step by stepping forward and adding more individuals to their fire crews, which is quite useful. But this behind-the-scenes stuff that we have to do…. There’s such a variety of issues that are coming up.

If there’s anybody who doesn’t believe in climate change, they need to come and talk to me. I’ll convince them.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Fortunately, I don’t know anybody that would want to talk to you about that lack of what’s there. So no, you’re good.

Rob, thank you very much for your presentation and for what you do.

We’ve got a slight alteration to the agenda. Chris Johns from school district 5, you’re up next.

Chris, you have five minutes in which to give a presentation, followed up by five minutes of questions and/or comments.

The floor is yours.

SCHOOL DISTRICT 5,
SOUTHEAST KOOTENAY

C. Johns: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, and welcome to our area.

Tom, good to see you.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m representing today on the homelands of the Ktunaxa people. The footprint of our school district is fully contained within the Ktunaxa Nation.

The board of education of school district 5 assumes the responsibility for governing the education system in our district in a progressive and educationally sound manner. The board is fully accountable to our public.

The district covers the southeast corner of the province and includes the major centres of Cranbrook, Fernie, Elkford, Sparwood and Jaffray, South Country. We provide education services to over 6,600 students, with 20 schools and four StrongStart centres, and we employ over 1,600 people in the district.

Our first recommendation of two is an increase in special education funding. Additional funding is required to meet the supports and services — for example, counselling, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, school psychology, speech-language therapy — needed to increase the 91 percent, six-year graduation completion rate for all of our SD 5 students.

All students have unique educational needs. Most students are able to be educated within the basic allocation funding. However, the level 1, 2 and 3 funding for special education is insufficient to meet the needs of all applicable students.

Provincially 67 percent of the actual special education operating expenses were covered by special education grants in 2022-23. In 2022-23, SD 5 received $10.572 million in special education funding and expended over $15.8 million. Therefore, the SD 5 board supplements the special education funding annually by an excess of $5 million. That comes out of the general operating funds.

In September 2022, approximately 16.2 percent of our student population — that’s 971 students — have been identified as having diverse abilities or disabilities and require additional support to meet their needs and graduate with dignity and purpose. We have 367 level 1 and 2 students that require the most support, and 229 level 3 students that also require additional supports. These are the highest historical counts experienced at SD 5.

We are unable to provide learning assistance to students that require a minor amount of support due to this lack of funding, as we already significantly supplement the special education provided for our students with the highest needs.

Mental illness is becoming the next crisis, caused by financial and social strain. Targeted grant funding for mental health in 2022-23 was $74,000. This has not been identified as ongoing funding for 2023-2024. This will greatly limit our ability to meet our students’ needs.

Targeted funding for all students with diverse learning needs and abilities would work best for our district. Additional supports and services funding is required to properly service the needs of our students and to provide and to improve on our 91 percent graduation rate. Adequate funding to meet these needs is the moral and ethical thing to do.

Our second recommendation has to do with the school life cycle funding. For too long, the focus has been on fitting kids into spaces. It’s about time we start building spaces for students and their learning needs and their stages of development. The province needs to address aging infrastructure in the educational sector. Districts outside seismic areas, and particularly the rural areas, have continued to maintain a level of maintenance which is barely acceptable to operate schools.

[10:35 a.m.]

The learning environment for students and the health and safety of all employees suffers as a result of our aging facilities. The facility condition index, FCI, determines the condition of a school. FCI is expressed as a range of 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.0 being a new facility, and 0.6 and above requiring immediate action. Provincially, the FCI average is 0.46, and the SD 5 average is 0.54. A rating between 0.5 and 0.6 is given a poor rating and does not meet requirements.

Immediate attention is required to replace multiple SD 5 schools. With significant building systems being at the end of their life cycle, parts may no longer be in stock or be exceedingly difficult to obtain. There is an elevated risk of failure of some key safety systems, such as fire suppression. SD 5 has 15 of 17 schools that fall within this unacceptable range, and the average age of our facilities is 50 years.

Building repair costs are becoming significant. There are necessary upgrades needed to properly serve our students and staff at Mount Baker Secondary School. These systems include a new elevator, at over $400,000; a dust collection system, at over $500,000; and a fire safety system, at over $2 million. SD 5 has been advocating for a replacement school for over 20 years. Millions of dollars spent in regular repairs and maintenance is a shortsighted solution to a long-term problem.

We have submitted a project definition report to the ministry for a new middle school in Fernie, and this will be a significant help to our fastest-growing community. However, all our other communities are in dire need of replacement buildings, as I noted above.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Chris, thank you for your presentation this morning.

S. Chant: Thank you very much for your obvious advocacy for your school district and for the kids that you serve. It’s really appreciated. Also, thank you for the very distinct numbers; for me, that helps a lot.

I want to clarify. You’ve got a couple of schools that are in urgent need. How many schools are in the urgent-need place?

C. Johns: Well, we have submitted documentation to the ministry for four schools.

S. Chant: Four, and then you’re looking for one. So it’s four urgent and one new. Am I understanding correctly?

C. Johns: Yes, that’s right. The middle school in Fernie is our top priority, and a replacement for Mount Baker, as MLA Tom has gone on about, is also one of our big top priorities.

S. Chant: Okay. Thank you.

B. Stewart: Yeah, thanks very much, Chris. I just wanted….

This was really insightful because, of course, in my area, in school district 23, they haven’t given us these numbers, but we’ve been advocating for one of these older schools. I often wonder, having a business and looking at the life cycle of a building, even though it has been maintained and kept up, etc., there comes a point when there’s a business case to just start over and do that.

Is there any of that, that you know has been done? Do you get any financial resources to make a business case for those four schools, rather than just this index?

C. Johns: Well, with respect to Mount Baker, we have done extensive work on that, documenting what needs to be done with that. We’ve had a variety of different architects come in and review and come up with plans for us. We’ve been doing this advocacy for a Mount Baker replacement for quite a few years. I’ve been a trustee now pushing 17 years, and since I started, we’ve been working on this.

We’re making the case, and we haven’t got the ear of government.

M. Starchuk (Chair): I have a question for you. You talk about 16.2 percent of your student population identified as having diverse abilities or disabilities requiring additional support to meet their needs. How does that relate to, or how does that compare to the rest of the province?

C. Johns: I couldn’t answer that question. I don’t know what that comparison is like. All I can deal with is what we’re facing in trying to provide those supports for those kids.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): That was actually one of my questions there: the trend. You said it’s historically the highest — students that need support. Is that a trend across the province? That’ll be the first question.

For the second one, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t get into the life-cycle funding for some of the infrastructure we need right now. Maybe an update on Isabella Dicken. For the middle school that’s required up there, I believe we need to turn some dirt here before the end of the year, or we might run into some issues on that land that was purchased.

[10:40 a.m.]

I think there’s an agreement signed that could turn that land back over to the original owner. Maybe give me some confidence that we’re going to see that project, because that’s critical.

Also, on Mount Baker, just to put it in context for the committee, that school was built in the late ’40s, I believe ’49 or ’50, so it’s over 70 years old. There are some major issues. It’s been band-aid after band-aid after band-aid. It needs to be replaced for sure, so thanks for the advocacy on that.

So maybe just on the Isabella Dicken part.

C. Johns: Well, with respect to the new middle school, as I said in the presentation, the PDR has gone forward, so we’re expecting…. That relates to your other question about breaking ground. We’re waiting for the ministry to give us the green light on that.

The additions to Isabella Dicken are well underway. We’re looking at having that completed shortly, and we’ll be open for September.

Now, I forget what the first question was that you….

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): It was just if it’s a historical trend with students with supports, that need supports for whatever conditions they have. You said it was historically high in SD 5. Is that something that we’re seeing across the province? Do you know?

C. Johns: Oh yeah. That’s right. That was the question.

Well, I do know that the BCSTA and the B.C. Teachers Federation, in their presentations to the select standing committee, will be highlighting those concerns as well. So they may have something that reflects more of a provincial basis.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. Love your tie.

Two questions. How stable is your student population? Does it fluctuate? Does it move around within the district?

The second question is: do you believe that this rating system is fair? It’s obviously not working for you. It seems to me that you kind of come to this cliff at that halfway point, and you guys are just under or just over. It doesn’t put you in a better position to be able to move forward on the initiatives you want to take.

C. Johns: Well, the FCI is the creation of the provincial government, so they use that to monitor what’s happening in schools. That’s why we’re saying there’s lots of attention to seismic upgrades, which we totally understand, and where growth is happening in the province. But you can’t ignore the rural areas.

We have issues. If you were to step across the street to Mount Baker and walk through Mount Baker, as Tom went through, you would see that we’re doing a pretty good job. That school is 72 years old, and its best-before date is behind it.

We’re trying our best. I’ve made these presentations to the select standing committee, I’m going to say, five or six times now over the years, maybe more. I’ve advocated for the replacement for Mount Baker. At the same time, we’ve got all these other buildings that are also in need of replacement.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Chris, thank you very much for your presentation. Just to note, when you make presentations five or six times…. Some of us weren’t there, and I appreciate the new information that comes to us. Thank you for the work that you do.

Next up is Karen Bergman from the Collective for Lower Elk Aquifer Restoration.

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

You have the floor.

COLLECTIVE FOR LOWER ELK
AQUIFER RESTORATION SOCIETY

K. Bergman: Thank you very much, everybody. Good morning.

I recognize the area that I’m talking about is the traditional lands of the ʔakink̓umǂasnuqǂiʔit, or Tobacco Plains. They are the original stewards of the land that we are concerned with.

By way of introduction, CLEAR is an organization of volunteers recently registered as a B.C. society. Our issue is that our ground aquifer water and surface water in Elko, Baynes Lake, South Country and surrounding areas is depleting due to the alteration of the Elk River above the Elko dam, which is located behind Elko and is now a non-operating dam.

In 2017, B.C. Hydro decided to not maintain the dam’s head pond at 917 metres, so we’ve lost water in our aquifers. That threatens the wetlands and species of concern.

Our number one recommendation is to create the conditions to restore water, to recharge the aquifer inlets located adjacent to the Elk River at Elko. This would restore our ecosystem of lakes, ponds and creeks.

[10:45 a.m.]

The recommendation can be fulfilled in one of these three ways. B.C. Hydro operate the Elko dam with a head pond level of 917 metres. B.C. Hydro sell the dam to an entity that will operate it at that level, or the B.C. government fund an engineering project that would be an estimated $3 million, based on cost estimates of a 2021 engineering study. We are undertaking some studies to determine which engineering project would be the most effective.

Two, implement a comprehensive long-term water and ecosystem monitor….

Oh, I was remiss in saying thank you all very much for your public service. It means a lot to all of us.

This recommendation would be a monitoring network. We are developing a water and ecosystem monitoring network now, with funding from partners and a lot of volunteer community work. The money we’re seeking, the $100,000 going forward, is to implement those monitoring systems.

It would be things like staff gauges; expertise to install them; water sampling and lab analysis costs; a system for collecting, storing and interpreting data so that we know, over the long term, what’s happening. It would be lidar imaging to identify and map wetlands and riparian areas. There is no scientific mapped information about the size and the condition of those areas. It would be for training for community volunteers, a citizen scientist monitoring component.

Monitoring would be in collaboration with other stewardship organizations like Living Lakes Canada; industry — Teck, we’re getting a lot of interest from them; government — B.C. Parks, the regional district of East Kootenay; and again, the community.

Our third recommendation is to hold a South Country workshop. The working name for that at this point is “Challenges and Solutions in a Dry Region.” This would be fiscal year ’24-25, and we’re asking for $25,000.

Southeastern B.C., of course, is a very dry ecosystem. We have a lot of…. It’s favoured for recreation and residency. We have growing pressures and demands. For 50 years, there’s been a concern for the decline in the aquifer water. It’s partly associated with climate warming, but primarily it’s due to the loss of the recharge of the aquifers by the Elk River and associated with the installation and operation of the B.C. Hydro dam down there.

The workshop would be for academics, students, government, industrial, private sector and non-governmental professionals, community and Indigenous members, including the yaqan nuʔkiy and the Ktunaxa Nations.

Thank you. I’ll stop there.

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

B. Stewart: Thanks very much, Karen. What’s the rationale in 2017 for B.C. Hydro to abandon or not operate the dam any longer? What changed, or what was the rationale?

K. Bergman: They stopped producing electricity in 2014. Then, under a complicated process of water licensing and whatnot, they were ordered to operate the head pond between 912 and 917 metres. They kept it at 917, and our issue was good. We didn’t have problems.

Then in 2017, they said that they could no longer safely maintain that head pond level and were unclear exactly why. It might be that they couldn’t install the flashboards. It was no longer safe to do that. We can speculate, but we’re not sure why it’s unsafe.

[10:50 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): Before we go to Tom, can you tell us how many people rely on that aquifer?

K. Bergman: Residents, about 500 in the summer. We have probably 10,000 visits in the summertime, so a big explosion of people, and there’s more…. Due to housing pressures, housing costs, we have more and more people moving to our area, so we’re seeing a big buildup of, in our terms, an increase in population.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay, great. Thank you.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Karen, for everything you’re doing here. Really critical, super important for the committee to understand. The dam was put into care and maintenance back in about 2016, I think, somewhere around there. Pond levels were over 917.

What was done back in…. The late sixties is when B.C. Hydro took it over from East Kootenay Power. They built some berms along the west side of the Elk River. The purpose of these berms was to prevent water from the head pond going into these sinkholes that effectively recharged the aquifers in the region.

Since the care and maintenance that went in, and since the subsequent drop in the dam below 917 metres, which fills the aquifers…. Since no water goes into those sinkholes anymore, the aquifers are drying up the waters around the Baynes Lake area. So Baynes Lake, Surveyors Lake, Engineers Lake, Mud Lake. We’re seeing a three-foot drop every single year in these lakes.

We have red-listed species, Lewis’s woodpecker, western painted turtle. Huge ecosystems at major risk, and all we’re asking, all Karen’s group is asking, is to get an engineering study to prove that this is actually happening. I think we’ve got more than enough proof from hydrologists.

I guess the biggest issue is getting that water back in to recharge the system. That’s what this is all about. It’s a really important ask.

First Nation involvement. How are you supported with them, the Tobacco Plains First Nation in particular?

K. Bergman: Yes, we’re very fortunate that we have representation on our board. Jason Gravelle. He’s a land manager with ʔakink̓umǂasnuqǂiʔit. A person that he works with, Lane Twigg…. He’s a land steward; he’s on our board as well. We’ve had a lot of cooperation and support from them.

This area is very important to them too, and there are some species on our monitoring list here that they specifically asked to be included that are of traditional importance to them. That includes the burbot, the westslope cutthroat trout and the bull trout.

R. Leonard: Thank you so much for being a leader in this. It’s obviously very important.

A question. Putting in dams is altering the natural flow and the natural balance, and you’re talking about doing things to amend that interference. Has consideration been given to just removing the dam, and if so, what are the potential impacts downstream, like in terms of flooding in a dry area?

K. Bergman: Yeah, removing the dam, that’s way beyond my expertise. I know that just decommissioning the dam puts considerable…. My understanding is it puts considerable responsibility and costs on B.C. Hydro to simply decommission. I don’t know what removal involves, but I’ve heard of other situations where that has happened. As a society, we haven’t really gone there and looked at that.

R. Leonard: In terms of the history of that water system, maintaining an aquifer.

K. Bergman: It’s hard to say, because the construction of dams has a big impact upriver. It’s hard to say if simply removing the dam would bring that back. When they stopped producing electricity there, there was an offer to purchase the dam, actually, by Tobacco Plains. My understanding is that B.C. Hydro then pulled back their offer to sell. That might be another option that they simply sell the dam to somebody who will operate it if it….

[10:55 a.m.]

The province needs more electricity, so it seems like a viable option for somebody to operate it and produce electricity and maintain the head pond.

Does that answer your question? Okay.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Okay. Karen, thank you for your time and your presentation this morning.

Next up is Gary Eisele, Community Connections Society of Southeast British Columbia.

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

Gary, the floor is yours.

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS SOCIETY
OF SOUTHEAST B.C.

G. Eisele: All right. I will read quickly.

In September 1983 — I mean, that’s 40 years ago — I began studying sociology. We used to make fun of the psych department. We used to point our fingers at them, because we knew what the fixes were in our society, and the psych departments were just putting band-aids on everything.

Anyway, 30 years after I picked up my BA, I completed my master’s in psychology, and in the intervening 30 years, not much has changed. We’re still approaching everything with band-aids. Ten years ago, Stephen Harper commented: “We’re not doing sociology here.” The trouble is we’re not actually putting the band-aids on either. We just seem to be talking about it.

There’s the famous telecom talking about mental illness. Many folks are talking about how their mental illness affects them. You know, we saw it in the Olympics a couple of years ago, with Simone Biles dropping out of a couple of competitions, but we’re not seeing much in the way of funding for mental health supports, even though adult mental health at Interior Health here is overrun with clients.

Back in 2018, Community Connections had a men’s resource centre, side by side with the women’s resource centre, but we couldn’t get any funding for that. I volunteered for 11 months to keep the doors open. To put that in perspective, I live in Creston. So I was driving 200 kilometres a day on a volunteer basis to keep the doors open at the men’s centre.

Finally, in 2018, October, we got funding for a walk-in clinic. So we collapsed the men’s centre and reformatted it as a walk-in counselling clinic. Unfortunately, the funder reduced our grant because we couldn’t find any additional funders. That one sum was contingent upon other folks supplying some funds. Since March of 2020, the clinic has been kind of limping along. The two counsellors that are working are just doing pro bono work on occasion to keep the doors open.

A couple of years ago, we presented to the committee, and we presented at the same time as UBC Okanagan presented something about their walk-in clinic. They talked about seeing a certain number of clients, and it worked out to about $250 per client for their walk-in clinic, based on their funding. We’ve been doing the same for much less — $160 to $170 a client. We’re only open 20 hours a week. With more funding, we could reopen the doors. With $100,000, we could be seeing somewhere north of 600 clients a year.

There’s still a great deal of need in the community. Everybody is talking about their mental health issues. We’ve got the working poor and the homeless in Cranbrook and in the area. We serve all the way up…. I was getting clients from Invermere and Fernie as well, so a pretty broad footprint and quite a distance to come to avail themselves of free counselling.

COVID, of course, has exacerbated mental health issues, and I think those problems are still sort of chugging along in our society.

Our recommendation, in addition to us maybe setting up a few more walk-in clinics in other cities across the province…. But for sure hit us…. You know, $100,000 would be great.

I finished a minute early.

[11:00 a.m.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): It gives us more time for questions. Gary, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

I have a quick question. What kind of a wait-list do you have? By opening up extra hours and getting the funding, what would that do to a wait-list, assuming that you have one?

G. Eisele: We don’t have a wait-list right now. It’s just first-come, first-served. I think right now, Jasmine, the other counsellor that was working with me, has two hours open a week. If somebody shows up in those two hours, they’ll…. Certainly, we saw 400 people a year prior.

R. Leonard: Thanks for coming and presenting today. I hope you didn’t have to travel 200 kilometres to get here.

G. Eisele: Only 100 here.

R. Leonard: Only 100, okay.

Now, you said you serve 400 people. I’m just wondering what the profile is of the people that you serve. Is it just a men’s clinic?

G. Eisele: Once we moved into the walk-in counselling, it was open to everybody. Jasmine has experience with counselling children as well. So she was working with kids.

R. Leonard: Are you involved with the assessment process for diagnosing kids’ disorders?

G. Eisele: No, not really. It was, basically, just single-session, brief therapy. Just get people in, pump up their tires and get them out the door again. Help them figure out some solutions to their issues.

R. Leonard: Are you connected in any way? Is there networking around different mental health services in the region?

G. Eisele: We were getting some referrals from adult mental health. They were dealing with folks with significant issues. If somebody came in with less significant issues, they would shoot them our way. I was doing anger management classes; they would send folks down for that.

B. Stewart: Gary, I just want to know about…. Has CCS always been a not-for-profit, or was it originally an extension of Interior Health, where you were providing services that were part of health, and then it changed?

G. Eisele: No. I think it grew out of the original women’s resource centre back in the day. Unfortunately, my grasp of the history is a little spotty, but that’s the way it started originally.

B. Stewart: What has changed in the funding model? Let’s go back pre-COVID. How did it get to this point? With the fact that there’s pro bono work, you’re driving 200 kilometres…. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a sustainable model.

G. Eisele: No. I’m no longer doing that. I was doing the 200 kilometres to keep the doors open for that year, 2018. You’re right; that is not sustainable. I had to stop. I was coming in four days a week. As much as I like driving, it was surprising to me how much of a toll that took.

B. Stewart: There’s a need here in this part of the Kootenays. It seems to me that some of that should be coming from Interior Health. You used their name at the start. I just wondered — did they change something?

G. Eisele: No, they’ve never been involved. They would send people our way because we were better suited than they were for certain issues, right? I think it was Columbia Basin.

B. Stewart: What does it need to be sustainable? How much?

G. Eisele: Consistent funding, $100,000 year. I think we originally were doing it on $70,000, but we’d like to expand it. We had a couple of students working with us as well. We did practicum positions, and we’ve got more practicum folks coming in from the College of the Rockies, whom we would utilize, too, for peer counselling and that sort of thing.

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

Well, Gary, thank you very much for your presentation. I listened to the 100 kilometres and then the 100 kilometres, and the first question I have, not related to your presentation, is: what does your playlist look like, or sound like? I mean, that’s an awful lot of songs that you have to go through to be able to get to your next stop.

G. Eisele: Actually, I’m old-school. I drive a 2003 Passat, so I’ve got CDs. I listened to Sticky Fingers on the way in this morning.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right, there we go. I might have that.

We are going to take a five minute recess. Just five minutes, and we’ll be right back.

The committee recessed from 11:05 a.m. to 11:16 a.m.

[M. Starchuk in the chair.]

M. Starchuk (Chair): We will call the meeting back to order.

Next up is Michelle Bennett, CUPE Kootenay district council.

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

The floor is yours.

CUPE KOOTENAY DISTRICT COUNCIL

M. Bennett: Thank you very much. I’m Michelle Bennett. I’m the president of the Kootenay district council.

I acknowledge that I’m presenting today on the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa peoples.

I’m very proud to be here on behalf of the council, which represents CUPE members, Canadian Union of Public Employees, in the East and West Kootenays.

Our members provide high-quality public services in local governments, libraries, transportation, public schools, child care, colleges and community social services. All three of our council’s recommendations today are about addressing affordability for the working people through high-quality public services.

Our first recommendation is to create and mandate a public housing developer to build publicly owned, high-quality, non-market housing with the resources required to address the scale of British Columbia’s housing crisis. The crisis is felt deeply in smaller communities, and this is especially true in the Kootenays. It’s not just a Lower Mainland problem.

Purchasing a home these days is simply not possible for most. People are struggling to find adequate housing that they can afford to even rent. The cost of purchasing a home and the lack of real rent control have put extreme pressure on the cost of rent, which inflates much faster than the wages have increased.

The government of British Columbia must take bold action to reimagine the future of housing for a growing number of citizens who, sadly, will never own their own homes. There are practical solutions that the province can afford. Building high-quality, non-market housing that is self-financed through the rents of occupants is one example.

The second recommendation is an investment in regional transit and increased transit service for rural communities. Having a transit system that runs between communities is great. Having one that works for working people, equity-seeking members, seniors and students should be the goal.

The impact of low-quality transit options in rural communities disproportionately impacts all of these community members. Public transit in the Kootenays, particularly between communities, runs too infrequently. In Nelson, the buses don’t run at all on Sundays.

In most rural parts of British Columbia, people must travel between communities to access employment, education and the health care that they require. Transit could provide an opportunity to reduce some of these out-of-control costs, such as fuel, as well as helping address climate change for working people and give them some relief. This is simply not an option when the service within and between communities is not frequent enough to provide for the trips required.

The province must invest to increase the number of buses moving in and between rural communities. The bus drivers out there provide an amazing service. They are dedicated and professional and make a huge difference in your citizens’ daily lives.

Finally, we believe that Budget 2024 must prioritize the investment in public child care options for B.C. families, creating seamless, integrated child care operated in-house in school districts. Many parents my age wish that this had happened years ago, when we could have used it. So from the bottom of all of our hearts, we want to say thank you for the work that you’ve done so far.

However, despite the historic investments by the B.C. government, families continue to face challenges finding reliable child care spaces. Without access to proper affordable spaces, parents are being forced into long commutes, multiple drop-off locations and times. If they are not able to find licensed spaces, they’re faced with anxiety and guilt over having to place their children in unlicensed child care spaces, or worse, they can’t go to work, which impacts the entire family.

[11:20 a.m.]

These struggles persist because B.C.’s model for child care is one in which nearly all child care, including those on school grounds, is not public. Parents are being downloaded with this market-based model. The fact is that parents cannot find affordable, reliable care in their community.

Child care is a precarious job. They don’t make a living wage. They have few benefits. There’s no access to a pension. The for-profit system has left parents with a lack of quality child care spaces because of the insufficient compensation to recruit and retain staff.

British Columbia needs a public option for school-aged care, one that provides reliable, stable access to child care in every community, in every school. Public child care in schools would mean fewer transitions, better care for kids, better jobs for workers, better access for affordable spaces that the parents need.

The public option in schools delivers these benefits while maintaining parents’ choice of school- or community-based care. This model could be implemented across our province using existing spaces, and, in many cases, using existing and underemployed staff already working in our school system.

Thank you for your time today. I know that being away from home and family and being on the road takes a toll on everyone. I just want to tell you that I appreciate you all, and I thank you, because I know you don’t hear that enough.

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

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

I just want to touch on regional transit. Since we lost Greyhound back in, I think it was, 2018 or something that, it really has been a noticeable difference just for commuting between communities for, like you said, employment, health care.

We talk about the travel assistance program, the TAP program, that’s available in B.C. for people to access for health care. The key part of that is that you need public transit to access that fund. So we literally have nothing as far as getting funding for our health care needs.

What would a regional transit system look like to you? Would it be something similar to Greyhound, or would it be a little bit more dedicated than that?

M. Bennett: I think, a little bit more dedicated would probably be helpful. I live in Nelson, where you can’t find anywhere to live — period. Even 20 years ago, housing was horrible there. We have members who live in Salmo, Castlegar and Trail, and a few of them can’t drive in the wintertime. They’ve had to quit, because there’s no way….

You can’t get there before work, and you can’t get home after work. My daughter had to drive to Castlegar to go to school. She had to drive. She wanted to take transit. It wasn’t possible for her to do it. There’s all over…. Happily, we would take the bus.

B. Stewart: Thanks very much. Really interesting points you made that made me just rethink. We’ve heard lots about child care and the model you’re talking about, the for-profit ones, and why that’s kind of unravelling, probably because of the fact that both parents are working. The fact is the model really was just supplemental income rather than a business.

When I think about the school system and using it…. Think about: how do you see that it works with the fact that people are working when the schools are closed? How would that work? Obviously there’s a cost to opening schools when they are closed during the summer holidays and things like that.

I’m making the assumption that it would require staff to open it up — like the people that maintain it, the janitors, etc. — just to be able to use that specific area of these schools. Have you done any kind of costs in terms of what that would be? Do you have any idea?

M. Bennett: Have I done any costs? No, I haven’t done any. I work all year. I work in a school, and custodians and maintenance are there all year. Where they have for-profit daycares, they run all year. Honestly, as a custodian, it’s kind of a pain sometimes, because you’d like to be able to go in and wax the floor. But you can’t, so you make other arrangements.

How our school district has always worked was that it was always pretty much cost-neutral. We have a pilot project in Winlaw, and it’s working just fine with an ECE.

B. Stewart: So year-round.

M. Bennett: No, it doesn’t run. But the daycares do.

B. Stewart: The daycares run year-round.

M. Bennett: The daycares run year-round. They already do.

B. Stewart: Okay, all right.

[11:25 a.m.]

M. Bennett: There are already custodians in the schools all year, so it would be minimal cost for that. Education assistants technically aren’t ECEs, but they can take a responsible adult course, which is 20 hours — which is kind of sad. It would be really great if education assistants could be grandfathered in as being able to do that work, because we have a lot of education assistants. Even though they’ve been there for 30 years, their pensions are lacking, and a lot would jump at the chance to work year-round.

It’s a great job when you have little kids, but they grow up. Then they have grandkids, which are even better.

M. Starchuk (Chair): On that note, Michelle, thank you very much for your presentation and for the work that you do in the community.

M. Bennett: Thank you. If you have any questions, just yell.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next we have Sara Jacklin, Summit Community Services Society.

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

SUMMIT COMMUNITY SERVICES SOCIETY

S. Jacklin: Perfect, thank you. Michelle did half of my work.

I am in child care. I can answer your question. It costs us $60 per day to use a school in Lindsay Park. We just started an after-school program that will run all year round. During the summer time, it will be $60 per day, which will offset the cost for a janitor service.

I’m Sarah Jacklin. I’m the executive director for Summit Community Services Society, which is located here in Cranbrook.

I want to acknowledge that Summit Community Services Society operates on the unceded territory of the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket people, and we honour these grounds.

Summit Community Services Society has been in operation since 1973. So this is our 50th year of operation, which is very exciting. Annually, Summit helps over 2,200 local residents through our programs, which include child care facilities across both Kimberley and Cranbrook, services for domestic assault survivors, along with our police-based victim services and our program for seniors.

Our services are directed to some of the community’s most vulnerable people. There are several areas in which we struggle to find adequate funding, and we hope that you would take this into consideration in your budget process for 2024.

As you know, across the province, child care operators have been closing, due to staffing shortages. Currently the government offers a $4 top-up to registered early childhood educators, and the average wage for an early childhood educator with a two-year diploma is between $17 and $24 per hour. In comparison, the average wage for an education assistant, who also takes a similar diploma program, is between $20 and $29 per hour.

The discrepancies between these two very similar positions see many potential early childhood educators move into education assistant programs instead. It’s instances like these that further strain the child care system and increase our already huge wait-lists.

Although the province has begun many initiatives like the $4 top-up, we hope to see these initiatives become more permanent, rather than annual contracts, so that staff have more stability. By introducing permanent funding for top-ups and benefits like pension plans and provincial wage grids, child care will become a more viable career path and allow us to better serve the kids in the community.

Another area that we feel needs to be addressed is funding for our ministry contracts for our community program workers. Many of our positions are grossly underfunded for the required education level that is expected.

For example, our Stopping the Violence counselling program, which assists people who have experienced domestic assault, requires a high level of experience as well as schooling to ensure that clients’ complex needs are met. Although a master’s degree is required to provide trauma support for clients like these, the program’s contracts are not funded taking this into account, and many health authorities with similar positions offer wages above and beyond what we can offer. This leaves programs unable to entice qualified staff.

Finally, one of the other considerations we’d like you to take into account is funding for administration and other operational costs. As a non-profit, it’s virtually impossible for us to find operational funding streams or grants. To operate well, non-profits need to recruit staff, retain staff, maintain our buildings, provide human resources support and ensure that our technology is up to date. It’s often very difficult to find grants that are willing to cover anything like this.

[11:30 a.m.]

That leaves a large gap for us to compete with for-profits for the limited pool of qualified workers. We do this, as I mentioned, on a shoestring budget or sometimes no budget at all. Many non-profits have fallen behind in places like recruitment and resource management, technology, human resources and other areas, due to this lack of funding. This leaves many gaps in organizations, and in turn, can reduce the quality of service.

I’m grateful this for this opportunity to speak with you, and I will now answer any questions you may have.

M. Starchuk (Chair): All right, Sarah. Thank you very much for your presentation.

G. Chow: Thank you for your presentation.

Can you expand a bit on that $60 a day?

S. Jacklin: Yeah. We have partnered with school district 6, which is one of the few school districts in the province to really be gung-ho about providing child care in their spaces. The costs that they are recouping for the $60 a day of being open in the summer is only to cover operational costs like janitorial service or any maintenance that we would be in their space when we’re operating.

G. Chow: So that’s five days a week. That would be $300 a week.

S. Jacklin: Correct.

G. Chow: For parents.

S. Jacklin: No, that’s our cost. Those are the operational costs for us, right? We have parents pay a fee, and then that helps offset that coverage. It’s no longer…. We’re not making any profits. It’s just in-and-out service due to that charge. There are so many parents that need that service we’re…. Yeah.

G. Chow: Your cost is $60 a day.

S. Jacklin: Correct. Yeah.

G. Chow: How many hours in operation?

S. Jacklin: Eight hours per day. And this is the first summer that we will run a fully functioning program out of a school space.

S. Chant: What is your census in that school? How many kids can you see?

S. Jacklin: So 24 kids per space.

We operate out of the library, which has been the most successful, because teachers put a lot of work into their classroom space. For us to go in there is just not going to happen. So we operate out of the library, and that model has been working the best for us, and that does allow 24 kids, which is a good handful of kids.

In terms of wait-lists for our programs with 24 kids, there are probably about 60 kids on the wait-list. That is one of our smallest wait-lists.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Sarah, you made reference to recruiting and maintaining staff. Are wages the top concern, or are there other ancillary concerns to that?

S. Jacklin: Wages are the top concern. We just can’t compete, in terms of what EAs are offered, with pension plans and different benefits that the school district offers. So retention is a challenge for us.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Sarah, for every­thing you guys do. It’s a huge part of our community, ensuring that the continuum of care to those most vulnerable is in place. Your asks here all basically have the same theme, and that’s just basically keeping those services in place. So it’s not an unrealistic ask at all.

Of all the services you provide, is there one in particular that is the most stressed or strained, or is it pretty much the whole system?

S. Jacklin: Child care is the most strained. Yeah.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): That’s just on the retention and attraction of staff?

S. Jacklin: Yeah, there are more human resources needs because there is a higher number of staff. It’s just all-encompassing in terms of meeting licensing requirements, and it’s just the most taxing. And parents are frustrated.

T. Shypitka (Deputy Chair): Right. We’ve heard time and time again about child care needs across the province — that it’s not a social issue; it’s an economic one. What we provide can have a huge ripple effect on economic growth in our province. Thanks for keeping that going.

To the committee members: if you want a solution to some of these problems, here it is right here. Let’s get to work.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Are there any other comments or questions? Okay, not seeing any.

Sarah, thank you very much for your time and your presentation this morning.

S. Jacklin: Thank you, everyone.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Next up, we have Natalie Hake, Canadian Mental Health Association for the Kootenays.

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

The floor is yours.

CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH
ASSOCIATION, KOOTENAYS

N. Hake: Thank you.

Firstly, I’d like to recognize that it’s a privilege to live and reside in the unceded traditional territory of Ktunaxa, the Métis and many other Aboriginal peoples.

[11:35 a.m.]

Hello, Chair and committee. I’m very grateful to have this opportunity to speak with you about this important topic today. My name is Natalie Hake. I am the director for crisis services and public education for the Canadian Mental Health Association for the Kootenays. I’m also here to represent the many community members who are in some kind of a crisis and to share with you the escalation of these needs that we are desperately wanting to support on our crisis lines.

One of my roles with CMHA is managing and supporting our crisis lines. These include the Interior crisis line network, 310 mental health and our 1-800-SUICIDE lines. We have a call centre here in Cranbrook which is staffed. We are also fortunate enough that some of our very caring community members also want to help people and answer the crisis lines, to do what they can to help others as our volunteers.

I am here today simply because our crisis lines and our community members are in some sort of crisis, which is a very sad situation. I’m asking for $80,000 from your committee to help support us to add more staffing to our lines. This will greatly increase our call-answer rate, support people in crisis and, ultimately, save lives. I have kept in mind, with that funding, that we’re also keeping up with our current wages.

Being in a smaller community, there are barriers to having a larger volunteer base, so we depend on funding to help us answer the cries of the world. It could be anywhere from somebody’s bad day to their very worst day. To give you an idea of what it looks like from our perspective, we are answering 40 percent more calls than pre-pandemic. And because we do not have enough support with this increase of calls, we are missing approximately 50 to 55 percent of calls, which is a crisis and which is why I am sitting here before you today.

I also want to share a quick story which will provide you a bit of insight on how our responders are navigating calls and working to de-escalate callers in crisis, which ultimately is going to contribute to our community wellness.

We received a call late one night not too long ago where a woman was very emotional and described having a very difficult time finding a reason to live due to some major stressors in her life. Now, these are not rare calls. We’ve seen an increase in many people’s abilities to cope with the amount of stressors that are happening. She was stuck. She was isolated. She was scared.

The responder who took the call was able to calmly and respectfully listen to her fears and her stressors while assessing her safety. As the caller became more comfortable and less isolated talking with our responder, the caller shared a very specific suicide plan and had the means to act on that plan. The fact that she knew she could call the crisis line for support was validated, and the responder was able to de-escalate that caller while empathizing with this caller’s situation, and ultimately created a plan of safety for the time being. We had the opportunity to help this caller keep herself safe, which potentially saved her life in that moment.

I’m going to ask: please consider supporting us with a sustainable amount of funding to continue to support people in our communities who are living with mental health issues and problems and are struggling to cope.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Natalie, thank you for your presentation, and thank you for representing those people that are out there.

Take a deep breath. That is a very good story with a good end to what’s there.

S. Chant: Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the work that you do.

You’re asking for $80,000 — annually, ongoing or…?

N. Hake: Sure. That would be wonderful. You know what? Even if we could get a year of funding, it would make a significant difference.

When I broke that number down, it’s adding two positions of 21 hours per week for two people, so 42 more hours of our calls being answered. Typically, within a seven-hour shift, we’re averaging around ten calls. Imagine the difference that’s going to make to our call-answer rate. We’re going to be able to support more people.

S. Chant: Your call-answer line — what are the operational hours of it?

N. Hake: It’s 24-7. We are a branch of five. The Interior crisis line network is Kelowna, Vernon, Williams Lake, Trail and Cranbrook. I’m here on behalf of the Cranbrook site because each branch is responsible. So we definitely….

[11:40 a.m.]

I mean, these 50 to 55 percent missed calls are not just within our region. It is provincially, actually. It’s a crisis.

S. Chant: So 50 to 55 percent of calls are missed.

N. Hake: We just don’t have enough people in the seats answering the phone. It would be wonderful to be able to have the opportunity to create some more job positions for people in our community and to help others in our community.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Before we go, and if you don’t mind, Natalie, how do you verify the 55 percent number that you’ve missed?

N. Hake: Oh, we collect that within our statistics. We have a wonderful database. We actually have a couple of databases that we use to collect stats, not only contractually but just to keep up with what’s going on.

Through our virtual call centre, we’re able to track when we miss calls, calls aren’t being answered. They go into a queue, then people will give up after a while and hang up. This is the reality of it. It is really hard to swallow that sometimes — that you can’t do anything else about it. We just hope that these people will call back.

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

As you can tell, Natalie — she wears her heart on her sleeve. A very huge resource here in the Kootenays for sure. Natalie’s group has assisted our staff in taking suicide prevention and all those kind of great things that you do. Thank you so much.

Missing 50 to 55 percent of the calls is a troubling statistic. You know how much good you do when you get some of those calls. It’s unfortunate, the jobs you can’t do when you miss those calls.

So $80,000 funding, I think, Susie mentioned. Is that ongoing? I wasn’t sure if I understood that or not. You’d need to retain and keep those jobs in place and, at the end of the year, if that funding is unknown, they may leave, right? Maybe a better ask would be sustainable funding throughout. Is that kind of what you’re asking?

N. Hake: Yes. Oh, yes. Like I said, from where I sit and my perspective from my seat in mental health, this is a big deal. We really, really need that extra help, definitely. With the funding that we receive, unfortunately, it is not enough. It’s up to us to go out and do fundraising and find funding and support our communities. That, again, is why I’m sitting here.

B. Stewart: Thanks, Natalie. You were talking about the shortage and the need here and how you operate with Kelowna and some of the other CMH operations. I guess when we’re looking at it holistically, are they all in the same situation?

N. Hake: The only difference between the branches is the amount of people they have. For example, with Kelowna or Vernon, they live in a larger demographic, so they have a larger volunteer pool, whereas for us in Cranbrook here, it is a little bit more of a barrier to get volunteers. We rely more on funding so that we can have more confirmed seats, people answering the phone.

B. Stewart: So it’s more of a specific regional issue versus something that…. Okay.

N. Hake: Well, this is a crisis all around. I’ll just say that. But I’m speaking on behalf of our branch and what our responsibility is to our community members. Does that make sense?

B. Banman: Natalie, thank you for what you do. Your request doesn’t seem to be that large, considering some of the requests we’ve heard.

I’m going to maybe, perhaps, ask a question that you might not be able to answer. There’s no doubt that we have a rise in mental health issues, in those that are calling out for help because they just can’t…. They don’t want to be on the earth anymore, and they want to do that ultimate suicide, which…. Thank you for preventing that.

Do you have any idea as to what the underlying cause of this rise is, and is there anything we can do ahead of time so that we can — no offence — put you out of business because we don’t have this problem anymore?

N. Hake: Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

There are so many contributing factors here. Collecting statistics every month helps me to kind of evaluate that. We’ve seen a rise due to multiple stressors in people’s lives. The main contributors of most calls are mental health–​related: grief, sadness, depression, anxiety. Contributing factors: relationships; homelessness — homelessness is a big one; violence; abuse; addictions. It’s a huge ripple effect. Typically, when people are calling, they’re quite complex problems.

[11:45 a.m.]

To see something happen…. I think with the crisis line, we’re doing such a great job with de-escalating, providing people with resources if that’s what they want at that time, helping them make a plan and move forward, and just being an ear for them to go: “I’m having a really tough time right now. I don’t know who to talk to.” I think that in itself is really helpful. It’s always good to feel heard, especially…. Some people that live in isolation don’t have that.

I think this is a huge, bigger picture than what I could even imagine. What would actually ultimately reduce this…. Our systems are lacking. A lot of people are burning out in our medical and mental health field, and it’s almost like we’ve just been running, and we haven’t stopped.

I wish I had an answer, that: “If we do this, everything will be better.” But it’s overwhelming.

H. Yao: Thank you so much. I really appreciate what you do.

N. Hake: Thank you, Henry.

H. Yao: I used to be a bc211 call-taker, so I know exactly where you’re coming from. I actually used to do this professionally.

I’m actually surprised that you’re only asking for $80,000. I was hoping you would ask for more.

Interjections.

H. Yao: You guys might find it funny, but 40 hours of training is not enough for volunteers. Almost every volunteer who will handle a potential suicide call requires debriefing. They need someone to go through a process with them. I personally had to handle quite a few interventions myself. I had to call police to actually go in to knock down a person’s door while I was holding the person on the line.

You can tell that this is a topic that bothers me. So thank you for your great work that you’re doing.

I know one thing about bc211 that we learn from that is…. Because it’s a phone call, and you can use the phone lines along the technology system to allow integrated support for one….

For example, if you have a region that doesn’t have enough volunteers, you can actually try to funnel the phone call to another region so the other volunteers can support. Are there any kinds of coordinated efforts being established to make sure different crisis centres can work together?

I know there’s also talk about a fourth crisis line that could be potentially part of a 911 call to support individuals….

Sorry, go ahead. My apologies.

N. Hake: That’s okay. I think I got it.

So number one…. From what I understand, you’re asking about the connection between the sites, kind of covering each other with the lines?

H. Yao: Like, to help each other.

N. Hake: Here’s the thing. We have an excellent Interior crisis line network. The problem is that we don’t have enough people in all the seats as the calls are coming in. Let’s say there are eight responders on over the five sites, and they’re all on a call or in the middle of an intervention…. Those are lengthier calls, as you know. They can be up to an hour.

It’s like I was saying earlier. We’re getting more calls than we can handle. Yeah, we do collaborate, and we work very closely together. That’s why I’m sitting here. It’s concerning, and it’s upsetting, especially when we’re seeing people in the queue, and we can’t get them.

H. Yao: My apologies. Maybe I wasn’t being clear about my question.

Obviously, different regions of British Columbia have higher population densities. So I’m just wondering. Is there any kind of potential consideration to maybe working with an urban area like Vancouver or like Victoria? The technology could cross over. But if it’s a phone call across technology…. Or do you see it as regional, because people will understand a neighbourhood or community better, so it’s actually better to have a local individual addressing the phone calls?

N. Hake: That being said, when there’s an overflow of calls…. I’m going to use Vancouver Island as an example. They’re coming to the Kootenays. We’re getting calls from the Island, so out of our region. So we’re actually navigating those as well, because they’re short-staffed over on that end, if that makes sense.

I think, ideally, it’s always great to be in the same community or region as your callers, because you can identify with the lifestyle and the current things that are going on in their communities.

I hope I’m understanding you right. Am I understanding you right? Okay.

M. Starchuk (Chair): Natalie, thanks for your presentation. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind here of the passion behind the presentation that’s here today and the work that you do for the people that are in crisis at the time it’s there. So thank you for taking the time out of your day today.

On that note, before we adjourn, before we head off to Revelstoke, I wanted to thank MLA Shypitka for his PSA for the region, several of them.

On that note, a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

M. Starchuk (Chair): See you all in Revelstoke.

The committee adjourned at 11:49 a.m.