2016 Legislative Session: Fifth Session, 40th Parliament
HANSARD
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
official report of
Debates of the Legislative Assembly
(hansard)
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Afternoon Sitting
Volume 37, Number 2
ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)
ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)
CONTENTS | |
Page | |
Orders of the Day | |
Committee of the Whole House | 12089 |
Bill 12 — Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2016 (continued) | |
H. Bains | |
Hon. S. Thomson | |
B. Routley | |
Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room | |
Committee of Supply | 12116 |
Estimates: Ministry of Education (continued) | |
Hon. M. Bernier | |
R. Fleming | |
J. Wickens | |
S. Hammell | |
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016
The House met at 1:32 p.m.
[Madame Speaker in the chair.]
Orders of the Day
Hon. M. Polak: In this chamber, I call continued committee stage debate on Bill 12 and, in Committee A, the continued debate of the estimates of the Ministry of Education.
Committee of the Whole House
BILL 12 — FORESTS, LANDS AND
NATURAL RESOURCE OPERATIONS
STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 2016
The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 12; R. Chouhan in the chair.
The committee met at 1:34 p.m.
On section 1 (continued).
H. Bains: I think where we left, the minister was to provide an answer to the question that I asked. I think it’s the minister.
The Chair: Minister.
Hon. S. Thomson: Thank you, Chair. Welcome to the chair.
I hope I can provide the answer and clarify this in a way, I think, where the member opposite was going. I want to restate the question, just so I make sure I’ve understood the question. I think what the member opposite asked specifically was: could the minister issue a new non–B.C. Timber Sales licence — which would be, for example, licence A — and use the proposed reduction legislation to take volume from another non–B.C. Timber Sales licence? I think that was the essence of the question.
The answer to that is no. This legislation doesn’t provide for that. The proposed legislation cannot be used to take volume and reduce the harvesting rights of one non–B.C. Timber Sales licence — in this case, in the example, licence B — to support the issuance of a new or expanded non–B.C. Timber Sales licence, licence A.
The volume to support new or expanded licences will come from unallocated AAC in some management units where it exists and in other management units from B.C. Timber Sales. The reduction in this bill refers to the volume transferred from the new or expanded licence to B.C. Timber Sales. No other licences are involved.
H. Bains: That is a different answer than we were going through before the break, but it’s much more clear. I appreciate that.
I think the question still remains. Where is this unallocated timber, and how is it coming to BCTS? Then, if that’s the case, what is the purpose of having this clause in there? It says amend the definition of AAC to allow a reduction under section 35(1), a reduction under section 43.3, a reduction under section 43.55. Further down, which we will talk about later, is a reduction under section 14(1).
There are provisions for a reduction. If you’re not able to take from the one licensee to support the other licensee…. I think that’s what the minister….
The minister was using that example. The example of the Haida was used. They needed 80,000. We had only, say, 65,000, and that additional 15,000 is needed. Under those circumstances, you could take away from non-BCTS and allocate to the Haida, as I understood the answer. Or BCTS can, from its own, add to that. I think that’s the way, as I understood, it was being explained. Then, having the ability to have a reduction of the Haida, the portion that is given to them…. So they could still be seen to be part of BCTS for the purpose of the 20 percent and having the market pricing.
When would the reduction take place, then, if you cannot take from one licensee to add to another or to create another? When will you actually be in a position to utilize this section, where you want to reduce someone’s AAC?
Hon. S. Thomson: Hopefully, with the previous explanation, which the member opposite said was clearer — and I apologize for the potential lack of clarity here….
Where this takes place is…. This is on newly issued licences and/or with the consent of the holder of an existing licence, under the provisions of a newly issued one, which is the additional authority that is provided here around making it part of the terms and conditions of the licence.
Volume is provided to the licensee under a newly issued licence, whatever that volume may be. That could come from a combination of unallocated AAC in an area.
When we do apportionment decisions, we set aside AAC for that purpose for First Nations woodland licences or for a community forest or for woodlots. It’s all part of the apportionment decision. We have an apportionment for B.C. Timber Sales as part of that decision.
When you allocate the new licence, you can — and as we move further into the legislation and the amendments here around the terms and conditions that can be part of it — then, under this, reduce the amount of the new licence by that amount that is given back to B.C. Timber Sales to auction for a period.
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The terms and conditions can be for a period of time. It could be for a number of years, a certain volume — that kind of process. It’s a reduction of that licence — the newly issued licence — for a period of time under terms and conditions that are negotiated between the newly issued licensee and B.C. Timber Sales. That’s why we have the reduction provisions in the legislation.
I’ll just use an example. You could go to…. A community forest is looking for an opportunity, and you come to them and say, “We’ve got 20,000 cubic metres of unallocated volume here — AAC — that we could use for that community forest opportunity,” or: “We’ve got a community forest, First Nations.”
You could say: “You could have that, or you could have a 30,000- or 35,000-cubic-metre community forest licence.”
Part of that requirement, part of the conditions, to have that licence will be that some of that volume will need to be reduced from that licence initially — for whatever terms and conditions are determined — back to BCTS to maintain the pricing system.
As well, you can have the separate business-to-business arrangements between the community forest and BCTS, for example, around contract opportunities. Those could all be part of the conditions.
What we’ve heard from community forests and First Nations is that, given a choice between an X-volume licence or an X-volume licence with more volume in it but some of it reserved through an agreement back to B.C. Timber Sales, in those circumstances where it makes sense and the opportunity is there, we think that the community forests will….
We’ve had the discussions with the Community Forest Association. We’ve had the discussions with the First Nations Forestry Council and others on this process. We think they would take that second opportunity, because they get a larger volume. They get benefit from some of that volume being reserved and reduced, back to B.C. Timber Sales for an agreement. They would get the benefit out of it. It goes into the licence holder.
We think, under those circumstances, it’s going to give us an extra tool that’s going help us build on those objectives and meet the two objectives, the mutual objectives here, of expanding First Nations opportunities and community opportunities, and maintaining the integrity of the B.C. Timber Sales market pricing system at the same time, using the same square metre of AAC — trying to achieve both objectives.
As we said, it will be used sparingly, on a limited basis. There will be areas and circumstances…. I used one example on Haida Gwaii, where that opportunity will make sense. It’s already being worked on. The legislation provides us the opportunity to do that as we go further in the legislation, setting the terms and conditions and time for that agreement.
H. Bains: Okay, so I think what this means is that…. Let’s use this as an example. BCTS, for example, has — just for the sake of easy numbers — 100,000 cubic metres of timber, and licensee X has 10,000. BCTS or the minister or the forest manager decides that 5,000 from BCTS should go to this licensee X to make it 15,000 for them, for that licensee.
That’s one thing that I understand, because there’s a definition, BCTS, being changed as well. I think that’s probably what that is, but we’ll get into to that as well.
On paper, yes, licensee X is getting 5,000 extra. But BCTS or the ministry will be saying that that licensee X’s AAC is being reduced to 10,000 or whatever they had before. The 5,000 comes back to BCTS for them to manage, but the benefit goes back to licensee X. Is that basically how this will work?
Hon. S. Thomson: I think the example the member opposite uses is essentially correct. Maybe I’ll just take it back down to the basics again. In order to meet the objectives…. I’ll just use a theoretical example again. You said you’ve got 100,000 apportioned to BCTS as their apportionment out of an AAC set for an area. You’ve got some unallocated volume that you can provide to a community forest or to a First Nation licence, whatever that may be. Let’s say it is 10,000 cubic metres.
We recognize that 10,000 cubic metres, in the shorter term, is not going to create a fully viable unit for that opportunity, so we would look to take BCTS volume and add it to that and give them an expanded opportunity. But in order to maintain the integrity of the system, we would have an agreement that says that if you took ten from BCTS and made the community forest 20, you would reduce that volume for a period of time. It could be for the term of the licence. It could be for a set period of time. Then the community forest would have that volume, depending on the management objectives and things like that.
It provides that opportunity, and it would be for a benefit. The community forest, the First Nation, gets the benefit of a new opportunity. It gets the benefit of the financial benefit. There would be a benefit paid to the entity for providing that back to BCTS. BCTS gets to auction it and maintain the pricing point.
We see it as a tool, as I said, used on limited opportunities and in limited areas where it makes sense. But we think it’s an important additional tool to have.
We had the debate all the way through Bill 25 on this, around the disposition agreements. The purpose of what we’ve done here is taking the next step that would allow us to actually make that a term and a condition of a licence, on a new licence going forward.
I point out clearly that it doesn’t apply to existing licences unless there was consent or agreement. There may be situations where there is an existing licensee — for
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existing community forests, for example — that would look to provide some of that back for purposes, for a benefit. If it fit within their management plan and their purposes, they could do that on a voluntary basis.
The only use of the provisions that are in this legislation would be on a go-forward basis on newly issued licences.
H. Bains: In plain words, the intent here is, then, to benefit new licensees at the expense of BCTS. Because when you only look at the benefits, BCTS, in the example that I…. BCTS is losing 5,000, and the licensee is gaining 5,000. But because that volume is coming back to B.C., on paper, to show that BCTS has maintained the integrity of the system at 100 percent…. Actually, they don’t have 100 percent. They have only 95 percent of the allocation.
I think that’s basically what it is: at the expense of BCTS. Because the 5 percent…. Although it still shows on their books, for numbers purposes, that they still maintain 20 percent to satisfy the 20 percent of timber pricing, there’s a licensee who is benefiting from that 5,000. All the benefits of the 5,000, although BCTS shows and manages it, goes back to the licensee. That’s what the purpose is.
Hon. S. Thomson: Yeah. As I said earlier, this is about balancing objectives. The alternative would be a decision that says: “No. In order to maintain the integrity of the system, we can’t provide that opportunity.”
It comes down to a choice. This is about balancing it. The community licensee or the First Nation benefits because they get the opportunity for an expanded…. They get benefits from the agreement to provide the volume back to BCTS to be auctioned. BCTS pays a benefit for that. There are the ancillary benefits that would come in that arrangement around contracting opportunities, management opportunities that could be provided as part of that.
This is not about winners or losers. This is about not creating a loser because you can’t find the way to land a community forest opportunity, a First Nations woodland licence opportunity, a woodlot or anything like that because you’ve got such scarce volume.
I look at it as being an additional benefit to the communities; a benefit to B.C. Timber Sales, in the sense that they have a way to help support community objectives and those objectives without losing the integrity of the market pricing system. As I’ve said, the terms and conditions can be for a period of time, and then the full volume stays with the licensee.
I see it as win on one side, less…. Maybe you could portray it as not a full win for B.C. Timber Sales, but an opportunity for us to help build community opportunities and First Nations woodland licences without a big significant negative impact on B.C. Timber Sales because they lose the amount of volume that needs to maintain that system. It’s a way to meet both objectives.
H. Bains: I get it now. It is — as the minister finally has put it — that at the expense of BCTS, a licensee will benefit. BCTS will maintain the integrity of the timber pricing system. I get that. Now we know what the purpose behind this is.
My next question is: what portion of BCTS can be reallocated into new licences, as we just finished talking about? I understand that, roughly, BCTS has about 13 million cubic metres today, or thereabouts. How much of that can be apportioned to go into new licences? Can all of it be gone? Can some of it? What percentage?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, as I pointed out earlier, we see this being used in limited circumstances where our first effort to provide these opportunities is to do it with existing apportionment room in our apportionment decisions.
Based on the current commitments, discussions, underway…. This is to support opportunities that have been developing and been worked on with community forests and First Nations woodland licences. I’m advised that the current volume being considered in the number of opportunities we have represents about 130,000 cubic metres per year, less than 1 percent of the B.C. Timber Sales’ annual apportionment — again, a very limited amount with the opportunities that are there.
If it all works successfully, I can see more interest and opportunities coming forward as we try to build the opportunities for those communities and First Nations and woodlots. But again, a very limited amount now.
I still see it going forward as being used judiciously and sparingly as far as volumes are concerned. Obviously, if we gave it all away, it would have a significant impact. It has a significant impact on provincial revenue. There would be a concern around whether you really have got the integrity still in the market pricing system.
It’s a way to do it on a limited basis and provide those opportunities. We see it as being a very small percentage of the existing apportionment to B.C. Timber Sales on a provincial basis.
H. Bains: It’s nice for the minister to say that currently only 100,000 is being considered and it will be utilized on a limited basis. I appreciate that. But where in this bill restricts you to 100,000 or 200,000 a year or five million a year? I would like to draw my attention. I can’t find it, unless I missed it here.
Are there any limitations in this bill that would put limits on the minister’s ability to apportion only certain parts of BCTS or limited amounts of BCTS’ AAC?
Hon. S. Thomson: I’m sure the member opposite has looked hard through the legislation to find the limitation. There is no limitation on the amount that could be utilized. The reality is…. Our preference is to have full licences issued to community forests without the com-
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plication of that, the decision back, to keep BCTS whole to the degree possible, in terms of their volume.
It would be used on a very limited basis, and only be used where it makes sense and where there is a real need in the community to look for an additional opportunity — where there is a need around supporting opportunities of First Nations through the First Nations woodland licences.
I’m not concerned that this opens up a floodgate of opportunities or a floodgate of arrangements that would see BCTS really negatively impacted. We will use the ability here sparingly and where it makes sense.
H. Bains: But the fact remains. We go, and we are guided, by the act. The act is before us. There is no limitation. I think that’s the concern.
Perhaps the minister now can advise the House: before these changes, under the current act, can BCTS’s AAC or the apportioned part be reallocated to create new licences from the existing BCTS volume?
Hon. S. Thomson: Under the current Forest Act, we can set apportionment. I can take BCTS volume and apportion it elsewhere when you are making the apportionment decisions around that. Theoretically, you can do that. It then significantly puts it at risk — the market pricing system, the integrity — if I do that. What we’ve got here, under those limited circumstances, is the ability to take limited amounts of those and still meet both objectives.
Again, go back to the original. The intent of this is to provide that opportunity on a limited basis, without simply using the tool that says, “We’re just going to take it away,” in order to meet those other objectives. We want to do it in a way that helps provide those opportunities.
As we’ve said, it’s only on the issuing of new licences. It doesn’t impact existing licences unless there is consent. That could happen, where there may be an agreement that they would like to do that — so a limited basis.
Again, it’s around that situation where I end up with a choice of saying, “We can give you a 20,000 cubic metre community forest,” or, “We can give you a 30,000 or 40,000 metre community forest,” or, “We can give you an 80,000 metre community forest” — as we’re working through on Haida Gwaii — “but we’ll have to have it on this basis and with this provision back.”
I think, on balance, it provides the opportunity. We’ve worked through the consultation process with the associations on this. They support this opportunity because they see the potential to have an added financial benefit into the entities — into either the community forests or the First Nations woodland licences or a new woodlot. We’re responding to those situations where we see that opportunity.
B. Routley: I thank the minister for some of the clarification that we’re getting on exactly what this does mean. I do support, in some instances…. There’s a need to be able to deal when you’ve got a limited timber supply. So much of our forest is overcommitted that I get it that you’re looking for community forest opportunities or for First Nations or for woodlot.
My thinking went to: is there an opportunity to…? This may be something you may or may not have thought of before. I get it that one of the things that government has to be concerned about is the softwood lumber deal, right? The whole goal of providing timber available to the free market is to have that provided through B.C. Timber Sales. I’m also aware that other forest companies throughout British Columbia do have some portion from time to time that may be available, because their own needs are already met within their fibre supply, to put in a free market system.
I guess my question…. You used this example. Let’s go to your example of unallocated timber and B.C. Timber Sales timber being put together, bundled together to create a community licence. Is there any reason why the minister couldn’t take the unallocated portion and get the benefit of that back, even if it was a part of it, a part of the…? Let’s use…. I think you were using ten and ten — 10,000 cubic metres unallocated and 10,000 that’s B.C. Timber Sales. If you were to take that unallocated and if B.C. Timber Sales got a commitment that a portion of that was going to be managed in such a way, let’s say, that 50 percent of it was going to be sold on the open market by the community, what advantage would there be?
I have seen, myself, up in Haida Gwaii, where a log seller, instead of having maybe 16 sorts, had 52 different sorts. In other words, they sorted for grade, so it was log grades as well as the species that they were identifying, trying to get maximum value out of every single log. I know, myself, again from experience, that some companies that do that extract more value out of the timber by using a little innovation.
In my mind, why can’t B.C. Timber Sales contract out, if you like — I can’t believe I’m saying these words — some portion to the community for the purposes of their being able to show that the market was satisfied? The community sells 50 percent of their timber supply on the open market, and 50 percent of it goes allocated to the local log home builder or specialty logs for building totems, for example, in the case of, say, Haida Gwaii. If there’s some portion that’s sold on the market, why couldn’t there be arrangements made so that B.C. Timber Sales gets the benefit of others’ open markets? That’s really what I’m saying.
Again, you may have already considered this. Maybe it’s out of the question for some reason that I am unaware of. I would be interested because I think the overall goal, and I know my friend’s concern is: do we have a shrinking problem with B.C. Timber Sales, and is there a way to expand that? I think that’s what you’re trying to do — expand it.
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Are there new and innovative ways that you could expand the timber sales? Your staff would know more than I would.
For example, if a company was selling part of their timber supply on the open market, is there any reason why you couldn’t find a way to get credit for that to B.C. Timber Sales?
Hon. S. Thomson: That’s a really good question that the member opposite has raised. You know, this was before my time, but my understanding is that idea was looked at extensively at the beginning, when the system was set up. The result, and with the current market pricing system….
One of the keys to the current market pricing system is the consistency of having all of the same provisions and rules, whether that means…. If we looked at those opportunities there, they would have to comply with the same registrant pools, with the same advertising process — all of those rules. It would add significant costs to the community forest or the First Nation operation.
In order to maintain the credibility, one of the keys to it all is that it’s developed and auctioned in a consistent manner. As a single entity across the province, B.C. Timber Sales is uniquely situated to provide that function. A disproportionate amount of time would be required to resolve all the complex issues of accepting that data from a non–B.C. Timber Sales source for that market pricing system.
It has been looked at, but it has been determined that it wouldn’t provide the benefits that the member opposite outlined. What we’ve looked at here, in this process, is the ability to provide those benefits through to community forests and First Nations woodland licences, woodlots, through this process by having the agreement back and keeping the integrity and the base in B.C. Timber Sales that supports the current market pricing system.
B. Routley: If my notes serve me correctly, I had you saying that these reductions will apply to tree farm licences, community forests, First Nations and woodlots. I wondered if there were any other kinds of forest licences that were missing. For example, what about timber supply areas?
Are there any other licences that may or may not be included by these definitions and the sections that are applied here?
Hon. S. Thomson: The population of licences that this applies to: tree farm licences, forest licences, CFAs, First Nations woodland licences and woodlots. That’s the provisions. I’m not aware of other opportunities in forest licences to cut or…. Those kinds of things don’t lend themselves to this. It is the core of the licensing opportunities that the legislation makes provision for.
B. Routley: Does this specifically apply to the coast, then, of B.C.?
Hon. S. Thomson: It could be used on the coast or the Interior. It’s not regionally specific.
B. Routley: Do you know if you have plans to include the Interior in some of the…? You did use coastal examples like the Haida. I wondered if you had any examples in the Interior or the north.
The Chair: Through the Chair, Member.
Hon. S. Thomson: As I said, this is provincial legislation. It applies across the province. There are some discussions underway for potential opportunities in the Interior. I did reference a couple of examples, or one specific example, on the coast, because that one is well advanced.
There are others that are in discussion, and in terms of not prejudicing some of those discussions, I don’t want to list them and name them. But particularly, as we look for First Nations woodland licence opportunities…. I regularly get representation from communities around community forests. Part of the legislation, as you know, going further on in the legislation, is some amendments that provide for the opportunity for expansion of community forest boundaries.
There are some opportunities under discussion. We will look, as I said, to deploy this, utilize this, where it makes sense and where the opportunities exist on that limited basis. But this is legislation that’s provincial in scope.
B. Routley: One of your examples you were talking about was the Haida. In fact, I did hear about that when I was up that way. Were First Nations consulted about these proposals or this new idea?
Hon. S. Thomson: Yes, there were discussions with First Nations in this process and through the Bill 25 development process previously and now these changes, the First Nations Forestry Council. It should be noted many of the opportunities that are currently being utilized or that are being advanced involve First Nations. These are around First Nations woodland licences. It’s a significant benefit and opportunity for them. So the short answer is yes.
B. Routley: Okay, and to be clear, using your example of the 80,000 cubic metres in Haida Gwaii, for example, I don’t know what percentage of that, but let’s just say that it was 50 percent B.C. Timber Sales. Now, just to be clear, does B.C. Timber Sales get that right by buying it back for some kind of fee, or is it going to be paid based on how much people bid on the timber?
If you could give us a little bit more of the specifics on how that might work when you are talking about B.C. Timber Sales having authority over it again. Who gets
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what, exactly, in terms of monetary compensation, and how does that system work?
Hon. S. Thomson: I know we’re still on section 1, in the amendments and definitions around AAC. The question the member asked is actually dealt with further on in the legislation, section 5, under 22.4, which talks about the reduced non-BCTS licence. It notes that “in accordance with the regulations” will pay “the holder of a reduced non-BCTS licence the amount determined in accordance with the regulations for the amount of timber that is disposed of” under the BCTS licence.
There will be regulations developed that will set out those. The regulation process is still under development. It will be done through a consultation process. Just for an example, it could be a percentage of net revenue, or it could be a number of other options, but there would be, as part of the terms and conditions, a payment from B.C. Timber Sales to the licensee, whether it’s a community forest or a First Nations woodland licence or other.
B. Routley: Was the woodlot association consulted?
Hon. S. Thomson: Yes, they were, and I’ll be quite open here. The woodlot association had some concerns on it. Most of those concerns were alleviated when they understood that it wasn’t going to be applied to existing woodlot licences unless it was by consent and on a go-forward basis with new woodlot opportunities.
This is enabling legislation, broader enabling legislation that provides us the tool. While the licences are part of the mix of licences where that could be…. I think it’s probably fair to say that we don’t see the woodlot program as being one of the major users or major opportunities in this program. I think it’s much more around community forests and First Nations woodland licences.
But we wanted to make sure we had the broad sweep, because there may be circumstances where it made sense and it could work. Again, very clearly, it doesn’t apply to existing licences. Once they had that assurance and understanding, the majority of their concerns were alleviated.
B. Routley: The question I have now is about tree farm licences. I think I heard you say words to the effect that people could volunteer for some kinds of changes. These would be licences that weren’t up yet. I guess my question is: what would be the incentive to volunteer, and would this apply to the renewal of tree farm licences on an across-the-board basis, or would this somehow be selective? How would that work?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just to be clear, that circumstance would only apply for an existing or a replaced tree farm licence with the consent of the holder.
B. Routley: Were there consultations with stakeholders, such as the coast forest employers association, Council of Forest Industries? What about unions that may be impacted?
I might add that I recall when the government of British Columbia took 20 percent away from every forest licence, including tree farm licences. There were over 1,000 unionized forest workers that lost their jobs as a result of this government’s introduction. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. That was just on the coast of British Columbia. It was well over 1,000 unionized forest workers, who had family-supporting jobs here in British Columbia. Now it’s, basically, put out to tender.
Could you tell us: were those groups at all consulted in this whole process?
Hon. S. Thomson: Yes, the forestry associations were consulted in this — Coast Forest Products, COFI, Interior Lumber Manufacturers, Interior Logging Association.
[R. Lee in the chair.]
It’s important to recognize, in this, that this is about, primarily, a process that will benefit First Nation opportunities, benefit community forest opportunities — all those opportunities that are contemplated in here.
This is about finding that balance. It helps keep opportunities in local communities. Again, on balance, the whole — back to the original provision…. The original rationale and reason for these amendments here is to provide those opportunities there, and forestry associations were broadly consulted.
B. Routley: Thank you for that.
I learned when I was up in Haida Gwaii that they had concerns about getting their timber supply. I was told by local loggers there that they were not achieving their AAC. There was a variety of reasons given why they weren’t achieving their AAC.
Under B.C. Timber Sales, I would like to know — particularly, the fact that this is for First Nations — if you have made progress on ensuring that the AAC is achieved in First Nations licences. And how does that compare to other forms of licences — for example, community forest licences and that kind of thing? Is it relatively comparable or equal in either the problems or the existence of achieving their annual cuts over the five-year period?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just in terms of BCTS performance. As you know, we’ve had a very active process to ensure B.C. Timber Sales meets its sales targets, meets its performance targets.
We don’t have the fourth-quarter final figures yet, but I think it would be quite accurate to stand and say that
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we’ll have achieved or be very close to achieving the targets that have been set.
As far as community forests, First Nations woodland licences, I would have to get that information separately for the member opposite. I know that the community forests, because those benefits are going back into the communities, because there’s local community involvement, generally meet their plan and their targets over the period.
First Nations woodland licences. Again, I would have to get some specific information for the member opposite. They’re a relatively newer entity, as we move to provide those opportunities. Many of those that we’ve provided are just in the first parts of their opportunity. But I can undertake to provide some more specific numbers for the member opposite.
B. Routley: I would appreciate that. That would be great to have some follow-up information.
I think I’m relatively satisfied that we’ve canvassed fully (a), (b), (c) and (d). So (e) is kind of a new concept talking about B.C. Timber Sales within the program of the ministry. There’s a new definition that says: “‘BCTS licence’ means (a) a timber sale licence under section 20, or (b) a forestry licence to cut under section 47.6 (3).” Then it goes on to….
Well, we’ll deal with B.C. Timber Sales first. Then we’ll focus later on the merchantable timber stuff. These definitions of B.C. Timber Sales — what’s the benefit of that, and how does that impact B.C. Timber Sales exactly?
Hon. S. Thomson: This is nothing new here. These definitions are in the existing Forest Act. Here we are simply moving them from section 22.2 up to the front in the definitions to provide for better readability. The terms will be used throughout the rest of the act, as the amendments are made to the bill — when we refer to B.C. Timber Sales or BCTS licence. It’s just a repositioning.
B. Routley: Thank you, Minister, for the answers.
Moving on to (f) and (g). Boy, we’re just racing through this. The question here is about “the definition of ‘merchantable timber’ by striking out ‘were older’ and substituting ‘was older.’” That’s kind of how I feel these days. I went from “were older” to “was older.”
Anyway, could you explain that? And in (g), it says the definition: “…by striking out ‘are on an area’ and substituting ‘is on an area.’” It went from “are on an area” to “is on an area.” Again, what are the benefits to that for us, generally?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just as the member opposite suggested, “was” or “were” older — I’m not sure whether it makes much difference. You generally feel older, but this is just a very minor correction that corrects grammar and verb tenses in the definition.
H. Bains: I’m compelled to stand up to correct the minister and the member from Cowichan. You’re talking about “were older.” Speak for yourself.
I just want to go back to section (d) and (e). I probably need some clarification on this, because there is some new wording being added in relation to “reduction” under section 14(1)(g). Perhaps the minister can explain both of these questions together. And then the next one, (e) — similar wording, but also that’s for the reduction under section 45(1)(f.2).
We know 35(1), 43.3, 43.55 plus TFL, community forest, First Nations. What are we talking about under these sections, 14(1)(g.2) and 45(1)(f.2)?
Hon. S. Thomson: So (d). This is a new subsection. It expands the definition of the AAC available to include the AAC set for the forest licence holder. Subsection (i) then, under there, accounts for any subtraction from that set AAC by the volume reduction for the purposes of the disposition through the B.C. Timber Sales licence, which is what we’ve been talking about.
There is a note here around section 70. This is a provision that accounts for any reduction that the chief forester might make under section 70 of the act for causing or allowing excessive soil disturbance. So there’s a provision where the chief forester can do that if the licensee causes excessive soil disturbance. What we’ve got and made sure is that section applies to the circumstances here.
And (e) is a new subsection. It expands the definition of the AAC available to include the AAC set for a woodlot licence holder. Again, the subsection under it accounts for the subtraction from the AAC set by the timber reduction for purposes of the disposition.
Both of these amendments are consequential to the new provisions introduced in this bill that require the reduction in the amount of timber available to the forest licence, the woodlot licence or First Nations woodlot licences for the disposition purposes. They really are, essentially, consequential amendments that enact the intent of the legislation.
H. Bains: So that I understand, as consequential as they may be…. The reduction under section 14.1(g.2) is for soil disturbance and the chief forester’s right to reduce the AAC. The second one was 45(1)(f.2), for woodlot licence holders reduction. Perhaps the minister can correct me if I’m wrong.
Then it goes on to (d)(ii): “except for the purposes of section 70, a reduction under that section.” Can you explain? You talked about that under section 70, he has the ability currently to reduce the AAC under 14(1)(g) and 45(1). Then it goes on to say “except for the purposes of section 70.”
Hon. S. Thomson: To clarify this, the sections which, as I indicated, are consequential relate to the reductions under 14, 45, etc., and are around the reductions for the disposition provisions.
What the second section says, “except for the purposes of section 70,” means that if the licensee has had a reduction as a result of that section of the Forest Act being utilized, they can’t pass that reduction on as part of the…. It’s not part of the overall reduction. It separates out and applies the penalty provisions to the AAC that’s in the licence, not an AAC that would be transferred.
H. Bains: It separates these provisions from 35(1), 43.3 and 43.55 because they have their own purpose. But this one here is…. The reduction is made under a different purpose because of a soil destruction or disturbance or a woodlot area.
If it’s not under section 70, in which the chief forester has the right to reduce the AAC, then under what section do they come in? Is it a new section giving the chief forester new authorities? Just explain what’s the…. I understand that when their AACs are reduced under 14(1) and 45(1), they cannot utilize that reduction, similar to as was listed in 43.3 or 43.55. These are, supposedly, penalties and, therefore, cannot be viewed, as was mentioned, in section 1(a), (b), (c). Is that correct?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, this is really about, as I said, consequential amendments to it. What this does is that it sets up, in a sense, the counting of how you would undertake this. If you start out with the AAC, if there has been a reduction because of the application of section 70, then you run the reduction from that AAC that’s available for the purposes of the disposition.
It’s really about what you calculate and pay annual rent on. What we wanted to make sure of is that in calculating this, in running this process, you set up the accounting so that the reduction only applies from the AAC down to what your AAC is that you’re putting into the disposition arrangement with B.C. Timber Sales.
Section 1 approved.
On section 2.
H. Bains: Perhaps the minister can explain (a). “Section 8 is amended (a) in subsection (5) by striking out….” It’s a change of wording. The way I see it, it says that “In determining…” is taken out. Instead, “In respect of…” is inserted. How does that change of wording…? What is being achieved through this section?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, I think I’m responding to the question here. I think the question was: what’s the difference between “In determining an allowable annual cut…” or “In respect of an annual allowable cut determined under subsection (1)…”? I think it’s just sentence construction, grammar. There’s really, essentially, no difference in respect of that. The key pieces of it relate to that the chief forester may determine at any time and then specify: “The chief forester may, at any time….”
The intent of the section is to allow the chief forester to specify a portion of the AAC, known as a partition, for harvest by timber type, by terrain area, all the purposes for that. What these amendments do in section 2 is to allow the chief forester to establish, amend or cancel a partition order at any time so that the chief forester can manage forest health and stewardship concerns more quickly and effectively, rather than every ten to 15 years when the AAC is set. That’s the intent of the section. I think the first part of it is just structure.
H. Bains: Essentially, what we’re talking about here in section 8 is a partitioning proposition. The change of wording, as the minister said, doesn’t mean anything except that “at any time” is inserted: “The chief forester may, at any time, amend or cancel a specification made under subsection (5).” That’s the only thing that is being achieved, right?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, the significant change is: “In respect of an allowable annual cut determined under subsection (1), the chief forester may, at any time, specify….” The previous wording said: “In determining an allowable annual cut under subsection (1) the chief forester may specify….”. It’s the way leg counsel redrafted the sentence structure, but it’s the addition of “the chief forester may, at any time, specify.” Then the balance follows.
B. Routley: Just to clarify, when you say the chief forester may, at any time, amend or cancel a specification made under the subsection, I assume that any time…. Is that in any way under the control of the minister? You used the example of timber types and terrain, which I fully support.
For example, I remember a chief forester suggesting that there may be times, given where we’re at in the cycle with the pine beetle, that companies need to be focused on marginal timber stands, marginal timber stands that may be out down the road apiece. I know, ideally, companies like to have wood within 100 miles or 100 kilometres of their manufacturing plant. That’s ideally. Given the circumstances that we now live in, in British Columbia, where, as we all know, the forest companies…. You know, I understand why they do it, but there’s a tendency to get the best of what’s left, whether it’s in their tree farm licence or in a timber supply area.
As a result of those practices, I think that there had to be a day come where we got to a point where the chief forester in the province had the ability to manage to make
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sure that we weren’t high-grading the forests of British Columbia or in some way using only the best timber and leaving the community with the prospect of there being a more dramatic falldown than needs to be necessary — if the chief forester directs that timber types that are, for example, dead and dying pine or to steer clear of all of the best spruce that might remain in a stand and that maybe you have to take a higher level of pine and those kinds of things.
I just want to be clear what the minister has in mind in this. Is this my imagination run wild, or is the government really trying to do the right thing by ensuring that we have higher-quality forests in the future of British Columbia and that we actually do ensure that marginal timber stands are utilized?
Hon. S. Thomson: This is a very, very important part of this legislation. This is strengthening the tools, strengthening the role of the chief forester by being able to respond to emerging forest health stewardship issues at any time and not having to wait until the next AAC is set. So this really is about meeting the objective that the member opposite represents — a strengthened role or strengthened capacity for the chief forester in this regard.
B. Routley: Well, I must say that’s good news indeed from my perspective, that the chief forester is going to have a new tool that empowers him. But of course, with that empowerment, I hope there’s some cash, some money. Is there going to be any help for the chief forester? How is he actually going to be able to achieve this?
On the one hand, that’s a very good tool. But if you can’t leave the shop to actually utilize the tool…. In other words, if there’s no fuel for the plane to get up there, for him to go to have a look around or his staff to go and get out there and look around and report back…. Obviously, the oversight is necessary. I hope it’s not done in a discriminatory way — that you’re only picking on some. I hope it’s even-handed and across the province. It is important.
Finally, foresters, potentially, have the ability to, I would hope, influence the chief forester and have him look at problem areas and address them. Exactly how are you going to do this? Is there going to be additional funds allocated to bring this about?
Hon. S. Thomson: The key step in this is providing the ability to deal with this, as we pointed out, at any time. We think that provides an important new tool to the chief forester. It also provides the opportunity to deal with those emerging stewardship issues more regularly and in a more timely manner, which, with the existing support and tools, will help address that.
I have every confidence in the chief forester in that role. I’m pleased to be able to provide her with this additional tool.
Additionally, as you may know, the chief forester, along with myself, has provided a very strong direction to licensees around forest stewardship planning and expectations around that, which will assist in this role. I’m confident, with the additional tools and timing, that she will be able to perform her role well. I look forward to her continued work, and with this additional tool, I believe that will be significantly enhanced.
Section 2 approved.
On section 3.
H. Bains: I think we may have already canvassed this section extensively under the definitions part in section 1. Some of the exceptions are described here, especially under (b).
Maybe the minister could explain. He did explain that those provisions do not apply to the existing licence, but here are some of the exceptions to that, it seems to me. For example: “a forest licence entered into before the date this subsection” comes into effect — I think we canvassed that. Then: “(b) a replacement for a replaceable forest licence, unless (i) the forest licence already includes the requirement, or (ii) the holder of the forest licence agrees to include the requirement.”
I think it’s basically saying that the existing licence, unless they agree voluntarily, whether they’re replaceable or if the forest licence that replaces a tree farm licence…. I mean, those circumstances also, it seems to me, it doesn’t apply to.
And “(i) the tree farm licence or forest licence that is replaced or amended already includes the requirement, or (ii) the holder of the forest licence that replaces a tree farm licence or forest licence, or that replaces or amends a forest licence, agrees to include the requirement.” So I guess if it’s the licence being replaced or it’s already existing, unless they voluntary agree, these provisions under this act will not apply to them. Is that basically what this section talks about?
Hon. S. Thomson: I think we have canvassed this quite extensively in dealing with the original intent in the definition. This really is the section that sets out the fact that it doesn’t apply to existing licences except by agreement or by consent. It includes the forest licences that originate under sections 16 and 19 of the Forest Act that allow the holder of one or more tree farm licences to replace those.
Really, it does set out the key provision that it doesn’t apply to existing licences unless by agreement or if the forest licence already includes the requirement. Again, it wouldn’t have it doubled up. It is the section that clarifies that key provision of the legislation.
B. Routley: I think we did cover a lot of this, but in (a)(g.2), we talk about “a specified period of time.” I was
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just wondering: what was your thought process on that? Is that going to be in regulation? Is this going to be applied in every instance or occasionally? How would this be working?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section was specifically written to provide the flexibility as we develop these agreements. It can mean for a specified period of time. That could be the total term of the licence or replacements, or it could be for a portion of that term of the licence. It really just sets out the flexibility. That will be developed in the regulation and then would be developed on a case-by-case basis, because this gives us the flexibility to do that, whatever makes the most sense in each opportunity.
B. Routley: Under (a)(g.2), it ends that sentence with “all or part of the specified amount of timber, with one or more persons other than the holder of the…licence.” That seems to be introducing a new concept that we maybe didn’t canvass. How could there be…? If there are not just two parties, what other persons are we talking about here?
Hon. S. Thomson: I’ll respond to the question. Very quickly, I just want to correct my previous answer. I talked about the specified period of time being in regulation. It wouldn’t be in regulation. It would be in the licence. The legislation provides the flexibility to have different time frames for different circumstances. We wouldn’t set that out in regulation. We’d have the flexibility to be able to do that on a case-by-case basis.
In terms of this section, with one or more persons other than the holder of the forest licence. Really, what this section does is prevent the non–B.C. Timber Sales licence holder from being a participant in bidding for that disposition or that licence or that opportunity that they provided back to BCTS.
They would put it out to their registered pool. What it would do is prevent the licensee or the person who’d made the arrangement from being part of that process. You don’t want to receive a financial benefit for it and then bid and get it back again. It prevents that situation from happening.
B. Routley: Well, in subsection (3), I guess it is, it’s clear that the purpose is that a forest licence entered into before this date wouldn’t be impacted by this. But it then goes on to say that a forest licence that already includes the requirement that is renewed…. That also wouldn’t be covered.
There was talk about a person having the opportunity to do this if they wanted to. I’m just wondering. In what circumstances can you even imagine they would want to?
Hon. S. Thomson: This goes back again to Bill 25, when this provision was established on a voluntary basis. Potentially, what could happen if you had a licensee that — for management reasons, for capacity reasons, for other objectives — would voluntarily provide the opportunity to B.C. Timber Sales for a benefit…. We could see circumstances where that develops.
A purpose of what we’re debating here, in terms of the amendments, is to have that situation where you can, on a new licence and a new opportunity, build those provisions into the licence and the opportunity.
Again, as we discussed when we did Bill 25, the…. We saw the ability and the provisions in the voluntary approach and even in the directed approach here being limited in number, limited in overall scope and used in circumstances where it makes sense but not broad application.
Section 3 approved.
On section 4.
B. Routley: Well, just to clarify, this seems to be a lot of housekeeping in order to achieve what’s set out. Is there anything that I’m missing? Is this not just housekeeping, or are there some hidden powers here that we need to be aware of?
Hon. S. Thomson: Housekeeping. No hidden powers.
Section 4 approved.
On section 5.
H. Bains: I think it talks about payment for timber respecting non-BCTS licences with the reduction. I guess when you read this, along with the explanation that was given in section 1…. During those circumstances, the tree farm licence, the AAC, is reduced. The BCTS utilized that for their auctioning purposes, and the benefit goes back to the licence holder.
My question here is: what are these payments for?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section is the section that requires a financial consideration be paid to the non–timber sale licence holder for the amount of the timber reduced. This is a benefit payment back to the licensee for the Crown timber harvesting rights that have been provided back to BCTS to auction. The benefits would be paid out of the BCTS special account. This sets up the process where the regulations would be developed for the amount of timber that’s provided back.
Really, this is just the enabling section that says: “If you have that agreement and you provide it, you’re going to get….” The provision is there to be able to provide a benefit back to the licence holder for that provision and reduction in their timber harvesting rights.
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H. Bains: So that we are clear, we’re only talking about…. In general terms, when 20 percent was reduced to create BCTS, the licence holders were given payments or compensated according to the reductions that were made in their AACs. Here that’s not the case. The reduction may be made, but the timber essentially…. Although it goes to BCTS for their purpose of auctioning, the benefit goes back to the licence holder. There’s no addition.
Is it going to be handled similarly to when BCTS was created and the determination was made on how much the licence holders would be paid at that time based on the reduction that they were required to make to their AAC? Is it a similar…? Or is this a separate setup and a separate system altogether with a different outlook to this?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section sets out the requirement to pay in those provisions. It is a separate system. What will be paid will be determined in the regulation.
We will be working on developing that regulation in consultation, in the same process as we consulted in developing the legislation. I used an example previously. Although we haven’t landed on the final process, it could be, for example, a percentage of net revenue from the auction process that BCTS undertakes with that volume that has been provided to them.
There may be other models, but this section simply sets out the fact that in providing that volume back and having the AAC reduced for the licensee, there will be a benefit paid to the licensee for that purpose.
H. Bains: My question was…. A similar formula would be used as when BCTS was created, when the overall AAC was reduced by 20 percent and different timber holders or licence holders were asked, or basically ordered, to reduce a certain amount of their AAC. There was a formula created at that time. I’m just asking if this is something new. Or is it a similar formula that was used at that time or in the past?
Historically, AAC has been reduced and the licence holder has been compensated. There has to be a formula in place. Is it a different formula, or is it the same formula?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just to confirm or advise the member opposite, it will be different. The amount to be paid for this will be determined in the regulation. We’re going to develop that in consultation with the stakeholders in this process. I used an example of what it may be.
What this section simply does is sets out the fact that there will be a benefit to be paid, that it will be developed and determined with regulations and that it’ll be based on the amount of timber that’s disposed of under the BCTS licence.
H. Bains: Who will determine…? Under the regulations, you said it’s a consultation. I’m just trying to figure out why this would be something new when you already had a system to compensate licence holders in the past when their AAC was reduced. Why is this different than that?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, this is a new tool that is being provided for, and the provision here sets up the authority for the payment. It will be developed in regulation. It will be developed in consultation to ensure that the amount paid reflects the benefit that is being provided by the licensee and that it’s fair. We will do that in consultation with the licensees and with the industry in developing that regulation.
H. Bains: Let’s move to the new area but in a similar section. This section authorizes payments under those circumstances to licence holders whose AAC is being reduced. How about the workers who depend on that AAC?
Part of that AAC is being reduced, but the licence holder will be compensated based on whatever formula you come up with under regulations. How about the workers who will lose their jobs as a result of this? Will they be compensated — severance pay, whatever?
Hon. S. Thomson: I’m not quite sure what the member opposite here is worried about, because what’s being proposed here is a benefit to community forests. It’s a benefit to First Nations woodland licences. It’s a benefit to woodlots, if we find that opportunity.
By having some of the volume come back to BCTS, BCTS has to lay it out, get it ready for auction. They employ people to do that. They make the opportunities available. That’s bid on by contractors, by registrants that, if they’re successful, employ people to do that.
The benefits that go back to the community forest will…. Those benefits flow in a number of different ways. They flow to communities. And the benefits that community forests make to their communities, in many communities, provide the opportunity for additional economic development and diversification within those communities, depending on how they utilize those resources.
If it’s flowing back through to First Nations, First Nations, in undertaking activities — because this will provide an opportunity to provide a licence where we might not normally be able to do one or provide a much-reduced opportunity — will be employing people and things in their activities on their own licence, or they’ll be contracting to do that.
Again — back to the original premise — this we see as a win for the community forests and those licensees, and the opportunities as a benefit in protecting the market pricing system. As I said earlier, you could portray this as maybe not quite such a win for B.C. Timber Sales, but in the overall balance of objectives, we see this as providing those opportunities.
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I think it will provide enhanced job opportunities in these licences, because we’ll be able to find unique ways to get an opportunity in places where we might not be able to otherwise, or we’ll be able to find a larger opportunity for those in those circumstances that we might not normally be able to do.
H. Bains: I want to remind the minister that, under section 1, we also talked about — section 35 — tree farm licence, so it’s not just the community forest. We’re talking about a reduction of tree farm licence, although it could be a new tree farm licence.
If there is a tree farm licence which is non-BCTS and it is to a private entity — a person or a company — they will get a benefit, because of the reduction under this act. But their workers will also lose their jobs because a portion of their AAC is being reduced, coming to BCTS, and then BCTS is disposing of that part of the AAC, utilizing it for their own options.
What happened to those workers who would be losing jobs as a result of that tree farm licence reduction in their AAC?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just to be clear, again, to the member opposite: this applies to new licences. If, for example, a new tree farm licence was to be issued with it and we had this provision where a portion of it was allocated or disposed back to B.C. Timber Sales, we have two scenarios. One is you have that in place with a provision back, or if you weren’t utilizing B.C. Timber Sales as part of that, you’d have a smaller AAC in that licence.
I don’t see the scenario, I don’t see the opportunity, and I don’t see the issue of a fact that you might have a situation develop where there would be an impact on workers in that tree farm licence. You’re either going to have a tree farm licence of X, if it’s new, or you’re going to have a tree farm licence of X-plus, with the disposition agreement in it.
The only way to do this is to…. What we’re talking about here is utilizing portions of B.C. Timber Sales’ apportioned volume for these agreements.
H. Bains: The minister is saying, then, that under this, if there’s a new tree farm licence created and if it only comes from the BCTS part of the apportionment to create a new tree farm licence, or you’re adding to a tree farm licence from BCTS, then the only portion that is being added to the tree farm licence can be clawed back.
As I understand it, as we canvassed this before, if you are going to create a new tree farm licence from unallocated timber, you could have this provision in there. It could be 100,000 cubic metres issued to company A, and with this provision, later on it’s decided that 10,000 should be brought back in order to fulfil the BCTS mandate for their public auction. Then that 10,000 means that somebody will lose jobs in that tree farm licence.
Unless the minister is saying that the totally new tree farm licence cannot be created with unallocated timber? I mean, that’s the thing — unless the minister is saying the only area that we are talking about under this section is if the tree farm licence is created only out of the BCTS existing AAC.
Hon. S. Thomson: I don’t see the scenario that the member opposite is asserting here. Firstly, if it’s unallocated AAC in any form and it isn’t out and allocated and isn’t being utilized, then any allocation of it, whether it’s to a tree farm licence or to a community forest or anything, is going to create additional opportunity and additional harvest activity because it’s currently not being utilized.
We’ve got two…. Volume to support these will either come from unallocated AAC in some management units, where it exists, and in other management units from B.C. Timber Sales. So in any scenario here where this is utilized, by having the B.C. Timber Sales provision here that will be part of the terms and part of the licence allocation, that would be new.
Unless there is agreement, this doesn’t contemplate providing the licence and then going out later and taking some of that back in those provisions. This is about providing additional opportunity by utilizing, through an arrangement, a portion of a BCTS apportionment, which will help provide additional opportunities, which is both a benefit to the opportunity and maintains our market pricing system credibility.
B. Routley: Can you just give us some clarification on the matter of treaty negotiations? Have any of these forest licences come out of treaty negotiations? Do you contemplate that part of the package of offerings that government can present is these licences? Is that one of the underlying reasons for this whole exercise?
Hon. S. Thomson: No. As the legislation lays out, this applies to a specific set of licences: First Nations woodland licences, where they’re provided; community forests; and the other licences that we listed.
This does provide ongoing opportunity in building relations with First Nations, as we look to build opportunities and economic development in those communities and reconciliation with First Nations. So it provides an opportunity.
As I’ve said in all of the earlier discussion on this, this is designed to balance those objectives and find those opportunities where there are constrained opportunities, where there is a constrained fibre supply. I see all of this is as positive in continuing to build economic opportunity for First Nations.
Section 5 approved.
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On section 6.
H. Bains: I’m looking at section 6 and comparing that to section 3. I don’t see much that’s different, unless the minister could explain it to me. What is the difference between sections 3 and 6?
Hon. S. Thomson: The member opposite is correct: very, very little difference. Section 3 applies to forest licences. Section 6 applies to tree farm licences. It sets up the same construct and the same provisions.
H. Bains: It again talks about some of the exceptions. There are different exceptions, I notice, than section 3, especially when you look at (b) compared to the (b) of section 3. They do talk about it with different language. Can the minister explain why (b) and (c) are different, if we’re talking about the same kinds of exceptions, although they’re two different areas?
Hon. S. Thomson: Because we’re amending into different sections and it is a slightly different form of tenure, these provisions here, under section 6, bring in the same principles of the previous section, which are the provisions to safeguard the rights of existing tenures.
It doesn’t apply to current licences, unless there’s consent. It can only be on a go-forward basis on the new provision. It sets in the same provisions, unless the tree farm licence holder agrees to include that they can’t be a participant in the process. It’s all the same provisions. The only differences are because it’s referencing into a different section of the act. But it is to bring in exactly the same principles that were in section 3 and to apply those to the tree farm licence.
Section 6 approved.
On section 7.
H. Bains: Under section 7, it talks about a community forest agreement. I’m just going to ask the minister again. It’s a similar provision, as we just talked about, so it does not apply to the existing community forest agreement. Going forward, (b) says: “a replacement for a replaceable community forest agreement, unless (i) the community forest agreement already includes the requirement, or (ii) the holder of the community forest agreement agrees to include the requirement.”
It’s basically, essentially, saying that it will not apply to the existing community forest agreement but any future community forest may include these clauses.
Hon. S. Thomson: Yeah, the same provisions and same intent as the other sections. That protects the rights of existing community forest agreement holders and would only be utilized in new agreements going forward unless you have the consent of the existing community forest holder.
Section 7 approved.
On section 8.
B. Routley: Again, could we just get some clarification on the purpose of “striking out ‘boundary or area’ and substituting ‘boundary or increase the area’”?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section, this proposed amendment, is needed in order to allow the minister to adjust the boundary or to expand the area of all categories of community forest agreements. It includes those competitively awarded agreements and those directly issued to non–First Nations communities.
In the current situation, minor boundary adjustments might be needed where a land use decision creates a sliver of area that would that would be best suited for management under a community forest agreement. It provides for that. It provides for larger expansions that do increase the total area of the community forest agreement that may be required to meet commitments to communities and allow governments and communities to meet changing circumstances and to provide those economic opportunities. This is really a piece that sets out our ability to look at opportunities for community forest expansion.
Section 8 approved.
On section 9.
B. Routley: For the legions at home that are fixated on this fascinating discussion we’re having here — I find it fascinating, but maybe everybody doesn’t find as fascinating as we do, I’m sure — this section 43.55 is amended “by striking out ‘and’ at the end of paragraph (h.1) and by adding the following paragraph.” For the record, we should read that in:
“(h.2) may require that the amount of timber on Crown land within the first nations woodland licence area that is available to the holder of the first nations woodland licence be reduced by a specified amount of timber for a specified period of time for the purpose of entering into one or more BCTS licences, respecting all or part of the specified amount of timber, with one or more persons other than the holder of the first nations woodland licence, and….”
Well, let’s just stop and camp at the first part, because I’m sure the minister wants to explain the way that this could work. For greater certainty, I guess my question is: is there a limit that he has in mind, or is this kind of limitless? Would this be making up less than half of the new licence? Could there be circumstances where there’s
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more volume apportioned under the B.C. Timber Sales licence giveback than 50 percent? Is that a circumstance that you can see? Or is it possible? Let’s put it that way.
Hon. S. Thomson: This section — and again, we’ve canvassed all of the principles of this at length — is simply taking the provisions that we’ve applied into the content of a tree farm licence, into the content of a forest licence, into the content of a community forest, taking those same provisions for First Nations woodland licences.
As we indicated previously, there is the legislation, and it does not limit the amount to any percentage. What we will do is look at each opportunity and each circumstance, based on the opportunity, based on volume that may be available directly for First Nations.
That will depend. In some cases, it might be a smaller portion of BCTS that you add to it in order to make a viable opportunity. In other cases, we may look to a larger percentage of a BCTS arrangement in it to provide that opportunity. It doesn’t set out a specified amount. It simply brings the same provisions that we’ve discussed for all of the other forms of licences in this section.
We’re going to move section 10 at some point, and I’ll have the same answer. The content for woodlot licences is the same.
B. Routley: Okay, this (h.2) also talks about a period of time, and you did earlier specify that it could be that during the term of the licence would be the most likely scenario or upon renewal. Maybe this is too hypothetical, but how likely is it that these will be renewed? What’s the most likely term? Are these going to be, like, five-year licences? Ten-year? Do you ever envision where they’d be 20-year licences? What is going to be the standard time period? What would be your preference, at least at this point in time?
Hon. S. Thomson: As I commented previously, the legislation provides us the flexibility to deal with each of the circumstances, each of the opportunities, on a unique basis. That means specified amount, specified period of time.
It can be different for the different licences, since the different licences have different lengths of terms when you issue them. I don’t have a preference.
What I have a preference for is to find the opportunities to be able to build those opportunities for communities and for First Nations and being able to utilize a portion of B.C. Timber Sales in an arrangement that helps us land those opportunities. That’s what I’m interested in. The provisions here simply give us the flexibility for an amount and for a period of time. That could be different for different licences, different areas.
I expect over time we’ll develop some consistency around some of those. But again, each opportunity is going to be unique, depending on how much volume we have available for the opportunities without having to utilize B.C. Timber Sales. It will have different percentages, depending on the circumstances in each area.
B. Routley: Thank you for that clarification that there are going to be differences. I do get it that there are unique areas throughout British Columbia. There are a lot of differences. I think you were clear that there doesn’t seem to be any specific template for the time or the term.
Would it be safe to say that this is subject to negotiations with First Nations or the community? Or is there some other thing that I should read into this, other than negotiations? Like, how else would you decide these things?
Hon. S. Thomson: Keep in mind a couple of objectives. As far as B.C. Timber Sales is concerned, we want to make sure we have the durable, reliable supply in order to meet the market pricing requirements. From a community perspective, they will want the benefits. They’ll want to see the increased opportunities. Same for First Nations.
I guess you could probably portray this — given that, in each area, it’s going to be a little different and everything like that — as a bit of a negotiation. But it will be a negotiation around meeting common objectives and some principles.
I don’t think in this case…. This is enabling legislation that provides the opportunity. We don’t want to have a template that you just walk in and say: “Well, unless you do it this way, it’s not going to happen.” What we want to be able to do is go into the community area and say “Here are our objectives. Here’s what we would like to achieve for the community or First Nation. Here’s the interest we have in this area for B.C. Timber Sales.”
That will be different. As you know, in some areas, we have higher volumes of BCTS on a percentage basis. You may be able to be a little bit more flexible. In some areas, we’ve already impacted BCTS levels for other reasons and things. You might have not as much flexibility in that case.
It will be a bit of a negotiation — but around achieving some core objectives.
B. Routley: Moving on to section 9 (b) — and I will read this into the record — (3) says: “A requirement described in subsection (1) (h.2) must not be included in the following: (a) a first nations woodland licence entered into before the date this subsection comes into force, unless the holder of the first nations woodland licence agrees to include the requirement….”
Again, is that something that you have already experienced, as a ministry — where this has happened or you have interest from First Nations?
It goes on further, in (b): “a replacement for a replaceable first nations woodland licence….” This is not to hap-
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pen unless: “(i) the first nations woodland licence already includes the requirement” — so it does kind of indicate there seems to be some experience in the ministry with this — “or (ii) the holder of the first nations woodland licence agrees to include the requirement.”
Again, I assume that’s part of negotiations, but do you have a number of circumstances where this is already a requirement? I mean, I assume you wouldn’t write this language just for the sake of having additional licences, if it didn’t mean anything. So there must be some circumstances where this is already in place. Is that correct?
[R. Chouhan in the chair.]
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, these are the same principles that apply to all the other licences. What it means is that we can’t go in and utilize the provision here on an existing First Nations woodland licence that we have already issued — we have issued a number of First Nations woodland licence opportunities — unless we have their agreement. We’re certainly not in discussions to that point with any of the ones that we’ve issued about taking that step.
As I talked earlier, given these provisions under Bill 25, you may have somebody approach us to say: “For capacity reasons and other reasons, we’d like to see about a disposition opportunity here.”
But again, this is on a go-forward basis — new licences that may be issued where there was an opportunity to provide an enhanced opportunity to the First Nations utilizing those provisions. This protects the rights and the agreements of those First Nations woodland licences that have already been issued.
Section 9 approved.
On section 10.
B. Routley: Under section 10, it adds a term to a woodlot licence. I think the minister did refer to the woodlot association having a meeting and that they did have some concerns. Did they have concerns about this particular section, and if so, what were their concerns?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section brings in the same provisions as all the other licences. The woodlot association was pleased that the provisions are there for not applying this to any existing woodlot licences unless it was by consent and by agreement or under the voluntary provisions that were there previously. So they like that section and the fact that they’re treated the same as all the other licences.
I think it’s probably fair to say they didn’t see the same fit with this as you might see with a community forest or a First Nations woodland licence. They saw much more limited opportunity where this might work. But when we explained to them the way it would work and the financial benefit that would be paid, they were comfortable with being included in the overall intent here. They were pleased that we were treating them in the same way as all the licences. There wasn’t some different approach here.
I think it’s probably fair to say that given the nature of a woodlot and the fact that many woodlots include private land in the woodlot…. They just didn’t see this being a major application to the future opportunities for woodlot licences. They also would agree that there may be — again, because we don’t have a template and things — a circumstance, in some situation, where it might work. There might be a benefit that they would see for doing this, and we didn’t want to exclude them from the opportunity of doing that. We also made it clear that this is not applied to existing woodlot operations.
B. Routley: Yes. I do see the pattern with the language and this applying to woodlot owners as well.
Just as a matter of interest and because this would potentially apply to future woodlot licences, does your ministry have any idea at all how many new woodlot opportunities are going to be available on, say, an annual basis? Are there really any at all, or is it safe to say it’s all been allocated, and there’s not much left? I would be happy to be surprised by some great opportunities for ten a year or something. If that’s unrealistic, where are we at in granting new woodlot licences in the province of British Columbia?
Hon. S. Thomson: We work closely with the woodlot association. I don’t have the total number specifically at hand. We had a target and a goal to provide, through what we call the woodlot expansion program, those additional opportunities. I would have to check things. I don’t have it specifically with me in terms of where we are in that target and that goal.
We do work to continue to provide opportunities. I know I’ve had the opportunity to award some new woodlot licences over my term as minister here. I think I’m safe in standing and saying that there are some advertised opportunities out there. I know we’ve had one. The member from Powell River will know of one where we tried and were unsuccessful in providing the woodland opportunity because the community residents didn’t want that form of tenure in their area. We do run into challenges sometimes when we try to do it.
We do understand and recognize the value of woodlots as a form of tenure and the benefits they bring and the approach they bring to forest operations and stewardship in those communities. I can undertake for the member to provide him with the current number of where we are in that program; what opportunities may be out there currently; potentially, what ones we see going forward.
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There is some opportunity. It’s probably fair to say it’s a little more limited.
The most significant requests we get currently are around trying to find the areas for the First Nations woodland licences and also the ongoing interest of communities in new community forest opportunities, existing community forests that have a volume that they would like to see enhanced or a process where we’ve got an invitation out to a community for a community forest, and they just want to see us move more expeditiously and faster in getting the opportunity landed. It’s always a challenge of finding the operating area and everything.
Again, I’ll provide the more specific numbers around the woodlots for the member opposite.
Section 10 approved.
On section 11.
B. Routley: Yes, I see that we’re amending this by striking out “5 years” and substituting “10 years.” I just wanted to ensure that I understood who benefits by this change. I’m hoping that this is done for the ministry as well as it is for others. Is this somehow connected to these new powers of the chief forester to essentially make changes along the way? Is this for the benefit of the ministry as a whole? Who else does this benefit?
Hon. S. Thomson: This is not related at all to all of what we’ve been discussing up to date around the B.C. Timber Sales and the disposition agreements and all of this. This is into dealing with enhanced opportunities around fibre recovery.
Here, currently, the term of a fibre licence to cut must not exceed five years. This is a relatively short term, administratively burdensome to put into place. What we’re proposing here is to increase the term to ten years, because the licences generally are anticipated to be reissued, so providing the longer term decreases the administrative burden. It also provides greater business certainty to the licence holder who has that fibre supply licence to cut. Again, a step that helps enhance the opportunity for fibre recovery under this tool.
Section 11 approved.
On section 12.
B. Routley: Is this mainly housekeeping? I understand it corrects a cross-reference, so there are no other additional powers that we should know about here. Is that correct?
Hon. S. Thomson: That’s correct.
Section 12 approved.
On section 13.
B. Routley: Now we’re getting into…. Thank you for clarifying that we’re moving into fibre recovery. This is definitely going from harvested volume….
This is what I would suggest is a key new change to the Forest Act that does repeal the definition of “harvested volume” and substitutes that harvested volume means….
Again, for the record, because I think this is important, harvested volume means “(a) in relation to a licence to which a limit specified in an order made under section 75.02 applies to the licence, the volume, as determined in accordance with the regulations, of the partitioned timber that is harvested under that licence or” — I think “partitioned,” for sure, is new — “(b) in relation to 2 or more licences held by the same person to which a limit specified in an order made under section 75.02 applies to the licences, the sum of the volume, as determined in accordance with the regulations, of the partitioned timber that is harvested under each of those licences.”
Then it goes on to say that “‘partitioned timber,’ in relation to an allowable annual cut partition, means the timber that is subject to the allowable annual cut partition.”
Do I have that correct? This partition is something that I recall we talked about when I was talking with the chief forester during the timber supply review back in 2012. I remember walking along the dusty road. It’s something that I’ll never forget, anyway. The chief forester said: “If the forest is a pie, we’ve got to look at ways to make sure that they’re getting a little bit more of the crust.”
By that, what he meant was: how do you deal with the fact that the appetite, when you look at the best of what’s left, is to take the best and not necessarily deal with the timber that needs to be dealt with from the perspective of, I would say, the province, the community — sustainability for the province and the community?
There have to be some motivational tools, if you like, to ensure that they’re not just taking the best of what’s left and that they are looking at partition timber. Also, this empowers the government to deal with what used to be viewed as forest waste, as I understand it. Am I correct that there are many uses for this new tool of partitioning? Could you list some of what you think the ministry is contemplating with the term “partitioning” of areas in the forest?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section that we’re dealing with around the partitions — two things. We have a revised definition of “harvested volume,” which creates a broad enough definition in the regulation to capture all the different types of partitions that can be made.
We now have partitions for live or dead, pine or non-pine. What we’ve done is broadened the definition. It’s important to point out that this broadened definition
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in this respect applies to the partition order made under section 75.02, which is the partition section of the Forest Act.
Then additionally, we put in a new definition of “partitioned timber.” That ensures the tracking for purposes of monitoring a partition so that it’s not confused with the tracking of timber volume for purposes of cut control.
Both of these amendments, by having the broader definition and by having the new definition in this amendment, give us an improved ability for the ministry, for the chief forester, to deal with emerging forest stewardship and health issues, as we pointed out earlier in one of the earlier amendments around this.
This is all about strengthening the tools — providing the broadened definition and a new definition around partitioned timber — to allow us to monitor and to ensure the tracking for purposes of the partition, and not to confuse the two between partition monitoring and application and cut control.
Section 13 approved.
On section 14.
B. Routley: Again, this is more about partitioning. It allows the minister to specify limits, amend those limits on harvest volume of forest licences set out. It allows the minister, in determining a limit, to take harvested partitioned timber, as set out, into account. It clarifies the obligations of the holder of a licence, to which a limit specified in an order is made under this section applies, to include ensuring the limit is not exceeded. It allows the minister to amend the term of an order as set out. It sets out when an order is cancelled and changes a licence period from five years to ten years.
Does this increase the ability of the minister to alter partitions that are made by the chief forester?
Hon. S. Thomson: No. What this does is it provides the additional authority for the minister to enforce the partitions that are made by the chief forester.
H. Bains: I think that there are some concerns here and that the minister probably would clarify.
This No. 14, the amendments to section 75 — it appears to me that it does give the minister an increased ability to alter partitions made by the chief forester. If that’s correct, why are we moving powers from the chief forester — who’s supposed to understand, based on the science — and giving those discretionary powers to the minister to alter those partitions?
Hon. S. Thomson: As I pointed out, the amendments in this section provide additional strength and enforcement to the orders under the provision. The chief forester sets the partition. The minister, with these amendments, can provide the order.
A couple of important provisions of this. Currently the provisions, when they’re put in place, apply to the total area, aren’t applied to individual licensees. This now, with the change, means that when we say one or more forest licences, it means it can be applied to all, to one or to some of licensees in the area. All of this is strengthening the provisions of application of the partition direction from the chief forester through the partition orders.
H. Bains: I understand the mechanics of it. But the area that I’m concerned about is that the powers are shifted from the chief forester, who is supposed to make decisions based on science, available data, to the minister. I think that in doing so, we’re politicizing the system rather than making decisions based on data available to the chief forester.
That was my question. Why are we moving in that direction rather than staying with the chief forester, who is supposed to be doing these things and who has done it in the past?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, the chief forester’s role is to set the AAC — core responsibility to set partitions in that AAC. The administration of licensees and the enforcement of the partitions are the responsibility of the minister through that process.
It’s a formula-driven approach in many cases. The strengthening that we’ve brought in here with these changes…. One is the key change that allows the chief forester to set those at any time — also the ability to apply that to one licensee in a timber supply area as opposed to having to apply it to all. It may be more appropriate or more effective to apply it only to the one — to have it, as I said, happen at any time rather than during the determination of the AAC.
It also, if you’ve got two licensees in the area, now provides the flexibility to have that partition applied over the two licence areas so that you can shift harvest into one, if that is better for sustainability purposes, and not force the percentage to come out of the one licence area. So additional tools.
Then, also, with the definition changes. Bringing in the definition on “partitioned timber” allows us to monitor and ensure compliance with the enforcement order to a greater degree.
All of those are designed to strengthen the process and provide those additional tools and additional authority to have this be a more robust process.
H. Bains: Under (d), can the minister explain why we are changing from five years to ten years?
Hon. S. Thomson: A couple of reasons for this provision. One is that it more closely aligns the application of the partition in an order over the AAC determination process. It actually gives more strength in terms of the order. Five years is a relatively short time frame in the process. So if you have reasons and want to put the order in place, giving the ability to have that over ten years instead of five, we thought, was an additional step that would help ensure that when a partition is established and when an order needs to be put in place, it would be more effective over a longer period of time.
H. Bains: Does this affect the AAC as well? Normally, you have a five-year period to complete your AAC. Through this, does that change so that now we could go to ten years?
Hon. S. Thomson: I don’t think the member was…. I think the member probably, when referencing five years, was talking about cut control as opposed to AAC. This has no impact on AAC or cut control.
H. Bains: The minister said that five years is a relatively short period, but it’s been here for — how long? — as far as I can remember. Five years was the term used, and now we’re moving it to ten years. How do you determine that five years is no longer applicable or no longer practical and that we need to extend it to ten years? You try to explain, but it’s not coming clear — the real reasons behind this change from five years to ten years.
Hon. S. Thomson: This is not about changing the cut control process. Normally, and in most cases now, AAC is set for a ten-year period. What this would do is allow a partition to be established for the full time period of the AAC. If an order was required, it would allow you to have that partition order in place for the same length of the AAC period and the same length of the partition determination under that AAC.
H. Bains: The reason for a partition is for access to timber that may not be available under the existing licence. The partitions, to me, mean that we are bringing in additional timber. Then we partition and bring them into the AACs and utilize more timber through partitions.
Again, the period was five years. We had partitions before. Why are we changing now from five to ten years? What has changed?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, the chief forester sets the AAC, generally on a ten-year time frame, and within setting that AAC can set a partition which specifies, within that AAC, certain direction in establishing that AAC. Right now if the partition is set on that AAC and set for that time period and we want to put an order in place to enforce that partition, we can only do that for five years, which doesn’t line up with the term of the AAC — the setting of the AAC and the setting of that partition.
What we wanted to do by extending the period is to be able to line up the order with the partition which is set for that time frame. It allows us to align the provisions up between the AAC, the partition and an order that would enforce that partition.
H. Bains: Let’s move on. I think the number of areas it changed…. The amendments are made to change “holder of a licence” to be replaced by “holder of one or more licences.” I think it is listed in quite a few places. Maybe the minister can explain what we are trying to achieve by changing this language.
Hon. S. Thomson: The change here is designed to ensure effective implementation of the order. Where a licensee may have one or more licences in the area, the partition order applies to those licences together as opposed to individually.
What that means is that it provides the additional stewardship flexibility to be able to…. Say you’re operating in this overall area, and you have one or more licenses. If an order is put in place, then it doesn’t mean that the provision of that order, the formula, the percentage, has to happen on each individual licence within that area. You could have a higher percentage in one where it would make sense and less in another licence.
The way it operates now, currently, is that if you do apply it, that exact formula percentage has to apply to each of those licences individually as opposed to collectively. So it provides greater flexibility in order to meet the intent of the order.
H. Bains: Will this not allow the holder of multiple licences to spread out a limit over multiple licences rather than limit to a specific licence?
Hon. S. Thomson: No, the limit would stay the same. It would give the flexibility to which licences they would apply that limit to.
H. Bains: Then again, I think it limits the ability of the minister to set limits for specific target reasons. Does it not do that?
Hon. S. Thomson: No, I think what this…. As I said, it doesn’t increase the limit. What it does do is provide the flexibility. They can’t harvest more than the limit would provide. What it does is provide that flexibility for the partition timber.
If X amount of dead pine had to be in that partition, if it made more sense to harvest the greater percentage of that dead pine in one of the licences as opposed to another part of the other area and under a separate licence,
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it makes sense, from the flexibility point of view and from a stewardship point of view, not to have that limit applied specifically to each licence.
You actually may achieve the objective in a stronger way by giving that flexibility. But again, it doesn’t increase the limits or doesn’t increase the amount that can be harvested. It provides us with an additional flexibility, when an order is put in place, in enforcing it and monitoring it.
B. Routley: Just on 14, I wanted to clarify that the partitions…. You’ve given some examples, but maybe…. I don’t know whether this is helpful or not. I think if there was a circumstance…. For example, in a timber supply area, it’s essentially like a wood basket. I have heard stories about the competing interests of companies in a timber supply area trying to find the best areas of what’s left.
As I understand, this allows the minister to ensure there is some balance or some fairness, that one company doesn’t get more healthy spruce and pine, let’s say. If necessary, he can be essentially like an umpire in deciding: “Wait a minute. This particular company has taken some of the best area and may need to have a partitioned area that has a lower-quality timber that makes up some percentage of their annual allowable cut. If they don’t take that lower quality or let more dead pine — let’s use more dead pine — then there isn’t going to be any other timber available for them.”
Now, I don’t know if I have that right. Is that an example of where this might be used, or am I incorrect?
Hon. S. Thomson: No. All these provisions are about enforcing the AAC and the partitions that are set under the AAC by the chief forester. We, in constructing the amendments to this, looked at the steps that we need to take to have a stronger process around doing that. That relates back to being able to do it at any time rather than having to wait to be able to apply it to a single licensee and to be able to have a definition.
What it does ensure is that licensees — in their operations and their licences, if there is a partition in place around that — adhere to that partition direction, whether it’s a pine, non-pine, dead, alive partition, any of those. It allows and gives us the stronger tools to apply the partition direction that has been set by the chief forester in her AAC determination.
B. Routley: Well, I know my friend has attempted to get clarification on this. Maybe it’s just that I’m having a tough time getting it through my head, what you’re doing here — why it’s the minister and not the chief forester. I assume when you mean the minister, it’s not really the minister. It’s the minister’s staff who are making a lot of these determinations. Exactly why would you want to be the umpire, and not the chief forester, for the province of British Columbia — or your staff?
Hon. S. Thomson: Again, the chief forester’s role is to set the sustainable AAC for the management units and, as part of setting that AAC, the ability to set partitions within that AAC or as part of her determination.
The application of the licensing system and the provision of applying orders in compliance with the direction of the partitions that are set in the AAC are the minister’s responsibility. What we have done here, in these amendments, is strengthened the ability of the minister to apply those orders in those circumstances and increased the ability to focus on an individual licence and licensee — the ability to deal with it more regularly and with increased definitions that help us do the monitoring and the tracking of that.
It’s not in this provision here, but a key provision that was in earlier allows the chief forester to set partitions on a more expedited basis or an earlier basis, if required, as opposed to only when new AAC determinations are done.
I think all of these, combined, will strengthen the ability to have the application, or the compliance, with those partition directions out of the chief forester complied with. I think this is something that…. I know the members opposite have commented on this previously. We are responding by enhancing the ability around partition orders.
B. Routley: Well, I guess I would be happy if you could give us, at least, if not an exclusive list, a list of instances where partitions would be desirable within the ministry. I guess I imagine that partitions might be necessary where there was not enough harvesting of dead pine, for example, that you wouldn’t need to isolate an area and say, “Okay” — or marginal timber stands, or where high-grading was taking place.
If those are not examples, I’d like to be corrected on that and actually have the examples that are more closely aligned to what you’re thinking partition would be. So if you could give us a list of partitioned examples that you would use.
Hon. S. Thomson: The member opposite raises some examples that could be applied. That is the role and the responsibility of the chief forester. The chief forester would set those partitions.
We already have partitions in place for pine and non-pine, for dead, live. Another example: we may need a partition set in relation to addressing spruce beetle impact, for example. That might be another place where the chief forester stepped in and set a partition in order to direct harvesting into that area. The chief forester could come in and set a partition around high-elevation hemlock, or hem-bal, for example, if that was the case, if she felt that was important from a sustainability AAC point of view.
The provisions here are around the steps in order to give the chief forester the opportunity to set those partitions
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on a more regular basis, without having to wait for new AAC determinations. These provisions are around the enforcement on those provisions if an order is put in place.
Section 14 approved.
On section 15.
H. Bains: I just want to ensure than sections 15 and 16 are consequential changes. Is that correct, Minister?
Hon. S. Thomson: Yes, both sections 15 and 16 are consequential to the amendment proposed earlier in the legislation here. They’re both consequential.
Sections 15 and 16 approved.
On section 17.
H. Bains: As I read it, I think the change that I see in section 17, amending section 75.06(1), is that it gives the minister powers to “grant relief, in whole or in part, from the penalty if the minister is satisfied that the reasons for the relief meet prescribed criteria.”
If the minister could explain: what is the prescribed criteria? How do you determine whether relief should be granted in whole or in part?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section provides the opportunity for the licence holder to request and the minister to grant, as was pointed out, partial relief. Under the order, it provides greater flexibility in granting the relief from the penalty.
Right now it’s all or nothing. In making the decision, you don’t have the ability to look at the circumstances and say: “The appropriate penalty here is a portion of that.” There may be circumstances where there was an error. There may be circumstances where the partition direction was not communicated fully or something — a variety of circumstances.
What it really does is, instead of having to make the decision between nothing or all, you have the ability to now be able to assess a partial penalty, which I think gives us more flexibility when looking at that. But again, we would take each individual case, each individual circumstance into consideration.
H. Bains: Doesn’t that create a bit of a problem? How do you determine what is partial? It could vary from, I guess, penalty to penalty and licence holder to licence holder. Are there going to be set criteria on how you determine that the relief would be 25 percent relief, 30 percent relief, 50 percent or 75 percent? How do you determine that?
Whole or nothing — at least it was clarified if the licence holder could convince the minister that the penalty was not justifiable or maybe give some reasons why it should be waived. Then that’s the criteria. You waive it. Either they have made a mistake, or they haven’t. How do you determine you’re half guilty?
Hon. S. Thomson: In this situation right now, it is the all-or-nothing provision. You may have circumstances where direction was provided, cut control information was provided. There may have been a mistake in some of the cut control information that was provided. The licensee may not have realized that they were into a penalty situation or something like that. It may be partially that. Some of it may be as a result of their actions.
What you want to do is be able to have that ability and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis, to be able to look at it and say, “Okay, was there a part of this that we need to take responsibility for, or was it all the licensee’s responsibility?” and to be able to have that flexibility for something in between.
Right now if there was a penalty provided and we determined that there was some responsibility on the ministry’s part, we don’t have that ability to say: “You need to pay a portion of this.” You either have to provide relief or assess the full penalty, which may not be appropriate.
Each circumstance will be assessed on the situation within each of those. Simply, with this provision, which is a change from the current provisions, instead of all or nothing, we have that ability to apply partial relief from a penalty if the circumstances warrant it.
H. Bains: Clearly, we’re setting ourselves up for having to be in a position to reduce all penalties. Right now they think twice. If they know that they’re in contravention and that there is a penalty, they better not make a lot of noise, because unless they have a really compelling case where the penalty could be waived entirely, they would simply pay the penalty.
The way human nature works, now everyone will be complaining and saying, “Well, I should not be faulted for this or this or this, and therefore, the penalty should be reduced” — hoping that something will come out of this. It could be 10 percent. It could be 50 percent. The tendency will be to cut everything in half, just to make them go away.
I think it’s creating a mockery of the whole system. If there’s a penalty…. If they commit something under the act or break the act, then there’s a penalty. I mean, somebody made the determination that the penalty is warranted, based on what they have observed, based on as their investigation and what the violation was. Now all of those who are facing this penalty would be saying: “Let’s give it a try. I shouldn’t be held responsible for this thing or this thing; therefore, the penalty should be reduced.”
I think you’re creating more work. Unless you are adding more resources for monitoring this process and exercising this process, you will be creating a lot of work for resources that you will not be adding to provide those who will be managing this. Is that not correct?
Hon. S. Thomson: No, I don’t think it is correct. When we have the situation of a request for relief from a penalty, whether it’s in whole or part, it’s going to have to be assessed. So whether you’re doing the work to assess whether there is relief from the penalty, if you’re having to do that work and the only option you have is to say yes or no, no relief, you still have to do the assessment of the request.
To have the flexibility, under circumstances, to provide partial relief I think gives us an added flexibility. We will have to assess each claim on its merit. So I don’t see the circumstances where this is creating a significant level of additional work.
I think what all of the provisions do here is give us increased tools to deal with the partitions set by the AAC, to deal with orders and also to have a more robust partition process from the chief forester by giving her the ability to set those partitions on a basis that doesn’t have to wait until a full new AAC determination is done.
Section 17 approved.
On section 18.
H. Bains: Section 18 is, again, a new section here. It talked about: “(c) for the purpose of the definition of ‘harvested volume’ in section 75.01(1), specifying the rules, methods, formulas or requirements for determining the harvested volume, including, without limitation, requiring the holder of one or more licences to which an order under section 75.02 applies to make assessments of the partitioned timber….”
Perhaps the minister could explain. Is it not…? A change is being made here that rather than considering grades of timber, it may make regulations in order to determine the harvested volume. Is that the direction we are going?
Hon. S. Thomson: This change here, the section under the regulation-making powers, allows for amending of the regulation to clarify how the partitioned timber under the partition order would be tracked.
The example is that the chief forester puts a partition in place to ensure that there is a specified portion of live and dead timber in a management unit. This amendment would allow the regulation to clarify what information will be used to determine the amount of live and dead timber under the minister’s order.
Currently, it’s not clear how those types of live and dead partition orders should be tracked. It creates some uncertainty among licence holders and impacts the enforceability of a partition order. What we’re providing for here, under the amendment, is the ability to set a definition and to set that definition in regulation that will provide us a greater ability to track the harvest for partition purposes.
H. Bains: The change clearly is this, as I see it. Previously, the grades of lumber were considered in order to consider or determine the harvest volume as part of it. But now it seems to me that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council may make regulations.
Again, rather than having a clear-cut definition of the harvested volume, now the minister is going to make those determinations through order-in-council. Why are we moving the determined formula to regulations, where the minister is now making those decisions?
Hon. S. Thomson: This section, as is pointed out, provides for the purpose of establishing a regulation under the definition. What we’re really looking for here in this change is the ability to have a regulation so that the tracking is clear. Right now, there is some ambiguity to what counts and doesn’t count.
This will provide us to set, by regulation, an improved definition. It doesn’t necessarily mean that grades won’t be included in that definition. But what we found in the process is we need to make it clear through regulation for licensees of what counts towards the calculation and what doesn’t. This section provides us the ability to do that.
Section 18 approved.
On section 19.
H. Bains: I think this one is quite a significant section. I have some specific questions. Perhaps the minister could explain to those who are listening…. This is something new. I don’t believe that the government has ever done this before.
This is what, normally, the licensees will call waste — left behind to be burned. They take whatever they need out of the tree. The rest of the pieces are left behind, and normally, they get burned. Now this allows the minister to have an agreement with those licence holders and utilize that residual timber for someone else, a new party, to come in and make an agreement to have that removed — to utilize it, to create jobs and create some different products.
Maybe the minister could explain, if that’s what we’re talking about. Then, maybe, in detail, the minister could explain, in generality, what the purpose is behind section 19.
Hon. S. Thomson: Thank you to the member opposite for the question. This is a significant section, as the member opposite pointed out. What we want to achieve
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with the changes here is to strengthen the ability to deal with residuals and with what some people call harvest waste. Obviously, the business approach in making those arrangements is the preferred way to deal with that, but that doesn’t always take place.
With all the changes hereunder, I’ll maybe just describe the current process. Under current provisions, the minister may order the primary harvester to notify if they intend to abandon any rights to Crown timber that has been cut but not removed. If the primary harvester notifies that there is an intent to abandon these rights, the minister may order the primary harvester not to destroy or otherwise deal with that Crown timber. If the primary harvester does not intend to abandon, the minister may order not to destroy it if the minister is satisfied that a market exists for that Crown timber.
What we’re doing with the provisions here is what we call a new fibre recovery process. Under the steps now, the minister may order the primary harvester to submit a report with an estimate of the residual fibre volume expected in the area, and the volume of residual fibre they do not intend to use. The minister may order the primary harvester not to damage some or all of that residual fibre for a specified period of time if it’s not being used. That could be amended or cancelled.
The primary harvester notifies the minister that he’s willing to abandon some or all of the fibre. There’s a period put in place where the primary harvester cannot deal with that residual fibre identified in the notice. At that point, the minister may “by order, specify some or all of the residual fibre” and issue, to a person other than the primary harvester, a fibre recovery permit or a forestry licence to cut. A copy of the order is sent to the primary harvester, written notice that the rights of the primary harvester to the residual are cancelled. That’s not compensable.
Then, after that is issued — a licence for the residual fibre — the minister gives notice to the new agreement holder that the licence has been issued.
All of this is to set a process in place where we can set the notification, strengthen that process. If the fibre is not going to be utilized, there is a process now in place that will allow us to get to the point where we can put a do-not-damage, do-not-destroy order in place and make it available to a secondary user through a residual-fibre-licence approach.
That’s a fairly long answer, but all of this through these sections here is designed to strengthen our ability there to create a greater incentive for the business-to-business relationship first. But, ultimately, if that doesn’t take place, then we can take these steps.
H. Bains: My question would be…. The minister has a number of requirements, as he mentioned, under section (2). To advise the minister: “(i) an estimate, made in accordance with the regulations, of the volume of residual fibre in the area at the time of the report; (ii) an estimate, made in accordance with the regulations, of the volume of residual fibre the holder of the agreement reasonably expects to be in the area at a time specified by the minister.”
The third one is about fibre that it does not intend to use.
A number of different requirements are there. You’ll get a report, but is there an audit process available now or under these regulations? How would you determine the correctness of the report coming to the minister? Will there be audits of such to determine that what is being reported to the minister is exactly what is on the ground and available?
[R. Lee in the chair.]
Hon. S. Thomson: In the case here, the process for providing those estimates and things will be set in regulation. Those regulations are to be developed.
The current provision now is that they provide a report. It’s only a report on what’s harvested. In the provisions here, what we will require and can require in the reports is an estimate of the volume of residual timber that’s in the area at the time of the report; an estimate, made in accordance with regulations, of the volume of residual fibre that reasonably expects to be in the area at a time specified by the minister; and an estimate, made in accordance with the regulations, of the volume of residual fibre the holder of the agreement does not intend to use.
What this does is set in process a requirement to provide that reporting process in advance. Then we can plan with the secondary-user’s interests around what will be available, what we can work to try to facilitate in those business agreements, once we have that reporting process. This is part of the recommendations that have come out of the forestry fibre working group recommendations. What it does is it develops this process in advance, as opposed to waiting till all the harvest is happening and simply having a report that says: “Now this is what we have.” It incents or requires that advance planning process.
I think it’s going to give us a better tool in terms of looking to set up the arrangements, looking to know what’s there. If the report is that the primary harvester is not going to be using that, we can put the order in place that says, “You can’t damage that; you can’t destroy it,” because we know what is reported and what is there. Then we have the ability to set up the licence for the secondary user to go in and access that.
What happens now is that we don’t get that information until after the fact. In many cases, you are playing catch-up instead of dealing with it proactively.
H. Bains: I get that. But I think, again, there’s no auditing process in place. The minister has no access to audit those reports. That’s what my question was. If the answer
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is no, you will solely rely on the reports by the licensee and take whatever the report is as the fact. It is what it is. If there is no auditing, then you will never know what exactly is left behind, not intended to be used. You will never know. Anyway, I’ll move on.
The next thing. It says: “if the residual fibre is not being utilized or is not going to be utilized, not to damage some or all of the residual fibre for a period of time specified by the minister in an area specified by the minister.” Can the minister explain what the specified period is that this section applies to?
Hon. S. Thomson: In this case, what the legislation provides here, as was pointed out, is a period of time specified. That will be different in different circumstances.
What we want to be able to do in the case where you’re going to provide the licence and the opportunity to access that, and you’re putting the order in place not to damage that, is to put it in place for a period of time that would allow the secondary harvester to plan to access the materials. You don’t want to put it in place and say: “It’s only available for three months” or “Don’t destroy it within that time period when the secondary harvester may need more time to plan and access that.”
You want to work in combination between the opportunity, the amount of time that will be required to access that opportunity, the needs of the secondary user who is going to be provided the licence. This simply gives the ability to set a time. Each situation may be a little different in terms of the amount of time that would be required.
H. Bains: Will there be any provisions in here about compensation to the primary licence holders?
Hon. S. Thomson: No.
H. Bains: Will there be any cost to the secondary timber holder, the person who will be given the licence to utilize the residual timber?
Hon. S. Thomson: In these situations, obviously there’s a cost to the licence holder, an operating cost to go in and access the residual timber that’s available in there. In terms of the licence, it will depend, because there may be competing interests for that, in which case it would be competitively awarded. So there may be a cost to the awarding of the licence if there is more than one interest in it.
Those provisions are to be worked out. But in terms of the general provisions, no, there is not a fee per cubic metre, in a sense, or any of those kinds of things. It would be a licence and availability to go in and get it.
There may be a cost through the competitive process, and then there’ll be their operating cost to go in and access that available residual fibre that is there.
H. Bains: Obviously, there will be an operating cost to potential licence holders. I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about fee per cubic metre, and the minister said no, there won’t be. But then he also opens up, saying if there are competing interests, if there is more than one interest….
What was the minister talking about — that then there could be a cost? Maybe the minister could explain to the House: how could that be? Is it, then, going to be a bidding war going on between two or more proponents? Who does that money go to? There is a certain process put in place where they are starting to bid. Who are they bidding to? Where will the money go to if there are going to be any financial interactions as a result of that bidding?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just to clarify, we already have the ability for the fibre supply licences to cut, the residual licences. Those processes are known and well known to the industry, about how that process works. It includes a competitive bid process in which, in certain circumstances, it can be awarded. There would be stumpage to be paid if there was merchantable timber in that. There’s no cost for appraisal. There are various conditions of the licence.
What the provisions here in the legislation do is set up the enhanced or the greater opportunity for access to that fibre by requiring the pre-reporting, the planning process and everything like that. All of that system is designed to create the opportunity for greater access. This doesn’t change the existing provisions around fibre supply licences and the residual fibre licences that are already available and understood and utilized.
What we’re looking at here is an enhanced process where we can have more of those licences made available and do it in a preplanning process if the business-to-business arrangements can’t be made between a primary harvester and a secondary user.
H. Bains: I think on one hand, the minister said there’s no cost — the cost of the timber that is being allocated to a secondary licence holder per cubic metre, whatever the formula. Then the minister is saying that there are some set fees, the stumpage and other. Well, stumpage is paid by the primary licence holder. Now, we’re talking only about residual timber that is left behind for rot or to burn. That timber now is being allocated to a manufacturer or secondary licence holder.
The argument always, from the primary licence holders, is that it incurred costs for them to cut those trees and to put them along the side of the road to be burned. It cost them money to build roads and bridges. It cost them money to extract that tree. Whatever they utilize, the rest is considered to be waste.
My question is: if we are going to utilize that residual timber, which is cut but not being removed, how can someone access that? I mean, what is the process? If there is more than one potential licensee bidding for it, how is
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there going to be a cost to them? If they are paying something, because one is outbidding the other, is the money that they’re talking about going to the primary licence holder, or is it coming to the government?
Hon. S. Thomson: In this case…. Again, I want to step back, because the member asked: is there additional cost to this? The answer is: no additional cost. The process around the licensing provisions and the licence opportunity through the fibre supply licence-to-cut provisions is known. It does involve a competitive bid process, a security deposit, no annual rent, stumpage only on merchantable timber. All of those provisions are currently in place under the existing licence opportunity.
What we’re doing with this legislation is setting up a process that makes more of those opportunities available so that the primary harvesters will, by regulation, be required to report in advance. We can plan for it. We know what’s there. We know where the opportunities are going to be.
If they know the opportunities can be provided and the incentive remains on the primary harvester to actually make the business-to-business arrangement, because then they get the value out of it…. If they don’t and we know that it’s there, we can put the “do not destroy, do not damage” order in place and then provide the licence opportunity.
The bid process for that goes to the Crown. The opportunity is provided to the secondary manufacturer. It doesn’t change anything in the legislation around the existing licence process and structure. What it simply does, and importantly does, is set up enhanced opportunities to be able to provide those licences that we already have the tools and process in place for.
H. Bains: There are two different ways to access the residual timber. As the minister said is the case today, in a business-to-business deal, they could make an agreement. I get that.
Then there is a requirement now for the primary licence holder to report. And if they determine that this residual timber is abandoned, under these subsections, then it will be made available, perhaps through advertisements or…. How will you bring the interest of the potential licensees to start showing interest?
Maybe one is picked through a process. I am talking about that situation. Now, the primary licence holder has…. It’s deemed to be abandoned. I mean, I am talking about that section here. Then you are calling for interest from potential licensees.
If there are more than one, how do you determine which one qualifies? How do you determine who to award it to?
Hon. S. Thomson: The situation we’re addressing here…. First of all, we have no shortage of interest from secondary harvesters or secondary utilizers who would like to get access to that. What we hear is the frustrations around being able to make the business-to-business arrangements that give them access to that.
What we’re doing here is saying that if those business-to-business arrangements can’t be made and if we are hearing that frustration and we know that there is residual fibre that is there and being potentially left there and potentially burned, which is what we always hear about…. By being able to step in, in those situations — put the reporting process in place, the order in place that prevents that from being damaged or destroyed — then we have the ability to go through the competitive bid process with those secondary users who are interested in it through a competitive bid process.
There’s lots of interest. Obviously, from a primary harvester point of view, we would hope that the business-to-business approach would be the one utilized. If they know that they have to report and if they know that they’re going to have an order put on them, we think that that provides more direction or incentive to do the business-to-business relationship.
Again, if it doesn’t, then we have these provisions here. Then we have the ability to move forward with a “fibre supply licence to cut” opportunity, the tools of which we already have. We’ve brought in legislation earlier that has put those new licence opportunities in place. We’re just trying to create a situation where we have more opportunities to utilize that form of licensing.
H. Bains: Perhaps I could be a bit more specific here — maybe a different area, perhaps.
Section (2) and section (4). The minister said that there will be a requirement of the primary licence holders to make a report, as we talked about in (i), (ii), (iii), about “volume of residual fibre in the area at the time of the report,” “expects to be in the area,” “does not intend to use.”
Is it only through an order of the minister, or is it going to be a regular requirement, as a part of their licence, to make a regular requirement on a timely basis to the minister requiring and setting out all these requirements?
Hon. S. Thomson: It will be by order. It’s not a regular requirement. It will be where we don’t see the business-to-business arrangements happening, where we hear that it’s not happening, where we hear that fibre is being left. What this does is give us the ability to require that by order.
What we hope, knowing that we have these additional provisions, is that we will see enhanced business-to-business work opportunities. We already know some of that is happening — all the work through the forest fibre action group and the report that was signed off by all of the primary harvesters, the secondary manufacturers, the pulp sector, the pellet group, with all of their recommenda-
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tions around this. Just as a result of that work, we’re seeing increased business arrangements being made.
What we want to do is have the ability that…. Where we don’t see that, where we’re hearing that it’s not happening, we have the ability for an order. It won’t be a regular process. It will be stepping in with that and stepping in with the ultimate ability to place a do-not-destroy, in the sense of do not burn, order in place.
H. Bains: Very interesting. You’ll pick and choose. It’ll be, perhaps, complaint-based. By the time it gets to your office, the residual timber is already wasted or damaged.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve in trying to make a big thing out of this. The residual timber that we have heard so many complaints about, which can be utilized to create more jobs and produce more products…. You’re still leaving it up to them. There’s no requirement for them, on a regular basis, to report what that residual timber is — the volume, what they’re not intending to use.
Why not have a regular report so that you know what the volume is out there? Then you know where the interest is, and you match that interest with the volume. It just makes a lot of economic sense to create more jobs and fulfil the needs of those potential licence holders who want to utilize this timber, which is now being wasted.
If you don’t hear about it and you don’t know about it, that timber will continue to be wasted and burned. Isn’t that correct?
Hon. S. Thomson: No. We certainly hear about it, and the member opposite will know that.
These recommendations and the approach here come out of the recommendations of the forestry fibre working group, the approach which was developed by all the participants in the process and which represented all the sectors. This is the approach that they recommend. As I said, we’ve already seen the enhanced business-to-business work as a result of that process under the forestry fibre working group. What they want is to know that in the situation where it doesn’t happen, where we don’t see business-to-business arrangements taking place, then we have the ability to step in and provide the order.
From a secondary user point of view, they would much rather develop and have the business-to-business arrangement in place, because that, potentially, is more beneficial to them than an open, competitive bidding process where there are a number of interests. The incentive is there to develop the business-to-business components and arrangements for it.
Ultimately, if that doesn’t happen, the legislative changes here give us the ability to step in with a requirement and an order and the ability to step in and utilize do-not-destroy, do-not-burn orders in place to preserve that fibre while we can get a fibre supply licence-to-cut process in place.
That’s why we have put in there simply the specified time, because it will have to have some time to it, but we didn’t want to put in the legislation a specific amount of time. What we will do is look at the circumstances and determine what the appropriate amount of time is in order to get that process in place and get the opportunity to access the timber in place.
H. Bains: If that wasn’t bad enough, here’s another one — section (4). First of all, there is no requirement of the licence holder to report on a regular basis. Secondly, even if the order is made under section (2)…. This is what section (4) says: “the holder of the agreement may identify all or a portion of the residual fibre that is subject to the order and notify the minister that the holder of the agreement is willing to abandon the holder’s rights to the identified residual fibre.”
Again, you’re leaving it up to them to report all or a portion, and the remainder that they chose not to report to you can be destroyed, can be damaged. They can do whatever they want to do with it. They’re not even required to report all residual timber that they have no intention of utilizing. How does that work? How are you going to make this work?
Hon. S. Thomson: Just to clarify, this is not about reporting. This is about the ability to say that this is the amount that they intend to abandon and not utilize. They may have a portion of the area where they have an arrangement in place where it’s already being made available through a business-to-business.
If an order is made, you can identify a portion of the fibre that is subject to that order. That’s the portion that they intend to abandon. The other area or portion they may have an arrangement for. It just sets up that ability to target it at what they intend to abandon.
B. Routley: Well, having stood out on the road when Fletcher Challenge lit fire to a mountain and we had all this residual timber that was…. A quick rain took care of the fire, so we had a lot of wood left. I remember at the time that there were 450 loggers being laid off in the Cowichan Valley, and we went up and protested Fletcher Challenge leaving all of this wood fibre behind.
I do see…. My partner is correct that it’s not a panacea, but it is certainly a step in the right direction, from my point of view. I guess time will tell whether this is the right tool or whether it’s a tool that needs to be fixed up.
Just for greater certainty here, if there are companies out there that have existing agreements — like if they have chunk trucks or firewood arrangements with existing companies or small players that a company has a deal with — then I assume that that is going to be approved. Or if somehow there is other residual waste that might be left over after some secondary players are involved, I as-
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sume that those existing secondary agreements will not still warrant a waste assessment. Or will they?
Hon. S. Thomson: Where there are those existing business-to-business relationships, that’s obviously what we want to see.
This process of applying the order, applying the fibre supply licence to cut, if that’s ultimately what it comes to…. We’d design those and make sure that’s implemented in a way that would not affect those existing business-to-business arrangements, because that’s what we want to see happen. Again, what we hope is that we’ll see more and more of the business-to-business approach. Ultimately, we recognize that in those cases where we hear the frustration, where that’s not happening, we want to have this additional ability.
I appreciate the member opposite’s comments. I believe in this with these changes. We have the same objective. We want to see all of that fibre out, utilized and available, and these steps help us do that. Certainly from my perspective, I do not want to see valuable fibre, which could be utilized, burned because we don’t have the ability to step in and provide those orders in place where the business-to-business relationships aren’t being developed or aren’t working.
B. Routley: As I said, it’s worthwhile if we can actually stop companies throughout B.C. from lighting up huge piles of what the community sees as usable fibre — and have done for years.
I talked about there actually being an incentive to take the best of a timber supply area because, in pretty well all cases, the timber is only assessed in AAC after it reaches the brow log and is in some way calculated or scaled and graded and that kind of thing. Wood that’s left out there…. In the past, there was some effort, I remember, to have a waste assessment on certain sites.
Back to this model, is there any way to punish a company that doesn’t resist destroying or damaging timber? If they actually light it up, what tools are left in the toolkit to deal with that?
Hon. S. Thomson: In the event that it moves to the point where there is a do-not-destroy order put in place, under these provisions…. If that order is not complied with, the licensee would be in contravention of the provisions of the licence, provisions which would then make the licence subject to suspension or cancellation.
B. Routley: Okay. Well, that’s good.
Does this in any way deal with the problem of…? It’s a couple years ago now that I was up in Dawson Creek. I met with a group that were concerned about the fact that there was…. It was either transmission lines or oil or gas lines where they had a contract.
This was a small contractor, who had a contract to harvest and haul timber, but then the company found that they were not able to make a profit for what they could get for the timber by selling it to the nearest manufacturing plant. It was far enough away that fuel costs ate up a lot of the profit or made it not as viable.
I still think that it’s a waste and that there should be some way to get at timber anywhere in the province where it’s going to be just wasted. It’s wrong for healthy, viable forests to just be burned. I wondered if the minister had given any additional thought to how that kind of residual forest could be dealt with that is included in oil or transmission lines or in other areas. Or is this primarily just tree farm licences and other forms of forest licence in the province?
Hon. S. Thomson: The provisions here do not deal specifically with the situation that the member raised. This is dealing with licensees and the provisions there. The situation that the member references is part of the provisions that are provided to the proponent in any of those situations.
The reality in all of that…. You know, we would like to see all of it utilized. With the economics and the cost of bringing that out where you can’t achieve the return for that, it gets very hard to have it come out. But that overall issue would need to be dealt with separately. It’s not dealt with by the provisions of these amendments in this legislation.
B. Routley: Thank you for that. Just to get my two cents’ worth in, while I did suggest that there is good movement in this area, I do want to make a pitch anyway that I do believe that these other areas need to be addressed as well.
In my mind, it is wrong that if someone is going to profit, whether it be through a transmission line…. Think about that. It’s obviously to generate a profit for somebody in the future, or there’s going to be oil or gas profit. Even building an IPP, an independent power project. I understand there were instances where there were large volumes of wood that were just piled up and burnt.
My argument would be, to the minister and for the record, that there is a profit centre there. It’s really up to the province and to the Minister of Forests, who I know is tasked with dealing with the public interest, to think about the long-term consequences for the province of British Columbia.
Any time there is an opportunity to access fibre…. I don’t think we should just be looking at immediate economic circumstances and saying: “Well, if the oil and gas industry can’t get enough money for the logs, to get them to a manufacturing plant….” I think it’s incumbent on them. I would make that argument. Oh, that could be too socialist for the other side — the notion that good timber
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should actually be…. There should be some kind of payment against future royalties or future transmission line profits to pay for getting that timber, augment whatever the cost is to get that timber to a mill, particularly in a time when we’ve got a timber supply crisis.
I would add that I appreciated the opportunity to be on the Timber Supply Committee that went around the province in 2012. I might add that my partner and I actually found common ground with Liberals and those on the team that went around. We came up with a series of recommendations by sitting down and listening to each other.
We came up with a joint set of recommendations. I don’t think they’ve been fully implemented, and that’s a sad thing, in my point of view. It was good to be part of that, and it was one of those high points, at least in my career, to go around and to actually sit down with folks on both sides of the table, away from the usual riffraff kind of behaviour that might go on. We actually negotiated some very interesting terms and provisions. I was glad to be part of it.
I, too, am happy to see some movement. I do get what my partner says, that we’ll have to wait and see. We’re skeptics for good reason. In fact, I think it says on our cards that we’re critics. There’s good reason for us to be critical. That’s what we’re paid to do. We do have some concerns.
With that, I’ll conclude my remarks on section 19, and just say that I think it’s some good moves in the right direction for this old heart. It does me good to see this actually happening, that we’re going to use a little more waste in British Columbia. It’s a good day for me.
H. Bains: Just one last question. I think we canvassed this extensively about, I think, mostly, what traditionally are the residual parts of the tree that are not used — left on the roadside.
There’s another phenomenon that’s developing in the last few years, on the coast especially. The logs that are destined to be exported now are exported in containers. It used to be bulk, the loading of the ships. Flare or no flare, regular — dimensions of logs could go or not. Now, in order to fit as many logs as possible into a container, we are advised that the flared part of the log, which is good wood still — it could be two, three or four feet — is cut off and left behind to rot or burn.
My question to the minister is: will that also be considered part of these regulations?
Hon. S. Thomson: In the provisions of the intent of this, in terms of ensuring full utilization of the waste…. I’ll check into this more specifically, but if that is waste that is being left, the landing in the bush, then theoretically, because it is waste and there may be a use for it, you could have the same requirements in place — required reporting. You could move to the step of putting the do-not-destroy orders in place.
If we’re hearing that that is there, that there is a secondary user and manufacturer who wanted access to that, that they were being frustrated in not being able to develop the business relationships in accessing that, then these provisions — in my view, just as a quick response — could apply.
H. Bains: Does it have to be the potential user or potential secondary licensee who could launch a complaint, and that would trigger you to issue an order? Or could it be a citizen — a worker suggesting that there is waste being left here and the order should be issued to this primary licence holder?
Hon. S. Thomson: Well, I don’t think the legislation says who has to advise us or let us know that that potential exists. I think the reality is that you would want to know that there is a use for it, that there is a secondary manufacturer who could use that and has an interest in it and is being frustrated in their process to be able to access that. We wouldn’t want to put an order in place simply for the sake of putting an order in place if there isn’t a user.
I’m speaking theoretically, because we haven’t looked specifically at that situation. But again, looking at the intent here, I think the objective could and would apply under those circumstances if the same situation was there: that it was available, somebody wanted it and were being frustrated in a business-to-business approach with it.
Section 19 approved.
Hon. S. Thomson: Noting the hour, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 6:24 p.m.
The House resumed; Madame Speaker in the chair.
Committee of the Whole (Section B), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Hon. T. Stone moved adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.
The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.
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PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM
Committee of Supply
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); J. Yap in the chair.
The committee met at 1:35 p.m.
On Vote 19: ministry operations, $5,571,246,000 (continued).
Hon. M. Bernier: I just want to get on the record…. Prior to breaking, we were talking about the next-generation network. A couple of questions from the member opposite regarding the numbers for the year.
I had quoted that $24 million was the incremental cost increase. In fact, we double-checked that. It’s actually $22 million. So it’s actually down a little bit. It’s not $24 million; it’s $22 million. Obviously, we want to correct that and make sure it’s accurate. The information we sent to the school districts was $22 million, and we want to make sure we’re accurate on that.
The member also asked a question — some references to what that meant to small, medium and large. Over lunch, we went and got that information for you, to give some examples. A small school district, for instance — 3,000 students, Rocky Mountain school district 6 — is about $138,000. A medium one, West Vancouver — about 7,000 students there — works out to just over $300,000. A larger one, such as Burnaby, which has 24,000 students, is just over $1 million.
The next-generation, as I was saying, is — I’m sorry if I misquoted there — $26 million down to $24 million.
R. Fleming: I just want to ask the minister, related to his answer there, what the difference in annual operating cost is, when all 60 districts will have transitioned to the next-gen network, between the old PLNet system and the new one.
I understand it’s $22 million provincewide that goes to Telus as a service provider under the new system — I’m just struggling to recall the PLNet — and $24 million is what the cost of next-gen will be at 100 percent buildout. I’m just wondering if you can compare that to the operating costs of PLNet. I understand the vast technological improvements, the desire for it and all of that. I’m just trying to put into perspective that this is a new operating cost that has to be absorbed by school districts.
When we started this set of estimates, we were talking about how the combined increase on $4.8 billion for public school instruction is only $50 million in this budget. This is a cost pressure that school districts have to pay. I’m wondering how much additional it is in relation to all of the other cost pressures the school district has — so the difference between PLNet’s current operating costs and the next-gen network.
Hon. M. Bernier: Just to go along with this, though, when you look at the next-generation network. As we talked about, being a request from the school district, it’s something that…. We worked with them for quite some time to get to the additional capacity, the additional reliance that they wanted. School districts were aware that there would be additional costs with that. So, as mentioned, we will be eliminating PLNet.
The incremental costs, again, for ’16-17 will be $24 million. That’s the incremental cost for the school districts. Then, in ’17-18, it will be going down to $22 million.
R. Fleming: I guess the follow-up question for the minister is: is it projected to stay at or around $22 million indefinitely into the future? Is that the cost? I know the cost for MyEducation B.C., for example, is $10 per student, so that’s about $5 million of recovery. If it’s $22 million, we’re looking at 40 bucks per kid, approximately, in perpetuity. I just need to understand that — if this is going to be a cost pressure that districts must get used to paying indefinitely into the future.
Hon. M. Bernier: One of the things, when you look at the contract that we have right now…. For the next three years, within our plan, it’s been communicated that it’ll be at $22 million, when it comes down from the 24 to the 22.
That’s based on the present demand on the system. Hopefully, the member can appreciate some things do change. Sometimes school districts will ask for modifications to the capacity they have. There could be…. As we know, we’re going to be looking at building schools in some areas of demand, so that obviously increases load.
But the contracts and the funding, when you look at it right now, are based on an FTE basis back to the school districts, for their requirement with us.
R. Fleming: In the briefing that ministry employees were kind enough to arrange and provide for me…. I think the approximate number of schools that are on next-gen is now 80 percent. But there are, I guess, some persistent areas that are, let’s just say, underserved by fibre optics and this kind of infrastructure. There are also some legacy companies that aren’t with the large utilities. So there’s, presumably, a trickier negotiation there.
I’ve been in some of these communities. They’ve waited a long, long time to have the kind of broadband access that is part and parcel of an education in this era. I’m
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just wondering if there are any problems foreseen — contractually or otherwise or in terms of a higher cost infrastructure — getting into remote areas or underserved areas where the target of 100 percent compliance and access to next-gen may not be completed — that there are risks that may make it impossible to complete it in the next fiscal year.
Hon. M. Bernier: Just for the member opposite. The contracts for the next-generation network, to move forward with this, are contracted work through the Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services.
All the communications we have, all the anticipations and all the information, say that we’re on time and on budget by the end of 2016. There’s no reason to believe that we’re going to be in a position where we’re not going to meet those obligations for all the schools.
Further to the member’s question about if it is going to be harder in different areas, I can use my personal example of Dawson Creek, for instance. That one there has been done for quite some time. So it wasn’t a matter of leaving…. I guess the question was leaving the hard ones for the end. In fact, right now we’re in the final stages of negotiations with different contracts to be completed by 2016. The anticipation is, and we’ve seen, rural areas around the province who are already connected.
From the travels I’ve done around the province to a lot of the school districts, I have to say, really, how well the school districts are being served with this new network. When I go into a classroom, I look at the work that they’re doing. When I look at them and they’re starting to learn coding…. One student actually said to me — and this was actually in my hometown, in Dawson Creek: “You know, a couple of years back, when I clicked on a button to get on Google to work on my homework, it could take 30 seconds.” He goes: “Now, it’s instantaneous. I can be in a classroom with 20 other kids, and we’re all working together on the computer, and we have no problems now.”
When you talk to the school districts themselves, that’s really why they were looking for this change, why they said that we needed to advance the opportunities. Really, what it’s doing is helping all of our students in British Columbia.
R. Fleming: I just want to leave next-gen for a while and go back to some of the major areas around funding — specifically, around the administrative savings cuts that have been directed by the government for the second year in a row. It was $29 million last year, $25 million this current fiscal year — $54 million in total.
I guess the question is around, really, the Premier’s ill-advised words that simply enraged school trustees and elected local officials, when she suggested that there’s low-hanging fruit, that these are cuts that are simply made by school districts and that it’s, presumably, a bunch of grey suits in the back offices of the school districts that are expendable.
That characterization is so out of character for what school districts are like in this province, where efficiencies have been made year after year after year, where many school districts are forced to go without supports for students that they are reluctant to stop providing and where difficult decisions have been made year after year after year. Yet the commentary by the head of government, in the public realm, is that school districts are somehow bloated.
We have a study by the B.C. Association of School Business Officials, based on national research and American research, that has comparators that show that B.C.’s school districts are, in fact, the most administratively lean on the continent of North America.
We have school districts that have met with ministry officials and actually shown them the kinds of shared-services agreements that they have created amongst themselves, the kinds of partnerships, between districts or with local governments or other partners, where they’ve achieved savings. The entrepreneurial level of skill in some school districts to manage costs and even achieve revenues where they can and balance their budgets, I think, is instructive to the province. The Premier completely dismisses it and ignores it.
Having said all that, my specific question to the minister is this. It has been an edict, really, that these cuts have to be made. Obviously, there hasn’t been any assessment as to whether that’s the fair thing to do. There hasn’t been any selection by the ministry of different districts to say: “You’re less efficient in this district than another district. Therefore, you should bear more of the cuts.” It has been across the board.
This has not exactly been a surgically precise operation by the Ministry of Education. The pain has been spread to districts no matter how aggressively they’ve pursued efficiencies over the last ten or 12 years.
As I said in my opening remarks, in some school districts, the cost of administrative savings cuts, this year and last year, is exactly equivalent to the savings they have to try and achieve by cutting teaching positions and closing schools. In other words, take away this administrative savings directive, and we would have a lot less schools in rural parts of British Columbia being closed. It is the tipping point for many school districts, in terms of their ability to manage demographics, keep programs intact, keep education teams intact and keep schools open.
I’m coming, I guess, to the opening question on the issue around administrative savings cuts and the edict that this government has put onto school districts. Is there any actual ability for the ministry to track whether cuts are, in fact, being made to what would be, I think, reasonably considered administrative costs or administrative expenditures, versus the kinds of cuts we’re ac-
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tually seeing in real school districts in every part of the province right now — where it’s special education assistants, teaching positions, physical buildings being closed?
In other words, it’s things that kids and parents and teachers use in their daily lives. It’s classroom resources, or classrooms themselves, that are being lost in this cutback exercise. How does the ministry track it? Do they just say, “Across-the-board cuts, administrative savings — you do what you want,” and there’s no monitoring, oversight or reporting? That’s the end of it. The ministry has dusted its hands, and they don’t care after that point? Or is there some kind of verification that these cuts are, even in a remote way, linked to administrative expenditure?
Hon. M. Bernier: When we look at the whole conversation around administrative savings, I think what’s really important to highlight here is the fact that we’re specific around administration. So when the member opposite is referencing some of the other issues around the province….
I really want to be clear here. There was a lot of work done with our partner groups, with the BCSTA, through our technical review committee, when we’re talking around administrative savings. In fact, right at the very beginning, when we were talking about this, we were saying: “Okay. How do we achieve some of these administrative savings in a fair and equitable way?”
In fact, the information that we got back in those discussions that we had with our partner groups is that we need to look at doing that across the board — making sure that, through a per-student ratio going across with the budgets, those administrative savings were found in every single school district at those different ratios.
At no time did our partner groups want us looking at one school district more than another. We want to make sure, and the partners were very clear…. Let’s work together. Let’s make sure that we find these administrative savings in a fair way to all school districts around the province.
Now, with that, again, I just want to really highlight that administrative savings at no time are allowed to be used — and school districts know this — for programming changes. School closures. In fact, through the admin savings, there were very clear and specific guidelines that each school district had to report out. The discussion was around admin savings of what their quantum would be, what admin savings they would be looking for. Within those guidelines, they also had to report back to the ministry.
The ministry was very careful to review all of those documents, which every school district handed in, to ensure that the admin savings that they were highlighting…. Again, we want to leave those decisions at the local level for the school districts, to look at where their savings could possibly be, because every school district is a little bit different. But when they reported to us, we made sure that went through that.
At any time, if a school district identified something that was possibly not within that list, that discussion would take place to ensure that any savings were specifically identified within the allowable portfolios of acceptance for the savings.
On top of that, I’ll mention to the member opposite, we’ve also conducted a couple of random audits of a few school districts. We wanted to ensure that…. When school districts gave us their anticipated areas of where they knew they could meet administrative savings within the reports that they gave us, we did the random audits to ensure that’s what was being followed.
The main point of this that I think we want to make sure we discuss is that this is not about programming. It’s not about the operations in the classroom. It’s about looking at administrative savings, looking for opportunities, whether it be around shared services, other cost savings and opportunities within each school district, and allowing them the flexibility to decide where those savings can be achieved — noting that at no time are we looking at changing the programming or the funding mechanisms that go actually into the classrooms for students.
R. Fleming: On the subject of leading by example, I think school districts would like to know…. They’ve obviously seen their administrative budget allocation from the province go down by $54 million over the last two years, from $368 million to $315 million. What we haven’t seen — and I don’t see here in this service plan — is the minister doing that in areas that he directly controls.
Executive and support services in the ministry have not decreased or been targeted for administrative savings in a manner that school districts have. Even in the minister’s own office, which is directly under his control, there’s no commensurate reduction in his own spending on his own staff.
It seems that they’re looking outwards at their partners in the delivery of education and saying: “You’ve got fat to trim. You’re wasteful. We’re going to tighten your belts. We’re going to cut your budgets by $54 million.” But the same yardstick and the same standard isn’t used inside his own ministry.
So if I could ask the minister — unless I’m mistaken here — where there’s an identical or even greater cut, if there’s real leadership being demonstrated here, within the areas of executive and support services in the ministry and the minister’s office itself.
Hon. M. Bernier: I just want to correct the member opposite. When we look at admin savings, when we looked at the opportunities around savings within those discussions with the school district, it equated to approximately 1 percent of the overall budget.
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Just to look at the Ministry of Education specifically…. The Ministry of Education, in this year’s budget, is down 4 percent within the ministry — down about $2 million. Year over year, the trend has been going down. In fact, we’re down over 10 percent in the last five years with spending within the Ministry of Education, specifically around staff and the operations here.
R. Fleming: I think the minister had earlier stressed the importance of apples-to-apples comparison. He just talked about a 4 percent decline, and then he says it’s only 1 percent in the school districts. Well, now he’s blending public school instruction with administrative allocations.
I’m talking about what was a $368 million allocation for the administration of public schools. Administration is presumably where his administrative savings cuts are directed to be made from, not public school instruction, because he says it’s not supposed to come out of the classroom. By my recollection, this is more like a 15 percent cut. They’ve had to cut $54 million off $368 million.
If he could just clarify, then, that the cuts are significantly steeper for their external partners, the 60 school districts who deliver school services every day to 550,000 kids. It’s a 15 percent cut on their administration, and I believe he credited the ministry with a 4 percent cut.
Hon. M. Bernier: When we looked at the administrative savings again, with very specific guidelines over the two years working with the school districts, there were identifiable areas that they could bring forward, working with us on where those savings could take place.
I think it’s important to stress, when I talked about the reductions in the internal budget here within the Ministry of Education — specifically here — that we’ve been doing reductions year over year for about the last ten, 15 years. It’s been fairly consistent, the downward trend.
When you look at school districts specifically, there’s been a lot of discussion that’s taken place in the last couple of years to really look at where we could make administrative savings. Due to the fact that we’ve got about 70,000 fewer students in the province, we have fewer kids in the classroom.
In most ministries, most sectors within government — when we’re doing core review, when we’re looking at all the different opportunities for tightening our belts across every ministry, whether it be Health, Education or any other ministry within government — it’s: where are the opportunities to look at making savings?
Again, to stress the administrative savings that were done within Education…. It was after a rigorous conversation and discussion with all of our partner groups to be able to look at those opportunities. Every single school district was able to put in a plan of where they thought those administrative savings could be found and that were not going to be affecting programs.
When you look at the numbers that were being referenced, I think if we’re going to go apples to apples, again, it needs to be looking at everything in context on this particular issue. The Education budget here internally, as I say, has been going down almost year over year. The school districts have identified, as I say, a lot of opportunities of where those administrative savings can be found.
As I said, we audit some of them. We’ve looked at this to make sure that we’re falling in line with where those opportunities are. I think it’s important, again, just to stress that it’s not going into a classroom reduction. It’s not going into a programming reduction. In fact, that’s one of the areas that we want to continue highlighting.
We work with the school districts on that to make sure that the funding is going into the classrooms at every opportunity and to make sure that where there are opportunities for school districts to look internally, to look for operations where they can save money internally within the admins.
I think it’s important to constantly be doing that. Everybody does that in their personal lives. You’re always looking at opportunities. When things change, how do you fluctuate and change with those changing times to look at saving money? School districts were treated, I would say, equally and the same as every other sector where we’re looking at following through at that to look for savings.
R. Fleming: I don’t think the minister really answered my question around the apples-to-apples comparison, but I’ll take it as an admission that I’m at least partly right that school districts have been asked to make steeper administrative savings cuts than any other part of his ministry. That’s a fact.
I do note that in the minister’s office, there’s a slight budget increase this year. I think that erodes your credibility when you go to speak to school district leaders and tell them that somehow, after a decade of cuts and rationing and service improvements and efficiencies that they have found, that they still have to do more and more.
There are so many districts where they’ve made one-time savings that can’t be made again and again. There are school districts around the province that have sold property, which they’re living off to balance their budget annually — the very antithesis of fiscal sustainability, by selling off real estate to try and balance your budget. Yet the government comes after them for more and more on the administrative side.
Now, he’s trying to make the case that these are purely administrative cuts and that the students are shielded from it out there on the education landscape in British Columbia. I don’t think anybody believes that.
Certainly, the ministry numbers don’t show that. We just had numbers that were published by the ministry on class size and composition. Two years after the Premier
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said it was her number one priority, the numbers of classes out of compliance with classroom size guidelines in the province of British Columbia has never been higher.
The number of classes with students with IEPs — four, five, six, seven students with an IEP in a classroom — has never been larger. Those are the numbers that the ministry published earlier this year.
That’s what’s going on in the classrooms, and we have the minister saying that the administrative services cut, the $54 million that has been forced onto school districts, is not impacting the classroom. I don’t think anybody believes that. Certainly, the school trustees don’t. They haven’t welcomed or embraced this initiative by government. They’ve bitterly complained and resisted. I have the letters to prove it. They’ve wanted dialogue with the government. They’ve said to the province, “Prove it. We already are efficient,” and the government has ignored them.
What I think this really is about is that the province, this government, can’t even give a meagre 1 percent increase to public schools instruction before they grab half of it back with a $25 million administrative savings cut this year. That’s what it’s about. The net increase for public school instruction this year, after the administrative savings cut, is a paltry 0.5 percent.
You have to measure that against real rising costs that are happening in school districts. You have to account for the downloading of cost increases that are provincially determined. MSP premiums that are paid by school district employers are provincially determined by his colleagues in the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance, yet 100 percent of that additional cost is passed on to school districts.
B.C. Hydro rates. The Minister of Education — or maybe it was his predecessor — was petitioned by the B.C. School Trustees Association to be shielded from a 29 percent rate increase for their schools, particularly when government was charging carbon offsets and reducing their ability to make energy efficiency investments in their own buildings. That was rejected.
We have a number of provincially negotiated salary increases for CUPE support staff that were funded by cooperative gains that were internal savings found at the school district level, not funded by the province. We have it again, as I mentioned earlier, now with principals and vice-principals, who have not had a salary adjustment since 2009, getting a 2 percent salary adjustment in this year and adjustments in years forward. None of that is funded either.
You add it up. The B.C. association of school board officials estimate it’s $192 million. That’s from a briefing note to the deputy minister two years ago, so it’s gone higher, to be clear. I don’t have…. My FOI has not been completed by the ministry yet, to give me the current figure — if in fact that would still be included in the deputy minister’s briefing materials.
This idea that school districts are a bottomless well of administrative savings cuts, when in fact, they’ve shown the way…. They compare very well against community colleges, university administrations. They stack up 30 percent more efficient than school districts in neighbouring provinces like Alberta, all across western Canada — in fact, the country as a whole.
There is no more low-hanging fruit in the school districts. That’s the point I’m trying to make to the minister. That’s the point that’s been made over and over again to him by people in the education sector. Yet they push ahead in this budget in order to grab back the very modest, very insignificant increase for public schools instruction. They cut it in half, basically, through this so-called administrative savings cut.
It is the difference between keeping schools open and forcing them to be closed, ripping them out of communities — places like Summerland, Osoyoos, possibly in communities like Armstrong, in the north of B.C., right here on Vancouver Island. In community after community, it has proved an impossible task now, with these cuts, to keep schools open.
I want to ask the minister just one more time, I think, at this point, on administrative savings. Where are these cuts going to come from? You’ve got school districts now charging $500 per kid for school transportation in rural B.C., where they need school bus infrastructure. It’s not funded anymore. In fact, actually, school bus funding is considered an administration cost.
I could accept the minister saying: “Well, we’re cutting school buses, not classrooms.” The fact is that they’re cutting both — $500, sometimes $700, per family to ride the school bus to get to school every day, sometimes great distances. These are the kinds of real cuts that are coming out of the pockets of middle-class families and hurting the ability of families to be engaged in their school community.
He’s heard, very clearly, that there are no more administrative savings cuts to have. He’s seen enough interim budgets from different school districts around the province that show that administrative savings cuts mean the loss of learning supports, the loss of teaching positions and, in some cases, the closure of schools.
Isn’t it time that the minister had a rethink, sat down with his partners in education and said: “You’re right. You know what? We’re not going to ask you to do what I won’t even ask my own ministry to do — or my minister’s office to do, for that matter, where the budget has grown”?
They’ve made the case. I think they have. They’ve done a cross-Canadian study. They’ve looked both internationally and at their American counterparts to show that they’re more efficient here in British Columbia.
Instead of clawing back the meagre 1 percent of public school instruction funding and making it a half a percent, don’t play that game. Allow school districts to at least
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have a 1 percent increase. Then I think we can have a discussion about what the rate of inflation and all of those unfunded cost pressures are, too, because I think there’s a case for fairness to be made there.
I know the minister has heard that as well, but he hasn’t made the case for so-called administrative savings cuts. I mean, ten years ago, maybe there was a case there. But we have growing enrolment this year in the province of British Columbia. More and more school districts are coming out of funding and protection.
It’s a different situation than we had ten or 15 years ago, yet it’s the same playbook from this government. They give with one hand; they take with the other. They haven’t made the case that this is doable, and they know it’s impacting kids.
Will the minister reconsider this?
[M. Dalton in the chair.]
The Chair: Minister.
Hon. M. Bernier: Thank you, and welcome, Chair. Welcome to the excitement of Education.
When we’re talking about, again, the administrative savings, I think it’s important to stress that when we were working with the school districts — again, as I mentioned — the school districts submitted plans to us on how they were going to meet those savings.
Within the plans for the last two years, every school district has come back and said: “Here’s where we can meet those administrative savings.” Every single one of those plans showed that those could be met without affecting a classroom, within the parameters or what are set.
You know, when you look at the different…. There are some questions of what kind of opportunities there are. When we talk about the shared services, you look at some of the areas where school districts can work collaboratively together. You look at the opportunities from the administrative staff side, and it’s no different than what we’ve done, as I mentioned, within our ministry. In fact, about five years ago, we did a massive, over $10 million reduction within the ministry staff here in Victoria, as well, to make sure that we were continually doing our part looking for ways how to save money.
School districts also collaborate together. They look at opportunities to save, through energy efficiency opportunities, which, again, is extra funding that we give to the school districts. In fact, we just announced grant opportunities of $40 million for school enhancement programs, where school districts can apply to us, where we will give them extra funding for projects which can help reduce their energy efficiency costs — costs and money that they get to keep within their district to continue to roll into other programs, as well, to help the students.
The member opposite, at the beginning of his comments, was talking about school closures and class size and that. I just want to, again, correct the member. Over the last 15 years, when you look at student-to-teacher ratios, it is virtually unchanged. We have 70,000 fewer students in the province of British Columbia. Has there been a reduction, over that time, in teachers? Well, obviously there would be, when you have 70,000 fewer students, and you have to look at opportunities to make sure we have classrooms and money going into the students appropriately.
But I also want to say, when we talked about there being, more than ever, classes with 30 or more students…. Again, we’ve seen a huge reduction, actually. Since 2005, we’ve gone down to 8,000 fewer classes that have over 30 students in them. We’re down to just over 1,000 classes that have 30 students.
In fact, all of those decisions — when you look at having more than 30 students in a classroom, the majority of those are 31 — are made, actually, in consultation between the principals and the classrooms themselves. That’s not something done through here with the ministry. In fact, a lot of those have been decisions made that everybody has agreed upon within that school.
When you make the choice, in a grade 11 or 12 year, when a student requires an extra class in order to graduate or has to have an extra class in order to get the credits — it could be a physics class, for instance — I actually commend the school districts, the schools and the principals when they actually work collaboratively together to say: “You know what? Maybe we will put in 31 students, because we don’t want to have to say no to that one student that requires that physics class in order to move on to get their credits in order to move on to university.”
That wouldn’t be fair to the student. The school districts make those choices locally in order to accommodate those students, and I commend them for that.
I also want to thank the BCASBO, the school trustees and everybody around the province when we’ve had all these discussions around administrative savings. We’ve had very good discussions. They’ve been very responsive working with us on looking for savings. We’ve had great communications. In fact, when I go out and speak at events, I have to thank staff that’s around me and here in the room with us today.
At every single one of those events that I go to, our sector partners stand up and talk about the great relationship they have with the Ministry of Education, how we work together. We look for opportunities for savings. We look for opportunities to make sure that we continue to have the best investment possible for our students around the province. Those relationships, I know, are going to continue.
J. Wickens: This is my very first estimates. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to ask some questions.
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Most of my questions are, really, questions that I’m genuinely interested in learning about our ministry and that I think will be helpful in my role as a parent, advocate and new MLA. I’m looking forward to asking some questions to the minister and the ministry. I’ll just get started right away.
My first question is around distributed learning. I’ve done a little bit of looking at numbers in the province. Right now it looks like we have about 40,000 students that are taking distributed-learning classes — 40,180. That is about an 81 percent increase since 2001.
My question for the minister is: does the ministry have any analytics around who these students are? How many of the students are registered in distributed learning and also in regular education classrooms?
Hon. M. Bernier: Congratulations to the member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain for her first estimates. I will confess: this is mine as well. So we’ll do this together.
I guess the quick answer to your question is yes. When you have students enrolled in distributed learning, quite a few of them, actually, are in the bricks and mortar within the school system too. Especially when you look at the opportunities within a specific school that might not have the exact course that that child wants, that that student wants, they will register through the DL program and be able to take that.
Going back to the discussion we had an hour or two ago about the next-generation network, that’s opened up the doors for a lot of rural B.C. too, where you have students that might not be able to get those one or two extra courses that they really want in order to get the accreditation to move on to whatever post-secondary opportunities that they desire. So those really do have, I guess, a combination of here, there and both.
J. Wickens: Specifically, does the ministry know how many students are registered solely in distributed-learning classes, and how many students are registered in both distributed learning and regular education programs?
Hon. M. Bernier: For the DL, the distance learning, only, it’s 22,791. But just to quantify, that’s last year because, of course, it’s the ’15-16, and we’re trying to…. With the other number, we’re in the process of trying to put that together for you. I’ll try to get that to you as soon as I can.
J. Wickens: I’m going to put a couple of questions together in case you don’t have the answer. I would be curious to know how many students with special needs are enrolled in distributed-learning courses and whether or not the ministry has a report outlining all the analytics around distributed learning.
What grades of students are taking distributed-learning courses? What geographical areas are these students enrolled in, in distributed learning? So, really, a full picture of why there’s such a drastic increase in students taking distributed-learning courses — percentages.
Hon. M. Bernier: I thank the member for the question, which, I know, she’s very passionate about for different reasons, as well.
When you look at the analytics and what we collect, yes, we do collect a lot of that information. When you asked, specifically, around how many special needs in DL, I don’t have that information readily available. We can always get it, but one of the things, maybe, I’d offer is…. We have my ADM Ian Rongve here, who is actually responsible for this file, and at any time, we can try to arrange…. If you want to sit down, we can get you a fulsome briefing on it — give you more in depth, really, of how that whole system works, how the analytics are collected and how that information really drives what’s moving forward.
On the overarching theme, though, around distributed learning, I think one of the…. I really want to highlight the fact that because of technology, there’s been an increase, and that’s because it’s an increase of opportunities. When you look, again, at rural British Columbia, which maybe never had the opportunity to do DL before…. Kids and students were missing out on programs that they might have wanted, but they didn’t want to leave town. Because of technology, because of these opportunities, you’ve got students right across the province being able to open up to what their desires are, their passions, and being able to access courses and programs that they weren’t able to do before.
So is there an increase percentage-wise of people taking DL? Yeah, there is. The cause of that is, again, because of the opportunities that are out there in British Columbia.
I would put this as a very, very positive good-news story — when you have students around B.C., because of the education system and the opportunities through technology, to be able to access courses that they never were able to do before. That’s, with our new curriculum, how we’re opening things up, allowing kids to really have that flexibility to look at what their passions are in life, what they want to do when they leave school.
If it wasn’t for a DL program, the distance learning program, we would, actually, have a lot of students that maybe wouldn’t be able to get those extra programs that they want. So I’d, really, put this as a really good-news story.
J. Wickens: Thank you for your comments. I would agree, to a certain extent. I appreciate the team being willing to sit down with me to talk about some of those analytics. The challenge, really, is that I would like to call
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it a good-news story, but there’s not enough information to actually be able to call it a good-news story.
Is it children accessing distributed-learning classes because of technology and because of remote areas? Or is it, partially, lots of special needs students not being able to attend regular classrooms, so they’re needing to be in distributed-learning classes?
We just don’t have the information to be able to make that point — or I don’t. What I would ask is, if the ministry has a report, to provide that kind of report around those analytics. If you do not have a report, if the ministry can provide a report by the end of April 2016.
Hon. M. Bernier: To the member, specifically around the report that you want. I have talked with staff. We’re going to look at compiling that together for you because, as I said, we have all the analytics and that information. We’ll put some stuff together for the member. I’ll get that to you as soon as I can, once we have a chance to compile that for you.
I just want to also mention, if it helps, that we just quickly looked at distance learning and what the most popular courses are, what the majority are taking. It’s actually English 12 and biology 12. What that tells me is, specifically on that, when we look at the comments, technology and the opportunities…. Without looking at the analytics, obviously, in front of me right now, what that tells me, when you’re looking at courses like that, is these are students that are taking specific courses to make sure they get the credits to be able to move on to the post-secondary education they desire. Distance learning, again, has opened the doors for a lot of people.
J. Wickens: I’m going to move on, because I’ve quickly learned that I have lots of questions and not a lot of time.
My next question for the minister is whether he can let me know how many students with special needs are in our province and then break that down into high incidence and low incidence.
Hon. M. Bernier: Just looking at the exact numbers here, so I can get them to the member there.
When you look at the low-incidence students, you’re looking at 30,631, and when you look at the high-incidence students, it’s 33,853 at the last time we took it. Just please remember those change all the time.
J. Wickens: My question for the ministry…. Low-incidence students have increased drastically — over 26 or 27 percent since 2001. But high-incidence students have actually decreased quite a bit — about 17 percent. I’m wondering if the ministry has any explanation for the increase of low-incidence students and the decrease of high-incidence students.
Hon. M. Bernier: One of the things that I think we’ve seen over the last quite a few years is really around the diagnostics and the relationship now that we have…. You look at MCFD, at health, at students and children in general now and at how students are diagnosed at an earlier age. We didn’t really have that to the level that we have now as things have advanced, mostly in the health care system.
When you look at the low-incidence students, there has been an increase, and I believe a lot of it might have to do with that. But it’s also, I would say, more hands-on. When you look, we have our early learning centres that we didn’t use to have, and we have specialized training for the people within the early learning centres to really look at identifying, at those early stages in a child’s life as they’re developing, where there might be identifiable issues that might want to be looked at.
I think we’ve seen great success, with those opportunities, to be able to look at helping a child earlier in life. Any opportunity to be in front of a health care professional, to be diagnosed, to be assisted is obviously beneficial to everybody, at the end of the day.
When you look at the low incidence, as you were saying, it has decreased. But we’re at $512 million that we invest to help these students over the three different categories that we have within that. It’s one of the things within the school system, that supplemental funding, that goes back to help all these students, to make sure within the schools districts that on top of the per-student funding they have additional funds to be able to help different students, to have people in the classrooms to assist them to make sure they’re having the extra care that they require.
J. Wickens: I just want to correct the minister. That money is for low-incidence students, not high-incidence students. My original question was if the minister could explain why there has been a decrease. I understand the explanation for the low-incidence students and why we might see an increase there, but why have we seen such a decrease in high-incidence students, students with learning disabilities, gifted students — those students? There has been a decrease.
Hon. M. Bernier: One of the things that I’ll mention, then, to the member opposite is kind of what I mentioned in my first answer. Somehow, with the diagnostics and how things have changed…. If you looked 15 years ago, you’d have a child that could have been identified with behavioural issues. It could be ADD. It could be something like that. It wasn’t until we’d been able to really establish, with the great work within the health system, too, where we get the proper diagnoses, that this child might actually be autistic.
When you look at going from high to low, a lot of it could be the reclassification within the health sector as
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better diagnosis is taking place. But when you look across the sector, the amount of special needs students within the school system, actually, for the most part, has stayed fairly constant.
J. Wickens: Thank you for your answer.
My next question is: how many school psychologists are employed by the ministry?
Hon. M. Bernier: When you look at the specific question around school psychologists, of course every school district makes those decisions on a local basis, of how many employees they’re going to have, what levels they may want, and requires psychologists. The school districts make those decisions. Although I don’t have that information specifically, school district by school district, in front of me, I can get that for the member if she chooses.
J. Wickens: Can the minister explain why specialist teacher positions in the province have decreased drastically, but our students with special needs have stayed constant and, in the low-incidence category, increased drastically?
Hon. M. Bernier: When we look at students with special needs, one of the things that we’re really committed to within the ministry is making sure that we have the opportunities for them, making sure that we have specialized funding for them. In fact, we have the learning improvement fund, which I’m sure the member has learned about. Again this year it’s about $100 million that’s going to be going in specifically around this for support for teachers and for staff in the classrooms.
When you look at some of the numbers, actually, where that fund has been going — the reports back from the school districts themselves to us — we have 1,200 teachers, either full-time or part-time, that has increased. When you look at the support staff and the extra staff that’s hired to help students, we actually have 44 new full-time support staff, and almost 200 of them, additional staff, have been moved from part-time to full-time.
When we worked with the school districts around this learning improvement fund, we wanted to make sure that those opportunities and those funds were actually directed specifically to students with special needs, where possible. The decisions get made by the local school districts at how they’re going to use that funding, because they’re the ones that recognize each unique situation in the school. Every school is different, every classroom is different, and every child’s need is different. That’s why we allow that flexibility for them on how that should be spent.
J. Wickens: I don’t have this year’s numbers because they’re not published yet, I believe. But by my numbers that I have, since 2001, the total enrolment for students has decreased by 12 percent. We’ve seen declining enrolment, which the minister has talked about a bit.
There’s then, approximately, a 26 percent increase in our low-incidence students but a 23 percent decrease in our special education teaching positions, where all teaching positions have been cut by about 19 percent. My question for the minister is: does he think that these cuts to special education are disproportionate?
Hon. M. Bernier: Again, when we put these additional funds in, it’s really about making those decisions at a local level of what’s best for each classroom, for each student.
I’ll use some examples of what I’ve seen as I travel around the province, for instance. I’ve had some great discussions with some learning assistants, with teachers, where they’ve actually been able to help students to get better opportunities for them, I would say, with this flexibility.
What I mean by that is…. We look at the increase from a half-time to a full-time, let’s say, for a support worker. You might have had it in the past where you’d have two autistic children in the same grade but in different classes. In talking with the teachers and the support staff, it’s really about how we get those best opportunities for those children.
In some instances, what that has meant is: “Why do we have the children in separate classrooms with similar needs when we can put them, actually, into the same classroom with one worker who’s dedicated to really working closely, hand in hand, with that student to ensure they get the best opportunities as possible?”
When you look at the end of the day, from a school district perspective, it’s really about them making the best decision, utilizing the best staff in the classrooms to help the students. With examples like what I just mentioned, what we’re really seeing — what I’ve seen when I’m out there — are way better outcomes for our students — better results, more engagement.
I’ve talked to some of these students, and I can tell you this. I think the member opposite would appreciate the relationship that sometimes these students with special needs get with teachers, with their support worker, when you can have that person with them more often, as this LIF fund has provided.
At the end of the day, what it’s really done is been more beneficial for the students in the classrooms.
J. Wickens: I appreciate the comments from the minister. I would question the numbers around educational assistants. I think right now there are about 8,000 full-time educational assistants in the province, approximately, which means that that one educational assistant is actually being split up between three low-incidence students and about seven students all together with dis-
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abilities. I guess I would ask the minister how he would reconcile those numbers.
Hon. M. Bernier: I think the main point, again, would be around flexibility within the classrooms and the discussion that takes place between what would be a very obviously engaged parent working with the teacher, working with the principal, to make sure that the best opportunities are there for that student.
When you look at the individualized learning plan, for instance, that a student with special needs would require, when you look at the communications that would take place in the sign-off between the parents and the principals for that…. That’s why every situation is unique. Every student, again, every opportunity within the school district is unique.
At the end of the day, what it’s really supposed to be about is getting the best outcomes for those students. I just want to remind the member opposite that we have seen a 195 percent increase in graduation rates for students with special needs. We’ve seen a huge success. There’s been a lot of engagement. Some very passionate, very involved parents working with the great teachers that we have to make sure that every student has the best opportunities possible.
When you look at completion rates like that going up, that, to me, signals…. Although we never want to sit back and stop, because we know there’s a lot of work that we can do to continue, I would say, until any child has the graduation completion that they’re able to achieve. So we’ve seen great increase.
Back to the flexibility in each school. We have some examples from different school districts, which, maybe, will highlight how things can be very unique in the flexibility within the schools. If you look at one school here that reported back to us in Victoria, for instance, they had two district behavioral programs, at the elementary level and one at the middle level, with ten kids, one teacher and one EA. Then they had three moderate-to-severe special needs programs at the middle school and two at the high school level, with ten kids, one teacher and five EAs.
You look at the ratio there. You only have ten students, and you have six staff helping out. That, to me, shows the success of leaving those decisions at the local level. They really work with the students and have the different, special, identifiable needs that they need to allow the flexibility.
If we in the ministry actually said, “This is how it’s going to be” — and we don’t leave that flexibility locally — I think students would be missing out. Students would not be getting the proper opportunities if it was being decided here — if it was being mandated, for that matter. The whole point is making sure that these children, these students, all students within the system, have the flexibility to get the requirements and, really, what they deserve when it comes to an education.
J. Wickens: I would agree with the minister that at the end of the day, it’s really what’s important for these students. They’re a vulnerable population, and I think that we need to make sure that they have access to a great education so that they can be as independent as they possibly can when they get out of public school.
I have to dig a little bit deeper into the minister’s comments around completion rates, because I think they’re a little bit misleading. As far as completion rates for students with special needs in the province, I believe they’re about 50 percent. The minister can correct me if I’m wrong. I guess I would ask the minister what the completion rates are for low-incidence students, because those are the students we’re talking about in regards to educational assistants.
I am curious if the minister has an explanation for how we track the outcomes of those students.
Hon. M. Bernier: Maybe what I’ll do is just highlight for the member some of the completion rate information that we have. It was the low incidence you were looking for?
When we look at some of the completion rates that I was referencing…. We look at a 195 percent increase. All students with special needs right now that I have in front of me in that category are actually up — when I talk about 195 percent — from 50 percent to 66 percent. We are up substantially, and that’s actually just in the last five years. We have seen a great increase there. Again, as I mentioned in my last answer, 66 percent has been a great accomplishment. Obviously, it shows there is lots of work that we can do there.
I can get some of the more detailed breakdowns within the students with special needs and the different classifications at a later date for you, if you wish.
J. Wickens: Do we track students who are low-incidence students? How do we track those students?
Hon. M. Bernier: The numbers that I read out on the completion rates for the special needs are the low incidence. When you look at how we quantify them, where the information comes in….All of those students receive supplemental funding.
The school districts themselves are the ones that report that to the ministry. The school districts are the ones that identify which students they have that fall underneath that incidence range. There are three different classifications of supplemental funding opportunities for students with special needs, depending on the class of diagnoses that they have. When we talk about how we’ve seen great success in completion rates, that’s who we’re talking about.
[D. Plecas in the chair.]
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We’re seeing students now who are being able to move on right through to grade 12 and get their graduation certificate. Again, I think we would both agree that’s a great story, when we’re seeing more kids graduating.
More specific to some of the details that the member wants, I open up the offer again to meet with my staff. We can really have a real wholesome discussion. You can have that with staff, to really dive into some of the specifics that you’re talking about. The numbers, obviously, that we would have, that we would track, would be the low-incidence students because those are very specific to funding asks from the ministry. That’s why we have those available.
J. Wickens: I think it’s really important for me to clarify and correct the minister. Based on the ministry’s own documents, the completion rate is not tracking low-incidence students. That completion rate is for three categories of students, and that’s what’s published in ministry documents.
Again, I understand that we track students in the low-incidence category based on funding levels, but what I’m asking is how we track them academically and in completing school.
The Chair: Minister.
Hon. M. Bernier: Hello, Chair. Welcome to the seat.
I’m going to be asking a question back to the member, somewhat. But I’m hoping she can let me know what report she might be referencing, because the numbers that I’m stating are accurate ones. When we talk about students with special needs, all of that information is tracked. All of that is tracked just like any other student. We have all of that information.
When students go through the classes, when they’re registered, when they complete, when they graduate — all of that information we have. Those are the numbers that I’m referring to. I’m not sure what the member opposite…. Maybe that would help me a little bit to answer her questions, because the numbers that I’m reflecting off the reports I have in front of me are the accurate ones.
I’m looking forward to understanding what she’s referring to.
J. Wickens: That’s a bit alarming to me because in the ministry documentation on line, it defines special needs students when it looks at completion rates. There’s an asterisk under “special needs students” and the numbers.
If you go on to the back of that document to look at what the definition of special needs students is — the definition of those special needs students that we’re looking at those outcomes for — it’s “students with learning disabilities, students with sensory disabilities.” They are not students included in the low-incidence category, so we don’t have completion rates for students in the low-incidence category. I’m wondering how we then track those students’ outcomes.
Hon. M. Bernier: I’m just trying to follow along with the line of questioning again. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a clear answer of what the member opposite was referring to — which report — but I do have the service plan in front of me.
When you look at high-incidence students…. I think that no matter how we look at this, there has been an increase in completion rates. Incidences with high-incidence students have gone from 56 percent up to 72 percent completion rates, when you look for the students with special needs who complete school within the six years after starting grade 8. Those are students that I think the member actually identified, including with sensory disabilities, learning disabilities and behavioural disabilities within that category.
If it helps for the member opposite…. We collect the data, as I said, of all these students. It does come into the ministry. The low-incidence students…. We know those numbers. We keep track of all those ones, as well, because of the supplemental funding that goes along with it, which is different. Sometimes going back and forth on the high-low, but I hope I’m making myself understandable to the member opposite on the additional funding for the low. Then completion rates on both cases have continued to go up.
J. Wickens: The document that I’m referring to is the Ministry of Education document on six-year completion rates. Also, for year-to-year transitioning, there are reporting documents on line. In the back of that document, it defines when the Ministry of Education reports on performance of students with special needs. The students they’re reporting on are students with sensory disabilities, students with learning disabilities and students with behaviour disabilities. The ministry is not reporting outcomes for categories A to H. Would the minister agree with that?
Hon. M. Bernier: When we look at the low-incidence students, one of the complications…. First of all, it’s not being reported out, so what the member is suggesting is true. But let me quantify that. When you’re looking at some of the low numbers, you have to really be careful about the individuals’ privacy protection here. When you look at the low numbers, again, you don’t want to set up identification issues.
I’ll give an example to the member. If you have a school district reporting out, in a small school district that might only have four kids in a category, and you identify that you have a 75 percent completion rate, it can be pretty….
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At a local level, we don’t want people understanding which child completed and which didn’t.
You also have to look at the swing aspect. You could have another class that could have two. One year one completes, so it’s 50 percent. The next year you could have three. All three complete, and it’s 100 percent. You’ll have these constant swings going back and forth.
It’s one of those sensitivities of dealing with some of these students with special needs, a lot of them with IEPs as well. We’re very cognizant of working with the school districts so we collect all the information. But on these specific categories, we don’t report it out publicly.
J. Wickens: With all due respect, that answer is an interesting one, considering the numbers stated earlier. There were 33,000 high-incidence students, but there were 30,000 low-incidence students. I’m not sure I follow that line of reasoning around reporting.
I guess what is really important for me to let the minister know is that when we talk about outcomes and we’re talking and saying that we’re doing a fantastic job educating these students but all that we’re talking about is anecdotal evidence — no actual hard data or numbers to know how these students are actually doing — I think that we are, dangerously, possibly not looking at the education that these students are receiving.
I’m going to move along from these questions, but I’m a little alarmed at the reasoning around reporting for these very vulnerable students.
My next question for the minister is: how many students with special needs are enrolled in private school?
Hon. M. Bernier: I just want to start off, before I get into the specific question, by correcting the member opposite and making sure she appreciates that we collect the information on every single student. We know what students are taking. We know where they’re at in their education.
As I mentioned, every student has an IEP or an individual learning plan. That is all documented. It is all recorded through MyEd B.C. It is reported back to the ministry. We have documented every student that’s registered — how they’re doing in school, what courses they’re taking, etc.
The member opposite, though, I think is right, but I think was confusing collecting with reporting. They’re two different things. We have an entire branch that actually works on this to make sure that we have the information on every single student. Again, the question was on: do we report it? I was saying no, but we do collect it.
Now, specific to the last question, then, which was: how many students enrolled in independent schools are students with special needs? The last account reported that we have, which was for the ’14-15 school year, is 4,122 students.
J. Wickens: I would like to respond to the minister’s answer about collecting and reporting. I would say that collecting without reporting takes away accountability.
So when you have parents wanting to look at being able to quantify how vulnerable students are doing or how their students are doing in comparison to their peers, if that information isn’t made publicly available, what happens is we have bureaucrats stand up and say: “We have the highest students with special needs completion rate.” But there’s no context for parents or people in our community to understand what that really means and what’s happening with students who are in low incidence categories.
I’ll move on. I wanted to, since we’re talking about IEPs, ask a couple of questions about the special education audit that just took place in the province. I’m wondering if the minister can tell me how many school districts were part of the special education audit.
Hon. M. Bernier: Before I get specifically into the answer, I just want to maybe mention to the member opposite that any time my staff get out and brag about our education system, it’s because of the great work that they’re doing. It’s the politicians that might get out and make comments in a political forum. When you look at the staff of Education….
I just want to correct the member opposite around her comments around bureaucrats. I’m very proud of the work that my staff does. My staff works closely with all of our partner groups. They come to work every single day dedicated to making the education system in the province of British Columbia as good as it possibly can be. We have some staff members within the system — upwards of 40 years of service in the Ministry of Education.
What that tells me is that they are devoted people, dedicated to making sure that every day when they come to work they’re doing the best possible job they can. Their job is to give advice, then, to me, as the minister, on how to move the ministry forward. I just want to thank my staff for that and mention that to the member opposite.
The specific question though — a very quick answer. When you look at the audits, there were 11 school districts audited and eight independent schools audited in the last round.
J. Wickens: How many ministry employees were part of administering that audit?
Hon. M. Bernier: When you look at the last round of audits that were done, it’s about 1.5 FTEs.
J. Wickens: Have the results from that audit been compiled?
Hon. M. Bernier: To the member’s question, obviously, in this school year, the audits are just being finished. That
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information isn’t available and would be available publicly at the end of the school year. But we actually report out, so if she wanted, she could find the ’14-15 school years, which are publicly available.
J. Wickens: For this audit, has anything changed from previous audits? Previous audits looked at files — and the minister can correct me if I am wrong — making sure that there is the right medical information in files, making sure that IEPs are up to date. But has anything changed in the audit to start moving from looking at paperwork to actually looking at the implementation of what’s inside those files?
Hon. M. Bernier: When we look at doing audits, one of the important aspects is making sure that an audit is done properly and meets the needs. We actually have an advisory group that helps put the audits plan together before we do the audits.
That advisory group is actually made up of most of our partner groups. You look at special education instructors, BCSTA, school trustees. There’s a really collaborative approach taken right across the sector to make sure when we’re doing an audit that it’s being done properly.
The methodology around how those audits are done has not changed. We go in to make sure that the proper paperwork is in place, that the documents are in place, that if there’s an IEP or a learning plan, it’s been signed off. All of those things are looked at during the audit. Again, that’s all kind of composed and put together as part of this advisory group.
J. Wickens: I would suggest to the minister that an audit that’s simply looking at paperwork in a file probably isn’t fruitful when we look at the education and how we’re doing with students with special needs. I think what is much more important is how the documents inside that file are being implemented. Having the ministry look at making sure that those things are being implemented, I would suggest, would probably be more fruitful in the future.
I’m going to move on. My next question is: what is the current budget for SET-B.C., and has that changed from years previous?
Interjection.
J. Wickens: Special education technology.
Hon. M. Bernier: Just cognizant of the time, and I want to make sure I allow time for the member, for her questions. We’re trying to get that information together for you right now. If the member would like to continue on with another question, then when I get that answer, I’ll give it to you.
J. Wickens: Sure. I have a feeling I might get the same answer for my next question.
Have there been changes to POPARD and POPFASD? Are they still operating separately, or are they now operating as one? POPARD is the Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders. POPFASD is for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Hon. M. Bernier: It took me a second, but we’ve got the numbers for you.
When you look at SET-BC, it’s $7.5 million. POPARD is $2.366 million, and then the FASD is $552,000. Those, the ARD and FASD, are still separate line items and separately looked at.
When you look at the fact that these…. You know, it’s specialized training, and these are some of our highest-needs students, so we ensure that we have extra funding that’s available. Hopefully, that answers the member’s question.
J. Wickens: I also asked if that has changed from years previous. This year we have $7.5 million for SET-BC. What has that budget been previously?
Hon. M. Bernier: Over the last year to this year, there has been no change.
J. Wickens: Can I get the minister to provide me with some numbers for some years previous, back a couple more years?
Hon. M. Bernier: If the member wishes — which I assume she does — we’ll compile that and get it to her later. Those are quite unique, detailed pieces of information that she’s asking for. We have staff within the ministry that can definitely put that together for her, and we’ll get it to her at a later date.
J. Wickens: I’m just going to ask one or two more questions, and then I’m going to head out to my own school district’s budget meeting this evening. My colleague will take over again, and I’ll be back tomorrow with more questions.
What was the base supplemental funding amount for categories A to H in 2001?
Hon. M. Bernier: I’ll just remind the member opposite that we are discussing this year’s budget. Obviously, I came prepared to talk about this year’s budget and referencing even to last year’s budget. When we talk about 2001, I don’t have that information in front of me. It’s quite rare that a member would get to this detail in budgets from so far past which aren’t really relevant to what we’re talking about this year.
Again, I did offer to the member opposite an opportunity to sit down with staff to really get more detailed
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information. In discussions with staff here, obviously, we’re very open to getting any information we can for her. That far back would be within the ministry’s records, and we can, definitely, through that briefing, if she wanted to compile a list for us at a later date of all of the specifics that she is asking for.
Good questions, on her part. I just want to reference again that, obviously, we’re prepared to speak to this year’s budget.
With that, in light of the fact that we are dealing with the Ministry of Education, I’m looking at the clock, and I believe it’s due time for a recess.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. With the agreement of the member, we will take a five-minute recess.
The committee recessed from 4:14 p.m. to 4:27 p.m.
[D. Plecas in the chair.]
R. Fleming: Just to go back to some of the high-level budget numbers again and broaden the discussion out from there. One of the questions I wanted to ask the minister — it’s not just me but, I think, a lot of stakeholders, some of whom were in the budget lockup when this document was being introduced in the House — is specifically around funding for independent schools and the increases that are contemplated in the budget.
We’ve talked already about the very limited amount of resources that are also subject to cuts and unfunded cost pressures in the public school system. The increase, prior to cuts for public school administration, is set at $50 million for public school instruction in the 2016-17 budget year. That’s a budget of $4.672 billion that is used to support approximately 1,900 schools and 550,000 kids that are involved in public education.
You go down the Vote 19 list and look at other areas where there is a funding lift, modest or otherwise. We have transfers to other partners, at $36 million. I’ll have questions about that in a moment.
But the independent schools line there has funding in the current budget year projected to grow from $310 million to $358 million. This is, just by comparison, a school system that serves a little less than 80,000 students, I think — about one in nine school kids in B.C. It’s a much, much smaller school system, and it has a projected increase in funding of $47.6 million. So $47.6 million for about 13 percent of the number of students in B.C., and $50 million for the other 87 percent of students.
As I said, I think there are a lot of people who have questions about this. I put it there for the minister to answer in as fulsome a way as possible because I sense that there are some stakeholders who are a little bit puzzled by this.
If he could maybe talk about why independent school funding seems to be going up on a par with a much bigger public school system, at a time when the mantra of government is that dollars for public education are scarce, they must be managed carefully and they must be cut in the case of administrative spending.
I think that is why so many seek to understand why there is this apparent discrepancy on the surface of the budget that we’re talking about this afternoon.
[J. Martin in the chair.]
Hon. M. Bernier: I guess when I, first of all, look at the member opposite, who I believe — I could be wrong — was the critic last year for Education…. He would have been, at that point, in estimates and would have seen all of the budget changes, which actually explain the question that he just asked.
When you look at…. First of all, the funding formula that we have, which is in the act, has not changed. Our funding is still on a per-student ratio. The formula within that for what goes to independent schools has not changed, albeit there are fluctuations on a year-to-year basis when accounts happen of how many students are in there.
Specific to the question, though, when you look at the increase that he’s identified, that appears to look quite substantial this year compared to last. If the member would remember from last year, it was canvassed here actually, in the budget, which identified the changes.
The independent school increase is a 15 percent increase from ’16 to ’17, which is mostly due to the restored $34 million that was paid in ’14-15. That was identified in last year’s budget — or in ’14-15 year and then it was removed from the ’15-16 budget.
There was an accelerated payment made to the independent schools at that time. It appeared…. If you go year over year, it would appear that last year to this year there was a 15 percent. In fact, when you bring that accelerated payment back into the budget allotment with the actual increase, it would be about $13 million, not what was referenced, which compares to a now more reasonable 3.8 percent increase, mostly based on the enrolment and per-student cost.
R. Fleming: I would like to ask the minister this then: if he could explain…? What I think he is talking about is that there is a dramatic spike in private school enrolment in September 2014, right? We can remember that every public school in the province was shuttered for about four months at that time, beginning in the previous school year and carrying on all through September and into October, and that created a migration. That was a 9 percent enrolment bump that year. I don’t know about the following year — i.e., the current school year.
Is the minister saying that for the year in which the strike compromised about four weeks of instruction in
[ Page 12130 ]
the public schools, where there was this 9 percent growth that was unbudgeted, schools weren’t paid in the 2014-15 school year — independent schools — and they are now being paid in some kind of instalment plan in the next two fiscal years? I’m failing to understand.
The reason I ask this is that there’s a very interesting trend happening this year. I heard this from the deputy minister earlier when he availed himself to give the opposition members a briefing. When we were talking about why public school enrolment had gone up in September 2015 — 6,600 students, which the ministry hadn’t accounted for and which ate up the entire holdback fund for the budget year — one of the biggest contributory factors was that a year after the strike and the migration to private schools from public, amongst some parents, they came back to the public school system.
As I recall hearing from the executive director of FISA BC, Mr. Froese, there was actually a decrease in enrolment in this school year — that’s the preliminary estimate from the independent school sector — on the one hand, and quite a dramatic spike for the first time in 15 years at least of 6,600 students in the public system.
I don’t quite understand, again, from the answer that the minister just gave me, why there are 48 million new dollars in funding for independent schools at the time when their enrolment is declining, and there’s a 0.5 percent increase for the public school instruction, and if he could walk me through that again.
Hon. M. Bernier: My apologies to the member if…. I’ll try to explain this again to see if it comes across properly.
Two different things here. The increase had nothing to do with increase or decrease of enrolment. The reference was made around that in the budget.
When you’re talking about the specific…. On your first question, the independents’ increase of 15 percent this year shows in the budget of ’16-17. Most of that is due to the restored $34 million that was made in ’14-15 — so two years ago, ’14-15. So that accelerated payment — let’s see if I can explain this for the member — was money that was allotted in the ’15-16 school year budget that was accelerated to the ’14-15, which is why it appeared in the ’15-16 that the budget wasn’t as high as where it normally would have been, in comparison to this year’s budget. So we have to look at this over a three-year term.
Basically, the middle year, which is the ’15-16 budget again…. Money was accelerated to the independent schools, so it had nothing to do with the disruption in the public school system.
Again, the independent schools, though, are funded on a per-student count. When you look at how we do the counts every year, they’ll come in…. In September, we do the counts, then we redo a count again in the early spring. So independent schools are funded on a per-student basis.
When the member suggested that there’s actually been a decrease to students in independent schools this year, I believe he’s mistaken. What actually has happened is that there is a decrease in the anticipation of what they expected this year. The independent schools, continuing on the projected trend of going up every year, anticipated that there would be more students this year in the independent schools than actually showed up. They did see a modest increase, just not to the level that they had originally planned for. Those students — as the member said, more went into the public school system than the independent.
R. Fleming: I think that was a better effort. I understand how maybe the principle of a payment being booked in a different fiscal year for something that happened in a different fiscal year is done in government. Maybe what I don’t understand is….
We’re talking about large sums of money here for a much, much smaller sector of schools, and it is enrolment-based funding, just like the public school side. It’s per-pupil funding. Category 1 schools, if I’m not mistaken, are at 50 percent. Category 2 at 35 percent. I have a number of them in my constituency, so I’m very familiar with the Catholic school system in particular. What I don’t understand is that — having an idea of some of the numbers around enrolment in both school systems — a much larger one can have an equivalent increase to the public school system. Is there some change in the funding formula that’s occurred again?
I know that a couple of years ago — and there was no announcement about this — distance learning was sweetened for independent school delivery. I think it was the formula, which had been either 50 or 35, became 62 and then 63 percent. Has that been ratcheted up again? Does that account for some of the money? I know there was an incredible growth year in 2013-14, where FTE enrolment in independent distance learning increased by 125 percent or something like that.
There was a spike in that year. What I don’t understand is, if there’s an installment payment here…. We’re talking about three fiscal years now — 2014-15, ’15-16 and now ’16-17, which is where I’m looking at the $48 million right now, in the school year that will begin in September. What is the entire amount of money then, if there’s a payment here? And what was that payment for?
Hon. M. Bernier: I guess the quick answer is that the funding formula has not changed. Nothing has changed in there. When you look at the actual dollars on a per-student count, based under the funding formula, that is all the same as it has always been.
The difference, again, is just the accelerated payment that came out of one budget year, in advance, basically, into the year prior, which gives the illusion of an increase, a larger increase, that’s not actually there.
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When you look again at the per-student count and the growths, you also have to look at the budget as a whole. With the commitment that we have on per-student funding and the additional students that we have, where we have committed to funding all of those new students, there is additional funding that’s required that we’ve put in, in order to do that. Some of that is outside of the documents that the member is referencing.
R. Fleming: Just to be clear, the minister is saying that an enrolment surge in the ’15-16 school year or the ’14-15 school year — I’m not sure which — was then booked and paid retroactively and is still being paid on some kind of installment scheme. Is this money, then, completely enrolment based?
If so, perhaps what would make things simpler is for the minister to commit to provide enrolment figures — that, I would expect, are audited by the ministry in the same way that public school enrolment figures are — for at least the last probably three or four years and also what the projection is for the school year that will begin in September 2016, for which this budget will cover that period.
Hon. M. Bernier: Definitely, to the member opposite, for the information he’s looking for. We can definitely compile that and get it to him.
I’m hoping that those numbers will better explain what I’m trying to portray on the budget numbers and the correlation between the two. That would hopefully reflect that.
R. Fleming: I would just ask the minister, now that we’ve established that $48 million, roughly half the increase for the Ministry of Education budget, is for the independent school sector, which has other revenue sources available to it — namely, tuition fees….
Could I just ask him, here, during this budget estimates process, to be a little bit more precise — either here or in other areas of the public realm? That when he talks about a $110 million increase for education that’s in the context of when he’s being asked about public education schools, school closures and unfunded cost pressures, he not use the amount of $110 million? Because he’s very clearly demonstrated that the amount is just barely half that when you take the independent school sector out of the equation.
Hon. M. Bernier: I just want to, again, remind the member that all our students are funded on a per-student basis. When you look at the net increase to independent schools this year, you’re looking at approximately $13 million. That is what it is going to be out of this budget — the net increase to them — again, all enrolment-driven.
For the public school system, I think what’s also important to stress is the other additions that go into the public school system over and above independent — for instance, capital. This year $455 million is going to be invested into the public school system with capital projects. That’s seismic upgrades to the schools that need it. That’s also new schools in some of our growth areas.
We touched on the fact that we have approximately 6,500 new students in the province of B.C. in the ’15-16 school year. There’s an anticipation right now of projections of upwards of maybe 1,400 more students that are going to be coming into the education system, mostly driven into the public education system, this year. That’s going to be welcomed, great news, I know, for a lot of the school districts in the province that have seen declining enrolment. There are going to be great opportunities for those school districts.
When we look at other opportunities within the public school system, we also have the teachers pension plan overpayments, so we’re going to have money that school districts are going to be able to keep within the districts as well. That amounts to almost $45 million in additional funds that they’re going to be able to keep which normally would have been expended and that are going to help their bottom line.
One of the commitments that I’ve made, that government has made, is to fully fund all of our students in the province of British Columbia. We recently announced additional funding to meet those obligations that might not be identified within the documents that the member is referencing. In fact, it’s going to show per-student funding going up by $60 per student across the province.
I received numerous emails and text messages from so many of the trustees that have my personal cell phone number, thanking the ministry for following through with that commitment and making sure that that money is going into the public education system.
R. Fleming: Just a short follow-up question, and that is about the enrolment in independent schools. I asked the minister if he would provide figures for that. I know the reporting for public schools came out sometime in late January — it might have been early February — therefore he must have figures for the other school system.
Hon. M. Bernier: What I’ll do is read into the record actual numbers of the growth and changes over the last five years, between the public schools and the independent schools.
When you look at public schools, starting in year ’11-12, we had 569,736 students. That went down the next year to 564,000. Then it went down to 558,000. Then it went down to 552,000. Last year, in the year ’15-16…. Again, we talk about the growth. We’ve continually projected downward enrolment within the schools. Last year was the first year that we’ve actually seen an increase since, I think, 1997 — quite some years. In the public
[ Page 12132 ]
schools now, the beginning-of-the-year count is 553,378.
When you look at the independent schools, going back, again, to ’11-12, it was 71,866. They went up to just over 74,000 the next year, 76,000 the next year, 80,000 in ’14-15, and in the ’15-16 school year, independent schools are at 81,659 students.
When you put all of that together and when you look at the fact that we had seen declining enrolment year over year on entire student counts in the province, last year was a very unique year. That’s one of the ones that required some discussion with the local school districts because of that, but it’s a good-news story when you see more students coming into the school system in British Columbia.
R. Fleming: I just want to ask the minister some questions about distributed learning. We’ve already talked a little bit earlier. The minister answered some questions from the member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain about some of the numbers of people involved in distributed learning.
Again, this is an area of huge growth, much of it related to changes in society and technology and how we learn, for sure, but also some changes in terms of how the government funds distributed learning and some changes in the legislation. For example, Bill 36 opened up considerably the amount of courses and learners that could access distributed learning, going all the way to kindergarten, and the fact that you can now take it concurrently and be enrolled in a physical school, as well as distributed learning.
All of these led to pretty shattering growth in distributed learning. There have been some concerns, over time, about how much teacher contact and how much workload a teacher in, for example, a public DL system might have. There also were some concerns about the use of public tax dollars for independent DLs that were marketing free iPads and all sorts of enticements to enrol in DL so that they could get the FTE allocation. I think that was going back a few years.
My understanding is that government dealt with that by putting a cap on any such inducements. I could be wrong on the details. The deputy may have those. But all in all, growth continues, I understand, in DL learning.
It was spectacular between 2006-2007 and 2013-2014. I’m wondering if the minister can describe the growth in DL learning in more recent years, particularly the current year, because I think enrolment would be paid out by now, would be counted, and the fees would be disbursed to those that were delivering the DL learning service.
Finally, because I’m putting a few questions into one here, there was a commitment by government in 2014 to review DL schools in particular. It was part of the funding formula review that was promised by government. It was based on the per-pupil allocation in DL learning. Was that review ever completed? Is there a publication that was conducted by the ministry, and is that a document that the minister could table as part of this estimates process?
Hon. M. Bernier: There were quite a few questions built into the last session there, so I’m going to do my best to, hopefully, answer them as accurately as possible, hitting all of the points that you had.
The first one was around the head count for students and the changes within that around distributed learning. We do the head counts in the fall. In 2011-12, it’s 25,286; in ’12-13, 29,014. In ’13-14, it went down to 27,359. It went down again in the year ’14-15, to 26,046, and went down again in the last count that was done this fall. In ’15-16, we’re down to 22,791 on the head counts for distributed learning.
Then the next question was around the payments: had the money been distributed and the payments gone out. We actually have a payment schedule that goes with the schools when it comes to distributed-learning funding. We just follow the payment schedule, and we’re up to date with that.
When you look at the other question around a funding review, there was not a specific funding review done in 2014, as the member alluded to, but we annually do audits. We do quality reviews around the DL program. That’s done, actually, on an annual basis.
R. Fleming: The question was about the review as well. There’s an allusion to the review, so is it something that’s compiled and publicly released?
Hon. M. Bernier: As I mentioned in my last answer, there are audits done and quality reviews done on an annual basis. Those are public information.
R. Fleming: I’m just going to move on to maybe some capital budget questions.
Before I do that, I know the minister was just talking about how frequently he’s getting text messages from trustees who are in awe of him and just ever so grateful and thankful and hugging him and high-fiving him.
I just wanted to read it into the record, because it’s hot off the press from the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, which is a rather large organization and an important stakeholder. The title of the news release put out today is: “Additional Funds Not Enough.”
“‘Faced with unanimous criticism over their per-student funding allocation in March, the B.C. government has now placed a band-aid on a gaping wound,’ says BCCPAC president Nicole Makohoniuk.
“School districts throughout B.C. are facing the financial consequences of the government-imposed administrative savings plan, increased salary costs associated with government-negotiated contract agreements and resourcing implementation of the B.C. education plan. At stake is the quality education of B.C. students, who face school closures, program cuts and an uncertain future.”
[ Page 12133 ]
I rather think that this organization is looking at the same budget that opposition members and school boards are looking at, who are, indeed, facing all of those problems that are mentioned. But if the minister wants to pat himself on the back, I think that’s fine. I wouldn’t advise him to expect the same kind of applause when he’s able to attend those annual general meetings in the coming days.
If I could ask him about capital funds. I will segue to that section of the budget now and begin with, I guess, asking why…. In the service plan we were talking about last year, $541 million was contemplated in 2016-2017 to be spent. That amount has now been reduced — not significantly, but reduced by $20 million. It’s reduced at a time when — and the minister will know this — the demands for capital have never been greater. Vancouver school board alone, given the facilities index ratings of many of its schools, estimates $700 million in deferred maintenance for its buildings.
Obviously, the minister understands the high number of seismic upgrade programs that haven’t even been approved yet — some 65 of them in that district alone. There are, I think, now 120 outstanding seismic projects in high-risk schools identified by the ministry not approved yet for capital projects. There are literally billions and billions of dollars of capital needs in the province of British Columbia today.
Some of them aren’t related, obviously, to seismic upgrades at all. Some of them are around new construction. We have, in Surrey, at least 1,000 new students every year added to the growing enrolment in that district. In Surrey, the district is unable to get a handle on schools that are over capacity, which brings a whole host of unpleasant problems for students, staff and parents who are involved with those schools.
I have spent some time out in Surrey talking with parents — some of whom have students now in high school — whose kids have spent almost their entire learning career in portables, or parents of young children who are beginning in schools that are either brand-new or relatively new, constructed in the last five to eight years, where already there are portables on site, underbuilt schools. When they look at the pathway around middle and secondary schools, they see more schools with portables that are underbuilt, or they’re not even able to enrol their kid in a catchment area that is within a reasonable number of kilometres from where they reside.
It brings an incredible amount of stress to people living in Surrey. The story is very similar in the fast-growing Tri-Cities region.
So there’s capital for old buildings. There’s capital for those buildings that are not up to code, that are not safe, that pose a safety risk to kids across the coast. The government is hopelessly behind in that regard. They’ve contemplated five- and ten-year delays. There are capital demands on the AFG grants that also have not been adjusted in recent years.
And in this budget, just one year after the service plan that we were debating in this very same place, there’s a reduction. Yes, it’s a slight reduction, but why is there a reduction at all when the capital demands in British Columbia for schools keep growing and the ability for the province to respond to them seems to be diminished?
Hon. M. Bernier: One of the things I want to say is, obviously, from a budgeting perspective, it’s a fluid document. Year over year things change as the demands change, as the work with the school districts and their planning departments change.
When you look at the ’15-16 budget, we were $392.1 million in the capital. We’re talking about the last year’s budget documents that were released. And $469.7 was announced for ’16-17. That’s what we anticipated. This year we actually changed that to $454.3 million. It’s kind of what the member alluded to. But we increased it for next year — $559.9 million, in our three-year plan. Basically, it boils down to $1.47 million — specific in that — around the capital.
The point is that we continue to work with the school districts. We continue to make sure that the projects that we can deliver, working with them, take place. The budget documents are always fluid and reflect that. We have great staff within the ministry that are constantly working with the school districts to ensure that projects are delivered on time and on budget, as we’re able to work through the mechanisms with them.
There’s a lot of planning that’s required on delivering projects like this. Some of them can take quite a few years to go through the process of planning and making sure that the budget documents are prepared appropriately.
When you talk about seismic specifically, I want to commend some of the school districts out there, the work that has taken place. You look at the North Vancouver school district, for instance. We’re down to just a few schools left that require seismic upgrading. On the very near horizon, there’s going to be another school district, combined with, I believe, eight other ones, if not ten, that have already completed every school within their district that’s seismically upgraded. The school districts themselves come forward, and they work with us to make sure that happens.
One of the things we committed to, not only within our budget but as a government, is to make sure that the funding is there to seismically upgrade all of the schools. We’ve committed to that since the start.
I think what’s really important to highlight there is that prior to 2005 there actually wasn’t a seismic mitigation program. In fact, under the opposition, they looked at this and decided to not do seismic upgrades or repairs on schools. They actually publicly said that when they did
[ Page 12134 ]
the work…. It was going to be $6 billion to do the work back in the ’90s. They said that was just an astronomical amount of money that they could not afford, so they pulled back and didn’t do seismic upgrades.
It wasn’t until 2005 that the Liberal government actually came in and said: “Safety of students is important. We need to have a plan in place.” In 2005, we announced that we were going to have a seismic mitigation program, work with the school districts around the province for the safety of the students.
We’ve done an amazing job, I would say, within the ministry staff — prior to me being here — working with all of these districts. I don’t want to give the member opposite some opportunity to stand up and say I’m patting myself on the back yet again, because, in fact, it wasn’t me. It was people prior to me that have done the great work.
[G. Kyllo in the chair.]
The point is — and welcome to the new Chair who joined us here — the fact that we take this seriously. The safety of students is paramount. It’s number one. That’s why, year over year, there’s money in the budget. There are projects identified. There’s work that takes place with the school districts, as they identify the projects that they feel are the next priorities as well. This year in the budget, just like last, the member is going to see yet more projects, more seismic upgrades, that are going to take place within that collaboration within the school districts.
You know, in my short time — eight, nine months now — as minister, I’ve been very fortunate to be out to a lot of the schools. I’ve seen the seismic upgrading that’s taking place. I’ve seen the work that’s underway. I’ve seen, within the budget, the work that’s going to be taking place in the coming few years to ensure that we have the safety of our kids taken care of.
Maybe I’ll say, too, that it’s not just the children. Everybody that uses the school system is important — the principals, the vice-principals, the teachers. You know, safety is paramount. That’s why we have committed to ensure that investment is there.
The member opposite can maybe try to highlight the fact that he figures we’re going to spend $20 million less this year than anticipated. I guess my comment would be that every seismic upgrade we do now is one more that wouldn’t have taken place when they were in government.
R. Fleming: The Premier has been promising seismic upgrades and saying that it’s her number one priority for kids since 2003, since she was the Education Minister.
We live on a more dangerous fault line than even the San Andreas in California. We live on the same fault line as the King County school district, which is about the same size as all the coastal districts in British Columbia combined — similar age of building stock, very similar population demographics. That school system has already completed its seismic upgrades. They did it within a decade.
We had a Premier that promised it would be done by 2020. It’s now, apparently, 2030. But by the ministry’s own estimates — because the number of upgrades, as of 2015, is at roughly about five per year — we’re probably more likely, on the current course, on a 35-year trajectory. That is what is called taking risks — betting against a big, significant seismic activity happening in British Columbia.
Now, if the Premier wasn’t so adamant about getting in front of the cameras all the time and saying, “nobody cares about the safety of your kids more than me….” When there’s an earthquake in New Zealand or any other country that has similar geological conditions as us, she’s there, in front of the camera, saying all the right things about seismic upgrades and how important it is to her and how important it is for kids and all the staff that work in the building, and the pace of getting the work done is completely inadequate. It’s not getting done.
I will quote from a ministry document. This is the ministry talking to itself about capital. It says: “Since 2006, no ministry capital plans have been approved by the Ministry of Finance. Funding for capital programs has been ‘uncertain and insufficient.’ All supported projects must be reviewed in detail and approved by the Treasury Board staff. With fewer project approvals in recent years, there has been an increase in deferred maintenance and schools in need of replacement.” That’s the capital management characterization of this government by government employees.
The question for the minister…. We’ll leave seismic aside for now, but just to get back to Surrey. Surrey’s investment is not sufficient. This government is happy to take out all the sales tax and income taxes and revenues that come to government from a fast-growing economic region of the province. You know, happy to take the taxes from the paycheques of moms and dads in Surrey whose kids are studying in portables, but they aren’t willing to reinvest it at a rate that will allow public services to be part of those fast-growing communities, to make them complete communities.
The minister should spend time out in Surrey and listen to folks in some of those fast-growing regions like Clayton, because they’re suffering through a situation where their kid isn’t getting the kind of school experience that they should. The pace at which government has to get caught up to be able to get on top of the capital backlog in Surrey is such that the government is going to need to massively improve upon its disbursements.
We look at the record. I know that the minister is quoted as: “We’ve spent $300 million on Surrey since 2001.” That’s $20 million a year in the fastest-growing region of British Columbia, where there are — I’m trying to remember the enrolment right now — something like 70,000, 80,000 kids, growing by 1,000 every year.
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My question to the minister is: what does he have to say to those who are involved in capital planning on the district side in Surrey, who’ve been patiently waiting for government to get it and be able to start, finally, expanding and approving their capital investment plan so that government is at least, if not getting ahead — because I don’t think that’s possible — getting caught up to the kind of development pressures and enrolment pressures that are happening in the Surrey? Right now, year after year, we’re falling behind on school construction in Surrey.
What’s his plan to get Surrey caught up and get a measurable quality of education for kids so they can study in a real school and not expect to be in a portable their entire learning career?
Hon. M. Bernier: He’s canvassed a couple of different things there. First of all, the member opposite referenced a letter. He wasn’t able to quantify when that was. For all we know, the letter that he just identified that said that no work was taking place was back when the NDP were in power, because he wasn’t able to tell me when. It’s not during my time, so obviously, I’m not familiar with the letter he’s referencing.
Before he moved on to his other question, he was still talking about seismic upgrades and capital investment in general. I think what’s important, again, to stress is that when we look at our capital budget and the opportunities in the province, seismic, and safety of students and safety of those within the schools, is number one. Then we look at growth areas.
When you look at seismic specifically and the money we’ve invested over the years — by the way, our capital budget is record numbers — it keeps going up, year over year. We’ve invested $2.2 billion since 2001 in our capital for seismic.
Interjection.
Hon. M. Bernier: The member opposite says: “Promise.” In fact, if you looked through the budget documents, it’s money that was spent; it’s money that was well spent. In fact, we’ve completed 149 schools — 16 more under construction. We have nine more that we’re working on that are proceeding to construction, and we have 40 that we have announced that we support working with the school districts trying to get to the next phases.
When you look, again, on the importance of the seismic mitigating plan — which by the way, I have to reiterate, was brought in under this government to ensure that schools were safe — since then, I mentioned that some of the great school districts have gotten to the point where all of their schools have been completed.
I just want to highlight them. I think it’s important to stress the great work they did working with our staff here: Chilliwack, district 33, 100 percent complete; Sunshine Coast, district 46, 100 percent complete; school district 47 in Powell River, 100 percent complete; 49, Central Coast, same thing.
The others ones: 64, Gulf Island; 69, Qualicum; 78, Fraser-Cascade; 83, North Okanagan–Shuswap; and 85, Vancouver Island North. Every single one of those school districts are at 100 percent completion. They’ve got the seismic upgrades that are required, seismic upgrades that we committed to and seismic upgrades that are going to ensure that the students and the staff within those schools are safe.
There are other districts that we continue to work with. We recognize that it’s a top priority. We recognize that the safety is important. We continue to make sure that we have investments year over year, working with the districts to ensure that those projects take place.
As I mentioned in my last answer when I got up, the work that’s taking place right now — I’m seeing that. If the member opposite…. I’m sure he’s gone around. I commend him for the travelling that he’s done around meeting with school districts as well. He should have also seen the investments that are taking place around the province and the seismic work that’s taking place.
The other line of questioning that the member canvassed was around Surrey school district. When we talk about capital investment, you look at Surrey school district first of all. We’ve built 8,500 new seats in Surrey. We’ve got more to do. They’re growing quickly. We’ve got more and more people moving to Surrey, just like we said — more and more people moving back to British Columbia for the opportunities that they have here.
Surrey-specific, I just finished meeting with the school district, with the board chair and the staff. My staff from the capital department also met with and continues to discuss the issues with them on a very, very routine basis, because we have a lot of projects underway in the Surrey school district.
If you look specifically, we’ve invested $56.1 million at the new Clayton North secondary. That pre-tender has been approved. That’s going to be for 1,500 new students. We’ve got the Adams Road Elementary, which is under construction right now — $5.6 million. Morgan Elementary — we’ve invested $2.3 million there. We also have the Rosemary Heights, which is under construction — $1.5 million that’s going forward there.
I think what’s also important to stress is that in my last meeting with the school district, we identified some of the other growth areas. We’re working with them on plans this year to make further announcements to make sure we’re meeting the demands as Surrey — unlike a lot of school districts, obviously — continues to grow at rapid pace. We’re going to work with them to meet those needs.
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R. Fleming: For the minister’s benefit, the document that I quoted from is Transition Binder, 2013 of the Ministry of Education. It is his ministry briefing his predecessor about the state of school capital in British Columbia.
Let me ask another question about Surrey, then — specifically, about its portable inventory. I’ve talked a little bit about the consequences of Surrey never being able to have approved enough school construction, and opening schools that within months are sometimes populated by portables because they’re underbuilt.
One of the examples of a school that I went to was Katzie Elementary — opened, I think in November 2015 — a 605-student-capacity school, expected to reach 900 students. Imagine what it’s like to try and drop off your kid at an elementary school where there are 900 students when it was built for 605. Six hundred is a big elementary school by any standards. This is happening in many, many regions and many, many areas of Surrey.
The district has to have portables. They have to have them. Some of these Surrey Schools have farms full of portables. Literally, there’ll be a dozen or more, and they get further and further away from the main building as you add more and more portables, as the minister can well imagine.
It means that we have to get on with quicker school construction in Surrey. Everybody says that. Local government says that. School boards say that. I hope that not just opposition MLAs are saying it in Surrey — they’ve been saying it — but that in fact government MLAs are also briefing the minister on how urgent this need is.
However, portables are a reality in the near term and have been a fact of life in Surrey. I think there are 300 of them right now. As I mentioned, it’s the 24th-largest district on its own. There are 7,000 kids that are anchored in portables as part of their school experience.
The district has to pay for these. It’s been a ministry policy for some time now — I’m not sure how many years — that it doesn’t pay anything for portables. They’re expensive to run. They’re not energy-efficient. They basically rob money from operating budgets to fund inefficient buildings because the government has not been quick, as I’ve quoted the ministry’s own documents, to approve capital plans and allocate new school construction.
It’s not their fault is the point I’m trying to make. It’s the reality that they need these portables while the government gets its act together on getting at the curve of Surrey’s growth and meeting it with new school construction.
So the question that I would have is: why does Surrey not at least get to plead some kind of case to the ministry that there should be some assistance from the government on its portable costs? I mean, the government is delaying capital expenses and debt — its responsibilities for capital — and saddling Surrey with additional operating expenses. It seems fair to me that, through no fault of their own, they should be able to get some assistance with the high cost of operating portables.
Let me just give you an idea of what it means in Surrey. It’s at least $4 million additionally that they have to take from operating expenses — classroom resources basically — to fund these inefficient portables. That could hire 45 teachers in Surrey. That could lower the pupil-to-teacher ratio there. That could provide, districtwide, non-enrolling teachers working in all kinds of interesting and innovative programs. It could meet a lot of the ministry goals in the B.C. education plan, but it’s being wasted on portables while the district tries to catch up on capital.
The minister is surely not hearing this for the first time from me. The district has been trying to make its case that it has exceptional circumstances, that government hasn’t been as attentive a partner to its growth challenges as they would like and that, through no fault of their own, they’re relying on portables.
Shouldn’t they at least get some kind of assistance from the province in the interim for portables — constituting the 24th-largest school district — in Surrey?
Hon. M. Bernier: First of all, I want to start off by introducing, behind me, Shanna Mason and Renée Mounteney, who are with the capital branch. The reason why I specifically want to highlight them at this moment is because, when we look at the relationships that we have within our ministry with the school districts, in order to move projects forward, it’s their department, and those behind me, that actually do all of that work. I want to thank them for it.
When I was out in Surrey, meeting with the superintendent and with the school board out there, one of the things we heard and we discussed was the growth that’s taking place in Surrey. Nobody is discrediting that. It’s an obvious trend that’s happening, which is why we continue to make investments with them and make sure that we have those close relationships.
As we’re identifying the different growth areas, we want to make sure, as we build a school, that it’s built in the right area, to the right size. That’s the relationship that we have with the school district to make sure we get to that point.
In the meantime, when some of this happens — as the member said, yes, there are portables in the area — we want to make sure that, where possible, we’re also working with school districts. We met with them quite recently in this last budget cycle, and one of their asks was: can you help us with our budget as far as funding portables and some of the remediation or issues that are required because of the portables?
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With that in the ’15-16 budget, we actually did give extra funding to the Surrey school district in the amount of $1.127 million to help in that regard.
R. Fleming: Then can I follow up by asking the minister if that amount, or an improved amount, is part of the current budget? Is that an ongoing commitment to help defray the costs of excessive use of portables that is caused by capital construction delays of schools in Surrey, or was it just a one-time amount that the minister cited?
Hon. M. Bernier: You know, this year, one of the things that we just recently announced was $40.4 million for a school enhancement fund. One of the things that we’ve continued to work with the school districts on is to ensure that we have additional funding, outside of their normal annual facilities grant, to help them where there are needs.
The school districts all across the province have the opportunity to apply. It is my anticipation that Surrey will be applying for grants within that. It’s their choice, within the grant application, where they feel their largest stress is this year. If they choose to apply for funding this year to put towards portables, then that’s something we’ll look at and definitely try to fund it, if possible.
R. Fleming: Okay, so the minister has identified where they got this money, I think, in the previous year — which was, at that time, called the routine maintenance grant. Has it undergone a rebranding? I hope it didn’t cost very much to change the name.
All the same, I mean, Surrey’s unique circumstances are such that instead of applying, as other school districts do, to the routine maintenance fund — or whatever it’s now called — to get at, with whatever way $40 million can get at it, deferred maintenance that’s estimated in the billions of dollars in British Columbia…. It’s for, primarily, schools that need some immediate capital funds to make sure the hallways are properly floored and that minor repairs — it’s almost a minor capital fund — that the district can’t fund internally, and that are proper capital projects, happen.
Now, in Surrey’s case, they would have schools of that era in certain parts of Surrey, and they still have the need to get caught up with new school construction. They’re using money that could go to repair existing schools to deal with the higher operating costs of portables. It doesn’t seem fair to me. In essence, they’re not really getting any additional consideration. They’re just being told to get in line for a fund that’s primarily, I gather, to deal with existing older-stock schools’ maintenance issues. They’re having to use it to try and defray some of the costs of having to haul out ever more portables to deal with underbuilt schools and how behind Surrey is on the capital funding.
Have I got that correct? This is the fund they have to use that’s for schools to deal with deferred maintenance. It instead is going to somehow fund the portable problem.
Hon. M. Bernier: Let me just start by saying, again, that when we look at all of the growth opportunities we’ve had in Surrey, that has brought on the great relationship we have with the staff, where we’ve…. Moments ago I mentioned the new schools that are being built, the ones that are under construction, and the fact that we’re working with them again this year to look at some of the other stress areas for new announcements.
We’ve added 8,500 seats in Surrey. We’ve done a couple of projects in the last couple of years which added 1,160 more seats, investing just under $45 million. Those are all new seats, which is helping out.
When you look specifically at some of the questions the member opposite was alluding to around the opportunities for the schools, when you talk about repairs or operational requirements…. We’ve canvassed and we talked about the annual facility grant. Surrey itself, in the last five years, has received $55 million in their annual facility grant to be able to invest that in their district towards school work, maintenance requirements on the schools.
As we did just talk about, too, we have the former routine capital program, newly minted, at no cost to the taxpayer, the school enhancement program.
Interjection.
Hon. M. Bernier: I’m glad the member opposite now agrees that it’s a great program, and it sounds so much better. I think he’s referring to the name. I totally agree. I appreciate the name as well.
We have that program — $40 million, as I mentioned. That money can be applied for by the school districts.
I think it’s important to stress, also, with the annual facility grant…. We look at all these different pockets of funding that school districts can apply for. The annual facility grant…. When we came into government in ’01-02, we actually doubled that number from $50 million to $100 million. We put that money up front, right to the schools, so they can actually make those decisions, at a local level, of how they want that money to be spent.
We also have other programs. We have the carbon-neutral program. We have the building envelope program. We have numerous programs that allow money to flow back to the school districts — opportunities for school districts to save money because of some of these programs. They get to retain those costs.
I just want to make sure the member opposite realizes that there’s not just one thing going on. There’s a multitude of programs. There’s a multitude of different areas
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that school districts can apply to for funds, that they can receive those funds and then make the local decisions on how those funds can be spent.
S. Hammell: We are talking about $4 million for the cost of portables, and the $4 million is a direct consequence of not building schools.
You say there were 1,160 new spots built in the last year, if I heard you correctly. Surrey has 1,000 people coming to it every single month, which means you have 12,000 people moving to Surrey every year. A certain percentage of those are kids. You have now a situation where you have 300 portables. So we have 300 portables. We have $4 million extra that it is costing our school district because we haven’t built schools to keep up with the population.
The citizens of Surrey pay property transfer tax. They pay income tax. They pay sales tax. They pay their fair share, and they don’t get the schools that they need to have their kids in. You can have two children in one household go to two different schools because of the overcrowding in Surrey.
We have $4 million in excess costs that are unique to Surrey because the government hasn’t paid for schools. Yet the answer is to line up and apply for some kind of grant instead of acknowledging that this is a unique circumstance. The people of Surrey pay their fair share, and the government should cover the costs of portables.
Will the government look at the possibility of just dealing with that $4 million extra cost? It is unique to Surrey, and Surrey kids and Surrey parents deserve that kind of break from the government.
Hon. M. Bernier: Again, when we talk about the opportunities and the investments in Surrey, the member is not going to get an argument from this side — from myself or the ministry staff. We’re going to continue working with them to build schools, to work with them because of the growth that’s taking place in Surrey.
I just want to make sure we talk about when we look from a budgetary opportunity, though…. When the member opposite is referring to $4 million, I just want everybody to be clear that those costs, because of portables, do not disappear completely when you build a new school. Those costs are transferrable when you have a portable.
When we talk with the school districts themselves and talk about the portables, they say: “When you have heat, light, ongoing maintenance because of those portables, that doesn’t disappear when you build a new school.” You’ll still have a lot of those cost pressures that will come in that new school because of what’s taken place. So it’s not a complete disappearance. I just want the member to realize that.
If I can for the member, as I know she’s from that area…. I just want to make sure that other people who live in Surrey also understand that we take this very seriously. We’re making investments, and we’re planning — working with the school district as we’re going forward.
When I look at the fact that the site acquisitions that we’ve made for schools…. You look at Grandview Heights area for a secondary, Grandview Heights for an elementary, Clayton North for the secondary and Clayton for an elementary. We have Sunnyside Elementary in 2013 — replacement. In 2014, we had the new Goldstone Park Elementary School. We also had the Fraser Heights Secondary with an addition. The Katzie Elementary School was new in East Clayton. Panorama Ridge Secondary received an addition.
We talked about the Clayton, all of the work that’s happening in that area. When you look again at the different funds that we’re helping the school district with this year, which they applied for…. Then we talk about the annual facilities grants and everything else.
We also have boiler replacements that took place at the Fleetwood Park Elementary, almost $600,000; Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary, $80,000. The portable classrooms as well — as I mentioned, we have money that’s gone into that.
We’ve built and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Surrey and the area to help with the growth that’s taking place. We know there’s more to do, and that’s why we’re working on those plans right now with the Surrey school district for this year and for the coming years to meet those demands.
S. Hammell: I do appreciate your comments, but Minister, there are more and more and more portables every year. I don’t think we’ve had as many portables in our school district than we have now.
I remember having the pleasure of inheriting portables in the ’90s and how difficult it is to remove them. But we have more portables now than we’ve ever had. And to boot, Minister — and I think this is really important — we have four high schools that are on staggered openings. So you have double shifts. Not totally shifting, but what happens is you have kids that start in the morning and kids that start in the afternoon. The overlap means sometimes kids in the afternoon can never get help from their teacher because the teacher is gone by the time their day is over.
We have a huge number of kids in Surrey and to have four high schools on staggered openings because we have not built the schools that are needed for the area is not okay.
Of the $400 million or $500 million that is being spent on capital funding this next year, how much of it is going to Surrey?
Hon. M. Bernier: When we look at the last five years and when you look at Surrey, they’ve received the most
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out of any school district. We have 60 school districts in the province. They receive $128.7 million, which is about 10 percent of the overall budget for the capital side going specifically to one school district.
This year we’re going to continue to work with the school district. As the member would know, we’ve made announcements on Clayton and other secondary schools being built. The school district has identified some other areas that we’re working with them on.
The local MLAs, the government MLAs, have been meeting with me and coming to me regularly, talking about their different areas as well. I’m more than willing to meet with the member opposite if she has any specific projects, as well, that she wants updates on later.
The school district, again, when we look at it this year, is going to continue to receive a good bulk of the capital money — outside of the seismic program, when you look at our commitment to ensure that we have safety for students.
With that, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 6:21 p.m.
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