Orders of the Day

Private Members’ Statements

WORKING TOGETHER
TO END HOMELESSNESS

S. Chandra Herbert: Last night was cold. It was even colder if you were living on the street.

I’m speaking today about the work we need to do together to end homelessness. This is a topic that’s important to me, and it’s been something that I’ve worked on for many years of my life, because you can’t have a good life if you’re homeless. You can’t have the safety you need, the stability you need to follow your dreams, if you have no home to live in.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

When I think of homelessness, I think of coat hangers in the woods. I’ve done the homelessness count most every year, and an image that will forever stay with me is going through the woods of Stanley Park and coming across somebody’s home — what they tried to make a home, anyways.

They’d hung coat hangers in between trees, with their T-shirts arranged very nicely. The trees had, of course, gotten wet, and the clothes got wet. The clothes had been there for I don’t know how long, but they were covered in what looked like moss because they’d been there so long.

A little ways down the path, there was a man living in a stump. How he ended up there, I’m not sure. He lived there, he said, because it was safer than the single-room-occupancy hotel that he’d been living in.

When you walk up Davie Street, you pass Hornby. Right on a little patch of concrete, you can still see a burn mark. That’s where Tracey burned to death, shortly after I was first elected to this place. I’d met her once, maybe. Many had. She burned to death on the street because she had no home.

I think of Peter. Peter, who was in and out of my office many times, attacked a number of times while homeless. He is housed now, and I can tell you it’s made a world of difference.

I think of the woman I met who was homeless because of renovictions. Because, unfortunately, the law had not been properly set out to protect her, she ended up on the street — terrified, with a big dog, hoping that nobody would attack her.

I think of the youth I’ve met on the street. In some cases, fleeing homophobia from their parents, and they end up in Vancouver.

Now, these are all people. I speak about the people first. Too often we hear about the homeless, and it becomes as if they’re an object or something different. We count homeless. Well, these are people. In Metro Vancouver last year, we found 3,605 people homeless. That’s up 30 percent from 2014.

In a province that could boast of billions in surpluses, think of thousands and thousands of our fellow citizens sleeping homeless — on the streets, on a couch, at a friend’s place, in their van. We’re seeing more and more RV’s and vans across communities, more and more homelessness in every community. It used to be a Vancouver issue: “Oh, those Vancouver people.” Now it’s an every community issue.

Now, how did we get here? How has it got so bad? Why? Well, I would argue it’s because we haven’t taken enough of a systemic approach to this. We haven’t looked at it in every community. We’ve focused on anecdotes rather than actually trying to end it systematically, trying to stop people from spiralling into homelessness. It’s not just about building homes and getting people off the street into homes, but making sure they don’t end up on the street in the first place.

That’s why I’m so glad that finally, finally, the government has committed to bringing in a homelessness action plan. The proof will be in the pudding, so to speak, but you can’t address a problem unless you acknowledge you have one, and finally the government has acknowledged there is a serious, serious problem in every community.

Modular housing has been announced, $291 million to provide quick-start solutions to get people in immediately so that they’re not sleeping in the cold. It’s a good start.

[10:10 a.m.]

Building housing takes time. Modular housing cuts that time almost in half, if not faster, depending on the style of housing you are trying to build. These are solutions, and I know people who’ve gotten into the housing now who are already finding a better life because of it.

Now, I was once asked by a constituent: “Why do you think we have to address homelessness? Why do you focus on this in this way?” I said: “Well” — he, at least at the start, seemed to me to be rather unsympathetic — “financially it’s just stupid to leave people on the street because they get sick. There’s a financial cost for the health care, the legal cost if the police get involved. It’s on and on.”

He said: “Well, that’s rather cold.” I said: “Well, I’m glad I can talk to you from the heart.” For me, yes, the financial side makes a lot of sense. But for me, it’s always been about the heart because I don’t think that you can be strong as a community if some of your members are struggling and falling and failing. You can’t feel good about your community if you have to step over a homeless person in order to get to a shop.

I know some people start to not see homeless people, start to ignore them, because we can’t, I suppose, face up to the fact that there is that level of deprivation in our society. But that’s not the right way. We need to focus on it, see the people, address the needs and raise them up.

Homelessness comes from a variety of ways. I talked about renovictions. I talked about discrimination. It’s also poverty. We have a poverty problem in this province, and we’ve had it for far too long. And you can’t address poverty unless you have a plan to address it. So a poverty reduction strategy is the right way to go.

I’m glad our government is also addressing that because you can build the housing, but if more and more people end up on the streets, you’re always going to be playing catch-up, rather than saying: “Let’s make sure people have the stability they need in their lives so they can stay in the housing that they have, so they can get the addictions support, the mental health support, the family support, the financial support — if that’s, indeed, what happens — so they can get that extra little bit of care that we each owe each other.”

That can help end homelessness before it begins, and that’s where we need to be focusing on — ending it before it begins.

R. Coleman: Thanks to the member for his comments.

I should start out by saying I don’t think anybody on either side of this House is interested in not doing something about homelessness. I think there’s a significant record with regards to it. Back in just 2001, we had 835 spaces for shelter in the entire province of B.C. None of them were open 24-7. None of them provided meals. Today there are over 2,000 of those so people can actually get meals for stability.

The important thing to understand — and the member hit on it — with regards to homelessness is that it’s about the people who are homeless. There is no single piece that you can actually fix other than you can provide the housing, but you better have the supports behind the people.

A lot of the people on our streets today suffer mental health and addictions, and they have multiple barriers. So not only do you have the challenge when you get them into housing that they would stay and feel comfortable, but when they’re there, you need to have the services to wrap around them, whether it be the teams that we now have out there for our youth across the province or whatever.

There have been literally thousands of units and hundreds of buildings bought and renovated for the homelessness in B.C. over the last number of years, in the billions of dollars. Operating budgets are three or four times what they used to be, simply because we’re trying to catch up to a problem that seems to sometimes move on us in quick periods of time.

Sometimes, within six months, you can see a dramatic impact and the increase of people in homelessness, like we had with the camp, particularly here in Victoria, and we ended up buying a number of buildings and renovating. But our cohort that was in that camp wasn’t actually British Columbians. It was coming from elsewhere across our country. Of course, in our country, we take care of everybody, no matter where they are, if we can.

I think the first thing to understand is that both sides of this House want to work on this. I think the fact is that there are over 10,000 families today that actually have rent assistance, and the government has now decided that they understand the importance of that — 20,000 seniors.

The other piece, though, is that little untold story. The outreach workers had started to be put into the system back about nine or ten years ago. We expanded that across the 40 communities. The result of that is over 7,000 people a year are being connected into housing and supports through our shelter system and our outreach workers in this province.

[10:15 a.m.]

As we’ve learned more and more about the cohort itself, the difficulties it has in adjusting, we have increased our teams to have clinical psychologists and health workers and what have you with our outreach teams so they can start to wrap around right at the very beginning.

Then the biggest challenge of all this comes when you actually want to do something. It doesn’t matter which community you’re in. I can guarantee that as soon as you say you’re going to build a shelter — even if it’s at 3030 Gordon in Coquitlam or whether it’s the Salvation Army in Langley — you’re going to have a very large anti-project of people at a public hearing that municipalities have to deal with. It’s a challenge for them. They’re actually trying to make a change, but the community doesn’t ever want it anywhere near them.

I’ve been to communities many times where people say: “Well, we want a shelter.” They point me to the industrial area where there’s not a single residence or any services because that’s where we can get it sold. The reality is that we as a society have to understand something. This is about humanity. It’s about people.

Although we sometimes get partisan in our criticisms, I don’t think anybody can be critical of the fact that people have been investing; trying to get it done; working with MLAs across the province, no matter what stripe they are, to try and do it. That needs to continue — and with funding to help with that.

Of course, we will have to step up over time and help the local governments with education and understanding about…. Just because someone builds a shelter somewhere doesn’t mean your crime goes up. In actual fact, shelter and supportive housing can actually do the opposite. But there’s a fear of mental illness and addictions in people. That’s a challenge for all of us to get through. We should continue to do that and continue to invest.

I’m actually proud of the investment and the work we’ve done over the last decade in housing. It’s never perfect. You won’t get it all the way, but you need to set the foundation. I believe we’ve done that.

S. Chandra Herbert: I thank the member for his comments. I think he’s really pointed out the challenge. It’s that you can increase the amount of housing — and we have seen an increase after a time when we didn’t have much supply for years — and shelter, as well. But if the numbers keep going up, as they seem to be, we’re not keeping up, unfortunately.

I think the challenge has been catching the folks before they fall. How do you help somebody so that they don’t spiral into poverty; so that they don’t take the step into addiction, mental health challenges, sometimes conjoined; so that they don’t end up being thrown out of a home due to hatred or because they simply don’t have enough money? It may start with money, but it doesn’t always end with money.

I think about the challenge that we’ve got around modular housing and the issue of community acceptance and the need for community support to be able to house homeless people. In my neighbourhood — close by, in Coal Harbour — you can go through the parks, you can go through the back areas, and there are homeless people there. Now, I talk to some residents, and they say: “What do you mean?” I say: “Well, what time do you get up in the morning?” Oh, okay. Yeah, they don’t get up so early, so they may not see them.

When I raised the issue of modular housing, one of the first things constituents in that neighbourhood said was: “Well, but they’re not coming here, are they? They’re not meant for us in this area.” I said: “Well, but you were just complaining to me about the panhandler. You were just complaining to me about the fella who sleeps under the tree out in front of your condo with a multi-multimillion-dollar view.”

These are our neighbours. I think the key part is to remember this could be any one of us. Unless you provide the social supports, these folks, in some communities, will never believe that they can be safe. They’ve zeroed in on the fact that some people who would potentially be in the modular housing could be addicted, could have a mental health challenge. When I point it out — that could also be their neighbour in their very own condo building — it’s: “Oh, well, that’s not the same.” Well, it is the same.

We don’t have the right to decide who our next-door neighbour is, so we better start accepting that homeless people are our neighbours too. We don’t want them to be homeless for long. If they’re not homeless, they’re going to be a healthier neighbour and a better neighbour than if they’re living on the street.

I don’t think we can take our eyes off this issue. The moment you do, more people are on the street. The moment you do, then you start hearing from the business people. You start hearing from the communities who don’t feel safe because their park has people living in it. You have to focus on this completely, all the time, and that also means the federal government needs to be there too.

I’m honoured to be able to speak on this issue. I’ll keep working on it. I thank all members who’ve worked on this issue over the years.

[10:20 a.m.]

MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTIONS

J. Thornthwaite: Under the previous B.C. Liberal government, our province became the recognized leader nationwide in harm reduction, from opening North America’s first supervised injection site in 2003 to declaring a provincial public health emergency in April 2016. This provided more resources and services, which continue to save lives. It’s working, but it’s not enough.

Given that the most recent statistics of overdoses for the last year indicate that overdose deaths are still rising within the current system, the question remains: how do we get to the root of the problem and prevent people from turning to drugs in the first place? How do we address and treat an underlying mental illness when the first signs of a problem are identified, before the symptoms get worse and people find it difficult to cope with stress, anxiety, depression or underlying trauma, neglect or abuse?

The answer is quite simple: we have to do it all. British Columbia needs a full continuum of care, ranging from mental wellness programs in schools and communities to harm reduction treatments, plus the availability of abstinence-based recovery programs for all incomes.

How do we get people off drugs completely? It is recognized that for some, this may not be possible, but there needs to be more attention and effort put into abstinence-based recovery for everyone who is seeking help — when they are ready. Continuing to pour more money into harm reduction services, including replacement therapies and drug testing kits, may help save lives today, but they won’t end the cycle of addiction.

Right now, across the province, there are an abundance of beds available in private recovery facilities with a proven track record of getting people off drugs — beds that sit empty because government is not funding them.

In 2001, Portugal took the step of decriminalizing the possession and consumption of certain levels of drugs, taking the issue out of the legal system and putting it into the health system. British Columbia, and Canada as a whole, should follow Portugal’s lead. However, what is often lost in the conversation about the Portuguese model is that their goal is to get people well and to have people not using drugs at all.

Portugal’s model includes prevention, dissuasion, harm reduction, treatment, recovery and reintegration. I think, right now in British Columbia, we are making great strides in harm reduction, but we’re lacking in prevention, dissuasion and, most importantly, treatment, reintegration and recovery.

In Portugal, individuals with substance use disorders are considered to be individuals that need health and social care, not a criminal record. When a person is found using or is in possession of drugs for personal use, they are referred to the Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction within 72 hours. There they are assessed for a variety of factors, including family and social history, psychosocial status and more. The intervention is targeted for the individual’s need. If they are found to be in possession of amounts over the limits of personal use, they are sent to jail.

In Portugal, there are support systems in place for families, all centred on the Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. There are a variety of options when someone is caught using drugs or overdoses, ranging from a fine to assistance with recovery and treatment. What they don’t want is people to be in a vicious cycle of using drugs and never having the opportunity of accessibility to, or treatment in, abstinence-based treatment centres.

The framework for Portugal’s approach is based on the idea that substance use should be stopped and that government has a strong role in pushing individuals in that direction. In Portugal, people with substance use disorders are guided through recovery to get well. The goal is to help those who want to get back to becoming participants in society back to health.

Our local societies, like the Last Door Society and Cedars, at Cobble Hill, are currently providing long-term help for people and their families and have beds available today. Right now only the very poor, those with means or those with extended health care plans can access these types of recovery facilities. If we’re going to tackle this crisis head-on, we need a multifaceted approach that doesn’t lose sight of all the options on the table to help those with substance use issues. This includes prevention, assessment, treatment, harm reduction and stable recovery.

Stable recovery recognizes the personal, social and environmental resources that can be brought to bear on maintaining remission and long-term recovery. We need to get to the root of the problem, which could involve childhood trauma, abuse or neglect. We need to recognize that stable recovery can take a long time and can come with relapses, just like any other chronic physical illness.

[10:25 a.m.]

Recovery includes relapse prevention skills, healthy lifestyles, exercise and nutrition, with a focus on mentoring and family involvement. People in recovery can become healthy, productive community members, and investments in recovery community centres or schools have been shown to work in many jurisdictions.

I look forward to continuing my discussion in a moment.

M. Dean: Thank you so much to the member for North Vancouver–Seymour. I couldn’t agree more that we do absolutely need a range of services. They need to be accessible. They need to be non-stigmatizing as well. What’s really important in delivering services in this area is understanding the need for prevention and understanding the causes — the impact of trauma and of a range of vulnerabilities that can actually exacerbate issues as well.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say how very proud I am of this government for creating a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. We have a minister whose sole responsibility is making sure that this government addresses these issues. Already, in my community and across the province, I know that there are fantastic people working in the profession, in the sector, who are engaging in research and looking into best practices models and who would like to implement those on behalf of British Columbians.

Myself, I’ve had three decades, nearly, of working in this area, and I’ve had concerns. I’ve been delivering mental health and addiction services in my constituency of Esquimalt-Metchosin. Even in a community where we had some of the fastest-growing communities in the whole of the province, over the past ten years, we actually saw cuts in services for community-based mental health and addiction services.

A particular program that used to serve about 100 adults in the community in any given year was cut, and within three years, RCMP saw a 50 percent increase in the number of incidents that they were responding to where there was a mental health concern in the community. So I’m really pleased, today, to be able to respond to the member and talk about what our government has done and how seriously we are taking this issue across the whole spectrum.

Of course, it is a crisis as well. There’s an overdose crisis that we need to tackle as well as the whole spectrum of mental health and addictions needs. There were 1,422 overdose deaths in 2017, which was a 43 percent increase, compared to 2016. Last year was the deadliest for overdose deaths in the province’s history, with an average of four deaths per day. These are people. These are the neighbours that we heard our other member talk about.

This is a provincial issue, and in the constituency of Esquimalt-Metchosin, it is a community issue. We have hot spots in our community where the rates of overdoses and deaths are actually higher than the average. Our first responders are exposed to human crises outside their offices, on the streets, as well as on call-outs. The numbers of people dying are staggering, and the human impact is unspeakable.

Families in my constituency regularly talk to me and tell me about how they want our government to address this crisis. We’re all saying that we can do more and must do more to end this. Today I say to everybody: think about what you can do, and please take action. I want to say how proud I am of all of our first responders and how they’ve been handling this public health emergency.

It’s very complex. There isn’t just one simple solution. Our government is taking an all-of-government, whole-province approach to the overdose crisis. We’re focusing funding on the ground, in communities, to fight the crisis and to make sure that funding is invested where it’s needed the most — to save lives and create a pathway to hope and recovery.

In September last year, our government announced $322 million in funding over the next three years to combat the overdose crisis. In December, we launched our new provincial overdose emergency response centre, building community action teams on the ground in communities that are hit by the overdose crisis. We’ve also dedicated an additional $1.5 million of funding from this year’s budget for grants for other communities that need the resources to fight this issue. We’re expanding the availability of naloxone kits, and we’ve made drug testing more widely available as well.

[10:30 a.m.]

Government is working with Indigenous partners, too, and other sectors to save lives and provide better and more culturally appropriate support to First Nations and Indigenous communities to address this crisis. We are taking an all-of-province approach and a whole broad spectrum of approach to develop a better system for mental health and addictions care.

We know that we need understanding of the causes of mental health and addictions issues and how people are most vulnerable and how people are working hard to put the building blocks in place across the levels of need. The goal of everything we’re doing is to save lives and to connect people to treatment and recovery as soon as possible.

J. Thornthwaite: Thank you to the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin for her comments.

The other aspect of addictions and mental health is prevention and early intervention. While millions are being poured into addressing the opioid crisis now, I worry that we’ll forget about youth struggling in schools with unidentified or untreated mental illness, which eventually may lead to substance use.

The Foundry, a one-stop-shop initiative, is a great first step that improves access to mental health services for youth and their families. But we also need to be getting to kids earlier. That means in the schools. Teachers are often the best at identifying if a child has mental health needs, and there should be immediate supports in place for those needs when they are identified. Certainly, recent research that’s come out has definitely given credence to more supports in the schools that actually work.

The North Vancouver school district has already reached out to government with a proposal to coordinate services between the Foundry in North Vancouver and the school district. We need to ensure that the children and the youth who present at schools get the help they need immediately and that connections for services can happen where they are — in the schools.

Mountainside Secondary in North Vancouver is already on the right track in integrating mental health services in their school. We need to do more in all of B.C.’s schools to offer timely help when students are identified as struggling and to provide appropriate services as soon as possible — within weeks, not months. We need to listen to the successes of schools like Mountainside Secondary and copy their successes in all school districts provincewide.

We know what works and what doesn’t. Government needs to continue to make mental health, addictions and recovery a government priority and work together to give people hope and opportunity for their lives and their families.

ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AS
A QUALITY OF LEADERSHIP

J. Routledge: Today I rise to talk about creative expression as a quality of leadership, as an important political skill.

Now, I don’t want anyone jumping to the conclusion that I intend to spend my time justifying the stereotype that politicians make things up. I know that, at the very least, you may be wondering why I would choose a topic that must seem frivolous in the face of the so many overwhelming crises we grapple with in this House every day — like surgical wait-lists, homelessness, wildfires that consumed much of our province last summer, the unprecedented number of drug-related deaths and so many young British Columbians who have simply given up believing they will ever have a good job or own a home.

It is because so many British Columbians seem to have lowered their expectations and have accepted the inevitability of poverty within the midst of plenty, of catastrophic weather, of daily stress and insecurity that I want to talk about creativity and politics.

I ask: how can we hope to build a better world if we are incapable of imagining what a better world will look like? How can we fix the social ills that stalk our families and communities if we can’t even imagine what it feels like to sleep in a doorway, to be in so much physical or psychic pain that we’ll gamble our lives on the temporary release of a street drug or to feel the indignity of lying in our own filth, waiting for an overworked care aide to come and tend to our needs?

[10:35 a.m.]

Sadly, the work of imagining, interpreting our experiences and expressing our feelings had long been relegated to the artists and poets. John Lennon’s Imagine had us all singing about a world without war or hunger. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech inspired the civil rights movement. Just last Thursday, on the steps of this Legislature, the Butterflies in Spirit dancers invited us to feel some of their loss and grief.

It’s an unfortunate feature of the modern age that creativity has become disconnected from the serious business of making money, passing laws, curing disease and inventing new technology. This separation of art from science isn’t new. It’s part of the binary thinking that has been embedded in our predominant world view for at least 300 years — science, art; reason, passion; logical, irrational; strong, weak; serious, frivolous; male, female. I don’t think I need to explain which column is deemed to have more value in our society.

There are many ways up-and-down binary values are signalled to us. For example, we’re all familiar with the term “starving artist.” But a starving scientist? That just doesn’t make sense. I needed science and math credits to get into university, and I was in an arts program. But high school art? That’s an elective.

In short, our society has come to overvalue rationality and undervalue creativity. It begs these questions: does society produce politicians with underdeveloped imaginations? If politicians could think and act more imaginatively, would we be able to come up with more effective solutions to the problems that challenge the people we represented? Might we even avoid playing a role in creating those problems in the first place? I believe the answer is yes. Our ability to reason is of course useful, because it arranges our ideas, but imagination is also an important mode of mental action because it creates new ideas.

I have another question for us to consider: if creativity is an essential political skill, one that helps us think outside the box and feel empathy for those affected by our decisions, is it something we can and should develop within ourselves as politicians? Again, my answer is yes.

Now, I’d like to go on and talk about some of the ways I think we can develop our sense of creativity, but I’d like to hear from the member opposite about his thoughts about this as well.

S. Gibson: Thanks to the member for Burnaby North for bringing up this rather intriguing topic this morning — one of the more interesting topics that we’ve been engaged in here lately in our Legislature.

I would agree that there is an aesthetic side to leadership. There’s a dimension which we don’t always consider, and as was noted by the member, I think it’s important that we discuss that a little bit this morning. I think, too, about leadership in its purest form. Leadership should motivate, and it should inspire.

I had the privilege of teaching university students for many years. I had a business course, and I’d ask the students: “How many of you work for a manager?” They all had part-time jobs. They all put their hand up. I’d ask them: “How many of you work for a leader?” Nobody put their hand up. They said: “Well, Simon, what’s the difference?” Well, a manager implements, but a leader inspires. I think that’s a bit about what we’ve been hearing this morning from the member opposite.

[10:40 a.m.]

I go running in the mornings around here to get ready for my day, and I run around these streets of Victoria. When I come past this building, I realize that the leadership that inspired this building to be constructed had a deep aesthetic sense. Look, even in this room here, at the design, the beauty of the architecture.

Now, this building will come down at some point. It’s not permanent. It will come down, like all buildings will eventually. But for now, it’s something we enjoy, we savour. The leadership that got this building up and designed, all the stained glass and the architecture…. It’s worth remembering that somebody designed it so many years ago.

I think we’re inspired by the beauty of this place. Artistic expression is found everywhere we look, and even if you’re not that interested in art, you are motivated by it. If you go to a movie that inspires you — the values of it — it keeps you going for a few weeks.

My mother was an artist, a painter. She did oil and watercolour. She passed away since I was elected to the Legislature. I was always inspired by her paintings. Many of them are up in our house. I have a little bit of that artistic sense. I do cartooning, and I have submitted 24 cartoons to New Yorker magazine. They’ve all been rejected, so I’ve decided now to switch to the New Yorker cartoon contest. Every week I submit, and one day I’m going to make it. You’ll hear about that in the Legislature. I’ll be making that announcement.

Seriously, though, my daughter now has done art for two children’s books. She was inspired by her grandmother.

In politics, we tend to look at the facts, the numbers and that side of life. But what will be our legacy when we step aside and turn over our seat to someone else? It probably will in part be the aesthetic side of what we’ve done here.

We envisage a better world. We imagine it. I don’t know what I was thinking when I first got elected 37 years ago to the Abbotsford council. I didn’t imagine what would happen, and here I am, allowed to serve the people of my community in the Legislature.

Herman Melville said this: “It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” I believe each of us around this room has a special sense of our purpose here. We represent our constituents, whether it’s from the far north, as my colleague here, from the Cariboo, from the Chilcotins. Wherever it is, we all bring that sense of caring.

I’m thankful for this topic. It’s an interesting one. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to expect here, so I had to tailor my message a little bit in reply. But a good topic. Thank you to the member for Burnaby North for bringing it forward, and thank you, hon. Speaker, for allowing me to speak to it.

J. Routledge: Thank you to the member opposite for his very thoughtful, inspiring and motivational words about this topic.

I stated earlier that I thought politicians can and should develop, should hone, our capacity to be creative. But how? Many of us who have chosen the rational, practical path in life are pretty self-conscious about being creative. We say things like: “Oh, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body” or “I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

Let me ask you this. When you were two years old, were you told to give up trying to walk, because you just weren’t very good at it, or to forget eating, because you had so much trouble finding your mouth with your spoon, or to stop trying to have a conversation, because no one could understand what you were saying? Of course not. Because doing those things was considered essential life skills.

Somewhere along the line, many of us got the idea that we couldn’t sing or couldn’t draw or couldn’t dance or couldn’t tell a story, and we gave up trying because none of those things were considered essential.

A few years ago I started painting. I guess it was a hobby, a pastime. I wasn’t really very good at it. But the process of trying to capture an image, the process of trying to communicate a moment that had meaning to me and to do it in such a way that someone looking at my painting could see that meaning…. Well, it changed my relationship with the world around me. I started seeing details and connections I hadn’t seen before.

I suspect everyone in this chamber has a hobby, a pastime, a way they express their creativity. We call it recreation because it creates us again and again.

[10:45 a.m.]

Almost 200 years ago, the poet Shelley declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Two hundred years later we can put a rocket into space or blow up this planet, but we still haven’t figured out how to end world poverty. Perhaps it’s time to reunite art and science before it’s too late.

ADDRESSING FAMILY
PHYSICIAN SHORTAGES

L. Throness: I rise in the House today to speak to a growing problem, and that’s the shortage of family doctors in B.C. I was surprised last October to find from the Minister of Health, during the estimates process, that my city of Chilliwack has almost 25 percent, exactly 23,327 people, without a family doctor. The situation is worse in Agassiz, in my riding, with 26 percent of my residents without a family doctor.

Provincewide 23 percent of British Columbians don’t have access to a family physician. I see this as a gathering crisis, and the crunch is only going to get worse as physicians from the baby boom generation begin to retire.

I wrote to Fraser Health about their plans to recruit doctors, and they replied that they don’t do that. It’s the responsibility of the local divisions of family practice. So I met with the division in Chilliwack and found that Fraser Health provides no funding for recruitment. We have local divisions of family practice scrambling to find money to help attract doctors to our communities, and there’s no provincial recruitment drive at all. I find that quite astounding.

I also find it incredible that the Fraser Health Authority alone has 27,000 employees. It’s a massive organization. Our health system has an enormous cost — $20 billion a year. But there is a dire shortage of the most basic level of care — that is, a family doctor to see your kid when he’s sick.

There are other anomalies across the system. The district of Hope, next door to Chilliwack, is well served by doctors. In fact, they’re taking on patients there. Saltspring Island, with 11,000 people, enjoys 15 family doctors.

Why do these types of shortages and imbalances exist, and what can the government do about it? Well, our health care system is known as a command-and-control system, where we don’t depend on the forces of supply and demand, as expressed through market pricing, to allocate health resources.

Our system reminds me of the old Soviet Union, which would decide at the beginning of the year how many shoes to produce, and at years’ end, there would be either too many shoes or too few. They would get it wrong, by definition, because no one can predict the future.

By contrast, a modern market economy functions more efficiently, because the forces of supply and demand operate on a moment-to-moment basis, using market prices as signals for change.

I would point out that we don’t have a shortage of dentists in Chilliwack, because it’s a private system, and the market takes care of the allocation of labour. This explains why we have waiting lists in our public-only health care system. When you can pay privately, you can get your surgery done tomorrow, as in the States. When the public pays, you have to wait for it. But the people of Canada and of B.C. have consistently supported a public-only system.

Strangely enough, even though we have a command-and-control system where we must actively manage every part of health care, we do not take the same approach with doctors. We train them, and then we set them free to make their own decisions.

Here I want to affirm our doctors. They’re great people. They’re working very hard. I had a doctor phone me to tell me that he has 4,500 patients. He’s working 14 hours a day, and he’s burning out. Our doctors are heroes, but they lack information about the big picture, so they naturally act in their own best interests, just as we all do.

For example, doctors can work the hours they want, full- or part-time. They can set up a practice wherever they want or move to or from a community whenever they want. They can work in a hospital, in an emergency room or some other clinical setting, or they can specialize, at will. In short, they can choose not to be a family physician, and obviously, it’s not the most popular choice.

The problem in the system is that we don’t give direction to doctors. We do it with nurses, with lab techs, with 27,000 workers in the Fraser Health Authority. We tell them: “You have to show up at this hospital at this time and work this shift.” They don’t have a choice. This is not a sign of disrespect to those employees. This respects the needs of patients who are ill.

Almost everyone who is paid by the public purse, like myself, like us in this House, must be in a certain place at a certain time to serve the public.

The solution is either to introduce market forces into our health care system or for the system to take steps to allocate physician resources. I think British Columbians prefer the single-payer system.

[10:50 a.m.]

Let me explain what the government could do within the confines of our present system. First, the government can train more doctors, and it ought to do that, but this is expensive.

I have another solution that wouldn’t cost the government a penny. The government, or perhaps the College of Physicians and Surgeons, could simply become more assertive in allocating physician resources and say to a doctor, “Do you want to move out of Chilliwack? If you want to practise in B.C., we’d like you to stay in Chilliwack for a couple of more years,” or say: “We need you to be a family physician for a little while longer before you become an ear, nose and throat specialist.” We need to be able to say: “For the first three years after medical school, we’re asking you to practise in a rural area of our choosing.” We should be able to say: “We need full-time doctors, not part-time ones.”

Now, it’s true that younger physicians don’t want the punishing schedules that doctors kept in the past. I don’t blame them for that. But I went over the latest blue book and found that roughly a third of physicians bill less than the average, which means that for whatever reason, many are working part-time. That’s one contributing factor to a million people in B.C. without a family doctor. So I’m encouraging the government or the college to exert a measure of control over the situation and allocate physician supply. The placement of reasonable, fairly minor restrictions on doctors would not need to affect current doctors but future ones.

We would let all med school candidates know that in the future, there will be parameters around their practice so that the needs of the community will come before their own, and they would agree to these parameters as a condition of entering med school. For sure, some candidates would drop out and say: “I don’t want to be a doctor, then.” But the competition to get into med school is so fierce that there would be plenty of others who would be happy to practise under reasonable guidelines laid out by our system.

We have to answer this basic question: “What comes first — the health needs of the people of B.C. or the free agency of doctors?” We in this place are bound to the public interest. The needs of the people of B.C. must come first. I call upon the government to bring before this House policy or legislation that will ensure a sufficient, rational and more equitable distribution of family doctors across every area of this province and into the future.

I want to close by thanking doctors, by affirming their hard work and dedication and by appealing to their understanding in this most important matter.

J. Rice: The previous government’s focus was on GPs. Our view is to turn to team-based care, where health professionals work together to get patients the support they need. This includes nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and other health care providers working in concert to help people. Our focus is to institute team-based care and to create urgent care centres.

Urgent care centres would allow people to be treated by nurses. We would be able to pay and incentivize the whole team, including nurse practitioners, not just doctors. Nurse practitioners are so underappreciated, yet they have a high level of training and a broad scope of practice. They would provide better primary care so as to keep people out of crowded emergency rooms.

Less than one-third of doctors report having arrangements for patients after hours. It’s no wonder that in places like Surrey and Chilliwack or places in rural B.C., even those with a family doctor don’t have access to care. It tends to push people to the ER because there is no appropriate service after hours or on weekends. So we are proposing and working on establishing urgent care centres that will work with the divisions of family practice to improve access to care, especially after hours.

For a long time, the previous government failed to reform primary care. They focused on incentivizing doctors with a fee-for-service system. Other provinces have changed the structure and organization of primary care, moving towards team-based models of care and away from fee-for-service compensation for doctors. Other countries have also implemented incentive payments for doctors, but unlike B.C., these models were tied to reporting improved patient outcomes.

The costly incentive implemented under the previous government was a $315 annual payment made to doctors, on top of regular patient visits, for providing ongoing care for complex patients, those that have multiple chronic illnesses. British Columbia now spends more than $50 million a year on this single incentive and another $100 million on similar extra payments for obstetrics, mental health or management of individual chronic diseases.

The incentive payments for doctors failed to achieve the stated goal of improving primary care for patients. For a long time, the previous government failed to reform primary care. Other jurisdictions are far ahead, and we have a lot of catching up to do, but we’re going to leverage on their experiences.

[10:55 a.m.]

The GP for Me program failed, where it was promised in the 2013 election. It was said that by 2015, everyone would have an attachment to a family doctor or nurse practitioner. But today, still, one in six British Columbians don’t have access to a family doctor. It’s a significant problem. But the only way to start resolving these problems is to start one step at a time, and that’s exactly what we are doing.

L. Throness: I’d like to thank the member for North Coast for her response. Her idea of delivering service, like an urgent care centre, is a nice thing. It may result in better-quality health care. It might result in more convenience for patients or reduced emergency room visits. All that is good. But team-based care is virtually irrelevant to doctor supply. It won’t solve the problem I’ve described. Like so many other so-called health care reforms over the years, like the internal markets of the 1990s, little will really change.

I fear that the government is using the idea of team-based care to tinker with fee-for-service payments, and I would oppose that. We need to give the incentive to physicians to see many patients, and fixed salaries for doctors would remove that incentive and actually worsen the shortage, so that’s very important.

We have a human resource allocation problem on our hands, and we have the capacity to solve it. Right now we have a command-and-control health system in general but a free-market system for doctors alone. The two systems do not mesh. They’re not working well together.

If we want to retain a single-payer system in which the government pays all the bills, we must harmonize the allocation of physician labour with all the other kinds of labour we have in our health authorities. This idea might not be welcomed by the physician community at first. But I would repeat, first, that restrictions would be reasonable, and second, they would not apply to current doctors, only future ones.

The government tried to do this years ago by restricting billing numbers, but this was struck down by the courts. Given the worsening situation today, that kind of restriction may well be seen as reasonable by the courts today.

Again, I call on upon the government, or the College of Physicians and Surgeons, to become more proactive in the allocation of physician human resources, in the interest of the one million British Columbians without a family doctor. At the very least, requests could be sent now to physicians asking them to take on more patients or fewer patients, to stay longer in one place or move to another, to specialize now or hold off on specializing for a while — in the hope that moral suasion alone could change behaviour.

To close, I would once again appeal to physicians to recognize that there would be broad public benefit and, therefore, broad public support for a body with an overview of the entire province to become more assertive with respect to the allocation of physician resources. This is an urgent matter of the public interest.

Hon. S. Robinson: I call Motion 1.

Deputy Speaker: On Motion 1, we don’t need leave of the House because it’s No. 1. So I’ll ask Surrey-Guildford to proceed.

Private Members’ Motions

MOTION 1 — AFFORDABLE
POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

G. Begg:

[Be it resolved that this House recognize the importance of affordable post-secondary education that ensures success in a rapidly growing modern economy.]

It is my great pleasure to rise today to speak about the importance of recognizing the importance of affordable post-secondary education that will ensure our success in the rapidly growing modern economy.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

In order for us to debate this essential issue, it’s important that we set the proper stage for discussion. Put yourself back in time — say, 20 years ago. Could you have predicted the success of the web, tablets and smartphones, privatized space travel, the rise of terrorism or any of the other large and small changes that have an impact on us today and how we all live?

Could you imagine that a leader of a small, hermit nation could boast of his country’s ability to reach the continental United States with a nuclear-armed missile — and to know that such technology exists? We are fully in the midst of a technological and educational revolution that has transformed and will continue to transform our world and all of its inhabitants.

[11:00 a.m.]

It’s absolutely imperative that we, all of us, come to grip with the realities that we face in this province and equip all British Columbians with the important tools of affordable post-secondary education that ensures their success in our exciting and rapidly growing economy here and all around the world.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” These words were attributed to the hockey great Wayne Gretzky. I think it is an apt analogy for where I hope all of us want to position ourselves as we seek to prepare this province by ensuring our post-secondary educational institutions groom our students for success.

What kind of future are we facing today? The United States is still the world’s largest economy, but China is rapidly closing the gap. The economic growth in China has slowed from double digits to around 7 percent annually. But it’s now so large that it will continue to affect the world economy much greater than it ever did in the past.

Given the global interconnected challenges of sustainable development, peaceful and inclusive society-building and climate change mitigation and adaptation, it’s essential to prioritize knowledge and skills that are linked to 21st-century livelihoods, conflict resolution and sustainable development. These skills include critical thinking, problem-solving and relevant content knowledge like environmental and climate change education, disaster risk reduction and preparedness, sustainable consumption and lifestyles, and green technical and vocational education and training.

We all agree, I hope, that education is the most effective means that society possesses for confronting the challenges of the future. In fact, I believe it can be argued that education will shape the world of tomorrow.

Charles Darwin is often quoted as the author of the famous phrase about the survival of the fittest that suggests that it is only the strongest that survive. That’s something that Charles Darwin did not say. In fact, he said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

There should be no doubt that we are now, and for all of the future will be, in a constant state of change. Indeed, it has been widely said that the only constant is change. We live in a world that is changing at a rate that is much greater than at any time in our history. If we are to be prepared for our inevitable future, our post-secondary educations must open the doors and provide the tools to prepare us for that future.

Progress has and will increasingly depend upon the products of educated minds — upon research, invention, innovation and adaptation. Of course, educated minds and instincts apply not only in our laboratories and research institutes but in every walk of life. I hope that this House now recognizes the importance of affordable post-secondary education that ensures success in a rapidly growing economy.

S. Cadieux: Thank you to the member for Surrey-Guildford for his commentary. I think we would all agree that the world is in a constant state of change and that, certainly, one of the things we can count on is that change — and, of course, taxes.

The member has raised this issue of the need for and the importance of affordable post-secondary education in a rapidly growing modern economy. I wonder why the word “affordable” was there.

[11:05 a.m.]

The member didn’t talk at all about the cost of post-secondary education or the cost of providing that wonderful and rapidly changing education for the world as it grows and changes and as technology becomes more and more a part of our lives. As that technology changes at such a rapid pace, ever-increasing, the cost for the education system of providing and keeping up with that change is also ever-increasing. That means, of course, that that cost falls to someone, be it the students or the system. When it falls to the system, of course, that means it falls to taxpayers.

I will certainly agree with the member that post-secondary education is ever so important, ever more important in our economy today. As a member earlier spoke about the challenges in our society today of growing income inequality and of poverty, the reality is that a good job is still the best way out of poverty. And to get a good job, one needs a good education. That is ever more true today with technology jobs now outpacing those of labour, with the days of family-supporting jobs on the green chain gone and more and more service jobs at low-paying wages replacing those.

We are challenged for individuals without skills and without higher education to be able to support their families. So I think the importance of post-secondary education can’t be understated for both our students and our future as a province. By 2025, almost eight in ten job openings will require post-secondary education.

Post-secondary education ensures that students and young people today and older people who may be retraining are equipped for those jobs of the future and to take advantage of those opportunities. People who are trained contribute to a skilled labour force, and their hard work will help to ensure that our economy remains strong and growing.

I think everyone knows that numerous studies have shown that British Columbians with an undergraduate degree will earn more in their lifetime — between $800,000 and $1 million more — meaning that that investment in one’s education is highly valuable and highly profitable. Students are recognizing it. There are now more than 200,000 full-time students in this province, more than 50,000 more than in 2001. That’s all the more reason that British Columbia and the government need to continue to invest in our post-secondary system.

I’m proud that our government invested more than $3.3 billion in capital projects over our time in government and had committed to another billion in the three years going forward. I’m sure this government will be continuing to invest in that because those investments in capital and infrastructure are also required for that post-secondary system to exist. We were investing in innovation with the open textbook program, which helped nearly 34,000 students save almost $3.9 million in the last five years alone. These kinds of advances are things that I would hope will continue under this government.

While we talk a lot about the cost of post-secondary education, it’s important to get the facts on the record as well. On average, B.C. students pay about a third of the real cost of their education, and the taxpayers pay the rest. In 2016-17, British Columbia students paid the fourth lowest undergraduate tuition fees in all of Canada. In Budget 2017, last February, our government had committed to reducing the interest rate on student loans by 2.5 percent, a promise I’m glad the government today continued to follow through with. The value of post-secondary education can’t be understated.

M. Elmore: I’m very pleased to speak to the motion moved by the member for Surrey-Guildford: “Be it resolved that this House recognize the importance of affordable post-secondary education that ensures success in a rapidly growing modern economy.”

[11:10 a.m.]

Like my colleagues before, talking about the increased need for folks to have some type of post-secondary education training, be it continuing adult education, skilled trade apprenticeships, college diploma or a university degree…. It’s anticipated that in the next ten years, 78 percent of job openings will require this type of education.

Where are we now in British Columbia? We had a report from the Conference Board of Canada that determined that the skills gap in British Columbia, to the current date, has cost our economy $7.9 billion and has cost our government $600 million in tax revenue annually. That’s a gap in terms of the ability to have skilled workers to meet the needs in our province. We know that the B.C. Tech Association has said that there are 30,000 tech jobs that can’t be filled with B.C. workers because we aren’t training enough here at home. That’s where we are now.

I think we have to appreciate where we’ve come from, how we got to this point. It’s characterized by the priorities of the previous Liberal government over 16 years. They made the priorities to have subsidies to the top 2 percent in tax cuts to millionaires and to increase fees — record high tuition and record high student debt for our students.

What’s the reality? We know that tuition fees doubled since 2001. Tuition fees have not only doubled, but if you go to post-graduate — so either your master’s or to pursue your PhD — that has tripled. That’s the reality for students in B.C. As well, there are new tuition fees for apprenticeships and adults who want to complete their high school education.

In 2002, grants were eliminated for first-year students. In 2004, the grant program was eliminated entirely. The B.C. loan reduction program for high-needs students was discontinued in 2008. And we know that the average student debt is the highest in Canada. That’s the reality in terms of the inaccessibility and the crisis in affordability in our education system under the previous decisions by the B.C. Liberal government over 16 years.

In addition to that, we know that besides record high tuition fees and the record high student debt, B.C. had the highest student loan interest rate in Canada — prime plus 2.5 percent. The former Minister of Advanced Education, now the Leader of the Official Opposition, actually directed universities to increase mandatory fees on students, in addition, to get around the 2 percent tuition cap. This was really the record in terms of how students in our province saw increasing fees — to pay to go into record debt — and also in terms of making it more difficult for students to get the skills that they need. That’s the reality.

Our government has made it a priority to address affordability for British Columbians. What have we done? We have reduced the student interest rate, reduced the 2.5 percent, and we are moving towards reducing interest on student loans.

We have eliminated fees for folks who want to complete their adult basic education, high school and English language learning. It was really atrocious. As well, we are looking at supporting students and increasing the number of tech seats at B.C. colleges and universities, waiving tuition for former youth in care — right? — in terms of ensuring that they have opportunities.

We are taking steps, as well, to invest in British Columbians, to address affordability, to ensure British Columbians have opportunities and that they can afford to upgrade their skills to be successful. We’re investing in people, ensuring that public education is affordable so that folks have opportunities. Not only do they benefit, but that is the way forward.

That’s the priority of our government. We have heard that loud and clear. We are taking a different direction. We are investing in folks. We’re investing in services to ensure that individuals have opportunities here in British Columbia for affordable education to strengthen our economy.

M. Morris: Just listening to the previous member speaking, a lot of the things that she announced were announced under the government that we had before the election. It’s a continuation of a lot of the good things that we were doing.

[11:15 a.m.]

Something the member omitted to talk about was the $1,000 grant that they had promised during the election campaign to give every university graduate — a $1,000 grant. If you look at the roughly 62,000 graduates that graduate every year, that would have cost the province approximately $250 million over four years — a pretty significant amount of money that they omitted, unless we’re going to hear some news coming up in their budget speech. It’s, again, another campaign promise that they omitted to follow through on.

The original motion was talking about looking forward into the future and the advanced education opportunities that are coming at us. This whole entire world is…. The technology sector is really pushing forward, moving forward in leaps and bounds.

When I look around my district — and I look at the resource sector as an example — and the impact that advanced education has had on the resource sector….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

M. Morris: You go to Mount Milligan, which is one of the newest mines that opened up under the previous government, a copper mine in the interior of the province up near my riding. To walk into the control room of that particular mine is just a mass of large screens. The technicians that sit at those controls can monitor everything right down to the temperature of individual bearings on a shaft somewhere in the complex. It’s just amazing that they can look at those kinds of things and rectify any problems before they surface into something major.

The sawmills that we have in the riding and across the province here…. British Columbia leads the way in the world with technology around the sawmilling part of it. Years ago we would have a sawmill that would — for lack of a better term, we’ll say — put out 100,000 board feet with about 30 to 40 people working on the floor looking after all the different aspects of the operations.

Today we have a mill that doubles that output and that employs probably in the neighbourhood of six or seven people on the floor at any given time because of the computer technology that’s involved in running that organization and the automated systems and the technology that they have running that.

We have a trucking company in Prince George that was experiencing a significant number of injuries from their truck drivers, who would have to crawl up the side of a chip truck and cover the load with tarps. They had articulating points with B-train vehicles — so two articulating points on it — and they were having extreme difficulty, particularly in the wintertime on icy roads. So this company sat down and had a look at it and developed a truck with a single articulating point and a system that didn’t require the drivers to crawl up on that and tarp the loads down. But that all started with engineers and engineering technologists.

We’ve just had a number of those seats granted in Prince George. It was kind of interesting, the value that the current government puts on this. Nobody from government showed up at the announcement from UNBC and CNC when they announced roughly 100 seats for civil engineering and an increase in the number of environmental engineering seats and technology seats at CNC. This is a significant thing for Prince George and for the Interior — training people in the north, for the north, to keep them in the north.

We learned that through the northern medical program, which the B.C. Liberals had initiated back in the early 2000s. We’ve trained a number of doctors now, and I recognize many of them that grew up in Prince George, went to high school in Prince George, started university in Prince George and went through the northern medical program and are now practising family medicine in the Prince George region.

If we can do the same thing with technologists, with engineers, with physiotherapists — to try and attract more physiotherapists and speech therapists, occupational therapists — for the north and for the interior of British Columbia, then that’s when we see advanced education working, which will benefit all the citizens of British Columbia, not just a few that are down in the more populated areas.

An advanced education system…. We have a number of advanced education facilities throughout British Columbia that are underutilized, and I think it’s time, perhaps, that they were all looked at.

L. Krog: I am entirely indebted to the member for Prince George–Mackenzie for pointing out the difference between this government and that government. He’s still showing up for the photo ops, which he would have done previously, for the good work that’s being done by this government in its announcements in Prince George.

[11:20 a.m.]

I just want to thank him for fulfilling a role that they fulfilled for 16 years of photo ops, while this government, in six months, actually does the heavy lifting. We are proud of that record, achieved so quickly, early in the mandate.

Earlier we heard the member for Surrey South. I’m always appreciative of what she has to say. She talked about the cost of post-secondary education. The cost….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

L. Krog: Well, we get it that education is expensive. But surely she and other members opposite would have seen that wonderful BCTF bumper sticker for years that said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

How is Canada going to compete in the global economy if we are fighting over who pays for the education of its citizens — the technologist that the member for Prince George–Mackenzie talked about, the people who give us the economic advantage to fight in a globally competitive world? It’s up to the community as a whole.

We have always recognized, on this side of the House, that we do collectively what we cannot do individually. And when we do it collectively and we do it well, we build a better, more prosperous and more equitable society. That’s what people on this side of the House want to do, and that is why we are standing up for this motion today to recognize the importance of not just post-secondary education but affordable post-secondary education. We understand that the success of our economy in a global world is going to be entirely dependent upon our skill sets.

To rely continuously on the extraction of resources is a dead end, eventually. If any of the members opposite have read the history of this province, there are communities where 5,000 and 10,000 people once lived, where there were opera houses and theatres, communities that have disappeared entirely because the mine petered out or the forest got logged away or the fish don’t swim there anymore and get caught and processed.

If we are to build a successful economy, it will be based on our education system. It’s why this government is pursuing, so hard, increases in post-secondary education in order to ensure that our young people have a future.

Star Wars is all in the news again. Another episode in the big theatre. Let me talk for a moment about a distant galaxy far, far away, in a time a long time ago when young people like the member for Nanaimo, speaking now in this Legislature, knew that the only way up and out of a small community was post-secondary education, when he had access to good, union-paying jobs to pay for tuition, when he had access to post-secondary education that was cheap — tuition was cheap relative to the cost of everything else — and when opportunities abounded in this province.

I would have thought the members would remember their political ancestry. It was under the Socreds, for heaven’s sake. They believed in high union wages. They believed in unions and construction agreements for major projects. They believed in low tuition, because Wacky Bennett saw the future. Dave Barrett saw the future. But it seems they have lost their way. They over there now have lost their way. This morning, they’re complaining about the cost of post-secondary education.

We are on the side of history. We want to move forward. We don’t want to be living in the past. We want to be there for the future. As the member for Surrey-Guildford so eloquently put it, quoting Wayne Gretzky, we want to go where the puck’s going to be. We know the puck isn’t going to be where it is today. That puck is moving faster and faster than it has throughout history. We know the rate of technological change is incredible. You only have to read a few of the modern authors to understand that.

I say with great pride — with a government that managed, after its term in 2013, according to the BMO survey, to end up with student debt per capita in British Columbia at $8,600, a third higher than the Canadian average and $4,200 higher than second place Atlantic Canada — we want to be on the right side of this argument.

We want to be on the side of students and the future, our children and our grandchildren. We have everything to be proud of. Let them sit for a few more years in opposition till they can understand what the simple old BCTF bumper sticker said. As I quoted earlier: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” We on this side of the House will go for education any day.

G. Kyllo: It’s truly an honour to rise and speak to today’s motion. I think that all members present can agree that the value of having an accessible, high-quality education cannot be understated.

[11:25 a.m.]

A good teacher can open your mind to new ways of thinking, teach new skills and provide opportunities, which is why it’s important that we are actively attracting and keeping talented professors while simultaneously making sure that students who choose to pursue post-secondary education are able to do so without excessive financial hardship.

They say that the most sincere form of flattery is imitation, as we’ve seen with the members opposite — with the reduction of the interest rate on student loans by 2½ percent and the additional engineering seats. Those were all part of the B.C. Liberal platform, so it’s good to see that the NDP is actually following through with some of the initiatives that we had undertaken.

When it comes to the use of public tax dollars, I believe that government should be using funds to promote and create institutions that train the next generation for the demands of tomorrow. Members on this side of the House have created a legacy of investing in forward-thinking post-secondary programs and institutions.

Under the watch of the B.C. Liberals, we made record contributions to post-secondary institutions, which were used to help create institutions like TRU, UBCO and three new medical schools. Between 2001 and 2017, 32,000 new seats, including 2,500 graduate student spaces, were added to institutions throughout the province to improve access to college and university programs.

Let’s not forget the Industry Training Authority. Not all of the education is in colleges and universities. We have a lot of education in the trades training and apprenticeship programs. They actually provide great educational opportunities for young British Columbians, and older British Columbians, that are looking to take their place and earn their Red Seal certification for trades.

Now, in spite of the new direction, B.C. has some of the highest-performing post-secondary institutions in the world. These institutions deliver world-class instruction while keeping tuition fees lower than in most other provinces in Canada.

I know that some are of the mind or the habit of taking things a step further and insisting that post-secondary education become a completely free service. However, many fail to realize that students in B.C. are already only paying one-third of the actual cost, with two-thirds of the cost being borne by taxpayers.

When we have a look at the opportunities for students to participate in post-secondary education, we also have to focus on the career or trades training that actually happens in high school.

I know for myself…. I’ve got four daughters. Actually, when two of my daughters went to post-secondary, they spent the first year trying to figure out what they wanted to do. If we have a look at a way to maybe provide some more robust career counselling, we can provide an opportunity for students to have a better understanding of what trade or what career they want to pursue and reduce the amount of time that they’re spending in post-secondary. That alone would save a significant amount of dollars.

What we do know is that under a tuition-free program, problems can arise when students choose to drop classes that have already been paid for by tax dollars. That money is then lost when classes are dropped and, obviously, cannot be recovered, leaving British Columbians with the full bill and, again, wasted tax dollars being spent.

Now, in our current system, schools are able to control their tuition rates and redirect enrolment dollars back into programs. This, in turn, raises the profile of certain programs, attracts better talent and allows universities to retain valuable professors.

I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of maintaining an affordable, flexible post-secondary education system. However, we must be prudent when it comes to making widespread systematic changes.

R. Singh: It is my pleasure today to speak in favour of this motion.

The community that I come from, Surrey, as we all know, is the fastest-growing community in B.C. Every year we get so many newcomers. In fact, every month we get so many newcomers coming to this community. The reason they are coming — the reason they make Surrey or B.C. their home — is that they want a better life not just for themselves but a better life for their children.

They come here. They work so hard. We have seen, in recent years, how difficult life has become for the average working family. Most of the constituents in my riding are working two or three jobs. I’ve heard from so many of them that even after working two or three jobs, it has become so difficult for them to have a decent living.

[11:30 a.m.]

One dream that they have is that they want to send their kids to post-secondary education. Many of these families are struggling. They were looking upon this beautiful British Columbia, and then they were looking at the government to do something for them. But we know what, in the last 16 years, the government has done. They were just working for the 2 percent most wealthy people in this province, while they were ignoring the average working families.

As my colleagues have already mentioned, tuitions have doubled in the last 16 years. The spaces have been reduced, and I can say this for Surrey, like most of the students and youth living in Surrey. They have to go outside Surrey to get post-secondary education. They are spending so much money in post-secondary education. The tuition has doubled, and tripled in some instances. But they have to go out, and all that money that they are spending, getting out of their communities and going out for the post-secondary education, is a double burden on the families.

As a mother myself, I had my first experience of what these families are facing. My son just started post-secondary education. I would say that I’m still one of those fortunate people. We are a two-income family. I thought that I would be able to afford it, but it came as a big surprise to me how much money it cost to send a child to post-secondary education. Just one semester is costing more than $6,000 or $7,000, and this is just the tuition fees I’m talking about. It is not the residence or the lodging or anything; it is just the tuition fees.

I think about the families that are struggling — single mothers and newcomers to this country — how they are struggling every day and what a big challenge for them it is to make this dream of sending their kids to get a proper education so that they can get good jobs, how difficult it is for those families.

I’m really happy that our government is working for these families. Our government knows what the real issues are. They are investing in the programs that will help not just families but these youth to get the proper education and be successful in the future. I’m really proud that this government is making getting an education more affordable by reducing and eventually eliminating interest on student loans. We have also eliminated fees for adult basic education and ESL courses and have waived tuition for former children in care. We are also improving services by investing in 2,900 additional tech spaces.

This government realizes what the future jobs are going to be in what sector. That’s why we are putting the resources…. We are putting in more tech spaces. I’m very happy that more than 500 of these tech spaces are in Surrey colleges and universities. We are also creating good jobs in the tech sector by partnering with the private sector and other levels of government to create good programs.

J. Thornthwaite: It’s an honour to rise today and speak to the motion. I think all of this House agrees that an affordable post-secondary education is integral to ensuring success in today’s economy.

A post-secondary education offers a return on investment, whether it is a diploma, trade or degree. British Columbians with an undergraduate post-secondary degree can expect to earn an additional $827,000 over their lifetime. But I think a component that is missing is quality education. That is really unfortunate, because British Columbia has some of the finest post-secondary institutions in Canada and the world.

During our tenure in government, B.C. universities rose to the top of the Maclean’s university rankings, most recently in 2017, with first place in two categories. UBC is ranked third in the medical doctoral category, SFU is ranked first, and UVic is ranked third in the comprehensive category. UNBC is ranked first in the primarily undergraduate category.

Under our government, we oversaw the creation of three medical schools that didn’t exist previously. TRU and UBC Okanagan were created under our government.

[11:35 a.m.]

We made record investments in post-secondary education. From the Alberta border to the west coast of Vancouver Island, we have universities that are building and growing the ranks of the highly educated workforce of tomorrow. This is why, when we were in government, we focused on helping our post-secondary institutions be the best that they could be. We kept tuition the fourth lowest in Canada — $839 less than the Canadian average. Tuition in B.C. is lower than in Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.

I know that the members opposite support our record on post-secondary, since the only Advanced Education announcements in the throne speech were from the B.C. Liberal budget in February. The new engineering seats at TRU and UNBC, the cutting of student loans by 2.5 percent — all reannouncements from our budget. While keeping tuition among the lowest in Canada, we also made sure that students had the best institutions possible in which to learn.

I would like to pay tribute to one of those institutions in my community, as they reach a milestone — Capilano University. Capilano University is named after Chief Joe Capilano, an important leader of the Squamish Nation of the Coast Salish people, and 2018 is Capilano University’s 50th anniversary. For half a century, the university has maintained an international reputation for providing the highest-quality education.

Today over 8,000 students attend Capilano University. There are over 1,000 international students and nearly 400 Aboriginal students. They have 99 programs, which include 12 bachelor degrees, 28 diplomas and eight post-graduate credentials, although they award bachelor degrees, associate degrees, post-bachelor degrees, advanced diplomas, certificates, and statements of completion. A recent survey by the provincial government found that 93 percent of Cap U graduates were satisfied with their education, which is provided by over 900 faculty and support staff.

Capilano offered its first bachelor degree, a collaborative degree in music therapy, with the B.C. Open University in 1990. A second music degree, in jazz studies, was offered in 1992, and a business administration degree was offered in 1993. Capilano has grown, expanded and become one of our province’s largest post-secondary institutions. North Vancouver is proud of our university, and anyone from Cap U can be proud of their time there. My son and my daughter would also agree.

One final point. In the wake of the world that is being rocked by the Me Too movement, it is especially important to point this out. It has always been a priority for me. I think that students should also have access to a safe education.

That is why, in cooperation with the leader of the Green Party, we introduced the Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy Act in 2016. The act requires public post-secondary institutions to have policies that address sexual misconduct and set out procedures on complaint reporting and institutional response. Thanks to our cooperative action, institutions now have a legal responsibility to develop and maintain policies that would address sexual violence involving students enrolled at university, because nobody should be afraid while they’re at school.

R. Kahlon: Again, I’ll start off by just reading out the motion.

“Be it resolved that this House recognize the importance of affordable post-secondary education that ensures success in a rapidly growing modern economy.” I think that no one would disagree with that, in notion. I think what we disagree on is what’s happened and where things should be going.

I was listening to the Leader of the Official Opposition’s speech the other day, his response to the throne speech. One of the things that stuck out…. I went and found this quote. He said: “We only need to think about that 20-year-old student out there who’s wondering about their future. I have three of them living in my house. They wonder where they’re going in life…. They have that sense of opportunity. They’ll get the skills and the training they need, work hard and be successful…in British Columbia.”

It jumped out at me. I started reflecting on that and thinking to myself: “Well, he’s the Leader of the Official Opposition. He’s privileged to be in this building. He lives in the wealthiest neighbourhood in this province. His home is worth probably the most from everyone in this House, so his kids feel that they’re going to get that opportunity.” It helps when your parents are well off and you’re going to get those opportunities.

[11:40 a.m.]

My son, who is seven years old…. When he goes to university, he’ll have certain privileges. He’ll have some confidence that he’s got those supports that he needs to go to university. I’m hopeful, as are most people in this Legislature. I’m glad they feel that way, because his children and my children will have some certain privileges. That’s not the reality for so many people in this province.

Debts. Most people that are coming out of university are not actually having those feelings that things are going to be great. I have so many friends and I coach so many young people who don’t have that sense of hope. They’re coming out of university, and they’re seeing record levels of debt. They’re seeing a housing crunch where they’re looking at the housing market and saying: “How will I ever own a home? How will I ever get a job that pays me enough to not only have a family but also pay off my debts?”

This is what most people who are coming out of the university system or the post-secondary education system are thinking. So I reflect on the conversation here, and I think to myself: “Is that what we want in our society — a society where people who have privilege and who have money have access to post-secondary education and whose children can have those advances in life and those who don’t have that, those who don’t have parents and don’t have wealth, just don’t see hope in our society?”

I don’t think that anyone in this chamber wants that. But this is what we have, so we need to start taking action to address that. B.C. students’ debt is one of the highest in the entire country. Some might dispute the BMO study that was done — the survey that was done across the country. Some might say: “Well, you know what? It didn’t capture the data appropriately.”

I know the opposition may have their own data to throw out there, but the reality was that the B.C. stats that we’ve been using only capture the B.C. debt. It doesn’t capture the 40 percent, the federal debt. That’s just debt that people are facing. We can say: “This is our problem, and that’s their problem.” But that’s not the reality for people.

The tuition has doubled. Within the first four years of the B.C. Liberals taking on the reins of this province, they doubled the tuition. After that, they said: “Oh, well, you know what? We’re going to put a 2 percent raise now. We’re only going to let it go up 2 percent, but colleges and universities should increase fees.”

It’s nice to have that 2 percent, to show that we’re not going to increase the rates and that we’re holding that line for people. But when you tell them, “Go ahead and raise the rates,” what does that do? We’ve got schools that are charging $800, $1,000, $1,200 in fees, essentially to cover up for the lack of funds that universities don’t have because the student rates are not going up.

Anyways, I can go on for days about the challenges. But where do we go from here is, I guess, the question. I’m grateful that the Minister of Advanced Education announced that we will be dropping the interest rate to prime and eliminating 2.5 percent. I heard the folks in the opposition say: “Oh, guess what. We were going to do that.” I heard the same thing about MSP. We lowered it by 50 percent and said: “Oh, we’re going to do that, too.” Well, guess what.

Interjections.

R. Kahlon: No, no. I’ll say it to the member opposite, who says: “Yeah, we were going to do all these things.”

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

R. Kahlon: Actions. Actions, not words.

M. Stilwell: Thank you to the member opposite for his enlightening data that obviously doesn’t correspond with the data that I have in front of me. So we can have a little bit of a discussion there.

I would like to, of course, thank the member for Surrey-Guildford this morning for even bringing forward the motion. Of the importance of post-secondary education in a modern economy, I think there’s no doubt, and I think everyone in this House agrees that, you know, there is importance there, and that young people who are about to enter that job market for the first time recognize their right to education and the importance of it and the major difference that it will make in the rest of their lives.

In fact, this morning, when I was driving my son to school, he was talking about his future. He’s in grade 11, and he’s really excited to be planning for grade 12 and graduation and what it looks like for him. We talked about going to VIU right in our own community and being able to go to school right in our home community.

I think one of the hallmarks of the previous B.C. Liberal government was the expansion of post-secondary institutions beyond the south Island and the Lower Mainland and making sure that we could best prepare people for that modern economy if the students have education opportunities in their own communities.

[11:45 a.m.]

For many, that means that they forgo the expense of relocating to a place far away from home and that they risk losing many of the supports that are necessary for them to be successful in that learning environment. That involved us creating 32,000 new student seats and seven new university campuses since 2001. It involved the transformation of many community colleges to degree-granting institutions.

Vancouver Island University is one of those examples. It’s one of the best examples. Formerly known as Malaspina College, it originally had campuses in Nanaimo, Duncan and Powell River. Now it has a campus in Parksville-Qualicum, and in 2008, it changed to become Vancouver Island University, offering unique, core programs for people right at home in our community.

The motto of VIU is: “Enjoy the journey. Love where you learn.” I think it’s rather appropriate because VIU offers academic programs that work in concert with our local economy.

We actually just started…. They actually have a strong focus with First Nations as well, and I think it’s incredible what the president, Ralph Nilson, has done there to engage the Aboriginal community. It includes a highly specialized program, such as the Aboriginal shellfish aquaculture program, designed to specifically meet the needs of Aboriginal communities.

One of the core values of VIU is to build those relationships with VIU. Through its community promotion for Aboriginal communities, their students learn culturally relevant skills that allow them to work with and support specific health care needs within their own Indigenous communities. I can’t speak enough about how much VIU has done to build the valuable experience for the students inside and outside the classroom.

I think I just want to spend a few minutes to go over some of the facts I didn’t agree with that the other member said.

According to the OECD, education is completely free in Germany, but only 30 percent get degrees, versus in the U.S. where, arguably, costs are higher and more expensive for students to get a degree, where 45 percent of students between 25 and 34 actually get their post-secondary education.

If you look at places like Sweden, where university is absolutely free — yup, totally free; I see you nodding your head over there — students actually still end up with a lot more debt than the average. In fact, according to the most recent B.C. student outcome survey, less than one-third of graduates in the public post-secondary sector made use of government student loans.

In fact, did you know that 70 percent of students do not actually go into debt? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, bursaries and scholarships go unaccounted for every year because people aren’t even applying for those opportunities. There are lots of opportunities in B.C. We promote post-secondary education. We know the value of it, and we will continue to grow it as best we can.

R. Leonard: I’d like to thank the member for Surrey-Guildford for bringing forward this resolution. It’s an opportunity to speak about opening doors and new opportunities in British Columbia.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Like members previous, I’d also like to talk about where we’ve come from. I have personal experience, because my kids were in post-secondary between 2001 and 2013. My first-born’s tuition astoundingly doubled in the time that she attended her undergrad, and by the time she enrolled in her master’s program, grad tuition had risen by 184 percent.

The loss of any grants for low-income students has crippled so many bright citizens’ futures. One of my daughter’s friends, Amanda, didn’t make it to the finish line because of the stress of studies and living under the burden of climbing debt in an unaffordable city.

My son and his friends entered university in 2008, as the recession hit. Summer jobs were hard to come by. One of his friends set up a plan to graduate in ten years, taking only a few courses at a time so he would not rack up a huge debt. It also meant his earning capacity was depressed for twice as long as a full-time student.

[11:50 a.m.]

We do know that post-secondary students in British Columbia have the highest debt load in Canada. Members across may quote different statistics and try to paint a rosier picture, and we have to recognize that student debt is more than just provincial debt. It’s across the board, as was mentioned by another member. What’s worse is that we have students, young adults like Amanda, who don’t have enough supports to stay in school.

After incredible hikes in tuition, the previous government tried to make it look like it cared by instituting a 2 percent cap, but this was quickly drowned out by the increases in ancillary fees. As Shakespeare has said, a rose by any other name smells as sweet.

That was then, and this is now. In the 2017 budget consultations last year under the Liberal government, there was a call for increased funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — STEM — to respond to the huge market demand. It was unheeded, as this past fall the Finance and Government Services committee once again heard the same call throughout B.C.

The skills gap has been ignored for far too long, resulting in lost opportunities in B.C. for companies and British Columbians alike. The Conference Board of Canada states that our economy has missed out on $7.9 billion worth of activity, which would have also brought in $600 million in tax revenue annually. It’s estimated that the unfilled demand will result in a shortage of 30,000 skilled B.C. workers by 2021.

The proof is in the pudding. The opportunities languished under 16 years of successive Liberal governments. In contrast, today’s government has been quick to respond. Already, 2,900 spaces have been funded in 13 colleges, institutes and universities throughout British Columbia, along with funding to provide access to high-speed Internet across B.C.

This whole package will support and drive innovation and create opportunities unseen before. It not only helps the students with more affordable living while in school; it also paves the way for prosperity in communities throughout B.C.

We’ve heard about Prince George, which now can provide a full engineering degree at UNBC. That’s 70 grads per year.

College of New Caledonia has 25 engineering technologists that will be graduating each year by 2022. The college recognized they needed to fill a talent gap for technologist jobs in the north, and now local employers can benefit from homegrown talent.

Vancouver Island’s numbers are increasing by 165 graduates — as early as 2020, 40 of them readying for up to 10,700 tech-related jobs on the Island over the next ten years.

The story continues in many other communities that will see STEM grads in the fast-growing tech sector. As our Parliamentary Secretary for Technology said, the tech industry will hire as many people as we can train. The more we invest in people, the more companies will invest in B.C.

I’m proud to be part of this open-eyed government that is focused on the people of British Columbia.

R. Leonard moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. B. Ralston moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 this afternoon.

The House adjourned at 11:53 a.m.