2008 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 38th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

5 p.m.

Osprey Room, Best Western Baker Street Inn & Convention Centre

153 Baker Street, Nelson, B.C.

Present: Randy Hawes, MLA (Chair); Bruce Ralston, MLA (Deputy Chair); Robin Austin, MLA; John Horgan, MLA; Richard T. Lee, MLA; John Rustad, MLA; John Yap, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Harry Bloy, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; Diane Thorne, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 4:59 p.m.

2. Opening statements by Randy Hawes, MLA, Chair

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

4. The Committee adjourned at 6:46 p.m. to the call of the Chair.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Finance and Government Services

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Issue No. 82

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 1957 ]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

The committee met at 4:59 p.m.

[R. Hawes in the chair.]

R. Hawes (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Randy Hawes, and I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. I'd like to welcome those of you in the audience and thank you for participating in what we think is an extremely valuable process.

In preparing estimates for Budget 2009, the Minister of Finance is required to release both a fiscal forecast and a budget consultation paper by September 15 of each year. The consultation paper is required to provide a description of the major economic and policy assumptions underlying that fiscal forecast as well as identify the key issues that need to be addressed by the public in preparation for the next budget.

The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services is charged with carrying out public consultations on the minister's behalf. This is an all-party committee, and we are required by legislation to report back to the Legislative Assembly by no later than November 15 of each year.

So far we've held public hearings in Kitimat, Smithers, Fort St. John, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Penticton, and in Cranbrook this morning. Later this week we are going to be in Courtenay and Langford, near Victoria. In mid-October we'll be in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley at four final locations: Abbotsford, Surrey, Burnaby and Coquitlam. Then we will begin work on drafting our report.

[1700]

If you'd like to review the budget consultation paper, we have copies here, available at the information table at the back of the room. Information on how you can make a presentation to the committee is available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

As a reminder, any input that the committee receives in writing or electronic form is given the same consideration as any oral presentations made here today. Due to the recently announced federal election, we've extended the deadline to receive submissions to October 24.

Today we're going to hear from a number of presenters, and each presenter will be given 15 minutes. We do recommend or suggest that you take about ten in your presentation, and then allow five minutes for questions and answers. However, the time is yours, and if you choose to take the whole 15 minutes in your presentation, that's a decision you are free to make. I will try to give you a heads-up when you're at ten minutes, and then I'll give you another heads-up when you have two minutes remaining.

Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike session at the end of the hearing. Those presentations are five minutes, and no questions are taken.

I'll now ask the other members of the Finance Committee to introduce themselves.

J. Horgan: My name is John Horgan. I'm the MLA for Malahat–Juan de Fuca, which is just outside of Victoria.

J. Yap: I'm John Yap, the MLA for Richmond-Steveston.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Bruce Ralston of Surrey-Whalley and Deputy Chair of the committee.

J. Rustad: John Rustad, MLA for Prince George–Omineca.

R. Austin: Robin Austin, MLA for Skeena, which is essentially the Terrace and Kitimat area.

R. Lee: Richard Lee, MLA for Burnaby North.

R. Hawes (Chair): Joining us today, I'm pleased to introduce our Clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. Also with us today are Stephanie Hansen, who is at the registration desk at the back, and the staff of Hansard Services, Michael Baer and Tamara Checknita, who are recording the proceedings and will prepare a written transcript of this meeting, which is also being broadcast live on the Internet.

Today we were going to begin with the 15-minute presentations. However, we did have a special request, and we are going to accede to that request. That's Dr. André Charles Piver, who wanted to make a five-minute presentation but can't be here for the end of the presentations. We've agreed to let him give his five-minute presentation prior to the start of the meeting. I think everyone has agreed to that.

Dr. Piver, if you wish, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

Presentations

A. Piver: I really appreciate you folks coming all the way out here. I have two areas that I wanted to talk about. With five minutes, I'll talk very quickly.

I've been involved in and taken an interest in regional food self-reliance issues after a report from the Ministry of Agriculture, which was accessed through freedom of information and published in The Vancouver Sun in April 2007, talking about the shortfall in irrigation, given the predicted climate for B.C. and the fact that 80 percent, according to the USDA, of the cost of food is fuel. And what's happening with the oil situation….

Those two things really require a regaining of food sovereignty around the world. The underfunding of the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture to the tune of 3.3 percent, as opposed to the Canadian average of 16.5 percent, of farm GDP is really the worst of situations that we're leaving
[ Page 1958 ]
ourselves in. That was the first thing that I wanted to talk about.

The second was the use of casuals in health care settings. I think there are some very well-meaning people with a master of business administration or a master of institutional administration who have figured out that using casuals gives the maximum of flexibility without the cost of benefits and so on, but some of the most important things that happen in human services and living systems are not captured — I'm afraid I have to talk so quickly because there are a lot of things I'm saying — with what we measure.

When you just measure blood pressure, temperature and heart rate, for example, you're not catching that Mrs. Jones usually is chirpy in the morning, that this morning she's not chirpy and that there's something going on with Mrs. Jones. A nurse who has been there for a few days in a row knows what's normal for Mrs. Jones. A nurse that's there as a casual does not catch it.

[1705]

It only gets caught…. What gets written down is what gets caught, and that's not documented. That's the heart of health care, which has really been ripped out of it with the corporate model — and, I think, a very well-meaning approach.

I'll say just very quickly that with the industrial model, where you have a widget that you're making that's engineered and has specifications, at the end of the assembly line you can measure if it's meeting specifications. When you're dealing with complex systems like human services — or the environment, for that matter — you cannot measure. What you're measuring is always proxies. The systems we've created are crumbling. They're failing on the ground, with the best of intentions. So that's the example.

I just had my 96-year-old mom at home for the last nine months of her life. I really got to know the health care system from the inside. I'll say very quickly that she was unable to eat for three days because of an obstruction in her esophagus. I got her into hospital. It took three days to get it cleared, which was wonderful. The surgeon did the courtesy of calling me at home, telling me that she was fine and that they were going to keep her overnight.

I'm giving you an example of what happens with casuals in health care. "We're going to just keep her overnight and make sure she's swallowing well." She's 96. She hasn't eaten for three days. That was at noon.

At eight o'clock at night she calls me at home to orient herself. She's a bit mixed up. She said: "I'm not quite sure where I am, and I wonder if I can get something to eat." I call back the nursing station in our regional hospital, and I find out that actually they'd lost her, because from the OR, where she had her scope, to the nursing floor the orders hadn't been transferred. She essentially did not exist because she was not on paper. Those are the systems we've created.

In five days of home care she had seven different workers. All of them were well-meaning, but none of them could even figure out where things were in the kitchen, never mind connect with her personally. That's the system we have now.

When I air-evac'd her to Vancouver, the senior paramedic told me…. I shared the stories of what she had gone through so far. He shared with me that in ten days they had moved somebody who had been in intensive care on a ventilator three times, because of the efficiency of keeping all the slots in the ICUs filled.

This is a piece of living flesh that's connected to a bunch of tubes and a ventilator — they're that sick — that's being jostled, being handled by umpteen different personnel and going up and down in airplanes so that we can use our ICUs efficiently.

The approach that we have to human services, where people are commodities and they're all equal…. An RN is an RN is an RN. I'm not arguing here for more money for doctors, you understand. Nor am I arguing for anything that I have an interest in. There has to be a real….

Anyway, to make it very simple, the most simple example of how our system's thinking is completely wrong is the use of casuals in health care. It's only in the context of a relationship that you can bring to bear all the skills that human beings have to figure out what's going on and to adapt the system to be the buffer between our rigid, accountable systems, where everything has to be quantified, and the reality of the complexity of life and what's going on, on the ground.

Unless you have human beings that have a continuing relationship, where we use all these skills that don't get quantified, that don't get documented, then we're fooling ourselves if we think we have services that are meaningful.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Dr. Piver. Your message, I think, is heard loud and clear.

We'll now move to the registered presenters. The first one is Science World British Columbia and Bryan Tisdall. We have our presentations, which I guess we're now free to look at.

B. Tisdall: Yes. As a good teacher…. Yes, class, you may now turn them over.

It's great to be with you here in Nelson. I suspect that some of you may be wondering: why is Science World meeting us in Nelson? For two reasons. One is that it was extremely convenient, because I spent the day at Selkirk College, meeting with the folks there. Why I was there, I think, is interesting.

[1710]

To reinforce with you, it is Science World British Columbia. We have a provincial mandate. While people often probably first think of us as the big, shiny silver ball at the top end of False Creek in Vancouver, as is
[ Page 1959 ]
pictured on the front page of your presentation there — and I must say that we do appreciate that flagship structure — we have a provincial mandate. We interact with residents of British Columbia from one end to the other.

One of the programs which I was talking about in the local community today…. I'll come back to it in a few moments.

I might start by just talking about the mandate of the organization. This is as much for my benefit, to keep me on track, as it is for you. Some of you who I've had a chance to meet before realize I can get rather excited about this topic. I'd be pleased afterwards to go with any questions you might wish, and I will finish up in time to let you do that.

As you can see right there in our mission, we do have a provincial mandate. The other thing that is important about that is that we're in it for the long haul. While we very much like putting the glint in the eye and the spark in the mind of the young child or the family, Science World exists because of the contribution we can make to the future prosperity of British Columbia — supporting the evolution to a knowledge-based economy, making a contribution to closing the science gap.

It was interesting that the presentation we just heard references both the health care system and agriculture, both of which are all about science and technology. The approach we take to it is quite broad, recognizing that the conditions in our province tomorrow are largely going to be affected by the actions and the choices of young people and families today. It's for that reason that we're in the business of turning folks on to science and technology.

Quickly, a little bit about our organization. It's a volunteer-led, mission-based, not-for-profit, non-governmental organization governed by a group of community leaders. It has an operating budget of about $10 million, 78 full-time staff, about 30,000 hours of volunteer support annually focused on the False Creek facility, plus a great number of volunteers around the province as well.

For the most part, Science World is funded from the gate, from our visitors. Fully 75 percent is earned revenue — admissions, gift shop, food services, parking lot, facility rental, hustle money — with the other 25 percent coming from sponsorships, donations and, just recently, from government support. It's that that I would like to talk to you about.

Historically, up until three and a half years ago, Science World had received no government support. That was intentional by our founders, wishing to largely receive our support from the people that we serve and that visit us. But many of the activities in a mission-based not-for-profit organization do not generate revenue — some of our education activities, some of our inner-city work and particularly our outreach activities around the province.

As you perhaps better know than I, with your travels over the last few weeks, there's a lot of ground to be covered to some areas that are rather sparsely populated. But clearly, with a provincial mandate, it was very much our desire to get out and reach those.

So about three and a half years ago, following some concentrated discussions with the government, we received a commitment of $1 million a year for five years — so a five-year commitment, focused on kindergarten-to-grade-7 students. Although there was a series of programs, which you will see listed in the presentation, the focus of it was that every K-to-7 student in the province would have the opportunity for one free interaction with Science World every year.

The yellow school buses started pulling up to our building again last week. Or one of our outreach programs will visit you in Nanaimo; Fort St. John; Castlegar; Cranbrook; Atlin, which I didn't know where it existed before. That program, as you can imagine, has been extremely well received throughout the province. Over the first three years — again, the figures are in one of the charts as you go through the presentation — we have interacted face to face with close to 600,000 students and families across the province, with our own staff, with scientists that we send into classrooms, working with teachers.

As I say, it's focused on kindergarten-to-grade-7, but we have extended it somewhat — into preschool education, into teenagers, into teacher preparation and largely into families — with a program called community science celebrations. Interestingly, in Terrace…. We've been in Terrace three years now and will be again in just a few weeks' time. It's one of those community science celebrations.

[1715]

I was working with the folks at Selkirk College today and with the Kootenay Association for Science and Technology, who I'll be meeting with tomorrow morning, to plan the event here in April of next year.

Why I wish to speak with you today is that we just started year 4. This program, I should have begun by saying, is called the British Columbia program for the awareness of learning of science. That is quite a mouthful, but it does compact to B.C. PALS, and that's a very Science World type of expression.

B.C. PALS has been wonderfully received throughout the province. It's just beginning year 4. As I mentioned, it was a five-year commitment, and we're thinking to the future. Clearly, we don't want to wait to year 5 and then say: "What next?"

We have been successful over the past three years in attracting some corporate support in individual communities. For example, some companies in the oil and gas industry have supported the programs in the northeast part of the province, and we are now entering into discussions to attract provincewide support corporately.
[ Page 1960 ]

But clearly, if the program is to continue, it will require renewed government support. I've had a chance to chat with a few of you about that individually. It is our intention, quite frankly, to…. We're hoping to press the case as widely as we can. We are extremely enthused and committed about the program.

In fact, not only do we wish to continue it into the future; we would like to expand it. We believe, from the response that we've received…. The opportunity to really step up the activities for early childhood learning in that very crucial early.... Those are early years in terms of your initial concept of exploration, discovery and creativity.

We wish to extend the activities that we now have focused on K-to-7 to the secondary school audience, in those years when you're starting to make course choices and career choices, filling subsequently some of those post–secondary school seats in colleges and universities. We wish to focus on specific groups in the community — home-schoolers, first nations communities, some of the disadvantaged communities — much more so than we've been able to in the first five years of the program.

We wish, with some ambition, to double the scope of the program so that it would be a $2 million annual program rather than a $1 million annual program, and it is our hope that as the government looks forward in its financial planning, we will have a place in it.

That is the message I bring to you today, and I'd be pleased to respond to any questions you might have.

R. Hawes (Chair): It was pretty clear. We'll start with Bruce.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just a double-barrelled question, if I might, Mr. Chair.

Your connection with boards of education and the teaching profession, first one. Secondly, there are in Canada…. For example, I think, in Toronto your sister institution is quite a bit bigger in scale. I'm just wondering what plans your board might have when you look in the longer term to expanding the institution and its scope as an institution in British Columbia, because certainly, the one in Ontario is something that I think we might aspire to.

B. Tisdall: Terrific. That's great. Love to chat about both of them.

Let me go backwards in that. The Ontario Science Centre was the second science centre created in the world, the first being in San Francisco, the Exploratorium, and it remains one of the largest. Interestingly, of an annual operating budget of about $28 million, $12 million of that comes as an unconditional grant every year from the province. It is a very different financial structure and is much less reliant on the community than we are.

It's also much more institutional in its presentation. We pride ourselves on being very west coast. Although the mission is very similar to the Ontario Science Centre, our method of presentation is very different. We're whimsical and irreverent and cacophonous but no less serious in what we hope to do. They're buttoned-down easterners. As a former Torontonian, I feel somewhat comfortable saying that. We do, though, communicate very much across the country, not only with Toronto but with Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Sudbury, Montreal, all of which have science centres as well.

We have aspirations. We have some aspirations focused around.... Interestingly, the Ontario Science Centre doesn't have near the outreach program we do, and you don't see them in a New Liskeard and Oshawa and Petawawa as you would see us around the province of British Columbia.

We do have some aspirations around the building. The first thing we have to do is fix the building itself, which, as most of you I'm sure are aware, was built for the world's fair in 1986 and requires some significant attention at the moment. We wish to put an outdoor science park around our building to animate that part of the downtown of Vancouver. Interesting. A series of outdoor exhibits, all focused on sustainability in the world around us — the wind, the rain, the sun, the tides.

[1720]

But our primary focus in terms of our expansion is on a decentralized model — that we would like to be in every community in the province. That gets me to your first question. But we don't want to do that with mini–geodesic domes. We believe that that's done through partnerships with local….

Just like I was earlier today meeting with Selkirk College and with KAST, the Kootenay Association for Science and Technology, when we go into any community, we work with the local school district, the library board, the municipal council, recreation department — whomever is most appropriate and most enthusiastic in that community. We're not parachuting ourselves in from Vancouver and telling them what to do. Also, when we leave, we want to make sure there is some legacy from the activities that we brought to that community.

We work extensively with the BCTA, the teachers association, and more specifically with the Science Teachers Association, which is a subgroup of that organization. Their president, actually, was just talking with one of my colleagues at Science World last night at an event in Toronto.

Clearly, in the education focus, we are in no way a substitute for the formal education system. We would not profess to be. What we hope to do in terms of our teacher preparation is make teachers a little bit more comfortable in presenting science in a hands-on, interactive way to give them more confidence in working with their students.

R. Hawes (Chair): Your bountiful excitement isn't allowing very many questions.
[ Page 1961 ]

B. Tisdall: I'm sorry, sir.

J. Yap: Thank you, Bryan, for your enthusiastic presentation. I read through your presentation here and didn't see reference to the funding that was made available in the current budget. Was that for the capital program?

B. Tisdall: Yes. As I mentioned, our building requires some significant attention. Simplistically, it was built to look pretty for a short period of time — for the world's fair in 1986. Now we're 25 years later, and if any of you didn't put any work into your house in 25 years, you might imagine what it would be like.

We have a project underway, a $28 million project, which includes restoring the building — all the cladding, all the glazing, all the HVAC, all the plumbing systems, all the electrical systems — as well as this outdoor science park I mentioned to you.

Of that $28 million, the focus is $10½ million from the province, $10½ million from the federal government and $7 million from the community. The province has committed their $10½ million. We are in deep discussions with the federal government about that. The Prime Minister threw us off a little bit by calling an election, so he threw it a little bit off course, but we're going to keep up those discussions. Of our $7 million, we have raised approximately $3 million to date in the community, and we're just beginning to step up with our activities.

J. Yap: Excellent. Being an election, it might be a good time to be negotiating the federal contribution.

B. Tisdall: I've spoken with a number of candidates over the last three weeks.

R. Lee: Your Science World on the Road — do you have mobile units going to any of the communities?

B. Tisdall: We send people. Yes, we have mobile units. That's one of our programs, and we send teams of two into communities around the province from September right through until June.

An equally effective program is…. We have a dating service. We connect practising scientists in communities with school classes in communities. Although we love sending our own people out, if you can get someone from that community who wants to go in and talk to a school class…. By the way, we orient those scientists, because it is a little different being in a lab all day behind the bench or being in an office than it is appearing before a group of 7-, 8-, 9- or 10-year-olds.

After we give them a little bit of training, we hook them up. So that scientist, who may be your neighbour or your best friend's mom, will go into a classroom and be a real live scientist talking about water or environmental protection or whatever the subject is that a teacher may want to address — plus a whole bunch of other outreach programs.

R. Hawes (Chair): Bryan, I don't know if it was to you, but I've mentioned to Science World before that ActNow tours the province with their tour. You're a natural to fit in with what they're doing. They get all those kids in there looking at physical fitness. Well, there's a scientific part to that.

B. Tisdall: With these community science celebrations, that would be a great chance to bring them out into communities.

R. Hawes (Chair): I'm sure they'd be interested in talking to you, so maybe you should find a way to connect with them.

B. Tisdall: I will definitely follow up on that.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation.

B. Tisdall: Please come and visit anytime you're in Vancouver. I'll give you the 20-minute version rather than the ten-minute version.

R. Hawes (Chair): I have a suspicion that it'd be a lot longer than 20 minutes.

B. Tisdall: You think so?

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, given your bountiful excitement and enthusiasm.

[1725]

B. Tisdall: Thank you for your time. I do appreciate it.

R. Hawes (Chair): The next presenter is Selkirk College Students Union.

David Lubbers and Amanda Girard, welcome.

A. Girard: Hi, everyone. My name is Amanda, and I'm an executive of the Selkirk College Students Union. I'm here today to speak to you about the budget priorities of students and families in the West Kootenay–Boundary region.

The Selkirk College Students Union represents approximately 2,000 students that live and study in the area. I'd like to thank everyone, on behalf of those members, for a chance to provide our input into the province's budget priorities here today.

It's very easy when we talk about post-secondary education issues to reduce things to numbers and stats — FTEs and student spaces, among others. Before I get into the core of this presentation, I want to take a moment to remind you that the decisions you
[ Page 1962 ]
make regarding post-secondary education on behalf of British Columbians affect more than numbers on a spreadsheet.

At Selkirk College these decisions affect sons and daughters, single parents, millworkers who need to be retrained and people who want to break cycles of poverty in their communities to take advantage of and contribute to the best place on earth.

I want to talk about three things today that affect the lives of our members: the lack of affordable post-secondary education, government cuts to the post-secondary education system in B.C. and student debt.

First, the government needs to allocate funding in the 2009 B.C. budget to reduce tuition fees by 10 percent. Tuition and ancillary fees at Selkirk College have increased over 200 percent in just five years. Tuition and ancillary fees at Selkirk College are barriers to post-secondary education.

Statistics Canada, the Canadian Association of University Teachers and researchers in United States and across the globe have all produced research illustrating that tuition fees are the number one barrier to accessing post-secondary education. One American study found that for every $1,000 increase in tuition fees, low-income people were 16 to 19 percent less likely to acquire a post-secondary education. A similar Canadian study was done in '99 at the University of Western Ontario, finding that participation from low-income earners dropped 40 percent after tuition fees doubled there.

The students who are enduring these hardships are not numbers, and they are not statistics. These students are people who should be preparing to fix this province's labour shortage. At a time when post-secondary education is required to get 70 percent of these jobs, reducing the barrier should be the priority of this government.

More than any previous generation, the young people of our province need a post-secondary education to be successful, which they cannot get if they are unable to complete their education because they are being saddled with almost $30,000 in student debt upon graduation.

This brings me to my second point. All of us here today can agree that $30,000 in debt is not the jump-start a 22-year-old needs in life. In fact, British Columbians widely believe this is a flaw. A public interest poll conducted in July 2006 by the respected firm Ipsos-Reid found that 80 percent of British Columbians support reducing tuition fees, and 81 percent of British Columbians believe that students are taking on an unfair burden of debt to pay for their education.

Our recommendation is the elimination of student loan interest in British Columbia for 2009. Student loan interest increases the cost of education to those British Columbians that need the most financial help. Graduating with an average student debt of $30,000 leads British Columbians to make hard decisions around starting families and greatly diminishes their purchasing power due to debt load.

The Campus 2020 report noted that there are 88,000 British Columbians with provincial student loans. We should follow the lead of Newfoundland and Labrador and begin by at least decreasing interest to prime. This would help those 88,000 students and former students in British Columbia. For example, women, whose wages on average are significantly lower than men's, are disproportionately affected. A female borrower will take seven years longer to pay back her student loans.

[1730]

High interest rates combined with high tuition also have a negative effect on potential students. People who make the decision on whether to attend post-secondary education often do not attend due to debt aversion.

My last recommendation is to see a reinvestment of operating funding to our universities and colleges. Last spring's cuts to the operating budgets of B.C.'s post-secondary institutions have been disastrous. Faculty and staff jobs were cut. Class offerings were reduced. Long-planned expansions were scaled back or halted. Entire programs were put on the chopping block, and the list goes on.

Some programs are now only available on line, denying students valuable classroom learning opportunities. Kinesiology was cut entirely, leaving many students who had completed their first year unable to finish the program at all. Some were forced to move to other communities to finish, while others who were unable to afford such a move to complete their studies have given up, leaving them, in many cases, with over $10,000 of student debt and no ability to finish their programs.

All of these recommendations are well within B.C.'s fiscal capacity. All of these recommendations are in urgent need of implementation to secure the long-term economic and social health of our province.

Students at Selkirk College would like to thank you again for the opportunity to provide input on behalf of the students and families on these budget priorities and welcome any questions that the members of the committee may have.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Amanda. That's very to the point.

R. Austin: We've actually heard from a number of student associations throughout the province coming with very similar stories of what you're telling us here.

My question, specifically, is about ancillary fees. We understand that the government brought in a maximum as to how much student tuition could be raised and capped it to the level of inflation. However, we've heard quite a bit about ancillary fees.

Can you give me any idea, over the last two or three years, what the increase has been in ancillary fees versus tuition and the kinds of things that Selkirk College students are being asked to pay for when they're being asked to pay ancillary fees?
[ Page 1963 ]

D. Lubbers: It's worth pointing out, I think, that ten years ago ancillary fees did not exist. It was something that didn't need to exist because institutions were funded to a level where they didn't have to.

Selkirk College has ancillary fees in athletics as well as lab fees.

Do you pay any others, Amanda?

A. Girard: I don't think so.

D. Lubbers: No, I believe those are it. Selkirk College students are very lucky in that regard. Their ancillary fees are not that numerous in quantity. However, before the cap was placed on ancillary fees, we have seen them raised significantly. I think that's due to the institution's inability to offer programming and services that they had at one time been funded for.

J. Horgan: I'd like to expand on that a little bit and talk about books and other classroom materials, because I know that those are also costs that are increasing significantly. It's difficult to get a used book that's not much less than 10 percent off the retail price, because the student from last year wants to recoup some of their investment.

Are you finding that the course materials are also increasing at a rate that's difficult to manage based on your loan levels?

A. Girard: I think at Selkirk College…. I find with my science courses that my books almost cost as much as my course does — $130 for a book and $200 and something for a course, or $300. I think it might be a little disproportionate.

D. Lubbers: I think books can be a very significant barrier — not just books, but other supplementary materials that are required for a course. I know it's difficult for the B.C. government, maybe, to weigh in on this issue, but books have been going up in price. There are a lot of tricks that publishers and institutions like to use to get more money from students, like only accepting the current edition of a textbook, rather than allowing previous editions.

[1735]

J. Horgan: My supplemental question would be…. In some vocational courses tools and materials are tax-deductible, tuition is tax-deductible, but course materials for academics — science, arts, other faculties like that — and books are not tax-deductible. Would you suggest that this would be a recommendation that we could make to the Minister of Finance?

D. Lubbers: I think that that may be a positive move to help students. However, you need to be careful when you look at tax breaks for students. The federal government recently brought in tax credits on transportation, transit, for students. They're almost completely useless. The fact is that most students do not make enough money to take advantage of tax credits, so unless those tax credits are able to roll over, much like your tuition tax credits, I don't think those are going to have any use for students.

R. Hawes (Chair): You've hit on the topic that has always interested me. When you have a changing textbook, how much is the course content really changing?

D. Lubbers: Very little, in most cases. Again, it varies very much by the discipline. In some sciences you're going to see more of a difference. However, in most cases we find that the course material doesn't change greatly. Sometimes there'll be a supplementary chapter, and that will be all, and the rest of the book will be completely the same.

R. Hawes (Chair): I guess my only comment would be that I probably went to university before you were born, and the same thing was happening. You had to buy all new textbooks, and when you compared one to the other, very little change. It was almost like you could print a few pages as a supplement and carry on.

Do you have any kind of recommendation around what should happen with books to allow students to have the maximum use of the textbooks that are purchased and maybe create a library of used textbooks that are actually useful in courses?

D. Lubbers: I mean, the students union does take initiatives similar to that. We have a book-swap program, and we're looking to doing a sharing program with institutions in the Okanagan as well. But there isn't a lot that can be done, outside of changing people's perspectives on how students are treated in that way and the expectations of senates at institutions, and education councils.

R. Lee: My question is on loans. Sometimes — I think the program is in place already — if you graduate, then part of the loan will be forgiven. Do you find that program useful, and how much improvement would you like to see?

D. Lubbers: I'm glad you brought that up. It gives me an opportunity to talk about something. When I graduated from high school — I'm a little bit older than Amanda — we had a grant program in B.C. that would help people get their education right up front rather than do guesswork near the end. For a lot of people that I knew, that was something very beneficial for them.

Most students that I talk to do not know about the loan forgiveness program, don't understand how it works and don't trust it. The fact is that governments come and go — sometimes before somebody's studies
[ Page 1964 ]
are finished. It's up to a government's whim to decide that that program ends. The fact is that if it does, you're out of luck on the loan forgiveness. It is not something that students believe in. It's like gambling with your future. That's how they consider it.

A better way to go would be to reinstate a grant program in B.C. Or again, we've already mentioned the idea of lowering the interest rates. I believe that B.C. gets to borrow money at minus prime but charges the students interest at 3 plus prime. So there are things that can be done, certainly, to reduce student debt, which I think would be within the abilities of the B.C. government.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation — lots of good information.

The next presenter is Kirkham Geosystems and Garth Kirkham. Good afternoon, and welcome.

[1740]

G. Kirkham: Good afternoon, and thank you. My name is Garth Kirkham. I would say that I'm here representing the mineral exploration and mining industries. I've been involved in the minerals sector for 25 years. I have a geologic consulting business, and I'm a geologist and geophysicist. I also perform contract industry liaison for Geoscience B.C. I'm a director of three junior explorers and am also on the geoscience committee of APEGBC. That's just to give you some background for where I'm coming from.

I'd like to start by thanking and congratulating the government for its ongoing support of the minerals sector, especially regarding the recent announcement from the Premier's office with respect to the northwest transmission line on Highway 37 — I think that was just an absolutely wonderful thing to happen — and also for the 2007-2008 funding from the province of British Columbia for geoscience surveys in the mountain pine beetle–affected areas — namely, QUEST and QUEST West.

Two of the members here…. It's in the Prince George–Omineca area and in Terrace-Kitimat. All that money is being reinvested back into those areas and for oil and gas studies in the northeast of the province.

Locally, in Nelson, the government of British Columbia is co-funding a large geophysical survey with the federal government through Geoscience B.C. I believe it is crucial that the B.C. government continue to reinvest in the minerals sector, especially in times of market turmoil and credit crunch, which we're going through — it's pretty serious — right now. We need to ensure that we continue to remain competitive as a jurisdiction and attract and retain a significant proportional share of global investment in exploration in B.C.

The mineral sector is a key contributor to B.C.'s economy, both in revenue to government and in employment. Some of the challenges for the minerals industry are….

With the Selkirk presentation there, we're very much finding a skilled labour shortage in the province. We need to do all we can to attract and retain skilled labour in B.C. and make sure it doesn't leave for Alberta. A prime example is in the forestry industry, where a lot of those skilled labourers that…. Because of the closure of mills and things like that, we're losing them to other provinces.

We need to maintain a positive investment climate. B.C. is still saddled with the perception that we are not a mining-friendly jurisdiction. We need to do more to help dispel this misconception. Geoscience B.C.'s investments in some of these large, high-tech, pre-competitive geoscience surveys are helping B.C.-based exploration companies to show that B.C. supports exploration and that this in turn helps them attract investors to their B.C. projects.

Improving the permitting process can get exploration mining projects moving on a timely basis. Otherwise, too many investment opportunities are lost. Ministry staff in the field are absolutely excellent, but they need more support and resources from Victoria.

Improved relations with the first nations communities. We found that there is a huge demand for information. Many people in B.C. are not familiar with the minerals industry. Geoscience B.C. has been able to provide some of the outreach to B.C. communities around the Prince George and Terrace areas and to the native bands. It's been quite successful, but more could be done.

The mineral resources education program run by Sheila Stenzel does an excellent job of providing K-to-12 education on the basics of earth sciences and resources, but this is largely in the greater Vancouver area, so that could be moved out to a lot of the communities and to the first nations groups.

In the mountain pine beetle area, this continues to be a huge issue for the forest-based communities. In the Interior, government needs to do all it can to stimulate opportunities for economic diversification in these areas hardest hit by the mountain pine beetle. Even driving in from Vanderhoof, you could see that it's actually made it down here, which is disturbing.

[1745]

Geoscience surveys are a cost-effective way to attract industry attention and investment to underexplored areas in the province. With much of the province affected by the mountain pine beetle and due to underexplored geological factors, we have found that attracting investment to these areas, where they aren't geologically friendly, through the QUEST and QUEST West programs has been very effective.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation.

J. Yap: I'm interested in your comment that British Columbia is still perceived as not mining-friendly.
[ Page 1965 ]

In 2001 I think the annual level of exploration was probably around up to about $20 million. I believe that in 2007 it was a record year — over $300 million in activity. I believe that in 2008 we're looking to beat that record.

I understand that there have been changes that were made in 2001-2002 in the process of approvals permitting. Could you comment on one or two things that we could recommend, that we could consider doing better so that this reputation you talk about is addressed?

G. Kirkham: I guess, first and foremost would be to smooth out the permitting process to actually get a mine into production. I totally agree with you that the exploration industry has just gone gangbusters. In the Prince George–Omineca area, since the survey started there, over 800,000 hectares have been staked, which is just an astounding amount, especially when you consider that that's money that goes immediately to the ministry. But also, there's the work that has to be done on that property for the companies to keep it. It's just a huge revenue opportunity.

It's really on the actual permitting process and trying to get a mine into production, which is the ultimate goal of the mineral exploration industry, and it's been very difficult. The benefit of getting a mine into production is the huge number of highly paid jobs that…. I think there was a survey. It was over $100,000 per employee at a mine site. That just spins off into money that goes into the local community. They go back home, and that money then goes into their local community and tax revenue and that kind of thing.

So I guess my point is — it was kind of long-winded — that it's getting a mine into production, which hasn't really happened. There's a lot in the process right now, but not much is happening.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Garth. And I agree with you that certainly, the exploration sector has gone gangbusters. Commodity prices are encouraging people to get out on the road, but we haven't seen a metal mine since 1997. There's a moly mine that's just opened up here to compete with Omineca.

G. Kirkham: Yeah, MAX.

J. Horgan: Yeah. But there seems to be this inability to get something off the ground and get those high-paying production jobs in place.

You mentioned Highway 37, and I want to touch upon that because it's a carbon-intensive industry. We've had a carbon tax imposed on British Columbia recently. I know that there are many in the sector that are concerned about that. At the same time, as we look at public investment in a very, very expensive transmission network when we don't have a mine ready to go, it strikes me as a challenge for all taxpayers across B.C.

I support the electrification. I think that we all do at this table, but it needs to be a partnership. Without Galore or Schaft Creek or Red Chris or one of those mines on the precipice of taking off, why should the public come to the table without private sector dollars there first? That would be my question to you. And the carbon intensity of the industry. How do you think the carbon tax is going to play across the province?

[1750]

G. Kirkham: Certainly, because the mining industry is a huge user of diesel because of power…. They have to do local generation. Especially with the number of projects along the Highway 37 corridor, I believe that will alleviate a lot of that consumption.

I absolutely agree with you that industry needs to step up and be an equal partner. I think it was the CEO of NovaGold. I was in Prince George. He stood up, and he said: "Our $250 million is still on the table." I'm assuming that's still the case. If not, there are a number of projects in the area like Kutcho — I just got back from there — where they are very far off the beaten path. This transmission line would just be a huge benefit for them, and there's no reason why that company would not want to contribute.

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation and for advocating on behalf of mining. Coming from Prince George–Omineca and knowing the level of activity that's there, it's near and dear to my heart — wanting to see it expand.

Getting a mine and a permit and the process that we have to go through is very, very lengthy. I'm just wondering, specifically, if you can make some recommendations as to how we can speed that up.

I'm thinking about a mine like Mount Milligan, which Terrane is putting through the process. They've gone through. They've done everything right. They've done the consultation. They've compiled all the information together. It's taken them several years, even on a mine that was already permitted once.

To gather all that information…. Now they're going into the EA process. It's going to take six months to get through that. Then, assuming they can get through that, they have to go through the mining permit, etc.

Where do you see the shortcuts? What is it that we need to do to streamline that process so that a company like Mount Milligan — in a project that has already been permitted once and that is about as clean a project as you could ever want in terms of mining — gets through that process quickly?

G. Kirkham: I think that not all the burden is with the province. The federal government certainly has three or four departments that get involved. So the province working with the federal government as closely as possible to narrow the amount of departments that really have to get
[ Page 1966 ]
involved in a permitting process…. What the province may do, I guess, is partner with the federal government and reduce some of the overhead.

It was in Business in Vancouver — actually, I think, two issues ago — where Rob Pease of Terrane was speaking and saying that his EA document was 6,000 pages. Who the heck is going to read all that? That's onerous. That is years and years of work, and still it's tied up.

I can't speak for the companies, other than just hearing their frustration about how long it takes and the size of the studies that need to take place. Not that we want to cut corners, but there the feedback I'm getting is that it's over the top. So streamlining the regulations, I guess, would be the comment I'm getting back.

J. Rustad: Streamline, and then, with the federal government, more cooperation in terms of trying to prevent the overlap.

G. Kirkham: Exactly, yes.

R. Lee: Yes, my question is on…. You mentioned a geoscience survey which is very helpful — the QUEST project, that kind of thing. In the future, do you think investment in that kind of project will generate even more interest in exploration or investments?

G. Kirkham: Well, it has shown to be successful, and there are other jurisdictions that have also been very successful. Australia is very well known for creating public geoscience and getting that out to the companies. It's just giving them that first leg up. We look at the QUEST and the QUEST West areas, and so far it's a big swath of the middle of the province.

[1755]

This province is mineral-rich. It's not just the middle of the province that is affected. I guess it's all the way up the Highway 37 corridor, right to the Yukon border. The geology doesn't stop at the Yukon. You look at the number of deposits that come through there. That would be another area that could be a good investment opportunity for the province.

There's a lot of immediate return in that kind of thing, in staking. The crews are based out of Terrace, or they're based out of Prince George. They're spending that money there.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Garth. Your presentation is well received and most interesting. I think there's some great information there.

The next presenter is Kootenay Boundary Regional Resources Co-operative, Andrew Earnshaw and Roberta Hamilton.

Welcome, both of you.

A. Earnshaw: Thank you very much for having us. We are here today, as you'll soon see by the handouts that are about to be put in front of you, representing the Kootenay Boundary Regional Resources Co-operative. It's a provincially registered co-op that's owned by 11 social service agencies in the Kootenay Boundary area.

As a collective, we probably represent about 95 percent of the spending that the province does within the voluntary sector in this region. Roberta and I are actually connected to Castlegar Community Services, one of the member agencies. I'm the executive director, and Roberta is a chair of our board. Roberta also sits on the board of the co-op. So this is who is in front of you today.

As we were preparing for this audience, we were trying to think about what you were doing here and who you were going to talk to when you get back to Victoria. We're assuming it's the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board...

R. Hawes (Chair): We're going to speak to the Legislature. That's who we report to.

A. Earnshaw: …and the Legislature. Great. Fabulous.

So as we were thinking that through and what we wanted to say…. We have a long list of the things that we'd like different in our individual agencies — more money for this and more money for that. But we thought that, really, we should aim a little bit higher than that in our presentation. I'll explain that a little bit more, but we're basically thinking about the big, strategic decisions that are being made at the budgetary level — money to this agency or that agency, etc.

I'm going to start by asking you to aim even a little bit higher than that and asking you a question. Knowing that you're fundamentally public servants — that's probably why you're all sitting in these chairs right now, wanting to make a difference in your communities in this province — I want you to imagine that you and your family are plucked out of Victoria by aliens. You know you're in Nelson when this is what your imagination request is.

The powers that be say to you: "All of your past is gone. You're going to be plunked down again in the Legislature and in a community with your families in one of two places, Guatemala or Holland. You have to choose which one."

So that's my question. Guatemala or Holland — which is your choice? We'll come back to the question.

I'll start just talking a little bit about what the co-op does. If you're looking at the back of the page, you'll see who the member agencies are. We're the people who are at the door with the RCMP, when a crime has been committed, supporting victims of crime. We're the people that stitch back together children and their parents when family strife or…. And often, therefore, the Ministry of Children and Families has gotten involved in separating them.

We're the people that open new doors for women who are fleeing domestic violence situations. Tremendous
[ Page 1967 ]
kudos, actually, to Robin and John for your little cameo appearances in the What Should Men Do About Domestic Violence? video. It was excellent. We all watched that as a staff just the other day.

We're the people that provide quality community living experiences for people with mental disabilities. We make sure that seniors get to the hospital for medical appointments, have people help them with their shopping — those sorts of things.

What we ask ourselves and what we ask you is: what would the province look like if we weren't there, if our good work wasn't happening?

[1800]

When we think about that question and, therefore, what's important about what we do — why does it matter? — we first of all think that of course it's the right thing to do and that we want to live in a culture where everybody has opportunity, where everyone is able to reach the potential that is within them, that is possible. And we want to mitigate the impact of bad luck. That's really, in sort of a funny way, what the social sector is all about. It's trying to mitigate the impact of bad luck.

We also think: from the perspective of a co-op as a collective, why is this important? Well, the people doing this work have an awful lot of expertise, have a tremendous grass-roots, on-the-ground resource for you, for your work. We're not the folks that you're hiring to do your housekeeping in the province — not disrespecting that important work. But there is some deep value in what we have to do in terms of partnering on solving the kinds of problems we face in the social sector and in communities in general.

The third thing that we think of when we think of the importance of all that work is that it's awfully darn expensive not to do it. It's the opportunity cost question. It's the fact that primary health care and the justice system and kids that don't make it through high school cost us all a lot in our society. Really, that's sort of a gut thing that you just sort of know, if you look at what we do and the list of things that we did.

It's also backed up pretty powerfully by a really growing body of knowledge on the social determinants of health, which I assume that other people have come to talk to you about today. In a nutshell, it says that we can keep pouring more money into things like primary health care and that we are going to have very minimal incremental increases in improvements in the overall health of the population. We need to address the social determinants. That's our business; that's the business of our co-op and our sector.

Really, we're talking about a value chain. We're all here wanting a vibrant economy — economy in the Greek sense of the word "household" — for our province: social stability, maximizing wealth, well-being for all. To do that, we need a solid infrastructure, which is your job, which is why you are called to be public servants. It's a physical infrastructure, but it's also a human infrastructure.

Then we think of the triad, which is really health, education and social services. We look at the research on social determinants of health and what we know about how important those things are, and we see this incredible power and importance in what the social sector is doing to allow those other two parts of the triad to help create the foundation for that vibrant economy that we're talking about.

That logic is there, and it's one that most would probably agree with. But it's not what we see on the ground in the social sector. It's not what we've experienced. We see funds being reduced in terms of the work that we're doing. We see caseloads shifting.

In my agency we used to have two family support workers. It's a Ministry of Children and Families–funded position that is the "knitting the families back together" piece that I was talking about. They used to do about 50 percent community clients — people that walk in off the street and say, "Hey, I'd like some help being a better parent with my kids" — and 50 percent mandated clients — people who become involved with the ministry social workers. We now have three. They're entirely working with mandated clients.

We're looking at not necessarily a growing number of people but a growing intensity in the kind of complexity of cases that we're dealing with. When you look at why that is happening, we discover that mental health now only helps you if you have severe mental illness, which means that if you have mild depression and you're struggling with parenting issues in a relationship, there's no counselling available for you. We lost our general community counsellor several years ago. Now we can't even do work through family support on those kinds of core needs.

We also see wages far below what we see in education and the health sector for very equivalent work, by any measurement of work complexity and responsibility, educational requirements and those kinds of things. We don't see a balance in that triad. It doesn't fit with what we know about what it's going to take for those other two pieces of the triad to work.

This brings us to back to you and whether you'd want to go to Guatemala or Holland. There is no right answer. There are good reasons to go to either place, either as a public servant or where you would feel comfortable on a cultural basis or whatever. What we're asking is the big questions about what kind of state we're trying to create here, what kinds of big decisions we're trying to make. I think it's pretty obvious, if anyone's travelled in South America or Western Europe, that it's a different place, and different choices are being made about foundational things like social determinants.

[1805]

Our conclusion is that we'd like you to go back to the House and think about the return on investment of taxpayers' dollars and think about spending it smarter. Spending it smarter, in our minds, means making sure
[ Page 1968 ]
that the work in the social sector is being properly funded and properly supported, because it's going to lead to that chain. It's going to be the best source. The best return on investment is to put it in that place and watch it trickle up through all the other impacts of that value chain that I shared with you.

We recognize that that's really difficult. It requires a lot of boldness and braveness. It's a lot easier to say, "You know, that moms' group that meets could maybe just meet once every two weeks, and maybe we don't need to pay for the snacks that we're serving them anymore," than it is to say that we need to change the way that we're funding things in hospitals. It's a much tougher decision to say: "No, that moms' group is crucially important. It's an incredibly good investment for us, and we can't cut back on that kind of thing."

It leaves me with a sort of concluding comment — to think about the chain. We've brought a little souvenir for you, which Roberta is going to share — something you could maybe stick in your pocket.

It's a little chain link. I don't expect you to keep it for all posterity, but my suspicion is that you might find it in your pocket in a couple of days and say: "Oh yeah, the social sector, the foundational part of that value chain, the best place for me to get a good return investment for taxpayers' dollars."

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. We'll take questions.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Andrew and Roberta. Again, I know that all of us here come from different parts of the province. One of the advantages of this travelling committee is that we leave our politics at the door, and we try and just listen to what people have to say.

I was talking to someone on the radio just today, saying that the faces are different, but the issues are exactly the same, whether you be on the Island, in the north, in the Interior or here in the Kootenays. So I want to thank you for the work that you do and also for the creative way you've brought forward the chain and where value for money is in government these days.

We all have groups like yours in our communities. They all come to us and say: "We've got some really good ideas. Why aren't they being funded?" And if you don't come and ask for the money, we won't be able to advocate for you to get it.

So thank you for coming. That's all I wanted to say. You'll be in my recommendations.

R. Hawes (Chair): I can understand why there aren't really any questions, because your presentation actually is very understandable. And John's quite right. This is not a presentation that we haven't heard, in different forms, in other parts of the province.

A. Earnshaw: The root of our presentation is that we know that your decisions are tough, and we know that everyone's coming to you. We hope that when you really sit back and think about it, it's the return-on-investment equation that you're really thinking about here.

R. Hawes (Chair): Our next presenter is Selkirk Power Company Ltd., Douglas Hurst.

Welcome.

D. Hurst: Good evening. Thanks for hearing me. I have a bit of a presentation for you, so I've included several slides in this.

The first couple of slides really describe a little bit about who Selkirk Power is. We're a private company that's based in the Selkirks, so our offices are here in Nelson. We have an experienced management team that's capable of looking at small hydro projects, right through from picking up the licence application to operating the plant. There are five of us that are on the board, and there are seven of us that are working for the company.

Several years ago on the coffee circuit in Nelson we sat around and realized that there were going to be some issues for British Columbia coming forward. The biggest one by far is peak oil. What will happen with peak oil is that you will end up getting a massive switch in energy use from hydrocarbon-based fuels to electricity in one form or another.

On top of that, climate change is another issue, which will be partially mitigated by peak oil, because you'll end up having demand destruction because of high prices. But climate change is a very serious issue, and I'm glad to see that the province has pulled together a carbon tax. I think that government's role is to look a long way into the future and to make sure that we can try to mitigate the problems with current technology. I really like that.

[1810]

Another big issue. I note that earlier a gentleman was talking about the mining industry. That's my background. I'm a geologist, and I worked in the mining industry. I was at the Prospectors and Developers convention last March, and nobody wanted to explore in B.C. because there isn't enough power.

We're at a 15 percent deficit right now, and you'll see as we move forward that there are going to be some serious issues with that. I'm delighted to see that the government does have a mandate for self-sufficiency by 2015. So I'm delighted to hear that.

What are the problems? Those are the problems. Do we have enough energy? Do we have enough power? Then we have a few issues with water licence applications.

Peak oil. I think you probably have a general idea of what peak oil is. It's essentially the point at which the world can produce no more oil in terms of annual increases in production. It's a decrease in production. It's not the end of oil. It's just the peak in production.
[ Page 1969 ]

The United States peaked in 1970. It's a mathematical issue. It has nothing to do with whether we can bring on new technology or whether we can enhance oil recovery. That's not the issue. It's strictly mathematical. Canada, you could argue, has peaked, or it's very close to it. It's certainly plateauing.

The issue about peak oil isn't so bad because the infrastructure we already have in place allows us to draw oil from all over the planet. So there is going to be a shock, but it's not going to be as dramatic as the shock when we peak in natural gas.

The issue with natural gas in North America is that the United States has already plateaued, there's a high probability that Canada has already plateaued, and once we plateau here, it's very difficult to bring in LNG, liquefied natural gas. We don't have the infrastructure, it's very difficult to bring it in, and there's nothing being built. And you talk about a permitting process. A liquid natural gas regasification facility is a ten-year project from the drawing board to actually getting it into production. So it's a long way away.

Now, why is natural gas such an issue when it comes to energy? The reason is that, if you look at this little map — it's not that clear — most of our neighbours generate a big chunk of their electricity through gas-fired turbines.

In Alberta almost 40 percent of their electricity comes from gas. Another 45 percent of their electricity comes from coal. If you look at all the neighbouring states, all of them have some gas. Most horrifying is that in California 65 percent of their electricity comes from natural gas generation.

Now, for us in B.C. that is a massive issue. We're already underwater 15 percent. What happens if we can't generate new stations to generate electricity? Well, the issue is that we sure aren't going to be able to buy it from down south. What's going to happen is that other jurisdictions will pull in the electricity. So California, at 65 percent natural gas, is going to pull in electricity from the entire western grid, and we won't be able to cover our needs. That's a massive, massive issue.

So what happens? We will experience a large shift in energy use from carbon fuels to electricity. If you convert all of the energy that B.C. uses into joules and you make it a level playing field, what happens is that electricity covers about 37 or almost 40 percent of our energy needs. The balance — gasoline, diesel and natural gas — is all hydrocarbon-based.

Toyota is coming out with a plug-in hybrid in 2010. You know that people are going to start preordering these things. There are a lot of hybrids on the road already. Electric car technology is coming. This is something that B.C. Hydro has not put into its long-term acquisition plan at all — zero. Nothing in their plans for a shift in energy use from hydrocarbons to electricity. Facetiously, we put a monster truck there with an electric car beside it.

Essentially, the process we've gone through is that we've looked at the scope of this problem. If you were to convert all of B.C.'s gasoline use to electric vehicles…. Now, electric vehicles are way more efficient in taking energy and moving it into motion.

[1815]

What happens is that if we were to have no more gasoline tomorrow at all, in order to cover our energy needs under current consumption patterns, we would need 17,600 gigawatt hours of energy.

B.C. Hydro's system right now has the ability to generate 45,000 to 54,000 gigawatt hours of energy, so that's almost a 30 percent increase in new capacity needed to cover gasoline alone.

Of course, that's not going to happen overnight. This is going to happen over 40 or 50 years. It's going to be awhile. But this is going to be a very quick penetration of electric car and plug-in hybrid consumption of electricity. It'll go to 10 percent pretty quickly, would be my guess, especially if oil gets to 200 to 250 bucks a barrel.

What happens if we convert gasoline, diesel and total natural gas to electricity? What's going to happen is that we'll have to more than double our current capacity to generate electricity. So this is something that's going to have to happen over the next 30 or 40 years. This is a massive, massive issue, which B.C. Hydro has in none of their capacity generation plans.

Solutions. On the last two pages I have a few solutions. Conservation — brilliant. Smart meters — fantastic and a really, really cost-effective way of reducing electricity consumption. We have to add new generation capacity, whether it's through run of the river, some of our projects, or whether it's through augmentation of current assets that we have. So they're adding new generators onto Revelstoke, and they're adding new generators onto Mica. Then, this is where the government's role is going to really come into play, and that is supporting new technology.

Selkirk Power. Collectively, we sat around a table and generated a few recommendations for you guys. Don't sell B.C. Hydro. It's a bit facetious. I know that there's nothing that the government has said that they will, but there are lots of rumours around. So if you're thinking about it, don't. It's a massive legacy. It's a huge economic advantage to this province, and it augments our provincial energy autonomy so that it isolates B.C. from other jurisdictions that may end up having energy issues.

The second thing is to include fuel-switching estimates when projecting energy use in B.C. I think that's self-explanatory.

We should generate strong incentives for municipalities to create energy plans. Now, the province has already started that process. The province has already generated its own energy plan. You know what? If you go around the province, there are almost no municipalities that have energy plans at all.
[ Page 1970 ]

Another thing would be to generate incentives for new technology.

Then, the last thing is a bit of a bugaboo for us, and that is that it seems like there has been a gold rush in licence applications for hydro. Like most resource industries, what should happen is that it should be a "use it or lose it" type of application process. I'm not saying a hundred dollars a year to renew a licence application. You know what? It's a privilege to develop B.C.'s resources, and there should be a big price tag for that.

There are probably 650 licence applications on creeks and rivers in the province, and those that have those licence applications should pay a lot of money to develop them, to make sure that they're actually putting the effort into developing those. So the numbers should be $5,000 to $10,000. It costs you $8,000 to get a licence application. It should be a big number every year.

That's it. Thanks so much for your time.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, and we'll start some questions with John Rustad.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much. First of all, there's no question that what you're talking about in terms of power and where things are going…. It's pretty interesting, because it's going to change the world and how we look at things.

When you're talking about going through power generation, I think some of the run-of-the-river projects that are going now…. There are about 1,100 people working now on construction and about $2.5 billion in investment. But that's only a small portion of what we need.

How realistic do you think it is for us to be looking at coal for power and — through new technology, through a clean process — utilizing coal for power?

[1820]

Ultimately, when you're talking about the kinds of numbers you're talking about, if we switch over to electric cars and the amount of power that needs to go on, we're going to need to be looking at either nuclear or clean coal or some sort of form like that. The amount of power that's going to need to be generated is huge when you look at the reserves that we have. So I'm just wondering: in terms of that, what are your thoughts?

D. Hurst: You know, it's interesting. When you drill down into the peak oil issue, you find massive problems everywhere. Mining coal is a very, very hydrocarbon-intensive industry. The cost of coal is going to go up and up because of all the trucks and all the shovels and all the power that they end up consuming. It's mostly hydrocarbon-based. So that is a massive issue.

I think that probably in the long run the best solution to our energy problems is solar. It's very expensive right now, but I think that solar technology in the long run is where we're going to go.

I think what will happen is that it'll be a combination of conservation…. We don't need to consume as much electricity as we do. If we really sat down and worked through it and made some sacrifices, we could probably use half or 40 percent of the power that we consume today.

So I think that there's a lot of room in terms of conservation, and I think that there are much better ways to generate energy than to…

A Voice: …use hydrocarbons.

D. Hurst: Yeah, I think so. I think solar is where it is in the long run.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Douglas. I agree with many of your assumptions. I don't necessarily agree with all of your solutions. But the challenge we have — and I think we all agree on this — is that it's massive. We all have to be putting our heads together to come up with the solutions today for tomorrow's future.

Demand-side management. You've put that at the top of your list, but you cited smart meters. I just want to pose this question, because I posed it to the Minister of Energy, with his Hydro staff at his side.

If it's $900 million to a billion dollars to place all of these meters in homes and businesses across British Columbia, wouldn't that type of capital be better suited to bringing down the cost of solar, bringing on new technologies, rather than putting a meter in someone's home to tell them that they're using too much electricity? Because that's the end result. It's the time of use. I understand all of that. But a billion dollars — that's a lot of bucks for a meter on the wall.

D. Hurst: You know what? If it's $3 billion, it's a deal — okay? Smart meters….

J. Horgan: How do you save that over time? How many years do you have to…?

D. Hurst: Right away. Let me describe this. The math is very simple.

If you look at the cost of Site C…. Site C would augment B.C.'s capacity by about 10 percent. Smart meters are known to save anywhere between 8 and 15 percent. The cost of Site C is $6.7 billion — maybe. Even if it's half of that, if it's $3 or $4 billion…. Okay. That's what I think too. I think it's going to be $10 billion by the time you really begin to do the math.

You know what? I would be delighted if smart meters are a boondoggle and they cost $3 billion, because it's going to save $6 billion or $7 billion or $8 billion in generating capacity.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation. You mentioned in your presentation about the sources of power in
[ Page 1971 ]
British Columbia. You mentioned Alberta — about 45 percent from coal, 45 percent from gas.

I understand that there was some early, early stage discussion about the possibility of a nuclear power plant in Alberta. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

D. Hurst: Boy, nuclear is such a thorny issue. There's a lot of new technology — pebble bed reactors and those kinds of things — which is incredible.

France has had nuclear technology for a very long time. Once you get good at operating these things, you don't end up having accidents. But I think that there are better ways to generate energy. It makes a really good base load, and it's a very energy-dense technology. But in the long run, peak oil is going to limit travel, and it's going to make everybody more communal.

Having a nuclear power plant in the middle of B.C. providing power for everybody is one thing, but for everybody to have solar collectors on their roofs to collect their own energy for energy use is a much more efficient way. And if you're generating your own power, you're going to save. You're going to be conscious about every joule of energy that you end up using.

[1825]

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Douglas. That's a very, very interesting presentation.

We have the Kootenay Kids Society that is going to present, and that would be Stephanie Fischer. Welcome.

S. Fischer: My name is Stephanie Fischer. I am the executive director of the Kootenay Kids Society here in Nelson. I would like to talk about Nelson child care and focus in on employee retention in the public and private sector.

Our society is a non-profit agency. We are delivering a variety of programs that support the health and well-being of families and children. Our programs reach from direct intervention provided by therapy programs to family and children's support through our family centre outreach programs and child care centre.

We acknowledge the funding to our agency from the Ministry of Children and Families, Interior Health and Public Health Canada, as well as funding from foundations and sponsors.

Families and single parents in Nelson and the area are experiencing a serious lack of available child care spaces. Our centre, Care to Learn Children's Centre, alone has a wait-list of 185 children. Nelson has a growing population of young families, and the few centres we have are all experiencing similar wait-lists.

This lack of child care spaces is now felt by local employers in the public and private sector. To find solutions to this lack of child care spaces, the Kootenay Career Development Society held a focus group in 2007 with local employers to discuss human resources issues. The lack of child care was raised as an issue affecting many employers, as they are finding that, increasingly, employees are missing work or quitting their jobs as there is nowhere to find child care for their children.

From this meeting, representatives from the private businesses and the public sector met to consider how the group might work together to create a made-in-Nelson solution to the lack of child care. The UBCM has just finished, and I had a chance to talk to our mayor, John Dooley, today. We just learned that Minister Linda Reid was excited about our public-private partnership proposal and said that she is favourably looking at supporting this model.

However, the challenges that we, as child care operators, are facing is the retention of child care workers and early childhood educators. While we applaud the government's commitment to support students in the early childhood educator field through the ECE incentive grant program and ECE loan assistance program, we would like to encourage the government to recognize that child care operators like our agency need increased child care operating funds to attract ECEs and to be able to adequately pay early childhood educators.

We are experiencing a severe lack of employees in the field due to low wages. We currently pay $12 to $15 an hour, and employee retention is becoming a real concern for us as a child care operator. We have raised the parents' fees several times over the last three years; however, at some point low-income parents or middle-class working parents will not be able to afford the safe, quality care we are currently delivering.

Kootenay Kids Society, as a licensed child care operator, calls for an increase in the child care operating fund to be able to continue to provide sustainable child care. We believe that child care is fundamental to a prosperous economy and that this service contributes to strengthening the fabric of our communities.

[1830]

Please let's pay our educated early childhood educators a living wage without making child care unaffordable.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It's pretty clear. I'm just looking to see if there are any questions.

R. Lee: We know that Nelson has a helpful population in this area. If there was a private-public partnership centre, what would be the service area in this area?

S. Fischer: The city of Nelson has a 9,500 population. I think the service area, if you count in the North Shore and Blewett, is probably another 25,000 people, with Nelson being the service centre.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): When we were in Prince George last year, the Prince George Chamber of
[ Page 1972 ]
Commerce said that one of their goals was to increase the number of child care spaces in the city, for the same reasons that you set out — that the lack of safe, affordable, reliable child care is increasingly being felt by business. People can't come to work if they don't have that.

So I'm interested to see that the private businesses are supporting this initiative. Have the local chamber of commerce and some of the local business groups taken that on publicly as well?

S. Fischer: Yes, absolutely. The partnership right now is private businesses. The chamber supports the city of Nelson and the provincial government creating child care spaces, a new centre in the government building, which would take away some of the rental out of our operating…. The rent, utilities, maintenance and like that could be covered by being in that space.

But still, we are looking at paying our early childhood educators. The creation of the spaces is not necessarily the big issue. The bigger issue is really: how can we pay our educators to stay within the field? I think that in order to do that, we have to look at child care operating funding. But the chamber is definitely on board with that initiative.

R. Hawes (Chair): You have two issues. The one issue…. If I could just ask you to speak to the mayor, then. You said you were speaking to him today. I think it could be helpful, if he has a proposal that's, as you call it, a P3-type proposal that's unique to Nelson. Perhaps it's something that can be used in other places. I don't know.

If he's got that proposal and wanted to submit it to the committee on line, he can do that until October 24. I'm sure we'd be very interested in receiving that proposal to see if there's something we can do to assist.

S. Fischer: Great. Thank you.

R. Hawes (Chair): We have the city of Castlegar, John Malcolm.

Good evening. Welcome.

J. Malcolm: Good evening. Glad to be here.

My name is John Malcolm. I'm the CAO for the city of Castlegar. I'm appearing here on behalf of the city, and I'd like to extend the regrets of Mayor Lawrence Chernoff, who is away for the entire week on city business. Otherwise, he would have been delighted to be here.

I have a small presentation, and I believe you're getting copies of it. Perhaps I can go through that, and if the committee has any questions, please feel free.

The mayor and council of the city of Castlegar wish to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to contribute to its deliberations. Castlegar would like to speak on how the provincial government can maintain and enhance the strength of our local economy and how the provincial government can better support our community here in Castlegar and in the West Kootenay region.

Specifically, Castlegar would like to advance the cause of having a hazard beacon operation established at the Castlegar regional airport. The city appreciates the recent commitment of the Premier to the mayor of provincial support for 75 percent of the project's $1 million cost.

[1835]

The city has undertaken to secure the remaining 25 percent through doubling its original contribution from $50,000 to $100,000, with the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust contributing $150,000. Currently the Ministry of Transportation has committed $330,000, leaving a gap of $420,000. We hope that the committee will be able to help Castlegar and the West Kootenay region by recommending that the outstanding amount of $420,000 be allocated from the general or the health surplus.

There are many health and economic advantages to this project. The hazard beacon project, which will include the development of appropriate procedures, will enable emergency night flights to be reintroduced to the Castlegar Airport.

The benefits are expected to be similar to those experienced by other B.C. communities with similar projects, including Penticton and Kamloops. It will extend the operating hours of the facility, enabling air medical evacuations to occur at any hour in favourable weather and affording West Kootenay residents a service that is available in all other regions of British Columbia.

It will also, in a staged approach, lead to the federal Department of Transportation approval of commercial night flight service from Castlegar and, therefore, assist families and businesses in this region.

The Castlegar Airport, for your information, is the regional airport for the West Kootenay region. It has a significant impact on the economy of the region. The airport provides key air transportation services to a range of West Kootenay communities, from Grand Forks in the west to Kaslo and Nakusp in the north, Creston in the east and Trail-Rossland in the south.

Key airport services include scheduled commercial airlines, medical evacuations, corporate and charter service, training, aircraft maintenance and aviation fuel. A hazard beacon is required to address the inability of aircraft operators to use the airport after dark in favourable weather conditions.

Until the early 1990s medical evacuation flights were able to depart at night when the weather was better than VFR minimums. However, the B.C. Ambulance Service introduced stricter rules for medical evacuations by air, and since then, medical evacuations at night from the West Kootenays have been exclusively by road. This has led to situations where the ambulance transporting
[ Page 1973 ]
a critically ill patient has literally arrived at the airport as the medic evacuation flight was taking off, due to its orders to leave before dark.

The mayor is a former paramedic with long service in the ambulance service and can personally attest to a number of these incidents. The medics have expressed great frustration about having to stand by their ambulance with a critically ill patient and only watch the lights of the plane as they lift off in front of them.

The drive to the nearest airport for a medical evacuation is more than three hours through mountainous terrain — through mountain roads that are potentially closed during inclement weather in the wintertime. This is to evacuate to a tertiary care hospital. The region that we're serving, of course, is 80,000 people. So 80,000 people in our region don't have access, potentially, at nighttime for medical evacuations to a tertiary care hospital.

In addition to challenges with emergency evacuations, scheduled air carriers are reluctant to send aircraft that are behind schedule in the afternoon to Castlegar, as they risk being stuck in Castlegar. This causes challenges to the local community, as it limits the flexibility of airlines and air service.

Previously a federally owned and operated airport, the Castlegar Airport was transferred to the city under the terms of the national airport policy in 1997. The airport has been a self-funding municipal business since the transfer, with no access to operating subsidies. Access to some capital programs in the past — such as the discontinued B.C. air transport assistance program and the underfunded federal airports capital assistance program, ACAP — has provided some relief for critical aviation infrastructure and equipment.

In terms of funding, the Premier committed to funding the hazard beacon project during a public speaking engagement at the Association of Kootenay and Boundary Local Governments in April 2008, held here in Nelson, and he reiterated his support for 75 percent of the project's costs to Mayor Chernoff at UBCM last week.

Because of the importance of this funding to provincial health care and economic priorities, this project also has the support of the Interior Health Authority, the B.C. Ambulance Service and the surrounding communities, including Nelson here directly.

The hazard beacon proposal was identified after much study and consultation as the most cost-effective way to address the health care and economic challenges associated with the Castlegar Airport.

[1840]

The city requires approximately $1 million for the project, due to inflation. When we originally submitted it, it was for $750,000. But of course, as you all know, costs continue to increase.

Further, the Southern Interior Development Initiative, which was to have funded a significant portion of the project, recently passed a policy limiting their contribution to any project to $150,000. Therefore, the city has agreed to double its contribution to a hundred. This leaves, as I noted earlier, $750,000 from the province, of which the Ministry of Transportation has committed $330,000.

Immediate funding would allow for design and tendering by the winter of 2008, installation in April 2009, testing in June and would have the system operating fully by July 2009.

The point that I would like to add in this, in addition to the health objectives here, is that we see this as a staged development for commercial night flights. Once we have this system in operation — that we have medical flights able to use it and use it safely — we can then demonstrate to DOT the applicability of this system to commercial flights. So Air Canada then knows that if they come in at 4:30 on a winter night and it's getting dark, they'll land their plane rather than cancel, because they know they'll be able to take off.

So there's a very strong…. It's a staged and developed process we're trying to get on the ground here, but we really see it as the critical path for the airport and for this region to have a good air service, both for medical and economic reasons.

R. Hawes (Chair): Before we go to the questions, John, maybe you could explain for some of us — and pardon, at least, my ignorance — what a hazard beacon looks like. What does it do?

J. Malcolm: For those of you who have had the joy of landing in Castlegar…

R. Hawes (Chair): We had that this afternoon.

J. Malcolm: …you might have noticed the downward spiral into the valley.

R. Hawes (Chair): And we're staying overnight, by the way.

J. Malcolm: Essentially, what happens is that we put up six beacons on the mountainsides surrounding the whole valley, and they provide a box that the pilots can orient themselves within. Once they're in that box, they know they're safe — fundamentally. I mean, in simple terms, that's how it's going to work.

It allows, then, at nighttime…. The pilots can take off, and they know that as long as they are within this box of six beacons around the valley, they are safe and can go to a certain altitude and then exit out of this area.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. Now we'll go to questions.

J. Rustad: Thank you for the presentation. In one of the communities in my riding, Vanderhoof, putting in
[ Page 1974 ]
lighting was critical in terms of being able to have air evacuations. We were able to actually access some federal dollars to help out with that project, in conjunction with some other initiatives that the city was undertaking.

Have you had discussions with your federal MP about the possibility of funding through Western Economic Diversification?

J. Malcolm: Yes, we have had some discussions but to no avail at this point.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just to continue on, on the description of the hazard beacon. Beyond lighting, does it emit any additional signals to the aircraft?

J. Malcolm: No. My understanding is that it's basically a visual operating system that allows for flights to get out.

The future plans are, of course, to tap in with the WAAS system, which is an electronic system that places a plane within centimetres of its height and location. The WAAS system is actually operating south of the border. You could pick it up today, if you were allowed to. It's in wide use in the States. DOT in Canada hasn't allowed it yet, and they probably won't start with Castlegar. But we see that in a matter of three to four years, allowing us to move to that stage down the road.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): What would that cost?

J. Malcolm: Actually, it will cost very little because they can pick up the WAAS signal from Washington. It's very clear in this area, apparently.

R. Hawes (Chair): And if you had the WAAS system, would you still need the beacon lights?

J. Malcolm: I would think not, but I'm not an expert.

The point of it is, though, as I say, that DOT is moving very slowly. It's probably ten years out for approvals, apparently, by the time it will get to Castlegar — at the earliest.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. So along with the request that you've made here, I think maybe we should make note of the WAAS system and the fact that maybe we should be recommending that we push DOT as well.

J. Malcolm: That would be great.

R. Lee: You actually have a schedule for completion in this region. Without that additional funding, can you start the project?

[1845]

J. Malcolm: No.

R. Lee: No, you cannot. But you have the schedule of tendering by winter of 2008, and our process doesn't allow, probably, the minister to allocate money before that.

J. Malcolm: Before February.

R. Hawes (Chair): If it takes that long.

J. Malcolm: We understand there are different schedules at play in terms of surplus and budget, etc. We were trying to be optimistic and show we could move as quickly as possible, should the funding become available.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, John.

We have now come to the stage where we would have open mike, if anyone wants to make a presentation.

Hearing none, we will adjourn this hearing. We will reconvene tomorrow in Courtenay at 12 noon. Any of you that want to venture to Courtenay…. Of course, you can't leave until tomorrow from Castlegar Airport.

A Voice: Actually, I think the weather is good, so you will, in fact, be able to leave tomorrow.

R. Hawes (Chair): As long as there's no fog, we plan to be reconvening in Courtenay at noon tomorrow.

This hearing is adjourned, and we'll be on there again tomorrow.

The committee adjourned at 6:46 p.m.

[ Return to: Finance and Government Services Committee Home Page ]

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

Copyright © 2008: British Columbia Hansard Services, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada