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

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

4:30 p.m.

Summit Room, Coast Inn of the North

770 Brunswick St., Prince George, B.C.

Present: Randy Hawes, MLA (Chair); Bruce Ralston, MLA (Deputy Chair); Robin Austin, MLA; Dave S. Hayer, MLA; John Horgan, MLA; Richard T. Lee, MLA; John Rustad, MLA; Diane Thorne, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: Harry Bloy, MLA; John Yap, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 4:21 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 8:35 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

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Issue No. 76

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 1797 ]

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2008

The committee met at 4:21 p.m.

[R. Hawes in the chair.]

R. Hawes (Chair): Good evening, and welcome, everyone. I'm Randy Hawes. I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. I'd like to welcome everybody in the audience and thank you for your time to participate in this important process.

In preparing the 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 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 to report out on our recommendations by November 15.

If you want to review the consultation paper, it is available at the registration desk, and there are a number of copies there. If you want to know how to make a presentation to the committee, that information is available on our website, 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 are extending the deadline for submissions to Friday, October 24.

Today we will hear from a number of presenters who have preregistered with the Office of the Clerk of Committees. Presentations are 15 minutes. We suggest that you try to contain your presentation to ten minutes, which would allow five minutes for questions and answers. However, if you wish to take more time in your presentation, that's a choice you can make.

I will remind you when you hit ten minutes, and I'll remind you again when you have two minutes left to go, if your presentation part takes that long. Time permitting, we will also have an open-mike session at the end of the hearing. Open-mike presentations are not longer than five minutes.

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

D. Thorne: I'm Diane Thorne. I'm the MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

R. Lee: I'm Richard Lee, MLA for Burnaby North.

D. Hayer: Good afternoon. I'm Dave Hayer, MLA for Surrey-Tynehead.

R. Austin: Good afternoon. I'm Robin Austin. I'm the MLA for Skeena.

J. Horgan: And I'm John Horgan. I'm the MLA for Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

R. Hawes (Chair): John Rustad, our other member of the committee, is in a meeting, as is the Deputy Chair, Bruce Ralston. They'll be along shortly.

Joining us today, also…. I'm pleased to introduce our Clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. Also with us is Stephanie Hansen, who is staffing the registration desk at the back. Michael Baer and Polly Vaughan are here from Hansard Services. They will be recording and preparing a written transcript of this meeting, which is also being broadcast live on the Internet.

I see John Rustad is here.

If you want to introduce yourself, John.

J. Rustad: Hi. John Rustad, MLA for Prince George–Omineca and chair of our northern caucus.

R. Hawes (Chair): With that, we will open it up to our first presenter. Don Zurowski is a councillor with the city of Prince George.

Don, the floor is yours.

Presentations

D. Zurowski: Chair Hawes and committee members, there are many familiar faces around your committee, and I welcome you back to B.C.'s northern capital, and I welcome MLA Rustad home to B.C.'s northern capital.

My presentation, I believe, will be less than ten minutes. I'm not sure if the logistics issue could well have been on our end, but I welcome your flexibility in allowing me to do a presentation to you anyway.

On behalf of the citizens of Prince George, I'd like to welcome you to our city and thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services.

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Last year the city of Prince George embraced a new approach to our corporate planning that will ensure greater integration of the diverse program services, issues and needs that we have in the city. Some of the key elements that form the structure of our sustainability plan are providing for a diverse economy, developing and maintaining infrastructure and civic facilities, contributing to social and cultural well-being, and providing for healthy ecosystems through responsible stewardship.
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This afternoon, Mr. Chair, I'd like to present a number of the concerns and recommendations of the city of Prince George with respect to these key elements.

Issue 1: diverse economy. The forest industry is facing a reduction in timber supply resulting from the pine beetle epidemic, and the traditional market for manufactured products is weakening. Unless there is an investment in new industry, northern British Columbia will experience a net job loss, and all of British Columbia will feel the pain.

Mining. Increased mining in northern B.C. would offset a decrease in jobs from forestry. Mining exploration is currently high and is expected to remain strong.

Recommendation: that the province of British Columbia implement a mining commission that would assist government, first nations and industry issues to be addressed and enable mining development to proceed expediently.

Agriculture. Land has been excluded from the agricultural land reserve to facilitate the development of the airport logistics park in B.C.'s northern capital. When the land is sold, $5,000 per acre will be placed by the developer into the Prince George airport lands agricultural development fund, which will be administered by the Northern Development Initiative Trust. Up to $8.5 million will be contributed to the fund by the private developer and will be used for projects that will assist Prince George to become an agricultural processing and export hub.

Recommendation: that the province of British Columbia match the funds contributed by the developer to the Prince George agricultural land development fund.

Issue 2: infrastructure and civic facilities. The city appreciates the province's generosity and funding towards its flood response and mitigation efforts, its energy management initiatives and hard and soft infrastructure. Further funding support is required for the following significant projects: Boundary Road connector, which could make up part of the future ring road; Boundary Road link, which would connect Highway 97 south to Highway 16 east and which has a critical regional importance by virtue of connecting the BCR yard and inland port to the provincial highway and international airport.

In the Prince George dangerous goods–route study the Boundary Road link was also identified as a future dangerous goods route, which would remove the transport of dangerous goods through populated areas. The estimated cost to the 6.6-kilometre roadway is $48 million. The city of Prince George has applied to the Building Canada fund, communities component, for $16 million in funding from the federal government and $16 million in funding from the provincial government.

Recommendation: that the province of B.C. support the city of Prince George's application to the Building Canada fund, communities component, for funding the Boundary Road connector project.

Performing arts centre. Prince George is facing a labour shortage, and in order to recruit and retain skilled labour, full urban amenities are must-haves. A performing arts centre would complete the city's suite of urban amenities. It would also assist the city to become a cultural tourism destination and be a catalyst for downtown revitalization. The development would follow the smart-growth principles of mixed use, pedestrian friendliness. A gathering place would be created for the centralization of performing arts.

Recommendation: that the province of B.C. provide funds to the city of Prince George for the development of a performing arts centre.

Issue 3: social and cultural well-being. This is a major issue in the heart of our city, in our city. The city of Prince George's mission is to continually improve the quality of life, including offering full opportunities for housing.

Under housing, in 2004 the Premier's Task Force on Homelessness, Mental Illness and Addictions was created to develop innovative strategies to help people with addictions and mental illness move from temporary shelters to long-term, stable housing where their needs can be better met.

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In 2006 the province announced its comprehensive housing strategy, Housing Matters B.C. Recently council supported the development of a sustainable housing strategy, and B.C. Housing and the city of Prince George are beginning the process of negotiating a memorandum of understanding that will clarify the province's and city's role with respect to implementing a local housing strategy.

Recommendation: that the province of British Columbia provide resources so that the mentally ill and drug-addicted are provided with adequate care in the health system to allow for proper treatment and to reduce the draw on municipally funded police resources and the emergency at Prince George Regional Hospital; that the province of British Columbia work with local government to clarify provincial and local roles with respect to the provision of housing; and that the province create a funding program to support affordable housing initiatives.

Issue 4: a healthy ecosystem. Environmental stewardship is a cornerstone of community sustainability. Supporting the P.G. air quality management plan implementation committee, preparing an energy use and conservation plan and developing a community energy system are just a few of the contributions towards a healthy environment that the city of Prince George is working on.

Greenhouse gas reduction. The province has implemented the British Columbia revenue-neutral carbon tax on fossil fuels as part of its commitment to reduce
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greenhouse gas emissions throughout B.C. The city of Prince George believes that the carbon tax is not revenue-neutral for municipalities and therefore acts as a barrier to funding greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.

Recommendation: that the province of British Columbia share carbon tax revenues with local governments to support their greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.

This concludes my presentation, and I would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide the city of Prince George's concerns. I look forward to receiving the continual commitment from the province to work together to address these issues and opportunities to improve.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Don. Your presentation was very succinct and very to the point and very understandable.

D. Thorne: Hi, Don. Thank you very much. I was a councillor myself before I became an MLA, so I have a deep understanding of some of these issues, believe me. Are you going to be at the UBCM next week?

D. Zurowski: I am.

D. Thorne: Okay, good. I'm going to look for you there, because Randy's going to tell me to get on with it in about one second.

Under the housing section…. I'm the Housing critic for the opposition. I'm wondering if you could just tell me very briefly what your local housing strategy is — the one that you've agreed on at your council and that you've been presenting to the government. Can you tell me briefly, or will we…?

D. Zurowski: Not in detail at this moment, except that we want to drive the bus to the locations. Those are probably inappropriate words. We want to be very strategic in picking the locations. We clearly have identified now that wanting to deal with homelessness is not done because we want to, but in fact, we need some tools to address it.

We've got a start with the famous backpackers project that we took up in the city of Prince George, but we're still not addressing the health needs of the mentally ill and the addicted and accommodation for them.

We have a team right now working on the Housing First initiative. There has been success enjoyed in Portland, and some progress is being made in Victoria. We want to follow some of those best practices.

D. Thorne: But essentially, you're looking at supported housing and those issues. You're going to try and work through that before you even get into family housing or anything of that type.

D. Zurowski: Generally speaking…. Additionally, though, we clearly recognize the loss of some of the accommodation for the mentally ill who don't deserve incarceration. Rather, permanent and guided accommodation needs to be part of our future in the city of Prince George.

J. Rustad: Thank you, Don, for your presentation — as always, concise and well summarized.

I just had a couple of questions, particularly with regards to the greenhouse gas reduction side. I know that the city had looked at the community energy system. I know there's been a little challenge. They're still looking at the system for a location. I'm just wondering how far that is advanced and, in your estimates, what kind of reduction that will be in terms of your demand on natural gas fuels.

I have one supplemental, if I may, as well.

D. Zurowski: MLA Rustad, right now, rather than feeding raw material directly into a community energy system, what we're looking to do is associate and attach to heavy industry, where we have the benefit of heat power, and enter into a long-term agreement with industry. I think we're getting close. We're not there yet.

[1635]

We have a project in mind which would have the net impact of energizing the equivalent of about 40,000 homes, I believe. But commonly, the heat component would go to public facilities, like the coliseum, city hall, Prince George Regional Hospital, the regional district — that type of thing as a first step.

J. Rustad: Okay. A very short supplementary. Just in terms of that, I know you've asked for some support in terms of the performing arts centre. I'd love to talk to you about that. But really, what I want to ask you…. As the Finance Committee, we need to make some recommendations not about specific communities per se but more generally as to where funds should go. If I'm hearing through this…. What you're looking for is that there be additional programs available for infrastructure projects in the community. Is that what you're suggesting would be a recommendation for this committee?

D. Zurowski: Absolutely. The connectivity from a transportation perspective…. The logistics park is good for all of British Columbia. Additionally, with the performing arts centre, keep in mind that with some of these amenities, if it's not available in Prince George, it's not available in 65 percent of the northern part of the province.

So even though we are the host community for some of the amenities, if it's not here, it's not available for 350,000 people that extract resources and generate wealth for the province.
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J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Don. I note, as I look at the witness list, that we may not hear from anyone else on the air quality and particulate matter issues in the airshed here, which we've heard in previous years, so maybe you could touch upon that.

On the recommendation with respect to what you perceive to be a non-revenue-neutral carbon tax for municipalities. According to the government, it is revenue-neutral, so there are no funds to redistribute to municipalities. Having said that, do you have any other suggestions on how we could make this tax fairer for those like school boards and municipalities that don't get tax breaks, as it were?

D. Zurowski: From my colleague's perspective, revenue-neutral would mean that the payer recovers it in a different way. From a municipal perspective, again, it'll cost us approximately $100,000, and it does not come back.

From a personal council perspective — and this isn't from the finance committee — I would like to see more airshed monitoring and holding people accountable — the existing permit holders that emit into our airshed being tracked more carefully to see how they're performing. Often the permit is not followed to the extent that it might be.

From an airshed perspective, I aspire and the community of Prince George aspires to be the most improved airshed in the province — or a most improved airshed in the province at least — in the next few years.

We're conducting ourselves as a city corp. very innovatively — bioenergy in city fleets, going to a new hybrid garbage truck as a test, idle-free zones, smoke-free zones, going away from sanding agents to melting agents, increased sweeping. We're doing a lot of things better. But we need to challenge the permit holders, heavy industry, with good information that they now have and that we now have of doing it better.

We're open for business. We welcome industry, but they need to do a better job in our airshed, and you need to help us enforce and motivate with incentives.

R. Hawes (Chair): With that, Don, thank you very much. We've heard the presentation loud and clear.

Next we have the College of New Caledonia Students Union. We have Valentine Crawford and Alyssa Clark.

Valentine, I don't think you're a stranger to this committee. If you want to proceed, the floor is yours.

V. Crawford: My name is Valentine Crawford. I'm the chairperson of the College of New Caledonia Students Union. With me today is our external affairs coordinator, Alyssa Clark. We want to thank you for this opportunity for presenting once again to the standing committee and, as well, the opportunity to discuss our concerns and constructive solutions to the problems facing students here in northern B.C.

Our students union represents approximately 4,500 students, ranging from Prince George to Quesnel, Valemount, Mackenzie, Burns Lake and everywhere in between. Not only do our members cover a large geographical area, but we also have a very large demographic from high school students to seniors who are continuing lifelong learning.

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Since we last met, our institution has fallen on hard times and, as such, has made a number of difficult decisions regarding program offerings to our community. As a result, we have lost an important adult special education program called Open Doors — a program that is not offered anywhere else in this region, a program that is really near and dear to the college community. It serviced students who really had no other options in terms of education because of their physical disabilities.

We nearly lost our forest resource technology program, which helps service the forest industry, one of B.C.'s greatest assets. Due to the hard work and dedication of the program's faculty and support staff, the program was saved and a new initiative has come out of this crisis.

Nearly all our history and geography university transfer programs have been suspended, with the exception of one offering of each course this semester. Valemount has saved the northern outdoor recreational program, which was also targeted for suspension. But due to the community's interest in invested business, they were able to put another year of life into the program.

Just as a note, this program was also developed as an initiative to revitalize that community because of the loss of their main industry, which was forestry.

A. Clark: All of these affected programs were not under-enrolled and had an important part to play in our college and our communities. These decisions were made due to the chronic underfunding that our institution has been facing. Without increasing the base operating grant, at minimum to the rate of inflation, the institution could not maintain its current level of programming.

In constant 2001 dollars, per-student operating funding to universities and colleges has declined from $8,786 to $7,736, and that's using B.C.'s rate of inflation.

We acknowledge that additional funding has been given to our institution, but this funding has strictly been targeted to specific program areas and cannot be applied to anything except for the direct instruction of the course. This means that funding does not take into consideration the cost of the building, the services that these students will be utilizing and any other administrative costs involved with delivering a program.

When you combine both the base operating grant that is starving for inflationary dollars with the unfunded
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costs of delivering a targeted program, we are left in a critical situation for our institution.

V. Crawford: To make matters worse, the College of New Caledonia received a 2.6 percent reduction to its base operating grant, leaving administrators scrambling to make up for these lost dollars. It was bittersweet that in previous years other program cuts did occur, which left the college slightly ahead of the 2.6 percent reduction and was addressed without any additional layoffs or program cuts.

With the 2.6 percent funding cut, total spending budgeted this year in the Ministry of Advanced Education is at least $96 million less than in 2007-2008, despite an estimated extra $110 million from the federal government transferred for post-secondary education. Overall, that's a $205 million shortfall for this year.

A. Clark: Program after program is being suspended around our province, yet the cost of getting a post-secondary education continues to increase. In the 2007-2008 academic year undergraduate tuition fees in B.C. stood at an average of $4,855, approximately 7 percent above the national average and double the tuition fees charged in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador.

This year the government will collect revenue of $989 million in tuition fees. It would cost $98.9 million for a 10 percent reduction, which is less than the extra moneys the federal government transferred for post-secondary education.

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V. Crawford: Consequently, student debt is skyrocketing while enrolment is dropping at our institutions. CNC continues to see a total drop of 2.9 percent in 2006-2007 academic year as compared to previous years. The university transfer program enrolment dropped 16 percent over the previous year, and since the academic year of 2002-2003 to '06-07, our institution has seen a total reduction of 21 percent in total students attending the Prince George campus.

A. Clark: Furthermore, B.C.'s record-high student debt levels are at the head of the pack, behind only the maritime provinces. With average student debt upon graduation at approximately $27,000, student debt has increased 45 percent from 1999 to 2006 since the deregulation of tuition fees and the scaling back of non-repayable financial assistance in B.C.

Some consequences of high student debt as seen in other jurisdictions throughout the world have been reductions in graduates in badly needed but lower-paying professional fields such as teaching and early childhood education, an inability of those with high student debt to take on other debts such as mortgages, and multigenerational increases in student debt or decisions by children to not attend post-secondary education due to their parents' difficulties with student debt. All of these consequences will develop into systemic problems that our province will have to face for many years to come.

V. Crawford: With interest, student debt grows by thousands of dollars over the course of repayment. A Mustel Group poll conducted between August 8 and 20, 2007, commissioned by the B.C. component of the Canadian Federation of Students and the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness, found that 39 percent of British Columbians support the elimination of interest charged on student loans, while an additional 48 percent believe the interest should be no higher than the government's actual rate of borrowing, which is currently at 5 percent. The government currently charges 8.75 percent to 11.25 percent on student loans.

A. Clark: Based on the interest rates just mentioned, if a student has a $20,000 loan, well under the average for B.C., and took the ten years that the loan has been amortized, the cost of interest would be approximately $6,000. If that student needed an additional five years, the interest alone would be almost $10,000. That is nearly 50 percent of the original loan.

If nothing is changed, it won't be long until the average student debt reaches $32,000 at graduation, and if a student were to take 15 years, they would be paying back over $15,000 in interest alone.

V. Crawford: This is a clear indication that not only should interest be eliminated from B.C. student loans, but it is necessary to have a needs-based grant system put in place. Having such a system would help reduce the daunting levels of student debt and improve access to our universities and colleges.

We applaud the federal government of Canada for implementing a nationwide system of grants. However, it is imperative that British Columbia invest and implement a complementary system of needs-based grants.

So thank you for your time. We would offer the following suggestions for your deliberations based on our presentation today: tuition fee reduction to commensurate with the $110 million in additional funding received from the federal government; restore per-student funding to 2001 levels, accounting for inflation; implement a system of non-repayable grants in B.C. and provide upfront funding that is accessible for full-time and part-time students; and interest rates on student loans need to be dropped to the government rate of borrowing immediately, with a plan to eliminate interest on all B.C. student loans altogether.

By investing in the public post-secondary education system, this will improve B.C.'s diverse economic potentials and ensure that the province has a flexible and
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adaptable workforce. These are a necessity to ensure that B.C. can meet and expand local and global economies.

So on behalf of our 4,500 members, thank you.

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

Has anybody got any questions?

D. Thorne: I just have one very quick question.

When you talk about non-payable grants, basically you're talking about the old bursary system — right? To bring that back?

V. Crawford: Correct.

R. Hawes (Chair): It would appear that your presentation is about as clear as it could possibly be, and no one is misunderstanding anything.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just one thing occurs to me. You talk about the decline in total enrolment numbers here in the College of New Caledonia. How does that compare to the University of Northern British Columbia, and what's your explanation for the decline in enrolment?

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V. Crawford: Well, the enrolments that we've been experiencing since 2002 have fallen dramatically, in line with every year there has been a tuition fee increase. In regards to UNBC, their enrolment numbers have been flatlined for several years, and in some cases there have been drops.

Again, in the terms of CNC, you will see, probably later on, further discussion about enrolments. For the most part, CNC's enrolments are down. However, in targeted funded areas — primarily trades and health science, where money has been allocated strictly for those — there have been increased offerings to deal with those wait-lists, and so there have been spike enrolments in there. Overall, enrolments are still down from previous years.

Again, with UNBC I'm not 100 percent versed in it, but I do know they have flatlined for several years in terms of enrolment.

J. Rustad: I wanted to ask a question about enrolment in particular. How does that compare with the school district's enrolment? I know that when I was a school trustee we had seen a significant decline in enrolment, particularly a significant decline in the number of students that were graduating. We've seen that throughout the north in terms of percentage of students.

I know that students coming out of the high school system are your largest pool to draw from for CNC. How does your decline that we've seen in CNC compare with declines from other school districts around the province?

V. Crawford: That I can't answer. I do not have that kind of information.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, Valentine and Alyssa. Thanks very much for your presentation. Your suggestions will be put in the hopper, and they will form part of our deliberation.

Next we have the Northern Development Initiative Trust, with Janine North and Bruce Sutherland.

Welcome. You have 15 minutes, and I'll let you know when you reach ten. We look forward to your presentation.

B. Sutherland: We've got our figures, so we'll be right on track.

Welcome to Prince George, sunny Prince George. I'm Bruce Sutherland, chair of the Northern Development Initiative Trust, and I have with me Janine North, our chief executive officer.

The volunteer board of Northern Development and the people across 40 communities, ten regional districts and 70 percent of B.C. that we work with are extremely appreciative of the vision and opportunity that this government has provided to be a catalyst for central and northern B.C. to reach our economic potential.

You will see, in the short presentation that Janine will be giving, huge collaboration and a very effective and efficient delivery model for decisions made in the north, for the north. We'll show you our performance relative to other similar organizations in the three short years since our inception, and we'll give you a sense of the huge opportunity that we have to bridge any sense of rural-urban divide in B.C.

It's incredible that the government has created an organization that is as grassroots in governance but as professional and visionary in its operational execution as the Northern Development Initiative Trust, and we thank you for that opportunity.

With that, I'll pass it over to Janine.

J. North: Welcome to Prince George. I'd like to take you through the PowerPoint presentation that you see printed in the folders. We'll skim very quickly through it, and I'll just pick up the high points and then leave it at your discretion to review it later.

I'm sure that you're aware that the Northern Development Initiative Trust was created in 2005 as an initiative of the province of British Columbia. But what is quite wonderful about this organization in its three short years is that in the June strategic planning that the board did, they've determined that they'll be a catalyst to directly and indirectly inject $2 billion every decade into the communities within the region to realize their economic potential. They can show, and we can show, that it's on track to do that. You'll see that in this presentation.

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If you turn the page to 2, you'll see that we've approved…. I'll talk of "we" collectively, of the board. The board has approved $48.6 million in 247 projects in three short years, since 2005, in the ten investment areas that you see in that bottom chart.

The strategic goals that the board set are to inject that $2 billion into communities every decade; be a catalyst for the creation of 10,000 jobs; have 60 percent of all projects involving business; have 2,500 projects by 2020, with 1,000 partnerships; have 100 percent of the communities engaged and positively impacted.

We worked with 40 communities, ten regional districts and 63 first nations. Eighty percent of our projects will focus on economic development, and 20 percent will focus on community enhancement.

We will be training a thousand grant writers — and up to date we've trained about 250 since June of this year — and 40 economic development officers. We look for a return on investments of 7 percent annually from the portfolio.

Our performance measures are focused on leveraging to increase the investment into the region, jobs and an expansion of tax-based revenues and exports, and those performance measures which describe each individual project.

On page 4 you'll see the vision the community leaders have in central and northern B.C. for these regions. Those are just a few of the phrases they use to describe what they believe this area's potential is.

On page 5 you'll see our funding programs. They're well developed, with that balance of 80 percent on the economic development side and 20 percent community enhancement. In some very, very small rural communities, those are the opportunities. You'll also see our business incentives program, including one that we're rolling out towards the end of the month. You'll see the brochure in this folder.

Success to date. I've already told you about how many projects have been approved, 52 percent in loan form and 48 percent in grants. Those loans are zero-interest to communities, non-profit groups and first nations, and they move up to interest-bearing patient capital loans to other initiatives.

The total value of the projects — $275 million — is well on its way to that $2 billion by 2020, with $48 million from the trust and $227 million from other sources. For every dollar from the trust there has been $4.67 from other sources. Eighty-three percent of the projects are in small communities — less than 5,000 people. We track the construction spending, we track grant writers, and we're very performance-driven.

One of our business programs will pay 50 percent of the cost of competitiveness consulting for those businesses in the manufacturing sector in central and northern B.C. to help them grow their businesses and grow the jobs and the wealth that central and northern B.C. produce.

So in the few short months since this was announced earlier this year, you can see the sorts of businesses that have taken advantage of this and that they're spread across the north. Then you'll see a table that shows our funding by the ten investment areas in our legislated mandate.

Under "Success to Date," on page 7, you'll see that the board and the regional advisory committees — the four that we have, 56 people in membership — reach consensus on 96 percent of projects. So 96 percent of the recommendations made by those regional advisory committees are accepted by the board, and I'll show you how that's done.

Some 80 percent of the projects are in communities of less than 5,000 people, and 40 percent of the funding we've committed is in those same communities with small populations.

We've attracted a commitment of over $8 million in new corporate funding for projects that benefit agriculture. That's an initiative between the development community and the Agricultural Land Commission which will see $5,000 per acre deposited into the trust for lands adjacent to the Prince George Airport that will be developed as a logistics park.

Quick facts on page 8. You can see the leveraging for each of our programs. It varies depending on the program. Some programs we'll fund 100 percent; for some we look for other funding to come to the table.

First nations involvement was 24 projects directly led or financially supported by first nations. They tend to be innovative cultural tourism, training delivery and business partnerships, and $6.2 million has been committed to those. The total project value is $40 million. So 12.8 percent of our funding that's committed is to first nations, with a great leveraging ratio from funding from other sources that they've put together. That's well above the population of first nations. This has been drawn from partnerships between communities and first nations.

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Efficient and effective program delivery. You'll see the stats comparing the Northern Trust delivery to a federal program, in the first table. In the second table, you'll see comparative stats out of our 2007 annual report and another trust in B.C. You'll see that this trust delivers very efficiently and effectively across 70 percent of the province with a very small staff of six and with a very low overhead that is generally less than a half-percent of capital.

On page 10 you'll see the Northern Development compared to rural Alberta's development fund, which is a similar corporation outside of government that was capitalized at $100 million in a spend-down over five years by the government of Alberta at the same time that the Northern Development was initiated.

Aside from a difference in approach — one is a spend-down; the other is a long-term trust — you'll see that
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they're similar in board size. However, ours is a volunteer board. You'll see similar overhead, although we're certainly below them this year. We have a much higher success rate in terms of applications, a lot less frustration by communities and a lot more money that's being approved and moving out the door. So it shows that we've ramped up quickly and that we're on top of the game and doing what communities would like.

At the bottom of page 10 you'll see that we have a great track record of getting to yes. Our responsive decision times are a range of five to 90 days. We have a clear distinction between programs, and we have tracked our figures. There is a 99 percent success rate with applicants when they do four things: they align with our Getting to Yes guide and our program guides; they submit very complete applications; they make quick responses to requests for additional information from our staff; and they focus on performance measures, leveraging, new jobs and revenues.

We believe that the Northern Development Initiative Trust is a great option for cost-effective program delivery to rural, central and northern B.C. I say rural, but it's rural small and medium communities.

You'll see on page 11 that not only are we cost-effective, but certainly, there are some options potentially available, should you wish to consider them in your budget deliberations. New programs such as the agricultural benefiting fund that will be developed with the developer community will have customized branding and communications so that it's recognized in terms of its announcements. In terms of decisions made in the north for the north, it appeals very strongly to the public. It's resonating very well.

The communities and business take pride in the shared governance and the highly effective, low-cost delivery model where performance is measured. We've got a balanced suite of community funding and business programs. We have over 96 percent consensus, and that means very little controversy.

The communities have really seen the opportunity to build capacity and collaborate rather than compete. You find several communities coming together to fund a regional priority, whether it's the expansion of the Prince George Airport or the Smithers Airport or an abattoir in the Telkwa area or whether it's an investment in the Haida Heritage Centre in Qay'llnagaay at Skidegate.

All of the mayors and the regional district electoral representatives from the Skeena–Queen Charlotte regional district moved a substantial portion of their allocation of the trust into that project because they saw the benefits of a world-class tourism destination, in terms of fostering business on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Haidi Gwaii.

You'll see in the next few pages our northern B.C. business advantage program and some of the statistics that have been gathered to attract business to central and northern B.C., to put this area on their radar screen, because of the low tax rates in this jurisdiction in B.C., low-cost electricity, great transportation routes, low overall business costs and very low land costs, compared to the Lower Mainland, for industrial development.

[1705]

You'll see project announcement signage, publicity. Then you'll see quite a number of photos which take you through a sampling of some of the projects that the trust has funded, both through grants and through loans.

We appreciate the opportunity just to present to you a little bit more about the Northern Development Initiative Trust.

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

J. Rustad: Just a quick question. Being very familiar with the trust…. In terms of our committee and the work we're trying to do in making some decisions about what we should do in allocating funds in the future, I'm just wondering if you have any suggestions or recommendations, particularly because of your experience and your tie-ins with northern and rural B.C.

J. North: I think that certainly the model is much leaner than government delivery of programs, as we showed you, in comparison to a federal program. If government is looking at the delivery of programs for central and northern B.C. or across rural areas, that's something.... If we can do it at less than half a percent overhead and with the benefit of having an operating endowment, it's an option you should consider. We're inclusive, very consensus-based and move things very effectively out the door to keep communities happy with that program administration.

R. Lee: Thank you for the excellent presentation. My question is on all those projects. How many are with an Asia-Pacific gateway component, and how much will we see in the future that the component will be?

J. North: We see that a number of these projects have led into that — the feasibility and engineering work for the private Port of Kitimat, in terms of expanding its break-bulk loading port; our work in terms of the northwest transmission line and opening up that area in terms of mining and exports; the Prince George Airport expansion, the logistics park and the air cargo opportunity.

We continue to look for manufacturing opportunities or value-added resource processing along this corridor so that this corridor, which is so resource-wealthy, can add value to our resource commodities and then move them out through the transportation system that is being built in terms of that gateway.
[ Page 1805 ]

R. Austin: I have one quick question. I noticed just before we came here to Prince George that one of the biggest projects you've done has been the expansion of the runway here at Prince George. My understanding is, in reading some of the documentation, that the idea is to try and make this a sort of global air cargo base, like Anchorage, Alaska.

I was reading that there's a problem from the federal government's side in terms of changing the status of this airport. Can you comment on that? What is the trust able to do to help to overcome that blockage?

J. North: In fact, there isn't an issue. I believe here you're referring to the National Post article. This airport does have transshipment rights, and they were awarded about two months ago to three airports in Canada. So in terms of transshipment — when cargo is coming in from Asia, landing for refuelling or tech stop or cargo transfer, and then the plane is taking on goods and moving out to the eastern seaboard or the other way through — this airport is absolutely positioned with everything it needs to do that.

What that consultant was talking about was strictly point-to-point and export development zones, which we have not yet seen developed in Canada and would be a huge benefit. We are advocating on that in terms of Prince George and Prince Rupert and potentially Terrace.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Janine and Bruce. Please keep up the good work. It seems everyone in the north is benefiting.

We have next got Initiatives Prince George — Katherine Scouten and Tim McEwan. Welcome.

T. McEwan: Good afternoon, members of the committee. I'm Tim McEwan, president and chief executive officer of Initiatives Prince George Development Corp.

With me is Katherine Scouten, our vice-president of economic development. I've given to the Clerk a copy of our submission, which runs some eight pages. I'm just going to go through a few highlights from that submission, which I'll leave with you to consider later.

[1710]

By way of background, Initiatives Prince George is pleased to provide this submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services outlining our views for the 2009-10 provincial budget that will be presented in February of 2009.

Also by way of background, Initiatives Prince George is a municipally owned corporation mandated to undertake programs and projects designed to grow and diversify the local and regional economy. Under the guidance of a private sector board of directors, IPG has the lead role in economic development initiatives in Prince George and the surrounding region. It serves as a liaison between government, business, first nations and other strategic partners, to advance projects of economic importance to our city and the region.

IPG also assumes a proactive role in marketing our city to prospective investors and assisting with completion of major business deals that have strategic value for the community.

There are a number of program areas within our umbrella, which are detailed in your submission. What I'd like to do is just go on to highlight a few things within the submission at this time.

The first thing that we see is a key priority from a regional perspective moving forward. Of importance to the broader economy of north and central British Columbia but also to Prince George are corridor improvements to Highway 97, south from Prince George to Cache Creek and also to the Pine Pass from Prince George to Dawson Creek.

The importance of these projects rests with the fact that it's important to have infrastructure that gives us propulsive growth from other nodes. In that regard, I'm speaking specifically to Highway 97 — in terms of Highway 97, the Cariboo connector, and Highway 97 from here to Dawson Creek.

The real issue is that our mining and service supply industries can't access the oil patch through that road to the extent that they ought to be able to because of low rail overpasses and other technical and safety considerations. Moving forward, I'd urge the standing committee to give consideration to improving that item.

Highway 37. Electrical transmission is an issue which impacts the northwest directly but that certainly has spinoff benefits for this part of the province, again related directly to the mining and service supply industry and the potential opportunities that that transmission line would bring by way of catalyzing new mine development in that part of the province.

More locally there are a few priority items that I'd like to highlight for you. Toward the end of the month there will be an application going in from the city of Prince George, supported by public agencies such as ourselves. The application deals with the Boundary Road connector, which will connect Highway 16 east with Highway 97 south. It's a 6.6-kilometre four-lane arterial highway, and we're applying for $32 million under the joint federal-provincial Building Canada fund.

The connector has a number of specific purposes. The first is to open up the new air logistics park to the west of the airport. I chair an effort locally involving public agencies and the private sector proponents, for the development of a 700-hectare air logistics park.

We had a successful application from the Agricultural Land Commission in August to release those lands from the agricultural land reserve for development. This 6.6-kilometre arterial road will open up that development and tie it into multimodal activity involving the CN
[ Page 1806 ]
Rail north-south in the Danson industrial area, together with the CN intermodal activities running east-west through the intermodal facility on First Avenue here in Prince George.

[1715]

The other aspect to this four-lane arterial road is that it will provide a dangerous goods route, it will remove a lot of truck traffic from the downtown area of Prince George, and it will serve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within our confined airshed. So I would urge the standing committee to give favourable consideration to that project.

Similarly, another project that is importance for Prince George from a growth-catalyzing perspective and downtown revitalization perspective is the new performing arts centre, which is in its concept stage and should be coming forward in the coming months. Downtown Prince George, where we sit, is becoming a very high priority for the community, moving forward. Certainly the performing arts centre, together with Housing First initiatives to deal with homelessness, is going to be a priority moving forward. So this is a key consideration for you as you do your deliberations.

Engineering programming at UNBC and technical and trades training with the College of New Caledonia are also of strategic importance moving forward. These two education program initiatives are going to be key moving forward in terms of dealing with our skilled trade shortages and engineering shortages.

If you look at what I just spoke about earlier in terms of the Highway 37 opportunities with the mining industry, there are senior mining companies that suggest that they will not have engineers to operate those mines. So in the same way as the northern medical program has been a beacon for how we can train in, for and by the north on the expectation that people will be retained here to build the northern economy, we need to have further focus in engineering and trades training moving forward.

Our submission also speaks to a few other issues that I think are of broad importance to the Prince George economy and the regional economy — certainly, first nations engagement. I would encourage the committee in its report to make some statement around the need for the north — northern business leaders, the provincial government — to redouble efforts to engage first nations in the overall pursuit of social well-being in first nations communities but also in the pursuit of unleashing wealth creation from the provincial land base.

Broadband connectivity across the north is an issue despite very progressive efforts of the Premier's Technology Council and other government efforts to bridge the digital divide in the north. We still have a number of zones across Highway 16 and across Highway 97 where there are dead zones, where there's a lack of coverage and so forth. When we're trying to build an economy based on transportation and logistics moving forward — this is our real opportunity in the north, taking us from Prince Rupert right across to Edmonton — we do need to have leading-edge fibre and connectivity in the north.

Back to the mining industry again for a moment. One suggestion that we have for improving the permitting and approvals process is to establish a one-window regulatory agency, much like was done in the late 1990s and refined in the current decade with the Oil and Gas Commission. We think that kind of approach would speed up the approvals process in the broader provincial interest, and certainly, within Prince George it would help bring about diversification from the mining industry for our local supply and service industries.

Finally, I guess, there are some other things that we outline within the report that deal with public policy considerations. I'd briefly like to highlight a couple. One is that I believe the standing committee report should speak to the differences we have in the north with carbon tax policy. Carbon tax taxation is not revenue-neutral to the north in the same sense that it is to the province as a whole. We travel longer distances. Heating public buildings, homes and so forth costs more, so I would suggest that the standing committee examine this issue closely as it makes its recommendations moving forward to budget 2009.

[1720]

Finally, one idea we have that I think supports some of the comments made by the Northern Development Initiative Trust is that we believe it's timely for government to consider a resource revenue-sharing arrangement whereby some of the proceeds of resource revenues are returned to northern and central British Columbia for further economic development initiatives. We're doing so on a basis that the Northern Trust has been very successful at, and that is determining priorities, balancing priorities amongst communities and moving forward in a way that leverages funds from other public and private sources.

For the north, this is a critical thing. It gives us a measure of self-determination for our economic development future. If you take the Northern Trust boundaries, for example, it's two-thirds of the province representing 375,000 people, so we have less influence in the public policy arena down south. I would suggest that it would be a prudent measure for the committee to recommend further revenue bases, perhaps funded through the trust or some other mechanism, to help with priority economic development projects moving forward.

I'll leave it at that. You have our detailed submission, and I'm open to questions.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you.

Questions?
[ Page 1807 ]

J. Horgan: Thank you very much for the presentation, Tim. I'm curious about chicken-and-egg when it comes to Highway 37, with the collapse of Galore Creek or the realigning of capital initiatives at Galore Creek. It has short-circuited the cooperation that was in place to move forward with the electrification of Highway 37.

Would it be your position that that infrastructure should proceed absent private sector involvement and a commitment to a mine getting underway? The member from Omineca and I were talking about the decade that has gone by without a mine opening in British Columbia, which is a concern to all of us.

From your perspective, should the province and ratepayers for B.C. Hydro initiate that infrastructure without some commitment from the private sector?

T. McEwan: Certainly, there would be a preference for engaging a private sector partner, to have the demand there in place before proceeding with construction. But I would suggest, though, as well…. There was a time in British Columbia when we did build it on the expectation that they will come. I see Highway 37 as a key piece of infrastructure in the provincial interest.

We've gone from somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 operating mines when I worked for the Ministry of Energy and Mines in Victoria some 15 or 16 years ago to about nine operating mines today. There is tremendous mineral wealth in the province, and we take the position in our submission that that project is squarely in the provincial interest. I've certainly said that on previous occasions in the southern media as well.

J. Rustad: First of all, thanks for the presentation. I want to focus in particular on Highway 97 and the Pine Pass, the connectivity between the northeast and the Interior. In particular, I've heard that from up in the northeast; I've heard it down here.

What I don't have a sense of is what the economic potential is through improving that road — whether there are some numbers around there so that we know, if we're going to put a $50 million or $100 million investment or whatever that number may be in terms of improving that connectivity, what the potential economic benefit would be through that type of investment.

T. McEwan: There is no specific economic impact analysis that we've done, but I would suggest this. What we've got going on in the northeast is considerable leakage to the province of Alberta for the supply and service industry. I think, as part of overall efforts to diversify the Prince George and regional economy — that's the mandate I work primarily within — that there is a tremendous opportunity to tap into the oil and gas industry in the north.

[1725]

We are certainly in contact with businesses within Prince George who suggest they could do a lot more in the northeast. I take the position that time is of the essence and that this is part of an overall diversification strategy for this region of the province.

R. Lee: A quick question on the broadband connectivity. You mentioned about dead zones around that area. I mean, Telus and also the Northern Trust and having a project like that in order to fill the hole….

T. McEwan: I recall that when I was executive director of the B.C. Progress Board, there were recommendations from the first or second report of the Premier's Technology Council to bridge the digital divide. When you travel along the northern corridor from Prince Rupert clear across to the Alberta border, you have about five minutes as you go through a town, or less, in order to be on your cell phone. So there could be further private sector partnership.

In our submission what we outline is just the need for a greater focus on that in the context of the multimodal transportation corridor opportunities that we are building out here in the north. The container port at Rupert has taken on a second sailing. We have the air logistics park that we hope to turn sod on in the new year, the runway extension. All these things come together and create urgency around having better broadband connectivity along that border.

It's important to underscore that we are marketing to logistics providers in the U.S. Midwest and in China. There is an expectation that you have the best and latest connectivity. So it's within that overall broad economic development context that we make that suggestion.

Katherine, do you have anything to add on that?

R. Hawes (Chair): Unfortunately, we are out of time, but thank you for your excellent presentation.

Now we have the Nechako Valley Community Services Society, Paula Pierre.

Welcome, Paula.

P. Pierre: Good afternoon. My name is Paula Pierre, and I'm from the Nechako Valley Community Services in Vanderhoof. First of all, I'd like to thank you for inviting us and hearing what we have to say on what some issues are in our region. I want to just apologize because I'm here in place of my supervisor Susan. She apologizes that she can't be here.

I just want to tell you guys a little bit about who we are and what we do in the agency. Then I'll tell you about the issues that we feel are important and the impact and what we feel should be the action.

R. Hawes (Chair): I'll tell you when you get to ten minutes, and then I'll tell you when you have two minutes left.
[ Page 1808 ]

P. Pierre: Okay, I'll talk really fast.

R. Hawes (Chair): If you do have time at the end for questions, that's what we…. Carry on.

P. Pierre: Our agency is a registered non-profit society, and it's been incorporated since 1977. We provide counselling services and primary prevention programs for children, youth and adults in Vanderhoof, Fort St. James, Fraser Lake, Cluculz Lake and Burns Lake. We operate Riverside Place, a residence for seniors and persons with disabilities. We have two group homes for adults with special needs, and we also have a mobile work crew for adults with developmental delays.

Our mission is to support children, families and individuals — including youth, adults and seniors — in order to promote independence and confidence in managing their daily lives. We do this through individual and family counselling, assessment, victim assistance, home services, etc. There's a list of stuff that we do there. We're the largest non-profit employer in Vanderhoof, employing 57 people.

We have some newer programs as well. This fall we're going to be opening a coffee house called the Bean on Burrard, and it's going to employ persons with developmental delays and also marginalized youth. Within the Bean we're also going to have a new program called the Nechako Valley organics, and it's going to employ people with developmental delays who will grow organic produce for use in our community's food bank and community kitchens.

[1730]

There is some more that I'll let you read about our agency, but I'll get into the priority of funding issues. It's listed in order from one to five. We have five of them that we've identified.

The first one is a lack of affordable housing. We understand that lack of affordable housing is a provincewide issue, but we'd like to explain what we experience in our area. In Vanderhoof we have one apartment building whose rent is within reach of people on disabilities and families on income assistance and the working poor. It's substandard, and it's in an unsafe neighbourhood. It's the only option in Vanderhoof, and it's always full.

It's the same in Fort Fraser. There's one apartment building that's in an unsafe neighbourhood, and there are drugs that are freely used in that apartment building.

Given the lack of competition in the market, the landlords are able to refuse repair of facilities, and they can demand top rent for these. There are also aboriginal persons and sole-support mothers who are often discriminated against and denied housing.

There's also what we've seen as an unintended impact of economic expansion. An example would be the expansion of the mining industry in Fraser Lake. That often pushes a lot of people out of housing. It is a housing issue because a lot of people are brought into the community and need places to stay. So lower-income persons have lost housing and are forced to relocate due to the impossibility of finding housing locally. I have some examples on the impacts, but since I don't have much time, I'll just keep moving along.

We are aware that the lack of affordable housing prevents women from leaving abusive relationships. It forces women to exchange sex for housing and puts women and children at risk of further abuse.

What we request is that for each economic incentive, moneys for housing be allocated not only for the anticipated influx of workers but also to protect housing options for the poor, and for the government to establish an interministerial committee whose mandate is to ensure that housing is provided for those most vulnerable. B.C. in the north is at a crisis stage, and the government must take housing as a top financial priority.

Day care is another issue. There are 45 licensed day care spots in Vanderhoof, which is inadequate. Three have been closed in Vanderhoof and one in Fort St. James. There is no day care facility open during the weekends or to accommodate shift work. There is only one spot in Vanderhoof that will take a child under three years of age. Each day care receives, on average, about two calls per week on needing placement for their children, but they can't find any.

There's only one after-school program offered in Vanderhoof, but it's actually on the reserve, and it's only open to the band members.

A year ago the Success By 6 committee approached our agency and asked if we would open a day care spot in Riverside Place. But given that the provincial funding for creation of new family and child care spaces has been utilized and no new funds have been allocated, we're unable to proceed with the necessary renovations of the space and the equipping of it.

The lack of day care results in a child being put in substandard child care options, where safety and learning are compromised. For an agency that works with children at risk, we are keenly aware that the lack of day care is a significant stress for struggling parents and has direct health and social repercussions on the children.

We ask that the provincial government reinstate funding for the creation of new family and child care spaces and make it available for not-for-profit group child care facilities.

The next issue is transportation. With our communities being along Highway 16, we're aware that there's an impact on the lives and safety of young women due to the lack of safe and affordable transportation. A high percentage of families living in Cluculz Lake, Fort Fraser and surrounding areas live without transportation or only have one vehicle, utilized by the wage earner. Often mothers are left at home with their children.

[1735]
[ Page 1809 ]

If the children are deemed at risk by MCFD, they are eligible for services which include transportation to obtain groceries, attend appointments. But without the ministry deeming them at risk, the families remain isolated, unable to access any basic services.

Often women are exchanging sex for rides into town in order to access services, to socialize or to get groceries. Some women are assaulted or go missing, a phenomenon that's well documented in our communities.

We are aware that there is a Greyhound bus for free for women. Anyone can access some travel through the Northern Health Authority bus. These are really good. These are awesome. But they're not of any assistance to women who are isolated at home with their children who need to get groceries.

We would like to launch a bus service that could be utilized by anyone needing regular transportation to Vanderhoof because a lot of the services are in Vanderhoof. The transportation would be free and available for any reason. The families can go to shop, go to the library, go to get groceries — anything.

Next is the lack of recreational opportunities for youths. Vanderhoof used to have a skateboard park, but it was closed down because of lack of funding to update and maintain it. We used to have a youth centre for the youth to go to, but that was also shut down because of lack of adequate funding. Our agency has partnered with Nak'azdli First Nation to provide a winter recreational group, but that was only for the band members, and pretty quickly the moneys ran out there as well.

The school district and the district of Vanderhoof do offer some recreational activities and do subsidize them so that they're cheaper and more affordable, but we still see lower-income families that can't give the $20 to go to Prince George for the evening to go swimming.

Often the recreational activities are well used, but they are used by youth that can access money. Youth on reserves, children being raised by single parents or children on income assistance remain marginalized, and they can't access these services. Even with sports teams and cadets and that kind of stuff, it still requires some money for uniforms and so on.

So children often accept that they have these limited options. I want to give a quick example of a worker that brought some youth to a coffee shop in Fort St. James recently. They've lived there all their lives, but they've never been in that coffee shop. Once they approached the coffee shop, they said to the worker: "I don't think people like us are allowed in there." That's what the lack of access does to young minds and spirits.

We suggest, in the spirit of 2010, that the government initiate provincewide funding to ensure that communities such as ours that lack sports and recreational facilities have access to funding to create these legacies for the children, to give them the chance to go snowboarding or to give them the chance to go to Prince George.

The last one I'll just do really quickly. With the action, with the lack of recreational activities, we'd also like a strong initiative to be launched to create opportunities for children and youth to engage in healthy physical activity — like I said, to be able to bring them snowboarding, to be able to bring them to Prince George to go swimming, anything like that — and to give them those strong choices so that they can have healthy choices. Since we don't have an aquatic centre or anything in Vanderhoof, it's hard to make anything free for children and youth.

The last issue is the lack of physical space for non-profits. The housing crunch and rise in rents has direct impact on the ability of non-profits to secure and maintain physical space.

Our agency has grown significantly over the past two years. We're full beyond capacity and have multiple sharing offices. We're aware that our strategic plan will force us to look at purchasing and renovating, or constructing, a new building to house our operations. Capital for this type of venture is almost impossible to find.

[1740]

As a non-profit that is expanding our services to our community, we're confronted with significant barriers such as these. The impact that this has is that a lot of the time, with some of the services that we want to develop in Vanderhoof, we can't due to the lack of space. We currently evaluate taking on new program dollars based on whether or not we have the space to house the programs.

Another example is our office. It's two floors, and one of the floors, the top floor, is not physically accessible to persons with disabilities. That's almost embarrassing, because we have employees that have physical disabilities, and we offer services to clients that have disabilities as well.

So we ask the government to strike an interministerial committee to look at solutions for all non-profits that are losing leased spaces, moving out into more isolated areas and unable to expand due to the lack of adequate physical space. Funding options need to be created to assist non-profits in being able to access affordable credit, combined with grants, to obtain, renovate or build adequate spaces.

R. Hawes (Chair): You've done very well. There are still two minutes left, so….

P. Pierre: Oh, when I practised, it took, like, 17 minutes.

R. Hawes (Chair): Questions?
[ Page 1810 ]

D. Thorne: I'm just interested in your idea about the bus. Right now you have a Greyhound bus. Is the Northern Health Authority bus a separate bus?

P. Pierre: It is. The Northern Health Authority bus is for people who need to make it to medical appointments.

D. Thorne: And that's for all across Highway 16 as well, so you'd have to book that sort of like handyDART — well in advance or something?

P. Pierre: Yeah.

D. Thorne: So you would run it out of your…. You're thinking that you would get a grant or something and buy the bus. You could use that for youth as well, couldn't you?

P. Pierre: We could. We could for sure.

D. Thorne: To take them to Prince George or to all kinds of things. It'd be a multipurpose…. It's a great idea.

P. Pierre: Awesome. It would be very….

D. Thorne: It's a great presentation. You really do have your hands full.

P. Pierre: Yeah.

R. Lee: In your community do you have, say, semi-empty schools — in order for non-profits to have access to some space?

P. Pierre: Oh, we just actually had one school shut down, but we don't have space, any other buildings, that we could really use for our agency at this point.

R. Lee: So can you work with the city and the school board to…?

P. Pierre: To use that space? That's a really good idea. But this just happened within the past few months, so…. Yeah.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): When you talk about the need for space for your organization to grow…. You also talk about the need for affordable housing. I know in some parts of the Lower Mainland various credit unions have funded, basically, what is affordable housing up above and commercial space or non-profit space down below. Is there any program that you're aware of, or any initiative taken by local credit unions or any branch of government to begin that kind of process?

Some of what you say here is, frankly, shocking to me. I know Vanderhoof — not well, but it does seem to be…. Particularly your anecdote about the kids going into the coffee shop — that's very startling. So obviously, there's lots of work to do there, and that might be one way that that initiative could get underway.

P. Pierre: Yeah, and we do like to partner. Let's give that example with the youth going into the coffee shop.

I'll give an example of…that went to a recreational group that we had. We do partner with other agencies, but it's difficult at times because the moneys do run out. We had a winter recreational group where we brought youth up to Murray Ridge to go snowboarding. We only got to go twice, and the moneys ran out.

But there is a credit union in Vanderhoof, and we have applied for funding with them as well. We've applied for funding with them for the coffee shop that's going to open up that's going to employ the persons with disabilities.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, Paula, your presentation is quite startling, so we will be giving it lots of consideration. Thank you very much. You did very well.

[1745]

Now we have the Faculty Association of the College of New Caledonia with Dr. George Davison.

I'll give you the high sign at ten minutes and again when you have two minutes left if your presentation goes beyond that.

G. Davison: Yep, perfect.

Okay, thanks for the invitation to speak to your committee today. I'm here representing 350 faculty at the College of New Caledonia, the central Interior's oldest public post-secondary institution, 40 years old next year.

We provide access for students in our communities who want to engage in post-secondary education and training, offering programs from Burns Lake in the west to Valemount in the east, from Fort St. James and Mackenzie in the north to Quesnel in the south.

Before I get into the details, I think we need to talk a bit about the context of where the college is working. Our region has been hard hit by a succession of crises. Last year, almost to the day, I addressed this committee and referred to mills that were running at full capacity. That seems like a distant memory.

We have seen countless mill closures, thousands of jobs lost, thousands of beetle-killed trees to harvest but nowhere to sell lumber. This is but the latest storm we've had to weather. From the Far East meltdown in the late
[ Page 1811 ]
'90s — I'm a historian, so forgive me — through the softwood dispute with the United States, the housing collapse and the current financial meltdown, overlaid on the largest natural disaster in Canadian history, the pine beetle epidemic, our regional economy has been hit by a succession of body blows that seem hard to fathom.

The decline is forcing the pace of transformation and diversification in our regional economy, and though mining and energy may offset the loss of forestry revenue, these resources are also subject to boom-and-bust periods. Last year I quoted a 1980s mayor, who said: "We live in a toilet seat economy. It's always going up and down." Not much has changed.

The response to these crises has been to dig down and work, finding new ways to do old things. B.C.'s lumber industry modernized over the last decade. Mills focused more on selling into the U.S. housing boom and made profits even with 30-plus percent duties. But no number of runway extensions, container ports, pellet plants or billion-dollar mines can supplant the renewable resource that lies just outside our doors.

We all know that forestry will come back, even though there'll be huge dislocation before it comes. Hopefully, the adjustments and the new infrastructure will allow the region to weather future storms.

Our provincial organization, the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia, has just launched a fall campaign to highlight our concerns about this government's post-secondary education policy. It's called What's Wrong with This Picture? I'd like to use this question and some provincial and local facts to make my points. I'll end with some recommendations I hope you'll consider.

First, tuition has gone up 95 percent since 2002, but real per-student funding has dropped 8 percent. The Industry Training Authority saw its $74 million budget increase by 30 percent, but completion rates have dropped 24 percent. University transfer enrolments have dropped at most urban and rural colleges, between 13 and 14 percent — even more at CNC. University colleges, now new universities, have seen a 2 percent drop.

Institutional operating funds were increased 4 percent last year, but inflation and the 2.6 percent clawback in March mean that the increase is wiped out and that institutions face increasingly difficult financial crises. It's interesting to point out that in March, when the cuts were announced, inflation was running at 1.4 percent. It's now at 3.4 percent and not likely to come down anytime soon. This is the highest level since January 2003, and institutions across this province have to face that. What's wrong with this picture? I think British Columbia needs to invest more in post-secondary education.

[1750]

Here in Prince George it's no secret that faculty and staff have had running differences with administration at least since 2005. Our last president went back to Alberta after two non-confidence votes. This year faculty have expressed non-confidence in essentially the same administration, the current board and the new president. What's wrong with this local picture?

CNC's administration has grown over the last two years. Administrative costs are much higher. Trades funding from the ITA, our vice-president told this committee last year, represented 60 percent of the cost of training trades students. Targeted funding continues for trades, health and aboriginal programming, and other areas in the institution suffer because the funding doesn't cover expenses.

Our marketing enrolment services department has expanded from a budget of $125,000 in 2004-05 to $719,000. In the meantime university transfer and business enrolments are down 60 percent. Our projected deficit last February was $1.1 million. The college had $800,000 set aside in a contingency fund from a previous year's surplus, but 24 layoffs were announced, 17 of them faculty.

Several program cancellations and suspensions were announced in early March. Adult special education and forestry topped the list. The Education Council, which is charged by legislation with providing advice to the board, was told after the fact.

The government then announced a 2.6 percent cut on March 12, making our deficit $1.6 million. The March board meeting was cancelled. The April board meeting saw a huge turnout for the disabled student community and other program cuts. They were silenced as the 2008-09 programs were suspended, with some vague talk about renewal for the fall of 2009. In May at our annual general meeting, the faculty association voted non-confidence in the board, administration and president.

The May board meeting was a closed meeting, though the decision on forestry was put off until the end of June. In June the college balanced its budget. Forestry was given the go-ahead to renew its program. Two disability programs were blended, pending a full review and search for more funding.

The bottom line is that we have 11 fewer faculty than we did in January of last year. Affected areas include a loss in culinary arts; two in adult special education, both here and in Quesnel; two in the business program; three in university transfer; one in forestry; and severe reductions in geography, history, English and hospitality.

Just so you know, four years ago in the history program I teach in, we had 484 students across 19 sections. Today we have one section and 33 students.
[ Page 1812 ]

The number of grievances has also grown between the faculty association and the college since 2005, a long list that is just starting to hit arbitration. This is going to take more dollars out of programs.

What's wrong with this picture? What could CNC do with more resources or better use of existing resources?

If post-secondary education is critical to the future of our province, it's even more critical for the future of our region. It will take deliberate and carefully managed investments by the provincial government to ensure that this region has the capacity and skills to cope with the impacts of the beetle-kill timber and all of the other storms that beset us.

Post-secondary education is one of those investments, but not just in targeted labour market areas. Demographics show looming retirements across every industry and profession, and studies have shown that adult upgrading and general arts and science provide very important employability skills.

CNC has a great track record in creating the very programs that this region needs. We have a well-established trades-training program that allows apprentices in the region to upgrade their skills. We have a health sciences program that's training a variety of much-needed health care practitioners.

Our university transfer program has sent thousands of students to finish degrees at every university and university college in B.C. The partnership with Thompson Rivers University, where students can enrol in both institutions at the same time and have a spot guaranteed in third year, is at the point of signing after years of hard work.

The emphasis is to give people in this region the opportunity to learn in this region. The new medical lab technology program is up and running and is changing already to meet new requirements. Work is starting on the radiology program that'll fit in with the cancer clinic that's coming. Lastly, we're developing an aboriginal studies program to ensure higher levels of post-secondary participation and completion within our first nations communities in the region.

[1755]

These programs are all examples of steps taken in the right direction, but the problem is that those steps are far too modest, given the challenges we face as a region, and they're not addressing the larger and more fundamental problems of affordability. Chronic underfunding has also led to the elimination of more expensive programs, even though these are the very programs we will need to create new skills in the region as it makes a transition to a new economy.

In the last six years CNC has eliminated legal secretary, electronics, geographic information systems, wood technology, engineering design and computer information systems. This year Business: the Next Generation, an award-winning small business incubator program, and career technical centre programs in hospitality and culinary arts were cut.

These are serious local problems, but provincially we have the resources necessary to fix those problems. What seems to be missing is a much stronger commitment from the government to make the necessary investments that we need to address these problems. We've had budget surpluses. Your paper talks about four in a row — $2.9 billion this year. Why was post-secondary education cut by $60 million? Why does no one seem to be planning for the future?

This system was built on the notion that students could access affordable education close to home. With the rationalization currently underway, B.C. is creating a multi-tiered, hierarchical structure with elite research institutions at the top, and second-tier special purpose universities and institutes below with new teaching universities and polytechnics and colleges specializing in niche programs.

Colleges like CNC were never meant to be all things to all people, but they were meant to help students start in post-secondary education and find the path that they would like to follow. This government's policies have made it more difficult and more expensive to do that, and that's a shame.

In previous reports by this committee you've mentioned the seriousness of the skills shortage and the role that post-secondary education can play in solving that problem. But to date neither the surpluses nor your final reports have been enough to make meaningful change in the budget allocations for post-secondary education. In fact, the system is worse off.

In February 2009 we need to see far more decisive measures. Here are some priorities that we think would make a major difference for post-secondary education both in general and in this region.

(1) Make affordable public post-secondary education a major priority in the February 2009 provincial budget. We know there's a skills gap that we need to close; 73 percent of new jobs need some form of post-secondary education. Only 60 percent of the current workforce has some form of it. We know, as well, that our skills shortage can only be solved by investing more provincial dollars in post-secondary skills.

(2) Give institutions the funding necessary to improve program options as well as program content. Three-year budgets that change every year, along with FTE reallocation and outright clawbacks, do not help institutions plan. We need to ensure that post-secondary institutions have proper funding to provide the full range of program options that students need to complete their post-secondary education. With the Industry Training Authority now housed in the Advanced Education Ministry, we're looking for better funding for trades programs. I think that's a positive move. We wait to see the result of it.
[ Page 1813 ]

(3) As a specific target for better funding, the 2009 provincial budget should allocate an additional $200 million for post-secondary education. That would represent a 10 percent lift in the ministry's budget and would put it in the position to bring real per-student funding back to the level it was in 2001.

Finally, endorse the Canadian Federation of Students' call for tuition fee relief. I know Valentine was here earlier. The provincial CFS and the CNC student union have asked for a reduction in tuition fees, a system of non-repayable grants and lower interest rates for student loans. We support these calls.

Thanks for the opportunity to make this presentation, and I'd be glad to answer any questions.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): There's not very much time to ask a lot of questions. I did want you to just expand upon the cutting of this business incubator program. A lot of what we hear is about how important it is for entrepreneurship and new business, in light of the pine beetle falldown, to take advantage of that and provide the kind of entrepreneurial zeal that's necessary. So it seems to me very counterintuitive, to say the least, that that kind of a program would be chopped.

[1800]

G. Davison: As I understand it, it was purely a question of dollars and numbers of students in the class. It had been around for about ten years. As I said, it had just won an award earlier this year, but the number of students who were applying for it was less than it was before, and the college thought the dollars could be used better in a different way.

They have kept the continuing ed portion of BNG, but it was designed to run over several months and give students a chance to set up their business plans. It actually worked a lot with the business community. It was an excellent program. Hopefully, it will come back some time.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, Dr. Davison, we've heard your message. A good presentation. We're at the end of 15 minutes, so thanks very much.

We have the Central Interior Logging Association, Rick Publicover.

I think you know the drill. Fifteen minutes, and I'll give you the high sign at ten minutes.

R. Publicover: Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to present on behalf of the CILA on budget priorities for the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Our theme is not substantially different than what we presented last year, although we believe it's important that we re-emphasize our points in order that they form part of the spending priorities for the next coming year.

Just to give you a brief background on the Central Interior Logging Association, we represent loggers, log haulers and suppliers from 100 Mile north to the Northwest Territories, from the Alberta border over to the Hazeltons. We have approximately 200 members, with investments in the neighbourhood of $2.25 billion. We employ more people than the sawmilling and pulp sectors. Our members are community-based businesses. They hire locally, they invest locally, and they provide investment backbone for many of the small and regional communities.

The resource development in central and northern B.C. continues to drive the economy of B.C. We feel that prudent reinvestment by the province is needed in basically four key areas: diversifying and strengthening northern communities, investing in trades skill training and apprenticeship programs to attract new workers and improve the skill diversity of the current workforce, investing in highway and resource road infrastructure improvements and upgrading, and improving provincial services to rural and northern communities.

We have a vibrant and challenging northern economy. We see diversification and expansion of the northern economy fuelling increased revenues to the province.

Having said that, there are winners, and there are losers. We're all familiar with the things that are happening here in Prince George in terms of the airport, the university expansions and all those kinds of things, and we see diversity in Fort St. John. We also see the losers in terms of the challenges that Mackenzie and Fort St. James are facing with single-industry towns. So this dictates the need to diversify and expand our rural and northern communities.

The province needs to be involved to assist the rural communities and regional districts to develop strategic plans to diversify and expand their economies. This includes taking action to identify what issues, both at the community level and also the provincial perspective, need to resolve any taxation and any other impediments, such as infrastructure. I was listening to the comments regarding Highway 37 and all those kinds of things. We need to examine what needs to be done on a local basis and take that information to be able to develop strategies so that local communities can expand their economies.

The province needs to invest in resource-based trade skills and training and apprenticeship programs. The fellow before me identified that. We agree, and we see a three-pronged approach here.

First of all, increase skills training and apprenticeship program funding for agencies such the Industry Training Authority — also, of course, the colleges and universities — and increase pilot program funding for on-the-ground training initiatives such as the Industry Training Authority.

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The four logging associations have done quite a bit of research and implemented a number of strategies
[ Page 1814 ]
to look at how we attract new workers to a challenging industry these days. If you look, there may be a decline in the number of forest workers right now, over the last ten years, but we see an increasing requirement for skills and highly trained workers.

So we've been initiating, in partnership with a number of other organizations, putting a proposal to the Industry Training Authority to have a training program for logging equipment operators, from feller-buncher operators all the way through to loader operators. We're in the next stages in terms of developing the training curriculum, but we need to see more funding to be able to have these training programs on the ground to promote employment in our sector.

Also, we see that we need funding from the government for local trade fairs, in terms of showing the employment opportunities that are available and to attract workers from non-traditional sectors — such as women working in the forests, oil and gas, mining or wherever — as well as enhanced opportunities for first nations.

The third area that we see in terms of investment funding by the province is in highways and resource road upgrading. I'll just start with the highways.

In terms of the first one, the priority we see is upgrading the Cariboo connector. In our presentation last year we suggested that there be a ten-year window to complete the upgrading of that. We're now saying a nine-year window — keeping the feet to the fire.

We are pleased to see the partnership that the government has done in seeking funding from the federal government in terms of twinning of the bridges across the Fraser River, the scale relocation and a number of other projects. We're encouraged to see that. We want our fair share out west here in terms of federal dollars. That would take probably about 30 to 40 kilometres per year in terms of upgrading the Cariboo connector.

Second to that would be the upgrading of Highway 16 west. Even though we may have some reduced activity in terms of forestry right now, it will rebound. We will need the roads and bridges, etc., and all the traffic lanes to have efficient transportation — efficient movement of goods and people.

We see, as a priority, developing three lanes from Prince George to Vanderhoof, in alternating directions. What you would have is three lanes with a passing lane going west for a while and then switch it over so that you've got passing lanes coming from the west, so that we can increase the flow of traffic.

In addition to that, we see proceeding with bypasses around a number of communities, one in Quesnel and also the second in Burns Lake.

In the investment in road infrastructure, the second area would be resource roads. We have an emerging bioenergy industry that is coming on stream. We'll need increased infrastructure to accommodate that industry. As well, we have increased activity due to mining, oil and gas. Not only that, but we also have tourism and recreation use — all utilizing these roads. So we need added turnouts and some better alignment of roads, bridges and drainage structures. We're suggesting that $25 million is needed in this area.

We suggest that the funding come from current resource revenues. If we're getting revenues to the Crown from these resources, we should be reinvesting them back into the infrastructure as well as from the existing provincial budget surpluses.

The fourth area is improvement in northern, rural and major communities' residents' access to government services. What I mean by that is that the growth of our communities is contingent upon the lifestyle that people enjoy in these communities, if they have to travel for medical care or training or other things. Our society is so mobile today that they're likely to find a community where they can get these types of things and migrate to those. The jobs are out there.

[1810]

I think if the government establishes some of the remote diagnostic tools that are available in terms of video diagnostics…. I'm not medical, so don't quote me on that one. I think if we establish those as well as the training facilities, to enhance the training facilities….

What I'm looking at there is video conferencing. If I'm in Burns Lake and I can't drive three hours or two and a half or whatever it takes there, I could attend this hearing by video conference. I think it will expand the opportunity for people to attend regional meetings and also to train at home, which will increase productivity and reduce costs.

I'm suggesting that these video conferencing facilities be funded by the province in partnership with, I suggest, the colleges. Most local communities have a college located there, and I think that would be a great opportunity for that. There may be some unused space already available for that.

Also, from a government and a business perspective, I think we'll see reduced greenhouse gas emissions as a result if we're doing a lot of video conferencing. I know a lot of government people travel extensive distances to go to meetings, and we need to look at more efficient uses of our time and resources to be able to attend these meetings.

Just to recap, there are four areas of investments: investment in programs and initiatives to assist local communities to diversify their economies — what strategies they need to implement to look at other resource sectors; investment in recruitment and retention strategies for resource-based industries and skill training and apprenticeship programs for new workers to be trained in the north; investment in the Cariboo connector, Highway 16 and resource road upgrading; and lastly, improvement in timely access to local provincial-
[ Page 1815 ]
government services, including health care, higher education opportunities and training, as well as other services for northern communities and major centres.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Rick. Good presentation.

Questions?

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Rick. I'm interested in the bioenergy section in your presentation, particularly challenges around tenure and access to fibre. Who owns that wood lying on the ground, and how do we get at it? Have you been giving some thought to that? If you have, maybe you could enlighten us on the committee.

R. Publicover: Yes, we have been giving a lot of thought to that. We just recently made a presentation to the round table. We think that there probably needs to be a different form of tenure in terms of land managers that are looking at long-term tenure, such as a tree farm licence or community forest — that type of area-based tenure that is longer term. From that tenure, the focus would be to grow trees to put on market.

So that could be having different products. I'm getting long-winded to get to your answer here. That could be a variety of products, including bioenergy. So we're not constrained by current tenure holders and access to timber, but we're looking more strategically at how the fibre comes on to the market, increased market availability, which would also allow new entrants into the business. You probably need to have some tenure. A portion of the tenure would need to be allocated to emerging businesses so that they have got some security of fibre, but not at the level that we see today.

J. Rustad: Thank you for the presentation. I think the requests that you put in there are certainly good and noble requests. I just want to ask a budgetary question of you with regard to this. Given that the pot is only so large…. I suppose some people may want to expand the pot. Given that scenario, you're asking for improvements in basic health and education, as well as additional training, as well as capital investments.

Where would your priorities be? We have only so many dollars to spend. Are you suggesting that perhaps we should consider raising debt, or would you want to see the debt level maintained or dropped? How much would you want to see going into infrastructure? What about taxation, in terms of adjustment? I guess what I'm asking for…. It's great to have the ask, but I want to know, in your mind and in your organization's priorities, where that should be adjusted in terms of the global picture.

R. Publicover: Well, it's all a matter of balance. I hear that. Let's take medical. I think there are dollars that we can use more wisely in terms of some of the techniques that are available, so I don't think there are huge long-term costs.

[1815]

There may be some upfront costs that we may need to expend in the short term. Where I would be putting my major focus would be on infrastructure, in terms of getting the transportation networks that we need to carry the commodities and people of today. I think that's going to go in the long term into reducing our greenhouse gas emissions if we have more efficient transportation networks, so that's going to reduce our costs in the long term. That's where my priorities are.

I think, though, that we do need to invest some. We need to increase training. Otherwise, we're not going to have the people to fill the jobs. If we do those kinds of things, then hopefully, new business will be investing and we'll be generating new tax revenue through that.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Rick. I liked the tone of the presentation, and I can see you've worked at making some very positive suggestions. Can you give me a sense of the feeling of your members about the carbon tax? You haven't mentioned that in your brief.

R. Publicover: No, I didn't. We're definitely against it. We feel that for the forest industry there should be no carbon tax. For all the supply chain to produce green energy products and green forest products…. In order to encourage investment in that area, we think that there should be no carbon tax.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): That's pretty clear. Thanks.

R. Hawes (Chair): So where the budget requests or suggests that you tell us where carbon tax money should be spent, I'll take it, then, that you're saying that money should be spent back into the industry.

R. Publicover: That's right. Yes.

As we see it right now in terms of the carbon tax, it's supposed to be revenue-neutral. We see it as a huge…. We're a carbon-consuming industry. You can't change a John Deere skidder for a Volkswagen that's going to use less fuel to skid logs. So we need to….

J. Horgan: A long extension cord.

R. Publicover: That's right.

We think by encouraging investments producing green energy products…. That's the benefit of getting our forests back into productivity in terms of the mountain pine beetle–killed timber.
[ Page 1816 ]

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Rick. That's the end of the time we have. Very good presentation.

Next we have the College of New Caledonia. John Bowman and — he's back — Bruce Sutherland again.

Welcome back, Bruce.

J. Bowman: Bruce wears many hats in our communities.

R. Hawes (Chair): I think you probably heard what was said. Proceed with your presentation. When you get to ten minutes, I'll give you the high sign. If you choose to go on, that's fine too. I'll tell you again when you have two minutes left.

B. Sutherland: To begin with, we thank you for coming to Prince George. We appreciate the opportunity to share with you our thoughts regarding provincial funding for community colleges.

I think it's fair to say that 2008 has been an interesting year for post-secondary education in British Columbia. For example, we have seen the creation of five new universities and the continuing expansion of college programming in trades, health science programs and services for aboriginal learners. However, on a less positive note, the post-secondary education system also experienced a significant 2.6 percent reduction to provincial-based funding to colleges and universities.

For CNC, the impact was a reduction of $686,000 which, on top of an unavoidable cost increase totalling $1.2 million, greatly exacerbated our difficulties in achieving a balanced operating budget for the 2008-2009 year. Unfortunately, in order to cope with ever-higher costs and reduced revenues, our college, like others, was forced to suspend some instructional programs and reduce services.

It's important to realize that reducing an institution's expenditures in the short term is an expensive undertaking. The one-time costs associated with severance payments and/or early retirement incentives are almost as much as the cost of continuing a program or service for another year.

For example, in order to reduce our annual operating budget by $1.2 million for the 2008-09 year, our severance payments totalled nearly $1 million.

[1820]

These costs have virtually exhausted our rainy-day fund, and as a result, our overall financial situation is very tenuous. If the funding our college receives in 2009-10 does not increase, we're going to face a budget shortfall again next spring, and the college will have no options except to discontinue more instructional programs and services for students. So that's the bad news.

However, on occasions like this I think it's important not to dwell only on the difficulties but also to look ahead with optimism, to stress the positives and to work towards an exciting vision for the future.

Our provincial college system's fundamentals are very strong. Indeed, back in June the Minister of Advanced Education, Murray Coell, wrote to the college board chairs to "express appreciation for the vital role that community colleges play in the public post-secondary education system and to reaffirm the mandate of the college sector."

The minister's letter goes on to state that the contributions of the community colleges are particularly crucial in the context of current and future skills shortages. Colleges and institutes are the primary supplier of skilled workers for our economy. An estimated 42 percent of skill shortages are in occupations that require college training.

The past year has also seen the introduction of government letters of expectations, or GLEs for short, between the minister and each of the institutional boards. Amongst other things, the GLE outlines the government's goals and program priorities for the college sector. The GLE for 2008-09 states: "In 2004 government announced a plan to expand the size of the post-secondary education system. The goal was to ensure that any student with a 75 percent grade point average in high school has access to a university."

This goal led to substantial additional funding being provided to the university sector in the past few years, which enabled those institutions to increase the number of seats available in first- and second-year courses.

Regrettably, this expansion in the university sector, combined with a strengthening provincial economy from '04-08 and low unemployment levels, had a negative impact on community college enrolments.

At the College of New Caledonia we have watched our student registrations in university transfer programs decrease by 38 percent from the year 2003-04 to '07-08. This loss of university transfer students resulted in a reduction in tuition revenues of nearly $500,000 over the course of four years.

The GLE goes on to indicate: "Government now wishes to redirect its focus from general growth to targeted growth in high-priority areas as follows: health, skilled trades, graduate programs, aboriginal students, ABE, ASE and English-language training and other program areas in high demand to support the labour market."

At this point I'll turn it over to the president, John.

J. Bowman: There is some good news here from the college's perspective. In three of the first four priorities that Bruce just mentioned, we've seen significant targeted funding that has been provided over the last couple of years, and progress is being made.

CNC has been able to grow our student enrolments by more than 8 percent in FTE enrolment for the past two years in precisely those high-priority program areas. However, it is the last priority category — other program areas in high demand to support the labour market —
[ Page 1817 ]
that I'd like to focus attention on for the remainder of our presentation.

The GLE states: "The increased focus on labour market demand reflects the seriousness of the labour shortages that exist in some locations and occupations. In addressing this challenge, institutions will need to refocus existing financial resources towards these priority areas."

For the three small northern colleges — CNC, Northwestern Community College and Northern Lights College — refocusing existing financial resources is not an option. We don't offer much that is not captured under the heading of high-priority areas — namely, those that are either in high demand by students or by employers.

With regard to other program areas in high demand to support the labour market, our current reality in northern British Columbia is that there exists a serious demand-supply imbalance for technicians, technologists and engineers. These are jobs that require the specialized training and accreditation that the provincial colleges can provide.

[1825]

The north has underutilized human and community capacity that can be developed for these technical careers — namely, capacity amongst aboriginal people, capacity amongst workers who are in transition from one industry to another, and women.

The northern industry and education systems have experience in building human resource and training capacity through previous collaborations to develop and expand the supply of health sciences, construction and industrial tradesworkers in the north. We believe this can be done for other technical education areas as well.

Our strategy, however, must include (1) aggressive and unrelenting promotion of careers in technical fields; (2) thorough, planned preparation and transition of youth, aboriginal people and transitioning workers and women into the required science and technical education pathways; and (3) strategic, planned and well-resourced post-secondary education opportunities across the north that will be delivered through the three colleges and UNBC.

To be successful, this will also require strong industry, school district and post-secondary institution collaboration. It will also require post-secondary program and service planning strategies that adopt a pan-northern focus, not a college region focus; that incorporate the use of educational technology to support access and flexibility for learners; and that integrate and link secondary school students directly to college programs, as we do currently with our career technical centre model.

We also need relevant research upon which to make educational service and program decisions based on labour market needs in the north, and we are gathering that information as we speak.

Lastly, we need the support from the provincial government by (a) recognizing the need for technical training in the north; (b) supporting the collaborative ventures already underway; and (c) lastly and most importantly, providing the required funding resources for program and service implementation.

The College of New Caledonia, in collaboration with our post-secondary education and community partners, is proposing a major five-year initiative under the leadership of our northern B.C. technical education consortium. Our plan is to expand the delivery of technical training in the following areas: medical radiography, information technology, engineering technology, mining technician, and transportation and logistics, as well as other areas.

Over the next five years we are proposing the creation of 274 new technical training student spaces at a total estimated cost, after five years, to the province of $2.9 million annually. This proposal will also require one-time funding to support equipment and other related infrastructure of $5.9 million.

In closing, we aren't offering a long list of recommendations and proposals. We'd like to just focus on two this evening, specific to next year's provincial budget.

(1) Recognize the impact of government policy decisions and the impact on the provincial colleges. Allocate one-time funding to offset the labour adjustment costs that Bruce spoke about earlier — a million dollars in the past year.

(2) Support our northern technical education consortium plan for expanded technical training in the region, including the addition of 274 student spaces in key program areas over the next five years.

Thank you for your time and attention. We'd be pleased to try to answer any questions you may have.

R. Hawes (Chair): You've done extremely well with your time.

Questions?

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, gentlemen. I just caught the middle part of Dr. Davison's presentation, and we heard from CNC in Smithers yesterday and from colleges in Vancouver on Monday. I'm confused because I was in the Legislature when the Minister of Advanced Education said: "There were no cuts." He repeated that half a dozen times. Yet wherever I go to speak to administrators, they're telling me it was a 2.6 percent cut.

In your recommendation to acknowledge the reductions last March, would that be a confession, or would that be a restoration?

J. Bowman: The 2.6 percent reduction was made to the base grant a year ago, and then additional funds were added back in after that reduction was made. So we did receive, for example, additional funding to pay the
[ Page 1818 ]
costs of negotiated salary increases. We received additional funding, as I alluded to, for targeted programs in health and in trades, and I believe there were some other increases. But at the start there was $686,000 of our base funding taken off the top, and then these other things were added back in, which all come with additional accountability expectations as far as program delivery.

[1830]

Our challenge really was that we were reduced initially, and then we were given money back, but it had strings attached.

J. Rustad: Thank you for the presentation. It was very thoughtful. It also built on the presentations presented by the students as well as the faculty.

One thing that is very clear throughout my travels throughout the north, but particularly in CNC's service delivery area, is the critical role that CNC is playing in the small communities. In particular, the satellite campuses are providing opportunities in those communities for people to stay in place and train. The technical education consortium you're talking about — that is part of that strategy, if I'm right, with regards to those facilities within the communities.

J. Bowman: Yes.

J. Rustad: So I guess the question I have for you…. In particular, a lot of the smaller communities are more focused on the trades than they are on, say, first-year university transfer courses. How has the college been able to manage some of those needs within those small communities? What are you looking at in terms of some of the wait-lists and the demand levels in those communities?

I'm trying to get an idea, a sense, of what that demand is out there in those communities and how this request could help to meet that demand.

J. Bowman: Well, the demand in the regional communities, as you said, John, is very strong for trades and technical training in particular. I think we're just scratching the surface in terms of what could be delivered in places like Fort St. James and Burns Lake. We are, obviously, constrained by the resources that we have.

In the last three years we have seen a dramatic increase in funding that's been allocated to trades programs, in particular, to our smaller communities. I don't have wait-list information off the top of my head, but we're confident that the demand in those regional communities is going to remain there. We're getting a tremendous response from those communities to the programs that we're offering.

R. Austin: I have a couple of questions. What you're basically asking for — and correct me if I'm wrong — is that you would like to see these technical positions that you have identified become part of targeted funding. Is that correct?

J. Bowman: We weren't referring to it as targeted funding. We need it in our base on a continuing…. The targeted funds currently are not committed in the long term. We have to apply for them annually. That is not, certainly, the scenario that we're presenting.

R. Austin: Okay. You want long-term funding.

J. Bowman: We need long-term, ongoing funding.

R. Austin: Okay. My second question or clarification is…. You mention how there's been a huge reduction in university transfer courses. Is that because the major universities are now sort of competing…? My understanding used to be that the colleges sort of helped kids go from high school and do the first- and second-year university transfer courses as a way to figure out how to be successful at post-secondary education, and then they would go on to the major universities for third- and fourth-year courses.

Am I correct in saying that major universities are now encouraged to sort of steal those first- and second-year students out who would have gone to the college program, and that's why you're seeing such a reduction in university transfer students?

J. Bowman: That's part of it. We've seen in the last number of years a very significant reduction in the grade point average required to get into the provincial universities. They've lowered their entrance requirements so that they could fill up the additional capacity that they have in first year.

Traditionally, those less academically gifted graduates, if I can call them that, have come to the colleges to upgrade their abilities and to achieve success. We have lots of research that shows that the students who come to the college system first and then go on to the universities in third year do better than the direct entrants to the universities. We think it's a more cost-effective and more successful way to introduce and support broad access to university credit programming.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your time. That was a very good presentation.

Now we have the Faculty Association of UNBC. That would be Darwyn Coxson.

D. Coxson: I've got a couple of…. You could call them instructional items, or you could call them props. Either way, I'll hand them out to you. It keeps everybody's interest and gives me an opportunity to stand up in the middle of the presentation a few times.
[ Page 1819 ]

Thanks for inviting me to come here. I'm a professor in the ecosystem science and management program. If you want to shorten that, just think of me as a biology professor. Right now I'm wearing the hat of president of the UNBC faculty association as well.

[1835]

I've been at UNBC 15 years now. We're a couple of weeks into our fall term. I'm still really excited to be a faculty member there. It's just the greatest job on earth. I've got great colleagues and an excited classroom of students in front of me that I just rushed from this afternoon, actually, to get here.

They're very diverse in that classroom. This is a biology classroom. One of them might think that they're going to go on and they're going to be a biologist managing moose for the Ministry of Environment. The next one might have aspirations of being a medical doctor, in pre-med. The one beside her might be thinking of going to a biotech startup.

My class is full. The numbers on it…. We had to actually bump it up in size by a third because of enrolment demand for it. So it's an area that people are excited to get into. It's an area where there's a lot of economic demand in the province.

I'm excited about the contribution of UNBC and the contribution of my fellow faculty members.

I'm going to give you three examples. These are my props. One of them is one of my own students, a student by the name of David Radies. He was a graduate student at UNBC. He just got his master's this summer. He was looking for biodiversity patterns in the Robson Valley. He had random points, and he was bushwhacking through devil's club and doing all sorts of measurements. He stumbled on a set of really neat sites that we didn't know about before — sites that had big 1,500-year-old cedar trees. The trees are five metres across. They'd fill the front of this room.

One of these has really captured the public's imagination. Local community groups have built a trail through it. Several forest companies that previously had it in a logging plan have now bought into supporting the trail. We've got faculty in environmental planning, and outdoor recreation and tourism doing tourist counts. Shirley Bond was very helpful in getting some access roads put into it for us.

This one site — it's called the Ancient Forest Trail — we now suspect could probably have the potential of the old-growth boardwalk in Revelstoke National Park. The potential is there for it to be an attraction of 50,000 to 60,000 people through the region. Even in the short term we could see that easily going to 10,000 people a year.

This is a development facilitated by a university student that has had wide buy-in by the community. I think it's an alternative economic development.

This is my first prop. It's a large one, but this is one of my daughter, actually, on snowshoes in front of one of the trees. It really captures people's imaginations, and it's sort of an alternative economic development that has arisen fortuitously. I don't think this was anticipated at the start. The project's boundaries were far more narrowly defined. It was Forest Service program funding. So that is my first example.

My second example is another graduate student, again, just down the hall from where I am. He's involved with firms that are putting in wind energy proposals — the big windmills, if you've been down by Pincher Creek in Alberta, that are just enormous. From a distance they look like they're rotating very slowly, but if you're a bird trying to fly between them, it could be a bit of a job ducking around them. The big environmental concern has been: what are these going to do to bird populations? You place these in the windiest spots, which in northeastern B.C. are where the migration routes for all of the birds are.

Phil Thomas has been backpacking portable radar systems to the tops of these mountains. He's up there in March when it's still blowing and they're having trouble getting their generator going. They're mapping the pathways for bird migrations, and they're assessing the environmental impacts of alternative energy development. That's my second sort of snapshot. I have a little brochure on that. You can keep the brochure, and keep the other photo, if you want it, but I've only got one of those.

My third snapshot is an interesting one too. Around Prince George there are a lot of dead pine trees, and the fellow in the lab next to me, another graduate student by the name of Sorin Pasca, sort of looked at those pine trees and thought: well, is there another use we can make of them? They don't have a very long shelf life. For timber products they've got a few years, and then they're gone. He's been thinking: well, can we do some sort of alternative material for them?

I'll show you what he's come up with here. When you look at this now, this could be on your bathroom vanity; it could be a floor or shelving. It's a composite wood product made of concrete and wood chips. Normally concrete and wood don't mix. They tend to not go together well, but he's come up with a formula for doing it. This is something that we think has enormous commercialization potential.

All around me I'm surrounded by innovation, surrounded by things that have at their base, perhaps, an academic question or a theoretical question, but there are a lot of spinoffs. I see that UNBC has a lot of potential for being a catalyst for change in our society.

[1840]

On the other hand, if you've been reading the Prince George Citizen over the last few years, UNBC has made it into the headlines a few times, and not always for these sorts of stories. There have been a few challenges we've had in the last few years.
[ Page 1820 ]

A year ago the faculty association and the university worked together to develop an early retirement and voluntary buyout package. The university was projecting serious budget deficits, and we lost ten faculty positions to that. These were all senior people with experience, with expertise. We're a young faculty. We don't have a lot of full professors. Losing those has really hurt. It saved a lot of dollars, but it has really hurt our programs. Those were the people who mentored students and younger faculty.

The library went from having four information technology persons to one. I mean, the library and information is just the heart of the institution. If you log onto our library computer system at 8:30 in the morning, it just crashes. It's incredibly sluggish. It can take 20 minutes to get a prompt up.

We have an inventory of air photos that I use a lot. Last summer the server for that crashed, and it's still down. We don't have the resources to fix it. We're seeing lots of incremental pressures — just small things, but we're really struggling with the resources to fix them.

The library accessions. If I bought a new book for my course a year ago, it's still in the box waiting to be filed. We're over a year behind in putting accessions back into the catalogues, onto the shelves. Again, we're just so short of people in our library.

Because I'm a biologist that often works with foresters, I'm in a lot of meetings with them, and I do work on partial cutting and alternative harvest practices. We often chat after those meetings — you know: "Well, what do you think is really valuable at UNBC, and what should we be doing to help you?"

One of the suggestions I often get is: "Well, the most valuable thing I see there is the co-op program, where one of your third-year students comes and works with us for six months, and then they go back and complete their education." Yes, it extends the amount of time it takes for a student to get a degree, but it really gives them a…. They hit the ground running when they graduate because they've got those links into industry, and a lot of them have job offers already.

A year ago we had to cut our co-op program to save the positions that were there, and it has come back now in an unfunded way and is really sort of crippled at the moment. And that was a real shame, because that was one where we were really networked to the community.

It has been puzzling to me, this change. I mean, it's sort of a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty. If I look over, say, 2001 to 2008, we certainly had a tremendous expansion of our infrastructure at the campus. We've got the Charles Jago Sport Centre, which is a wonderful facility for students; a new Teaching and Learning building, which again has accommodated the large increase in student demand over that time period.

We've had about a 50 percent increase in funding since 2001, and for that I'm very thankful. It's helped us meet our mandate here. On the other hand, if you use the consumer price index, what would have cost you $100 to buy in 2001 might cost you $112, $115 now. If you use some of the higher-education price lists, it might cost you $130, $140. So our growth in the actual value of the dollars…. I think it's easily shown that it's balanced by our increase in cost. In fact, our administration's projections are that we're way behind the ball there.

I just ordered, yesterday, a tank of enriched nitrogen gas. It's a heavy isotope that we use in our research. This is the third year in a row I've ordered it. Three years ago it cost me about $410, two years ago it was up to about $520, and this year it's up to about $640.

The cost of a lot of these science-intensive programs has really escalated. UNBC, compared to the other major universities, has a disproportionately heavy student balance in science programs, in health programs, where the costs for students are very high. So there are pressures that I see in the ranks. On the other hand, there are really exciting things I see happening around me.

So what would I recommend to you? I'm right at the closing point there. Well, this past year there was the 2.6 percent clawback, and yes, we're still getting more funding than we were before, but it was really disruptive in terms of planning for future managed growth of the institution.

New faculty members. They're not like a tap. You just can't open it up and have them appear. It's a two- or three-year process to get them in.

[1845]

As with other parts of government, there's a lot of value in having that long-term commitment to stable funding. Personally, I think I'd rather have three years' commitment that is honoured, even if it's a lower dollar value, than a projected increase that doesn't materialize, because it's very disruptive to students that are planning to enter programs and to faculty. We've had to suspend several searches for faculty, for hirings, and it's a competitive market out there.

One of my colleagues that took the buyout program in biology…. He took his big cheque with his severance package here and immediately moved on and started teaching at the University of Alberta. He wasn't out of the market very long at all. He was one of our best teachers in the first- and second-year courses. It was a real loss to us.

Inflationary costs. We have to have some way of thinking about those. The cost pressures in post-secondary education are severe.

The base operating grants. If we could somehow tie those to the rate of inflation, that would be far more valuable than one-off funding for special initiatives in terms of managing the system. If we're creating new, mandated student spaces, try to fully fund them, particularly reflecting what type of spaces they are, as we just heard in the prior presentation.

Graduate students are really critical to the post-secondary sector. They're sort of that interface between
[ Page 1821 ]
students, between knowledge creation, between economic development, and I'm really struggling to recruit graduate students. You know, I can get a $10,000 provincial post-graduate scholarship, but in Ontario, in Alberta that's typically $25,000 or more. If I had one thing I would really hold out for you, it's: increase the provincial graduate scholarship program from $10,000 to $25,000, and increase the number of graduate scholarships as well.

I'm really excited about what we're doing. There are a lot of really neat things happening, but we have been facing, at our institution, serious budget pressures, and it's really reflected in the stress on my fellow faculty members. I got a quote today from one of the librarians. She said: "I'd say that for a number of us, the majority of time is spent with crisis management, not project management."

The students don't see that, but as staff, as faculty, we're reactive a lot of the time. A computer crashes, a course has a problem, so we spend a lot of time trying to fix things. You're not looking where you're going as much now. You don't notice that for a year or two, but it catches up to you.

Those are my comments. The provincial faculty association group — CUFABC, the Confederation of University Faculty Associations — will be providing you with a brief summarizing some of the recommendations relative to funding, but I wanted to give you just a snapshot from the classrooms at UNBC.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It's easy to see you are pretty excited about what you do, and I can understand why your classrooms are growing in your particular case.

If there are questions.

J. Horgan: It's really not a question. I mean, we will get the data from your governing body. But I think that I speak for everyone when I say that anecdotal stories for people from away help us better understand what's going on in your community, and I really, really appreciated that presentation. Thanks very much.

J. Rustad: Actually, I just want to echo the comments, particularly about the advancements in the research side that are happening up at the university. It's something that we are very proud of.

The examples that you brought here today, particularly of products like that that are made out of what's considered to be a waste product at this stage, could potentially revolutionize the construction industry. It's a great advancement, and there's no question that the university here has made a huge impact in the north as well as a huge impact for many, many lives. So thank you for the work that you're doing.

D. Coxson: I'm replacing my kitchen counter and hoping to get some of that stuff. You can cut it, and you can drill it, but it's like concrete.

R. Hawes (Chair): I'm afraid it would be awfully costly, and I don't want my wife to see it.

Thank you very, very much for your presentation.

Michael Kerr and Tracey Law are going to make a presentation.

[1850]

In your presentation I'll let you know when you're at ten minutes. Then, if you want to go further that's fine, but I'll let you know when you have two minutes left. Otherwise, we'll have time left at the end for questions.

M. Kerr: Thank you very much, Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen. I am Michael Kerr. I am employed in the technology sector, and I come to you to present for the fifth time. In the past I have presented for the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. This time I come as an individual. I can be me for a change.

With me today is Tracey Law, past president of the Prince George day care association. She'll answer the tough questions.

T. Law: I'm ready.

M. Kerr: I do travel through the north for my work, and therefore my comments are based on what I see as an individual throughout the north. Key points to be made today are an effort to balance the challenge of reducing debt costs with the sensitivity of the need to provide a social framework necessary to build and maintain the people in our great province.

Financial gains for the province can come through cost savings or investments into strategic investments for revenue generation. As such, there are a few key points and suggestions to the panel.

First, debt reduction is still a top priority. Maintaining 50 percent of all surplus revenues to pay down the debt is critical for the future and must be encouraged.

The second is education and skill development. Support for the future of the north depends on the programs developed today with a vision for future needs of the economy. We must balance that with the type of social framework that we hope to achieve. Such a framework must include supporting aboriginal development and multiculturalism.

Subpoints. Improving training of aboriginal workers. Investments for programs that will foster education via training where aboriginals live must be encouraged. Whether increased development of the Trade Routes trailer or video training, a means to allow better access to opportunities is recommended.
[ Page 1822 ]

The second is fuel costs. Distances, especially in the north, are becoming prohibitive for students to travel to their institute of choice, and even to commute. Given that students do not generally have vast resources to afford any additional costs, we're now pricing northern students out of the skills acquisition market. Some northern allowances or tax credits are needed to ensure we have full participation in education from those that want to better themselves.

Next point, training tax credits for business. The federal tax credit for business, for training people within their businesses, has been well taken up, and this incentive that I've recommended needs to be maintained and expanded at both the federal and provincial levels.

Next point, book tax credit. I'm somebody who used to teach part-time at UNBC. The textbooks are getting absolutely outrageous in cost. What it's doing is limiting the courses that students can take. It's either eat or get your textbook. We can't do this, so we need to encourage knowledge development in the students by having some sort of tax credit.

Next, a mechanical engineering program is needed in the north. With the opening of the Prince Rupert port, mining exploration reaching over $126 million in the northwest, mining construction estimated at over $8 billion this year, oil and gas exploration hitting new all-time highs and rapid growth of the bioenergy sector, many firms are desperate for mechanical engineers for projects. There are approximately 40 to 60 co-op engineers from UBC at any given time working in northern B.C. UBC programs are already full, and they can't meet what the demand is in the Lower Mainland, let alone meet what we need.

[1855]

It is also recognized that in the next five years approximately 250 engineers will be retiring in northern B.C., and replacements are needed. This is the single largest limit to economic growth of the economy that is seen in the near future. This will be as large a crisis as the doctor shortage seen just last decade was.

I recommend that the government stage in a northern mechanical engineering program, leveraging the business investment that is available. Models of implementation to consider include the Lakehead University linkage with University of Toronto or even a model such as the medical program that was started here and that was proven very successful.

Next, day care. Day care represents the grass roots of our economy. The workers need accessible and affordable day care in order to go to work. Support, therefore, to provide equality between home day care and group day care is needed. Currently the two types of centres are treated differently, which not only creates issues for home centres run as professional businesses but also creates problems for the workforce. That is, workers that want to work are not able to work due to the lack of space available at affordable prices.

How can we support that? First off, the increase in fuel costs has had a tremendous effect on those businesses. Those businesses are forced to absorb the fuel cost increases that we have seen recently. The costs cannot be borne by their clients, who are also struggling to make ends meet. As such, a proposal is for an exemption from the carbon tax to licensed centres in order to provide adequate care.

We also need to understand that they need that because most centres are trying to do some sort of educational programming, and educational programming requires them to go to places like museums and education centres. So we're restricting their ability to have programs.

Car seats. The implementation of the recent car seat law has had a tremendous effect, again, on day care centres as well as on camps in order to provide good, adequate care and educational development. As a matter of fact, most camps and day cares are running in a range of about $100 up to about $1,200 just in car seat bills to meet the regulation. With that, they can only get a basic business tax write-off. They do need more, so I propose that registered camps and day care centres be allowed to claim up to 50 percent of the costs via direct credit through the ministry for costs of car seats for the normal operation of the business.

The next area we need to support is in bioenergy. The European Union has set targets of 20 percent bioenergy power in Europe by 2020, and they have no ready means available to produce or access such volumes of fibre. B.C. is the source they look to. In terms of capturing this biomass opportunity, there are a few key investments that can and should be made.

We first need to invest in the strategic interdepartmental management of biomass and bioenergy. The main problem there is that it seems to fall between a lot of the B.C. ministries. It's kind of a new advent. It's not really energy, and it's not really forestry, and the two aren't quite connecting. Any way that we can do that and have the funds leveraged such that we're not competing against each other is perfect.

We need to continue to invest in bioenergy research with immediate benefits. That includes our research and development into pellet optimization and transportation infrastructure. We need to invest in the commercial and industrial uptake of biomass within B.C., such as the development of small, local utilities to relieve B.C.'s reliance on power from diesel generation in places where that is in effect.

Last but not least is the access to fibre. That is an issue that I understand is currently being looked at.

The next area. Create revenue to enhance the surplus. I'm encouraged that the B.C. economy is holding steady
[ Page 1823 ]
and generating revenues while our U.S. neighbours are struggling. This is a clear indication that we have employed a solid diversification strategy in our markets and products delivered globally.

[1900]

In order to maintain this end, we must continue to generate revenues from investment and from bringing in dollars to our economy. A closed economy will fail, as we have started to see in the U.S.

With that in mind, there are two investments that need to be prepared for to meet these challenges.

The electrification of Highway 37. Demand for mining products is inevitable, and B.C. needs to be ready to invest at the time that the mining sector is ready to open up the mines. Several projects are already ongoing in the environmental assessment stage.

Prince Rupert phase 2. At this point, although the U.S. is in a bit of a downturn, we know that will come back, and there will be a need for more containerization. In order to be ready at the time that it is needed, we need to start planning the environmental reviews for phase 2. Some has been done, but we need to keep the course. Anticipated demand for the capacity is good for the north, as it opens up manufacturing possibilities and value-added industries for our resources to a ready market.

In conclusion, I'm encouraged that this committee is not simply a platitude. I have seen changes coming out of this, and I thank you for that. I thank you for listening and for your time.

Just to recap. The key points that I want to bring forward are: reduce the debt, and invest in education and the environment through our biomass and logistical resources. Do this while maintaining commitments to the current health strategy and other initiatives, and we should have a good path forward.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Michael. With that, we'll open up for questions.

R. Lee: I want to clarify the number on page 3 on the mechanical engineering programs in the north. You mentioned mining construction estimated at over a billion dollars this year.

M. Kerr: Yeah, it has probably changed from the number that I got.

Yes, at the northern B.C. mining conference, which was held in Smithers this spring, that was the number that was bashed around. I believe it might be a little lower right now, but the estimates are in the billions.

R. Lee: I think probably the mining production is around that number.

M. Kerr: Mining production?

R. Lee: Yeah, but not the construction itself.

M. Kerr: There are estimates of 22 projects in the northwest. Just the construction could be in that range, yes, if they all go through.

J. Rustad: I just want to make one quick comment and one question. With regards to Highway 37 electrification and the Port of Prince Rupert. As chair of the northern caucus, that's something we've recognized. Those are our top two priorities, and we've maintained that for the last three years. We see both of those as critical to the development of the entire north, not just for those corridors.

It's interesting, your comments on bioenergy. I guess the question I want to ask you is: do you see these recommendations developing into Prince George and the University of Northern British Columbia kind of being a hub or a centre for research and development of potential bioenergy technologies? Is that what you're suggesting, because of it being in the heart of the forest industry?

M. Kerr: Most definitely, but that's not at the exclusion of UBC. There is some very good work going on there as well. We are recognized internationally, as this should be the centre for that. Last time I presented in Europe at one of the conferences, that's what they saw.

Yes, in terms of the forestry and the fibre side, definitely. But that's not at the exclusion of some of the ethanol development that's already going on.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I remember the Prince George Chamber of Commerce taking some resolutions forward to your provincial body on child care, and I think you probably had some influence there.

I wanted to give you an opportunity to expand a little bit more on page 4, where you talk about "support for access without penalizing the business is a must to help contribute to our workforce needs."

Maybe you could explain that. I think your resolution made very clear the economic force that effective, affordable child care is for enabling the growth of the workforce. I understand that, but I just wanted a clarification of that point.

M. Kerr: I'll divert to Tracey on that.

T. Law: You wanted to know specifically what else you guys can do to support….

[1905]

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): What did you mean by support for access without penalizing the business? Maybe you could expand on that. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.
[ Page 1824 ]

T. Law: Right now there are grants out there; there are subsidies out there to help these parents pay for child care. Right now the difference between group cares and, say, family child cares that are operating at a very professional level…. The difference in funding is almost three times different for the group centres versus the family child care centres.

I run a family child care centre, and I get to hang out with the girls who run group. They get so much more. It's so hard for family child cares to even keep up, to hold the bar the same.

What we're proposing is that it should just all be the same funding. I know we only get seven children and they get 30, but they shouldn't…. We only get anywhere from a dollar to $4 in funding per child, depending on the age and stage of the children. They get as much as three times as much. It would just help alleviate a lot of the costs. This year alone our costs in family child care have risen big time. They've gone from an average of $25 a day to almost $40. That's really hard for a lot of parents to manage, and that's just to pay the bills.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): So if that were to take place, in your view more people would come forward and start family child care centres.

T. Law: Yes. Right now I operate at a deficit, but I have a partner who comes in and tops up those bills.

R. Hawes (Chair): So to be absolutely clear, you're talking about licence-not-required…. A family day care is registered but licence-not-required. Is that…?

T. Law: No. I have to beat to the same drums that the group centres do.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay.

M. Kerr: With that, the costs can't be offset. When you talk variable costs such as fuel and car seats, that can't be immediately taken from their clients.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. Hopefully, you'll see some success on your suggestions.

School district 57, with Lyn Hall, Sharel Warrington and Bryan Mix. As you know, I'll let you know when you get to ten minutes, if you go that far. If you go beyond, that's fine too. I'll let you know when you have two minutes.

S. Warrington: Before I begin, I'd just like to take a moment, if you don't mind, to introduce our team. We have Bryan Mix, our secretary-treasurer, who will answer questions for you at the end of the presentation, and Lyn Hall, the chair of our board, who will also help with questions if needed. I would also like to recognize that in our audience we have Brian Pepper, our superintendent, who is here; and our trustees, Trustee Michelle Marrelli and Trustee Roxanne Ricard, both present today. I'll now begin our presentation.

First of all, I want to thank you very much for providing us with this opportunity to talk to you about the funding for public education.

There are five points that we will address this evening. First, the government's goals and the role of government and boards of education in working to achieve these goals. Second, the expanded mandate of boards of education and the need for adequate, predictable funding to achieve it. Third, the need for additional dedicated funding to assist boards of education in improving academic achievement and graduation rates among our aboriginal students. Fourth, the limitations of current and proposed government spending for public education to sustain and grow programs and services necessary to meet the current and future needs of all students. Finally, our recommendations regarding the provincial budget and fiscal policy for the coming year.

Regarding the government's goals and the role of government and boards of education in working to achieve these goals. The provincial government's 2008-09 to 2010-11 strategic plan outlined five goals.

[1910]

Two of them are directly related to education. First, make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent, and second, lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness.

Notwithstanding the challenge that these goals impose, it is the role of both government and boards of education to work to achieve them. In the simplest of terms, through the Ministry of Education, government provides the funding and direction so that the boards of education can provide the programs and services. It is this co-governance model that will enable us to work to meet the objectives.

Boards of education are not only charged with the responsibility to work to achieve the goal of being the best-educated, most literate, healthy and fit jurisdiction on the continent, but are also charged with an expanded mandate that has moved our responsibilities and our obligations from K-to-12 students to students of any age. The financial support from the provincial government must be there to ensure that the success for all and the success for one child at a time become a reality. In stating this, it must be understood that boards of education are completely reliant on government for the funding of their programs.

Secondly, I would like to speak about the need for additional dedicated funding to assist boards of education in improving academic achievement and graduation rates among aboriginal students. A major concern for public education is the educational success of our aboriginal students.
[ Page 1825 ]

In the past year our board embarked on an evaluation of our aboriginal education programs through the appointment of an aboriginal education task force. Through an extensive public consultation process, 11 recommendations were developed and adopted by the board and subsequently supported by the local Aboriginal Education Board.

We believe that the implementation of these recommendations will improve the academic achievement and graduation rates of aboriginal students in our district. However, dedicated resources above the aboriginal-targeted grants must be identified and provided if we are to meet the goals set in our aboriginal education task force report.

We firmly believe that government must support boards of education in implementing these initiatives and that the additional funding required for these initiatives must come from government. Boards do not have an ever-expanding capacity to take on new challenges. Currently 92 percent of our school budget is spent on employee salaries and benefits, student transportation and the utilities that provide heat and light to our buildings.

The other 8 percent has to pay for teaching and learning resources, supplies and services that are used to ensure that our buildings are operable and maintained, essential equipment that needs to be replaced, and professional development to ensure that our teachers and staff are current in their thinking and practice.

Any new unfunded initiative works against continuing current programming. To ensure a continuation of the current and future service levels, boards must have adequate, predictable and sustainable funding.

Our next point is the expanded mandate for boards of education and the need for adequate, predictable funding to achieve it. The expanded mandate of boards of education must be acknowledged in the funding formula if it is to succeed.

The 30 minutes of daily physical activity; the StrongStart expansion; the imposition of district literacy plans; the education guarantee for adult learners; the early learning agenda, including any implementation of full-day kindergarten and service to three- and four-year-old children — these are all programs that boards of education are expected to embrace and promote. However, there has not been any indication from government as to how these programs will be funded.

[1915]

That takes us to our fourth point, the limitations of current and proposed government spending for education to sustain and grow programs and services necessary to meet the current and future needs of all students. The preliminary budget of school district 57 this year, 2008-2009, expends $4.3 million more than is provided by provincial or other revenue.

The budget has been balanced by using an operating surplus that has been gathered in prior years. This surplus was achieved through careful moderating of expenditures and strict cost control by all. It is quite apparent to us that if funding for public education stays the same, there will soon have to be unpopular and essential program cuts in district operations.

What does that mean? What does all this mean? Can we continue to sustain current programs and services under the current funding envelope? Can we meet the expectations of our expanded mandate? Can we develop new programs? Can we provide additional support to students at risk and for other areas of need?

Yes, it can be argued that education funding has increased. But so has inflation, and most importantly, so has the responsibility of boards of education to deliver the much-needed services that will ensure success for all and success for each student. Boards of education support the government goals of making B.C. the best-educated, most literate, healthy and fit jurisdiction on the continent. But we need government to provide the funding that will enable us to do our job.

Is there evidence that this support is forthcoming? I fear not. The total operating budget for all school districts for the year 2009-2010 and beyond is fixed at $4.5 billion and shows no projected increase. The Minister of Education continues to promote the idea that government is providing more money per student while student enrolment is declining in almost all the school districts, the implication being that new programs are affordable within the current envelope.

We would contend that any opportunity for this has been overridden by government-negotiated salary increases, legislated lower class sizes, unprecedented increases in the costs of fuel and utilities, general inflationary increases in other supplies and services, and the imposition of the carbon tax — a tax that has been purported to be revenue-neutral to government but that, in reality, is a direct and expanding cost to local governments and boards.

A review of the provincial government's fiscal plan through 2010-2011 for education does not indicate any funds for any of the new initiatives. In fact, indications are that it is not enough to continue current programming. Our board firmly believes that everything that government needs to achieve is totally reliant on a public education environment that is properly supported through adequate and sustainable funding.

We believe that education is not given the priority it should in provincial spending. In fact, the predicted budget surplus of $150 million for the next two fiscal periods will be acquired at the expense of underfunding education.

Finally, our recommendation. Our board shares the belief that boards of education are responsible for providing educational opportunities that develop the most literate, well-educated citizens capable of meeting the
[ Page 1826 ]
challenges of the 21st century, citizens who will contribute to and grow both a strong provincial economy and a healthy social structure.

[1920]

To meet these responsibilities, boards of education must have funding support that is predictable; that provides for sustainable planning for all programs and services; that supports new educational initiatives, innovation and creative educational opportunities; that addresses inflationary pressures; and that addresses the challenges of our time.

We have provided and communicated, actually, our concerns to the Ministers of Education and Finance regarding various aspects of funding for public education over the course of this past year, and we have provided copies of these correspondences with this written piece of our presentation. We've also provided for you our Aboriginal Education Task Force, complete with appendices.

We're open to any questions you might have.

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

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for a very clear and forceful presentation. I think, though, that you are uniquely positioned here as a city, where you have one of the sitting MLAs as the Minister of Education — indeed, a former chair of the school board here.

I'm familiar with what you accurately report as the reaction thus far, but surely you are in a position, perhaps better than most, to influence the kinds of decisions the minister might make. What has been her reaction to the presentation and representations that you've made?

L. Hall: Well, I'm not certain that we have an opportunity to better influence the minister than anybody else. She certainly is aware of what our district's challenges are. We meet continuously not only with the minister but with our other two MLA representatives. I think that for the most part, the minister understands the direction that the board has taken and understands what we've had to do over the past three or four years, really since 2001, in trying to manage to operate and sustain our programming.

I think that we have the ear of the minister, and I think that we have the ear of the MLAs. But we certainly aren't in a better position than any other district in the province, I don't believe.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I guess, given what you've said on page 6 about the cost pressures…. I think that's a very accurate list: negotiated salary increases, legislated lower class sizes, increases in fuel costs, the carbon tax. Are you saying that there has been no response at all from the minister when you raised these issues?

L. Hall: No, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that we have had an opportunity to talk to the minister and the MLAs about our concerns not only through our own board but also through our provincial organization, the BCSTA. We have had that opportunity, and they're well aware, as is the Minister of Finance, particularly around the carbon tax issue and our transportation cost issue.

We've had communication with those parties, and we are currently waiting to get a response, specifically around the carbon tax issue and our transportation cost issue.

J. Rustad: Having been rather intimate with the school board for three years, I just have a couple of questions, particularly around the carbon footprint for school districts and the opportunities to perhaps reduce them. I know that we went through quite a program of maintenance and upgrades over the years, which has significantly reduced the costs.

Bryan, I just want to commend you and certainly the staff in terms of those efforts, because I know it has been a great benefit in helping meet some of those financial challenges.

The question I have is around the new school at Duchess Park, as well as any other upgrades that you may be considering — whether or not that new facility that is being built here is going to be able to take advantage of any alternative energy types of opportunities.

I know that the city is looking at a community energy system, which is going to be available in that area. Is that something that the school district is looking at partnering with? That could be a way of significantly reducing some of the natural gas uses that you currently have and that you will have with the new facility within the city limits themselves.

B. Mix: The new school at Duchess Park is…. One of the conditions of building this school…. In February, when the Premier announced that new school construction or new government buildings would have to have LEED gold certification…. Our plan at that time was to have LEED silver or equivalent status.

[1925]

So in the throne speech, when the Premier indicated that there would be a requirement to have LEED gold– certified status, we changed the scope of the project. Our method of procurement was a design-build basis. We did an amendment to the RFP. We are very aggressively seeking to get LEED gold status.

At the present time we've got, on paper, enough points. But it's a very detailed and costly exercise to achieve that, and we won't know till the year after the building is actually in operation whether we achieved that or not.

To answer the question about alternative fuel sources, the building will be heated geothermally. It's probably
[ Page 1827 ]
the first major building in Prince George, and we're quite excited about that. The whole initiative of the carbon footprint and the LEED exercise is going to probably, for this particular school, make it one of the most efficient in energy design and fuel efficiency in the province. We're quite excited about that.

In respect to other buildings, we have a very aggressive program to alter or change our heating systems in our buildings. We spend well over a million dollars a year in upgrading our heating systems. We have a program, and over the next the ten years we'll continue to do that. So we're very conscious.

In fact, the whole energy and the whole issue about the carbon tax…. In our professional development for our maintenance department we have taken a leadership role. We have sent our management to make sure that they understand, through the Canadian Green Building Council, exactly what it means — those sorts of things. We feel we are in pretty good shape to provide leadership to the people who work in our buildings, maintain our buildings and really occupy our buildings — that we can be in a leadership position.

I hope I've answered the question.

R. Hawes (Chair): Your presentation is pretty clear to us, so thank you for taking the time to come and present it.

Next we have the district of Vanderhoof and Mayor Len Fox.

Welcome, Your Worship.

L. Fox: Len will be fine.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, we've got to start with the formal part first, though.

As you know, there's 15 minutes. I'll give you the high sign at ten, and if you want to keep going, that's fine, but I'll let you know when you have two left.

L. Fox: Firstly, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here. It's refreshing to see a standing committee doing something. In my tenure as an MLA I sat on three of them, and we never did anything.

R. Hawes (Chair): That's quite a refreshing admission.

L. Fox: Yeah. So I'm pleased to see you out listening to the people of the province.

As a mayor of a small community, there are many challenges being faced currently. In ten minutes there's no way I can articulate those, so I've chosen to concentrate on an area that is extremely frustrating in the management of a small community.

You will be aware that small communities in the north and throughout the rural parts of the province all have specific challenges today. Certainly, we in Vanderhoof, being in the hotbed of the pine beetle, have even more challenges than many.

We have been very privileged to have achieved a significant number of dollars from the provincial government programs and the federal government programs over the course of the last four or five years, which are enabling us to diversify our economy and become less dependent on forest-related jobs.

With that come a number of challenges. Before I go into those, I'd like to talk a little bit about how our community has benefited from the Northern Trust. The Northern Trust has been a very effective low-cost delivery agent for a significant amount of dollars that have flowed into our community. We have seen just a tremendous boost from those dollars that enabled us to take on projects and initiatives that we would not have been able to do without that assistance.

[1930]

I guess the upshot of my comment is…. I know that Janine North and Bruce Sutherland made a presentation to you earlier. I and my whole community wholeheartedly support the mandate of the trust being expanded and more dollars being placed into it. You could not find a more efficient way to handle tax dollars and a more credible way to deliver it than through an agency like the Northern Trust.

With that little sales pitch, then, I'll go into some of the complications that we have as small communities. Actually, thanks to the Northern Trust, we've been able to overcome some of this. But one major challenge that a small community has is that it cannot second-guess what kinds of prerequisites are going to be placed on government initiatives and where the emphasis of government funds is going to be identified and then delivered.

One of the major challenges, again, is the fact that oftentimes the time frame between the announcement and the actual closure of the funding application time frame is too short. We do not have the resources to go out and immediately identify how we can access those funds in a credible way within our communities.

The time frame needs to be lengthened so that we can have a credible application, along with exploring other opportunities for joint funding and leveraging that money. Currently many time frames don't give us that opportunity, and we're having a challenge to try to identify the exact cost of an initiative as well as where we could get the other funding from.

So that would be No. 1. Number 2 — and I'm only paraphrasing; I'm not going to read all this out, in the interest of time — is extending the project time frames for completion. Let me give you an example that I'm working on with the Solicitor General right now.

About two weeks ago we were given $1.8 million for a diking project in our community. The deadline for completion is March 31 of next year. We will be in frost
[ Page 1828 ]
conditions by the end of the month. Before we can even get the engineering and design done, we also have to do some lengthy negotiations with some private property owners in order to do it. Those have been started, but there's no way we can get that done and the engineering done in order to have any impact on the project before the frost hits, yet we're supposed to complete it by March 31.

Now, the problem — and the minister spelled it out to me when I spoke to him yesterday — is that it's not so much a provincial problem. It's more a federal problem, because it's a joint program between the federal government and the province. I understand the fact that there may be some ways that we might be able to get around it legally, but it would really help in negotiations with the feds. It's becoming more and more evident as they're playing a larger role in the joint infrastructure program and putting more onuses on environmental assessments that really delay projects.

What happens when that happens is that we have an estimate of X. The longer we delay it, the more money we have to find out of our local community to complete the project. In the back of this document there are a number of examples.

Let me give you another one. About a year and a half ago we had approved, through the joint infrastructure program, a million dollars to upgrade our water system. John is very familiar with this. We're still not able to go to tender, and we're a year and a half behind the announcement because the federal government has made the prerequisite that we have to do an environmental assessment on that project to improve the quality of water. I fail to see how that is necessary when we are going right now from a very poor quality of water to a treatment plant that's going to give us a better quality of water — in fact, an excellent quality of water.

So much work has been put into environmental assessments of virtually all projects that Western Diversification or the federal government are involved in that you can't get anybody to do those assessments. The time frame is really, really difficult, along with all the construction that's happening in the province.

[1935]

There's one there that we may be able to go to tender on by next spring. I'm expecting that that project will be $200,000 or more over budget because of the time frame. That, placed on a small community water system, is pretty excessive. It's those kinds of issues that are really hurting small communities. If we could get some consideration on that.

I listened intently to a couple of your presentations earlier. I'm not sure who the individual was because I came in partway through his presentation, but he recommended that Highway 16 between Prince George and Vanderhoof be taken to three lanes, where you alternate the passing lane all the way through. I made the same recommendation in 1995 to the then-sitting highway minister. Obviously, it wasn't done. It is a good suggestion.

We've had ten deaths in the last year between here and Vanderhoof. One occurred yesterday. So it is something that we certainly need.

The other interesting comment I have is that in my real life, I manage a pellet plant, so it's interesting to hear the bioenergy comments. Anyway, that's it in a nutshell, and I look forward to your questions.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much, Mayor Fox, for abbreviating it and for allowing us to read this on our flight to Williams Lake.

We had a presentation earlier from the Nechako Valley Community Services Society. I don't know if you'd arrived yet when that was….

L. Fox: No, I hadn't.

J. Horgan: It was quite moving and shaking for many of us here who don't have any conception, from our communities in the Lower Mainland or the south Island, of the challenges for aboriginal people and youth in rural and remote communities.

I'm wondering if you could comment on some of the initiatives that the district is working on to complement and assist the services society in meeting some of its objectives.

L. Fox: Okay. There are a number of ways. We're doing it through Saik'uz Nation. We are in cooperation with them on a number of projects. We're working currently on an interpretive centre for, we hope, a soon-to-be-announced white sturgeon–rearing facility. That's a joint initiative to deal with culture, education and so on, with first nations.

We have a number of recreational programs in our community where we're trying to involve those that can't afford to be in competitive sports. We have an initiative in our arena where we have 100 skates that people who can't afford it can use for free. Plus they skate for free. There's a whole host of ways that we are trying to address it.

The biggest issue — and it's not just in the native community; it's also in the white community — is that if the kids don't have parental support, you can't get them into those programs. It's really difficult.

I know that it frustrates Chief Erickson tremendously, because she's worked very closely with the community in trying to come up with ways and means of meeting those challenges.

J. Rustad: First of all, thanks for the presentation. I just want to make sure I've heard this right. In terms of the Finance Committee, we're tasked with making some
[ Page 1829 ]
recommendations for the Finance Minister to consider in the upcoming budget.

What I'm hearing from you is that the NDI program has been very successful and that you'd like to see additional opportunities for resources put towards that and that the application process — right from the time to actually put the applications in as well as the length of time it takes to get them approved and then, of course, project approvals, such as the federal component you talked about — creates challenges. What you'd like to see is a focus on that being streamlined.

L. Fox: I guess what I'm saying, if I could just speak to that point before you go on…. I think that one of the challenges we have is basically the federal government's participation. Every time I get an opportunity to talk to a federal member, I'm talking to him in the vein of: why don't they use something like the Northern Trust, which can deliver a program so cost-effectively and without a lot of red tape?

[1940]

Western Diversification is a huge bureaucratic nightmare for small communities particularly, where you don't have a lot of administration. It would be nice to see the province and the feds come together and use the NDI Trust instead of working through Western Diversification.

J. Rustad: That might be an interesting model to consider, so that's good. I guess the one question I want to lead around that, though, is…. For the community of Vanderhoof, which is under 5,000, the grant processes that have been in place that you've been able to take advantage of…. Vanderhoof has had quite a few that have gone through. In particular, I'm thinking about the small community grants and those types of programs.

Are those something that you would like to see extended? Have they been valuable to the community? Is that something you think that we as a committee should be recommending an extension or expansion of?

L. Fox: I totally agree. But I would ask again that the length of time to put in an application be longer.

I think that a lot of communities don't put one in because they haven't got the time to put a credible application in. They just need more time. As you know, deadlines are very short in some of those. The opportunity to access them is very limited for a lot of small communities.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much, Mayor Len. Good presentation. Sometimes when you talk about deadlines, you think it would be common sense, looking at the weather conditions and the area you need to work in. But when you're working in other areas, like Ottawa or Victoria, they seem to somehow miss it.

My question is actually to…. Part of the consultation paper asks about the tax money coming from the carbon tax, or the pollution tax, and how the government should use it. They're asking for input from British Columbians. Part of our job as a committee is to find out any suggestions. How do you think they should use the revenues raised through the pollution tax, the carbon tax?

L. Fox: Well, I think there are a number of problems currently in the biomass industry. Most are with — and it was mentioned earlier — trying to find a balance between forestry values and energy values. But I really believe that the carbon tax should be utilized — and I may sound like I'm in conflict here…. I'm almost ready for retirement anyway. When you're going to look at encouraging utilization of the fibre that's non-lumber fibre, which is not merchantable for lumber purposes, government is going to have to create virtually a negative stumpage process in order to offset the cost of extraction, hauling and breakdown.

I guess I would like to see it utilized in that kind of way. If it truly is going to try and reduce the carbon, then let's put it in programs which will lead to reducing the carbon.

R. Hawes (Chair): Len, we've run out of time, but thank you for your suggestions, for your presentation and for taking the time to come here. It's much appreciated.

L. Fox: I could tell you how much carbon tax I had to pay to get here.

R. Hawes (Chair): Next we have Mayor Nate Bello from the city of Quesnel.

Welcome to you, Your Worship.

N. Bello: Thank you very much. It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you for allowing us to come. It was either here or Williams Lake. Tonight's a little bit easier, and I'll give you a little preparation for tomorrow night and maybe what you'll hear a little bit down there.

I want to share with you the life of a small, vibrant community — Quesnel. We have about 10,000 people, with about 13,000 people in the immediate area just outside. We have a strong downtown core, a very friendly commercial area, a lot of industry — very, very compact, probably the most concentrated area of wood producers in British Columbia, if not Canada. We have neighbourhoods, a positive quality of life, and I would like to tell you that we're committed to our quality of life.

[1945]

I only have one request. That is to support our ability to keep our quality of life and with it our ability to continue to create wealth for all British Columbians.

The clock is ticking. You know all about the mountain pine beetle. Industry is doing everything it can to keep
[ Page 1830 ]
the mills going as long as it can. We just had a tour with Canfor, and they talked about the new, innovative processes that they have put into their mills as well as out in the bush, where they presort. They want to go as long as they can, but the pine is deteriorating. So everything west of us is dead or dying.

That's why the 2009 budget must reflect the reality, and it must create strong incentives for the future of our communities. In short, it's reinvestment so that we can continue to generate the revenues that the province depends on.

I've worked hard to bring new investment to our community. The provincial government, I think, has to be congratulated for its creation of the Northern Development Initiative Trust. I'm the vice-chair. I really appreciate Bruce here. Everything he says is totally correct. And Janine, too, because she tells us….

We've seen really positive effects of the program, and it is leading our communities to diversify. We've got a lot of projects that are on the go that have been supported by Northern Development. We shouldn't say Northern Trust anymore. I don't know if you know that story, but there's a Northern Trust in Northern Ireland. They didn't like that we were using Northern Trust, so we're Northern Development.

The approximately half a million dollars that we've received from Northern Development so far from the pine beetle fund is really only the beginning, when you think about the needs that we have and whether we're committed to sustaining all these communities, including Quesnel.

My first request is for the government to continue to invest in the subregional portfolios of NDI. Those are the four regions that we have. Maybe it's not the subregional but the regional portfolios. I represent the Cariboo-Chilcotin-Lillooet region, along with Mayor Ella Brown and the main board of NDI.

The money that has been used has been excellently invested — great, creative thought. I'm very proud to be a member of Northern Trust, but I think that what we have to have is a minimum of $10 million a year over the next ten years, really, to start to create the real funds that need to get beyond planning and onto the ground.

That is the whole north. Now let's go on to the regional level. This is, as I said, something you might hear tomorrow night. I don't know if you have Mayor Barnett, if she signed up, but if you do, you'll hear a lot from her. She, the former mayor of Williams Lake Rick Gibson and I sat down about three years ago and brought the Cariboo regional district in, and we formed the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition. This is a sister organization to Len Fox's Omineca Beetle Action Coalition.

We appreciate that $2½ million has been invested to create plans. Now the plans are finished, and we're meeting on Monday as a board, the CCBAC board, to actually approve the final presentation to the province.

You will be receiving a plan that goes farther than just straight economic development. It goes into looking at the cost of the effect on the social fabric of our communities. It looks at what's going to happen, if mills close, to the property taxation. We still have to keep our sewers going, our roads up.

All those things still have to happen, so it has a plan on that. It also looks at conservation and the environment, because basically, as you know, we have to have a good environment in order to have any kind of economy or social life. As I said, the plan is going to be put forward, and you will be seeing that it's hundreds of million dollars over the next ten years.

As you may remember, at UBCM's annual convention just about a year ago the Premier stated that he was prepared to take a leadership position. He pledged to do what it took to keep our forest-dependent communities sustainable in the face of this epidemic. Now is the time to start to turn it, so that the money does start to flow to the communities. The communities know what they need to retain their sustainability.

[1950]

Now, on a local level, you have our nice little yellow book here, A Prosperous and Sustainable Way Forward. I'm not going to go into it, but it gives credence to what I'm going to say in terms of communities being able to really have the expertise to say: "What do we need to do?"

It has a lot of goals. It has seven goals in it — where we want to go in the different economic sectors — and it really does it in a very positive, analytical way. We have the Quesnel Community and Economic Development Corporation, which is a visionary body but with its feet really planted on the ground.

You have that document. I hope you have a little bit of time to read it or at least browse through it later on. We showed it to the Premier a couple of months ago. He sent me a letter commending me on this. It shows really positive, visionary thought, as I said.

Based on the selected projects from the plan, our development corporation has prepared proposals. They've been funded, as I said, by NDI, and they also are being funded by WED. I'll take money wherever I can get it.

WED. It was announced here — $32 million. You know, it's really not enough at all, but we are getting a couple of million dollars for different projects that are very, very important, so I really appreciate their work.

If you look at it, you could think of it as a first step. The billion-dollar promise that was put forward by Prime Minister Stephen Harper a few years ago really has not been delivered on yet.

This brings me to the third point — and I think Mayor Fox kind of said it — about cooperation. What is needed — this is what I request the budget committee to look at; I recently gave this idea to the forestry round table, as
[ Page 1831 ]
well as when MLA Rustad came and talked on behalf of the northern caucus — is the establishment of forums throughout the mountain pine beetle area and specifically in Quesnel that will take all these good works, all these different things that have been put forward and put a community lens on them.

In our case, we'd review the NDIT funding opportunities with an eye to making the programs more flexible. I'm vice-chair, but I think we could always do more to get down to the communities and see how our programs, which have these criteria, fit into each community's needs.

We'd also look at the CCBAC proposals and the government response, once we do have a government response. We really need to have a government response to it very quickly after it is presented. Then we need to look at our own local plan. We have to put them together with other funding agencies, and we have to have an implementation plan in the different communities. Minister Coleman, when he was Minister of Forests, saw this. He thought it was a very positive idea when we represented to him.

In summary, I'm requesting an infusion of cash into NDI's regional accounts. I'm requesting major support for CCBAC's plan. I'm requesting support for our own local plan and for a forum to bring everyone together so that all players can coordinate their activities and create the kind of rescue plan, if you will, that we need in Quesnel, that as well as I know is needed throughout the north for any of the communities that have been affected by the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

I thank you for your time. Last year the budget committee made some really positive recommendations. Unfortunately, they didn't go beyond the budget committee in all cases, but I really appreciated the budget committee's positive response to a community focus last year. I hope you will continue with that this year.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Nate. It's well put together and well received.

J. Horgan: Thanks again, Nate. Good to see you.

We had a presentation earlier from the Central Interior Logging Association. They spoke about the Quesnel bypass, and that was touched upon, of course, when the committee was in your great city last year. I'm wondering if you could expand on the need to move goods and services around the downtown core because of the unique location of the city on the river.

[1955]

N. Bello: First of all, the bypass is not just for Quesnel. It's for all of northern British Columbia. There can be a business plan done to show how you would really save money for truckers in being able to move goods through the community.

Secondly, you heard last time about the safety concerns — going by the hospital and all those arguments. I don't have to reiterate all that right now, but I will say that Minister Falcon, when he came in June to talk about a few things, like our bus expansion — we're very proud of our transit system — and a few other projects, did nod his head and was a little more positive than I had heard the government before. However, I received a letter just recently that had mixed signals. However, he encouraged us to talk to ministry officials.

So we're going to see Minister Falcon again. I'd love for maybe MLA Rustad to join us if he has the time and talk about the importance of this. It's really part and parcel of the Cariboo connector, if we want to create something that doesn't have a bottleneck in the middle of it.

R. Lee: You can see Quesnel in the future in terms of mining, bioenergy or other industries. Which one do you think will be the most developed?

N. Bello: We can't tell the future about oil and gas — okay? There are rumours, and actually, there were people in Quesnel for 30 days going out in the Nazko area. We were wondering what they were doing. But if they don't tell us…. The oil and gas industry is very closed. So that could have a major, major effect on us.

Without that, what we are saying is that there are many different small activities that can happen in order to diversify our economy and save what the Canadian Forest Service has projected as a possible drop of 3,000 jobs. I mentioned that last year.

Many things. I particularly believe that bioenergy is really something that we have to…. But then again, the whole financial modelling is not there yet, as Mayor Fox said.

I just want to get one more thing. The Rocky Mountaineer has been so fantastic, and it shows what private investment can do. It's told the citizens of Quesnel that we can be a tourist place, and it's totally changed our minds toward our ability to progress in that area.

J. Rustad: Thanks, Nate, for coming and presenting, and thanks for the information. I always enjoy the opportunity to get a chance to get together and talk about it. Your passion for Quesnel is well known.

The bypass project. I just want to make a comment around that. I have talked to the minister about that in terms of those needs, because it is something you've identified as being a high priority for the community.

I'm just wondering if you have done any analysis in terms of whether or not, if the bypass is put in, it will change opportunities for rubber-tire traffic, rubber-tire tourism in the downtown area and what kind of an impact that might have. I know — like you say, with the Rocky Mountaineer and the train stopping in there
[ Page 1832 ]
— there has been some increased tourist activity. I just want to know if you've looked at that impact side of it.

N. Bello: Not formally yet. My gut feeling is that it's a positive thing, because it will add to the whole environment that we have. We have a very beautiful downtown. It's compressed. It has two rivers. Instead of having big logging trucks going through emitting carbon, we would have a more attractive place. People would come to it.

This goes to the idea of what some of these projects are that NDI has supported, as well as WED. That is, we have a proposal in to do such a business plan. We also have a letter back to the ministry to support us in actually getting the facts of the pros and cons of this. But I can tell you that 90 percent of people in Quesnel just think….

J. Rustad: Would like to see it, yes.

N. Bello: Yes, we really would like to see it.

R. Hawes (Chair): With that, thank you very much, Your Worship. A very good presentation. I think many of us will see you at the UBCM.

Next we have the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. We have Sherry Sethen and Albert Koehler from the chamber of commerce. I'll give the high sign in ten minutes.

[2000]

A. Koehler: Good evening, ladies and sirs. It is a pleasure to be here as the president of the chamber and come up with some concerns that we have. I have with me here Sherry Sethen. Some of you know her. She's the CEO of our chamber.

A while ago — it was at the end of July, actually — we had a presentation to some of the elected officials about what we see as urgent to be done in our community, and I would like to pound away at that. You have something before you. I do not want to read all of that. I would like to just elaborate on something which is there and not take up too much time. You must be very tired by now.

If you go to page 2, you will find out the items we found to be worthwhile to be discussed would be flood prevention, transportation infrastructure and education diversification.

Flood protection. I must commend Mayor Len Fox, because he was already talking about this briefly. Here in Prince George it was on the news. You probably heard about it — all the problems we had here. Something has to be done. Something is underway. I don't know how much, but certainly, we have to look at diking and other measures, eventually even dredging, and we're talking big bucks when that has to be done.

If this happens again — and it can — in the coming winter or any of the next winters, then that certainly has a tremendous effect on the performance and all businesses and whatever's happening in the city. You know what's causing it. It's the pine beetle and just weather changes. We just have to deal with it and protect ourselves. I don't want to go further into that. You may want to read what we think about flood prevention, what should be done.

If you just skip forward and go to page 4, we are looking at infrastructure, mainly transportation. Even there, the mayors before us were touching on at least some of it. We have to improve our highways. We just yesterday had an accident, a fatality again, on Highway 16. We have to have more bypass roads, and I would say we have to have a four-lane highway. Traffic has doubled within the last years around Prince George — traffic going from west to east and from west to south, mainly. So definitely, something has to be done there.

It was mentioned here that a bypass would be good for our cities in the Cariboo and the north. Same here for us. Also, that was part of our discussion in July. We have to have a bypass that is taken off at Highway 16 west via a bridge down to the industrial park and connected with Highway 16 at one section and another section from Highway 97 — we call it the airport connector — to Highway 16 east.

The advantage of all of that is that, naturally, we get the traffic out of the city. In our cities in the bowl, we have big air pollution problems, and it's not so easy to handle. You can't say: "We don't want to have any traffic anymore in the city." But if we manage, with such a bypass, to take a good portion of traffic — heavy traffic as well as other traffic — out of the city, then we are achieving quite a bit.

Everybody these days is talking about the carbon footprint. We would manage, if we do this, to get away from all these stoplights and having stop-and-go and stop-and-go in our bowl. Safety would be another thing that comes with it.

So a bypass for our city — I call it a southern section bypass road — would have to be looked at. We are looking at quite a few million dollars if we do that. It has been postponed. It has been looked at again, but I guess now we're at a point where we really have to go ahead. The chamber of commerce — representing, certainly, all our businesses — is asking us to bring this forward.

[2005]

I go to the next point, and that's on page 6. I just heard from a colleague that this point, engineering and technology or technical education, has been mentioned four times already today. Well, you're talking now to the initiator — that was us, or me — at the chamber of commerce.

Several organizations in our city looked at what can be done to diversify our industry. It was agreed that the chamber of commerce chair a big committee and find out what can be done. We have this committee now called ATEEC, Applied Technical Education and Engineering
[ Page 1833 ]
committee. It's a big consortium, and the interesting thing is that it is not just pushed forward by us, by the chamber, but by our members and the industry.

They are very, very concerned. They actually — and just take this — spent $90,000 to say: "We have to survey this and come out with a report to see what can be done. How can we possibly diversify our industry to shift the education into something that is doing something for us?" A very, very interesting thing. I guess John Rustad, Shirley Bond and Pat Bell, who are all MLAs here, have a very good relationship with all of them and are aware of it, but I thought I'd pound away at it again.

This committee now with, I guess, 30 members…. All of the industry has donated this money. We have to come up with additional technology education and engineering education to diversify our industry. There are many companies now — not just engineering companies; others as well — who say: "We just have to postpone jobs and can't take on more jobs. Just because we don't want to do it? No. We don't have the personnel."

We all know about the skilled-worker shortage that is almost a worldwide thing. We have it here in B.C. but very much so in the north, here in Prince George and the Cariboo region — just northern B.C. So we came with a solution that we know works. We know this from the experience with the physicians. We now, as you know, educate physicians in the north for the north. It's known that when you educate somebody in a certain area, he or she may stay there.

So we think: well, let us look at how we can educate technicians, technologists and engineers in the north for the north. That's what it is all about. We have wonderful post-secondary educational institutions. We have the college, and we have the university. Unfortunately, at this time we do not educate engineers at our university. That is something we should really look at. I would say we have to look at it.

There are some environmental engineers educated now, but they are here only for two years to get some basics like math and physics and so on, but then they have to go down to UBC to get the engineering part. They do not like that at all, although the program is a good program. So we have to get more engineering into the north.

This was of such interest for all B.C. chambers that this item has been accepted by the B.C. chamber policy and is in the policy book. It has been brought to priority. So it's on the priority list of all the chambers of B.C.

I want to pound away at it again, and I know it has been mentioned, obviously, several times. I don't know by whom, but we are the ones who started it. We are still working away at it and have all the details on what is happening and in what way.

We certainly have some recommendations attached to the very end, I guess, of our brief presentation here. Those are the ones we think should be looked at. Again, other institutions are looking at quite a bit of money to get there.

I would like to make it short. Maybe I'll stop right here. I'm prepared for any questions you may have.

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

Do we have any questions?

R. Lee: You mentioned about the physician programs in cooperation with UBC and UNBC. Do you know if UNBC has been talking to UBC mining engineering department in order to set up that kind of program?

[2010]

A. Koehler: Thank you for this point that you bring up. I will answer it by kind of going another road a little bit. As you know, we have now — what? — 24 mines before the review process. In the last ten years no new mine really has been opened, but there's the potential that we get something that's happening.

Not too long ago I talked to Jim Utley, who is the vice-president of human resources of one of the last mining companies. It's in your annos there.

J. Rustad: NovaGold.

A. Koehler: Yeah. Right. There you are. Thank you.

He said: "You know, even if we get a go-ahead now, Albert, we don't have the engineers. We just can't do it. The personnel are not around." That means we don't have the engineers.

Now I come to your question, and I'll try to answer it. Now, with our initiative…. I guess the educational institutes are aware of it and stakeholders are aware of it. Yes, something has to be done.

Whether there is something on the way already now between UBC and UNBC, I do not know. But just yesterday I had a meeting with Charles Jago, who is the interim president of our university. As you may know, we had some trouble there, but I think there's hope that it's sorted out.

That is something we have to look at — how to educate more technologists and engineers in the north so that they are really here, because now it is such a commodity. They go to Dubai, or who knows where, and there are other jobs and more money.

If they're educated in the south, they're not necessarily coming up here, and we have so many projects here now on the go. If we want to be sustainable, if we want to go ahead and want to be able to deliver more tax dollars to the south and support the south, then we have to look at education.

If we would have had ten years ago — you know this — what is happening now in the forestry sector, we would really be in a bad situation. We are better diversified,
[ Page 1834 ]
but with education — and education of the right kind, building something from within — we really would be even better off and would be better diversified. So we definitely need this in the north.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation — a very good presentation.

You've probably seen a copy of our budget consultation paper. It's in the back. Four pages in the back are for questions.

One of the questions is: how should the money revenues generated for the British Columbia government through the carbon tax, pollution tax, be used? All the money that's generated has to be put back in tax form — to cut the taxes or by tax rebates.

Do you have any suggestions for how that revenue generated from carbon tax should be sent back to British Columbians and how it should be used?

A. Koehler: Well, since education is my pet peeve, I would say stick it back into education. Thank you. That has been a hot item at our chamber discussions — the whole carbon tax issue. But to answer your question, where I come from, I would say that if you invest it into education, it's the best investment, in my opinion.

R. Hawes (Chair): If there are no further questions…. Your presentation is pretty concise, so we appreciate it very much. Thank you for making it.

A. Koehler: You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

R. Hawes (Chair): We'll be dealing with these issues.

A. Koehler: Sounds good. Thank you.

R. Hawes (Chair): Two members of our committee had to leave to catch a plane. They've got events in their ridings, so we're not abandoning you. PacificSport Northern B.C. is coming next, and it's Deb Meyer, Ken Edzerza and Ann Oishi.

Welcome.

A. Oishi: Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to address you and present our information on sport. Before we get started, does anyone need to stretch and have a moment to loosen up? You've been sitting an awfully long time.

First of all, my name is Ann Oishi, and I'm a five-year board member with PacificSport. I'm also a member of ProMOTION Plus, which is an advocacy and education group for girls and women in physical activity and sport, and locally the Prince George YMCA. In my professional life, I'm a faculty member in human kinetics at the college.

[2015]

To my right is Deb Meyer. She's a two-year board member with PacificSport, and she works for the city of Prince George in the community services area and has worked in the recreation industry for the last eight years.

To her right is Ken Edzerza. He's our current chair of PacificSport. He's been a board member for six years. He also wears many hats. He's the chair of ASRA, which is the Aboriginal Sports and Recreation Association of British Columbia. He's an executive member for NAIG, which is the North American Indigenous Games Society. Locally he's a level 3 soccer coach and heavily, heavily involved in Prince George youth soccer.

The premise of our presentation is: why does sport need to stay on the provincial agenda? We would like to just tell you it's simply because the system is starting to work, and the current investment in physical activity and sport is now paying dividends for British Columbians.

A little context of the sport system in British Columbia. Currently the government recognizes 2010 Legacies Now as the vehicle for funding sport in our province. Direct from the website is that the ministry provides funding to the 2010 Legacies Now Society, which administers funding to provincial multisport and recreation organizations to provide programs and services to athletes, coaches, participants, volunteers and others involved in a sport and physical activity community.

Our core business budget — which includes sport, recreation, volunteers and ActNow B.C. — is currently at $21.9 million. I just wanted to note that the budget for health care, as you probably very well know, increased this year by over $5 billion to $14.9 billion. The last cost stats that we have are from 2005, and the cost of inactivity in this province is $573 million.

Legacies Now achieves this goal by using Sport B.C., which is the umbrella organization for the provincial sport organizations like Volleyball B.C., B.C. Soccer Association and PacificSport — that's our organization, which is part of the Canadian Sport Centre Pacific network — to deliver sport and recreation programs to citizens around this great province.

Some of the programs that are supported are ActNow B.C., which you are all familiar with, to encourage physical activity and healthy eating for British Columbians. Another program is called Own the Podium 2010, which sets the goal of seeing direct medal results for the 2010 Olympics by our Canadian athletes. Another one is Canadian Sport for Life, which is a program of long-term athlete development that encompasses all ages and all levels.

Our provincial sport system here in B.C. is leading the country in its capacity, and that's because of the strength of a couple of things. It's the ability to reach out to the regions. We're one of eight regional centres around B.C., and we're actually the largest of geographical regions by far. Our capacity to tap into the national system is because we are one of a number of centres
[ Page 1835 ]
across Canada, and the fact is that we're one centre of eight across British Columbia.

Our organization, PacificSport, provides leadership, expertise and education to coaches and athletes, and this is the first model like it across Canada. Of note, 40 percent of the athletes at the Olympic Games that we just saw over in Beijing were from B.C., and 17 percent of athletes in 2006 in Torino were British Columbia athletes.

I want to speak about the notion of playground to podium and beyond. The playground encompasses all physical activity and sport at the grass-roots level, which does include the physical education system in schools and is the basis for physical literacy for everyone, especially for youngsters in the school program. The podium level is that we inspire and motivate all Canadians to be more physically active and protect and develop the current Olympic investment.

There is an opportunity for a legacy of improved physical fitness and health following the games, because if the necessary resources and infrastructure that are currently being developed because of the investment made into the 2010 Olympics are sustained after the games, they can reach all levels and ages, and in all regions. That's currently being done through the work of provincial sport organizations and in conjunction with the schools with the ActNow B.C. program, which delivers the majority of the sporting opportunities around the province.

[2020]

Now the three main points of our presentation. Funding and support is needed in three areas. The first one is participation for everyone in recreation and sport. That's in access facilities and coaching, and not only for athletes of high performance level. If you build facilities such as the Northern Sport Centre, everyone in the community has access to it to be healthy and participate.

The second point is that the navigation of the provincial sport system and development of athletes has to start at the grass-roots level. In order to have athletes at the highest level, we do need to cultivate and develop athletes — you know, youngsters. From the grass-roots level they participate in schools, get identified by the provincial sport organizations, and play in B.C. Summer and Winter Games. They move to provincial teams, move onto national teams, and that's how they get to world championships and the Olympic Games. This must come from a coordinated, networked system, and all British Columbians need access and need to be inspired to participate and be healthy.

The third point is that professional development of human resources and knowledge for things like research and specializations like exercise physiologists and nutritionists and mental trainers need to be part of this infrastructure, and that's an area which needs more funding and support.

I'm going to turn it over to Deb, and she's going to give you some wonderful examples.

D. Meyer: Okay, I'm going to give you a couple of examples of how the funding and support in areas such as facilities and coaching has provided some support for a couple of our Canadian athletes.

The first one that I want to talk about is Bo Hedges, who is a wheelchair basketball athlete on the Canadian national team. Originally, Bo was from Fort St. John, and at a young age he was injured and rendered a paraplegic. He was first introduced to wheelchair basketball in 1996, when a level 3 coach, Pat Harris from Prince George, travelled up to Fort St. John and did a demonstration of the sport for him.

After being inspired by that demonstration, a couple of years later he decided that he was going to pursue his education in business marketing. He moved to Prince George, went to UNBC and then was able to join the team because of that opportunity he had to train under the level 3 coach here. In Prince George the wheelchair basketball program is supported by PacificSport Northern B.C., which provides access to the resources, funding and support for these athletes.

In 2000 Bo was selected for the Canadian national team, and he's been competing in national and international competitions ever since. Just yesterday the Canadian men's wheelchair basketball team won a silver medal in Beijing. Actually, in two weeks from today Bo is coming back to Prince George, and he's going to go around to some of the schools and show the kids his medal and give back to the community at the grass-roots level, an act that will help inspire some of our athletes.

The next story that I want to tell you about is of Denny Morrison. He's a 23-year-old speed skater from Chetwynd, B.C. He was actually able to start trying out speed skating at three years old, when he or his parents made the decision that he was going to go into speed skating. He had actually tried to go into hockey first but was too young to participate, so he went into speed skating, got an opportunity to learn some of the basic skills there and later moved to Fort St. John to go to high school and to continue training.

Then after graduation he had to make a decision on if he wanted to gain some of the skills to train with the Canadian national team. He moved to Calgary to train at the Olympic Oval. He attended his first Olympic Games at age 20 in Torino in 2006 and won a silver medal in the team pursuit.

Denny is the current world record holder and world champion for the 1,500-metre race. He's getting faster and faster every year and is a medal hopeful for 2010. With all of the funding and support that Denny has been receiving, he is now one of the top speed skaters on the world circuit, and he's beginning to make an imprint into Canadian amateur sport.

I'm going to pass you on to Ken now.
[ Page 1836 ]

K. Edzerza: I have a script here, but I have just a couple of corrections here.

[2025]

One of the things that Ann said around the athletes was that our Olympians were 40 percent B.C. The correction is that of the medals that Canada won, B.C. won just under 40 percent of those medals. That's a big difference, in terms of the programs that we're talking about.

PacificSport is also an interesting organization in itself, where we are a partnership of a lot of organizations within the community. I'm just one of those volunteers that sit on the board to give direction to PacificSport. Then we create opportunities in programs like the one that Deb talked about in terms of Bo going back and giving back to the community. If it wasn't for PacificSport, these opportunities wouldn't be there.

That's why we wanted, in summary, to ask for sustainable sports and physical activity programs. We wanted sustainable funding for sports and activities, as these programs would result both in a healthier population and in opportunities for athletes to reach their goals.

Sports delivery and development in northern B.C. is an integral part of the provincial sports systems, and Legacies Now and PacificSport create opportunities for all citizens to be healthy and physically active. The current investment in sports and physical activity is working, as now you're starting to see this coming through the school system in terms of the mandated daily activities for schools. Also, you're starting to see it in terms of the medal performance at the international levels.

What we're looking for is…. Sports and physical activity require a continued investment at appropriate levels in the development of our sports and physical education infrastructure beyond 2010.

When we're seeing the rising cost of health care in B.C. and the increasing direct costs of inactivity, we know that the investment in sports and physical activity can create an avenue for directly reducing these health care costs. Whenever you can turn a negative into a positive, we can create a positive influence on the health of all British Columbians.

I want to thank you for your attention, and we would be pleased to take any questions right now.

R. Hawes (Chair): I actually have one. I'm not sure if…. The B.C. northern games. Does that fall under your watch, or who does that fall under? Do you have influence there?

A. Oishi: Northern B.C. Winter Games?

R. Hawes (Chair): Right.

A. Oishi: Well, that actually falls under the B.C. Games Society, the B.C. Games organization.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, but you provide some funding for the athletes who go there?

A. Oishi: We definitely provide support. All the funding generally comes out of the B.C. Games Society, to get the athletes to and from those competitions, to support the coaches and venues, to house and to host that in a community.

R. Hawes (Chair): When we were in Kitimat, the coach of the boxing team there made, I thought, a fairly compelling request to us. I don't know if he's contacted you or if you've heard of about that.

A. Oishi: He probably has, with our executive director. We're volunteers on the board.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. In essence, there's a rule now that 40 percent, I think — is it 40 percent? — of the boxing team….

R. Austin: I think what happened was that there were criteria set within each sport as to how people can go and participate. This gentleman, if I may, came to see us yesterday in Kitimat, and he said that the criterion that was set two years ago was for 40 percent of all the boxers who were going to the B.C. Winter Games to be female. Of course, there aren't that many females who like to be hit on the head, as he put it. By failing that criterion, they have now not been allowed to enter the B.C. Winter Games.

I guess our question to you would be: how do we go about helping to facilitate a solution to that problem? There are lots of very successful young people who are being coached in boxing, and they want to go. But because they didn't meet this criterion that was set two years ago….

R. Hawes (Chair): That's the first part of it. The second part of the question is…. They also are having difficulty with travel expenses and stuff, to take the few kids, because they don't have a lot of…. I don't think it's a huge boxing team, but they're unable to access funding to go to boxing tournaments in various places, and for that I'm assuming they could come and talk to you.

A. Oishi: Yes.

The first part of the question I guess I'd like to just address is that a lot of those criteria are set. So 2010 Legacies Now does have an inclusion strategy, and because they're holding all of the money and all of the purse strings, I guess you could say, for the provincial sport organizations and for B.C. Games, they've been charged with being able to provide and set the rules and the reports and all of those kinds of things. There is an inclusion strategy within 2010 Legacies Now. I'm sure that two years ago they thought: wouldn't it be great if we got more women to participate, more girls?

[2030]
[ Page 1837 ]

That's part of it. I sit on the ProMOTION Plus board as well, and certainly, some of these big blanket policies have come out. How to execute those and how to attract girls and women into certain sports is certainly a challenge.

I'm not sure if there is going to be a way to overcome that. Because of the way the reports are coming in, yearly or every couple of years or something like that, to renew your funding with gaming and all sorts of other hoops, I guess, that you could jump through, they'll hopefully be able to look at that and say: "That wasn't working, and that's not fair. It's not benefiting the system."

We are having a challenge attracting girls and women into this sport, and they will be able to change that for the future. I would hope that it's not a cut-and-dried situation, but it's working in conjunction with a lot of organizations that are part of the provincial sport organizations network or structure. It tends to be a bit fragmented, but 2010 Legacies Now is trying to be sort of the umbrella organization to pull it all together.

Does that answer your question?

R. Hawes (Chair): Kind of. I guess the concern — I know that every member on this committee would feel the same way — is that there are a few kids that are getting left behind this year. It's a shame to have to wait until somebody does an assessment. If they miss this opportunity, they've missed it for their lives, and they've been training to go there. We just want to make sure that we can find a way to get those kids into the games that they've trained to participate in. It's in their back yard.

A. Oishi: Northern B.C. Winter Games. I think that the policy changes would be through the B.C. Games Society. It would be the starting block for that.

R. Hawes (Chair): Great.

A. Oishi: Oh, is there a second part to that question? I'm sorry. Did we blow it with that...?

R. Hawes (Chair): The second part of the question was….

R. Austin: Funding for travel.

R. Hawes (Chair): In terms of funding, can we direct them to you?

D. Meyer: Yes, PacificSport Northern B.C. is taking care of this region. That would be something they could approach us about. Coach training, travel grants — that's the kind of stuff that we would work with.

R. Hawes (Chair): Perfect.

R. Lee: You mentioned here that we have to cultivate, say, students in elementary school, get them interested in specific sports. I understand that there's a new program coming up so that community organizations or local sports organizations can apply for funding as well. That's a new program. How much are you going to support this kind of demonstration programs in schools, etc.?

A. Oishi: Currently we do have a program that's called Xplore SportZ. It's on pro-D days, where kids have an opportunity to come to PacificSport programs to try sports. It's like a sports sampler. What our organization does is help facilitate it, working with the school district as one of our partners, to try and get more support in the schools for professionals.

But the school system has been decimated because of the cutbacks to physical education over the last number of years. There are no teacher specialists anymore in schools who have a physical education background. So now that whole infrastructure for physical education has to be rebuilt, and that requires funding.

It requires resources that our organization certainly has access to, with the knowledge of the specialists — not only the nutritionists and the mental trainers, the high-level specialists, but also the sports specialists and the coaches. They're level 3 coaches, but they can certainly go into the schools and teach grade 1s how to play badminton. We have access to those programs, and now it's finding the resources and finding more infrastructure to be able to facilitate those kinds of activities for school students.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much.

A. Oishi: We're happy to stay.

J. Horgan: I'll just talk to them later.

A. Oishi: We're the last ones. This is open mike.

R. Hawes (Chair): I know, but we do have a plane to catch here later, because we're off to Williams Lake later tonight. I want to thank you for coming and for making the presentation.

J. Horgan: And volunteering, more importantly. Thank you for volunteering.

R. Hawes (Chair): That's extremely important. Without volunteers like you, none of this happens, so thank you very much for that. I think we share your appetite for seeing continuing funding for sports, particularly for kids.

With that and seeing no open-mike presentations, we are going to adjourn this meeting. We will reconvene tomorrow in Williams Lake.

The committee adjourned at 8:35 p.m.

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