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, October 1, 2008

12 p.m.

Courtenay Room, Best Western Westerly Hotel

1590 Cliffe Avenue, Courtenay, B.C.

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

Unavoidably Absent: Dave S. Hayer, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 12:03 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 3:23 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, October 1, 2008

Issue No. 83

ISSN 1499-4178

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008

The committee met at 12:03 p.m.

[R. Hawes in the chair.]

R. Hawes (Chair): Good afternoon. I'm Randy Hawes, and I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. I'd like to welcome you here to what we believe to be a very, very important process and thank you for taking the time to participate.

In preparing 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 the fiscal forecast and, as well, identify the key issues that need to be addressed by the public in the preparation of 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 back to the Legislature by not later than November 15.

So far we've had public hearings in Kitimat, Smithers, Fort St. John, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Penticton, Cranbrook and Nelson. Today we are here in Courtenay, and tomorrow we will be in Langford, near Victoria. In the middle of October we are also meeting in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley in four final locations: Abbotsford, Surrey, Burnaby and Coquitlam. Then we will begin drafting our report.

If you'd like to review the budget consultation paper, we've brought copies along with us. These are available at the information table at the back. Information on how you may make a presentation to the committee is also available on our website at www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations.

[1205]

Just as a reminder, any input that we get in writing or electronic form is given the same consideration as any oral presentations that we may hear here today. Due to the recently announced federal election, we have extended the deadline for submissions to October 24.

Today we're going to hear from a number of presenters who have 15 minutes. We suggest that you take ten and allow us five minutes for questions, but the time is yours. If you wish to use the whole 15 minutes in your presentation, that's your option. I will try to give you a heads-up at ten minutes, and I will also give you another heads-up when you have two minutes left to go.

Time permitting, we can also have an open-mike session near the end of the hearing. Open-mike presentations are five minutes, and there are no questions.

I'll now ask the other members of the Finance Committee to introduce themselves, starting with Robin.

R. Austin: My name is Robin Austin. I'm the MLA for Skeena.

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

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

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

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

D. Thorne: Diane Thorne, MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.

J. Horgan: John Horgan, Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

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

With that, I'd like to call on our first presenter. That will be Jean-Marc Jaquier of the Nanaimo Child Development Centre Society, and I take it that your co-presenter hasn't made it yet.

J. Jaquier: That's correct.

R. Hawes (Chair): Welcome, and the floor is yours.

Presentations

J. Jaquier: Good afternoon. I'm the treasurer of the board of the Nanaimo Child Development Centre in Nanaimo and, also, the father of a child with severe disabilities. I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity today to make this presentation.

The CDC in Nanaimo has provided services to children and families in Nanaimo since 1967. We provide speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, both for early intervention and school age. We provide infant development, family services and family support, supportive child development workers and consultants, integrated preschool, and in 2007 we served directly 1,600 children and families.

My son was born in 2001. At that time we did not have to wait for services. After going through open-heart surgeries and other procedures, spending six months in Vancouver at Children's Hospital, we were able to go back home to Nanaimo and get the immediate help
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from infant children's specialists, physiotherapists and so on.

When you leave Vancouver and go back to a smaller community, having some help from the CDC is critical as they have very experienced staff full of resources and able to answer many of your questions.

In the past few years, however, many families are not able to get the services they need in a timely fashion. There are an estimated 6,000 children on wait-lists in B.C. right now and about 400 in Nanaimo.

At this point I would like to thank this committee for having heard us in the past few years. If you noticed, I was already here last year. You understood our urgency and recommended some additional funding to help our wait-list, and we certainly appreciated that.

The main issues, however, have not changed. Your committee makes a recommendation two years in a row. The Minister of Finance allows for the funding in the new budget. The Ministry of Children and Family Development receives the funds but allocates most of those funds to other priorities. I understand that's their option to do so, but that certainly does not help the CDCs across our province.

In June 2007 Minister Christensen and our MLA visited the centre, heard our prominent requests, and despite some promises to do their best to help us, very little came out of this meeting. At the time, with a very large surplus in the budget, MCFD increased our funding by 0.5 percent.

[1210]

We met the minister on several occasions later on, and many of the reasons for not funding the CDC came in various fashions. One comment was, "Regarding the wait-list numbers, are they really accurate? Regarding staff hiring, even if you have the funds, can you really find the therapists?" and also comments regarding: "Are the CDCs really providing the services in an efficient manner?"

We also met with regional and local administrators from MCFD to discuss our needs and to try to understand: where did that money go that MCFD received? What were those other priorities? We had a very difficult time understanding where those funds went.

At the end of our fiscal year, which was March 2008, we had received $35,000 in additional funding for new positions. That included $25,000 from MCFD, based on a budget with MCFD of $2.9 million. So if you do the math, I think it's even less than 0.5.

MCFD, however, allowed us to use about $100,000 from supported child care, which was not used. It was the only department where the funds are received and not used. We were able to use those funds to hire some therapists and help us reduce the wait-list.

With the additional funds received, as mentioned previously, increased fundraising and use of some of our own reserves, we were able to reduce the wait-list a little bit, even while the referral of new cases increased by 24 percent in the same time. Today we have 353 children waiting for MCFD-funded programs, and this does not include 132 children waiting for autism and FASD assessments, these being funded by VIHA.

Speech is the most severe department with wait-lists. We have 135 cases. The wait is 20 months, down from 24 last year. Occupational therapists — we have 80 children waiting for service. The wait is 12 months. Family services, 90 cases. The wait is nine months.

Last year, and I mentioned that already in our presentation, we had 67 children aging out, which means they entered the school-age system without having services from our centre. This year, thanks to some one-time funding from MCFD and some very creative measures at our centre, we were able to reduce this number to 11. However, we expect to have about 40 to 50 children aging out next fall unless we receive additional funding right away.

If you were to close our doors to new children today and bring the wait-lists to an end in one year, we would still need an additional six full-time therapists to do that. But as you know, we cannot close the doors to the centre.

So what do we need? Our request today is to see annual funding increased by $400,000, which is only 14 percent. This would enable us to end the wait-lists within three years, based on our current level of referrals. Thanks to our work environment, a location in Nanaimo, we don't expect to have any major problems to find therapists. We have been able to recruit quite a few coming from out of province and from the mainland, mostly for the quality of life and also the excellent reputation we have at the Nanaimo CDC for the type of service and for the way we are structured.

Of course, other centres across the province, and hopefully you heard from them, are also looking for additional funding. Our estimates are that about 5,000 children in other centres are on the wait-list. As you know, any dollar invested today in a child before six years old will result in a lot of savings in the future. I think that some studies have showed a 7-to-1 ratio. I'm not an expert, but I'm sure that works around those numbers.

Of course, if you give any suggestions on how we can ensure that those funds allocated to MCFD for the specific purpose of reducing the wait-lists can be forwarded to us, I would appreciate any recommendation. I think we've tried everything. The only thing we have not done yet at this point is to write to the Premier. I'm not quite sure that makes a difference.

That's the end of our presentation, and I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have.

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

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Jean-Marc, thanks very much. I remember your presentation last year, and that
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was a very strong presentation. That's why the committee agreed to make a recommendation to eliminate the wait-lists and urge the government to give that a high priority. That is significant, because it is a committee of government and opposition MLAs. I am very discouraged that the minister seems to have got the money but not spent it on this priority.

[1215]

I do note that you sent a letter on January 23, 2008, to the Hon. Tom Christensen asking for an accounting of where the increased money that went to the ministry went. Have you received an answer from the minister on that point?

J. Jaquier: No, we have not received any specific details. We've also tried to contact the regional administrator, who was responsible for some of those funds, and it was a very nebulous answer that we received.

J. Yap: Thank you, Jean-Marc, for your presentation. I heard you say that there was an increase of 0.5 percent in funding. But in looking at your statement of operations for '06-07, it looks like provincial government funding has gone up, by my rough calculation, by about 11 percent — $2.33 million to $2.6 million almost. Did I misunderstand what you were referring to in the funding increase?

J. Jaquier: We did receive in the last fiscal year the increase in hourly wages, and that was part of a collective agreement that enabled us to try to keep up with the rest of the province. The CDC is one of very few centres which is not unionized, so obviously, our wages are lower. We're still able to participate in that agreement. So those funds we received were to help us increase and retain our staff that wasn't able to….

J. Yap: So the funding was increased, but the number of staff stayed the same.

J. Jaquier: Yeah.

J. Yap: I see. Thank you.

R. Austin: I have one quick question. Have you thought about contacting the child and youth advocate, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, just to see whether her office would be able to…? As an independent advocate specifically dealing with children's issues, it may be that her office can do some digging and get some answers that you and even we aren't able to get when you write these letters. I mean, she is an independent person who reports to the House, and that's her job. Have you tried contacting her?

J. Jaquier: My understanding is that our executive director, through the BCACDI, which is a B.C. organization, has been in close contact with this person. I think that all those avenues have been explored already.

D. Thorne: It's my first year on the committee, so I'm just learning as I go along. But it seems to me, just from listening to you and reading a bit of your recommendations, that for two years this committee has strongly recommended that we accept your recommendations and move forward on them. That has not worked, and you really don't know why.

I'm just wondering: have you and your board given any thought to presenting this in some kind of a different way — taking a different approach to trying to get the additional money put into your provincial contract? Is there something new that we could say or do in our report that might move this issue forward?

J. Jaquier: I think that the main thing we can keep in mind is that the wait-list is not going down very much with the increased efforts from CDCs in the province to reach more children. The referrals increase year after year. So as we're able to hire additional staff to try to curb that increase, either from the little money we receive from the ministry or from our own reserve or fundraising, we are still not making huge results in reducing that wait-list.

We've tried to improve even more the efficiency at the operational level. We've tried to meet with every single person we know. We were successful at getting the minister to come and visit. We thought that would make a difference. We've tried to involve our MLAs. We've got two MLAs who are working with the centre, one from each side, with mixed results, unfortunately. Save for making a big media campaign, which we are trying to stay away from because we think it may deter from some good relationships, we're kind of lost on what more we can do to help the situation.

D. Thorne: Well, it does sound like you've tried to do just about everything. Perhaps if our efforts and your efforts fail again this year, you might have to consider the big media campaign and deal with the wait-list that way.

[1220]

J. Jaquier: I know that other CDCs across the province have similar situations. At the various BCACDI meetings we had that discussion, and I think very few have received any significant fund increase.

R. Lee: I look at the financial statements there — your gaming, donations and fundraising. In 2006 you had almost $360,000. Then last year it went down to $276,000. Which component is actually decreasing? Is it gaming, donations or fundraising? Which part is it?

J. Jaquier: I think the gaming has been going down. We've been receiving, also, funds from the United Way
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in the past, and year after year that component is going down as well. I'm not quite sure. I think more organizations are receiving funds from the United Way in the area. Overall fundraising has increased in the last few years, and this fiscal year has been very successful so far. But I think we are still a fairly small organization with a lot of competition in terms of fundraising in the area, and this is a very small component of what we can do.

R. Lee: That's a difference of about $80,000, so it's a significant….

J. Jaquier: Yeah. Well, keep in mind that we had a special event last year, and that was deferred by a few weeks. This started happening in the next fiscal year, and the timing and the recording then made a difference.

R. Hawes (Chair): I'll just ask, if I might, further to what John Yap was asking, Jean-Marc. Just so I understand it, provincial funding went up, according to your statements here, by about $260,000. Is that what it worked out to — a roughly $260,000 increase? But your wages and benefits went up by $120,000. I see that your contract fees and administration went up. Within that, then, you're saying that there was really…. Other than $35,000 to hire one employee, all of the money went into increased wages. Or was there any money in there for increased services?

J. Jaquier: Well, these are the 2007 statements. Unfortunately, you don't have the March '08 in these statements. In this year all the funds we've received…. Everything went into hiring staff. Our administration is very lean. We don't have any mortgage or rent to pay, so we're able to operate in a very efficient manner in that sense.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, so your year-end 2008 statements aren't out yet.

J. Jaquier: Oh, they are, but they're not in this. This is a brochure we made. We can't afford to have a new brochure every year, unfortunately.

R. Hawes (Chair): No other questions. Thank you very much.

Next we have the North Island Students Union — James Bowen and Ron Scow.

Welcome.

R. Scow: Gilakas'la, gilakas'la. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ron Scow, and I am a member of the North Island Students Union. With me today is James Bowen, a former student of North Island and a staff person of the North Island Students Union. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf of over 3,500 students and their families from across north Vancouver Island.

We have spoken to you in the past about increasing funding for trades programs and also for elimination of fees for adult basic education. These priorities have been met in whole or in part, and for that I would like to thank you.

The North Island Students Union has been part of a provincial coalition, under the Canadian Federation of Students, that has consistently lobbied to ensure that not just our members but everyone from the north Island community could access high-quality post-secondary education. More specifically, our priorities have included and still include increased government funding to improve the quality of education in universities and colleges and the elimination of any financial barriers people face in being able to participate in post-secondary education, including a reduction in tuition fees.

[1225]

I am sure that by this point in your process you have begun to hear stories of how disappointed students were with the previous year's budget. There were no new initiatives to support students, who are increasingly burdened with excessive debt loads, and no new money for institutions to limit their increasing dependence on tuition fees to supplement their operation budget. Students continue to be burdened with excessive debt loads, and they continue to pay more to receive less.

In addition to a budget that did nothing for students, there was a massive cut to post-secondary funding just prior to the institutional budgeting cycle. This nearly $55 million provincial rollback significantly contributed to a last-minute $1.1 million deficit at North Island College. This was cause for the elimination of numerous staff and faculty positions at North Island.

These reductions have had a noticeable impact on students. Over 40 sections are no longer being offered. Students have less flexibility in their course selection, making it more difficult to work around necessary part-time jobs and oftentimes scarce and expensive child care provisions.

Students who could previously take courses on campus in their hometown are increasingly being forced to travel to campuses in other cities. At a time when gas prices show no sign of letting up, this further increases the cost of their education.

I know from talking to my peers at other institutions that the situation at North Island is being echoed across the province. Funding for post-secondary education has been consistently squeezed in a time of great prosperity in the province of B.C. Tuition fees continue to rise, and student loan debt increasingly burdens recent graduates.

It's becoming clearer by the day that this prosperity won't last forever. We are rapidly approaching the end of the golden decade. If we don't invest now in essential
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social programs like post-secondary education, we will have missed a golden opportunity.

To this end, we would like to make four recommendations. The first is a reduction of tuition fees equal to the roughly $110 million increase in funding committed by the federal government for post-secondary education in British Columbia this year.

As you know, the 2007 federal budget had an additional $800 million earmarked for provincial post-secondary education funding. Students were expecting an increase of funding following this budget. Instead, what they found was that provincial funding decreased by margins nearly equal to the expected increase.

It's been the same story for many years now. Funding for post-secondary education decreases while tuition fees increase. Tuition fees within this decade once accounted for a tenth of North Island College's operating budget. They are now closer to one-third.

Students are calling for a tuition fee reduction of 10 percent. We will continue to make this call to ensure that the education required for the people of British Columbia is as accessible as it is necessary.

Our second recommendation is the reinstatement of an upfront grants program. It is the case that even with dramatic reductions in tuition fees, a large number of students would still require student loans to cover the costs of their education. Student loans are a program accessed by those in the greatest need in order to achieve the education they know will benefit them in the future. It is the unfortunate reality that it is those with the greatest need who bear the greatest burden upon graduation.

The federal government responded to the call by students to alleviate some of the debt pressure on newly graduating students. We hope that our provincial government will follow suit.

Upfront grants are far superior to the government's current loan reduction program. The loan reduction program offers no guarantee to those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds that their loans will be reduced.

Without knowing what exactly their debt levels will be, people are staying away from college and university due to debt aversion. This is keeping many qualified people from accessing B.C.'s post-secondary education system. It is also putting pressure on those already in the system to seek employment rather than continue on with their education and risk-taking on debt that is often seen as insurmountable.

[1230]

A need-based, upfront grant program would do two things: (1) it would encourage more students from low- and middle-income backgrounds to take the risk of getting the education they need, and (2) it would encourage those who have already taken this risk to continue on in fulfilling their education goals. This is important not just for these students but also for the province of British Columbia, as something needs to be done to reverse the trend of decreasing domestic enrolments.

Our third recommendation is to reduce the rate of interest on B.C. student loans to the government rate of borrowing. I have already touched on the adversity that the high cost of education — and the amount of debt that students are required to take on — causes. To this end, reducing the rate of interest on student loans is a simple matter of fairness.

First, students in British Columbia pay a higher rate of interest than students in most other provinces. Second, charging high levels of interest on student loans causes those who have the least money to pay more for their education than those who have the most.

I would encourage you to take the step recommended and reduce student loan interest to the rate of borrowing to bring about equality in access to help ensure that any who want to access post-secondary education can.

Our final recommendation is threefold: an increase in per-student funding to 2001 levels, an indexing of this base funding to the rate of inflation, and a guarantee that carbon neutrality by 2010 at North Island College won't be on the backs of students.

This is, essentially, a call for a reinvestment in funding for colleges and universities in B.C. Research has shown that since 2001 the per-student operating funding to the universities and colleges has been over a thousand dollars. This means that in a time of doubling tuition fees, students are paying more for less.

Service at North Island College has continually been reduced due to budget shortfall after budget shortfall. It is more difficult to see an adviser in the financial aid office or to talk to counsellors about course selection. And when students do these, people are often overworked and overstressed.

It is the same story with course offerings in the outlook of faculty. More and more classes are being cancelled; even entire programs are being eliminated. This forces students who anticipate taking these courses to seek their education elsewhere at greatly increased cost and away from their home community.

Another effect of the reduction of funding is the increased reliance on distance and on-line education. While these delivery modes are great for some, offering flexibility that is key when part-time jobs are an increasing necessity, for others this form of education offers insurmountable barriers. An immediate increase in funding to the levels recommended would reverse these trends and improve not just the quality of education delivered but accessibility as well.

Finally, while students are excited by the prospect of carbon neutrality at North Island College, they are wary about the toll this might take on their education. Students do not want this initiative to further decrease the value of their dollar for their education. If North Island College is not provided adequate funding for this
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exciting transition, we can only assume that it would be paid for with further tuition fee increases and less money spent on education.

To recap, we have four recommendations today. Students would like to see a 10 percent reduction in tuition fees. We are seeking an upfront grants program that will complement the new federal system of grants. We are asking that the interest on student loans be reduced to the government rate of borrowing, and we are calling for an increase in funding to 2001 levels, to be indexed to the rate of inflation.

I'm certain that you have heard these recommendations already and will likely continue to hear them across the province. It is our hope that you'll recognize how important these recommendations are for students and their families all over B.C. and that you will act on them accordingly.

Thank you for your time today. Gilakas'la.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, and we have some time for questions.

[1235]

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Ron, for your presentation. We have heard similar presentations and recommendations from other student associations from across the province.

Recently the Premier announced in Penticton that there were going to be conditional grants for municipalities and school boards to soften the blow of carbon neutrality. Your last point is an interesting one. As an Islander, I understand the distances you have to travel between Port Alberni and Port McNeill.

How would you suggest the government deal with the carbon tax and post-secondary institutions? Would you suggest that they follow the lead that they've put forward with school boards and impose a similar grant program so that the costs of fighting climate change are not borne in your tuition fees?

J. Bowen: If I might, I think that…. I'm not too familiar with the program that you're talking about. It's in the K-to-12 system?

J. Horgan: Just last week.

J. Bowen: Just last week? Sorry.

J. Horgan: It's a week old, so I'm not surprised. But that you were excluded is the point. The post-sec sector was excluded.

J. Bowen: It's my understanding, talking to an administrator at North Island College, that there's going to be a framework set and that if the college does not meet their emissions framework, they will have to pay that money back to the provincial government. It's the students' perspective that if that is the case, then likely students will be bearing the brunt of that repayment.

A place like North Island College doesn't have the necessary resources that a place like UBC might have in order to make that transition more smooth. UBC might even be able to profit off making that transition, but at North Island College that is unlikely. So we'd like to see that that transition is funded rather than charged to the college.

J. Rustad: Thank you for your presentation. We have heard from many post-secondary groups around the province where we've gone, as you have surmised.

A couple of things, I guess. One of the things is just sort of a comment with regard to the carbon tax in particular. There are some proposals out there that would have a carbon tax on producers, so it would just be a cost increase that would come and you wouldn't see it upfront. You wouldn't have the opportunity to do the offsetting.

I actually wanted to ask about trades and the trades programs. Post-secondary education funding has gone up by roughly 40 percent since 2001. They've seen increases virtually every year. In particular, there's been a very large expansion in the number of people in trades. I believe the number of apprentices has gone from somewhere between 14,000 to over 40,000 that are in the training process.

I'm wondering for North Island, how much increase you've seen in terms of the trades and whether or not you still have wait-lists for additional demand on the skilled-trades side.

J. Bowen: I'm not too clear about the wait-lists for trades at North Island. I think that there is still some wait-listing. I'm a student at Malaspina currently. I know that there are definitely wait-lists occurring at Malaspina. I mean, it's to the point where I've heard the chair of the board talk about offering sort of private trades programs in addition to the publicly funded ones so that students who got there first would get a cheaper, publicly funded education, whereas the students who weren't fortunate to register in time would be forced into paying three or four times what the other students were.

I think the situation is much the same at North Island as well.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Just to return to the issue of the carbon tax and its burden on the college system, would you support a recommendation that the Premier consider extending the program he announced last week in Penticton to post-secondary education institutions, such as colleges, so that that money isn't taken out of student services?
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J. Bowen: Absolutely. Without knowing the full details of that program, if it's a program that would ensure that students aren't bearing the cost of the transition to carbon neutrality, then absolutely.

R. Lee: I understand there's some expansion planned at your college. Can you comment on the benefit to students or challenges to students?

J. Bowen: Sorry. The expansion plans?

R. Lee: Yeah.

J. Bowen: In terms of new campus centres or…?

R. Lee: Yeah. New buildings.

[1240]

J. Bowen: I'm not aware of the new expansion plans at the college. Sorry.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation. It was well presented and well understood.

Now for something completely different, as they say. Vancouver Island University Students Union, Steve Beasley.

Welcome.

S. Beasley: Thank you. I'm not sure whether I should just say "ditto" and ask for your questions or whether I should go through and read what are essentially the same types of things. I'm sure it won't shock the committee that what we're going to say is very similar. So I'll start out with a prepared statement and then welcome your questions, whether you want to ask me the same questions as the previous group in terms of our institution or different ones.

Good afternoon. My name is Steve Beasley, and I'm the executive director of the Malaspina Students Union, soon to be the Vancouver Island University Students Union. I also serve in a capacity on the senate and the board of governors there as a student representative. I'm also a geography student in my final year of studies.

I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for hearing our presentation today and note our appreciation for this process, this sort of democratic process where we can give input to the government. Just as background, the Malaspina Students Union represents more than 10,000 students at Vancouver Island University who study in Duncan, Parksville, Powell River and Nanaimo.

One of the key goals of our organization is to increase the ease of access to higher education and trades training in our region and across the province. It's unfortunate, from our perspective, that last year's budget did little to address this goal, as it was virtually silent on issues relating to colleges and universities. While our members understand the very legitimate array of demands and recommendations before the committee, we would respectfully submit that post-secondary education and funding post-secondary education needs to be a higher priority for the province in the coming years.

With that, I'd like to start with the issue of tuition fees. For some time, Statistics Canada has cited cost as the number one deterrent to pursuing a higher education in Canada. This data is evident in many forms, including the scores of presentations made to the Campus 2020 process last year.

In 2001 British Columbia had some of the lowest tuition fees in Canada and had increasing enrolments, with students enjoying broad access to a high-quality system. Then, upon a lifting of the tuition fee freeze, we saw fees shoot up as funding was eliminated and institutions had to backfill budget shortfalls with tuition fees. At our institution, the Malaspina University College, tuition increased between 200 and 300 percent in just three years.

This rapid fee increase placed a huge burden on students and their families. In 2005 the B.C. government wisely implemented a tuition fee cap of 2 percent per year. This was a sensible and progressive policy, but unfortunately, the cap came too late for many learners and many more potential learners.

That brings me to our first recommendation, and that is to implement a fully funded tuition fee reduction of 10 percent for all post-secondary students in the coming year. The 2007 federal budget allocated an additional $800 million specifically for post-secondary education funding, distributed in the form of provincial transfers. Of that $800 million, an estimated $110 million was transferred to British Columbia for use in the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

As my colleagues mentioned, it's unfortunate that rather than increasing funding in the last year, the Ministry of Advanced Education ended up reducing funding, and we saw a decline in support for our institutions at the same time that we saw tuition fees increase by over $30 million.

With tuition fee revenues collected by the provincial government now just under $1 billion annually, the approximately $110 million in extra federal funding announced in 2007 can and should be used toward providing relief to students and their families through a 10 percent reduction in tuition fees without putting any new pressure on the provincial treasury.

I'll move now to the issue of student debt. I think it's fair to say that all of us experience debt in some form, be that credit cards or car loans, mortgages or lines of credit. Debt in our society has become extremely common. But I would argue that the current levels of consumer debt carried by the average citizen have reached a critical level, and a significant proportion of that for young people is the ballooning level of student debt.

We estimate that by January of 2009, the total amount of federal student loan debt will reach $13 billion. And
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when that's coupled with provincial student loan debt, we expect that number to exceed $20 billion.

Research distributed by the Canadian Federation of Students estimates that student loan debt for an average university graduate in British Columbia is near $30,000. Estimates produced by Statistics Canada calculated an average student debt per university graduate at a figure in excess of that $30,000 when both private loans and government student loans were included, and those figures are nearly a decade old now.

Currently the British Columbia government provides a loan reduction program. This service offers no guarantee as to how many students will qualify to have their loans reduced in any given year and no guarantee the students will receive the same level of funding in each year. These shortcomings have a profound effect on the likelihood of potential learners to enter the system because these students cannot depend on this funding as part of their financial planning.

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For this reason, our second recommendation is the development of a new upfront B.C. grants program that would provide non-repayable student financial assistance. A new provincial grant program would ensure that low- and middle-income families have the necessary resources to pursue post-secondary education and training. Further, upfront forms of grants are important to providing the much-needed relief for students struggling to find the financial resources to participate in university or college as well as for students that are currently in the system contemplating dropping out due to lack of funds.

I'll say as an aside that there is a lot of research done by the Canadian Association of University Teachers on the significant barriers faced by students in their later levels of education and how a number of students that drop out do, in fact, drop out for financial reasons in their third and fourth year.

Our third recommendation is also under the heading of student debt reduction. We are seeking a reduction of the interest rates charged on student loans to the government's own rate of borrowing.

As members of the committee are likely aware, the B.C. government charges interest rates on student loans. However, it may come as a shock to members, as it did to myself, that nearly every province in Canada charges a lower interest rate on student loans than does British Columbia.

High interest rates on student loans have a crippling effect on students' economic abilities post graduation. Based on the current interest rates, a $30,000 student loan would turn into a $45,000 debt upon adding interest. Those who graduate with a $45,000 debt end up paying back more than $65,000 dollars. Again as an aside, those at the higher ends of debt are students with dependents and mature students, people who are least in the position to be able to afford that crippling level of debt while they're trying to provide for their families.

It's because those who come from lower- and middle-income backgrounds inevitably rely on the financial assistance more than those from high-income backgrounds that the system penalizes those families most in need of assistance. Meanwhile, in terms of impact on the provincial treasury, the annual cost of even eliminating interest on student loans is nearly negligible.

The final area of discussion for my presentation today is funding for our universities and colleges. Students at Malaspina University College were amongst those shocked and dismayed at the unexpected cuts to college and university funding last spring.

At our institution, while we transition to full university status, we faced layoffs of faculty and reduced course offerings. Nearly 160 sections is my understanding, so nearly 160 courses were pulled back last year. We've seen halted construction projects and cutbacks to important and vital student services. While the $55 million that the system was shorted is a relatively small number, our institutions are not in a position to absorb any further cuts after several years of budget reduction exercises.

Though our students have read the press releases and listened to the minister, someone with whom our organization has worked and for whom we have a great deal of respect, we would have to conclude that the government's messaging on this issue is misleading. While the government has publicly touted funding increases as high as 40 percent for post-secondary education, the reality is that when those increases are measured accurately, the funding has declined.

Since 2001, accounting for inflation, per-student operating funds for universities have declined from $8,786 to $7,736. This underfunding is a clear and direct attack on the ability of our institutions to offer quality education and is a real affront to those students who have been asked every year to pay what we've called inflationary tuition fee costs.

While the government asked students to recognize the existence of inflationary pressures, it then hypocritically not only does not keep pace with inflation but in fact shorts institutions the all-important inflationary increases in funding, which we would argue is quite a shameful double standard.

Accordingly, our fourth recommendation is the restoration of that per-student funding, accounting for inflation, to 2001 levels and that future funding for post-secondary institutions be indexed to inflation.

The second component of our discussion on funding is about the carbon neutrality mandate, the mandate that our institutions be carbon-neutral by 2010. Students are very supportive of this initiative and have long taken an active role on campus and in our communities in supporting environmentally sustainable practices.
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We're extremely pleased to see that the government has also made environmental sustainability a core goal. However, we are concerned that without the necessary funding, the costs of reaching that goal will be downloaded onto those who can afford it least, which are students.

Additionally, we would express concern, as the previous speakers have done, with the possible effects of the carbon tax on the resources of our institution. Because there has been such underfunding, our institutions are not in a position to be able to absorb those costs in the next year without having a profound effect on the quality of service provided to students and the community.

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Our fifth and final recommendation is that institutions be provided the necessary funds to meet the government's carbon neutrality mandate and that the negative impacts of the carbon tax be mitigated for universities and colleges.

I think, just before closing, I'd like to make perhaps a final plea on this point. And that is that when students, such as myself or the previous group, come and speak about these issues, we do so from a very kind of dollars-and-cents point of view. But I'd like the committee to also consider the broader social impacts of what we're saying.

Not so long ago I was at a conference with a number of medical students who were facing crushing debt levels, because in their province of Ontario, like has happened here, the government ceased to regulate tuition fees for professional programs. And those medical students were explaining to me how in med school now students were ceasing to choose the option of becoming general practitioners and choosing instead to specialize, because those who specialize could charge a lot higher rates for their services and therefore be able to deal with their crushing student loan debts.

As you can imagine, extrapolating that into how our society will be shaped in the future, as we see in a number of our communities where people are having difficulty finding family doctors…. And perhaps there is a relation between that phenomenon and the existence of high tuition fees.

Additionally, other professions you can look at.... You know, how many lawyers graduating after paying three years at $13,000 for legal programs are going to be able to go and work for legal aid services and provide free legal assistance to those in our society who need it most.

Finally, I think that when all of you are next at the doctor, you should contemplate whether that person who is providing you with important life-saving advice is the person that could actually afford the $20,000-a-year cost to go to med school, or whether it's somebody who got really good marks and is really passionate about the medical profession and is doing it for the right reasons and is someone that was very highly skilled — or whether, again, that person is somebody that got in because the standards were lower because the fees were higher.

With that, I'll end my presentation and look forward to your questions.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Steve. Before I go to…. I just had one quick question for you, if that's okay.

S. Beasley: Sure.

R. Hawes (Chair): It's this. We have heard from other students also about the cost of books.

S. Beasley: Yes.

R. Hawes (Chair): You sit on the senate at Malaspina, so….

S. Beasley: Transitional senate, yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. And we're told that the decision on how to change textbooks is one that's made generally in the senate somewhere, and I'm just wondering…. Like, we're hearing that sometimes the changes are pretty small, but the cost of making the change loaded onto students is pretty tremendous.

S. Beasley: Yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): How is that decision made? I mean, is it made with consideration of the impact on the budgets of students or…?

S. Beasley: Generally not. The faculty will generally have independence on how the curriculum is delivered, and so they have the ability to assign a different textbook. And generally textbooks are agreed upon at the departmental level, and the senate would be a body that someone would appeal to if there was a problem with the textbook.

The real issue with textbook costs is the role of publishers. The publishers will regularly change editions year after year after year and will produce what they call an updated book with very few changes. So there's really no reason why a first-year psychology book or a first-year history book or first-year political science book would need to change year after year, except that publishers know that by changing the editions they can put institutions in the position of requiring students to purchase a new version of the textbook, as opposed to being able to share textbooks.

This has a huge effect on the cost as it's downloaded to students by not being able to share and use each other's textbooks. It also is a complete waste of resources in terms of the trees that are required to produce essentially the same book year after year after year.

R. Hawes (Chair): If the committee were to ask you, along with your colleagues, because clearly…. You
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know, the presentations are essentially the same, so there is…. I know there has been some discussion with the federation. Would you have any suggestions on how to handle this textbook thing to alleviate some of this problem?

If you could come back to us…. You have until October 24 to make written submissions. I would be very interested in seeing that, and I'm sure others in the committee would too.

S. Beasley: Yeah. Well, maybe I'll reserve that, and then we'll make a submission as a group on that topic.

R. Hawes (Chair): That would be a very interesting one, I think. The members of the committee would appreciate that a lot, I'm sure.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Steve, for the presentation. Although "ditto" might have done the trick, it's really important that we hear from different communities, and so I appreciate, and I know all members appreciate, Malaspina/the artist formerly known as Malaspina's presentation.

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I have two kids at UVic, and neither of them drive a car. They take public transit; they ride their bikes. Their carbon footprint is virtually negligible, yet their institutions, their administrators, who are not on the bus — I don't know if the administrators get U-passes; we'll be certainly asking them if they show up — are not reducing their footprint to get to the big office with the windows. The kids who are students are.

Yet with the carbon tax in position and the neutrality mandate by 2010, as we heard from North Island, there is a possibility that those costs of achieving those targets will be passed on to students in the form of tuition increases.

Could you make a suggestion on behalf of Vancouver Island University to the committee as to how we could recommend to government that they better cushion the impact of this societal shift that we all want to see and ensure that it's not borne on the back of students who, as you say and others have said, will come out of university and colleges with a massive debt and also riddled with guilt because they are not the problem with climate change?

S. Beasley: Yeah. To clarify, I speak on behalf of the students union and not on behalf of the university. Sometimes that gets confused.

With respect, I absolutely agree with you. I think that the carbon tax, though perhaps well meaning, is the wrong direction for our province in terms of dealing with these issues.

One of the other roles I have at the institution is that I'm on the campus sustainability committee, and one of the things we're hearing from students across the province, not just at our institution, is difficulty accessing transit services. At our institution we don't yet have a U-pass. When we move forward on that issue, one of the conditions we're going to place is that everyone in the institution pay for it and not just be something that students pay for.

As with the carbon tax, these U-pass systems are also a means where a cost of an important social service is downloaded to a particular section of the population—where students end up subsidizing transit systems on behalf of government, which then underfunds it.

If we are serious in British Columbia about making a real difference to climate change, what we need to do is actually take a hands-on approach. I would argue that carbon taxes are a hands-off approach. They are some version of autopilot, where the government believes that they can assign a tax to something and then walk away from the issue and it will just take care of itself, when in fact that's not the case.

I don't think carbon taxes will achieve the goals that the government lays out and, in the meantime, will disproportionately disadvantage huge sections of our population. If the government was serious about making our institutions more sustainable, it would fully fund transit. It would provide transit in the regions of universities at a cost of zero dollars to students, and it would take away parking and force students and other people at the institution to take the bus. That would have a profound effect on the levels of carbon produced. It would actually make a more collegial institution at the same time.

My vote would definitely be against carbon taxes and for funding for transit systems…

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Steve.

S. Beasley: …and updating outdated facilities. I'll slip that in at the end.

R. Hawes (Chair): Our next presenter is Justin Rigsby.

Welcome.

J. Rigsby: Thanks very much. It's nice to be here. Robin — a familiar face from Terrace, where I used to live, although I'm a resident of Vancouver Island now.

I'm here today on behalf of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce. I know that CEO John Winter addressed the panel last week, I believe, in Penticton. I'm the chair of the board and felt that I would hit on a few different topics other than what John hit on, although you're going to hear a similar refrain on some of the issues I've just been hearing from a completely different angle.

In my day job I'm part-owner and controller for a group of logging companies here on Vancouver Island
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and what we have left up in Terrace. Basically, my presentation will lead through the four questions that were cited on the website. I believe, as John mentioned to you last week, that the B.C. Chamber will be submitting a formal document for your review at a later date.

I guess, first of all, commenting on the impact of tax cuts, I'd like to address the issue of the carbon tax, which seems to be most unpopular in northern and rural communities and which poses a particular challenge for the forest sector. While the chamber congratulates the government for its commitment to ensuring the tax is revenue-neutral to the provincial coffers, it is clear that the tax is not revenue-neutral to business, as business will be responsible for 70 percent of the revenue but will only receive 30 percent of the tax cuts.

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In simple terms, the carbon tax has become a cost of doing business. As a cost of doing business in an export global market sector like the forest industry, it does not have the ability to pass these increased costs along to customers.

Next to wages, fuel has become the second-largest variable cost in log harvesting. On Vancouver Island, be it second-growth harvesting or high-lead logging, the equipment-intensive nature of harvesting, trucking, sorting operations and marine transportation has meant that the tax will come to mean an increased cost of doing business, especially for small business contractors.

Yes, tax reductions have helped in recent times. However, strikes and mill shutdowns, temporary and permanent, lower demand and lower processing of coastal lumber and logs have put companies in loss positions where tax cuts are not necessarily beneficial here in the short term. While tax cuts aid businesses that are profitable, it doesn't seem that's the case today in the coastal and Interior forest sector.

The chamber believes it's critical that government partner with business to look at solutions outside tax cuts provided, which enhance productivity and efficiency in the long run, allowing them to increase revenue and thereby offsetting the negative impact of the tax. The chamber, as I mentioned already, presented a wide range of solutions to address the challenge presented by the carbon tax.

I would again reiterate that these solutions need to be innovative and go beyond the tax cuts already announced by investing in increased funding to particular sectors such as forestry through targeted incentives and changes to policy that would mitigate any financial impact of the tax.

With reference to corporate and small business tax cuts, it wasn't long ago that the B.C. economy was in tatters. The late '90s saw government policies that favoured labour, not business. B.C. was considered a have-not province and relied on federal transfer payments. It was struggling under a huge debt load and had the highest or near-highest personal and corporate tax rates in the country. Head offices were abandoning B.C. for the business-friendly climes of Alberta, and people were migrating to other provinces in search of jobs.

Fast-forward to today. B.C. is now a have province. Government has provided the impetus for business by enacting the lowest or near-lowest tax rates in the country. Government has reduced its debt and now discloses annual surpluses. We compare very well against other provinces in terms of corporate and personal taxation, and I would go as far as to say that the tax cuts implemented at both the personal and corporate level over the last eight years are the primary reason B.C. is able to weather the current economic challenges facing most other jurisdictions.

While the chamber welcomes competition as good for the economy, the ability of B.C. businesses to excel in a competitive environment, especially the forest industry, depends on government's ability to ensure a level playing field, particularly in terms of taxation. We need to keep pace with tax cuts that are being enacted by neighbouring jurisdictions such as Alberta.

I just want to touch briefly on the PST exemption that is applied in the log-harvesting sector. While some aspects of the industry are PST-exempt, other costs are not. This has led to confusion amongst industry participants. The PST application needs streamlining, and the exemption status should be applicable across all manners of costs to log harvesting.

Tax credits. It should be noted that the tax system can be utilized to be a proactive way for providing incentives to encourage sectors to invest and grow and to encourage beneficial behaviour. This has been the case with the film and television tax credit in the movie industry, the mining exploration tax credit in the mining exploration industry, and the scientific research and experimental development tax credit in the high-tech sector. We believe these credits have proven to be beneficial to their respective sectors and should be maintained or enhanced where appropriate.

But the same thought process needs to be applied to the forest sector. The chamber recommends that a tax credit mechanism or other incentives be created for three things. New entrants and existing firms to invest in capital, in manufacturing facilities that end up making products from the plentiful second-growth timber we have on Vancouver Island…. These would include tax credits on plant and equipment purchases — lower municipal taxation and the reduced logging tax rates.

Second is the log-harvesting sector, in order to encourage innovation and to reduce the high cost of getting timber and logs to market. Third is for maximizing the value of the timber profile, including incentives aimed at harvesting old-growth timber. This will incent manufacturers to extract the highest value possible from timber and help producers access niche markets.

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As part of this mechanism, stumpage charged by the government needs to be re-evaluated. The current MPS system is not working. The stumpage rates, as derived through the B.C. Timber Sales auction system, are not responsive to rapidly changing market conditions and often do not reflect the value of low-value timber that could otherwise be extracted. Stumpage rates need to reflect the underlying value of timber in a true marketplace. Unfortunately, the MPS system is based on too small a volume of competitive-bid timber to set pricing.

Municipal taxation. While likely not part of this panel's jurisdiction, property taxes on large manufacturing facilities — especially here on Vancouver Island, as has been well documented — are a hindrance to competitiveness. The chamber welcomes the announcement by the UBCM of a review of local government finance with a view to reducing local governments' reliance on local property taxation.

We would encourage the provincial government to engage in this process, with a clear mandate to implement solutions that provide local government with revenue sources required to fulfil their mandate through a system that is fair and equitable and that reflects the true costs of the service of each taxpayer group.

Question 2 referred to priority investments. I would echo our original presentation made by John last week and some of the components that he mentioned. I wanted to highlight two areas specific to the forest industry.

Silviculture. From a forest sector perspective, the mountain pine beetle is a complete environmental, economic and, indirectly, quite possibly potential social disaster. The scope of replenishing this dying Interior forest with healthy, vibrant new trees is beyond the capability of existing licence holders.

The government needs to dedicate the resources necessary to perform intensive silviculture and encourage new forest growth. This will help reduce carbon emissions from the decaying timber and encourage CO2 absorption from young growing trees. As well, the establishment of a vibrant forest will provide economic benefits in the future and mitigate other issues that are creeping up, such as flooding and the wildfire potential.

Public education. Currently much misinformation exists in the public domain with respect to the forest industry. Education of the public as to the benefits of a financially stable and successful industry is vital. We respectfully request that government undertake an initiative to provide the necessary resources to inform the general public as to what the forest industry means to the province — the jobs provided, the revenue contributed to government coffers and the positive impact forestry can have not only on climate change but also on the very communities that depend on forestry.

Question 3 referred to debt reductions. I believe our original presentation made in Penticton was quite clear on what our feelings were on that, and I will bypass that.

Question 4, other measures. The chamber believes that the key to the initiatives in Budget 2009 should be investing in people and critical infrastructure that are critical to the growth of productivity. In particular, I'd like to focus on three recommendations that we believe to be of particular importance to the economy, particularly here on Vancouver Island, where our suffering forest sector needs immediate revitalization, and diversification into other industries will reduce the reliance on the forest sector to sustain the economy.

Firstly, energy self-sufficiency for Vancouver Island. The government must consider additional investment in ensuring that at least 30 percent of Vancouver Island's power needs are generated on the Island. In recent years the population on the Island and outer islands has grown substantially. With population growth has come economic growth and an increased demand for power. Vancouver Island needs to look to alternate sources of energy to provide and maintain this threshold. Run-of-the-river, tidal and wind power sources are potential to meet and exceed that 30 percent threshold. Government needs to encourage investment and provide incentives to businesses that are focused on energy creation.

Secondly, the skills and training tax credit. The chamber was the leading voice in calling for the introduction of a training tax credit introduced in the budget in 2006. The chamber's recommendations were clear. The tax credit needed to be focused on small business and preclude any training already funded by the federal or provincial governments.

In the forest industry it has been particularly difficult to attract new entrants or to provide alternative opportunities for existing employees. The apprenticeship program has been a vital source of training for new mechanics in the industry. I think it was mentioned here earlier that there's been a vast increase in the number of apprentices in the province, which is excellent.

In addition, the heavy equipment operator program at Malaspina College, now Vancouver Island University, has provided the basic training for heavy equipment operators needed by the industry. However, the training tax credit only applies to apprentices. Ideally, that tax credit application needs to be expanded to benefit or enhance other formal and informal training needs. The chamber recommends that the provincial government immediately review the training tax credit with a view to expanding the credit to training besides apprenticeships, or introducing a new small business training tax credit.

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Aquaculture. Aquaculture is uniquely situated to address many economic challenges currently facing the south coast of B.C. Aquaculture is a research and development–intensive industry, and it is mainly through advancements in technology that this industry leaps ahead. More than 90 percent of aquaculture jobs are in coastal and rural
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communities, and there is no reason to predict that will change in the future.

Aquaculture is and will continue to be an important employer in coastal B.C. Strategic expansion of the industry will only increase contributions that salmon farmers make to the economic health of our communities. Therefore, the chamber recommends that the provincial government ensure that utilizing legitimate and responsible research, ensure that relevant regulations and programs be implemented to support the development of the aquaculture sector….

In conclusion, from my perspective as a resident of Vancouver Island, B.C. faces a unique set of challenges. Whether it is the economic downfall of the coastal forest industry or the fall in visitor numbers, the chamber's recommendations focus on ensuring that we are well positioned to engage in the next phase of economic development.

We are entering a new phase in our economy, with some sectors and regions experiencing challenges while new opportunities present themselves. Ensuring that existing sectors like forestry and aquaculture flourish, while ensuring the province can capitalize on new opportunities, will take a careful mix of investments and incentives supported by strong fundamentals of low taxation, competitive regulation and a commitment to debt reduction.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Justin. We've got a little bit of time for questions, if we have some.

R. Lee: Thank you for a very excellent presentation. My question is on public education and how important it is.

We heard from the mining industry that they want some public education, and then the forestry industry. We also heard about Science World going to different communities to promote science.

Do you see any opportunity for collaboration from the resource industry and Science World?

J. Rigsby: I definitely think there's potential there. I know there are other associations — and I can't speak for them — involved in the forest industry that are looking towards wanting to co-opt with government on education.

I spoke to my daughter's grade 4 class here on the benefits of the forest industry and the benefits of planting new trees, the carbon sequestration model and how lumber products are probably more environmentally sensitive in their production than, say, others types of products.

So I think it's important that those of us in the industry bail in and educate the public. But educating the public at large is a difficult task, and I think that's where we see, and obviously other organizations see, a benefit in partnering with government to get that message out.

Really, the forest industry has had a bad rap for many years, and I think most unfairly. All one needs to do is drive up and down the inland Island highway here to see the beautiful second-growth forests. That doesn't necessarily excuse what went on as far as forestry practices go many years ago, but there certainly is a very vibrant forest out there that will be commercially viable and is currently and can be in the future.

J. Yap: Thanks, Justin, for your presentation.

On the carbon tax, I think it's fair to say that we're in an age now where more and more governments are looking at recognizing that we need to put a price on pollution, on carbon and greenhouse gases if we're going to start moving towards dealing with climate change.

So whoever is in government will have some form of carbon tax. We have our carbon tax that's out there now. As you recognized, it's revenue-neutral to government.

There are those who are suggesting that if they were to be in government, there might be a change to a carbon tax that would be levied against industry, against business, and would perhaps be less transparent than the carbon tax that's in place now.

I'm interested in your thoughts on that possibility that's being proposed.

J. Rigsby: Well, basically, from the B.C. chamber's perspective, we've identified the fact that there is an inequity between business and what individuals receive. That may, at the end of the day, be a bit of a political football.

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At the end of the day, I think we recognize that the tax is here and it's here to stay. How do we, as a B.C. chamber representing in excess of 31,000 members, get that towards a more revenue-neutral aspect for business?

Of course, I've singled out the forest industry here today, because the forest industry is a very capital equipment–intensive industry and thus burns a lot of fuel. From our perspective, we want to see the tax identified so that it's not hidden. By the same token, I think, as I've mentioned, the government can put certain incentives or other initiatives in place that ease that burden between what businesses and individuals….

J. Yap: Like tax credits.

J. Rigsby: Like tax credits. That's why, as part of my presentation, I brought up the notion of tax credits, because we really need to revitalize this industry. I think one of the ways towards going that way is to incent manufacturers, and I think one of the obvious ways is through the tax credit.

The training tax credit has been hugely successful, and we definitely want to see that stay. It has provided a lot of opportunities for young people to get into the apprenticeship program. We'd like to see it expanded to meet other jobs. But that has certainly helped bring new entrants into the business, and it's helped defray some of the costs of training new people into the workforce.
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The forest industry isn't going to survive in the long term unless we start attracting younger people into the industry, and that's a unique way of being able to help business but also bring people into our industry.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Justin. Great presentation.

We have a little gap now, but we could call the next presenter if he's here, and that would be Cliff Boldt.

C. Boldt: Thank you, Chairperson. My name is Cliff Boldt. I live here in the Comox Valley. I'm speaking to you as an individual senior. I'm representing myself. I'm not representing any organization as some of the previous speakers have done.

I'm talking to you as a senior. I have a gold card. There are a lot of statistics about aging in the population that you have all heard about. I was at a conference just recently where I heard reams and reams of them.

But just to summarize, in the 1920s about 5 percent of the population in Canada was made up of seniors. By 1960 this had climbed to only 8 percent. In 2005 it was 13 percent, and it is estimated that by 2036, you're going to have about 25 percent of the Canadian population over the age of 65. Those numbers are probably going to be higher in B.C. because of Victoria — people moving here and to the lower Fraser Valley, for example.

A significant factor about that is that seniors have the highest participation rate, when it comes to voting, of any demographic. So it's something for you to consider.

The numbers suggest that in this budget and in future budgets, the government is going to have to pay some attention to the whole issue of seniors and services and programs for them, for the long-term needs of seniors in the B.C. communities.

There are some things that I think are noteworthy in B.C. One is that the poverty rate for seniors in B.C. in 2006 was 11 percent. The median income for seniors in B.C. in 2005 was about $21,000. The proportion of households in B.C. where the primary maintainer is 65 to 74 years of age and spends more than 30 percent of their household income on rent is 48 percent. And you have about 17 percent of people over the age of 55 participating in the labour market.

Now, I want to congratulate the government, I think, for the creation of the Seniors Healthy Living Secretariat within the Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport. I think this is a very important first step that government has taken towards recognizing seniors as a demographic and concentrating some of the efforts of government in their direction.

The four goals that are laid out by these…. I'll just repeat them for you. One is to create age-friendly communities; secondly, to mobilize and support volunteerism; thirdly, to promote healthy living; and to support older workers.

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I have written to the minister, congratulating her on her initiatives, because she spoke at one of the conferences I was at a couple of weeks ago. But I'm also going to urge that she include adequate housing for seniors as one of the goals for this ministry. I'm also going to urge her to ask the Legislature to appoint a seniors advocate similar to the child and youth advocate that exists, because seniors, like young people and children, are the most vulnerable sector of our population.

Changes in government policy over the last 15 or 20 years have created some real gaps in many of the services for seniors. I think there is a real need in B.C. for more emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention. Aging in place is an appropriate place to start when talking about prevention, because seniors really want stability in their lives. If they can stay in their homes, everyone is going to benefit — the seniors themselves, the community, their families and government, because their costs or their charge on the taxpayer will be reduced.

It's estimated that in B.C. the cost of providing seniors services in their home — for example, home support and home care — would be about $10,000 a year. Putting the same senior into a facility or an acute care bed could cost at least $26,000 a year. So you're looking at a significant cost saving to government by improving many of the services.

Prevention is cheaper than treatment. Prevention starts with adequate nutrition, appropriate physical activity and general mental health. However, when disease does strike, the cost of treatment, especially for pharmaceuticals, is prohibitive for many seniors. For example, some seniors have to choose between getting a prescription filled or having food on the table or paying the rent. That's a reality right here in the Comox Valley.

Governments are encouraging seniors and others to be physically fit, but sufficient resources are not in place to make fitness easy and habit-forming. Parks, green spaces, safe walking and bicycle routes, for example, and hygiene stations — something as basic as this....

Many seniors, for example, are unable to take some of their blood pressure medicine because it is diuretic. So they will stop taking it a day or two before they're going to make a major trip to, say, Vancouver or downtown Courtenay or that sort of thing, because there are no toilet facilities, and businesses frown on people coming in off the street and using their toilet facilities. Something as basic as that could be a major issue for seniors.

The November 22, 2005, issue of the Canadian Medical Journal did some studies on patients who have to share drug costs. There are more physician visits per month during the cost-sharing period than there are during the free period, and that translates into charges on the government's health care budget. Fewer prescriptions are filled in the month there is cost-sharing than when it's free, and fewer prescriptions are filled per physician
[ Page 1989 ]
during the cost-sharing than during the free period. They just can't afford it.

There are more hospital visits during the cost-sharing period than there are during the free period. Again, that's a charge on the government health care system.

Now, governments in B.C. of all political stripes have found that the cuts to financing of drug costs, a political appeal of reducing expenditures.... And I understand this. However, there are some unintended consequences of these containment policies, such as a high deductible for Pharmacare and an over-season, overall increase in the costs to the health care systems.

If you follow some of my recommendations, I think there's going to be a net cost saving. I've got a number of references in my brief, and I also have a number of recommendations. I want to stress only four or five.

My first recommendation is that the government surplus funds go to enhance public services in the next budget. Secondly, that the next budget recognize the savings for keeping seniors in their own home by restoring the cuts to home support and home care that have been made in the last 15 or 20 years.

My third recommendation is that the next budget increases the shelter aid for elderly renters, the SAFER grants, to accurately reflect the cost of rental accommodation for seniors in 2009. Right here in the Comox Valley, I know a number of seniors whose rent has increased by $350 in the last three years. The SAFER grant hasn't kept pace with that.

I'm also recommending that the next budget eliminate the flat tax known as the medical health services premium for those who are over 65.

I'm recommending that the budget provide for infrastructure grants for local government to ensure that communities become more age-friendly — for example, by having access to public drinking water fountains and public toilet facilities, the hygiene stations that I mentioned earlier.

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Finally, I think that the deductible for Pharmacare benefits should be eliminated for people over the age of 65. It's a real serious burden for many of the seniors.

That's my prepared comment.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much. You got a lot more in there than what you've mentioned, so you've clearly spent a great deal of time and thought on this. I want to congratulate you on that. I'm sure all of us do.

Maybe I'll just start with one question, if it's okay.

C. Boldt: Sure. You're the Chair.

R. Hawes (Chair): We read that today's seniors actually, on average, are the wealthiest group of seniors ever in the history of our country. There are, of course, a lot of seniors who aren't in that position at all.

Are you recommending that all Pharmacare and MSP premiums be cut for those who are extremely wealthy seniors? Or would you be more suggesting that there be some form of income test that would be applied, which would make sure that those who need the support get the support but that those who don't and who can actually pay…?

I'll just add one point to that. We have eliminated mandatory retirement, so there are a great number of people over 65 who choose to keep working.

C. Boldt: And many who have to keep working because they can't afford….

R. Hawes (Chair): I would agree.

C. Boldt: Probably more of that category than those who choose.

R. Hawes (Chair): But with some form of an income or means test, that would catch those people and provide them with the assistance. Just a question.

C. Boldt: Ten percent of our population makes the most money. If you take an average, you're averaging people who are making millions of dollars a year with people who are making $21,000 a year. While there might be, on average, wealthier…. You know, we're a wealthier generation than, say, my parents were. I don't buy that argument. For the same reason that maybe 10 percent of the seniors are very wealthy, there are about 75, 80 or 90 percent who are not wealthy.

I think that the medical services premium should be treated the same way as the old age pension. Everybody gets it — universal.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. That answered my question.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Cliff, for your detailed presentation as a senior. I note that there is going to be a cutback on ferry sailings this fall because of a drop in utilization, so I don't know if the gold card will be as valuable to you as it was yesterday.

I wanted to touch upon your suggestion about tax credits for senior volunteerism, because I think it is a very important issue. I represent an area in southern Vancouver Island where there are a lot of seniors. A lot of these people put in countless hours to enhance the quality of life of those who can't take care of themselves.

I am wondering if you could expand on that recommendation so that we can better discuss it when we get to the point in our deliberation where we're putting forward suggestions to the minister.

C. Boldt: I'm not sure how that could be done. I'm sure there are the staff in the Ministry of Finance, the staff in the Ministry of Health, that sort of thing…. You
[ Page 1990 ]
have all kinds of people who would be able to help you much more in that than I can.

I would just like to reaffirm that if every senior stayed home in the Comox Valley tomorrow morning, the Comox Valley would probably come to a grinding halt because of the number of hours that we do put into various services — everything from helping out at Casa Loma or St. Joseph's Hospital to working at St. George's United Church to put some food on the table for the homeless.

D. Thorne: Thank you, Cliff. It's very interesting to me. Not only am I the Housing critic, but I'm a senior. So everything you said really hits home with me.

C. Boldt: It's personal, isn't it?

D. Thorne: Especially if I don't win in the next election, I'll be very interested when I don't have a job — right?

C. Boldt: You don't have a good pension plan?

D. Thorne: Well, I have no pension plan at the moment, no.

C. Boldt: Oh, okay. I thought MLAs had a pretty good….

D. Thorne: No. Actually, we don't. So there you go. That's another misconception.

C. Boldt: Oh, okay.

D. Thorne: I'm particularly interested around recommendations 2 and 3. I have never understood the cuts to the home support and home care, because it's such an obvious saving that everybody understands, whatever political side of the fence they are sitting on. So that is something that, as Housing critic, is not exactly in my area but that I have been looking into. I certainly agree with that, and I may in fact get in touch with you at a later date about some more information.

Recommendation 3 around the SAFER grant. I know your recommendation is that it keep up with the actual, realistic rental rates. Are there also some other areas of that grant that you think need to be looked at in terms of societal changes, etc.? Do we need to look at making it available to a larger group of people as well?

[1330]

C. Boldt: Probably, yes. We have a lot of people in B.C. who are making less than $30,000 a year. The people that I have talked to here in the Comox Valley, one woman in particular who three years ago was paying $450 for her apartment…. Today she's paying $700. She's a widow. She has to survive on the little bit she got from her husband and her CPP and OAS.

The cutoff has to be higher. Right now it's basically subsidizing landlords, I think. It isn't really helping seniors all that much.

D. Thorne: Okay, so can I then just recommend that when you…. I know you've already done this list now, but you're not actually recommending that particular change. You're recommending that the rates be increased, but I think equally as important is that the cutoff be changed.

C. Boldt: Yes, and if you wiped out the Pharmacare deductible for people over 65, that would make one heck of a big difference to a lot of seniors.

D. Thorne: Yeah, but that's a different issue. I'm talking about the SAFER grant itself.

C. Boldt: But the SAFER grant is tied…. What I'm talking about is the disposable income that seniors have, and if you cut down on, for example, the Pharmacare deductible.

D. Thorne: Yeah, but I'm saying that that is a different issue. You have that in a different recommendation. I still think that when you're talking about the SAFER grant you need to be clear that we also need to look at the cutoff points, that that's a huge issue as well as the amount of money people are getting — okay?

Thanks very much for your presentation.

C. Boldt: Point made.

R. Hawes (Chair): With that, thank you very much, Cliff.

We have the North Island College Faculty Association and Shirley Ackland.

The other thing. MLA Harry Bloy from Burquitlam has now arrived. Harry had business in his riding.

Harry, welcome to the hearing.

Interjections.

S. Ackland: This is my brother-in-law.

R. Hawes (Chair): Excuse me, but is there a conflict of interest here?

J. Horgan: I've never seen that woman before in my life.

S. Ackland: Last year he wanted put on Hansard that he is in fact the younger of the two brothers. I'm married to his older brother Pat.
[ Page 1991 ]

J. Horgan: Very older brother. Much older brother. Extremely older brother.

Is this mike on?

S. Ackland: I think he now has it in triplicate.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, with all of that, Shirley, if you want to proceed, you're on.

S. Ackland: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here representing the North Island College Faculty Association. I teach at North Island College. I'd like to thank the committee for providing us some time to add our input on the 2009 provincial budget. Some of the committee members are probably familiar with our institution, but for those of you that are not, I'd just like to give you a brief description of who we are and what we do.

North Island College enrolment space is close to about 2,000 students. Like other community colleges, many of our students don't come directly from high school — not any more. Many are returning to post-secondary education to upgrade for diplomas, certificates or associate degrees.

North Island College operates four campuses in this region. We have a Comox Valley campus, a Campbell River campus, a Port Alberni campus, and I actually teach in the Port Hardy campus.

We take our mandate as a comprehensive community college very seriously, and we put a lot of emphasis on outreach in the community to ensure that we make the most of our resources that we're given by the province. Economic conditions in the northern part of the Island have been increasingly difficult.

The forest industry, once the main driver of employment in the region, is really suffering. Mill closures and bankruptcies have become far too common in this region. Unlike the Lower Mainland, the economic base in this part of the province isn't sufficiently diversified. Originally, I moved up when I married a logger, and you go where the trees are. As a result, adjusting to the changing economic conditions is more difficult in this region than in others.

It's one area where post-secondary institutions can play a very valuable role. Workers making a transition from one industry to another often need new skills. For many it's not just a simple exercise of registering in a new program. There are prerequisites that are needed. Mature students also need support as they adjust to their new role as a returning student.

These are the kinds of institutional challenges that community colleges like North Island have been addressing since our inception. However, our challenge has been made just that much more difficult by some of the policy and funding choices of the provincial government over the last seven years.

[1335]

I appeared before the committee last year and talked about the affordability crunch that many of our students face. High tuition fees are a barrier for many of our students. Those fees are just part of the cost of post-secondary education.

Many of the mature students that I mentioned earlier are balancing family commitments as well as their education. Many have jobs. They have day care responsibilities as well. We're forcing these students into higher and higher levels of debt.

According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average student debt is now approaching $30,000. Those barriers either delay or in some cases completely undermine the transitions we want to see take hold in our region. In fact, the very people whose economic future depends on making a successful transition are the same people we are discouraging by imposing high tuition fees. In a prosperous province like ours, we need to find better solutions.

We also know that the need to get a post-secondary education is growing. I would ask committee members to review a study just released in June by the Conference Board of Canada. It's called Confronting B.C.'s Labour Shortage Challenge. The report describes some of the demographic problems that we face and how critical it is that we put programs in place to address those problems.

I'm going to highlight just a few points from their analysis of the problems that we face. They're forecasting a labour shortfall in BC of 160,000 people for the period between 2005 and 2015. They suggest B.C. will need to significantly increase labour force participation rates to overcome the shortfall. To increase participation rates, several of the recommendations talk about encouraging or supporting greater student participation in post-secondary education programs.

The report makes about 15 recommendations. Some of them are policy-related, but more substantial ones deal with funding issues. The report isn't specific about how much funding is needed, but to anyone familiar with the post-secondary system, many of the recommendations speak to the need to substantially increase our investments in post-secondary institutions.

I should also point out that the shortfall described in the Conference Board report is not the only challenge we face. The B.C. Business Council tells us that about 73 percent of all new jobs will require some form of post-secondary education or training. Typically, these jobs will require some certificate, diploma, completed apprenticeship or undergraduate degree. Currently about 60 percent of the labour force in B.C. has that kind of credential. So not only do we need to address a looming skills shortage;we also need to close an existing skills gap.

Again, this is where post-secondary education can play a critical role. We are the institutions that provide the skills and training needed to address the shortage and close the
[ Page 1992 ]
gap. But unfortunately, funding for post-secondary education has struggled.

When I talked to you last year, I stressed the importance of getting real per-student funding back to at least the level it was when the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001. In March of this year the entire public post-secondary education system was blindsided by a 2.6 percent cut in our operating grants.

At our institution that has meant that at the Courtenay and Campbell River campuses, we've had to reduce the number sections that we provide in a semester. In the Port Hardy region where I live, the cuts to programs have been devastating. We don't have any health, any early childhood or resident care or trades programs being offered in our region. We are a two-hour drive from the closest campus.

With the logging industry in perpetual shutdown in the Port Hardy region, we have no programming to offer unemployed loggers in the North Island who are looking to retrain. Those 2.6 percent cuts came in the second year of a three-year budget plan, a plan that all institutions signed as a way to ensure more predictable funding and planning.

To be told that what you had counted on had been cut by 2.6 percent meant that these institutions had to rejig plans. Budgets and hiring arrangements, all of which were predicted on a three-year funding arrangement, were changed.

There are a number of recommendations that this committee could make to begin moving post-secondary education in a direction that can fulfil some of the urgent needs that we see in our sector.

They include these. Immediately restore the 2.6 percent funding that was cut from provincial operating grants in mid-March. Earmark $200 million from the existing budget surplus to allow post-secondary institutions to increase access and affordability. That commitment would move real per-student funding up to the level that was in place when the current government took office in 2001.

[1340]

Make a long-term commitment to reduce tuition fees over the next five years to ensure that lower- and middle-income families are able to fully participate in post-secondary education.

Revise the research guidelines to allow the five newly created universities, as well as colleges and institutes, to better access provincial research funding.

Bring back the student grant program. Deregulated student fees have pushed more students into debt. The average debt for students completing their post-secondary education is close to $30,000. Those debt loads are both discouraging new students from entering post-secondary education, and they penalize those who are trying to complete a degree.

Thank you very much for listening.

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

Do we have any questions, other than from your brother-in-law? Apparently, he wants to ask what's for dinner next Sunday.

J. Horgan: Thank you very much, Shirley. As much as this is all fun, there's very serious content in your presentation.

We've heard from other institutions across the province about the 2.6 percent cut in March. In the Legislature we heard a different story, so it's quite revealing. One of the advantages of the travelling committee is that we're able to see different faces in different communities telling a similar story.

When you talk about the perpetual shutdown of the forest sector in the north Island and the importance of having post-secondary institutions or training institutions to retool these older and new workers to face a new economy, if you were to be able to sit down with the Minister of Finance and had two sentences to give to him, what would they be, with respect to how North Island College could benefit from the huge budget surpluses we're seeing, to meet the needs of the skill shortage in your community?

S. Ackland: The first thing that I thought of this morning as I was driving down on my three-hour drive was a rural FTE. We have funded now a rural locum for rural doctors. It costs more money to provide programming in the Port Hardy region, but the closest campus is Campbell River. So if we were to somehow define the fact that it costs more to provide that access….

The people in my community can't pick up everything and move to Campbell River. The Port Alberni campus of our college is a half-hour drive from Vancouver Island University. Courtenay and Campbell River have better access than we do in the north Island, yet we are the proverbial Newfoundland. We're the furthest away, and we're the smallest, and we receive the least amount of funding.

But if this committee or the Minister of Finance could think of something, figure out how to fund colleges and institutions that have campuses or centres in rural areas. They do an incredibly valuable job. People that are in those areas have a one-stop…. We have no competition in the north. We're it. A public institution should be able to provide its community members places to retrain that are close to home, where they can get that training on the ground.

I've worked there for 20 years, and everybody that works in the community has come out having good jobs and keeping their families there has managed to access programming out of North Island College.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, Shirley. Thank you very much. That's an idea I think we have not heard. I don't
[ Page 1993 ]
think we've heard that anywhere else — about a different funding formula.

S. Ackland: Well, Granger Avery and the rural locum FTE.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you.

Next we have the Nanaimo Men's Resource Centre as presenters, and that would be Jonathon van der Goes and John Westwood.

We have a number of Johns on our committee, and this is going to maybe become somewhat confusing, but we'll struggle through. There seems to be a John convention here.

You're on.

J. Westwood: My name is John Westwood. I'm programs and communications director with the Nanaimo Men's Resource Centre. With me today is Jonathon van der Goes. He's our resource and referral coordinator.

I brought with me an information package — which you have in front of you there, for everyone on the committee to look at — with an outline of our programs; our brochures; a booklet; a DVD, which we produced; and a copy of recommendations from an inquest which took place in 2006, which might be of interest to you.

[1345]

Basically, the Nanaimo Men's Resource Centre is a resource centre for men and their families. We offer support and referrals to men in the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of their lives. We promote healthy connections between men, their partners, their families and their children. We help men deal with family court, divorce, separation, custody and access issues. And we promote community awareness and education regarding men and men's lives.

A little bit about the history of the organization. The Nanaimo Men's Resource Centre is a non-profit, charitable organization founded in 2001 to offer a response to the lack of services available for men and their families in and around Nanaimo.

Over the last seven years the NMRC has grown to provide 13 different programs. Included in these are our referral and resource centre; a Dads Make a Difference program; family crisis support services; separation and divorce support; a community education program; parental alienation awareness program; a Calming Your Anger program; family violence program; FMEP support, or family maintenance enforcement support program; and DNA testing.

We're also working cooperatively with Vancouver Island University on divorce and separation research projects.

Even though NMRC is primarily a men's centre, we have a policy of inclusiveness. We have women on our board of directors, women on our staff and on our volunteer team. Many of our programs and events are open to women, children and grandparents.

Our funding has been an ongoing challenge for NMRC. Over the past year we've been operating on a B.C. Gaming grant and some small amounts from the United Way and the city of Nanaimo. In the past we've received other grants from the Queen Alexandra Foundation and the Vancouver Foundation as well. But once again we are low on funds and would like to have more permanent, sustainable funding for what we're doing.

Last fall we had eight full- and part-time paid staff, and now we're down to one full-time and one part-time paid staff plus our volunteers, of course, which we have quite a few of.

Services for women's centres in B.C. have been funded by about $50 million annually from the Ministry of Community Services as well as many millions more from other provincial and federal ministries and private foundations.

We've always supported funding resources for women, but we've questioned the relative shortage of funding for men's centres. There are well over 60 women's resource centres in British Columbia, and the University of Guelph recently did research on men's centres in Canada and found that our centre was the only one in Canada that offered the breadth of services that we do for men.

I'll tell you a little bit about our programs. Our clients can drop into our centre and receive information or counseling or take advantage of our support groups, our library with books or DVDs and our computers for Internet access. They can attend one of our workshops or get a referral to another community organization, if necessary.

Many of our services are also available on our website or by telephone, making them available outside Nanaimo and throughout British Columbia.

Our Dads Make a Difference program meets every Thursday night. Young and older dads can enjoy sharing their stories, as well as listening to talks about parenting skills and hearing about other community resources from guest speakers. Older men act as mentors to the younger dads as part of a mentoring program modeled after a similar one designed by Gardner Wiseheart in Texas.

Family crisis support services. NMRC provides support for men who are in crisis in their relationships and need to leave their domestic situation because of violence or the potential of violence either committed by or against them. We provide short-term housing in a local guesthouse for some of these men. We also provide financial support to parents who need assistance with supervising access costs and access exchange services.

Every first and third Wednesday evening of the month we have a drop-in divorce and separation group where clients work with one of our counsellors to help find information or support for their particular situation.

[1350]
[ Page 1994 ]

Three or four times a year we present a Calming Your Anger weekend workshop, where counsellors and adult educators teach men and women skills to manage conflict. This is a preventative program aimed at reducing the underlying causes of violence in families and teaching various coping skills. Then we have a community education program as well.

We're producing and publishing a booklet. We have produced and published a booklet for prenatal and neonatal fathers entitled Dads Make a Difference: Resource Material for Dads. This booklet is distributed from our centre as well as throughout Vancouver Island Health Authority centres on Vancouver Island. We've also produced a 32-minute DVD called Parental Alienation Awareness, which you have in the package there, as part of our parental alienation awareness program. It's been distributed throughout B.C. to professionals — lawyers, psychologists, teachers — and libraries.

We're also involved with other community organizations. We're on many community group committees, so we can help each other and share information about what we do. We've conducted radio interviews provincewide to raise awareness of issues and promote NMRC services throughout the province.

Our parental alienation awareness program. As mentioned previously, we've done the DVD, and we have a parental alienation awareness program as well. Basically, parental alienation happens when one parent alienates the children from the other parent. We have a PA group that meets once a month, and we've also developed a workshop on the subject and presented it around B.C. for parents and professionals.

Family maintenance enforcement program. Our family maintenance enforcement program provides feedback on FMEP matters. This service is available to both men and women who are experiencing misunderstandings or issues with FMEP. This program helps keep support payments flowing to custodial parents.

Domestic violence prevention program. We believe that domestic violence needs to be approached on the basis of working with perpetrators and victims. This means that we work with male victims of domestic abuse as well as with male perpetrators of domestic abuse.

Some of the positive results of our work. Men in our society have a lot of trouble asking for help, and one of the biggest benefits that our centre has is that it provides a safe place for men to come in and talk to other men and take advantage of our various services. This process helps prevent domestic violence as well as depression, in many cases, and possible suicide.

Our centre also focuses on fathering, making it easier for men to stay connected to their children and helping them become better parents. Many studies have shown that children from fatherless families are much more prone to dropping out of school, increased criminal activity, increased sexual promiscuity, increased unemployment and increased lack of coping skills. Some 65 percent of teenagers who have committed suicide and 75 percent of men in our jails grew up in fatherless families.

There's a tremendous need for centres like the Nanaimo Men's Resource Centre. With our preventative services, we can save lives and save money in the long run in our community, keeping men and children and their families healthier and more productive members of society.

We need more funding, and we'd like to see the B.C. government find ways of funding more of our programs on an ongoing basis in the future. Thank you very much for allowing us to make the presentation today.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, John. You were spot-on ten minutes. Your presentation was pretty clear.

Questions?

J. Horgan: Thank you, John and Jonathon. I'm wondering. I thumbed through most of the material here. I didn't see an operating budget or an ask, in terms of a dollar ask, of government. You mentioned accessing gaming funding. Are there any other government sources, federal or provincial?

J. Westwood: That we've asked money from? Yeah, Theo Boere, our executive director, has more of a handle on all the various places we've applied for funding, but it's quite a few different places. I didn't bring a list with me, unfortunately. I can get that information.

J. Horgan: Yeah. Would you mind sending that through to me?

J. Westwood: Yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): John, could you also…? As John just said, your operating budget? And you've said that it has shrunk? Your funding levels have gone down, so you've had to let some positions go, etc.?

[1355]

J. Westwood: That's right.

R. Hawes (Chair): Perhaps you could give us the last three or four years' worth of funding, in terms of your statements…

J. Westwood: Sure. We could do that.

R. Hawes (Chair): …so we can follow where your funding has gone. From that, also, what is the extent of the ask here? How much money do you need to put the services that you feel are essential in place?
[ Page 1995 ]

J. Westwood: Ideally, around $1 million a year to be able to run all 13 programs as well as we'd like to and promote the things that we're doing.

R. Hawes (Chair): You have until the 24th to make a further submission, perhaps with your financial statements, etc. If we could get you to do that.

D. Thorne: I have two questions. The first one is…. I just wondered if you've applied for United Way funding, because they're an excellent source for a group like yours, I would think. It's nothing to do with this group, but I just….

J. Westwood: Yeah, we have already received some United Way funding.

D. Thorne: Okay. But not steady?

J. Westwood: Not steady, and it has been fairly small amounts.

D. Thorne: So my second question is more…. Do you see yourself in terms of comparing you to resources that have been around for years for women's resource centres and services? There are distinct groups of women's services and family services. There are women's centres, which as you know, have lost their funding with this particular government.

It was $1.7 million for 32 women's centres across the province, so it was a very small amount of money that women's centres, who actually provide a lot of the same kinds of services that you're providing…. They were only getting $1.7 million — the 32 women's centres. There are also the women's resource centres that are working more with violence against women and transition houses and that kind of thing. And family resource centres, family centres.

Where do you actually see yourself placed in that continuum, or do you?

J. van der Goes: Okay, if I can answer that. If you look at the coroner's report that's in…. You'll have a copy of it. That was the result of an incident that happened in Nanaimo where a father came along and grabbed his child from school, I believe, and then drove off. There was a traffic accident, and he was killed and a boy in another car.

Basically, what came out of that was the understanding that in domestic violence situations, if you take the guy out of the situation, throw a lot of services at the woman and put the guy on the street with a restraining order, he's kind of standing there with no support and doesn't know where to go. So we see ourselves as being the support for that person to find a rational and healthy way of dealing with the situation.

D. Thorne: But on the continuum then, you see yourself more in that part of the system that is at the moment being funded more liberally by the government — the domestic violence area?

J. van der Goes: Yes. Domestic violence is one of the major pieces but as a preventative — a way of preventing domestic violence, not reacting to it.

J. Westwood: We'd ideally like to set up a shelter, like a lot of the women's centres do, so that men have a place to do. Right now we're just putting them up at this guest house, here and there when we can afford to do it, for men who are really in a desperate situation.

D. Thorne: I just wondered, on that continuum.

J. Rustad: First of all, thank you very much for the work that you do. Across my riding, particularly in smaller communities, there is a need for services, and often there isn't anything organized. So I'm just wondering: do you have connectivity with any other groups that are around the province, and is there a provincial organization that tries to help smaller groups, particularly in smaller communities?

J. Westwood: We definitely would like to see something like that happening. We've been working with other groups to try to encourage them and help them in any way we can. The Tri-City men's centre over in the Vancouver area is just starting out. They've got very, very little programs running right now. There's one in Victoria as well. I think that's basically a one-person operation — and meeting irregularly in ours.

There's very, very little else, but I think there's a tremendous need in small and large communities around B.C. So we'd like to try and help. That's part of what we like to do in our community education program is help groups that want to find out more about how you do this sort of thing and help them get started.

J. van der Goes: There is a group called MARS, the Men's Affordable Resources Society, which is just starting out, with a look at building affordable resources provincially.

[1400]

We do a lot of phone-in support for people from all over the province. We have a 1-800 number. We get calls from the Queen Charlottes because there's nobody else closer or available.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, John and Jonathon, thank you very much for what you do. I know that if we get that additional information…. I know your MLA has advocated pretty heavily for you and had you down in Victoria talking to some of us last year. Keep up the good
[ Page 1996 ]
work in what you're doing, get us your budget, and we'll take a look at what we can do in our deliberations.

Next presenter is Murray Presley. Welcome, Murray.

M. Presley: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Comox Valley. My name's Murray Presley. I'm a chartered accountant with Presley and Partners in Courtenay. In my presentation today I would like to provide an overview of our region to provide some context for you. I will follow this with some specific recommendations for the next budget.

As you're no doubt aware, this region has felt the impact of the downturn in the forest sector. A recent report by the Chartered Accountants Institute found that manufacturing lost 2,500 jobs last year, primarily in forest products. It is estimated that on Vancouver Island alone we have 5,000 forestry workers out of work. Since 2005 we have seen mills reduce shifts and close their doors permanently.

Locally, Interfor closed their field sawmill and TimberWest permanently closed the Elk Falls sawmill in Campbell River, affecting Catalyst Paper, which had to cut staff at Elk Falls pulp mill.

These are but a few of the forestry production plants that have closed in the last five years. Western Forest Products shut down its sawmill at Duke Point in addition to the indefinite shutdown of Ladysmith sawmill. In April Madill Equipment, which has been a mainstay of the coastal forest industry for 97 years, went bankrupt. Most recently the Pope and Talbot pulp mill, Harmac, in Nanaimo went into receivership and is now struggling to remain viable.

We have also had Ted Leroy Trucking go bankrupt and Hayes Forest Services in creditor protection. These companies have been cornerstones of our Island economy, and shift reductions and closures are very difficult.

Despite more economic diversification, forestry continues to be a vital industry for the Island's economy. While things will almost certainly improve in the future, it is apparent that 2008 is going to be another tough year for our forest sector and the communities that depend upon it.

I'm pleased that government has the ongoing Working Roundtable on Forestry travelling the province and listening to local concerns and recommendations.

Fortunately, capital investment has been strong in our region, and development has occurred throughout the Island and the coast. The CA report found there was $1.7 billion in projects under construction outside of greater Victoria. In addition, mining has seen significant growth. Proposed projects include the Catface copper mine in Tofino and Eagle Rock quarry in Port Alberni.

These capital investments are laying the groundwork for future jobs and economic diversification. We have also seen growth in tourism, real estate and health care services, as many of our communities now support an expanded retiree population.

While the region has seen growth, we must be ready for the impact of the softening global demand for commodities as the U.S. economic downturn reverberates throughout the globe. We have seen exports in B.C. decline, both a result of the U.S. economy and also due to the higher Canadian dollar.

In terms of the provincial budget, we know that the province cannot control commodity prices or exchange rates. However, government can certainly enhance our competitive position and provide strategic investments that can assist our economic and fiscal position.

Government has the ability to improve our competitiveness through tax policy. An example of this is the last provincial budget when the capital tax on financial institutions was eliminated. This was a very positive step towards strengthening our financial service sector and attracting jobs and investments.

[1405]

Similarly, government has the ability to make more positive changes. I would suggest that increasing the small business tax threshold can help our small business sector to grow and prosper. In Alberta the small business tax threshold was raised in their last budget to $500,000, which is consistent with Ontario and Saskatchewan. It would seem appropriate that B.C. match other jurisdictions and also increase our small business tax threshold.

Similarly, government has the ability to make our business more competitive through simplification of tax administration. In B.C. the simplest way to achieve this may be the sales tax harmonization. Small businesses currently struggle with administration around two separate sales taxes — the PST and the GST. The lack of a harmonized sales tax translates into higher costs for businesses in two ways.

First, businesses require separate recordkeeping, reporting and remittances for the GST and PST, creating unnecessary costs for accounting and administration. In addition, businesses deal with two sets of auditors enforcing compliance at the federal and provincial levels. I guess as a chartered accountant, I don't mind that, but it's a lot of work for me.

Second, the provincial sales tax paid on the purchase of inputs for businesses — for example, supplies, materials, etc. — is not a tax credit like the GST, thus imposing an additional cost on business. I would recommend to government that it seriously consider the harmonization of the provincial sales tax with the GST. The first step would be the initiation of a study on sales tax reform that could look at the cost benefit of such a move.

In terms of government investment, the province has done a good job on infrastructure. Investment in transportation and other infrastructures is very beneficial to the province. Whether it is highway expansion, bridges or hospitals, these types of investments benefit all of us.

On the coast, projects such as the Texada Island LNG terminal, the East Toba River–Montrose Creek hydroelec-
[ Page 1997 ]
tric project in Powell River, the Klinaklini hydroelectric project in Campbell River and the Gold River power project are key investments in our infrastructure.

I was fortunate enough to lead a trade delegation of 14 people from the Comox Valley to Beijing in August during the Olympics. We had representatives from our Spirit 2010 committee, from Mount Washington, Sage Hills, IMG sports academies, Canada West University, Vancouver Island Tourism, Natural Glacial Waters and our Comox Valley Economic Development Society. While there, we all attended many meetings, either separately or jointly, with excellent results.

The final outcomes will not be known, in some cases, for several years, but one thing we know for sure is that if we hadn't gone, we couldn't expect any success.

I certainly look at the financial turmoil globally, but especially in the U.S., and realize that (a) we are living in very interesting times with a challenging future, and (b) we need to continue to concentrate our time and energy in improving our Asia-Pacific economic ties.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Murray. That's a great presentation.

J. Horgan: Thank you, Murray, for your presentation.

Comox is the terminus for the E&N Railway, and I'm a Vancouver Islander at the other end of the line. We're going to be in my community tomorrow, and I know we have a number of presentations about the importance of protecting the Island corridor for not just economic vitality, for transportation services, but also for tourism.

I'm wondering if you would have any comments on what you believe the importance of the E&N line has been and could be to Comox and environs' economic future.

M. Presley: Unfortunately, I just wish that the line had been completed all the way to Campbell River, because it is very important. For the future, it has to protected and not carved up for other uses. It may not be viable now, but in the future maybe that's the perfect high-speed rail trail.

When I was in Shanghai, they had a magnetic levitation, I think, rail that goes from the city to the airport, and the trains were travelling at 450 kilometres. To have something like that going up and down the Island…. It might take a lot of traffic off our highways. The only thing is, you can't look out the window. It has to be a blur.

Does that answer your question?

R. Hawes (Chair): I don't think you want to wander on the track either, or in front of it.

M. Presley: No, you could be history.

[1410]

J. Horgan: Yeah, that's fine. I just wanted to hear, from your perspective, that you value that line and see it as a….

M. Presley: We certainly do.

R. Lee: I've been on that train myself. It's fantastic.

But I think my question is on the opportunity. You were in China, in Beijing. What kind of opportunity can you see for the Island to have in Asia-Pacific?

M. Presley: We have a company here called Natural Glacial Waters. They have a licence to take off groundwater, and it's just south of Fanny Bay. They ship all they can produce, really, to Taiwan, China. They now have a five-person office in Beijing, which we went to.

One of the things we are trying to do…. I also sit on economic development. There are several firms that want to produce berry wine. For instance, we have a farmer here in the Comox Valley that has either 70 or 80 acres in blackberries and other berries. If they can combine that with the Natural Glacial Waters product — and that's what they're looking at right now — they can ship all they can produce back to China or Japan or Taiwan or whatever. That was one of the opportunities — just a small one.

The other thing is that we're trying to encourage as many sports teams to use Mount Washington as…. The Olympics won't be held there, but the Olympians need to train someplace. You can't all get into Whistler. We have quite similar conditions, so we originally sent a delegation to Torino. As a result of that, we have the Swedish team coming to do their training. They'll be starting in 2009.

We have indication that some other teams — possibly the French team and maybe the Norwegian team — are coming as well. When we went to Beijing, we touched those Olympic…. Even though it's the Summer Olympics, a lot of the countries' people are involved in both summer and winter, so we want to keep the ball rolling on that.

It was interesting, though. When we were there, Mount Washington people got to talk a little bit more with IMG sports academies. I don't know if you know about them, but they have a big sports academy in Florida. They want to do something similar here in Sage Hills. Sage Hills is a 2,000-acre development south of the Trent River, kind of behind Union Bay.

Anyway, in talking to Mount Washington, they realized that they can facilitate and help each other with some of the things that IMG possibly would have done here themselves. They can now actually possibly put the money up to Mount Washington and build the same infrastructure there. Just being in Beijing away from other people in a strange country, different town, they spent a lot of time talking to each other. They determined that they can help each other quite a bit.
[ Page 1998 ]

David Strong from Canada West University now has a contract to manage a small university in Beijing. He wants to put a campus here in Sage Hills. We met in quite a few cases with Chinese Paralympic and other Olympic organizations, and we met with some of the educational leaders to try and get….

R. Lee: These are very detailed opportunities.

M. Presley: There is, and lots.

R. Lee: I think time is limited. The Chair….

M. Presley: I'm a politician too, and I could go on and on. So I'll shut up.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Murray. We've heard that message from other chartered accountants across British Columbia. Certainly, this can give us some strong consideration in our recommendations, so thank you.

Tony Law is our next presenter. Is Tony Law here yet? We'll move to the one after that, and that would be Lush Valley Food Action Society, Betty-Anne Juba.

Welcome.

[1415]

B. Juba: Thank you very much for letting me present to you today.

Lush Valley Food Action Society is a staffed, registered organization that has been going for about nine years. We are most well known in the community for our rescue program. We rescue fruit and vegetables and nuts, and then we redistribute them back into the valley to those most in need. This year we will do 10,000 pounds-plus.

Food security, basically, is that everybody in your community has access to safe, nutritious food that they can afford. You will be hearing from the Comox Valley Affordable Housing Society, which follows me, about the four health determinants and the interconnectivity of how everything kind of fits together. If housing is too expensive and your income is low and food is expensive, then it clearly affects your health.

All of north Vancouver Island is experiencing an epidemic proportion of diabetes in indigenous communities resulting from a lack of access to healthy, culturally adaptive indigenous foods. It is of no great surprise that the Comox Valley, with more than 3,000 people on the verge of, and 250 homeless people…. High rents and less than 1 percent vacancy have been going on for quite some time. Actually, the last time I presented to you I believe it was around the same amount.

Our community is suffering, and of course, food is of primary importance. It is recognized by VIHA, Vancouver Island Health Authority, as being one of the pillars to the necessity of good health. The average income in the Comox Valley is well below the provincial rate and below the Canadian rate, and yet we receive $35,000 less per person for mental health than the average in B.C.

An individual must make $17 an hour to be able to rent a two-bedroom house in the Comox Valley. When you are making approximately $10 an hour, you can see that both people need to be working and that you have decisions to make. If it's keeping a roof over your head and not becoming homeless, then you're going to choose keeping a roof over your head. You're not going to be able to afford to buy food. So when you're taking a look at…. When you go to the grocery store, instead of buying a head of lettuce, it's going to be a box of Kraft Dinner. That's a no-brainer. That happens all the time.

We have a number of different kinds of programs. One of them is Buy Local. It's an excellent program, but it's almost redundant here in the valley. All of our farmers sell at the gate or in the farmers' market. It's expensive, and for the majority of the people that I'm talking about, they can't afford it. The results are poor nutrition.

The Comox Valley was highlighted by a UBC report, their early childhood development mapping project by Joanne Schroeder, completed in March 2007. Basically, what it did was assess all of those competencies that you need before you enter school. Now, they tested in 2004 and came back again in 2007 and found that we had fallen in every category.

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One of the primary reasons was lack of affordable housing, which meant that they weren't able to afford food, and the lack of child care for people to be able to go to work to make that extra dollar to be able to buy their food.

So when we take a look at the competencies when children come to school…. If anybody has ever been in a nursery or a preschool, you'll see those children who are able to sit and quietly be able to do their work, and you'll see the other ones who are swinging from the chandeliers. These are the kids I'm talking about.

The lack of protein…. It's extremely necessary for the development of brain function and brain size. When you're lacking protein, it's going to affect children. Our valley is a prime example of that. It can be reversed with good nutritional food. But if it isn't, it is passed onto their children and their children's children. That's something to take into consideration, because the poorer parts of our areas…. Well, they vote too, and you want intelligent people to make intelligent decisions.

So it's a necessity. We need people to be able to run our cities and towns and be able to help us. If we don't have people who are capable of doing it, who's going to do it?

B.C. farmers produce about 48 percent of the food that we eat in all of B.C. In one of your own reports, it
[ Page 1999 ]
says that farming needs to be increased dramatically over the next period of time. Just how that will happen wasn't in the report.

In the Comox Valley we used to produce about 80 percent-plus of our own food. Now we produce less than 10 percent. The reasons are many: inability to compete with cheaper foods, United States dumping, other food shipped in, cheaper labour in other countries — those kinds of things.

Our aging farmers are on average 65 years old. In B.C. the average is about 57, so you can see that our farmers are older. Their ability to farm has been reduced. We have acreage that's not being farmed. So we do have free acreage here that's not being used.

The cost of buying farmland is extremely expensive. Try and buy a farm now. I came from a farm, and if I would take a look nowadays and say, "It's going to cost me a million dollars to buy a farm," I don't think I'd do it, and I don't think many sitting around here would either. It's not an investment; it's a way of life — but an extremely important way of life for our communities.

We don't have a lot of experienced farm labour, and the cost of labour is extremely high. Farmers are unable to afford it because they can't get the price that they need — or the quantity or the quality, because they're older, and they don't have the help to be able to do it. So it all fits in together. It's a complex situation.

In the north there's a lack of fertile land to be able to produce food. Of course, greenhouse farming would be able to help that situation quite a bit.

With the food prices, carbon fuel taxes, climate changes, the cost of labour…. Food prices are going up now about 4 percent a month. I don't know how much higher, but they will, and they'll go up dramatically in the near future.

Recently highly published food scares are indicating to us that Canada on the whole, and B.C. as well, needs to get better control of its own food production, where we know that it can be safe and can be delivered properly at a better price.

Cheaper foods from United States are going to get far more expensive, because they too are going through climate change. They've gotten rid of much of their very cheap Mexican labour that they were paying $2 and $3 an hour to grow the food that we got dumped on our market, which made our farmers unable to compete. That's going to stop.

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But it isn't too late. With your help, we can turn some of this around. We're only a small organization. The introducing of a non-interest-bearing loan for farmers to be able to purchase land so they can pay directly on the primary loan that they have would need a body similar to B.C. Housing, which would oversee the project and guarantee or pass on the loans and make sure that they were being done. These loans need to be directed to food growing — not biofuels, not liquor, not wine, but food.

A shortage in the ALR policy would need to be changed. The policy right now allows only one permanent home, and you're allowed a trailer or a skid shack. If a young farmer came and purchased your farm and you were allowed to stay there, you'd probably sell it cheaper, and you could also be a mentor to the new farmer.

For existing new greenhouse farmers, institute a grant because the coal and the wood, the new carbon taxes and the cost of these kinds of things…. Many of our greenhouses, I've been told by greenhouse farmers here, are going to have to shut down. They were making some money but not enough to be able to cover the costs that are going to happen. Something needs to be done there.

We're in danger of losing our inland fish farm because of high interest charges and the insistence of Community Futures that this farm heat with coal for the shoulder months. He does use solar during the summer. The costs have risen significantly, and with the carbon tax on the coal that he has to use, it's becoming untenable.

In a recent marijuana bust in northern B.C. there were nine properties involved. It looked like, on TV, about eight or nine greenhouses were on it. The land has been confiscated by the B.C. government. If you gave us 20 of those greenhouses, we can, within four years, almost make the north Island food secure.

Now, it doesn't cost you guys anything. The gangs paid for it. You've got it. We can use it. And 20 is a great deal less than the ones that you guys have. I believe there were about 45 or 50 greenhouses.

We could use it. We could use the technology that goes along with it, and we could station them throughout the north country and throughout the Comox Valley. We would go a long way to making ourselves food secure. It would address health issues, it would address employment, and it would make it so that we are doing something for ourselves.

Institute a moratorium on fertile land being taken out for apartments, parking lots and those kinds of things. We're going to need all the fertile land that we have. We need to stop using it for other things. There are a number of issues here.

Along our rivers and streams, land is being used for things that it shouldn't be used for. Our fish, our spawning areas for fish, all of these kinds of things…. Some of the creeks have been damaged quite a bit. I think there needs to be, and our organization is asking for, significant fines and that those fines be returned to those people who are going to rejuvenate the rivers and the streams so that they once again can bear fish and do the things they need to do to be able to feed our population.

Agriculture has been a poor second cousin. It hasn't been highlighted in any government for quite some time, but agriculture now is prominent. The community knows about it; you know about it. We've presented some very low cost, no cost and some things that will cost money. But it's very, very important. If we don't
[ Page 2000 ]
do something soon about what's happening, not only the people that I'm talking about, who have very little money and little access to food, but all of us are going to feel the pinch.

You have the rest of the things. I take time to talk, and I could talk forever. You have the things in front of you. If you have any questions….

R. Hawes (Chair): Unfortunately, we don't really have time for questions now, because the allotted time is up, Betty-Anne. We do have your recommendations here, and we have certainly got the minutes and, I think, a memory of your very passionate presentation. Thank you very much.

[1430]

I think we'll probably be asking some questions about these greenhouses. That's the first I've ever heard of that.

B. Juba: I've given you where you can find it on the Net. You've got an address there. If you could do anything for us, anyone can do anything for us, we would appreciate it. Thank you very much.

R. Hawes (Chair): Next we have the Comox Valley Affordable Housing Society and Rod Spink. Welcome. The floor is yours.

Interjections.

R. Hawes (Chair): One meeting at a time, please.

Carry on.

R. Spink: I just want to tell you a little bit about the affordable housing society, the Comox Valley association. We're a non-profit registered with B.C. Non-Profit Housing and in good standing. We've been active in the valley for the past three years, educating and initiating incentives and attempting different proposals on different buildings to try and bring forth some sort of successful building to accommodate the needs of the homeless in the valley.

To date it's estimated that there are about 250 homeless people in the Comox Valley. Those projections are anticipated to go to about 900 by the year 2012. These are statistics and numbers that come out of the Courtenay mayor's task force on homelessness. With those sorts of projections we've got a real serious consideration here.

Homelessness is not necessarily just in our valley situation; it's in all communities across the province and across the country. We have some limiting factors within the valley here in that the funding we receive for mental health and addictions is about 35 percent less and that the average household income in the valley is less than across Canada. That creates problems for people to find affordable housing.

This situation that we're seeing right now in the real estate market, etc., is just going to worsen this, because now these people that find themselves losing their homes are even going to have a tougher time to qualify for housing going forward.

We've attempted twice now to put together offers on two options. One was in Courtenay. It was a used building — three stories, had all of the right infrastructure in place, an elevator and convenient to all the services. But one of the barriers that comes forward for us to finance something like this is that we have to get our funding through B.C. Housing.

B.C. Housing has a mandate that if buildings accommodate these types of needs people, the buildings have to be earthquake-proof. Consequently, older buildings are very difficult to transform into that type of housing on an economical basis.

[1435]

That kind of binds us. If we have to take an old building and make it earthquake-proof, then the costs are so horrific. This one building we looked at was around $600,000 to make earthquake-proof. That doesn't make it too feasible for a non-profit to actually make it workable. We're suggesting that maybe some of these barriers can be rethought through.

The other thing is that we are aware that within the Comox Valley, each one of Comox, Courtenay and Cumberland have land available that's not being used and could easily be transformed into affordable housing units. Starting from scratch might be a better option.

Just to give you an idea of some of the costs and how this makes this a consideration for taxpayers, the average cost for caring for people living on the street to taxpayers is about $59,000 per year. Those costs are in mental health, community services and policing. If we took those costs and projected them, based on these projections of 900 homeless people in the valley, that's $53 million per year that it's going to be costing taxpayers.

If we rethink where some of these tax dollars are going — and some of the suggestions are that we utilize some of the present B.C. government's surplus of $2.86 billion and projected surplus of $4.5 billion — we could save tax dollars for everybody.

It's been proven that people living on the street — most of them — have mental health considerations. If you house them, the success rate of getting them off the street is a lot higher — if they have decent housing and, as Betty-Anne mentioned, good health and food habits, etc. The other option might be to reallocate the land transfer tax to municipalities to fund social housing and to build the infrastructure necessary to support them.

That's about it. Any questions?

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation, Rod.
[ Page 2001 ]

Can I just ask this. Has Courtenay said that they'll partner and put up some land and applied to B.C. Housing to get some social housing built? Do you know if there's been an application made at all?

R. Spink: Not the city of Courtenay that I’m aware of. Maybe Betty-Anne could answer that, though.

B. Juba: I can answer that. There hasn't been a project that we've been able to get through the municipality — any of the municipalities. It's an extremely difficult situation, as there isn't an awful lot of free land here in any of our communities. So the application hasn't gone forward.

We do have a project in Cumberland, but the situation is antiquated infrastructure — sewer and water are big, big situations. We have a project that'll house 80 people, but we do know that the infrastructure can't support it. There are very few places in any of our communities — remember, we're dealing with four municipalities here — that can deal with it.

[1440]

One or two or three or four people — housing them for a year on a city lot doesn't work. We've got 250 people now. It's growing every day, every day as we sit. We need to do some big projects. We need infrastructure. Our municipalities have been suffering, and I'm quite sure you've heard from municipalities. The union of municipalities just met, and they've told you that there are problems, big problems. We need to correct those as well as housing the people.

R. Hawes (Chair): So when you say infrastructure, you're talking about a lack of serviced lands — sewer and water.

B. Juba: Sewer, water, those kinds of things. Let's say I were to get some land out of the regional district. It wouldn't be serviced. We would have to put in septic fields, water. The cost of that, when we take a look at where we are going to get this money from…. We borrow it from CMHC, who charge us an interest rate of 4 percent to 6 percent. That is something I don't understand. How can you charge an interest on non-profits building housing for homeless people? It's untenable. It is not something that I can understand.

Whenever I tell anybody that this occurs, nobody else can understand it either. Here we have non-profits giving their time. I work five days a week for the four non-profits that I'm involved in. I don't understand. Maybe somebody could explain it to me.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, I thought there was a housing program for cities that were willing to put up some land, etc.

B. Juba: There is a housing program, but you still have to borrow the money. There's a $500,000 grant from B.C. Housing. When you're looking at building a large unit, you're looking at $5 million to $6 million, if not more. If you look at the infrastructure over and above that, you're looking at another million or a million and a half.

D. Thorne: This is not news to any of us on this committee. We keep hearing it and hearing it. I'm from an urban area in Coquitlam, and we're just building yet another in a line — not a long line but a short line — of affordable housing units with the province and a non-profit. I know you don't have the same ability to do that. You don't have the non-profits that we have — like the Y, for instance — in the Lower Mainland — right?

B. Juba: That's right.

D. Thorne: I'm sure you have lists of — if you don't, you need to get them — city-owned land that is available, and regionally owned land. But there's also Crown land. The cities have to participate — the councils. Perhaps they don't have land, and you do have to pay, then, for the infrastructure costs like your sewer. But if you can get some Crown land and get councils on board to not charge you DCCs and to put in the infrastructure that you need….

I don't know what to say. It's such a huge issue for you in the rural areas.

B. Juba: That's right. Our municipalities are short on staff. They don't have enough staff to do the work that they do day to day. They don't have any money. Some of our municipalities are near bankruptcy. To ask them to put out a million or $2 million in DCCs is almost untenable.

D. Thorne: So it's impossible. Well, what about the property transfer tax? This keeps coming up. Have you discussed that with representatives of the government?

B. Juba: I've discussed it with anybody that will hear me, and you are the best guys.

D. Thorne: We are the best guys. We keep hearing this from all kinds of people, including the Real Estate Association, who say that if you can't cancel this tax….

R. Hawes (Chair): Have you got a question, Diane?

D. Thorne: Well, I'm just asking her if this would solve the problem.

B. Juba: This would go a long way.

D. Thorne: If part of it went into affordable housing….
[ Page 2002 ]

B. Juba: I don't know how many houses…. This fellow would know better than me, but I do know that if the 1 percent transfer tax for every house that is sold in our community would go back to our municipalities, it would go a long way to improving…. And I wouldn't, without a tag on it, guys…. I would insist a tag on it to ensure that it would go to affordable housing — right? That 1 percent is a huge amount of money, people — huge.

D. Thorne: Could it solve the problem, do the two of you think?

B. Juba: Yes, absolutely.

R. Spink: Absolutely.

J. Rustad: I just want to pick up on the question that Randy had said and a little bit about what Diane was talking about. The bottom line is that in order for government to be able to come in and help with a project, we need a place for it to happen. In my home community in Prince George there was an opportunity to do some affordable housing in there. There was some community backlash around the location, and council pulled back its horns and it kind of delayed. It took three years or more before that finally got through.

[1445]

This is a great time; it's election time. Have you asked your councillors and mayors about making sure that they have some designated property and trying to get an application forward? We've increased the housing budget from, I think, $40-some-odd million to about $350 million so that we could look at building and acquiring opportunities within communities so that we can get some affordable housing.

We're trying to move forward on projects. The Woodward's project down on the Lower Mainland took — I don't know — 15 or 20 years or something like that to get off the ground. There's a lot of frustration at that level, but I want to encourage you, if you haven't already done it.

I guess the question to you is: how engaged are you with the municipality around trying to designate some property so that we can get some projects moving?

B. Juba: We're absolutely engaged. I mean, this is the thing. But like I say, we're on an island. I know Prince George. It has a wider selection of land. Election time may or may not be a good time because of the NIMBY situation.

The building we have presented to Cumberland has 80 units in it, four storeys. We haven't even placed it for first reading. It was only an informational meeting, and they have petitions against it. Yet most of the people that would be living in it will come from Cumberland because they're now living in Courtenay. There's that situation.

J. Rustad: It is going to take backbone from all of us to get it done.

B. Juba: The amount of money that's being spent on housing…. I think each of you should take a look and download and see where it's going. It is going to age care and to people who are highly addicted. It is not going to single moms with kids or families or any of these people. They are not high on the priority list and haven't been for three or four years — or probably since '79.

I mean you need to take a look at where it's going, because when you say that that money is being spent, I know where it's being spent. I'm on their news list. I know where it's being spent.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, the time is up, so I want to thank you very much. We've heard your message.

Our next presenter is Rob Walker from Middle Bay Sustainable Aquaculture Institute. Welcome, Rob.

R. Walker: Thank you, Chair Hawes and committee members. I appreciate this opportunity to provide some input into how you want to spend the province's money. My name is Rob Walker, and I work with the Middle Bay Sustainable Aquaculture Institute in Campbell River. The institute is a not-for-profit corporation mandated to develop sustainable, environmentally sound aquaculture-rearing technologies.

I'll give you a little bit of background on what we're all about so that you'll be able to understand my request a little bit better. In the year 2000 Agrimarine Industries was granted a licence to work on land-based rearing technologies at Cedar, south of Nanaimo. Some of you may be familiar with that site. This project was done under the provincial pilot technologies initiative, which was a green technologies initiative of the then B.C. government.

The project underscored statements made by industry at that time that land-based systems were not economical. However, there was a lot of useful data developed that demonstrated quite clearly that healthy salmon could be raised to market size in solid wall systems.

Out of that project arose a different approach: a marine-based closed system. The cost for energy for on-land systems is untenable, but sea level systems don't require anywhere near the same energy inputs. Closed systems allow for the collection of salmon wastes, avoidance of harmful algae blooms and possibly sea lice, and eliminate escapes. Lots of recent local experience with these issues should certainly be encouragement for the industry to seek new farming methods.

Agrimarine Industries funded all of the early design and development work on the new concept but quickly found that external financial support was needed but
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not readily available. We determined that a number of philanthropic organizations were very interested in our design, but they couldn't fund any for-profit enterprises because of the rules of philanthropy. Thus, the Middle Bay Sustainable Aquaculture Institute was born.

Through the development process we've learned much about barriers to innovation. Industry does not promote large-scale change because they have too much invested in the status quo. Government does not like to support single businesses, particularly ones that threaten the status quo, because they don't want to be seen as supporting the interests of one business over another.

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Environmental NGOs love positive change but unfortunately have no money to invest. Universities love to research, but they're restricted by both a lack of funding and objectives associated with what funding is available. Finally, traditional lenders and financial markets have proven to be very risk-averse and tend to stay away from controversial industries such as aquaculture. So finance has proven to be a major barrier.

We have also learned that there are many regulatory barriers. Most regulations are based on known quantities, but in our world or the world of developing technologies, every day brings change, so more forms need to be filled out and more communications proffered. These are surmountable, of course, but you need to have the resources to deal with them, and certainly, our experience has been that it stretches our limited resources to the extreme.

There are also perceptual barriers we've dealt with. We've really struggled with trying to get our message out to educate stakeholders, from industry players to consumers to many levels of government. It's not really the message that's difficult to understand. Again, it's the lack of resources that we have that are needed to handle the questions, the site tours, the newspaper articles, etc. Small companies just don't have the staff, typically, or the wherewithal to hire the expertise required to get the message out.

On a positive note, we've also learned that innovation begets innovation. Since the day we started this project, we've been approached by many people from all over the world with fascinating ideas that are attached to our main idea, our main concept. It's wonderful to know that the excitement we feel is mirrored by so many people and that there are so many people willing to put their minds to these challenges. Unfortunately, no one works for free.

How can the British Columbia government help a group such as ours? I'd like to suggest that an innovative solutions fund that's specific to the aquaculture industry be formed. I envision a fund with a mandate to commercialize made-in-B.C. solutions to challenges in the industry. These would be solutions that are not incremental in nature but more of a paradigm-shifting change.

The fund must be accessible by all through a standardized and transparent vetting process that is not controlled by industry members and not linked to academic research facilities. The money for the fund could be in the form of loans or loan guarantees or possibly even contributions for projects that reach the commercialization stage.

Early research has typically been funded, in large part, by industry and, of course, by other government partners as well. There may be room for an early-stage research fund, and although I don't speak for industry, I think that there are some good possibilities for industry funding.

When you think about it that 85 million kilograms of fish grown in this province each year are fed about 100 million kilograms of feed, one penny per kilo would create a nice little pocketbook of a million dollars each year to be spent specifically on early-stage research in sustainable technologies. Matching funds from the government as an inducement toward further innovation would be a part of this fund.

Just letting you know where we have been, the institute and its partners have spent about $3½ million so far developing the solid wall containment system at Middle Bay. We do have further commitments of $2.4 million from the federal government through the Sustainable Development Technologies Canada program and another $1.3 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. They're a U.S.-based philanthropic group. We're asking investors to pony up several million more to establish the demonstration facility at Middle Bay.

A little help from the province in commercializing this project would be greatly appreciated. We're still in need of about $2½ million to complete the project. We are going to market for that, but I think you all know what's going on with the financial markets these days. Things have changed a little, even since last week.

Why would the province provide support to an innovative technology program in an industry that seems to be in the headlines for all the wrong reasons? We believe that growing food is the right thing to do, but we have to do that in the right way.

The B.C. salmon-farming industry currently employs almost 2,000 people directly and almost as many indirectly. They grow about 85,000 metric tons of salmon a year and return over $400 million in farm-gate value to the B.C. economy, and of course the multipliers drive that up substantially more.

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Yet the unrealized potential of the industry is far greater. Canada ranks a poor fourth in global rankings of salmon-producing nations, with about 7 percent of global production. Changing this can only be realized by expansion through the use of sustainable technologies, not by the current practices in the net-cage industry.
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There is also another issue here which my patriotic heart demands that I mention. The majority of B.C. salmon farms are operated by companies with head offices outside of Canada. The global aquaculture industry suffers from many of the same issues wherever it operates. The solutions to those problems lie in developing closed systems for aquaculture. How nice it would be if that solution came from this province, from British Columbia.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Rob. Just a quick question about clarifying what you said here with respect to…. It says that you are developing a solid wall containment system at Middle Bay. I take it you are already building a system?

R. Walker: That's correct. Well, we've done all the initial research and engineering. We're actually at the fabrication stage right now, and we're using a fibreglass mould. So we're building it. It's not yet installed.

R. Austin: Thanks, Rob, for your presentation. As you know, we spent about 18 months going around the province looking into the whole situation around sustainable aquaculture. Of course, our report that we gave to the government…. Most of the recommendations have not been enacted. In fact, there hasn't been any real attempt to speak to probably 90 percent of those recommendations.

Part of that was that we needed to move to an ocean-based closed-containment facility. So certainly you have my support, having spent so much time listening to it.

My question to you…. There were two things. The last time I spoke with people who were involved with your organization there was also talk of getting some money from western diversification. Did that not come through at all?

R. Walker: No, they wouldn't fund it.

R. Austin: They wouldn't fund it. Okay.

My second question…. You've done the technology. You were originally going to build this out of concrete with fibreglass in the middle of the concrete, and now you are moving over to a different kind of material. Can you just describe what that is? I don't think many people around here would know what that is.

R. Walker: Certainly. The initial process we looked at was using concrete. There are a lot of floating concrete structures used in the province for all kinds of reasons. We had the expertise on site through a company we were working with.

Doing the engineering on it, we discovered that there were a lot of issues, primarily with the construction side, not so much with the…. Once it was in the water it would have been fine. Moving something that weighs hundreds of thousands of tons isn't that easy.

We looked at other materials. We looked at various metals — aluminum, steel, etc. We actually had settled on aluminum but ran into some interesting issues with cathodization — corrosion issues in sea water — and a bunch of other issues — flotation issues and so on. Also, at the time aluminum as a commodity was floating all over the place. It was very difficult to nail down cost, and so on.

So we got in touch with some boat builders and some people who were actually building some really interesting fibreglass structures for Arctic exploration and discovered that we could use what's called a resin-infused fibreglass over a high-density foam core.

This is fairly lightweight in comparison to all the other materials we looked at. It's very long lasting. The cost is right, and it's easy to adapt to changes. We felt that even though we have designed the system, we've also gone through a lot of changes over the years, and we recognize that there's going to be a need for flexibility in design. So the fibreglass model really helped out a lot.

I should have brought a piece with me. It's a good product and has lots of engineering support.

J. Horgan: Thanks very much, Rob. I worked on the aquaculture file when I was a public servant ten years ago. I was so gleeful that I wasn't appointed to the committee that Robin just referred to.

I did visit a closed-containment site just north of here — the bag technology. The industry at the time was very resistant to that technology, which was extremely cost-effective, I would suggest, relative to the solid wall.

I'm wondering if you could give me a primer. I know the committee's not necessarily interested as much as Robin and I might be, but why did the bags fail as a technology, and what makes this superior to that?

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R. Walker: I think there were two issues with the bags. The bag design had early technical issues. It doesn't take bad weather very well. That's been worked on a lot over the years, but it just hasn't taken off. People are fearful of it, I think.

It actually has several uses. For instance, in freshwater, where you don't get the tidal movements and so on, and in calm areas of marine situations, it's used as a freshwater cell. But the main piece for us was the commercial aspect of it. It's not commercially viable. The bags just cannot be large enough to make it worthwhile.

We looked at something…. Our experience with the Cedar facility indicated clearly that we had really good internal environment controls in a closed environment, but those tanks were also very small. They were 15 metres in diameter and 760 cubic metres. The tanks we're looking at…. The first tanks to hit the water will be about 3,000 cubic metres — so substantially larger. The second engineering drawings are for a 30-metre
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diameter tank, which provides about 5,500 cubic metres of rearing space. So we need that space to grow enough salmon to warrant the upfront cost of putting these in the water.

There's a whole other piece to this other than the upfront costs, of course. There are the operating costs that are involved in running these things, and that's, I think, where we have a pretty good advantage over nets. Obviously, nets don't cost that much to put in the water, but they also have a lot of…. How do you describe things that don't have value attached to them, like pollution? They're all those….

A Voice: Externalities.

R. Walker: Yeah.

In full-cost accounting, which is part of our project, we'll be looking at all of those things. When you throw those into the mix, the operating costs of the closed systems, I think, are on the positive side of the books — way more than the net-cage industry.

J. Yap: I was also on the committee with Rob, and one of the issues I recall in discussions on closed containment is the handling of exactly that — the handling of waste and the power requirements to circulate waste away and the treatment to dispose of the waste in an environmentally sound way. I take it that that's all part of your programming and that you've addressed that issue?

R. Walker: Yes, it's part of a larger research piece that we're doing as well. I'm not sure what the power requirements are that you're referring to, to remove waste.

I'll tell you what we're doing right now. We have a Future SEA system holding our smolts while we wait for our technology. So we've been working on the waste removal of that. We've gone through a variety of pump types and so on, and they're all pretty low-energy pumps. We've settled on a diaphragm-style pump, which pumps the waste out of the bottom of a tank into a filtration system. Then we…. Basically, it's a dewatering system. We take the water out and take the solids left over to composting for now.

We are also working on trying to derive more value from that. There's some decent nutrient content in the fish feces — nitrogen and some phosphorus and potassium and so on, which are typical fertilizer components.

There's work to be done. Certainly the dewatering part of it is a bit problematic right now because of the fish oils that are in the waste. But there's also some really interesting work being done outside of our project on using the calories that are in that. You can actually burn this material. So there are some interesting burners that are part of a larger carbon sequestration process that goes on. Anyway, there are a lot of side research pieces to that.

Energy, generally, is one of the big question marks that industry has had about closed-containment systems. We are using a 15-horsepower motor to push 50,000 litres of water per minute through our tank — very low energy footprint and very high volumes of water. That technology is well looked after right now, so that's not really one of our bigger challenges.

Also, of course, we're on the hydroelectric grid in Campbell River, and that's another thing that is a bit questionable for the industry. Can you take one of these systems and plunk it in the Broughton or Prince Rupert or wherever — somewhere remote.

That's a challenge, but I think there's enough opportunity — on the south coast, certainly — for situations where the hydroelectric grid is very close at hand, so we don't need to be in these remote areas. Again, if you're talking about carbon footprints, of course, that reduces all the transport-related carbon pollution by it, because you have to get to these places both for feed in, fish out, other supplies and so on. So there are a lot of concurrent advantages to this technology.

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R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, Rob. We don't have any time right now for further questions, but I would be interested in a further submission from you, if you don't mind.

R. Walker: Certainly.

R. Hawes (Chair): You did mention in here "one penny per kilogram." Is that the proposal? Are you making that proposal — that we set that aside?

R. Walker: No. I'm making a general proposal for the industry. I guess there are two proposals. One is industrywide, because I think it's really important that industry be attached to this. I'd love to see them contribute to an industrywide fund. The other, I guess, is that we…. The institute does in fact need money to complete this project. I think this is a really important project. There are global implications here. We just….

R. Hawes (Chair): I'd be interested if you have a suggestion on how that fund could be established with your one penny, if that's the way you're suggesting.

R. Walker: Sure. I just threw that out as a suggestion.

R. Hawes (Chair): Also, with your own project, I'd be interested in knowing how you would see proprietary rights to the technology, how it would spread throughout industry and how industry could tap in to what you have discovered if there's public money going into your research and your project planning.
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R. Walker: Sure. I can provide you with a business plan, if that would help.

R. Hawes (Chair): That would be very helpful.

R. Walker: Okay. Terrific.

R. Hawes (Chair): It's easy to get it in to us, and you have till October 24. Thank you very much.

Tony Law.

T. Law: I'd like to thank you very much for this opportunity and honour you for the work you're doing. It must be a challenge to sift through all these presentations on a whole range of topics — lots of passion.

I'm from Hornby Island. I'm executive director of the Community Economic Enhancement Corp. there. I'm also an elected trustee for Hornby and chair of the Denman-Hornby ferry advisory committee.

I'm making a presentation on behalf of the chairs of the 12 ferry advisory committees up and down the coast. We represent over two dozen communities from Haida Gwaii, Queen Charlottes, down to the southern Gulf Islands and then into Howe Sound and the Sunshine Coast.

A key recommendation is that the upcoming budget allocate sufficient ongoing funding to rescue the coastal communities from increasingly unaffordable ferry fares resulting from the government's nine-year freeze on the transportation fee at a time when operating costs have soared beyond all expectations.

Quoting from the Budget 2009 consultation paper, it says: "Investments in B.C.'s infrastructure are producing new economic benefits enhancing both travel and tourism." For instance, between 2008 and 2011 the province is making transportation infrastructure investments of $3 billion, including roads, bridges, border-crossing improvements, rapid transit, airports and port development.

Now, there's something missing here. B.C. is a coastal province. Yet there is no mention of the ferry system, the sole transportation infrastructure for many coastal communities. These communities rely upon ferry service to generate economic activity. Many have had to move away from resource-based economies and are relying increasingly upon tourism.

Far from supporting economic development, ferry service is proving to be an impediment. Fares on some coastal routes have increased by as much as 125 percent since 2003. These increases are far in excess of what is happening with other modes of transportation. Ten fare increases in five years have been followed by steadily declining traffic. This situation is not sustainable.

Small businesses operating on small margins are already in trouble. Members of the workforce in coastal communities are particularly vulnerable. Incomes are generally well below the provincial mean. The communities that I come from…. The mean earnings are less than 50 percent of the provincial mean, and in some communities they're even lower.

Like the inland ferries, which continue to be provided free, coastal ferry service was established as an extension of the highway system, and this is how residents continue to see their connection to the rest of the province.

The provincial government, through the Coastal Ferry Act, has severed B.C. Ferries from direct government control over management of the system. However, the province still has control over the cost of ferry service to B.C. residents through the transportation fee it provides to B.C. Ferries.

The act requires that the major routes between the mainland and Vancouver Island be financially self-sufficient. The province provides annual transportation fees to support ferry service on the remaining routes — the routes serving north and midcoast communities, the Sunshine Coast and communities adjacent to Vancouver Island and in Howe Sound.

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The government has significantly increased its contribution to ferry routes serving the north and midcoast communities, recognizing that ferry users cannot absorb significant capital and operating costs through fares without economic impacts to the affected communities. We are asking that the province give the same recognition to the minor routes serving south coast communities that are already in trouble.

The provincial transportation fee is presently budgeted to stay at essentially the same level from 2003 to 2012, unlike the federal contribution which is indexed to CPI. Meanwhile, B.C. Ferries is faced with galloping fuel increases and the heavy costs of renewing infrastructure that was badly neglected when the province managed the system.

The fare shock already experienced has damaged local economies. Continuing increases could be devastating. And as somebody who is working in tourism, when the 17 percent fare hit in August, people said: "We're not coming back." So the impacts have yet to be seen. Now, to get to Hornby Island for a family of four, it's over $90 for essentially travelling on ferries that cover two kilometres.

Accessible and affordable transportation is a key to economic activity for coastal communities, as it is elsewhere. The budget should provide for the following: an immediate cash infusion into the minor routes of B.C. Ferries, including absorbing some or all of the unprecedented fuel cost increases, enabling a rollback in fares; indexing of the transportation fee to CPI from 2003 with adjustments as required to address extraordinary cost increases, traffic declines and community hardship; and contributions to investment in capital assets.

One of the concerns we have is that B.C. Ferries has been focusing on the major routes in terms of capital
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replacement. In the next performance term of the contract there are a lot of aging vessels and terminals to be replaced, and it's hard to see how that can be carried on the back of fares.

I'd like to say that obviously we're making a submission here where we're asking the province to provide some relief to our communities, but we've also put together a strategy, which I've sent to the minister — and I have a meeting with the minister on October 23 — where we've tried to take a holistic look at the ferry system to the minor routes and realizing that there's probably going to have to be some changes. And I'm working with the commissioner to set up an innovations workshop, bringing together the ministry, coastal communities and B.C. Ferries to say: "Are there other ways to deliver this service to coastal communities?" There are some innovations that haven't been thought of before B.C. Ferries goes to the next round of vessel acquisition.

We want to look at integrated transportation. We're willing to look at service adjustments. The trouble, from our point of view as members of ferry advisory committees, is it's hard for us to go to our communities and say, "Look, maybe we need to look at some service cuts, service changes," when people are feeling in crisis as a result of the fare increases they've experienced. So it's kind of putting our heads in a noose to go back to our communities. We're already seen as apologists for the government and B.C. Ferries in trying to explain, you know, policies to our communities.

I know these communities are small and are often thought of as not being very relevant, but they are hurting. They're vulnerable because businesses are small. The workforce is vulnerable, and without some support just to deal with the fare shock that we've experienced, it's going to be hard for us to sort of maintain a lot of what we've built up in terms of community infrastructure, businesses.

As I've said, I've been working on trying to support tourism, but it's sort of almost counterproductive when we're seeing the means of access to our communities as being prohibitive to a lot of travellers.

I really appreciate your listening to this presentation.

R. Hawes (Chair): Welcome to the world of sometimes looking people in the eye and giving them the news they don't want to hear. It's sometimes a little bit difficult. I think we have all experienced that.

Questions?

I think your presentation is extremely…. When did you say your meeting with the minister is?

T. Law: On the 23rd.

R. Hawes (Chair): We take input until the 24th.

T. Law: Right. Yeah.

R. Hawes (Chair): So perhaps you would have some further input for us after your meeting with the minister.

T. Law: All right. We might be able to put a little bit more shape on the presentation as a result of that. Thank you very much.

R. Hawes (Chair): That concludes our registered presenters.

We do have open-mike, and we do have one presenter for open-mike so far, and that would be Wendy Prothero.

Wendy, welcome.

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A Voice: You were here the last time we were here.

W. Prothero: I was here the last time, actually.

A Voice: I remember you. You ride your bike — right?

W. Prothero: I guess I do. I ride my bike everywhere, and this is sort of my…. I noticed in the paper last night, in our local paper, that you guys were coming, and I thought…. Well, once again we sat around the dining room table, and we had some discussion about one of the issues that particularly concerns us.

My name is Wendy Prothero. I live in Comox. I really thank you for the opportunity to comment on the budget process and my priorities. After all the things that I've heard today, it seems a bit…. I'm just representing myself and my family. I don't know; I guess that's okay.

Anyway, I note with interest that the B.C. government has a substantial surplus, although I recognize that this may have altered in the last little while. Thinking about my priorities was an interesting process. I have a broad range of interests in my community. As our family composition is changing, my priorities also shift somewhat.

A prime concern of mine is climate change, for I feel that it will affect my children and my grandchildren, to say nothing of other species and other countries in the world.

I've been encouraged by the British Columbia climate action charter, which I have here and which was passed in September of 2007. Here we are at the end of 2008, and I note that local governments have undertaken to being carbon-neutral in respect of their operations by 2012, which is four short years from now.

I am an avid urban cyclist and use my car sparingly, going for longer journeys to Victoria and Vancouver. I have noted that my government has committed $31 million in their latest budget to cycling infrastructure. I would like to draw your attention to the Route verte in Quebec that has North America's largest bicycle
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network, covering over 4,000 kilometres and travelling through the more than 320 municipalities. The Quebec government has put $88 million towards this system over a period of years. What a fine example for us to follow, especially in this era of climate change.

In my community, I hope that the provincial government will assist local governments to provide more safe-cycling infrastructure for urban cyclists. Actually, recently my husband and I were in Vancouver, and I cycled quite successfully from UBC to Granville Island on the cycle path — this wonderful cycling infrastructure in Vancouver. It would be so nice if a lot of the rural communities had similar sorts of emphasis put on cycling infrastructure.

On the Island I would encourage you to fully explore a cycle route parallel to the E&N railway, Courtenay to Victoria. I know that the local councils here, I think, have each put in $10,000 to start the exploration of this possibility, and it would be nice to have some provincial funding for this as well. Talking about development of tourism potential, just think of the tourist attraction, to say nothing of savings in health dollars due to a fitter community and less greenhouse gases.

I also encourage you, as much as you can, to allow bikes to be carried on the train — something not allowed at the moment. If any of you have any influence at all in this regard, it would be most welcome. I have asked VIA Rail. I think I phoned Jack Peake one time. A group of us from here would have loved to have gone and taken our bikes on the train to go to Victoria and cycle on the Galloping Goose.

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You're not allowed, which seems strange to me in this day and age. That's not in my presentation. Imagine the joy of taking the train and arriving in a community with your bike — less cars on the road.

My other hope is that you will urgently provide money for social and affordable housing. You've already had a presentation, which I heard this afternoon, by Betty-Anne Juba, whom I don't know personally, but it was a wonderful presentation. This is a huge issue for those not only in large urban centres but for our community in the Comox Valley, which you've heard.

I've lived here almost 40 years and have watched in dismay as many of my fellow citizens can no longer afford to live here. High-end homes are built where there were once trailer parks. Where are people to live? The government has an obligation to provide social and affordable housing to its citizens.

I noticed in your ad that most folk are interested in personal income tax reductions. That was in our local paper. I am personally interested in services to people rather than tax reductions. I thank you for, hopefully, paying some attention to my interests.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much, Wendy. While questions aren’t permitted, I would like to make one comment. The West Coast Express that moves between Mission and Vancouver has got a place for bikes.

W. Prothero: Oh, I know. I'm very well aware of that, and that's what I'm…. I guess the point I'm making is that in the big urban centres you're doing some…. Some pretty wonderful things are happening. I'm talking about the E&N railroad.

R. Hawes (Chair): I'm guessing as we move forward — talking about southern rail here — that perhaps that'll happen here too.

The other thing I'll say is…. I just got an e-mail about an announcement in my community about a bunch of new bike trails. Hopefully Courtenay has applied for money and has a….

W. Prothero: I don't know. I live in Comox, so I'm not sure what….

R. Hawes (Chair): There is money available, so push them to apply for some money.

Seeing no further witnesses, we're going to adjourn this meeting. We will reconvene tomorrow morning in Langford at 9 a.m. For those of you who make it to Langford, we'll see you there. Otherwise, tune in on the Internet. We're adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 3:23 p.m.

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