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

Thursday, October 16, 2008

9 a.m.

Centennial Room, Executive Hotel

4201 Lougheed Hwy., Burnaby, B.C.

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

Unavoidably Absent: Robin Austin, MLA; Harry Bloy, MLA; John Horgan, MLA; John Rustad, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9:04 a.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 12:16 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

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Issue No. 87

ISSN 1499-4178

[ Page 2133 ]

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2008

The committee met at 9:04 a.m.

[R. Hawes in the chair.]

R. Hawes (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I'm Randy Hawes, and I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission. I'd like to thank you for being here, and I'd like to thank you for taking part in this very valuable exercise.

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

The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services is charged with carrying out the public consultations on the minister's behalf. This is an all-party committee and is required to report back to the Legislative Assembly by not later than November 15.

[0905]

So far we've held public hearings in Kitimat, Smithers, Fort St. John, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Penticton, Vancouver, Cranbrook, Nelson, Courtenay and Langford, and yesterday we were in Abbotsford and Surrey. Today we're here in Burnaby, and this afternoon we will be in Coquitlam. That will conclude the road trip for this committee, and we will then begin working on our final draft.

If you'd like to review the budget consultation paper, we've brought copies with us. These are available at the table at the back.

Information on how you make a presentation to the committee is available on our website, www.leg.bc.ca/budgetconsultations. Any input that the committee receives in writing or in electronic form is given the same consideration as any oral presentations made here today. Due to the federal election, we extended the deadline to receive written submissions, and that new deadline is Friday, October 24.

Today we're going to hear from a number of presenters. Each will be given 15 minutes. We recommend that you try to take about ten minutes and leave five for questions and answers. However, the 15 minutes is your time, and you can use it all on your presentation or as much as you choose. I'll try to give you a heads-up at ten minutes, and if you choose to keep going, I'll give you another heads-up when you have two minutes left to go.

Time permitting, at the end of today's session we will also have an open mike. Open-mike presenters are given five minutes, and there are no questions.

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

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

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

R. Lee: Good morning. Welcome to Burnaby. I'm Richard Lee, MLA for Burnaby North.

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

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

R. Hawes (Chair): And joining us today, I'm also pleased to introduce our Clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd. Also at the back, at the registration desk, is Mary Newell. At the Hansard desk we have Michael Baer and Polly Vaughan. They will be recording today's session, and they will prepare a written transcript. As well, this meeting is being broadcast live on the Internet.

So with that, I would like to now call on our first presenter, the Simon Fraser University Faculty Association — David Mirhady and Robert Hackett.

The floor is yours, gentlemen.

Presentations

D. Mirhady: Thank you very much. I must admit that as a professor of ancient history, I've spoken to hundreds of students. But I haven't ever spoken in a forum like this one, so this is a tremendous opportunity. I also tell my students to stick to their ten minutes, so I'll try to do that.

Bob Hackett is our president this year, but he's been off on a research trip to Africa for the last couple of weeks. I'm a little more up to date, so I'll do most of the speaking.

What's at stake? For the next budget year SFU is facing an $18.7 million deficit. We're anticipating losing positions, including 30 faculty positions — that means tenured faculty — and 50 other positions, staff around the university. In the last year, largely through attrition, we've lost 50 faculty positions and 23 other positions, some of whom got pink slips. So over the two-year period we're anticipating the loss of 150 positions overall at the university, and that's going to result in a reduction of services and programs and increases in class sizes.

In a nutshell, we're asking for the 2.6 percent funding cut that was made in March to be returned, to have an increase in average government funding provided per full-time student at least by the rate of the consumer price index — but really, costs for universities are higher than that and have been rising at a higher rate than that — and also to provide funding for our as yet unfunded graduate student spaces.
[ Page 2134 ]

The faculty association at Simon Fraser represents about 900 faculty members and librarians. We know that you've already heard from the University Presidents Council and from our provincial organization, CUFA, so we can't regale you with those sorts of figures. Especially if you can ask questions about what the situation is on the ground for us who are in the classrooms and doing research at SFU — these are the perspectives that we can especially offer.

[0910]

We'll take note that even without a medical school or a law school, the Times recent ranking of the top 200 universities put SFU at 139, the ninth-highest in Canada. It's a good testament to our international reputation.

We also recognize that grants to research universities could always be higher, just as taxes could always be lower. But SFU has hit a special crisis point now, and it's our view that the demands of health care, for instance, are now taking a disproportionate share. In the budget document that was circulated to households, although education and health care are increasing tremendously, it masks somewhat that health care is taking a much larger share than post-secondary education.

We have seen increases for SFU over the last few years. Costs have been increasing at this sort of angle, and grant funding has been increasing at this sort of angle, and this gap has been increasing. This was dealt with for a time through increased tuition costs.

Over a three-year period we had tuitions double at the university, with the promise that this would result in more classes being offered, more services for students. But in fact, that hasn't happened. So it's making us uncomfortable that we're not keeping up our end of the bargain with the students.

Costs of building have increased tremendously. Heating costs have rapidly escalated. So things were tight even before March 13. The news of the 2.6 percent cut to the planned funding came too late for us in March to do things like reduce the number of students admitted or freeze hiring commitments that had already been made.

We could decrease, even now perhaps, the number of students, but that hasn't been our mandate. Our mandate has been to increase numbers of students. Reduced tuition that would result from having fewer students would cost the university also.

The $4.9 million cut that the 2.6 percent cut represented is especially difficult for a university. University budgets really cannot turn on a dime — or on a loonie or even a toonie. So the current budget scenario that we are seeing, as I said, involves the elimination of 30 teaching faculty positions and 50 other staff positions.

The administration has said that there will be no more relying on attrition since that skews the university's strategic objectives, particularly in health sciences, environment and high-tech. Some sort of program in voluntary severance or, in fact, layoffs is being anticipated, which will do quite some damage to the university's reputation.

We have some figures, in the middle of page 3 of the document, on per-student funding. These figures use so-called inflation-adjusted dollars, but we know that the costs in B.C. have actually risen at a greater rate than this and that the so-called higher education index is quite a bit higher than the consumer price index that's involved here. Things really have got to quite a grim state.

Now, Bob, did you want to jump in with a couple of points?

R. Hackett: I just would like to mention a couple of dimensions of the impact of these budget cuts in the last year, which actually go back even before March. One is the hiring freeze we've had since March. From my own personal experience, I'm in a department with about 25 faculty members and a thousand undergraduate student majors. So we already have a high student-to-faculty ratio.

In the last year we've lost two members, one due to retirement and one to an untimely death. We cannot replace either of them at the moment under conditions of a hiring freeze, which means, of course, it's going to be more difficult to offer the full range of courses that undergraduate students need to complete their degrees.

[0915]

It also makes it difficult to develop and maintain the research programs, the research streams that full-time faculty members bring with them which also attract graduate students and external funding. So that's one consequence we've already experienced.

Another is the decline in graduate student support since the cutbacks last March. For example, I have several students in our school who were denied graduate fellowships that they would have received in normal years. Thus they were forced to make a choice between either delaying the completion of their programs or adding to their already significant student debt — significant in some cases.

So those are two immediate impacts, but we're looking at far worse unless these cuts are reversed in the near future.

D. Mirhady: I just wanted to say a little bit about mandatory retirement. I think it was an excellent policy decision and long overdue for us to allow people to be working beyond 65, to choose their own retirement dates.

Over time I think that the costs for places like the university will be negligible, certainly largely mitigated, since most people in fact retire by 67 or so. But just in these last couple of years it seems that three out of four of my colleagues who reached the age of 65 aren't retiring. The way our salary structure is set up, it means that they're continuing to get high-end salaries for a couple
[ Page 2135 ]
or three more years, and that is having a temporary effect on the university.

So I wonder whether the government could think about some sort of bridging to anticipate…. I think this can be costed out, and at least temporarily, the universities could get a bit of a break on these things. I think we're hitting about our ten-minute mark, so if you've got questions.

R. Hawes (Chair): You are on it. Very good.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. I have a question on graduate student funding. Do you know the number at 2001 for SFU?

R. Hackett: You mean the total amount?

R. Lee: Yeah, the total amount for graduate students funded by government.

R. Hackett: We do have a point in here. We could always go back and check the numbers, but our second-to-last point on page 3 refers to the number of funded graduate student spaces versus unfunded. It's at the bottom of page 3.

D. Mirhady: I can't give you the exact figures, Richard. But there was a response to a question the other day by our former graduate dean, now vice-president academic, who pointed out that until very recently SFU was taking on graduate students without external funding at all. These were being paid for largely through research grants, because the presence of graduate students is integral to the research mission of the university. So we took them on, and we funded them ourselves.

The government, just in its last….

R. Lee: Two years.

D. Mirhady: Two years ago it started to increase these, but only for new students. The students that we had before continued to be unfunded. So we're hoping to get some funding for those students to make up for that lost opportunity before.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I'm searching for the right ancient history metaphors. In view of the changing economic times, maybe we're heading into the economic equivalent of the Peloponnesian War.

Given that there is likely an economic downdraft occurring, I think historically that would show that students are likely to want to either stay in university longer or return to university either as undergraduates or graduate students.

What anecdotal evidence or other evidence do you have to support that proposition, and what do you think should be the response of the government to that possibility?

D. Mirhady: Well, I think you're right that in a sense, we haven't seen the numbers of students that there may be if there ends up being fewer opportunities to be out in the workforce than there have been as people come back to university and retool themselves. But I think we should point out that the government….

We've had a bit of a population surge in the demographics anyway. While many of the colleges have been fighting for enrolment increases, SFU has been meeting its enrolment targets, and we've been well over them for the last couple of years. So the pressures on us have been quite extreme, especially with that cutback we got in March.

[0920]

D. Hayer: Thank you very much. It was a very good presentation from a very good university.

My question is about the professors who might be turning age 65. Now they will be staying for a longer period of time. Because the wage scale over the time experience…. Do you think that they should be looking at some other persons who might be turning 65 and maybe putting them at part-time so you still have some students? At the same time you can allow some younger professors to come in, who will be starting at a lower scale because that is just the earliest stage of their career. Have you looked at that or any of those combinations?

D. Mirhady: Yes, we certainly have. When the changes were made in the legislation with regard to mandatory retirement, the faculty association negotiated with the university to allow a three-year decreasing scale so that the university would be able to anticipate that yes, this person will be off the payroll in three years and in the meantime, as you suggest, will be scaling down — perhaps winding down research projects and continuing to do teaching or various sorts of permutations like that.

I think we have tried to anticipate that already. We'll have to see over the next couple of years as these people who are now 66 and 67 decide: "Okay, yes. Now this is the time."

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you. You've exhausted your time, but it's a good presentation, so thank you very much.

Next we have the Insurance Bureau of Canada — Lindsay Olson and Serge Corbeil.

L. Olson: Good morning. I would like to start off by thanking you for the opportunity to meet with you all today and to bring you up to speed on some of the priority policy issues that we see coming in the near future. To start off with, Serge will talk a little bit about some general comments about the industry and where we're at.
[ Page 2136 ]

S. Corbeil: I believe you're getting right now the formal written submission and also a copy of the slides with the PowerPoints. We'll go by the slides this morning.

I think you know about the Insurance Bureau of Canada. We're the national trade association representing the private property and casualty insurers in Canada.

I'd like to start off by just giving you general comments on the economy. Our industry pays very close attention to the economic health of the province and of the country. As such, we've been impressed over the last few years with the economic situation that British Columbia has been facing. Even though we seem to be going through some very quickly changing conditions around the world, around Canada and most probably in British Columbia as well, the first quarterly report that was issued earlier in September shows that B.C. and the government of B.C. are still on strong footings.

We believe that the past decisions that have been made are allowing the British Columbia government today to make more choices and to have more choices to face the current situation. We are, however, encouraging the government, in our submission, to pursue its balanced-budget approach. Our recommendations today go in the sense of a mix of debt payment, tax relief and a few targeted investments.

The insurance industry is obviously very important to the economic health of the country. We underwrite the risks associated with buying a home, driving a car and also starting your own business. We tend to follow the fortune of the economy, and as such, 2007 was a bit more challenging to the insurance industry. By all accounts, from what we've seen so far in 2008, this will continue to be challenging.

Claims incurred are rising faster than premium growth. This is obviously not something that is hoped for in the industry. In 2007 this resulted in a combined ratio, which indicates if you are arriving at an underwriting profit or loss, that has worsened and is 91 percent overall. But in some lines of business it's closer and reaching above 100 percent. This indicates that we might be entering a hardening phase in the insurance cycle.

[0925]

On slide 4 you have a graph that indicates claims incurred as opposed to premiums, and it also shows how we follow the fortune of the GDP.

In British Columbia our industry employs over 12,000 people. We paid $1.6 billion in claims to British Columbians, $236 million in taxes were paid to the B.C. government, and our members invested $8.4 billion in B.C. in 2007. Nearly 20 percent of that is in provincial bonds, which help the government fund different initiatives that it has.

B.C. consumers, as you'll see on slide 6, are still in an enviable position. While the rate per thousand has been going down, which is good news, some might have seen an overall increase in their premiums. The reason for that is on the right side of that slide. The average policy size has also been increasing.

Finally, you can see there where the Canadian insurance dollar is going. Most of it goes back to policyholders, to communities, in salaries, in taxes. Nine cents — and that seems to be going down for 2007 — went to profit.

Lindsay will now talk. We have four policy priorities that we'd like to present to you today.

L. Olson: The first item that I would like to talk about is the issue of climate change. We all recognize that this is here today. It's not something that we are threatened with in the future. It is here today.

Insurers have seen the impacts of climate change over the last few decades. We've seen more and more extreme weather events occurring around the world and in Canada as well. Not only are we seeing more of these extreme weather events; we are seeing the average loss for those events increasing as well. What we're seeing at this moment is that the value of claims stemming from natural disasters is now doubling every five to seven years. That's a burden that is obviously paid by policyholders.

We are fully supportive of government's initiatives to work on reducing our carbon footprint. However, we have to realize that carbon emissions remain in our atmosphere for many, many years. In fact, the first emissions from the first horseless carriage or the first airplane at Kitty Hawk are still in our atmosphere today. Even if we stop emitting — if we shut down every coal plant, if we get half the cars off the road…. Even if we accomplish that today, we will continue to see emissions that we have already put into the atmosphere continue to propel our climate change for many decades to come.

Because we have climate change resulting in natural disasters and severe weather events today, we are encouraging governments across Canada and here in British Columbia to look to mitigation — looking to find ways to strengthen our communities against these hazards.

A couple of areas, in specific, that we would like to talk about. One is assisting individual property owners with risk mitigation work needed to limit the impact of pine beetle infestation. Many homeowners in British Columbia live at risk of fire due to the conditions created by the pine beetle. Work is certainly underway throughout the affected areas to mitigate that from a broader perspective, but individual homeowners need support and encouragement to address the risk that they face as individuals.

[0930]

The other area that we would encourage is dealing with basic infrastructure in the province. A good example of that is within sewer systems. Our sewer systems in British Columbia — and indeed across the country — were not built to deal with, first of all, the level of development that we currently have.

But secondly and most importantly, there's the
[ Page 2137 ]
increasing number of extreme weather events. What was a once-in-100-years event is now turning out to be a once-in-20-years event. So if we're going to have more of these severe weather events putting a strain on our infrastructure, we need to address that sooner than later.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has stated that infrastructure deficit is estimated at $123 billion and growing by about $2 billion per year, so this is an area where we need to take a good long look at strengthening our communities.

Another area that we would like to address is fair and competitive tax policy. We certainly welcome the reduction of corporate tax to 11 percent effective July 2008, but we would still remind government that corporate income tax and insurance premium tax remain higher in British Columbia than they are in Alberta.

The federal government has sought to collaborate with the provinces and territories to reach a combined 25 percent statutory tax rate by 2012, and we recommend that British Columbia adopt the national goal and commit to reducing its corporate income tax rate to 10 percent by 2012.

The insurance premium tax is another area where we would recommend that government take a look. Alberta's insurance premium tax is 3 percent. The average insurance premium tax in the United States is 2 percent. So we would encourage that this be reviewed. This is a burden for individual policyholders who must pay that tax.

One area that we would suggest that government look at, not only to create a fairer marketplace for auto insurance in this province but also as a possible way of offsetting drops in revenue, is allowing the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia to pay the equivalent of corporate tax, which they are currently exempted from.

The Insurance Corporation Act, under section 26, does allow the government to direct the corporation to make such a payment to the government. It's our estimate that it would be roughly $42 million per year that would be secured through that means.

Last but not least, as you all know, the Insurance Act amendment has not been passed, and we certainly encourage government to make that a priority. We would, however, like to note that speedy reconstruction following an earthquake is paramount to the economic recovery that the province would need to achieve.

We would like to see a stand-alone earthquake insurance endorsement as a means of achieving that and encouraging that. At the moment, Bill 40 is not clear as to whether that would be permitted or not.

The last item here is that section 28.4 of the bill actually creates a fair bit of uncertainty, and obviously, the insurance industry is built on knowing what's going to be happening in the future and requiring certainty to do that. So 28.4 is a particular clause that creates uncertainty, and we would encourage government not to proceed with that section.

On that basis, we'll wrap it up and thank you for your time and ask you if you have any questions.

[0935]

J. Yap: Thank you, Lindsay and Serge, for your presentation.

On ICBC, I've always had the impression that our auto insurance rates here in B.C. are actually among the lowest in Canada if not in North America. Your point here that they aren't is something that I'm interested in learning more about. I'm wondering if you have a study or a review of our auto insurance rates here in B.C. compared to other jurisdictions.

L. Olson: Yes, we do. We'd be happy to provide that to you. I can assure you that British Columbia does not have the distinction of low rates at all.

J. Yap: So you can provide us with that study?

L. Olson: Absolutely.

J. Yap: Okay. If you could, make it available through the Clerk.

L. Olson: We will do that.

D. Hayer: Section 28.4. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better rather than removing it — clarifying it so that there's no uncertainty for an insurance company, but at the same time, the public is protected?

L. Olson: Basically, 28.4 allows government, through the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, to make other perils mandatory under insurance policies. The government can obviously achieve that at any time through legislation. If it's done through legislation, then we feel that there's adequate time for debate, adequate time to ensure that all viewpoints are heard before that change is made.

To allow it to be put in through an order-in-council does not give adequate opportunity for full debate, and that's what we would like to see.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): A quick question. The Supreme Court of Canada made some comments on the Insurance Act in British Columbia about five years ago. We've been waiting for legislative amendments to correct what the Supreme Court of Canada has pointed out. How important is it that the proposed amendments to the Insurance Act that were before the Legislature go forward?
[ Page 2138 ]

L. Olson: I would say that it's extremely important. Obviously, insurers and their consumers are continuing to muddle by, but the Insurance Act amendments are essential to create contract certainty for both parties. It's not only important for insurers, but it's equally important for consumers as well.

R. Hawes (Chair): With that, thank you very much for your presentation. It's pretty clear.

Next we have the Canadian Cancer Society, B.C. and Yukon division — Kathryn Seely and Cathy Adair.

Good morning.

K. Seely: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee members. There's a presentation that we have for you, which will soon be passed out. I'll just take a moment at this time to tell you a bit about the Canadian Cancer Society and that we're very pleased to be here before the committee. It's our second time presenting before you.

We have six priority recommendations. They centre around chronic disease prevention, health promotion and health inequity reduction.

The Canadian Cancer Society is a national, community-based organization whose mission is to eradicate cancer and to help enhance the quality of life of patients living with cancer. We achieve our mission in many ways — providing information services; providing supports for patients; funding quality research; and advocating for healthy public policies, which is why we're here today.

Our six priority recommendations for you today are the following: (1) to increase tobacco taxes, (2) to fund nicotine replacement therapies, (3) to begin to reduce health inequities, (4) to implement provincewide product-labelling and cosmetic pesticide legislation, (5) to enhance sun safety measures and (6) to support the Canadian Cancer Society's vision for a cancer prevention centre.

Turning to our first priority. In the budget consultation paper you asked British Columbians what taxes we'd like to see reduced next. Well, we're here today to tell you that we'd actually like you to increase taxes in one consequential area, that being tobacco control.

Last year this committee recommended that the government increase tobacco taxes. We commend you on that recommendation, and we'd like you to make that recommendation again.

[0940]

Tobacco use still remains the most pressing public health concern in British Columbia today. It kills 6,000 people annually and is responsible for 30 percent of cancer deaths and 85 percent of lung cancers. The government has done much in tobacco control of late, of which we're very appreciative, and our smoking rate is down to 14 percent, which still makes us, though, as the Hon. Mary Polak said, the best of a bad lot — and it's still ahead of Utah's rate. When Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Olympic Games, Utah's rate at the time was 12.6 percent.

If we want to be the healthiest jurisdiction to ever host an Olympic Games, we've got to get our smoking rates down. We know that to get smoking rates down, we require a basketful of policies. But one of the policies that have been shown to be most effective is increasing tobacco taxes. Studies have shown that a 10 percent increase in tobacco taxes can reduce tobacco consumption by 3 percent to 5 percent.

Now, what we recommended last year was that the committee recommend to the B.C. government that it increase tobacco taxes by 40 cents on a package of 25 cigarettes, or $3.20 per carton. If we did this, this would be an 8.9 percent increase.

We've done some calculations. We did them for you last year when asked by then Chair Bill Bennett to show that if the B.C. government did raise tobacco taxes to the tune we're recommending that it would realize some $65 million per year in the first year. Now, we recognize that revenue would go down in each subsequent year as more people stopped smoking.

I'd like to conclude the tobacco tax recommendation by saying that it would be a win-win-win. It would be a win for fiscal policy, a win for healthy public policy and a popular public policy, as 81 percent of British Columbians were in support of a tobacco tax raise in February 2006 when we conducted an Ipsos-Reid poll.

Investing in substantive investment priorities. One area that we recommend that the B.C. government invest in is funding a broad-based nicotine replacement therapy subsidy, not unlike Quebec has done. It's an effective way to combat smoking, especially when combined with physician counselling.

We have records that Quebec spent some $9 million in 2007 on nicotine replacement therapies, and last year we were asked to provide some calculations as to what it might cost B.C. to do so. Our calculations at that time showed that just extrapolating the percentage of B.C. daily smokers with Quebec daily smokers demonstrated to us that it would cost the B.C. government $4 million, approximately, to fund a nicotine replacement therapy program — well below what it would realize in tobacco tax revenue.

Turning to our third recommendation, we recommend that this committee recommend to the B.C. government that it begin to address health inequities. I've been reading the transcripts. I know that you've heard over the last few weeks about the child poverty problem we have in B.C. It is the highest. We know that you know that the determinants of health are a significant driver in terms of health care costs and health problems. The World Health Organization has a recent report on it. The Public Health Agency of Canada has a recent report on it. Our Progress Board continues to have reports on it annually.
[ Page 2139 ]

What we would like to recommend to this committee is that it urge government to begin to address the health inequities by implementing a cross-ministerial initiative, not unlike ActNow B.C., whereby each ministry would have to have a plan in place to begin reducing health inequities. We would like to see ActNow expanded to include health inequities and funded beyond 2010.

Our fourth recommendation is that we continue to address other environmental issues. Last year this committee recommended to government that environmental protection go beyond reducing greenhouse gases. We commend you for that and would like to repeat that here today. We think that further environmental protection measures would include provincewide cosmetic pesticide legislation.

It's probably no surprise that you're hearing us say that. It's been in the media of late. There's a package that we gave to you with the presentation. That's our pesticide toolkit. That's just for your reference and reading at your own leisure later.

We know that 16 municipalities in B.C. do now have cosmetic pesticide bylaws in place, and two provinces — Ontario and Quebec. New Brunswick is considering legislation. P.E.I. has a standing committee in place. We know that 76 percent of British Columbians support provincewide cosmetic pesticide legislation, as we told you in April when we hosted our MLAs for an MLA breakfast in Victoria. We also know that some 200 delegates at the UBCM convention three weeks ago handily supported two resolutions asking the government to pass provincewide pesticide legislation.

[0945]

The other environmental protection measure that we would like to see passed, and we're hoping that this committee would recommend to government, is that government pass product-labelling legislation. This would require consumer products to not only contain a list of the ingredients they contain but to contain a hazard sign or warning symbol if those products contain a cancer-causing substance. Proposition 65 in California has done this.

Fifthly, implement sun safety measures. Our recommendations there are around tanning salon bans for children under 18 and minimum shade structures for child care facilities in schools.

Sixthly, we are hoping that the government will be in support of the Canadian Cancer Society's vision for a centre for cancer prevention, in partnership with UBC. That's a proposal that we're soon going to be putting to the B.C. government.

Those are our six policy recommendations and priority recommendations for Budget 2009. Thank you for considering them. If you have any questions, we would be pleased to answer them.

J. Yap: Thanks for your presentation.

On the cosmetic use of pesticides, where is the science on this issue, in terms of research? I'm assuming that the society has research that backs up the recommendations.

K. Seely: The evidence is suggestive, but it is growing, that there are links between cancer and some substances in pesticides. That evidence is out of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, which shows that some substances in pesticides are probable or possible carcinogens. It's a growing body of evidence, and so there are studies that the Ontario College of Family Physicians have looked at. As well, the national toxicology program in the United States says that some pesticides can contain carcinogens. So it's a growing body of evidence.

Just this morning I was on the Internet and realized that there is now a study — I forget out of which journal — that is showing that glyphosate in Roundup is now linked with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

It's the growing body of evidence that's showing that some substances in pesticides can cause…. The cancers that it has been associated with are the leukemias, the lymphomas, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer.

D. Thorne: I'm interested in all of it, but specifically interested in the nicotine replacement therapies. You know, it seems like a no-brainer to me that if we increased the taxes, then we could pay for the nicotine replacement. What kind of successes or what road blocks are you or people across Canada encountering in getting governments to do A in order to do B and have it be a win-win for the budget as well as for all of the people in British Columbia?

K. Seely: I don't know that I know the answer to what the other provinces are facing, but I would suspect it is cost. I mean, it is expensive to fund a broad-based NRT program. Quebec is the only province that does that. But there have been recommendations put forth to the B.C. government by the Clean Air Coalition and by the medical health officers council that recommend not a broad-based nicotine replacement therapy program but nicotine replacement therapies for the populations that might benefit from them most — mental health and addictions, schizophrenia, autism. Those organizations are recommending a stepped approach.

I noticed that the B.C. government has a nicotine replacement therapy program for its public service employees, and I think that the success rates have been quite high. The membership is high, and it's not in the paper, but it's in a brief that we've been providing to some of the cabinet ministers of late. They've extended that NRT program now till May 2009. The health authorities are scrambling for programs like this, because the health authorities are now…. The grounds are smoke-free.

D. Hayer: My question is with your point No. 5 — tanning salon, banning children using them under the
[ Page 2140 ]
age of 18. I have many constituents come talk to me about the same issue, but other than that I haven't really heard much about it. Are there other states or provinces that currently have that? If they have, what has the response been from the general public with that?

K. Seely: The answer is that there are a few states and provinces that have done that. Tanning salon bans are in place in a number of U.S. states, the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia, the countries of Scotland and France and the province of New Brunswick.

[0950]

Last week I believe it was the Health Minister of Ontario who said that he would consider it in Ontario, when our Ontario division of the Canadian Cancer Society released a survey they had done of tanning salon companies showing that they didn't comply with the provincial requirements that they ask a minor's age and other things before having those minors enter a tanning salon.

Yes, other jurisdictions have done it. I haven't heard problems with it. I know that Australia did it in combination with a number of other policy measures, and their melanoma skin rates have gone down since. Australia had a very successful media campaign, as well as tanning salon bans, and offered products for outdoor workers such as shirts and suntan lotion.

C. Adair: If I could just add to that, we recently had a national sun survey. I'd be happy to send the summary results, which showed quite an alarming attitude on the part of our young people with respect to sun safety. They actually know that it can create difficulties but choose not to change their behaviour. We know that public policy, combined with those kinds of individual choices, actually makes the difference.

R. Lee: You know that we have a new Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport. Also, you are thinking that how to reduce health inequality should be one of our government's objectives. Do you have any concrete program? We have the food programs in schools — vegetable programs. Anything you want to add? Any ideas — say, in the schools — where we can do more?

K. Seely: Well, last year you recommended — and it was a good recommendation around this area — not only that we increase housing and address the issue of homelessness, but the committee recommended that you increase programs in schools to deliver safe, nutritious foods for children. We think that's a very good recommendation.

C. Adair: Certainly, nutritious foods in school and fresh fruits and vegetables at the school level are critical, but in fact, many of the policies that need to take place for the health inequity issue are around some of the poverty.

Some of the areas that we've talked about in terms of eliminating child and family poverty are strengthening the social safety net, increasing temporary income support, improving earned incomes and living wages, increasing the availability of decent affordable housing and, certainly, improving school outcomes.

If you look at first nations communities and the rate of completion of high school, it's obviously quite a bit lower. But for all children, just completing education is one of the significant social determinants of health.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much. I don't buy tobacco products. The roll-your-own loophole….

K. Seely: Yeah. The roll-your-own loophole is that it now costs…. You can buy 100 milligrams, because it's expanded tobacco, yet you can achieve 200 cigarettes. So effectively, roll-your-own is taxed at half the rate. One milligram can make two cigarettes. That's the problem, because it's now expandable tobacco.

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

K. Seely: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

R. Hawes (Chair): Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, and the presenters are Stelios Azoudis and Hal Stovall. Good morning.

The floor is yours.

H. Stovall: Well, thank you, hon. Chair and committee members. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'm Hal Stovall, and this is my colleague Stelios Azoudis. We are members of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies' B.C. regional committee. I work for Eli Lilly, and Stelios is with Merck Frosst Canada.

[0955]

Let me begin by providing a short background of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, also known as Rx&D. Rx&D is a national association of the pharmaceutical research community, representing over 22,000 men and women who work for more than 50 research-based pharmaceutical companies in Canada.

Approximately 10,000 medical researchers are employed as a result of our member companies' investment in research and development with about 4,000 employed by Rx&D member companies and an estimated 6,000 indirectly by universities, hospitals and research institutions.

Stelios and I are based in B.C., and we are part of a large community of individuals from our industry who work and live in this province. Our member companies share one single primary objective: to discover new medicines and vaccines that improve the quality of health care available for every Canadian.
[ Page 2141 ]

We commend the B.C. government for again reaching out to the public to seek comments and suggestions in preparation of the 2009 budget. This is our association's third consecutive submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, and it's an honour to be able to participate.

This follows in the tradition of the Conversation on Health. It also engages the people of B.C. to share their thoughts on the sustainability of the B.C. health care system. Rx&D contributed to that public consultation process as well.

Hon. Chair and committee members, we are committed to playing a positive role in meeting the economic challenges of the government of B.C. We firmly believe our presentation today is a further testament to our commitment to this fact. We are here today to accomplish three objectives.

First, to elaborate on an idea we shared last year regarding a solution with generic drugs that will help manage costs in Pharmacare and provide opportunities to reinvest cost savings in innovative new medicines.

Second, to clarify a misconception about the role that innovative medicines play in rising Pharmacare costs and the role of drugs as a cost saver, not a cost driver, in the health care system.

Third, to reaffirm Rx&D's willingness to work with Ministry of Health officials to improve patient health outcomes and help ensure the sustainability of B.C.'s health care system.

I will now turn the microphone over to my colleague Stelios, who will address the first two objectives by sharing with you a summary of a very detailed analysis of B.C. pharmaceutical expenditures.

S. Azoudis: Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. I am pleased to provide you with highlights this morning of an analysis of B.C. Pharmacare expenditures that was completed by Brogan Inc. in November 2007. Brogan is a health care market research company based in Canada and well known to B.C. Pharmacare.

The purpose of this analysis was to establish facts regarding past expenditures and to dispel some of the myths on future expenditures on patented medicines. I should also inform the committee that the data presented today, albeit in more detail, was presented to the B.C. Pharmaceutical Task Force earlier this year.

The objective of the study was to analyze retrospectively B.C. Pharmacare drug expenditures for the period April 2002 to March 2007 and, further, to analyze forecasted drug expenditures in the subsequent five-year fiscal period of April 2007 to March 2012.

The analysis focused on three main sets of data. Firstly, it looked at the impact of generic substitution on the drug budget in the past five years for several top-selling drugs and also forecasted the potential budget impact of generic substitution of major drugs coming off patent in the next five years.

Secondly, it reviewed the net impact on the B.C. Pharmacare budget of new patent medicines introduced, again, in Canada in the last five years and also forecasted the net impact under existing restrictive listings of all potential new blockbuster drugs in the subsequent five years.

The third set of data really is an additional analysis determining the actual annual savings from the reference-based pricing program here in British Columbia.

Presenting data is always a challenge at the best of times, and I hope to do justice to this data this morning. To better appreciate this data, I ask you to refer to graph No. 1, which is provided in your handouts. It's entitled "B.C. Pharmacare actual drug expenditures." As you can see, the vertical axis represents drug expenditures in millions of dollars, and the horizontal axis represents budget years. Each complete bar of the graph represents total B.C. Pharmacare drug expenditures. That excludes prescription fees.

[1000]

It is important to note that actual B.C. Pharmacare drug expenditures are shown in years 2002 to 2007, while forecasted expenditures are shown for the years 2008 to 2012. The numbers at the top of each bar describe the percentage increase in the drug budget from the previous years.

Overall, you will see that the B.C. Pharmacare budget showed a modest 4 percent annualized growth in the period 2002 to 2007. A reduced annualized growth of 3 percent is forecast for the next five years, 2008 to 2012. Indeed, the B.C. Pharmacare drug budget is projected to decline to a low of 1.1 percent in the year 2012.

The part of each bar shown in red represents the amount that generics contribute to the drug budget. Included are the corresponding percentages of total annual expenditures attributed to generics. It is clear from the analysis that the expiration of patents of blockbuster drugs in the past five years has provided an additional $143 million in savings to B.C. Pharmacare.

Indeed, there will be further savings from the continued patent expiration of blockbuster drugs in the next five years. Based on the current pricing of generics in British Columbia, which is at 64 percent of brand price, the projected five-year savings are estimated to be $233 million. These savings would be increased to $323 million if generics were priced at 50 percent of brand price, like Ontario has recently done.

The contribution of generics to the budget, resulting from the planned expiration of several blockbuster drugs, is estimated to increase from 33 percent to 52 percent in the next five years. As mentioned, generics could represent a larger percentage of the B.C. Pharmacare drug budget through even more aggressive pricing of generics.

This represents significant opportunity to generate significant savings that would permit the government to
[ Page 2142 ]
reinvest portions of the existing drug budget in innovative new medicines that have among the highest returns on investment in the health care system. This would support sustainability of the health care system, with no negative impacts on patient outcomes or on innovation and economic development.

I would like to draw your attention to the yellow box at the top of the page, where there are two important notes regarding some additional work on the existing reference drug program and, secondly, on the cost of new patent drugs on the B.C. Pharmacare budget. The Brogan analysis determined that the actual cost savings to the drug plan from the reference drug program in years 2002 to 2007 was less than $10 million a year.

These are not net savings, as the analysis did not consider the cost needed to administer the program — for example, the special authorization program, additional physician visits and overall costs to the health care system. As our industry association has stated many times before, this does not include the lost investment in British Columbia that has occurred as a result of the reference drug program.

The public has the perception that new, innovative drugs, medicines, are responsible for driving up Pharmacare costs and making it an unsustainable program. I will address this point by asking you now to refer to slide 2 in your handouts, entitled "Impact of new patent medicines, 2002-2007."

This table indicates that new patent drugs introduced in Canada in the past five years have had a negligible impact on the B.C. Pharmacare budget. In fact, B.C. Pharmacare has spent a total of $33 million on new drugs introduced during this five-year period. This $33 million represents less than 1 percent of the total drug expenditure during that five-year period. The main reason for this finding is the very restrictive listing policies of B.C. Pharmacare with regards to approval and listing of new patent medicines.

You may be interested to know that during this same five-year period, of the 100 new patented drugs approved for sale in Canada, only five received the full benefit listing in British Columbia, and nine were listed under the special authorization program. Therefore, overall, 86 percent of new patented drugs were not listed during this period.

[1005]

However, we know that there are tangible benefits to patients receiving new, innovative medicines, and the restrictive policies in British Columbia hinder access to the right medicines for the right patient at the right time.

In summary, Mr. Chairman and committee members, the Brogan analysis presented to you today clearly shows that the rate of growth of the B.C. Pharmacare drug budget will decline in the next five years. Generics will contribute an increasing portion of the budget. The reference drug program provides modest savings, and, because of restrictive listing policies, new patent drugs contribute a negligible amount to the drug budget. Combined, these factors suggest that there should be additional room within the existing Pharmacare budget to invest in innovative, new medicines.

Thank you for your attention. At this point I would like to ask Hal to provide our concluding comments.

H. Stovall: Rx&D has a strong desire to work with the B.C. government. We have, hopefully, made this clear through our feedback to the Conversation on Health and through the presentation Rx&D made to the B.C. Pharmaceutical Task Force and in numerous other presentations to government committees.

As a contributing stakeholder that participates in both the health care and economic agendas for the province, Rx&D member companies look towards partnerships and collaborations that focus on improving health care outcomes and enhancing the knowledge-based economy.

Our request today is that the B.C. government consider the budget savings opportunity we have shared with you, and we ask that Pharmacare reform and modernize the restrictive policies that it maintains with regard to the new, innovative medicines and work with Rx&D member companies to develop programs that will improve patient health outcomes, manage chronic diseases more efficiently and support a sustainable health care system.

The budget savings found through pursuing better prices for generic drugs can be used to reinvest in new, innovative medicines. Prescription drugs have one of the best returns on investment in B.C. health care.

On a different note, when we met with this committee last year, we reviewed our association's code of conduct that its members adhere to. We're very proud of this code. Its main guiding principle is the health and well-being of patients and all Canadians. Coincidentally, later today Rx&D is hosting a code of conduct awareness day to celebrate its 20th anniversary of the code, and we will be sharing that and the principles from which we operate with stakeholders in B.C.

In conclusion, we strongly believe that creating a sustainable vision for the future of health care can be found in new partnerships, new thinking and a new, collaborative approach. We hope that you find our submission and discussion a guide to some of those solutions. Thank you, and we'll be pleased to answer any questions that you might have.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): I just want to be able to summarize my understanding of it. You're suggesting that because a number of patents are going to expire in the next five years — I think Lipitor is probably one of the ones — that that will reduce costs to the Pharmacare program. And your second request is that the reference-
[ Page 2143 ]
based pricing system be abolished. Would that be a fair summary?

H. Stovall: Yes, that's part of it. We're also saying that there's an opportunity if you are more aggressive with the pricing of generics, as Ontario has been and other jurisdictions like the U.S. There are additional savings to be had there.

R. Hawes (Chair): I have just one quick question, and that's the Pharmacare task force. It did report out. My understanding is that there is an overhaul on the approval methodology, I guess I'll call it, and that that should result in some expedited approvals. Am I incorrect in my assumption here?

H. Stovall: Well, we were very pleased with the recommendations of the task force. Now it's left, I guess, for the interpretation. That's always the question — how things will actually be interpreted and implemented.

We are working with the pharmaceutical services division. A preliminary paper they put together and shared with all stakeholders raised a few concerns that they weren't necessarily following the recommendations as closely as we would have liked to have seen. However, I think it is an early draft, and they have accepted additional feedback from us. It's a process, and I think we're meeting with them again later this year.

R. Lee: What are the price differentials for generic drugs in Canada across different provinces? Is there an opportunity for, say, Canada as a whole to negotiate a good price for those drugs?

[1010]

S. Azoudis: The price differentials are as low as 50 percent, as I described for Ontario. The range is usually between 65 percent and 70 percent, depending on the province — that is, 70 percent of the brand price. There are different prices in other countries, namely the United States, which can go to as low as 35 percent of brand price. But it varies across the country. There are opportunities for bulk buying, as you say, but that has not been pursued to any detail.

R. Lee: Why?

R. Hawes (Chair): Richard, I'm sorry. We're out of time.

H. Stovall: I was just going to add that there are rebates that pharmacists receive, as you're probably aware, from generic companies, so sometimes the true cost of generic price isn't that clear.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you, guys. Good food for thought here.

Next we have Vancouver Community College — Don Fairbairn and Peter Legg. Good morning, and welcome. The floor is yours.

D. Fairbairn: Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here. As my tag says, I'm Don Fairbairn, and I'm the chair of the board. I have my colleague Pete Legg, who I would say is probably the best CFO in the college system. We're both here, wide awake and happy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to hear us today. We very much appreciate it.

I think that as many of you know…. But I need to remind you of a few things. VCC is the oldest and the largest community college in the province. We serve nearly 25,000 students in a year, and we have a broad range of programming, from literacy development through career training to bachelor's degrees.

Like every college and every great institution, we have lots of successes, but we're challenged in delivering those successes. So I'd like to talk with you today about those successes and share with you some of our challenges.

The Vancouver Sun ran a recent series of articles on literacy. Their lead-off article spoke about VCC and highlighted our work in the field of literacy. It's really, I think, very representative of what the college does.

The college is as close to the community, as close to the street and as close to the needs of people as any institution. We're very effective in dealing with newcomers to our province, newcomers to our country and those who simply need to pull themselves up, because they're willing to take that step to do so.

The students that we have, the learners, range in age anywhere from 18 to their 50s. They're from around the world. We've had folks from Afghanistan. We've had citizens from the Downtown Eastside. We had a family from Croatia and lots of first nations students. It's all about people who at any time in their life find the courage to take that first step to improve themselves and to become employable. We provide them with that opportunity.

As a consequence, we've been at the centre of the needs of many of the folks that not every institution in the province addresses, certainly in the Lower Mainland. In delivering valuable programming to those folks and others, we're very proud of those people, our instructors, who deliver that kind of quality education.

I think it's pretty remarkable to note that last year, as an example, VCC received two of five national awards. For all colleges across the country, there were five offered. We received two of them, and they were for program excellence and educational leadership. We've been provided with national recognition for our community literacy, and we've received an excellence award for instruction in trades training.

I don't know if any of you have family or spouses that are in the business of education, but you know how
[ Page 2144 ]
challenging it is. To excel to that level, you know how much commitment is required and how important it is to be supported in a strong work environment, not only from your colleagues but from students and your administration.

These individuals in the college have excelled. I think it's something that we all need to appreciate and celebrate.

[1015]

There are lots of success stories at the college. Our outcomes are very good, if not outstanding. Some 92 percent of the graduates are in the labour force, and 94 percent of those are currently employed.

From the perspective of anybody interested in labour markets and anybody interested in introducing new people into tight employment markets, or just increasing the welfare of individuals and their ability to work, those are very good numbers, very good results.

All of our colleges, not just VCC alone, are a very important sector in our province. I don't know if we overlook their impact. Sometimes I feel, now that I've learned more about the college over the last two or three years, that I knew nothing about it. I think from my perspective certainly, I've been granted the opportunity to not overlook the positive impact, but I think many of us do.

The colleges, all 12 of them, are deeply connected to the communities — just like VCC. They have been doing for a long time what we do, and that's preparing an educated, skilled cohort of individuals for the workforce. There are 12 colleges. The Justice Institute is another.

In total we serve about a quarter of a million students in 50 communities throughout the province. Some 96 percent of the graduates from the college programs stay and work in British Columbia. That's close to a quarter of a million individuals who receive skill training — either basic or upgraded, or right through to a bachelor's degree — that stay in the province. So it's very important for our economy and the health of our communities.

From a financial perspective, for those who are interested in financial returns — and I think this committee is — we get a very high return: somewhere in the order of $3.80 for every dollar invested in the sector. That's a number that falls out of a methodology and approach to research that is used across North America, so it's a number that you can have some confidence in. It's not to be taken precisely, but it's generally accurate. You can see by the difference between the return and the investment that it's well worth the effort.

In short, I think the college, VCC, as well as the sector are clearly critical to the well-being of the province. But we have our challenges. We have high goals. We want to continue to deliver a very high quality of education. You know, educational quality is one of our real values — the delivery of that. But we're really challenged.

We have a situation where we're constantly trying to balance funding with costs. Our obligation is effectively to deliver the highest level of quality for the lowest level of resources. That's our job: deliver more with less, always work hard to do that and always respect the interests of the stakeholders — our teachers, our instructors, our students, our communities. So we don't shirk from that, but there are times when it's exceedingly difficult to find a way to balance funding with costs.

Slowly but surely over the years we've found it increasingly difficult to do that. The current funding model that we have — I'll talk about that in a moment — really doesn't fit the circumstances of our college and, I would argue, probably doesn't fit the majority of the circumstances of colleges in the sector.

The costs that we incur at VCC are driven, again, by this desire to deliver the best quality that we can. As a consequence, when you look at the nature of our programs, our programs are expensive. They're driven by the fact that it's hands on. We require smaller class sizes. We have specialized equipment and customized learning spaces.

I say that because we're not invested heavily in university transfer programs. University transfer programs can be quite profitable. You can teach in larger class sizes. You can optimize the return to the college on the basis of simply putting more seats in a lecture hall.

If you're providing folks with the opportunity to pull themselves up to a higher level or to teach them very specialized programming — like skills for sign language, dental technicians, nursing — you can appreciate that the learning environment is much more intense and much more technical. So our specialized programming, the foundation skills and the intensive career programs are costly — two and a half times more than the traditional university transfer program.

And we're proceeding to deliver those great programs in aging facilities. We are the oldest, as I mentioned. Our facilities reflect that history. Some of our buildings are actually heritage buildings in the city of Vancouver, so they're tough to maintain and expensive to operate.

[1020]

From a cost perspective, I think it's clear that we face challenges. We're not your average college. From a funding perspective, we're always trying to say to ourselves: "What is it that we can do to do more than simply appear in front of you or in front of the ministry with our hands out, asking for more?" I don't want you to get the impression that that's what is happening here.

We've worked very hard to drive costs down through finding shared-service opportunities with other colleges — joint purchase of natural gas, information systems and routine supplies. So we have a lot of collaboration there with colleges in the Lower Mainland with respect to trying to drive our costs down.

We're also challenged to collaborate with our competitors. It's a classic situation where there is a fixed envelope of funding, so your colleague is actually going
[ Page 2145 ]
after the same wallet that you are. As a consequence, the reality is that you're competing. You're competing for students, you're competing for staff, and you're competing for funding.

But it behooves us…. We have a responsibility to collaborate with our fellow colleges to see if we can't better integrate our programming. We're taking a leadership role in doing that.

We've recently launched a program which is a new bachelor of performing arts. It's a degree program, and it combines the respective strengths in the fine arts programs of Capilano, Douglas and Langara. VCC is taking a leadership position in trying to do that across other programs.

We think that's important. We think, actually, that the objectives of this government and of all governments are to try to acknowledge that while you need to compete in order to deliver more for less, you also need to collaborate. It's a tough balance.

Our primary revenue sources. We have block funding from the province and student tuition fees. We receive funding from the ITA, and then we also go out and we sell the services of our college and of our expert instructors and our administration in the form of consulting to third parties — colleges overseas, industry and specialized training for other provinces.

So we're trying to take advantage of the fact that we do have skills that are remarkable. We should be able to sell them to others, and we do the best job we can there.

We should also remember that tuition fees, a big component of our funding, are capped. Furthermore, when they were capped, VCC's tuition fees were the second-lowest in the province and the lowest across the Lower Mainland.

These increasing costs…. We know how difficult it has been over the last years. Sadly, it might be easier going forward, but I don't think that's going to give us a whole lot of relief. These increasing costs, combined with a funding model that really was developed some years ago….

Pete, I don't know how old it is. How old is the block funding model?

P. Legg: It would go back at least ten years.

D. Fairbairn: At least ten years. The colleges have been challenged. They've changed. The environment in which they operate has changed. But the funding model hasn't.

We've had to cut programs. We had a structural deficit last year in the order of $4½ million. We did our very best to optimize, again, with trying to drive on the value of quality education, our programming. People lost their jobs. We had to reduce the number of full-time-equivalents that we trained.

Even with that restructuring, we're going to be in a tough position next year. Again, if the majority of your programs are costly and on average higher than every other program across the system, even if you take that program out on the basis of some very difficult decision-making, you're still going to be in a position of generating a deficit because you don't have other programming in the college to offset the expensive programming. So no amount of cost-cutting is going to help.

Our buildings are old, as I mentioned. We need somewhere in the order of $25 million, currently, to upgrade these old buildings. We haven't been upgrading them. We've been using that money to fund operating costs.

We do welcome the initiative of the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development to reconsider the level and approach to the funding of community colleges. We're committed to participating in that discussion.

We do appreciate the fact that we have a brand new facility that will be open in January of this year — the official opening is sometime in February — for our health sciences. It's a spectacular facility. We have to fund it, and we have to make it work, but we're delighted that we have it. We very much appreciate your support on that.

[1025]

The message today is that we need new funding — a funding approach that better reflects the programs we deliver for the community at large. We ask you to consider that seriously, not just on our behalf but on behalf of the sector.

So thank you all for your leadership. Watching the debates, I understand how difficult it is to conduct yourself in an election. I know there's one coming up here. Thank you all for leading us and listening to our story today.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much. You pretty much used your 15 minutes, but I think you told your story very well.

The only request, on behalf of all of us, would be that when you talk about a new funding model, do you have some recommendations as to what that would look like? If you do, could you submit those to our committee?

D. Fairbairn: We would be delighted to. Thank you. And apologies for talking on.

R. Hawes (Chair): No apology necessary. It's your time. And we're happy to listen. Thanks very much.

Next, the Alma Mater Society of UBC Vancouver — Stefanie Ratjen.

S. Ratjen: Thanks a lot for having me today. Good morning. My name is Stefanie Ratjen, and I'm working as a vice-president, external affairs, for the Alma Mater Society at UBC this year. I'd like to first off thank the committee for hearing the priorities of B.C. students and their families today. Now, I didn't want to distract
[ Page 2146 ]
the council here by submitting a paper copy of what I'm about to present, but that submission will be forwarded within the next few days.

I'll start by telling you a little bit about the Alma Mater Society. We represent about 45,000 students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels here at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

For many years the organization has campaigned for accessible, high-quality post-secondary education in Canada. More specifically, our priorities have included, and still include, increased funding to improve the quality of B.C.'s universities and colleges and the elimination of any financial barriers people face in being able to participate in their post-secondary education.

As I'm sure you're all aware, B.C.'s students were very disappointed with last year's budget. It contained no new initiatives to make education more affordable, reduce student debt or improve the quality of education in B.C.

Students in the post-secondary community alike were further frustrated with the government's last-minute cutback to the badly needed and promised operating funding in the range of $55 million last spring.

We share a concern with many other student associations around the province in that the government has been building short-term wealth for some British Columbians at the expense of investing in the long-term prosperity of the province as a whole.

My remarks today will be specific to the questions posed to applicants making a budget submission to this committee. There are five recommendations that I will elaborate on. These are: (1) ending the education tax; (2) reinvesting in B.C.'s knowledge economy and the establishment of a B.C. grants program; (3) end government profit from student debt; and (4) end post-secondary funding instability.

I'll start with question 1. That question was: which tax do we want to see reduced next? Well, with the current debt, cost of living, tuition and ancillary fee levels that B.C. students are facing, this answer actually came quite easily. I'm recommending putting an end to the education tax. This is an educational tax in the form of student user fees. These are the largest barrier to participation in the post-secondary and skills training programs in B.C.

In many circumstances B.C. has the highest tuition fees or education tax in Canada. At UBC standard tuition averages just under $5,000 per year, with professional programs ranging between $10,000 and $20,000 annually. There are many ancillary costs such as lab fees and academic materials that are not incorporated into this figure.

International student fees at UBC are the highest in Canada. This is an unacceptable situation. With initiatives like the Olympics and increasing opportunities to expand relations with international trading partners, B.C. often prides itself as one of the best places on earth. Yet Canada, and B.C. in specific, is one of the few remaining jurisdictions in the world to maintain such high costs of education for students.

[1030]

Few would question the benefit of providing universal elementary and secondary level education to B.C.'s children. Furthermore, the benefits of universal health care, now classified as an essential service, have long outweighed the costs for Canadian citizens. According to Human Resources and Social Development Canada, 75 percent of new jobs will require some amount of post-secondary education. Post-secondary education and skills training under these conditions have become an essential service for B.C. people.

We know that tuition fees are a significant financial barrier in obtaining a post-secondary education. For example, after the B.C. Liberal government axed the tax for tuition for adult basic education last year, enrolment for the programs has skyrocketed.

Furthermore, the documented effects of sticker shock — or the aversion to obtaining an education based on the upfront cost of it — are also one of the reasons why B.C. educational institutions are having a hard time reaching enrolment targets. We need the government to recommend its role in creating positive conditions for individuals to be able to succeed both economically and socially. This happens through the maintenance of an educated and highly skilled population.

Tuition is a tax on students — and an unnecessary one, at that. The provincial government should cover tuition fees for B.C. students through direct transfers to the institutions.

Now, we've addressed this already, and VCC did a great job highlighting this. We realize that there is significant value in having an educated and highly skilled population for our society and for our economy. In terms of investment priorities for 2009, we are calling on the government to prioritize the creation of a new grants program for B.C. students to ensure that low- and middle-income families have the necessary resources upfront in order to pursue post-secondary education and training.

We're also recommending that the government prioritize restoring funding to the post-secondary sector so that B.C. students can enjoy a high quality post-secondary education and skills training. We will elaborate on this in our submission, but I will highlight it in the interests of time.

Our second recommendation, in summary, is for the government to make a real investment in the knowledge economy through the establishment of a B.C. student grants program, restoring the per-student institutional funding to pre-2001 levels and indexing the provincial grants to the institutions to the rate of inflation.

The third recommendation I am making is in regards to the third question on investing savings for lower
[ Page 2147 ]
interest payments from debt-reduction initiatives. Now, the idea presented in the question is that if one is able to reduce debt levels, there's a positive outcome in terms of opportunity to invest in other resources.

I'll be honest. I was almost excited to see this third question, as our third recommendation also relates to debt levels and the opportunity to invest in other resources. Today's students are graduating with more debt than any students ever before. The average student debt level upon graduation in B.C. is $27,000. Comparatively speaking, this is about $3,000 more than the national average of $24,000.

Current student debt levels have a significant impact on students and their subsequent opportunities to become active, civically engaged persons in their communities and the province. Such large loan principals upon graduation adversely affect students, both in terms of restricting job choices and inhibiting the ability to invest in the economy through activities like buying real estate, starting a family or even starting up an innovative business.

More specific to our recommendation, first, members should be aware that following graduation, student loan borrowers pay interest on their public student loans substantially above the government's cost of borrowing. But members may not be aware that nearly every province charges a lower interest rate on student loans than in B.C. As it stands, by keeping interest rates as high as they are, the government is penalizing those students and their families with the least amount of financial resources — those who are already hit hardest by the education tax.

Our recommendation to reduce the student loan interest rate to that of the government's rate of borrowing plus administrative costs should not be more than prime. Provinces such as Nova Scotia and Alberta have already taken similar actions, and it's time for B.C. to step it up.

Finally, in regard to other measures that we'd like to see in the 2009 provincial budget, we'd like to address the issue of funding stability. Last year an additional $800 million was allocated to the province specifically for post-secondary education funding. Of that $800 million, an estimated $110 million was transferred to B.C. for use in the 2008-2009 fiscal year. Instead, total spending in the Ministry of Advanced Education, far from increasing by $110 million, actually declined this year by almost $96 million. Tuition fees, or the individual education tax, increased again this year by over $30 million.

[1035]

I alluded earlier to the budget reallocations or cuts that happened in the spring of 2008. The reality for UBC is that UBC was already budgeting for a $17 million deficit at this time. The additional federal funding was intended for B.C.'s post-secondary education system, and it must be reflected in the Ministry of Advanced Education's budgets in the coming year.

We recommend a commitment from our government to students, faculty, staff, employers and everyone affected that there will be steady funding for our B.C. post-secondary education system.

In conclusion today, we have listed five recommendations that could immediately begin to improve B.C.'s post-secondary education system. We are seeking an end to the education tax, and a reduction in tuition fees is an investment supported by over 80 percent of British Columbians. In this recommendation, we also support an upfront grants program that will complement the new federal grant program.

Our second recommendation is for the government to make a real investment in the knowledge economy. We are seeking a reinvestment in the per-student funding returning to 2001 levels and indexed to a minimum inflationary increase annually. We are seeking the reduction of interest on student loans to the government rate of borrowing plus administrative costs, which should be no more than prime.

Finally, we are urging this government to recognize that the most important investment it can make for the province's future is in post-secondary education. We need to see adequate and stable funding for our post-secondary institutions in B.C.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you.

Anybody got any questions?

I think your presentation is pretty concise and pretty clear.

D. Thorne: I just have one question. Can you just elaborate a little bit on the…? You were talking a second ago about the $110 million. Can you elaborate on where that comes from and what's supposed to happen to it?

S. Ratjen: That was part of the $800 million social transfer coming from the federal government to the provinces. What we're seeing right now….

This is something that the government has been supportive of in the past — to advocate for a federal post-secondary education act. In this act that money would then be targeted towards post-secondary education. What we're seeing here is that although $110 million was targeted for post-secondary education in B.C., that money did not actually make it into the post-secondary education sector.

D. Thorne: Targeted by the federal government for post-secondary, but it didn't get used that way.

S. Ratjen: It wasn't, no. We saw a $96 million reduction in spending to the post-secondary education sector in British Columbia, compounded by the fact that there was a surprise budget reallocation last spring.
[ Page 2148 ]

D. Thorne: Did you add that up? That's a total of…. I mean, if you count the $110 million not getting at the budget cut and then the $96 million — whatever…. Do you have a total for all of those?

S. Ratjen: I can follow up with more accurate numbers in that submission.

D. Thorne: Could you send us that? That would be an interesting group of figures for us to have.

S. Ratjen: Yes. I think what we're seeing here is that the B.C. government prides itself on its budget surpluses. But it's also time for these budget surpluses to be put back into the arena where they will have the most long-term impact for B.C.

We've been seeing a reduction in the per-student full-time-equivalent funding for students over the last decade. We're also seeing a reduction in funding for post-secondary education throughout B.C. We need stable funding, and we need committed funding from our B.C. government.

D. Thorne: So you're going to send us those figures that back up what you just said?

S. Ratjen: Yes, definitely.

D. Thorne: Great. Thank you.

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

The next presenter will be Zeal Cortes of the Ugnayan Foundation.

S. Bowden: Hello, members. I'm Shawn Bowden, also from the Ugnayan Foundation. I'll be speaking, if that's okay.

Z. Cortes: I'm Zeal Cortes. I'm the chairperson of Ugnayan Foundation. Essentially, we have currently three advocacies that we want to contribute. It's a not-for-profit organization, and I think Shawn would be the one presenting our case now.

[1040]

S. Bowden: The first point I'd like to raise right now is that the Ugnayan Foundation is not asking for funding. What we would like to see is the expansion of a very successful program here in British Columbia. The program I'm referring to is actually the provincial nominee program.

Currently, the health crisis in British Columbia is getting worse as we go each day. Soon we will have a population going into the senior age group. Recently, the provincial government has allowed registered nurses and licensed practical nurses to be in the designated health professions category of the provincial nominee program. This will allow foreign-trained nurses to come into the province to help with the shortage.

What we're asking for is an expansion of that success. We are not looking for additional funding. We're looking to build on that success to approach the broader issue of the health crisis here in British Columbia. What we're asking for is to build on the success of this program to allow foreign-trained residential care aides to also be included in this program.

There are two categories which this can apply to. One is the designated health professional category, and the second category is actually the pilot program, which also took off this year. This would allow for the evaluation of residential health care aides to be evaluated to fit into the program itself and, at the same time, to participate in the program.

First, I'd like to approach this by looking at the situation we're in. The second step I'd like to show is, by allowing residential health care aides into the program, what solutions it'll present to the province.

Over the next eight to ten years we'll be expecting to see an increase in our senior population of 1.2 million people. Demographically speaking, this will be the largest change this country has seen in the last 150 years. What this means is that by 2056 one person in four will be a senior.

Currently, the approach has been to build on the educational aspect, the educational institutions of this province, to build and to create the required employment resources. If we look at this, how it applies, we can see if it will do the job. In my opinion, it will not do the job. Currently the educational institutes in British Columbia produce about 1,000 residential care aides a year. Currently in this province we produce about 8,000 registered nurses and LPNs. This will not meet today's needs, and this will not meet the needs of tomorrow.

George Abbott was right when he stated that this is the coming of the silver tsunami. This is what is happening. The population is aging, and the resources we are using now will not meet that need. Also, you have to look at the retirement scale. Over the next ten years, 50,000 to 60,000 registered nurses will be leaving the profession. Again, this is highlighting the overall effect it has on the structure. When nurses leave, residential care aides leave also.

What we're proposing here is to allow foreign-trained residential care aides to come into the province to help alleviate the stress this will put on our system. Has this been done in other industries? Yes, it has.

If you look at the model of the United States, in some of the states the United States has actually taken the provincial nominee program and expanded it. The provincial nominee program here will meet about 8 percent of our needs. The program they put in, in the United States — similar to what the PNP program is here but expanded
[ Page 2149 ]
to include residential care aides — meets about 16.8 percent of their needs. It's probably the most successful program in the world right now.

Does it meet all of their needs? No, it doesn't. Will it address their needs better than our current system will? I think it will.

You also have to look at the level of training that residential care aides get outside our country. Most of the residential care aides in our province right now are actually trained nurses. They are qualified nurses. What they do is come into British Columbia under that program to get additional language skills and assimilation skills before they try for the nursing exams.

[1045]

Now we have to see if the solution — to bring in foreign-trained residential care aide nurses — will actually work. We think it will. If you look at the efforts of the government of British Columbia, working with the health unions of this province…. They both say the same thing. The system on its own right now will not meet the needs. There has to be a broad-based solution, and this will have to include allowing foreign-trained residential care aides into this province.

If you look at the educational perspective, educational institutes are saying the same things. They can produce only so much. The need is a lot more than what it is. Everybody working together will provide a solution.

There's no conflict on this one. The unions actually agree with this. The government's policies promote this. Educational institutions recognize this. To bring in foreign-trained residential care aides is part of the solution.

Currently, British Columbia is spending $1.68 million to create 213 residential care aide seats in the institutions. Another way to look at this is the economics behind this. By allowing people to come in under the provincial nominee program, you will not need to be spending that money. You will be providing a solution now. You will not need to put up the infrastructure here. In my opinion, if you do put up the infrastructure here, it will not meet the needs that we are looking for.

In closing, what we're asking for is not funding. We're asking to expand on a very successful program that has started in British Columbia. We're not looking to provide an alternative here.

I've studied the PNP program quite well, and compared to other provinces, B.C. is leading. They're looking for a long-term solution. If you compare it to what's happening in the United States now, it can do a bit more.

Now, I know that this year it was started for registered nurses and LPNs, but just in the first few months of that success…. You should look at that and see, at this point, how much more it can succeed.

Z. Cortes: I would like to add more on the topic of contributing to the broad-based solution. It's kind of like a catch-22 here, because we have a nursing shortage now. Really, even the veterans' organizations are saying that some of the tasks the nurses are doing should be done by the RCAs so that they can perform their jobs better.

There were several surveys done with regards to the job satisfaction of nurses. Currently they're overwhelmed. That's why most are leaving their field of profession, because the work opportunities in B.C. are just open and tremendous.

We can solve all of this, I think, by just expanding the program. Later on I think another group will be presenting. That is the Multicultural Helping House. Now they are experiencing the detriments of the caregivers program.

When B.C.'s Children's Hospital closed for 50 surgeries, ironically there were about 70 Filipino nurses in the same hospital who were all trained and qualified nurses back home but were working as food servers and janitors. Because it's the federal caregiver program that is open, they ought to go through that program.

Again, there are so many social dilemmas and social problems when these things happen, when you try to displace a professional. That's why we're saying, just looking at it closely, that we can solve a much broader issue. I think that is really the place to start.

I believe that the government has recognized the need for RCAs. That's why there are education funds being set up for this and marketing campaigns just to ask people to go into this program.

Realistically speaking, it only offers about $30,000 a year. That's why maybe it's not too attractive for most Canadians here, but it is attractive for foreign-trained nationals.

[1050]

What we're suggesting is doing it there. The Skills Connect program — do it there in their home country so that when they get here, they get assimilated and really contribute to the society, really contribute to the province. It will just solve a lot of other issues that the government is currently tackling.

R. Lee: Thank you for the presentation. I know that a few months ago the government of B.C. signed an agreement with the Philippines on labour mobility. It's a MOU. Do you think this is the right direction? What do you think of, say, the improvement in terms of labour mobility between the two countries?

Z. Cortes: Honestly speaking, when you go through the Philippines, through the labour route, because the Philippines have been known to be really leading exporters of manpower — right…? When you go through the labour route — there are organized institutions already in the system — there are a lot of obstacles that you will be facing because of getting the temporary licence.
[ Page 2150 ]

Under the laws of the Philippine government, you can't really charge the workers for placement fees. Here in Canada — because they're far away, and they haven't tested the workers — the companies are also hesitant to be paying for about…. Really, to make the process work, the employer would be looking at spending $3,000 to $5,000 per employee. Realistically, most private companies are not willing to do that.

That's why I think the best approach is through the immigration process. It's like weeding out, which really will help the country. Also, there should be some degree of financial stability and educational background for people coming into Canada. That's why the immigration approach, I think, is a better solution than the temporary labour workers.

S. Bowden: In theory, it's a very good policy. It really is. In practicality, if you look on the side of the employer — because it is employer-driven — there are a lot of roadblocks to it. There is a lot of hesitation to use it. To be honest, as in my own position, it is a gamble, and it is a gamble that causes hesitation to the process.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation. A couple of things about the PNP program. The provincial nominee program is designed so that if you have a job offer and you have shown a skill, then you come in. You can't sort of bring people in and then look for the job under the PNP program.

The other one is the federal program. You have to go to the federal government rather than here.

My question. When you say that the RCAs here…. You're not suggesting that we close down the program here? You're just sort of saying that because we cannot graduate enough to fulfil the extra, we need to go to the Philippines because there's a lot of training in that. Many times when I talk to people, they say that all around the world they have allowed RCAs or nurses to go in and fulfil those positions. That's what you're trying to say?

Z. Cortes: Yes.

S. Bowden: Yes, it is. You also have to look at the training programs overseas. They are quite comprehensive. A lot of them are not short four-to-six month programs. They're up to a year-plus, and that includes a practicum added onto it, depending on the country of origin.

Z. Cortes: In fact, it's a model that was done by most…. The U.K. has done it. The U.S. is currently. No, actually, they are in retrogression now, but yeah, they have done it. In fact, they did three steps more. In fact, they're doing their licensure exam outside of the United States, and we're not even proposing that. We believe in the sanctity of the regulating bodies here. We're just saying, "Open up a classification for them" — that it's easier and it's more attractive for them to come here to Canada. Just give them a doorway.

S. Bowden: You have to look at the overall structure of the health care system. If you look at the 5,000 bed targets that were supposed to come up in 2008, to meet that 5,000, you're talking 650 to 700 RCAs that will be required to fill just that niche alone. And that's in addition to what we have already.

You can bring in nurses. Yes, you can. You can bring in doctors. Yes, you can. But the whole structure relies on more than that.

J. Yap: You mentioned that RCAs fulfil a lot of duties which take the pressure off RNs and LPNs. In your proposal here, have you talked to the nurses and LPNs? And what is their level of interest or support in your proposal here?

[1055]

S. Bowden: The level of support is actually quite high there. To be honest, you're looking at their workload. They're in high stress already. They're in a lot of frustration already. Why? Not because of their designated workload. It's through the extra workload that's been placed on them because of the current shortage.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much. We hear what you're saying.

Next we have the Multicultural Helping House Society and Maria Javier. I gather we're going to hear some of the same.

M. Javier: Almost.

R. Hawes (Chair): Welcome, Maria. The floor is yours.

M. Javier: Yes, good morning. Thank you for allowing us to present our case to you.

In your hands today, what she's distributing, is a dream that was 12 years in the making, ever since that first Filipino caregiver jumped over the Cambie Bridge.

Let me tell you a story about the caregiver. A caregiver comes to Canada to be able to provide a better future for her children. She's willing to sacrifice the separation from her husband and children, and to take on a job that requires less skills for two years.

While she's a caregiver, she's able to send her money back home to allow for basic needs and to allow her children to enrol in a private school — very important for Filipinos. The dollar sent home is multiplied by 45, which means that the spouse and the children lead very comfortable lives.

During the two years, the caregiver is subjected to constant overtime without pay. She becomes so tired that she has no opportunity to use her mind. This contributes
[ Page 2151 ]
largely to a deskilling, which goes on for years if not corrected. The two years becomes three, sometimes even five, and the long separation takes a toll on their relationships. Spouses become distant, children grow up with different values, and the caregiver adapts to the Canadian culture, which all contributes to the chaos of their lives.

At last the long wait is over, and the spouse and the children land in Canada. But unlike the regular immigrant, the caregiver has more of an adjustment to Canadian life issues. These new immigrant families go through bigger issues, such as family breakdown due to geographical distance between partners, husbands and wives losing interest in each other, falling for someone else during the separation.

There is a lack of maternal and filial bonding between mothers and their children, which leads to familial disintegration. How? The mothers try hard to reach out to children and make up for lost time, with mothers feeling confused as to how to relate to their children, and children trying to get their parents' attention through behaviours that may be inimical to social order, such as engaging in violence and poor scholastic performance.

Now the dollar is no longer 45 pesos. It's a dollar, which means that the family left a comfortable life back home to come to Canada to be poor once again. Why? Because now the caregiver is deskilled and can only take on a minimum-wage job.

Remember the private school that she had to break her back to pay for? Well, they don't mean anything, because Canada does not really care that you come from a private school from some Third World country.

So they are actually back to zero — in fact, less than zero, because now they have family disintegration problems. No wonder caregivers jump over the bridge or kids get into gang fights.

You would ask: "And how is this Canada's problem when the government didn't force them to come here?" That may be true, but these caregivers left their own children to take care of our children and our parents while we are working and playing. We don't even pay them the right amount. Sure, we pay the minimum wage per hour, but they work longer hours than we pay them for.

Just because they are desperate to finish the two-year contract, it does not mean that we can abuse them in those two years. Think about it this way. These caregivers are citizens of a Third World country subsidizing the citizens of a G7 country. What an embarrassing thought.

I'll give you another reason why we should help them. These caregivers have full control over our children and our parents for eight hours. That's more time than you have with them. Do you really want them to be lonely and depressed and suicidal? Or would you like them to be happy and in the right frame of mind while they're looking after our most important assets?

[1100]

Lastly, after two years, unless they commit a crime, they will become permanent residents, and their families will land as immigrants. Guess who has to look after the disintegrated family and assist the deskilled immigrant find a job? Do you think it's the feds or perhaps the city? Or more realistically, will it be you, the province?

If you have to pick up the pieces anyway, you might as well step back two years and start helping them when they get here. How will we help these caregivers? What do they need?

First, they need a support system through settlement services specific to their needs. What does that mean? A drop-in centre with a life counsellor, not a telephone line with a voice message to leave their name and number. Caregivers who fear for their lives need a live person to talk to. They would need a 24-hour hotline manned, again, with a life counsellor, because their problems occur during non-office hours.

Today they have our president, Tom Avendano, but the man is 80 years old. They will need workshops and training sessions that will empower them through better knowledge on issues relating to them — legal rights and responsibilities, building positive relationships, parents, self-care, and so on. They would also need legal advice and assistance in filing charges against abusive employers, filing for divorce, etc.

We could provide two days of free emergency housing for caregivers who are released by their employers and, of course, one-on-one counselling and support for caregivers and their sponsored families as they go through a family adjustment and reunification process brought about by the long separation.

What else? Policy changes. This one's a bit hard to believe. Today caregivers are not allowed to study while they are in their two-year contracts. Why not? What is Canada afraid of? These caregivers are going to be our immigrants. Why don't you want them to study? We need this policy changed.

While we are at it, we could give them a subsidy too. Bear in mind that they earn minimum wage. They have to send money back home for basic needs including education. Then they have to save money for the family's landing fees and plane fare. That's pretty tough, even for you and me. Imagine a minimum-wage earner. If you can give subsidies through Skills Connect to professionals in construction, energy, transportation, health, etc., why can't we extend it to the caregivers for whatever industry they may be in?

Work permits. Today, in the event that a caregiver is released by their employer, it will take three months to change their work permit. It takes a foreign temporary construction worker exactly one day. I know that for a fact, because I help them do it. Why? What's the difference between them? This issue of the work permit is the number one reason a caregiver allows an employer to abuse them. They would rather sacrifice than lose three months of the two years.
[ Page 2152 ]

Ladies and gentlemen, Canada is not some godforsaken Third World country. These horror stories that we hear about the caregivers sound like they come out of a movie script. But no, it's happening right here in our back yard, right under our noses. We have got to do something. These caregivers who leave their families behind to take care of our families deserve better treatment from us.

I grew up with a nanny, and we treated her like family. When my mother died, our nanny was included in her last will in thanksgiving to her for taking care of us.

Now, I'm not asking you to go as far as that. Coming to Canada as a caregiver was their choice, but in return for taking care of our children, let's at least help them get back on their feet. Think about it.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you for that very eloquent presentation.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Maria. I think that presentation gave a lot of insight that maybe many don't ordinarily hear.

I was interested in your suggestion about support systems that would expand settlement services and make them more effective. I'm familiar with the Multicultural Helping House Society. Are those services that Multicultural Helping House Society does not deliver now and could deliver in the future? Or do other agencies, as well, deliver those services that you suggest, which all seem to make pretty good sense?

[1105]

M. Javier: We deliver it in a way through the settlement services of the BCSAP, but not as much, because we can't work after office hours, and we don't have a drop-in centre. But yes, we have a caregiver program right now that, unfortunately, is not funded by anyone. We're scrimping left and right to try and get funding for it from corporations.

But if we would like to embark on a really effective support system, then it's got to have some government funding, because private corporations can only give — what? — $10,000, $20,000 a year? That's not even enough to pay for one worker.

D. Hayer: Thank you, Maria. I appreciate you coming in. I've been involved with Multicultural Helping House for a long time, when you had a small office, and then you built your own building. Tom does an excellent job with his board of directors there.

My question is: do you talk to other non-profit service providers who also look after the immigrants that are coming in and are supposed to be helping them with different issues?

The second part is: do you know a better system in some other provinces, other states, that's working better than here, so that you can maybe learn from that? Any suggestions on that?

M. Javier: For the other service providers, they actually have even less, because they don't have the private funders. Yes, there is the West Coast Domestic, but again, they only run during office hours. According to the caregivers, whenever they call, it's a voice message. So to them it's useless.

With regards to your question on other provinces, I've had initial talks with Service Canada, and they're very interested also in trying to get up a project that would help the caregivers. Their intention actually is for Vancouver to be a pilot project and for Multicultural Helping House, using the Filipino community, to try and survey all the other communities nationwide. If the project succeeds in Vancouver, then we can replicate it in all the provinces.

R. Lee: You mentioned that we are giving subsidies to professionals in construction, energy, transportation, health. The question is: why not to health givers, to whatever industry they may be in? I don't quite understand what you mean.

M. Javier: Oh, okay. Multicultural Helping House has the Skills Connect program, and we help the construction industry. We help the professionals upgrade their skills, pay for licensing. We hold their hand up to the end, sometimes even up to the apprenticeship part. But it's only for the construction industry or for the health industry or for energy or transportation.

What if you're a caregiver, and you're an accountant? Then you don't get anything. Or you're a teacher, which is more often than not what the caregiver is — a teacher — which is why we love them, because they teach our children. But then when they get here…. Even as an immigrant they wouldn't qualify as a teacher. Imagine the two, three, four, five years that they are not doing anything. It will take them so much time and maybe new education in order to get back their certificates.

R. Lee: Okay. This means the Skills Connect program — expanding that.

M. Javier: Expanding the Skills Connect program, yes.

R. Hawes (Chair): I just have two very quick questions. The first one has to do with work permits and the three-month issue versus one day. Is that federal or provincial?

M. Javier: It's federal, but the reason the construction industry takes only one day is because the province is screaming.
[ Page 2153 ]

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. So you're suggesting that…

M. Javier: We're hoping that….

R. Hawes (Chair): …we begin screaming.

M. Javier: Screaming too, yes.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay. Then the second part of my question is with respect to…. You say that during the two years they aren't allowed to study. I don't quite understand that, when you say that they're not allowed to study.

M. Javier: Well, that's what they've been told.

D. Hayer: The federal government.

R. Hawes (Chair): The federal government says they can't take courses?

M. Javier: They can't study, not during the two years that they are caregivers. In fact, during the two years they can't do anything. They cannot study. They cannot have a second job.

R. Hawes (Chair): Now, does that apply to others, like the construction industry, to everyone that comes in on that program?

M. Javier: No. Actually, the caregivers have their own program, which is the live-in caregiver program. It's totally different from the temporary foreign workers program.

R. Hawes (Chair): Okay, I guess we need to maybe scream a little bit about that, too, then.

D. Hayer: I'm just going to add that it's the federal government. It's the type of visa you get. If you're on a student visa, you can study. If you come on a temporary worker or caregiver permit, then you are only allowed to work….

M. Javier: You are only allowed to work for that particular….

[1110]

D. Hayer: So the federal government has to make changes. But it is a good suggestion. We'll follow up with the federal government to look at it.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thank you very much. Lots of new information there.

Next presenter is Dr. Mychael Gleeson — not a total stranger to this committee.

M. Gleeson: No. I'm missing Harry already. Where's my friend Harry?

R. Hawes (Chair): Harry is in Korea.

M. Gleeson: Hell of a commute — right?

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dr. Mychael Gleeson at Mychael Gleeson and Co., and I'm here to annoy you about our need for legal aid.

When my computer geek met me the other day, he said, "Which cases are you going to talk about?" because I usually end up embarrassing him. I said that what I thought I'd do is take a look at the last year and that we'd look at the stack of stuff that we have not been paid for because there's no money, because there's no legal aid, and we would take the fattest five files. So I have those. Of course, none of the names match, so I need my notes because I can't give you names.

Annie Adams is an interesting lady. She's 91 years old. She's resided in the same building for 20 years. She's a World War II vet. She was a plane plotter. She explained that to me in detail over two hours at Tim Hortons one day. I've known her for years.

She received a notice of eviction. I ran into her on the Sunday that I usually have coffee with her, and she shows me a notice to terminate residency. So I said: "Okay, Annie, what have you done?" She's 91 — okay? She says: "I was on my way to bridge, and I put the sink on to wash up a couple of dishes. I must have left it on when the girls came to take me for bridge, and I flooded the place."

I said: "Okay, but I took you to BCAA to buy your apartment insurance. Why would you be evicted? You're insured." She said: "Well, you're going to get really mad now." I go: "Okay." She said: "I wrote the manager a cheque for $6,000." "What?" "Well, he was there. It was 11:30. I came home from bridge. He said: 'You've done $6,000 damage, and I want a cheque.'"

Now, Annie is 4 foot 11, although she lies and says she's five feet, and she's 85 pounds. She wrote out the cheque. This was a holiday weekend. On the Tuesday morning, I'm leaning on the door at the Royal Bank to put a stop payment on the cheque.

The manager did present the cheque at the bank on the Tuesday at about 10:15. The lady at the bank said: "Just hang on a minute. Let me just check in the back." There's no back in a bank — okay? Everything has to be visible. She nips into the back of the bank. I've already, of course, got there. She photocopies the cheque but by law has to return the cheque to the gentleman who presented it. She said: "I'm very sorry, but there's a stop payment on this cheque." The cheque is safe. No $6,000 was taken out of Annie's account.

We nipped into the residential tenancy branch and filed our objection, saying: "She has insurance. This was truly an accident. She's been there for 20 years. She
[ Page 2154 ]
didn't set the place on fire. We didn't see any damage." Residential tenancy branch said, "Great," that they would start the suit. Remember, she's 91. She can't do any of this herself.

Long story short — because it's not the most interesting of all of the stories — she went to get a lawyer after all of this settled down. Yes, we won in rentalsman court. No, they won't give us the 50 bucks that we won, which is simply the cost. She went to get a lawyer.

She was told by every lawyer that she dealt with that there was no mechanism for her to get that money back. She didn't know the cheque hadn't been cashed — okay? She just wanted her physical cheque back, because she felt that she was in jeopardy. What if they lose the stop payment and it goes through? Having her cheque back is a reasonable request.

She went to the cops. The police in New Westminster are wonderful folks, but they said: "Hey, it's a civil matter."

I think it's extortion. My lawyer thinks it's extortion. The cops think it's a civil matter.

Long story short — there is no protection for Annie Adams. There's no legal aid. There's no one to help her.

[1115]

Number 2, Bob Burton. Bob Burton is crotchety. He's 78 years old. I've taken care of him since 1988. He pays me $20 a month, which usually just takes care of his parking fines and my out-of-pocket expenses. He makes $22,000 a year. He makes models for the aeronautical museum in Abbotsford, and he does technical drawings. He's retired, Canadian Forces.

Unfortunately, he lives in a crack building. Now, he lives in the crack building because he makes $22,000 a year and because he smokes huge numbers of cigarettes and because many of his friends who are female work during the evenings, so they are frequent visitors of his. So we know, kind of, where he is in New Westminster.

The people who live in the building frequently bang on his door, and they want money from him. Being crotchety, he screams obscenities at them; they scream back. Historically, for the eight years that he's been there and they've all been screaming at each other, it's been fine.

A new guy came on the block. He goes down to Bob Burton's place with a tire iron. Bob comes to the door with a water pistol that has been covered in aluminum tape. Yes, I know. When I heard about it, I freaked out. I said: "This is a model replica. This is going to end badly."

Be that as it may, the police arrived. By this time, Bob Burton has taken the model replica apart into a thousand pieces and put it with all his model stuff. They arrest him for uttering threats and possession of a firearm.

He phones me at 11 o'clock at night to tell me that this is done. I decide that he should cool his heels in custody for a couple of hours. Again, he's 78. The reason he's cranky is because he has cancer.

This incident happened in May. It's going to court in November. When I saw him in the cells to make sure he was okay the night that it happened, he was 160 pounds. He's now 115 pounds. He can't get a lawyer because even if he's convicted, he won't do significant time. There's a problem here. There's no legal aid for this guy. He can't afford a lawyer.

My theory is that Bob will make it to the hearing. Duty counsel will tell him to get a lawyer. Judge will say, "You have X period of time," and I doubt that he'll still be alive at Christmas. He's 78, but not a 78 that has worn well — kind of a 78 who rusts like a Subaru.

Colin is Colin and Debbie Cook — a lovely man. Colin is 50. He's a very Christian man, a very good man, married 17 years. Colin is bipolar — seriously bipolar. His dear wife Debbie is schizophrenic. They have two kids. The kids actually run the family, for which I'm very thankful. Colin talks to plants, and unfortunately he gets answers. His schizophrenic wife has many friends that none of us have ever seen and speaks to and receives her instructions from Jesus, which is nice, but hard to put in a report to the courts.

She decided recently, after several hospitalizations and after several long separations from Colin, that they should get back together. They got back together. She decided at some point in time, while the children were there, that Colin had assaulted her, and she phoned the police.

The children said: "Daddy didn't touch her. He never does. She just screams. Don't get mad at my mom. She's not well." These kids are 16 and 17 and have a better idea of schizophrenia and bipolar problems than 90 percent of the psychiatrists who work in New Westminster. But then if you want a real education, go to Tim Hortons.

Because mom started to decompensate and because it was dangerous, the cops picked up Colin, which was the right thing to do. They then phoned me and said: "Is he one of yours?" I go: "I'll be right down."

[1120]

Colin has never had any trouble with the police before. While he was in custody, he sat there. And they decided that because he wasn't a threat, they would bring him out to the front desk, and he decided to dust for them. So he dusted. We have a really clean admissions unit in the cells.

Colin can't get a lawyer although he's been charged with assault and domestic violence, which I take incredibly seriously. And I told him I took it incredibly seriously. I said: "What is the matter with you? Why didn't you walk out of the room?" He said: "Well, I wanted to talk to her about this." The dear woman is a schizophrenic; you cannot talk to a schizophrenic when a schizophrenic is in a rage, but Colin was being his bipolar…. It was somewhere from here to here — from point A to point B.

I'm sorry. I know that makes you crazy. I once in court said to a judge, "It was this big," and the court reporter went crazy. It was great.
[ Page 2155 ]

When it escalates, a bipolar is schizophrenic. You suddenly have many people in the room which none of us would meet or know or recognize. This is a huge burden on the two children of this family — ages 16 and 17. They gave statements to Crown saying: "My father did not touch my mother." But Colin will not be represented by counsel.

In the old days of legal aid, I would call some lawyer who owed me a favour and say: "Have I got a great one for you." They would never forgive me, but I can live with that. Colin's lawyer in the old days would talk to Crown and make this go away, and would make it go away in terms of public safety.

Colin would go off to his psychiatrist and his psychologist. Dear wife Debbie would go off to her psychiatrist and her psychologist. There would be a no-contact order by consent set up by Colin's lawyer and Crown, and all would calm down, and the 16-year-old and the 17-year-old wouldn't be in the position of having to choose sides. There is no legal counsel for Colin.

Edward Frankin is a gentleman of 52 years of age. He has two adopted daughters — great kids. His wife has been in and out of psychiatric care and is currently hospitalized. She decided to bring on a suit for sole custody of the two children. This is a woman who is in the psych ward. She was able to get a lawyer because patients with psychiatric problems get legal aid lawyers or pro bono counsel. I'm not sure why that works. I work on it frequently, but then I just hide under my bed with my dog and let the problem go away because I can't figure it out.

So the dear wife in psychiatric hospital brings on an application for the children. The husband, unable to do anything, calls me. I lean on a lawyer in Surrey who owes me a favour, who chooses to do it. When I spoke to him, he tells me that his office will end up supporting this entire file. It will cost them money, both emotionally and financially, and he wants me to remember that his job is the pit bull; I'm the one to be cuddly, fuzzy, supportive and kind. His job is to do the law.

Without intervention at my level, without arm-twisting of this wonderful guy in Surrey, the lawyer, this guy would probably lose his kids to a wife who is in mental hospital. This guy can't get legal aid. He will not be able to pay the taxes on the file, nor will he be able to pay any of the filing fees. It will all fall on my friend in Surrey, who will do it because he believes that kids belong with their parents, and preferably the parent who is not in the psychiatric ward.

[1125]

We don't have legal aid. We need legal aid. The people who are paying for the lack of legal aid are my friend Edward with his two kids; the case of a two-year-old that we didn't get to; poor old bipolar Colin, who will always be bipolar, and his dear wife the schizophrenic; Bob Burton — all he wants to do is have many long chats, many coffees and whatever else with his evening entrepreneurial friends; and Annie Adams, 91 years old — could have lost 6,000 bucks. We don't have legal aid. We can't protect these people. This is the fringe element of society.

My father died recently, and I went to the funeral because I worshipped my father. When I looked out in the audience, which was 90 percent Simon Fraser, I realized that none of these people have any idea what I talk about, because none of them are mentally ill; none of them are unemployed; none of them are unattached; none of them would know what to do with a hooker, where to find one, or what to say to one; none of them have ever been involved in family law; none of them have ever picked up their kid at a police station. My father hadn't ever picked me up at a police station, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still alive.

For them it is foreign. For them the issue of legal aid doesn't exist, but for these people who are just as valuable in society and people who have phenomenal stories of grace and courage, there's no support. I can't do it alone. And I can't do it…. I've come here for five years, yelling about the fact that, you know, I have to arm-twist lawyer friends. And I'll continue to do that, and I'll continue to come here.

We need to put legal aid back in place, because if we don't, these people will be the victims. We talked last time about my two-year-old friend, who's now three. It took his mother 11½ months to get him back when his father took charges that were later proven to be fallacious into court. We stole one calendar year of a two-year-old's life. He's home now with his mother. The progress is just short of brilliant. It took us one year to get that child home.

The judge on the bench was neither a flake nor stupid nor illogical. The judge didn't have a custody access report, because by last count, when I talked to my lawyer friends, a custody report costs $4,500, $8,500, $9,000, twelve grand. And oh, by the way, interviews that go over time are extra at $225 an hour.

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, we don't charge extra for people who go over the 15 minutes, but you are four minutes over…

M. Gleeson: I'm so sorry, sir. I'm so sorry.

R. Hawes (Chair): …and we did hear exactly what you have to say.

M. Gleeson: Any questions, ladies and gentlemen?

R. Hawes (Chair): I'm afraid we don't have time for them, but you've done very well.

Okay. We have the Georgia Strait Alliance — Christianne Wilhelmson.
[ Page 2156 ]

C. Wilhelmson: Hi there. It's interesting. I've just listened to the last two speakers, and I think it really highlights some of the challenges of the job I do. Just as the previous speakers very eloquently represented those who can't speak for themselves — and I could tell from everybody in the room, very emotional stories that truly make us listen to the challenges of these important issues — I, too, speak for those who can't speak for themselves.

It isn't always easy to get the heartstrings of the world to be plucked over water, air, algae, orcas…. But I'm going to try to do that today to highlight some of the issues that we're concerned about.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Georgia Strait Alliance, we are a marine conservation organization that works to protect the Strait of Georgia, its adjoining waters and communities. We've been advocating for over 18 years to improve the health of this region, and I think our work has been successful, though we have certainly many challenges ahead.

[1130]

I'm actually just going to take us back in time for a moment. I spoke before this committee a year ago. It was an interesting time to be part of the environmental movement, because only six months prior to that came the throne speech that we weren't expecting, where we heard really progressive ideas and an acknowledgment from the government that climate change is something that we cannot ignore, that we must make radical changes in the way we live in our society if we're actually going to be here 25, 50, 100 years from now.

For us as a community, it was a huge opportunity to present our ideas and our thoughts about ways that we could do this together. It was a really nice time — to actually be working with the government rather than at loggerheads, which unfortunately, we do tend to do from time to time.

The impacts of that throne speech were also seen throughout communities. Municipalities, regional districts, industry and individuals were recognizing that things were changing and that we needed to do something.

With the budget last year we saw the first good steps. Again, you can say that you're going to do something about climate change, but you actually have to put things into action. Last year's budget was certainly that good first step.

A year later we sit here now, and the environment, so to speak, has changed. Though I think that everyone acknowledges…. Individuals, governments recognize that climate change is important and that environmental protection is important. It's on everybody's mind.

Economic pressures. We watch what's happening in the United States, and we do what we can here in Canada, in British Columbia, to ensure that we don't suffer the same fate. Our concern is that because of these economic pressures, environmental issues will be seen as a luxury — something we can't afford to necessarily do anything about.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I would like to put that forward. If government and the Legislature are going to be leaders, this is actually the time when you need to show an acknowledgment that environmental protection, dealing with climate change, is an economic issue. Any economic changes we make cannot be sacrificing climate change actions or further environmental protection.

That is my main issue, but I would like to go into a few other things that are part of the submission. I will not read the whole submission to you but highlight certain points. We do have specific things that we would like to see in the upcoming budget that will build on what we saw in the 2008 budget.

In general terms, we'd like to see, basically, a price put on carbon emissions. We saw that, with putting forward the carbon tax. This needs to be put forward in a broader way and built on.

In my lifetime I've never seen such change in people's behaviour as from a rise by 50 cents in the gas prices in the last couple of years. Suddenly people were buying hybrid cars, selling their cars, wanting better transit. They were making fundamental changes to their lives. This, to me, on a small scale shows what can happen if we start putting a price on carbon and putting more effort into finding new ways to support our energy needs.

That is why we also would like to see an independently managed fossil fuel innovation and legacy fund put forward to benefit communities and low-income families.

As we know, though there is a price on carbon and many of us can pay the price, many in our community cannot. As we make a great deal of money in the governmental budget from the sale of fossil fuels in the north and selling of tenures and so on, we actually have an opportunity to put a portion of that money to help us transition to non–fossil fuel energy sources and to support communities and low-income families that need that support.

We would also like to see immediate improvements to local transit services. Especially here in Metro Vancouver, we're seeing that so many people would like to switch to transit, but when it takes you two hours to get anywhere that could take you 20 minutes in your car, it's a really hard argument to say: "Well, actually, the two hours is better spent, for the environment." It's tough. It's a reality check. So we need to put more money into transit.

Our organization is a marine conservation organization. We work to protect the environment, so the next three recommendations that I'd like to make are actually very similar to recommendations that I made last year. Unfortunately, we didn't see these in the budget, so I'm here to make them again.

Though I've spoken about climate change so far, the reality is that if we don't continue to protect our environment, our environment won't be there to help buffer the impacts of climate change. You cannot put
[ Page 2157 ]
all your money into climate change and continue to put pollution into our environment, continue to see shoreline degradation. We have to really make a change that way.

[1135]

Now, the first recommendation actually goes back to energy, but it's also pollution control. Last year I talked about the way that we were looking for new sources of biofuels. But we look at corn, wheat, and we see the social impacts of it. We're also looking at using agricultural waste and forest waste. Again, those have their benefits, but what we see now and what we see in communities around the world is that a lot of people are starting to use sewage and organic solid waste as a source of biofuels.

Integrated resource management is this concept of taking organic waste and sewage and managing it together so you stop pollution — but then also allowing you to have a new source of biofuel.

Included in your submission is the executive summary of a report that came out from the Ministry of Community Services, called Resources from Waste: Integrated Resource Management, Phase I Study Report. It's a 200-page report, so I didn't give you that, and I'm sure you're thankful. This just shows that there is…. This is a good business case for this approach to managing our waste, stopping pollution and helping us meet our climate change goals.

If we can offset our use of fossil fuels with biofuels, heat that comes from sewage, we can actually go a long way to meeting our climate change goals. In fact, this report says that if you can implement it fully, you can get to a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

We would like to see the provincial government establish resource recovery as the preferred means of municipal sewage treatment across B.C. and provide financial assistance and legislative tools to make that happen. I'll note that at the UBCM convention in September the UBCM approved this very resolution, and I took the words from that resolution.

Now, waste in our water doesn't just come from land-based cities dumping their sewage, raw or undertreated, into the water. In our region 54 million litres of sewage are released untreated into the Georgia Basin by boaters. Last year, however, the Canadian government enacted new legislation that will stop boaters from doing that. They have to have holding tanks. They need to dump their sewage now into pump-out stations.

The problem is that there aren't enough pump-out stations, and there aren't any plans to put them into place. There's a five-year phase-in period. When the five years are done, what are boaters supposed to do? They're going to be forced to disobey the law, because there are no pump-out stations, or not enough, in the region.

We have put forward, and I have a one-page summary of, the Ocean Solutions eco-dock proposal. We're asking for some funding for this proposal, and this is not simply a grant that we will come back every year to ask you money for. It's an investment in a business that, within five years, will be self-sustaining. It's basically a concept of eco-docks — floating pump-out stations — throughout the region that boaters will be able to use, and it will be financially self-sustaining within five years.

We are asking for a contribution of $3 million over five years, beginning with $1 million in this year's budget and $500,000 in each subsequent year. This money would be matched by other sources, as we are in conversation with Transport Canada and other federal agencies.

I know I'm running out of time, so I will quickly go to the final issue, which I think everybody, all of us, are really tired of talking about: fish farms. Unfortunately, we need to keep talking about fish farms because today we continue to put pollution into our environment from open-net-cage fish farms in our region, including the northern Georgia Strait.

The threat posed by open-net-cage salmon farming to the health of wild salmon cannot be underestimated. The evidence of the impacts on our wild salmon from sea lice is devastating. We are seeing the numbers of salmon coming back every year so low, and though there are a variety of reasons for that, you cannot deny the impact of fish farms.

In 2007 the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture recommended a transition to closed containment. We have here — and I've given you each a copy — a report that shows that closed-containment technology is being used around the world. It is fiscally responsible. It is an economically viable option. Why aren't we doing it here in British Columbia?

We continue to face opposition and support for the current practices by the current government, and we really would like to see that stopped very soon. So what we are asking for — and what we asked for this last year — is funding of a $10 million closed system aquaculture innovation pilot project to C2-to-3 commercial-scale projects.

The number one argument against closed containment is that it is not a good business option. This shows that it is, but we are willing to walk down that road and say: "Okay, let's pilot-project a couple of commercial-scale plants and show that it can work here in our region."

We have seen the devastation around the world from open-net salmon farming in Europe. In fact, the reason that those companies are now in British Columbia is because in Europe they won't let them use this kind of technology because of the impact on the environment. So why are we allowing it here?

We have many challenges to deal with, and I know your job is not simple — to make recommendations about what to do in the budget. But I hope that some of the ideas that I've put forward here will find their way into the budget, and we hope to have your support in the future.

I'm happy to answer any questions, if you have any.

[1140]
[ Page 2158 ]

D. Hayer: Thank you very much — a very good presentation, very detailed presentation. I've got a question for you about the carbon tax. I want to find out your organization's opinion about the carbon tax, because the opposition has said that if they form the government, they're going to slash it. There are also ads being run by the opposition to slash it.

Do you think the provincial government should slash the carbon tax — eliminate it altogether?

C. Wilhelmson: The principle of a carbon tax, in our opinion, is a sound one. How you implement it, how you ensure that nobody — as I said, low-income families or people in rural areas — suffers from it has to be taken into consideration.

However, it is important that individuals, industry and businesses see that there is a price to emitting greenhouse gases. The challenge we have right now with the carbon tax…. It's kind of like we've put forward the carbon tax, but we're missing a whole bunch of other pieces of the puzzle. So for example, you make gas more expensive by five or ten cents. Somebody goes: "Okay, I won't drive my car as much."

Well, if we don't have enough money in transit, then they're forced to drive, and they're forced to feel that impact even more. We support the carbon tax in principle, but we need for that to be part of a broader program so the impacts can actually be real and people aren't suffering because of it.

That's certainly our opinion on that. I hope that answers your question.

R. Hawes (Chair): I just have a very quick question on your resources from waste. As you know, Victoria is looking at now putting a sewage treatment facility in place. Are they looking at this kind of model?

C. Wilhelmson: Absolutely. In fact — and it is part of the submission — they're using the CRD as a model. Basically, the suggestion here — and it is just a suggestion — is that they put 32 smaller plants rather than a couple of large ones. It's through the CRD's model that they're coming up with these numbers of…. You can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25 percent.

The CRD is actually in a unique position. For many communities, implementing this philosophy or these technologies is more challenging because they've already got sewage treatment systems in place. Metro Vancouver, which just released its liquid waste management plan yesterday, has integrated resource management as part of its vision. Even in large communities that already have systems, they're hoping to start moving in that direction.

The CRD. Yes, they have pipes in the ground, but they have no sewage treatment system. So they are actually uniquely positioned to be a model and a pilot project, for lack of a better word — a large pilot project — for the rest of Canada to show that it can work.

I know that the CRD is seriously looking at this. For them a larger number of small plants is a better fiscal decision. I know that within the CRD and certainly the regional district, politicians and councillors are very supportive of this idea because they see it as a huge opportunity.

R. Lee: I heard that Nanaimo also has a sewage treatment system. They collect the gas and then use it for clean energy.

C. Wilhelmson: It's true. It helps to run some of their treatment plant, as it does in Metro Vancouver. At the Annacis plant a lot of the power is run from the methane from the plant.

R. Hawes (Chair): Just so you know…. I don't know if it's something that you've looked at, but there are complications in the transit thing when you have…. The GVRD gave up its…. The government took on the hospital debt for the GVRD in exchange for them taking on all the transportation investment.

Just outside of the GVRD, it's the reverse. The hospital debt remains with the local taxpayer, and the transit expenditure is the responsibility of the province. So it's sort of a mixed bag. To build an integrated transit system, at least in the Lower Mainland, is very, very complex and very, very challenging.

C. Wilhelmson: I can appreciate that, and I hope that what we do — whether it's integrated or it's within smaller communities…. We just need to start thinking a little differently about how we do this so that we can make some fundamental changes and allow people to make choices that are better for the environment.

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

The next presenter is Dave Lewis with the Truck Loggers Association.

Welcome, Dave.

[1145]

D. Lewis: Thank you very much. Perspective is a wonderful thing, and getting to listen to one of the presenters before me talk about some of the social issues that they face on a day-to-day basis really puts some perspective on what I'm going to speak to you about.

Probably my job pales in comparison to some of the social needs. But I think that in my duties it's important for me to come forward and talk about my members. No matter how much I talk to trees, they generally don't talk back to me. So I'm not going to propose to speak for anyone or anything other than TLA members today.
[ Page 2159 ]

The Truck Loggers Association operates basically on the coast. We represent independent operators and contractors and companies that derive part of their living or revenues from the forest sector. We represent companies that might be a single person walking around in the bush, all the way up to a pulp mill, sawmills, integrated companies, marketers, first nations, community forests.

Seventy-five percent of the entire coastal industry, whether it be harvesting or manufacturing is independent and small business. Within rural communities, the average company that would be one of my members may not be a corporate giant in terms of market share, but they're corporate giants in their own communities. They employ more people. They invest more money annually than all of the large licensees combined.

Everyone is aware of what's going on in the forest industry. We hear of the perfect storm. Most storms are preceded by bad weather. We've had a lot of bad weather for the past 20 years. I think there are two things that we need to focus on, and I liken it to a disease. We can either focus on curing the symptoms, through painkillers and pain management, or we can look at curing the disease itself. I think we need to look at both of those aspects.

The first thing I'll speak to is getting some assistance right now to alleviate some of the pain that exists within our industry. While there's no single silver bullet and treatment that's going to fix this, I think there's one thing that can be undertaken right now that would provide a huge benefit to the industry and the people that rely on it in the communities that are impacted. That revolves around the issue of log exports.

I know that this is a contentious issue. I think it requires a great deal of education on everyone's part. The reality with log exports is that, from my standpoint with my membership…. I represent harvesters, I represent timber owners, and I represent manufacturers, so I have to have a very balanced view on this. We've hosted our own meetings, and it's very difficult for me to find a common position for my members because they have very differing interests.

In terms of log exports, we feel that in the long run, we'd like to see every single piece of timber that's harvested in B.C. be manufactured in B.C. That's the optimum idea. However, that's not realistic. We have to understand that there's a difference between logs and timber.

Companies right now such as Western Forest Products control 185 percent of their sawmilling capacity needs in terms of timber. They're not harvesting that timber. They may be harvesting 50 percent of their timber. It is not a problem getting timber. When we talk about mills being closed, it's because it's uneconomic to go get that timber to mill it.

For every two workers in the sawmill, there are four workers in the bush. For every one worker in the mill, there are two in the bush. So what we've said is that we're going to put restrictions on log exports. We're going to add fees to log exports to try and maintain the domestic manufacturing. The reality right now is that that doesn't work because that timber is not being harvested. So instead of having one person out of work in the mills, we have three people out of work.

What we're proposing is a short-term immediate measure that would remove the fees in lieu that are charged on the export of logs so that we can put those two people in the woods back to work. We're asking for it to be a short-term emergency measure. We're not looking at this as a long-term solution.

We'd like to continue with groups like the Roundtable on Forestry, which are looking at broad changes. We hope that we can get to a policy and a legislated system where we can encourage people to manufacture locally, and we can afford to do it. But right now it doesn't matter how much timber you own, you cannot afford to go and take that to the mill and manufacture it and ship it to your markets. It just doesn't exist.

So if we want to make an impact right now in the forest industry, it would cost about $19 million. That's the annual revenue that's received in fees in lieu to government. If you were to remove those, that would be your maximum exposure. Then you could open up markets that are economic, and we could get those two people in the woods back to work.

[1150]

The second piece that I'll speak to is what a good-news story forestry is. When we look at basic human needs, we talk about food, water, shelter and warmth. There is not another single, globally accepted, commercially viable shelter than wood. Steel and concrete are seven times more environmentally unfriendly. I think the answer is building with wood.

We look at the carbon footprint, and we look at the benefits to having managed forests in terms of disease and forest fires. We look at the benefits that it provides communities. We look at the contribution it makes to the provincial economy in terms of hospital beds, classrooms, roads.

We need to do better. We need to do more with what we have. There are so many countries around the world that do more with less than we do. I think one of the cornerstones to that is accepting forestry as a great industry. We can't be embarrassed about it. We can't shy away from it. We can't be apologizing for it.

I think the first step in that is supporting it through education, providing advocacy. I'd sort of liken it to…. What we've done over the last 20 years is had one of those tennis ball machines shooting balls at you. As an industry, what we've done is asked for tennis racquets to deflect the balls. I think what we have to do is refocus, to go up and unplug the machine.

You go to a Scandinavian country. They accept forestry as their number one industry. They support it. They embrace it, and they're proud of it.
[ Page 2160 ]

Ten percent of the world's forests are certified by third-party management systems; 40 percent of those managed forests, or certified forests, are in Canada. We have the highest amount of forest land that's certified in the world. When we look at protected areas and parks on the coast, we have 20 percent more area in parks and protected areas than is available for harvesting. We have world-class standards when it comes to our forest management, and we should not be ashamed of that.

Through programs such as Forest Innovation Investment…. We'd like to see the government continue to fund those. We'd like to see increased funding. We'd like to see more of an advocacy and outreach from government to the public, saying that forestry's a great industry. It still contributes about 25 percent of the economic base of this province.

There is a tremendous amount of pain out there right now. I think those are two things that we could do to really support that.

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

We'll go to questions.

J. Yap: Thanks, Dave, for your presentation. In the past I've heard you talk about the challenge of reaching out to the youth to recruit the future foresters and workers in logging and the forestry industry in general.

How are those efforts? I know right now it's a difficult time, a challenging time, for the industry. But looking into the longer term, how's it going in recruiting people for the industry?

D. Lewis: If I had three choices to say that we're losing ground, we're holding even, or we're gaining ground — we're losing ground still, John. I don't think that the economic conditions right now help. I think a lot of young people don't see forestry as a socially acceptable or economically viable future. We've seen changes at UBC in the programs they offer.

If we really want to have this industry going forward, we have to make that decision, and we have to commit to that. Within our curriculum, for instance — I believe that it's grade 5 — there's a B.C. resource curriculum piece. It simply says: "You will teach about B.C. resources."

There's a whole bunch of things we can do. We spoke to the round table about some of these. We think that you could be a bit more focused in terms of providing teachers with information. We could do that. We could provide things like we do.

We fund education initiatives to the tune of about $100,000 a year on the coast. One of them is to have a lady in Campbell River…. She goes out to different schools, and she provides a nine-session forestry program to the kids in grade 5.

Things like that are really useful, but we're very limited in what we have. We need to lay that groundwork so that we do have people for the future, John, because you're right. We're losing ground, and it will be a huge problem.

B. Ralston (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Dave. You mentioned Scandinavian countries. In Finland, for example…. I think four of the ten major integrated multinational forest companies are based in Finland. There's a very sophisticated research component. It's an integrated industry — lots of investment and research and new product ideas.

Where is the leadership coming from in the B.C. industry that would even begin to take the first step in that direction?

[1155]

D. Lewis: I think, Bruce, that that is a great point. It goes to the issue of certainty. In most of these developed countries, where we see that leadership especially, there's a tremendous amount of private land. They have the certainty that they can get supply or can manage their business, so they'll invest money in research and development.

I think that if we're going to see investment here, which we need to see to keep up with the rest of the world, we have to provide that certainty. I'm not proposing privatizing the land base at all, but we have to find some measures that will give the investment community enough confidence that they're willing to put their money up.

If we look at the group that invested some money up in Fort St. John recently — bought a mill…. There's money out there. They had a labour force that wanted to go to work. They had a community that supported it. They have a good fibre basket. That's not private land, but they saw enough that they said: "You know what? We're willing to put our money up and enter the industry."

So it is out there, Bruce. It is a challenge how we get there. We've submitted a 45-page paper to the round table that illustrates some of those things that we think could be done to provide some of that certainty, but that is the biggest hurdle we have to face.

D. Hayer: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was a very good presentation. You know, when I visit small towns, they always say that log exporting creates jobs. When I go to my constituency, people say: "Don't export logs. It takes away the jobs."

You have said today that in the long term you'd like to see every single log used up here. But we are not there yet. In the meantime we need a place which can create more jobs.

How can you provide that information to the public so they understand, so they don't get the misinformation that says that log exporting kills jobs? It gets very difficult to tell my constituents that it's good to do. They don't believe the politicians. It has to be real people who
[ Page 2161 ]
can be effective, so that they can bring the message out, so we can sort of take a look at the policies that you are trying to suggest.

D. Lewis: That's a great point, Dave. I was actually on the Fanny Kiefer show this morning, Studio 4, and I spoke to that same issue on it. We need to do a better job as an industry, advocating, educating. We have to be very clear in our messaging that this is not about just short-term profits. This is about survival right now.

We're meeting with the NDP caucus next week. We're meeting with some of you next week to talk about these issues so that everyone is educated.

I think what's important from our standpoint is that we're very consistent in our messaging. It's not about partisan politics. It's not about, "Here's what we've hung onto in the past" — things like appurtenancy. It's about looking forward and saying: "Look, what's our vision for the future? What are our potential and possibilities? Let's let go of the past. Let's create a vision for the future, and here's how we're going to attain that."

Right now the fact remains that whether we export logs — have restrictions — or not, domestic mills are not operating. They have access to the fibre. They will not operate. If we subsidize them enough, they may cut that timber, but allowing that timber to be harvested and exported somewhere else with no subsidies in terms of going to the mills….

The fee-in-lieu was put in as a result of the softwood lumber agreement. We said that the U.S. was charging a 15 percent duty on lumber that was going across the line, so we were going to put in an equivalent fee-in-lieu on logs. We supported that at the time. We thought it was great. Look, we don't want them to have this freebie, taking the logs away, because in that situation it would kill jobs that could be created locally.

In this case right now that timber is not going to be manufactured locally. It's not going to be manufactured over the next nine months locally because of markets.

That's what we propose just until late next year — that we have this exemption or this suspension in place so that we can keep two out of three people working, keep some capital in the industry, allow these people to survive, allow the workforce to be there so that when this turns around, now we can look at it again and say: "Okay. Let's get everyone back to work."

R. Lee: You mentioned that there's no shortage of logs. Is that true for all species? If the fee-in-lieu is expanded, then how many jobs will be created?

D. Lewis: We're not talking about cedar. We'd still retain the restriction on cedar because people have a real tie to that. It's a high-value species. But I think what we have to do is look at it across the board, not have any entrenched positions and say: "Okay, what's the situation now? Let's adapt to it quickly. Let's be able to handle it."

This Forestry Innovation Investment has done a tremendous amount of work, and good work, on hemlock, which is our number one species on the coast. It's considered to be a commodity-grade wood.

[1200]

Recently they built a three-storey home and put it on the shake table that's located in Japan. They put a three-dimensional earthquake wave through this building two times the size of the Kobe earthquake, and the building remained standing with no flaws at all. That's the sort of thing that's very important for us — to do the innovation, the research, government supporting that work, industry supporting that. It's all really good stuff. It takes time.

But every species, as we do that work, will be important, Richard. That's the sort of thing that we don't want to draw too many lines and say: "Well, you can this, and you can't that." But right now if we have viable industries in B.C., we're not looking to take their fibre supply away and ship it somewhere else. If they're viable, if they're economical, let's make sure that they're working. But if they're not working, we have to find a way to not penalize one side just because the other can't work.

R. Hawes (Chair): Thanks, Dave. Just one very fast question. There are those who would advocate that we either tear up or renegotiate the softwood agreement. Is that a foolhardy thing, or is that the right thing to do?

D. Lewis: Once again, it might seem like it's an unfair agreement at times. What we have to understand is that it was negotiated purely and simply and designed to shut down our industry when times are bad. If you go through every part of it, that was the underlying design of it by the Americans. Times are bad, and it's shutting down our industry.

To try and say, "Well, we're going to rip that up now…." I think when things turn around within a year, we're going to face a whole new series of challenges and go through all the same acrimony. It'll be more punitive. I think that it's one of those ones where you pinch your nose and swallow. It's not a great deal, but it's better than what we had. It's a short-term necessity.

I would love to see things changed. It penalizes people like remanners that are in your riding, Randy. But those are the people that are being penalized that have said: "We'll live with it." And for heaven's sake, if the people who are living with it are the ones paying the cost, we really should be careful about to whom we're saying we will or won't deal with this.

I think it's a necessary evil right now. It doesn't make me happy, but I think if those people who are supplying the jobs and revenue say, "We want it kept in place," I don't know how we argue with that. There are a lot bigger issues that we can tackle, Randy.
[ Page 2162 ]

R. Hawes (Chair): Clearly. Okay, thanks very much, Dave.

Now we come to the open-mike portion, and our first presenter is James McAllister.

You have five minutes, Mr. McAllister.

J. McAllister: I won't take that long. My problem is with filing my income tax, and I have to pay for Fair PharmaCare because I save too much money. I also lose on my age allowance and the medical expenses because we save too much money.

It seems that the system is based on people that haven't got anything rather than people that save money and look after themselves whenever they get old. So my wife and I saved our money for 50 years, and now we've accumulated a certain amount of money. Because we have accumulated this money, we're not eligible for Fair PharmaCare. We lost out on the age allowance and our medical expenses.

If I was to sell the house we live in and use all our money that we've saved and bought another house worth a couple of million dollars, then I'd be eligible for all these things. Is that how the system is supposed to work?

R. Hawes (Chair): We're hearing you. We don't take questions here, or we're not asking you questions….

J. McAllister: Well, okay. If a person has a house that's worth $2 million and didn't have any money saved in the bank, then they would be eligible for Fair PharmaCare. They'd be eligible for the age allowance on their income tax, and they'd be eligible to claim the medical expenses, because their income was nil, or almost nil.

[1205]

In our particular case, my wife and I have about $24,000 a year — our old age pension and our Canada pension, but we have $73,000 from our RRIF, from our other pension that we paid for when we worked and for our interest that we get from the bank.

So if we didn't have the $73,000, we'd be as eligible for all these other things as people that don't have any money. So it seems to me that the system is encouraging people: "Don't save your money, because we'll screw you whenever you get old and you've got money in the bank."

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, I guess the only thing I can say to you, Mr. McAllister, is that it's based on your ability to pay, not on your wealth. Given the number of people that are moving into senior status, Fair PharmaCare presumed that that was the right way to go.

J. McAllister: But again, if I was to…. He shouldn't be laughing, because that gets me mad.

I'm assuming that if I was to have bought a house with all the money we have saved, then I would be eligible. Is that how the system wants to work?

R. Hawes (Chair): It's not how it wants to work, but I'm presuming that you probably wouldn't want to do that yourself.

J. McAllister: But I can also take that money out of the bank and put it into a safety deposit box, and we could still manage. I've got enough money saved that will last me until I die. Is that what the system wants? I'd like to know what the system wants, because, you know, I can do what I want to do.

R. Hawes (Chair): The system wants those who have the ability to pay, to pay. Those who don't have the ability to pay, for whatever circumstance, then the Fair PharmaCare system will assist those people.

J. McAllister: That's Fair PharmaCare. What about the age allowance and the medical?

R. Hawes (Chair): Well, I think the same thing applies.

J. McAllister: The same thing applies. So if I take the money out of the bank and put it in the safety deposit box, then I don't have the ability to pay, because we won't have $40,000-odd in interest that we're getting from the bank.

R. Hawes (Chair): You know, you'd have to ask, probably, your accountant those questions, but….

J. McAllister: I'm my accountant.

R. Hawes (Chair): I can't answer for the income tax department, but your ability for Fair PharmaCare, etc., is based on the income that you earn. So I'm assuming if you have….

J. McAllister: But I've not earned that income; that's interest income. That is because I saved the money.

R. Hawes (Chair): I understand that. We're not going into questions. I understand your question. This isn't the place or forum in which we can answer. I understand your frustration, but this is not the forum that can answer those questions for you.

J. McAllister: Well, I have written a letter to Taylor and to Flaherty and to two other people, and I keep getting letters back from them, and they're talking round and round and round in circles — right? They don't answer my question.

R. Hawes (Chair): All I can tell you is that the system is designed such that if you have the ability to pay, then you pay. If you don't have the ability to pay, then the system will assist you.
[ Page 2163 ]

J. McAllister: Okay. I know what to do then. I'll take my money out of the bank, and now the government is not getting income tax on my $50,000-odd, because I'll have it in a safety deposit box. Thank you.

R. Hawes (Chair): You're welcome.

We now have Doreen Player.

Doreen, I understand you're representing the Burnaby Partners in Seniors Wellness.

D. Player: That's right, yes. I appreciate you hearing my story. I realize that it's into your lunch-hour now too.

Burnaby Partners in Seniors Wellness is a health and wellness program of seniors working together at the four seniors centres in Burnaby, which are Bonsor, Cameron, Confederation and Edmonds centres. We provide health and wellness benefits to our seniors and have done so for the last 17 to 21 years.

Today I'm here asking you to help us consider sustainable funding for this program. It's a miniscule amount when I'm hearing millions being bounced around here at the table, but it is $40,000 in total for the four centres.

[1210]

I'll just briefly tell you a little bit about what we do. Our program is an excellent example of the kind of collaborative effort that is needed to help keep seniors healthy and out of emergency rooms. It's a partnership that involves the societies from each centre. It involves the city of Burnaby and sometimes the Fraser Health Authority — most of the time.

We also have a hundred volunteers in this program, and one-third of those volunteers are retired medical people who help us with our program.

The things that we do are weekly educational programs on health, blood pressure readings, foot care, weight control, massage therapy, exercise, falls prevention, housing information. We even in the exercise part have therapeutic and post-surgery exercises. It's seniors helping seniors.

In 2007, where we have our year's statistics, we had a total of 12,600 visits to specific services. The total cost to the Fraser Health Authority was a mere $2.37 per visit. It was supported by the 100 volunteers who contributed over 2,000 hours. That was just in the year 2007.

Given the low cost, as well as the preventive and early diagnostic focus, it is reasonable to assume that this service saves significant health dollars. Unfortunately, the program is not a regular item in the Fraser Health Authority's budget. In fact, it has faced cancellation on several occasions, until community pressure resulted in one-time funding grants from the Fraser Health.

The program is unique and innovative and offers a cost savings to the health care system. So we strongly believe that it deserves ongoing sustainable funding. In fact, we believe that it is the kind of program that should serve as a model for similar programs throughout the province.

We collaborate with our agencies, like falls prevention, chronic disease self-management, osteoporosis, arthritis societies — all of those. We have intergenerational activities, which we started offering this year. Being a seniors centre, usually the young people aren't included, but we are starting to really utilize young people in our program. We find that it works very well with the seniors and young students who are in nearby schools.

We support and encourage our ethnic members. We familiarize them to the health programs and the housing needs that there are in the community and encourage and celebrate their traditions with them.

What we do well is that we're community based. We're close to transportation. We're seniors helping seniors. They develop their own programs. They tell us what they would like to hear. They tell us what they'd like to know in these educational components. It's a one-stop seniors centre with a strong socialization and empathy component.

The health care system seems to deal with the specifics of a medical model, and we don't quite fit into that. It isn't wellness-oriented. I know they're supposed to have a little…. Part of that pilot is preventive, but it's very, very small.

Perhaps we belong in a different place. I know the Ministry of Healthy Living…. When we look at what we're doing, we fall into their framework, and maybe we need to be looking at a shift of where we are seeking our funding. That's one reason why I'm coming to you today so that you are aware of the program. You might be able to help us in that regard.

There is a program on the North Shore — it's very similar to ours — that is funded by the Vancouver Coastal region. It operates right across the whole of the North Shore. Some of you might be familiar with that.

So that's pretty well what I wanted to say today. We're looking for assistance from the Finance department. It's a wonderful program. If it doesn't continue, I know there'll be a huge uproar from the senior citizens of Burnaby — and there are a lot of us.

Thank you for your time.

[1215]

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

That's the last of the open-mike presentations. This being the last of the oral presentations, this does conclude this year's public consultation.

Interjections.

R. Hawes (Chair): Oh, pardon me. We have one this afternoon. I'm getting way ahead of myself. We are going to be meeting this afternoon in Coquitlam at three o'clock. So until then, we are adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 12:16 p.m.

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

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

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