Orders of the Day

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA ACT
(second reading)

The act is based on the recommendations of the interim planning council, which began its work in May 1995, appointed by the then Minister of Skills, Training and Labour. The interim planning council was appointed to advise government on steps to develop a new technical university in the Fraser Valley.

The council consisted of representatives from business and industry, labour, government and local educational institutions, including the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Kwantlen University College, the University College of the Fraser Valley, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia.

The Technical University of British Columbia Act sets out the purposes of this university and its governance structure. It incorporates many provisions of the University Act and includes new provisions establishing a university council and program advisory committees. The act describes this university as an educational and research facility designed to provide British Columbians with the knowledge and skills they need to be leaders in our twenty-first century economy.

The purposes of the university, as set out in this legislation, include, first, to offer certificate, diploma and degree programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels in the applied, technological and related professional fields that contribute to the economic development of British Columbia; second, to conduct applied research and development; third, to provide continuing education that responds to the needs of the applied, technological and related professional fields; fourth, to collaborate and cooperate with other post-secondary institutions and with business and labour respecting education and applied research and development; and finally, to create strong links with business and labour and to develop programs that are relevant to and at the forefront of industrial and professional initiatives.

These programs will be offered in accordance with certain general principles; that is, they will be offered in accordance with the principles of access, relevance, affordability and accountability.

I want to mention specifically the importance of this university's partnerships with industry, including business and labour, and with other educational institutions. Our goal is to make sure that its programs are relevant in order to avoid duplication and to ensure cost-sharing where appropriate.

Hon. Speaker, this act provides for a corporate governance structure that includes a board of governors with expertise in both academic and non-academic matters; a president, who is the chief executive officer of the university; and a university council. The interim planning council has recommended that this governance structure promote openness, accountability and innovation. The board of governors and the president will have the powers and duties of the traditional academic senate, as specified in the act.

This corporate governance model is being put in place to make sure that this university is flexible in programming and in staff requirements. The flexibility will allow the university to respond quickly to changing industry and community needs, to better prepare students for the workplace of the twenty-first century. The governance structure will also allow the university to more readily establish links with industry, to increase its ability to be self-financing, to be accountable for high-quality programs and to contribute to the economic development of the province.

The university council, made up of internal and external representatives, will advise the president on matters such as educational and research plans; the establishment, change or discontinuance of programs or program areas; and academic and other qualifications for admissions.

I just want to dwell for a minute on the qualifications for admission. The act specifically includes recognition of skills regardless of where they have been gained, whether in educational institutions or in the workplace. Mature students who don't meet the formal entrance requirements will have the opportunity to demonstrate that they have acquired the equivalent education through previous training and work and life experiences.

[10:15]

The act uses the term "teaching staff member" rather than "faculty" to define teaching and research staff employed by the university. This reflects the fact that there will be no tenure for teaching staff and no faculties, as such.

In introducing this act, I want to say a few words about the history of the development of this institution which has led us to today. In establishing this university, the government is acting on the recommendations of several committees appointed by the province to study post-secondary education in the Fraser Valley. The reports of those committees were consistent on two recommendations: first, the need for expanded educational opportunities in the Fraser Valley; and second, the need to be innovative, flexible and non-traditional in delivering programs cost-effectively.

Over the past several years the government has taken steps to implement the recommendations of these committees by expanding capacity and constructing new facilities at Kwantlen University College and the University College of the Fraser Valley and by providing those institutions with degree-granting status.

The new Technical University of British Columbia is part of the province's comprehensive response to very considerable demand for post-secondary education in the Fraser Valley. The establishment of this university is also consistent with our government's commitment to invest in people and help them gain the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in this global economy -- an economy that requires flexibility and requires response to changes in science technology in the world marketplace.

Although it will be located in the Fraser Valley, the new university will be for all British Columbians -- improving post-secondary access in applied science and advanced technology, providing students with relevant work skills in preparation for employment in the labour markets of the future.

Development of this university has been a process of working closely with the community and responding to its needs, and this legislation allows us to take the next step to continue working with the community and with educators to help develop another post-secondary asset for our province.

J. Weisbeck: Thank you, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to Bill 30, the Technical University of British Columbia Act.

This act enables a new technical university for British Columbia. The university is being designed to achieve three objectives: (1) to meet the rapidly growing demand for post-secondary education in the Fraser Valley; (2) to prepare our workforce for the demands of the current and future high-tech workplace; and (3) to serve as a flagship for innovations in higher education.

The Fraser Valley is one of the fastest-growing regions in Canada, but unfortunately it has one of the lowest participation rates and is in fact about 75 percent of the national average. At the same time, it has the largest growth of 18-to-24-year-olds. So the question is: will this new university increase our lagging participation rates? There is no doubt that the participation rates in British Columbia need improving, relative to the national average. In the period between 1985 and 1991, rates in B.C. increased from 18 to 23 percent, while Canadian participation rates increased from 25 to 29 percent. The goal of this government was to reach the Canadian rate by 1995. Although this goal was not obtained, there has been some improvement. According to the ministry stats, we are now in a cluster behind Nova Scotia and Ontario, ranked about third or fourth.

The College-Institute Educators Association of B.C. argues that this new university will not improve access. I would like to quote from a media release of June 9:

"We do not need another high-cost facility that will divert funds from already established and successful institutions. Our analysis shows that the Technical University will do little to increase post-secondary participation rates of residents in the Fraser Valley region. This area needs more bridging and upgrading programs to enhance access -- not high-tech, high-skill and high-cost programs which will exclude many potential students."

The second criterion: Whalley says that they need the economic stimulus to achieve its hoped-for rebirth. This is a very weak argument. I'm sure that Cloverdale could make the same statement. What city wouldn't want, and need, the economic boost? My only hope is that common sense will prevail, leaving the site selection to more common sense than some political aspect.

Mr. Speaker, we must prepare our workforce to meet the demands of a knowledge-based economy. Growth in the high-tech sector of this province, according to government sources, increased by 22 percent from 1994 to 1995. In a recent article in Newsweek, in the U.S. alone there are 190,000 high-tech jobs open. So as we move into the new century, there will be exponential growth in this sector. There will be a need to retrain already well-educated people for jobs available, as individuals are forced to make career changes. High-tech workers will find that one-half of the information received will be obsolete within three to seven years of completing their training. This will place huge demands on institutions to be able to facilitate these individuals in cost-effective and innovative ways. We must take into account the older student with family responsibilities and the inability to take time away from work.

The third objective of this university: to be innovative, to delivery learning in both a traditional and a virtual manner. To achieve the level of education in our workforce, we must be able to make higher learning available to everyone. Access to the provincial learning net, through this institution and other institutions, should make this possible.

One of the most innovative aspects of this university will be its governance, the structure of the board. The lack of a senate should give a maximum amount of flexibility. I think this fits very well with one of the main concerns expressed by students in the survey of 1993 baccalaureate graduates. They felt that their programs were overly structured, with insufficient time for concentration on their areas of interest. Hopefully, with this new structure, students can create meaningful and relevant programs that can be adapted to today's job market. But this also creates a challenge to maintain this model without reversing to a traditional university. This will require the board members to carry forward this vision.

There have been a number of concerns expressed by this new university. The process of hiring the president and then starting the university was contrary to some people's thinking. Creating a new university is absolutely contrary to this government's current policy of asking for efficiencies within the current system. This government has asked the various institutes to increase their enrolments without an increase in funding. This government is talking about new, innovative ways of improving access, yet it has gone back to the traditional mode of improving access: bricks and mortar -- a method, I would suggest, that will ultimately be underfunded.

Concern has also been expressed by the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of B.C. that the establishment of this new university will cause undue financial strain on the rest of the post-secondary system. There is further concern over this legislation expressed by their analysis of this bill, and I'll quote from their article:

"Furthermore, the new legislation allows for political control and interference in the operation of the new university unlike the other universities in the province. It denies any significant role to the academic staff, whose expertise is the key to the operations of a university and the guarantors of its quality. It permits outside business and labour interests to dictate the curriculum and the research work of faculty without any effective checks or balances to ensure that the public interest is served. It is a serious violation of national norms of academic freedom and of university governance. It has been designed by arrogant interests unwilling to consult with the academic staff, who are the key to the operations of any internationally competitive university.

"It is especially foolish to usher into existence a new university in a storm of controversy, rather than working with the academic staff to ensure both that the university is created only when there is sufficient funding for it and existing universities, and then that it has the same rights and responsibilities as the other universities of the province."

B. McKinnon: I am pleased to stand and speak to Bill 30, Technical University of British Columbia Act. I'm pleased to say that I support this new university. This is an act that will allow the government to establish a new technical university in the Fraser Valley. The growth in the Fraser Valley has been tremendous in the last few years, and teaching facilities have not kept up with this growth.

The Minister of Women's Equality stated in the fourth session of the thirty-fifth Parliament -- and I quote from Hansard:

"This government has taken a somewhat different path in making this decision to build a university in Cloverdale. The first difference is the scale of public consultation that took place. Four successive studies were done over many years, and all of them recommended that a university be built south of the Fraser. . . . So the decision to build this university came from the ground up and from a clearly demonstrated need."

The minister went on to say:

"The government recognizes that it's only fair to redirect capital funds to the south Fraser region, to redress the longstanding lack of facilities and to provide for the future of thousands of young people who will study, find jobs and raise their families in Surrey, Delta, Langley and up the valley."

When this government first announced this university, there was a tremendous amount of excitement in my riding of Surrey-Cloverdale. This university would not only help give our children an up-to-date education in the technical field but also bring revitalization and jobs to this area. There has been a need for a university in the Fraser Valley for many years. The people have lobbied for it and are now filled with a tremendous feeling of hope that this government will keep their promise and build this university in the Fraser Valley, accessible to the people living in the Fraser Valley.

[10:30]

There is a concern that the high cost of building this university will divert funds from already successful institutions. There is also a concern that existing institutions could deliver the programs and meet the huge demand for high-tech workers. I acknowledge those concerns when money is very tight and hard to come by. We also have to realize the costs to students who have to travel from afar -- the costs to them because of this distance. This cost could make the difference as to whether they continue their education or not.

Talks have to happen with industry so that the needs of industry for high-tech workers are responded to through our educational facilities. These educational facilities need to be placed where there is space for industry to develop and for students to receive on-the-job training, such as the site that Cloverdale provides.

The most profound change in this bill is the elimination of the senate. This seems to be a new form of governance, previously adopted by Royal Roads University. It appears to be more flexible in adapting to the changing needs of the workplace. I think it is important that we in government recognize that we are living in a fast-changing world, and that we need to keep pace with these changes in the workplace. Education has to keep pace with this changing world and the job market those changes are creating.

The most controversial implication that I find in this bill is the site location of the technical university. It appears to be becoming a political rather than a commonsense decision. It is my hope, as it is the hope of my constituents, that the minister will take the commonsense approach and keep the chosen site for the people of the Fraser Valley.

J. Smallwood: I feel very privileged to be able to enter into this debate, in particular to follow the critic and the member for Surrey-Cloverdale. I'd like to speak to a number of issues that have been raised by the critic and by my friend from Surrey-Cloverdale.

The issue of this university means an awful lot to us in Surrey, and it means a lot to us in the South Fraser. The debate with respect to a university and opportunities for our communities collectively has been, as the member indicates, ongoing for a long, long period of time. The member referenced the question with respect to the participation rate and opportunities for our young people, and I think that those arguments have been proven by the work that has been done. For many of us, as I said, this university has been a long time coming.

But there's more than simply the university and opportunity for people to either retrain or up-skill. It's also an opportunity for the South Fraser to become the community that it was meant to be. I first became involved in politics around issues of community planning. I think that most people that understand the suburbs understand that people come to the suburbs -- to places like Surrey -- because they have great hopes and expectations for their families. For a long time our communities were referenced by regions like the GVRD and by other communities outside the lower mainland as bedroom communities, because people raised their families there and worked elsewhere. For most of us, the development of our communities was not only about raising our children but about the future for our children -- the opportunities for education and for decent jobs, as well.

Our roots are deep for many of us, and I reference the member for Surrey-Cloverdale, as well, because I know that she has been a long-time resident in Cloverdale. Her family goes back a long while, and she understands that dynamic. I'm glad that the critic, the member for Okanagan East, is still in the House. He made specific references to the arguments that I have made, and I don't think he truly understands those arguments. This gives me an opportunity to flesh them out a little bit for him.

The questions here are about planning -- about what kind of community we will have as our children grow and what opportunities they will have. It's about the question as to whether or not our communities will continue to sprawl up the Fraser Valley, whether the transportation infrastructure that is there will serve our communities and whether we will continue to drive costs for that sprawling development.

The question with B.C. Transit is very simple. For those of us that were part of the debate around the investment in the SkyTrain infrastructure, we also understand that when the infrastructure was built, much of the bus transportation was centralized to SkyTrain; everything flowed into SkyTrain. Many of us at that time were very concerned about that. The centralization of the bus transit to SkyTrain made it very difficult to get around that region, because everything came into that juncture.

So be it. Those were decisions that were made a long time ago, and most of us have learned to rely on that transportation infrastructure. Indeed, much of the development has been driven by that. The five town centres for Surrey now begin to focus on SkyTrain, and they understand that if they need to get around the region, they have to rely on that flow of public transit. To get from any place in the South Fraser, one has to come to SkyTrain and then often take a second bus to their destination. So the argument with respect to transit is based on those infrastructure decisions many years ago.

Secondly, there is the question -- and I touched on it briefly -- of planning. For most of us, the business of planning our community has been a long-time debate. The questions are around affordability for housing, social infrastructure, schools and hospitals, and transportation infrastructure. Most of us are acutely aware that for such a community as South Fraser, the pressures on those infrastructures are immense. The province as well as the city of Surrey have to constantly have their eyes on the costs that are driven by development. When people talk glibly about government spending smarter, those are the kinds of decisions that governments have to take into consideration. Are taxpayers' dollars being spent in the most efficient way? Are we making overall decisions that ensure that we're not driving up costs down the road?

The question with respect to transportation is one that will be crucial to the development of the university. Can B.C. Transit afford an additional route or an additional structure that will feed an intense attraction like the university may, and hopefully will, become? Can the city of Surrey or the GVRD afford the continued impetus of growth that will be driven by a centre that is not complementary to the chosen site in Surrey, which is in the north end of Surrey, and the investments that have gone into the city centre with respect not only to transportation but to other infrastructure costs?

Then, of course, there's the issue of the environment. The pressure that the growth in the Fraser Valley has brought to bear on the environment, on the agricultural land reserve. . . . The overall pressures that a sprawling development brings to bear are all questions that I think responsible government must take into consideration.

Mr. Speaker, before I change my tack and talk about the university specifically, I want to name one other cost, and that's the cost of the fibre-optics juncture. At this point in time, the fibre-optics juncture for South Fraser is at Surrey Central in my riding. So for a university that depends on cutting-edge technologies, the questions around that infrastructure will also be crucial. I think the case is a logical case, not a political case. It's a case based on costs and smart spending. It's a case based on broader implications, more than simply the cost of the particular piece of land.

The point that I want to raise not only with respect to the location but with respect to this, I guess, bold initiative from our government. . . . I was a little distressed to hear the critic question the decision to invest in a high-tech university, because this is cutting-edge. It's cutting-edge for this province, and I think it's something we should all be very proud of.

I look at the constituents that I serve, and I all too often have the opportunity to meet with young people in our schools. Our school board has for some time supported science fairs, and in an opportunity that I had to speak to the president of the university, I suggested to him that perhaps one of the best ways we can meet this new age is to ensure that these young people have something to say about the development of the university and what it will do in the future.

When you talk to students and their teachers, their teachers will tell you that they are playing catch-up, that many times they find themselves in a situation where the young people in the classroom know far more than the teachers that are teaching them about the technologies. What an exciting way to ensure that the opportunities for our young people are on the cutting edge and reflect the new world that they will be entering -- the opportunity to involve them, as well as business, in designing what this university will do, and not only meeting their needs for employment but ensuring that they have the opportunity to meet human needs and the realities that exist in South Fraser and in Surrey generally.

It's an exciting time for us in Surrey. We're all very pleased to enter into the discussion, and we do it in the most congenial way, hoping that government's decision reflects some of those pragmatics and the imperatives of spending smarter and ensuring that the broadest considerations are taken.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'd like to just pick up on the comments of my colleague from Surrey-Whalley and say that this is indeed an exciting time for development of post-secondary education in the South Fraser area and for the province as a whole. At a time when other provinces in our country are reducing funding to post-secondary education, closing campuses, reducing the scope of programs and increasing tuition fees for students, here in British Columbia we are charting a very different course. We are keeping the costs for our post-secondary students low by freezing tuition and fees, and committing to keeping the cost of education affordable. Everybody has a right; it's not for the elite few as a privilege.

We are opening new programs and new campuses. Here, with the creation of the Technical University of B.C., we are truly embarking on a cutting-edge institution that will form new relationships with business and industry and the economy of the twenty-first century. I'm very pleased to be able to introduce this bill into this Legislature.

[10:45]

Let me just say a couple of things on issues that have been raised. First, on the whole issue of cost-efficiency, it is important to create new universities and provide new access. It is important to say that we are going to form new partnerships with industry, develop new training programs and move forward to make sure our citizens have the skills to prosper in the twenty-first century.

It is also important to do so in a cost-effective way. This university has committed to delivering student spaces at this university at a cost significantly below existing institutions -- at one-half the cost. It is also committed to developing clear links with business that will ensure relevance of programs and actually ensure some cost-sharing on training opportunities. It is going to be very actively exploring private-public partnerships for construction and development of its facilities, not unlike the BCIT downtown campus or the Simon Fraser University downtown campus that now exist. In all these ways, hon. Speaker, this institution will not only provide the educational services that are required but will do so in a way that is cost-effective.

The other issue that has received some debate already in this chamber -- and that I'm sure will receive more -- is the site of the university. I thank the member for Surrey-Whalley for her very thoughtful comments on the role that development of this university will have in community development in Surrey and in the South Fraser region. Let me just add a couple of points here.

I have asked the university to advise me -- as I said in estimates -- on siting for its facilities. Clearly, that decision and the recommendations that I expect to see before me will reflect the imperative that the Technical University of B.C. be linked strongly with the industry that it serves. Clearly it is imperative that the university consider transportation and access to other services within the Fraser Valley area and also within the broader province. This is a provincial institution, as well, and that needs to be recognized.

It is important that the siting also reflect its partnership -- which the member for Surrey-Cloverdale pointed out -- with Simon Fraser University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Finally, it's important that its site reflect opportunities for exactly the sort of private-public partnership in construction of facilities that I spoke about earlier.

These are some of the considerations that the university will be considering as it designs its programs and chooses sites. We have a site in Cloverdale, as I have said in estimates, and that site is the one now selected. If I hear something different from the board of the university, we will be responding at that time.

Clearly this is an issue -- even within this chamber -- on which many views have been expressed. I even remember the member for Chilliwack advocating that the old Canadian Forces Base in Chilliwack be used as a site for this university. There is a diversity of opinions here. That decision must be driven by the program needs of this university, and that will be the primary consideration as we move forward with development of the Technical University of British Columbia.

Hon. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to close debate on second reading. I will now move second reading of Bill 30.

Motion approved.

Bill 30, Technical University of British Columbia Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

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