 So this is the first webinar offered in our division that is focused on the BC Jobs Plan and therefore we're keenly interested in your feedback during and to follow this webinar about future jobs plan related topics and interests. So I'd like to introduce our presenters today. Greg Goodwin is Executive Director for the Regional Economic Policy and Project Branch of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation. Amy Schneider is Strategic Initiatives and Analysis Director for the Regional Economic Policy and Project Branch and Tanya Twinsper is Director, Citizens Engagement, BC Jobs Plan and Government Together BC, Government Communications and Public Engagement. Our agenda is here for as follows. So Greg will be getting just looking at how, looking specifically at the Canada Starts here, the BC Jobs Plan Six Month Report. Amy Schneider will be looking at the Regional Economic Investment Attraction Pilots and Tanya Twinsper will be speaking to the new developments on the BC Jobs Plan and Citizens Engagement website. So with that introduction, I'd like to turn to Mr. Greg Goodwin. Greg Goodwin Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the webinar this afternoon. BC Jobs Plan Canada Starts here is a key government priority that will build on the province's solid foundation of prudent fiscal management to attract investment and encourage exports and open up new markets to BC products. This very brief 10-minute presentation will provide an overview of the Ministry of the Jobs Plan as well as the results and progress over the last six months. The Ministry's mandate is basically, as you see here, open markets to BC products attract new investment and through various initiatives and offices overseas and in the regions. The Ministry works to basically reduce and eliminate barriers to exports and investment, increase awareness of British Columbia's competitive, competitive business commitment and attract international investment through our foreign offices. The three pillars of the BC Jobs Plan working with employers and communities domestically to enable job creation across British Columbia and ensure that communities are investment-ready for the investment that will come to British Columbia, strengthening the infrastructure in order to get goods and services to market and expanding the markets for British Columbia products, particularly in Asia. This slide is a key one. If you concentrate on the orange and golden rod parts of the slide, you can see the enormous and significant increase in spending power of both China and India in particular and these are one of the key reasons why the British Columbia and Canada in particular are looking for Asia to open up markets. And so initiatives such as the forest industries in roads into China over the last number of years building the relationships that have encouraged and allowed the forest industry to penetrate the Chinese market using that approach will be a key to other sectors that British Columbia has a competitive advantage. So some key things that the ministry and the government have done over the past while are really looking internationally and looking at new markets, looking at the markets that I've just described particularly China, India, Korea and Japan. And last year the Premier led the most significant international delegation in British Columbia's history, 350 delegates, 150 companies, organizations and community groups going to China and India. And as a result of that they signed 60 business deals and partnership agreements across a number of sectors. And more recently the Premier went to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines to reinforce or trade and cultural ties to those countries. And at that, through that delegation, 25 business deals were signed totaling a greater value of over half a billion dollars. Through the BC jobs plan also government has doubled its international trade presence to ensure that the penetration to international markets is there. And BC currently has nine trade and investment representatives around the world. Competitiveness and innovation ensuring that the right tax environment and the right regulatory environment is appropriate for the competitive nature of the global economy. A number of tax measures were included in Budget 2012. It will encourage further investment in the province and increase skills of British Columbia's labor force. For example, Budget 2012 increased the small business venture capital program by $3 million which provides tax credits of 30% for direct investments in eligible new corporations up to an annual limit of $60,000. And just as an example of the regionality of this tax credit program, $4.1 million was invested in Prince George's blue key energy incorporated in the company that processes craft pulp bills, waste products and to be chemically converted into biofuel, biodiesel and sterile. So that's a key example of the tax credit working in the regions. Other initiatives include a refundable tax credit of 20% up to $50, $250 to help apprenticeships in the shipbuilding industry. And the apprenticeship training tax credit has been extended through 2014 which includes about $31 million in annual funding. In terms of regulatory reform, the province, the government continues its efforts to reduce regulatory burden on business and since 2001 the province reduced regulatory requirements by more than 42%. The small business round table and Aboriginal small business round table continue to provide advice to the government to ensure that the key employment generators that are small business continue to have the business environment to enable them to create the jobs into the future. The key sector is driving economic growth and what the jobs plan really does is build on British Columbia's competitive advantage and so through the development of the jobs plan I talked about some overarching changes being made to promote greater investment and create a better investment climate and business climate for investment to occur and job creation to occur. But within that there are eight key sectors that the province wanted to focus in on where we have a competitive advantage with three overarching sectors, natural resources which includes forestry, mining, natural gas and agri-foods, knowledge-based which includes technology, clean tech, green economy and tourism and infrastructure including international education and then of course transportation, sports, marines and aerospace. And the next slide really outlines which each of the eight strategies, each sector there is going to be a strategy developed or there has been a strategy developed and those that remain will continue to roll out over time. Each of the key sectors government will be focusing in on the key ministries that are responsible for developing the sector strategy will be also responsible for implementing those strategies as well. All this material can be found on the jobs plan website which you'll hear more about in a little while. In terms of job creation, some key initiatives that the jobs plan provides for regional workforce tables where regions, region-specific skills and economic development initiatives are identified. Consultations happen with industry, labor, employers, First Nations, educators, training service providers to ensure that the training programs and education programs are tailored to meet the needs of particular regions in the province and thus far there have been two workforce tables and others planned in the Northeast and the Northwest. Labor market and training programs, the jobs plan wanted to ensure that the significant funding that goes annually towards labor market and training programs over half a billion dollars annually is targeted to meet regional and industry labor market needs. Investing in the industry training authority, over 100 million dollars has gone into the industrial training authority so they are responsible for making sure that there's a dedicated workforce and a skilled workforce for industry and career development opportunities throughout the province. The immigration task force recently concluded its work and made recommendations to governments and this really is key to ensure that immigrants will play a role in still roughly a third of the forecasted $1 million job openings over the next 10 years. So their recommendations are key to the future and their task force released a report on its findings on May 22 or 10 recommendations that have been made. And again, overall, making sure job creation is the focus of government so the jobs plan is a key priority of the ministry and of government and this is really a pervasive plan and strategy that all ministries have embraced and in addition to that, there are two agencies that are quasi-separate from government to BC jobs and investment board who are going to be providing regular reports that focus on investment opportunities and identifying issues and processes that may be impeding that investment. Benchmark BC is the best relative to other jurisdictions and hold government to account in terms of the success of the jobs plan over time and the Aboriginal Business Investment Council is another agency and they're across membership on both of those initiatives so that there's common objectives that can be accomplished. The recently economic investment pilots you'll hear about in the next presentation so I won't go into any detail there other than to say that these are key initiatives of the jobs plan and that they are key initiatives to engage communities and employers and businesses in the region. So recently the six months report was tabled, was provided to the public and in the original jobs plan there were targets that were set for example, eight new mines and operations by 2015, at least one LNG pipeline and terminal online by 2015 and three operating by 2020, three investment attraction strategies for each region and increased the number of international education students in BC by 50% over the next four years and in terms of the progress towards some of those goals four mines have begun construction, received approvals or extended operations. The pilots as you will hear have been established in three communities. The jobs and investment board and the Aboriginal Business Investment Council have been established. The major investments office has been established and they have identified ten key initiatives that they'll be working on over time and over 30 agreements, now 50 agreements actually through the two recent missions that the Premier led overseas. Some early signs of success. In 2011 the share of exports destined for Pacific Rim eclipsed both to the United States for the first time in the province's history and this is key because of the United States economy is still not recovered and our historical dependence on the United States has done as well in the past but we need to make sure that the problem keys in on Asia and other markets. So in total last year BC's exports grew by 14% to over $32 billion and just as an example of the growth in Asia the province's softwood lumber exports to China jumped 60% in 2011 surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time. In terms of tourism overseas visitor numbers have risen by 3.3% which is a good thing however visits from China were up over 15% and thus fueling some of the growth in tourism from Asia. The unemployment rate in British Columbia is much lower than it was last year at this time and certainly below the national average as well. Some key success stories that you'll want to follow in the future is C-SPAN Marine Corporation. There's been much made of this $8 billion contract to build non-combat vessels for the Canadian Coast Guard which will provide long-standing jobs both directly and indirectly for roughly 4,000 British Columbians. As another example of Mercedes-Benz British Columbia's fuel cell sector which has been long in development and the Mercedes-Benz has decided to close in to locate an international fuel cell stack production facility in Burnaby and this facility is expected to open later on this year. In February and Canna Corporation announced it had entered an agreement with Mitsubishi Corporation that will see the Japanese Global Integrated Business Enterprise invest approximately $3 billion, sorry, for a 40% interest in the cutback bridge partnership which is the natural gas lands in the Northeast. Again, I mentioned that we have nine trade investment representatives around the world and their job is really to ensure that British Columbia is well represented internationally and in Asia in particular and that they foster and create the environment for investment to come to British Columbia. So, I appreciate your time. Thanks very much and we'll open it up now for questions and if there are other topics that you would like to see related to the jobs plan we'd like to hear more about them at this time. Thank you. Thanks very much, Greg. So, as Greg did mention, we do have a bit of time here for four questions. Vinny, so you have the option of either using that Q&A button to a lot at the top of your screen and enter your question there or you can also use that feedback button again top right hand corner of your screen, the header there and just change that question and the questions will queue up there and we can take them off but we do just have a little bit of time so I'll just give you just a few more seconds for the opportunity there otherwise we may just jump into our next presentation. Yeah, we do have a question. We do have this question here. Why is there so much focus on immigrants when there are so many unemployed British Columbians that want to work? I think the forecast is a million job openings over the next 10 or 15 years. Immigration fueled the economy of Canada and British Columbia over the last for the historical period of our history. So it's important to ensure that we have an environment where immigrants are welcome and they can provide the skill sets that are perhaps necessary for jobs that are currently going on field. Recognize that there are gaps in certain areas where people are unemployed and jobs are waiting and much of what the regional workforce tables and some of the other schools and labor development programs are intended to do is really to provide that match between the opportunity and the individual and the skill sets. So in the meantime, there are still the need for British Columbia to ensure that there is an enabling environment for immigrants and a welcoming environment for immigrants to come here because the projections are that notwithstanding all of the people who are currently looking for work that there still will be about a million job openings over the next 10 years. So we need to make sure that there is a welcoming environment for immigrants to come to British Columbia. Thanks, Greg. And we've got one more question and time for just one more question here. So Arlene, you're cute up. I'm just going to unmute the lines right now and allow you to ask your question. The conference is no longer in lecture mode. Hi, Arlene. Are you there? Hi. I wasn't sure I typed in the question. Oh, oh, I do see you there. But I can ask a question. The 50% increase in international students, what does that translate into that like sort of total numbers, actual numbers? And secondly, we work with the tourism industry and so we're very interested in tapping into these people to work part-time while they're studying at BC. So is there, they'll take them getting a work permit along with their study permit? Numbers, I'll have to check. There's about 100,000 international students at the moment. So this is a fairly ambitious goal. But I welcome the number, hopefully before the end of the webinar, we can either post it or we can state what it is. Now in terms of your other questions, immigration is largely a federal matter. So the province works mostly with the federal government to ensure that programs like the Commitment Nominee Program have available spaces for immigrants to come to Canada. And we've done a lot of work with the federal government in terms of the temporary work permit and that type of thing. Again, it's a federal matter and we've worked hard to make sure that we're going to be as well represented as possible to ensure that this objective can be met through... because there are cuts back to the citizen immigration Canada where they're cutting back on consolidating offices in Alberta. So that would be, you know, an important thing to keep that pressure on. Great, period. Great, thanks very much. I need to do a little questionnaire. Thanks, great. So I'm going to go put in lecture mode and, you know, a little bit of feedback there. So I would actually ask these students to help us when we do unmute the line. Again, that starts there. The conference is in lecture mode. That's one lecture mode there. And, okay, next we'll be hearing from Amy. And Amy, actually we don't mind just moving a little closer. Perhaps taking Greg's spot there. It's grown a little brighter and a little harder to see people now in the camera. Go ahead, Amy. Thanks, Darby. Thanks for the introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to see such a long list of attendees this afternoon and from such a broad range of from places. Welcome, everyone. So as Darby mentioned, my name is Amy Schneider and I work in the Economic Development Division of the Ministry of Job Tourism and Innovation. And today I'm going to move from the discussion that Greg started around the high-level overview of the BC jobs plan and progress made thus far. And I'm going to provide some specifics about a key engagement initiative under the plan, which is to build a regional economic investment pilot. So what I'd like to cover today is, first of all, I'd like to give you an overview of the regional economic investment pilot, which provides a good example of how citizens have been engaged in moving forward one of the key objectives of the job plan. And I'll talk about how that engagement has been structured thus far. I'll let you know about some of the outcomes that have been achieved as a result of the engagement process. And lastly, I'm going to talk about some of the learnings that we've acquired along the way, both with respect to the pilot approach as a method of achieving economic development objectives for selected regions and more specifically with respect to engaging regional stakeholders and doing so. So hopefully I'll be able to provide some tips for folks on the line if they're engaged in similar initiatives. And I've got a few discussion questions at the end, and I'd love to get people's thoughts and ideas at that point. So Greg provided the jobs plan context. So I won't go into too much detail here, but I do just want to draw the linkage between what we're doing on the regional investment, economic investment pilots, and the BC jobs plan. Objective 6 of the jobs plan is where the mandate for the work on the pilots comes from. As you can see on the slide, Objective 6 talks about working with businesses and communities creating regional investment attraction strategies and building capacity related to responding to investment inquiries. And through the work on these pilots, we're initiating or piloting work to achieve these objectives in selected regions and learning so that they can be applied into further regions in the future. There are three pilot areas selected thus far, and work is underway in each of those regions. We also have started work on a First Nation pilot, but the region has not been announced thus far. The three regions that are underway substantially are the North Fraser, and so that includes the communities of Pitt Meadow, Mission, and Maple Ridge, the barrier to McBride Corridor. So for those of you who know your BC geography really well, you'll know that those are the communities of McBride and Vailmount and Clearwater, Barrier, as well as some unincorporated areas, Blue River, Avola, and a few others. The selection of pilot regions is intended to provide a range of experience by ensuring diversity with respect to geographic location, population size, economic opportunities within the region, as well as challenges that the regions were facing. And as I said, the intent is to be able to take the experiences from those pilot regions and apply them more broadly to future parts of the province going forward. So we're using an intensified approach to do this economic development work in the regional pilots. And what that looks like is identifying regional economic development priorities where the provincial government has a clear role. So the priorities or projects are initially identified at local economic forums held in the pilot areas, and these happened in the three regions I've mentioned in December and January, December of 2011, January 2012, and were attended by stakeholders from a range of places, community representatives, local government representatives, elected officials, First Nations, academia. We tried to get a broad range of representation, so we had all of the voices at the table. Following the forums, communities and provincial staff work together in partnership to select a small number of priority projects or components of larger projects that can move forward over a six to 18 month period. And then the project teams from across government and with those community representatives work together to advance community projects. We have elements of citizen engagement woven into each component of the approach, both from the initial economic forums to project selection and then out on progress. We've tried as much as we can to achieve a transparent progress around engagement and follow-up. And while, you know, looking at the slide, the approach was fairly clear and consistent. Upon application, we've certainly found some very interesting variation as a result of different regional interests, needs and priorities. So just to give you a sense of what the initial engagement looked like in each of these pilot regions, I do have a clip of the economic forum that took place in Vailmiles. And Darby, if you could show that clip now, that'd be great. I'm just going to quickly share that video with you here and reposition a couple of things. I'll be here in a second. I always chose a name and wrote it down to Berger Reed, so the north continent, Valleys is one of the pilot projects for our job strategy. The reason why we chose this route today is lots of small communities in geographic area, first nations that are progressive, but want to move forward with economic development and people that have great ideas already. So the question is something we support the local community to put those projects together in a meaningful way, deliver them on the ground and show people results in a very short period of time. I am optimistic. I'm so pleased that such a large part of the provincial government calm down and fix me with their commitment to making change in communities like ours and making smart ships. They're not saying they're going to dump a lot of money into small communities in order to make small communities happy. They're going to do the things that they can do as government to allow us to go forward. Very blessed in this part of the world to have timber, to have minerals, to have water and to have a place that is accessible. And I think by combining the efforts of people that are willing to work together, it makes it especially to work on pilot projects. It will provide economic facilities and growth to the great outdoor recreational opportunities. There's also some unique energy production for instance. Opportunities around forestry, opportunities around the Valley of Madden. The ability to work in this and raise the family in these areas is really great. It's not contrast like the city. So I think just from the family point of view, these places are very attractive. For raising children and we hope that by building up the economy with a project like this, more young families will come to the area and discover the beauty and the richness of the people in the outdoor. Back to Amy's slide and proceed. Thanks, Derby. So following the forums and project selection, we've moved into the implementation phase. And the implementation will take approximately, depending on the forums took place, about 12 or 18 months. Provincial coordination is key to advancing the projects in each of the regions. And project teams are comprised of government staff from across government from a variety of ministries as well as community and business leaders. To ensure coordination on the pilot project, we're seeking to continually inform and engage both internal and external stakeholders. And we also have a project evaluation underway to ensure that best practices and lessons learned are captured for future regional economic development initiatives. So as I mentioned, the process that was developed was intended to provide five consistencies, but there really has been significant variation on the ground as we've moved into implementation largely based on regional interest, needs, and priorities. And just to give you a sense of what that variation looks like. In the North Fraser region, a number of large projects came forward, and the team is working through these large projects to determine what components of them will be most beneficial and feasible to advance within the timeframe that I've mentioned. A couple of examples of projects that are under development in the North Fraser region is development within the Mission Interpretive Forest and a Business and Innovation Technology Center of Excellence in Maple Ridge. In the McBride to Barrier Corridor, a few large strategic initiatives were identified related to power, related to fiber, and related to destination tourism. And these are kind of seen as key requirements or drivers of economic development in the corridor. So that's where the focus of the project team for that region has been. In Campbell River, there have been some really interesting natural resource-related projects that have been identified. One related to exploring the mining potential of the region, and another looking at the available biomass and timber. Both initiatives aim to bolster existing information and attract investments to the region by providing more detailed information about what types of opportunities are available and accessible in the Campbell River area. So in terms of outcomes, well, longer-term outcomes are yet to be seen in the pilot regions because the project really is still in fairly early stages. There has been some key outcomes to date. Community support is one of them. Stakeholders, as you can see from the video that we just showed, stakeholders are excited to have the province come to town. Quite literally, the province did come to town. They were hopeful about what that meant for the region and what could be achieved through the focus attention being placed on their communities. There were regional opportunities identified. So engaging with the broad range of stakeholders that I mentioned at the Economic Forum, allowed for identification of a broad range of regional opportunities, more than we expected, in fact. And these opportunities were at all stages of development, so that was really great. Now, on the other side of the excitement about government coming into the pilot communities, there are also some very high expectations about what would be achieved. And expectations are good. We've worked hard to manage those expectations moving forward, and we have made some significant progress in meeting those expectations. There's been intensive work between community stakeholders and provincial representatives to find key requirements on individual projects and to identify clearly what the obstacles and barriers are to advancing some of those projects. Work is underway to move priority projects forward in all of the regions, as I mentioned. In the corridor, an example of success relates to the Robson Valley power issues, for which there was a task force formed and recommendations made about six months ago. And what the project team was able to do on that initiative, which focused on power stability and availability in the McBride Development portion of the corridor region that we're talking about, is raise the profile of those recommendations and really put them at the forefront of BC Hydro's list of priorities. And at a follow-up session in Blue River last month, BC Hydro committed $50 million towards building a transmission line, the Robson Valley Transmission Line, pending support from a group of independent power producers to come up with the other portion of the funding required to make that line happen. And the North Fraser community tourism plans are being consolidated in support of the identified priority project of creating the North Fraser region as a tourism corridor and attracting more tourism to that area. And then lots of work is going on in terms of investment attraction and opportunity marketing efforts. And this is across all regions where we're trying to increase the profile and support for projects and proponents in the region where financing is required. And we also have a few announcements forthcoming, so there's lots more progress that will be announced shortly. The last bullet on my slide there is that there's lots of interest in progress up to it. So there's a high level, one of the outcomes that we've recognized is a high level of interest in knowing what's happening and what progress has been made. People who attended the forums and who have been on our website have certainly been paying attention to what's going up there. And so that has been great to have that potential. But it's also keeping us honest in terms of moving the commitments that we've made. In terms of some hints or tips or learnings that we've achieved thus far, the first one is around planning and groundwork. And so in any other kind of broad stakeholder engagement initiative around regional economic development, I think our advice would be as much as possible, do all of your background checking and get familiar with the issues, know the history and wherever possible make connections to the relevant contacts as soon as possible. Communications communicate early and communicate often. Sometimes this is challenging in the government environment but we found that stakeholders and communities simply wanted to know what was happening. They weren't looking for the big announcements, they weren't looking for really big outcomes, they just wanted to know that work was underway. So I would encourage a nimble and flexible communications approach wherever possible. Cast a wide net. So by that I mean be open to the range of options that may come forward. And this doesn't just pertain to economic development initiatives. Of course, this is other engagement exercises as well. I think like we were, if you were to engage in a broad engagement initiative like this one, you'll be amazed at the interest in creating things that come forward once the invitation for input is being made. And an indication of true engagement, I would say, is being open to all of the information that comes your way. And then continue the engagement. So as I mentioned, people were really keen and eager to participate in the process that we initiated through the Economic Forum. And my suggestion is to harness that excitement wherever possible and provide opportunities for continued engagement to shape the work moving forward and to ensure that the community needs are being met accurately. The community that you build through your community process and I think that Tani will talk about this in more detail represents an amazing resource for achieving results. So I've got a few discussion questions and I think that Derby will moderate the discussion for us here. I'll start off with, you know, have any of you on the line use engagement initiatives to identify community priorities? So if I could just ask you to either enter answers to this or other questions, just in the Q&A above, or again you are welcome to use that feedback button and essentially raise your virtual hand in there and we'll get to you. I see we do have a question here from Brian and that question is, on your list of stakeholders, did you include actual unemployed British Columbians in the process? Isn't the unemployed British Columbians the ultimate stakeholder? We, as I said, we had a broad range of stakeholders on our list to be quite honest. The employment status was not one of the components that we knew about all of the folks in the room. This was a partnership with the community, so we had representatives from a broad range of groups including academia where, as Greg mentioned, they would be familiar with some of the skills, gaps, and labor shortages within those particular regions. And we had individuals from a variety of sectors as well. Thanks, Amy. Is there any other questions there? I'll just give just a few more seconds there just if there are any other questions and we do want to make sure we've got time for Fritania as well here and open things up for a broader discussion afterwards. Very much, Darby. I recognize lots of names on the invitation list so good to see, I can't see you but you can see me. I wanted to quickly introduce here with me as part of the team responsible for the digital side, I'll call it the BC Dolls Fund, so the website and the conversation that's happening on the website are two of my staff and so, or not my staff, my team, sorry, I was looking at them, and I wanted to introduce both of them to you because they may, in fact, be able to answer some of the questions I can't. So, first, Brooke Finnegan I'm not sure if the camera will go to Brooke, I think you have to speak. Hi there. I'm just a voice now. And part of the reason I wanted them to come to join this conversation is they have been in early days, Brooke, and more recently, Bowen, have been very involved in moderating the site and being part of the discussion happening on the site and the conversation happening on the site. So, I just wanted you to actually be able to see their faces if you have been on the site and know that they're out there and having the conversation and hearing from citizens about what they think about different topics related to the jobs plan. www.jobsplan.com Can you take a moment? Great. So, I'll just, in the meantime, just chat a little bit with the slides. I wanted to actually pull up the site, pull up the website, and give you a little bit. If you haven't been there already, I wanted to be able to do that. Can you go up to the site and share the, share the desktop with us? Okay. Yeah, that was great. About the site itself and then give you a little bit of a tour because things have changed quite dramatically if you haven't been there recently. I wanted to show you some areas where we're looking to get more content where we're really interested in communities and people who are out there talking to us. So, I wanted to... Do you mind if I... So, I just wanted to give you a little bit of a tour. This, for those of you who have been on the site, it may look a little bit different. This is new as of just a couple of days ago and we're still doing some tweaks. But one of the things we had actually heard quite a lot from citizens out there and we have met with different stakeholder groups who have talked to us about what they wanted the site to do, how they wanted more information about their jobs plan. They wanted to be able to get pieces of the jobs plan. They wanted to be able to understand the components. And so, I'll just give you a little bit of a tour here. You can see, as Greg talked about, the pillar of enabling job creation. You can start to see what job creation is, some of the actions that are taking place, some of the results as Greg talked about. But you can also start to see some of the impacts of people on what the jobs plan is about. And it's not necessarily, because I know this has been a bit of an issue from some people who think it's, you know, government is taking credit for these people. But what we really want to do is be able to showcase people, showcase how the jobs plan could impact them or how it impacts them. They may have taken programs, government programs. So I'll just give you an example of Mila who's sort of my favorite story here. Mila is an advocateer who was a graduate of a program called WIT, Women in Trade. And she works here at the Victoria Shipyard. And she has a really amazing story about how she's excited about the C-SPAN contract and what it means to her and what it means to people that she works with. But also, it's a lot about, you know, the skilled workforce and building a skilled workforce. And she has different opinions on that. So within this site, you can start to see people like Mila and how they relate and interact with the BC jobs plan. And then part of that is also about giving people ideas and giving them suggestions and giving them resources for if they want to do that, how they can then do that as well. And so that's a part of the site that's a little bit different is starting to focus on real citizens and real people out there who are doing really amazing things and being able to shine the spotlight and put the light on them so that others can learn from what they did. So you can see here also, this is for each pillar. So getting good to market, you start to see stories about different jobs that actually apply to getting good to market. And that's sort of a big piece or a big difference between the site and a part that we really want to grow. And I'll talk a little bit about that because you all could potentially have a role for us. So you can see here we have some instructional videos in terms of getting good to market. You can see an events calendar. So different events that are happening around the province related to jobs or the economy. You can start to see posted here and you can post them yourselves, but it is an event. So if you have something out there that you want to highlight or you want to tell people about, I think this event was actually posted there. You can see our Facebook and our Twitter feed. That is something similar to what we have before. But you can also start to see, I think this is kind of a neat feature, is you can start to see some of the infographics and information and data that are related to the jobs plan. You can see posted here. So you start to get some more information about the jobs plan and what it means in terms of facts in the economy. You can also read about the jobs plan in several different places. But you can download the plan here. You can learn about the economy. And this is a piece I think we have a really neat ability to start to actually put more and more content about regions and also about the that you and Greg are doing. But you can start to see information about each of the economic development reasons. And then you can click on and you can start to get details about the Northeast, the people, the work for the economy. And you can actually, that was one of the comments that we heard back from people is they wanted to greater their content to be deeper than it was previously. You will also see here the industry sector. So Greg talks about those industry sectors, agri-statuogas, international ed. And you can start to see, for example, if you click on Mining and you click on More Info. Here you can start to get more information about mining. So here is the Mining Sector Report. There's actually a discussion happening about mining right now that's currently open on our site that I'll talk about in just a little bit. And then you can start to see stories as I talked about earlier on. Stories about people who are involved in the mining community and how that connects with the BC jobs plan. So there's a real opportunity. This was early days so, but an opportunity to get a deeper level of content out that relates to each of you. So one of the things we've heard is people want information about their regions. They wanted about their communities. They want information about the sectors they're working in or perhaps they own a small business and they want to know where they should take their small business, what community they should take it to. And so they want more and deeper information about that. You can also read the plan. That was one of the things that was a little bit challenging before, but you can read the plan and navigate through that plan. I'm here. But the main thing I think that I wanted to show you, there is two pieces here. We'll share your ideas. And this has been some of the messaging in and around the jobs plan, obviously with the face-to-face engagement, the work that Amy has done. But also in an online environment, it's been really important that we open up this discussion. Open up this discussion to the public. We believe that people have really great ideas and we want to hear from them. You will hear, I've heard in the early days, especially those of the Premier and ministers talking about the jobs plan as all of our plan and the collective plan and we want to hear your ideas. So that has been built into the website. And so you can see there's actually a process. So questions are posted related to sectors, typically, or related to topics related to the jobs plan. So right now we have three questions open. Have you studied abroad and what, why did you go and how did you benefit from that experience? A question about mining and a question about work search. And so if you want more background to those questions so you want to understand the context or why we're asking that question or how it relates to the jobs plan, you can click on there and you can actually get information about that question. What do I need to know first before I contribute to that discussion? And then most importantly, what impact will my contribution make? So who's actually listening to me and what are we going to do with this discussion? You can see here that the Ministry of Energy and Mine staff are the ones that are paying attention to this discussion. And also there's other ways to engage. So we know not everybody wants to participate in an online open discussion forum but people may have ideas about this, about mineral exploration and mining and if they feel more comfortable there's an opportunity here to participate obviously in the discussion forum but also you can send information by email. You can participate on our Facebook page and you can also participate in a conversation on Twitter. So you can see here one summary of the discussion and that summary actually goes to the Ministry that has major responsibility. So here, this was one of the earliest, I think this was the first question posted is what ideas do you have to create jobs in your community and or industry and I think there was about 274 comments that were posted. And so you can see here if you click on the discussion summary you can actually start to see who participated in that conversation and what were the major themes that we heard about that topic and then what are government's responses to those major themes. So you can start to see that brought down by questions so that share your ideas just a question that's posted that goes into a black hole is actually government is taking this very seriously asking these questions very seriously and trying to set the context and provide feedback as to what happened. So you can see here the process is that the question is open for ideas for a period of time. It is then closed for review and then a discussion summary is posted on that particular question. So if you haven't already I highly encourage you to go to this section. I'm always looking for more contribution and hoping to get more perspective. The one on minding is a really interesting question. We haven't received too many comments yet so if you know someone who could help that would be really great. And then the final piece I just wanted to show you how am I for time? You're doing very well. Okay, great. So in terms of follow-up progress some of the comments that Amy talked about is people really wanted to be able to follow the progress. This for right now is very focused on it's fairly high level but we would like to get to a place where we are more specific. You can see here this is something we're experimenting with a little bit but you can see an interactive timeline that comes up and this is related to the six month project of six month progress report where you can start to see the different activities that are happening around the province and once the job plan was launched so you can start to see that and we'll hope to have more and interactive data posted over time in terms of progress. You can have a read of the six month progress report. You can also see the discussion summaries in one place as I showed you earlier or talked about earlier but the thing that I think is really neat here is we also start to host our stories and this is going to change a little bit but you start to see more stories about the folks out there in the province for whom either the job plan makes a difference or they're part of the work of the job plan so you can start to see more stories and those are all integrated throughout the content of the site as well. We also have here one of the things we heard sort of loud and clear is people originally didn't really understand the purpose of the site so there's a section called about us what happens but you'll also start to meet more of the moderators now and start to, I think, see how the moderation process works so that it's all transparent and then you can also see our moderation policy but also for any inquiries so again for those people who don't want to comment in the online forum there's other ways to contact us and that is all provided there. So we're hoping, I'm not sure, did I miss any, in terms of just all this in off-ramp and I have no idea why but if you could see, can they see that? Can I see myself? Okay. So if you see down here for folks who are interested in things that are, you know, they've read about the job plan but they're curious so they're curious about the questions around how do I find a job? Where are the WorkBC centers? What are the programs that are out there? What is this thing called JobFest? Or they're already working or they're businesses and they have information that they want about recruitment and retention or human resources, that information. So we've tried to help people out and lead them to a place where they can get information if it's not about the jobs plan, other information really quickly. If they are interested in coming to BC as we heard a big piece of this is welcoming people to British Columbia with information here about BC and also about investing in BC. And I see Jane is on the line so I think you'll be happy to see this section. Is there any following that has been intimately involved in helping sort of rebuild this site and respond to what people have told us they really wanted out of this? So he's probably really tight so can we flip back to the side? I just wanted to give you a little bit of a sense of that. Flip back to my slide. A lot of minutes. Okay, probably or more. But things like it's a living plan we can't do this alone. We need help in telling the world together we need to make this happen and this is just the beginning and this website is live and open to new ideas and we're very serious about that and we will continue to grow and build those profiling people around the province and being able to profile our province and British Columbians but also to make this more interactive to make this more live and to make this more about us and all of us together instead of just sort of I'm going to flip to this really quickly. In terms of sort of the next phase of where we're going to go we're going to continue to build on the stories and so I've just taken a bit of a profile of a few people here but we will continue to build stories and so for those of you who are out there who may know stories of success or really inspirational pieces people to help as I talked about to help set the context and understand why we need job creation or why we need academic stability all those kind of pieces. If you know of anyone we're happy to use and take pictures and we're happy to continue to build that resource library and then one of the things we want to continue to do this is really important and something we've heard a lot is people want more information and deeper level of content and so we hope here to be able to house more resources, more data that's been a really big piece we've heard from our stakeholder groups is they'd like more data tailored to both the sectors in the regions in particular and that can provide a lot of workforce information monthly and it's just a place where they can start to find that related to each sector they want more searchable content so they want to be able to search the job plan and read about the job plan not necessarily go to a long 23 or 29 page document, they want to be able to submit ideas, they want a place to talk to the government and give policy input and they want to get involved but in all different ways not necessarily always online but generally I think need to figure out how we integrate more action and more activities onto the site so people can find out all of the different ways that can get involved not just online and so one of the things that we really need is help in getting the word out and so we've talked a little bit about the fact that it's pretty tough work letting people know around the province about the site and how they can contribute and we also know that we get fairly large numbers of people coming to our site but that doesn't necessarily convert to more discussion and more conversation happening on the site so one of our goals is really to see a lot more discussion happening on the site and so the more people we have the hope is we get more discussion and more ideas and people's ideas are able to be considered and reviewed and thought about by government what we know about outreach is it really is about a lot of different people so we talk within government about the BC jobs plan but we need to do more about having and getting people to understand getting all different groups to understand their role and actually getting them to profile and promote and talk to us as well so some of the things we've thought about we've thought about is how we can continue to lead and get more participation in policy discussions whether it is day to face or online if folks have newsletters or emails that go out to people if there's any you know way you can help spread the word to get involved in particular if you get in particular if you get their topics related to what you're interested in word of mouth we do is a pretty big way pretty big thing way to get the conversation going posting events if you have events again please feel free to post your events on our site and then through social media so we're always happy to retweet and modify a tweet and post things on Facebook for folks and ask them to also do the same for us so if you're using social media be sure to follow us and we will follow you back and so in terms of how what we'd like to do is have a more collaborative and integrated website where we profile more people and stories we use social media to do that and our numbers have grown quite dramatically in the last of the while but we want to continue to do that be able to integrate all of the different activities that are happening all around the province here on the site profile and be able to provide service in a deeper level and a deeper level of content so I think that's it is that timing okay? that timing is great I think you did just have a poll question or two poll questions we wanted to finish with and should we pop over to those now? well I guess before today have you been to the PC? great yep so for those there you are certainly able to vote on this just click on the colors there right on the screen in front of you not the feedback button at the top right hand corner but the red and blue yes or no and I'll just share the results with you here so if you could please actually just enter that information and actually re-enter that information there if you did it before I'm just trying to show the results for you here so show results there we are we're just going to take some time and go through it and you can see the place to contact us if you have any suggestions or content or any other information please do you let us know damn ready for one more poll have you ever made a contribution to discussion on the site? six of you out there and you feel comfortable please feel free to contribute or contribute in the other ways that we talked about you have one other discussion question I guess yeah so I was just going to probably lead off my kind of open part of the discussion about ideas for us on how to help spread the word or any tools that might be useful or anything that might be helpful in terms of helping us spread the word about this site and getting this discussion going around the province and you can certainly do that by entering that in the Q&A again at the top right or if you want to do it verbally just use that feedback button top right hand corner and the opportunity will cue up there and you want to let us know that would be absolutely great it's also an opportunity for those of you who have not contributed to a discussion we also I think would find why you have not contributed we'd like to know why with that as well we'd like to hear as well from you so if you haven't contributed to this discussion and feel like you wouldn't at this point please let us know why and what we could do and we're getting your ideas thoughts and stories as well I think those are the questions that we've had so perhaps we could just switch gears it's a little bit we did have thanks very much Tanya and I'm just going to come back to another poll question I'm here and forward to our poll graphic I like the poll graphic it's really bold right here I'm going to go into the question perhaps a little bit more broadly what other job plan related topics are you interested in learning more about in the small language here so again absolutely please start voting on this so sector strategies international trade and investment labour market and training programs immigration tasks small business support and development the newly established BC Jobs Investment Board and Aboriginal Business Investment Council the other and do you have any use to comment here there's a discussion period following this poll and I'm just going to show you the poll results there what we're getting out and I'm just going to jot these down as they develop I'm going to follow up on a question that someone had earlier about international students you were asking how many international students are currently in BC what a look in the international education strategy and we're currently at 3.3 million international students and we expect to be at 7.2 million by 2025 you can find that report on the website under the sector I think just to clarify I think the number of international students in British Columbia is 94,000 and 50% increase will take us to we'll need another 47,000 to meet that goal over the next four years in British Columbia thanks very much Greg Emperor great we've got that portion the poll question there and we get the graphic one more time so what we'd like to do now is switch things over for discussion so again we're very keen on any questions you may have even comments the Q&A button top of your screen or again that feedback button top right hand quarter pose or comment on at this point I need the likes now and give you a chance to ask your question there the conference is no longer in lecture mode we were trying to answer more than one question on your last poll but it would only let us select one the other was related to that we were interested in any work that you're doing to develop or tap into or to aid business and rural business smaller and medium sized businesses that may not have one burden and that sort of stuff that was because of that that's your one great good one coming around can I just ask other attendees if they could just mute their lines start 6 and that would ensure that it's cut down on the feedback here's a question here so again that starts 6 the government is taking towards small businesses that the environment for small business to create jobs and expand is there so low taxation, low regulatory burden and there are supports through the small business roundtable providing advice to the government on how to ensure the environment is there for small business to continue to create the jobs and be with the engine of growth in the the rural BC website has a number of services for rural to go to that's ruralbce.gov.bce.gov it's the website so there's no specific steps for small businesses the government is wanting to make sure that the tax and regulatory part is there for businesses to be as we see internationally we're trying to ensure that those opportunities are there thanks very much Greg and again an open call for comments or questions hi can you hear me it's Arlene again hi Arlene sorry the last audio was quite choppy but I think I got the gist of what you were saying so thank you for that but just as as a FYI the audio seemed to have a problem there I have another question we really like what you're doing with work BC and the BC jobs site and the welcome BC and learn, study, live BC all of those sites really great work we would I know that there's a lot of industry groups as well as community not just community but industry groups that would like to be more working more with you because there's a lot of initiatives that are going on by in the various sectors like in ours and construction and mining and so on that are tackling labor market issues so we would really like to and we've made some we've had some contacts with your group but we think that's a really if you could increase your working with sectors so that we're all aligned on our initiatives and perhaps even leveraging what each other's doing between government and industry would be great from the web we for sure would like to be able to do that and we've had a little that I think of contact with the go to is that your group Arlene? On the tourism slide I think that would be really great so I mean you know sort of even beyond stories I think getting kind of the story of the tourism sector would be really really amazing to be able to do that and agree for the other sectors as well sometimes it's a challenge for us to know there's all different groups which you know who can help us so if you can help us navigate that's also very helpful We could do that and we've said this many times is that we're all in this together so instead of sort of setting up sectors to compete with each other you know like we've done creative things with the construction sector and so on and so that we're all working together for better for all sectors in the province are firing on all cylinders so a lot of work together of hitting one against the other this sector is better than that one there's just a lot that can be done particularly in areas like career awareness and marketing these key to come and live and work in place throughout the rest of the country and things like that One of the other things is on the small business sort of rural side of things it isn't always government that I know I think Brody is on the line and you guys do a lot of work in the north with communities and helping people with businesses so it isn't necessarily always about government being the direct line but if we can be able to help people connect I don't know Brody if you want to jump in but to be able to connect people to groups like that who actually do some of that that's kind of where we'd like to go as well Small business we'll see with the economic development Okay The Northern Development Initiative Trust it was established back in 2005 through BC Rail and then funding from the government to provide economic development support throughout that particular region so they're funded to the degree of 185 million there's this Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust 50 million and Island Coast Economic Trust another 50 million so they've been working on economic development they all have taken a different approach the Carteron Trust some small business programs as well and I should mention as well Small Business BC Vancouver provides services to the province to people existing and prospective Small Business Yeah and we get asked a lot the apprenticeship training tax credit for both the apprentice and the employer is a really good thing we get from Small Business if there are other incentives or programs to them to invest more in training any sort of infrastructure issues we know as I say the apprenticeship tax credit is really good but there's any other to help them sort of see them help them with the small business investment in training There are the what community futures is throughout the province and they provide directly small business loans and information and training they are primarily federally funded but they are a support there for communities as well I think Vicky who is on the line is from there or was on the line with schedules to be on the line for your comments and questions there and we still do have a bit of time here if there are others that wish to answer your comments there are 15 seconds there so perhaps a last call for any comments or questions from our participants or presenters any last few comments for everyone if you want your attention to our resources we do have so there's the pro-press report there's a regional economic assessment pilot as well and also the contact information for our individual presence