The purpose of this study is to enquire into the problems which face the British Columbia Indians in seeking employment, or in working as members of the labour force of the province. It also seeks to discover to what extent and in what ways the native Indians have been assimilated into the provincial labour force. An examination of these aspects of the life of the Indians should bring to light some clues as to their social needs as a minority group in the province. The study was begun with a full appreciation of the scarcity of information on the subject. The survey was confined to the Vancouver region, and to the predominant occupations, in view of the limitations of time and the fact that the population is scattered over a wide area. Interviewing of the Indian people themselves was the chief method used. As there are very few Indians on Social Assistance in the metropolitan area, material from this source was not available. The results show that the coastal Indians of British Columbia, who form a majority of the native population, are limited in their range of employment to the primary industries, chiefly fishing and lumbering. This limitation is undoubtedly favoured by cultural preference, but it is also clearly due to lack of vocational training for other occupations. Rigid governmental supervision during the past eighty years has also inhibited many from competing with the general population at the ordinary levels of opportunity. The prime purpose of the study is to underline and illustrate the welfare implications of employment. The importance of educational factors is strongly brought out. There are individual examples of the overcoming of the economic and psychological obstacles. But reforms in status and opportunities will be necessary to effect more substantial change. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the relationship between household income dimensions — that is, the amount, size, and kind of income — and associated household types. The relationship between different types of income and total income is also examined. In addition attention is given to a number of other variables which could affect the basic relationship. The main argument associates the nuclear family with skilled wage labour; the extended family with kinship controlled resources; and the consanguineal household with unskilled labour and/or welfare dependence. Hypotheses are stated which suggest the relationship between stability of income with different types of households. Analysis of the household income profiles of two reserves in British Columbia was undertaken in order to test the theory. The two reserves used in the study were Alert Bay Reserve and Skidegate Reserve. Each income source was characterized as being one of six possible types of income: wages, kinship, social services, reciprocity, kind and unearned. Tests consisted of proportion comparisons between households of different types and their associated income profiles. Data was examined separately for each of the reserves. Support was found for the predicted association between high income totals and extended family households. There was some support for the proposition that nuclear families are high per-capita income families, but no support for the proposition that extended family households are low per-capita income households. While there were only a few cases of consanguineal households there was strong support for the proposition that such households are welfare or pension income dependent households. There was no association between income sector dominance and household type. Because the data available did not allow for an examination of skill level and stability of income it was not possible to do a thorough examination of the argument for income dominance and certain household types. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The topic of this thesis is the relationship between transportation modes and regional economic development. The objective is to determine the influence of the mode on the pattern of development. The three most significant variables in transmitting the influence are seen to be: the construction pattern and attributes of the transport systems; the resources of the region; and the stage of development of the region. The basis of the relationship is that theoretically and empirically, in a frontier region transportation is one of the most effective and controllable factors influencing industrial investments. The relationship is examined by associating private investments in northeastern British Columbia with the demand and supply of transportation units in the region. The investment statistics are drawn from government publications while the transportation units are documented in a variety of ways. Firstly, the historical development of the networks is discussed. Then, a measure of the road network is developed to simulate the changing relative lengths of the road links over time. Investment in industrial categories in the study region was found to be related to attributes of transport networks, such as rates and frequency. Correspondence with firms in the study area supplied additional information about transportation needs and costs. The empirical data on transportation networks are discussed in terms of theories of industrial location and regional economic development to arrive at explanations of the spatial and temporal distribution of the investment. The conclusions drawn from the study verified that investments in certain sectors of the economy were related to specific transport modes. Investments in some primary industries were dependent on certain transport units supplied by the rail network. Cheaper freight rates, volume and size restrictions and frequency characteristics of the rail mode made it attractive to those industries which traditionally had low value-to-weight ratio goods. Investments in the primary industries were also associated temporally with changes in the rail network. The wood products and paper and allied industries received investments temporally and spatially related to changes in the rail network. Investments in industries linked with these primary industries were also documented showing temporal sequence patterns. The findings demonstrated that in a resource region, transportation units with specific characteristics are desired to facilitate development of resources. Cost was found to be one dominating consideration. Some industries which used the rail system, could have used the road network but it would have cost 10-30% more to do so given the characteristics of the existing roads. It was found in other industries that the frequency of service or volume capacity characteristics of the rail system were superior to the road system. These characteristics were found to be the most important in the study region and were incorporated into a model of transport related development in a frontier region. The first stage of the model covered the development of an interregional link to join the region with its potential markets. This interregional link or path was at first supplied by a road network and is traditionally of poor quality. The second stage coincides with the "opening up" of the region. Resources are developed and some processing of these resources begins. At this stage, a rail network with its lower rates, large capacities and interregional characteristics is the most useful mode. During this stage the region is slowly beginning to develop its urban hierarchy, but is still sparsely settled. The third stage is reached when activities are linked both in a forward and backward direction, to give the region a greater range of products, and in general products with a higher value-to-weight ratio. Because of this and because the urban hierarchy begins to develop, the highway network becomes more competitive. The model therefore presents a way of looking at the changing function of road and rail networks as a frontier region develops. This changing function is based on the characteristics of the transport modes, the production mix of the region and the level of development of the region. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Local B.C. communities facing hardship in the context of global restructuring and reduced demand for primary resource commodities, have increasingly turned to community based economic development (CBED) to strengthen their local economies. These community based strategies differ from place to place but essentially aim to expand the local economy through socially and culturally desirable development, utilizing local resources, and under some form of local control. However there are numerous obstacles to undertaking CBED, one of which is a lack of financing. Credit unions are community based financial institutions which would appear to be likely participants in a process of community based economic development. They possess significant financial resources, and share with CBED a common philosophy of economic self-help, and an orientation towards the local community. The potential for credit union participation in community based economic development is the subject of this thesis. A three part methodology was followed with particular reference to major aspects of the issue. First, a review of the local economic development literature pointed to the importance of financing, management advice and local capacity to develop in the CBED process. The experience of CBED organizations in obtaining assistance from chartered banks and federal government programs such as Local Employment Assistance Development (LEAD) demonstrates that there are significant gaps in support. An alternative such as the credit union is needed. The credit union system was examined to determine if indeed this community based cooperative financial institution holds some promise to assist CBED, and what factors presently act to constrain such participation. There are two fundamental obstacles to credit union participation in CBED. Firstly, there is a lack of will on the part of credit unions to become involved in CBED based on declining member commitment to credit union philosophy. Secondly, credit unions are presently unable to reconcile high levels of risk inherent in lending for CBED with their non-profit structure. Educating credit unions as to the potential benefits arising from CBED may heighten their interest in participating in CBED and there are mechanisms the credit union can employ to reduce risk. Furthermore, credit unions can play some important non-financial roles in support of CBED, which a local orientation and cooperative decision-making framework can enhance. The empirical portion of the research documented the CBED initiatives of Nanaimo District Credit Union and Vancouver City Savings Credit Union. It demonstrated firstly, that there is interest among individual credit unions within the credit union system to participate in CBED, at least in an incremental way; secondly, that credit unions have tended to follow a marginal business development strategy in support of CBED in their respective communities; and thirdly, there are a number of alternative roles, strategies and institutional arrangements for doing so. Based on this review of the major issues and the experience of two credit unions currently participating in CBED, it appears that credit unions do hold some potential an alternative source of community capital and expertise for community based economic development, but at present appear to lack the philosophical basis for doing so, and furthermore, face some constraints to pursuing a financial role in CBED. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Past migration studies have tended to concentrate on either, the characteristics of migrants, the correlates that 'explain' migration flows, or the monetary gains which accrue to migrants but, despite a growing interest in the field of Social Impact Assessment, there has been little empirical analysis of the relative performance of migrants and non-migrants in areas experiencing economic expansion. The few relevant case studies which have been done examine historically stagnant areas that have managed to attract a new economic activity. They generally compare a single aspect of migrant/non-migrant performance (usually income) and use data that has limited information on important socio-economic variables. Hence, the available information on the relative performance of migrants and non-migrants is sparse and fragmentary. The thesis improves the level of understanding of the outcomes and implications of in-migration. It achieves this by comparing not only the relative mean wage incomes but also the demands for social services and the occupational distributions/unemployment rates of migrants who entered B.C. between 1966-1971 with those of longer term provincial residents (indigenes). The analysis uses bivariate tables to examine data derived from a one per cent sample of the 1971 provincial population, the whole sample is used in the study of the dependency ratios while the male household head subgroup was selected for the examination of the relative income and employment performance of migrants and non-migrants. The analysis can be divided into two main streams. First, the examination of areas in which some previous work had been done. In this stream the analysis revealed that higher incomes among younger in-migrants, which have been found in previous studies and which are evident in the data examined in the thesis, cease to exist when level of education is held constant. Indigenes were found to have mean wage incomes that were predominantly higher than or equal to those of comparable in-migrants. while inter-national in-migrants had incomes that were substantially below those of indigenes and interprovincial in-migrants. At the same time it was found that the indigenous population had a lower proportion of its population employed in service related industries than in-migrants. This is the reverse of the situation in historically stagnant areas attracting new activities. In addition, with the exception of international migrants, the migrant flow did not consistently have a larger proportion of its population in high skill occupations than indigenes. Once again, this result is in contrast to previous findings. The second group of findings is in areas where previous work is minimal or non-existent. I In these areas, in-migrants were found: to have a lower ratio of dependents per income earner than the indigenous population, to be employed in a broad range of occupations rather than concentrated in a few, and to import a large amount of human capital acquired in other jurisdictions. Yet the unemployment rate of the indigenous male household head population was found to be approximately three per cent. The findings lead to three general conclusions relating to in-migration to B.C. during the 1966-1971 period: 1. in terms of the factors studied, in-migration over the period was beneficial to the province. 2. there are only a few subgroups of the indigenous population studied that did not perform as well as in-migrants in the expanding provincial economy. Furthermore, these groups include only a small per centage of the total indigenous population examined. 3. among male household heads there is no substantial support for the conventional wisdom that in-migrants fill a large number of jobs needed by the indigenous population. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The goals of this thesis are to identify the objectives for creating a Sustainable Community Network (SCN) within B.C., to acknowledge the various tools available to facilitate the network, and to develop illustrative models to guide those contemplating the establishment of a network. Three primary research methods were utilized in this project: literature reviews, group discussion in a focus workshop, and individual interviews. The literature reviewed focused on the fields of collaboration, networks in both technical and social capacities, and coalitions. Four objectives are identified as motives to create a SCN: to provide exchange mechanisms, to organise the "unformalized" field, to create a community of interest, and to be a vehicle for power, influence and empowerment. The emphasis at the beginning should be on building personal relationships over creating an electronic network. Other specific products and services are identified as beneficial for the stakeholders: newsletters, conferences, inventories, facilitation, and a clearinghouse for information. Alternatives for administering the network include a network manager, an administrative body, a governing body, and an intermediary broker. This research helps define networks within the field of planning. They may act as a support system, streamline efforts through collaboration or by reducing duplication of effort, act as a forum for monitoring and assessment activities, and be a source for on-going public participation. Three conceptual models are developed representing a range of possibilities for creating the network. The models are labeled the "Fundamental Network" at the basic level, the "Coalition Network", and the "Collaborative Network" at the most complex level. The need for a SCN is reconfirmed. The network should proceed from a "human scale" and develop the capabilities of the electronic network as computer literacy and technological capacity become generally available. Finally, it is recommended that the network should proceed slowly, building on community objectives and incorporating the diverse activities possible through collaboration as experience is gained. Further research is needed to clarify the potential for networks in planning and management, to better understand the evolving place for computer technology, and to monitor the effectiveness of the networks as they are implemented.

The goals of this thesis are to identify the objectives for creating a Sustainable Community Network (SCN) within B.C., to acknowledge the various tools available to facilitate the network, and to develop illustrative models to guide those contemplating the establishment of a network. Three primary research methods were utilized in this project: literature reviews, group discussion in a focus workshop, and individual interviews. The literature reviewed focused on the fields of collaboration, networks in both technical and social capacities, and coalitions. Four objectives are identified as motives to create a SCN: to provide exchange mechanisms, to organise the "unformalized" field, to create a community of interest, and to be a vehicle for power, influence and empowerment. The emphasis at the beginning should be on building personal relationships over creating an electronic network. Other specific products and services are identified as beneficial for the stakeholders: newsletters, conferences, inventories, facilitation, and a clearinghouse for information. Alternatives for administering the network include a network manager, an administrative body, a governing body, and an intermediary broker. This research helps define networks within the field of planning. They may act as a support system, streamline efforts through collaboration or by reducing duplication of effort, act as a forum for monitoring and assessment activities, and be a source for on-going public participation. Three conceptual models are developed representing a range of possibilities for creating the network. The models are labeled the "Fundamental Network" at the basic level, the "Coalition Network", and the "Collaborative Network" at the most complex level. The need for a SCN is reconfirmed. The network should proceed from a "human scale" and develop the capabilities of the electronic network as computer literacy and technological capacity become generally available. Finally, it is recommended that the network should proceed slowly, building on community objectives and incorporating the diverse activities possible through collaboration as experience is gained. Further research is needed to clarify the potential for networks in planning and management, to better understand the evolving place for computer technology, and to monitor the effectiveness of the networks as they are implemented. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The objective of this paper is to relate highway investment and economic growth in a regional context and to investigate the nature of this relationship. Temporal aspects are emphasised in so far as attention is focussed on the way in which economic activity leads or lags highway accessibility. A significant part of the economic development literature has been concerned with these lead-lag relationships. For this reason it is remarkable that so few studies have made a serious attempt to find out the nature of these relationships in a given region. Three aspects of the space-economy are singled out for analysis. These are the lead-lag relations between accessibility and economic activity, between traffic flow and link importance, and between economic growth in urban centres and distance to nearest larger centre. Concepts derived from the theory of graphs are used to simplify and operationally define the space-economy, and attention is paid to criteria for the inclusion of centres and highways in the abstract system. Regression analysis is used for classification purposes so that temporal trends in the residuals can be observed. Canonical correlation analysis is employed to reveal an underlying system of leads and lags in the data. Results show the existence of lagged relationships and the increasing spatial integration of the economy. Levels of activity are shown to have led highway improvement by some five years, which suggests that highway investment has not played the role of leading sector that it is sometimes held to perform. It is, therefore, conjectured that the primary, export-based activities are the leading sector and that these are identifiable with the leading regions of northern B.C. Results also show that highway improvement has led the levels of traffic flow. This feedback suggests that the highway investment programme has accelerated the growth of these regions and hence has fostered the regionally unbalanced growth patterns inherent in the B.C. economy. In addition to this the analysis implies that traffic flow has become more interregional in character. During the same period the settlement hierarchy has become regularly spaced. These trends are thought to be related to the development of a superstructure of tertiary activities directly upon the resource base as these are the economic functions most sensitive to highway improvements. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

The thesis is primarily an attempt to provide a better understanding on how territorial conflicts influenced infrastructural development in British Columbia between the years 1952 and 1972. Primary emphasis is placed upon exploring the territorial component of province-building in British Columbia. The major theme which emerges is that the spatial pattern of economic development witnessed in the province during these years was not merely the product of societal pressure, but instead, reflected the dreams, and ambitions of the W.A.C. Bennett government. Bennett's efforts to build a better integrated provincial society played a major role in strengthening the provincial government's control over the provincial territory. Six case studies on infrastructural development are investigated: railway transportation, oil and gas development, hydro development, ferry transportation, port development, and highway transportation. The thesis analyzes infrastructural development because it is assumed that the state-centred paradigm is much more useful for explaining provincial expansionism within this policy context. The thesis has four sections. The first section provides a review of province-building, and assesses how territorial conflicts influence state infrastructure development. The second section includes a review of the political setting. The third section presents the case studies. The final section provides a summary of the findings and concludes that the Bennett government's desire to exploit infrastructure for the purpose of building a more integrated and united territory had a major impact upon the spatial pattern of economic development in British Columbia. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

There are very few published studies that have investigated in detail the economic impact of the forest industry at a subprovincial level in British Columbia. The reason most often cited is that the techniques of analysis viewed as most appropriate for handling such an undertaking require more economic data than are easily obtainable. It is the hypothesis of this study that sufficient data do exist to allow a close examination of the economic impact of the forest industry at a regional or local scale and that such an analysis can be conducted with some widely utilized and relatively simple techniques of measurement. The central interior of B.C. has been chosen as the study region because of its heavy dependence upon the forest industry for its economic well-being. The thesis begins with a discussion of the historical development of the forest industry in the central interior. It concentrates upon the economic factors that have affected the industry's direction and rate of growth and the impact that this has had on overall regional development. Analysis of the present relationship between the forest industry and the regional economy is in part accomplished using two forms of Economic Base Analysis - the Location Quotient method and the Minimum Requirements technique. Both of these forms of measurement are reviewed, highlighting the major theoretical and empirical research involving their application, particularly in regards to the forest industry in other regions of North America. Using Statistics Canada labour force data, the analysis has concluded that an employment multiplier of 2.13 is justifiable for the central interior of B.C. The latter portion of the thesis attempts a dynamic approach to tracing the linkages between the forest industry and the rest of the regional economy. Applying statistical analysis to three types of data - employment, earnings, and unemployment - the study reveals the complexity of the interindustrial linkages within the regional economic system. Several of the more significant findings are that the nonbasic sector of the economy exhibits surprising resilience to short-term employment fluctuations and that the unemployment rate is an often overlooked effect that must be carefully considered in determining the actual rate of development within a region. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate