The committee met at 2 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Bob D’Eith. I’m the MLA for Maple Ridge–Mission and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, a committee of the Legislative Assembly that includes MLAs from government and opposition parties.

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m joining you from the territories of the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations today.

I’d like to welcome everyone listening and participating in this virtual public hearing for the Budget 2021 consultation. Normally our committee travels around the province to hear from British Columbians about their priorities for the next provincial budget, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the public hearings are being held virtually this year.

The consultations are based on the Minister of Finance’s budget consultation paper that was released to the public on June 1. We invite all British Columbians to participate by making a written submission or by filling out our online survey. The details for that are at the website at bcleg.ca/fgsbudget. The consultation closes at 5 p.m. Friday, June 26, 2020, which is very soon.

We will carefully consider all the input made and make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly on what should be in Budget 2021. The committee intends to release its report sometime in August.

In terms of formatting, presenters have been organized into small panels based on themes. This afternoon we will be hearing about social services. Each presenter, as I mentioned, will be five minutes for their presentations, and then we’ll have questions from members.

Today’s meeting is being recorded and transcribed, and all audio from our meetings is being broadcast via the website. A complete transcript will be posted.

Now I have the honour of allowing our members to introduce themselves. Today we will start with the Deputy Chair, Doug Clovechok.

D. Clovechok (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. My name is Doug Clovechok. I’m the MLA for Columbia River–Revelstoke.

I’m sitting here today on the shared traditional territories of the Shuswap and Ktunaxa First Nations.

D. Barnett: Good afternoon. I’m Donna Barnett, and I’m the MLA for the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

I’m here on the traditional territory of the Secwépemc people.

R. Coleman: Hi. I’m Rich Coleman, and I’m the MLA for Langley East.

I am on Kwantlen territory.

M. Dean: Hello. I’m Mitzi Dean. My pronouns are she/‌her. I’m the MLA for Esquimalt-Metchosin.

I am honoured to be here today on the traditional territory of the Songhees, Esquimalt and Scia’new Nations.

R. Leonard: Welcome, everyone. I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox.

I am coming to you lively, virtually, from the K’ómoks First Nations territory.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Great. Thank you very much.

Assisting us today from the committee’s office are Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond — they work at the Parliamentary Committees Office — and Dwight Schmidt from Hansard Services.

First up we have Jason Gordon from the B.C. Association for Child Development and Intervention.

Please go ahead, Jason.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 1 – Social Services

B.C. ASSOCIATION FOR CHILD
DEVELOPMENT AND INTERVENTION

J. Gordon: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity to present today to the select standing committee. My name is Jason Gordon. I’m the provincial advocate from the B.C. Association for Child Development and Intervention.

I’m calling in today from the traditional unceded territory of the Okanagan Syilx Nation.

[2:05 p.m.]

I’m here today to talk to you about a few budget requests or highlights we’d like to make concerning some of the early intervention services we have in our province. Our non-profit provincial association, BCACDI, represents 32 agencies across the province that contract with the Ministry of Children and Family Development to deliver services to children and youth with support needs. Many of you likely have child development centres in your communities doing this great work.

There are three priorities we have in the budget moving forward this year, the first being early intervention services. Early intervention therapy services are a contract that MCFD provides — free access for any child with a developmental delay or at risk of a developmental delay for physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech language pathology services from birth until school age.

This is the one program where we see a consistently huge wait-list and long wait times to access. It has actually been raised at select standing committee on several occasions and, in fact, there was a recommendation in the budget consultation reports from this committee in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Unfortunately, in those last three years, despite the recommendations, there was no significant lift from treasury in response, and the wait times continue.

What’s happening on the ground, so to speak, at this level is that with the large wait times to access services, agencies and therapists are forced to change their service delivery model, and it’s making it challenging to achieve therapy goals. There’s a lower intensity of services for children and, essentially, a watered-down service delivery.

The evidence does demonstrate that we do get a positive return on investment on early intervention services, but our fear is that with the watered-down service delivery currently in the province in this particular program, we’re not taking advantage of the evidence.

We’d like to propose a three-month wait-time benchmark to access early intervention services. Using wait-time benchmarking is not something we see commonly in the social services sector. However, we do see it in the health care sector. We have managed, as an association, to build consensus around a standardized wait-time measure.

We actually have our first official annual data report from the 2018-2019 fiscal year available on our website, bcacdi.org. Just to give you an example of that snapshot in time: when we did that data collection, the average wait time in the 2018-2019 fiscal year to access a speech language pathologist in the province was six months, with some communities facing wait times of more than 16 months.

Our recommendation concerning early intervention therapies is to use the work that’s been done to standardize the wait time and make investments so that we can start to move towards benchmarking wait time to access early intervention therapies so that we have families able to access that program quickly, during the early years when we know it makes a significant impact on their development. Also, it’s such a quicker time frame such that if they get referred later on in life, around age four, they can still have an opportunity to access the more intense early intervention therapy services before they move on to school age.

The second piece we wanted to discuss today is that as it stands now in the province, there’s an inconsistent availability of services across the province. There are some primary programs and services like early intervention therapies, infant development, supported child development. However, there’s a need for more services such as family navigation to help families navigate through the complex model we have of service delivery here in B.C., behavioural support, family support and life skills training.

What we see in the province now are certain communities that have better access to fundraising opportunities or certain regions that happen to have more resources than others are contracting for these services, which is great, but it’s not making them available through an equity lens across the province in every community in B.C. So we would like to do some work with the province on ensuring that we have a consistent suite of services available across the province.

Now the clock reads zero, Bob. Is that…?

B. D’Eith (Chair): I was just going to say your time is up. Do you have a final point to make? Because if you can make it quickly….

[2:10 p.m.]

J. Gordon: It’s just on an additional model for autism services. Autism has an individualized funding model, which we think is great in terms of parent choice. But the marginalized families have a lot of challenges accessing individualized funding. So our proposal is to pilot an alternative model, complementary to IF, that focuses more on a contract with an agency so that those marginalized families that can’t access the current model can do so.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Jason.

Next up we have Britt Andersen from Canucks Autism Network.

Britt, please go ahead.

CANUCKS AUTISM NETWORK

B. Andersen: Everybody, hello. Thank you for hosting this event for us. It is an honour to be here. My name is Britt Andersen. I’m the CEO of the Canucks Autism Network.

I want to start by asking a simple question. I guess it’s probably not the venue for questions, so I’ll give you the answer first. There are 16,000 children with autism in this province. That is 1 in 46 kids, certainly a far greater statistic than I think everyone ever realized, and growing all the time.

Too often children with autism face barriers in participating in community-based programs. As a result, they feel unwelcome and alone. I think that extends far beyond the children. It also includes their families. At Canucks Autism Network, we’re committed to ensuring that all of those individuals and their families are understood, accepted and supported in every community setting. We believe that kids with autism need to be engaged in fun, meaningful activities, where they can learn and grow and become part of their community.

In the last 12 years of our existence…. We started with a very humble sport-based program, which was soccer. We have now rolled that out to 5,200 individuals across the province and more than 500 programs. We also realized along the way that those young kids that we started with in providing sport and rec programs grow into adults with autism. We realized that we needed programs for youth and adults so that they can work in terms of promoting their physical and mental health and that we can help them through those important transitions into independent living.

Additionally, we work with community partners, educators and businesses so that individuals with autism can enjoy their independence through life. Because of our work with our families, they’re accepted into sports and rec programs at community centres across the province. Individuals with autism can safely ride transit because of the training we’ve provided to organizations like TransLink. Also, they can get on a plane very comfortably because of the partnership we have with organizations like YVR and the training we provide there. We work with hundreds of businesses to ensure that there are employment opportunities and volunteer opportunities for those individuals as they age.

Despite our successes, we still have two big challenges. That’s what I’d really like to speak to you about today. We simply do not have enough capacity to meet the growing demand for our programs. This is especially vital for our younger kids — so children under the age of 13. We sometimes have wait-lists for our program that are twice as long as the number of program spots we actually have.

I’ll give you a great example of that. Our swim program will have, at any one time, ten instructors for 12 kids and a number of volunteers to go along with that. We’ll have a wait-list for that individual program that’s about 30 kids long. We’ll have that across the entire province. That’s important, especially in swimming, because for autism, a child is 160 times more likely to drown than their peers. So it’s truly a life-saving skill. It is beyond essential.

Secondly, there’s also a tremendous gap for our youth and adults with autism, especially once they age out of the system. There’s a lack of funding for programs. There’s a lack of support for vocational opportunities. That very often leads to social isolation, depression and anxiety. Another startling statistic: suicide rates are seven times higher in teenagers with autism than in their peers. We all know that the suicide rate for teenagers is egregious. It’s so much worse for this population.

These are two huge issues for our individuals and families we serve that we need your assistance in solving.

What we’re asking for is a $1 million investment in our programs across the province. That works out to 1,874 additional spots for British Columbians with autism. It works out to a very simple number of $530 per child.

[2:15 p.m.]

That’s to focus on programs, especially those life-saving programs like swimming lessons. We believe we’ve moved that needle on those statistics greatly, and we will continue to do so with your help.

We’re also asking for $870,000 to continue to work with our B.C.-based mental health service providers in building programs specific for young adults and teenagers with autism, because there is no program that exists like that now. And clearly, we need to move the needle as it relates to the suicide rates for this very vulnerable population.

I know my time is up. I’ll leave it there.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Britt.

Next up we have Brenda Lenahan from B.C. Parents of Complex Kids.

Brenda, please go ahead.

B.C. PARENTS OF COMPLEX KIDS

B. Lenahan: Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

I’m joining you from the traditional territory of the K’ómoks people.

I’m a parent representative and the founder of a group of 400 families known as B.C. Parents of Complex Kids. We’re not a formal organization but rather a group of families that connect on line with the common denominator being that we all have at least one child on the At Home program. This program is administered by MCFD under the children and youth with special needs umbrella and, to my knowledge, is accessed by about 3,000 families in B.C. These are the kids with the most complex disabilities in the province.

The At Home program was robust when it was created in 1989 to fund the medical and respite needs for families that wanted to support their complex children at home, as the name implies. At that time, many of our kids would still have been living in hospitals or in government care. The families that wanted their kids to live at home advocated for the formation of this program.

The sad irony is that after 30 years of erosion and neglect, the At Home program threatens to be the cause of children ending up back in government care. Families are crumbling under the financial pressure of raising a child with significant needs.

The funding amounts for medical equipment and therapies were never tied to inflation and remain almost completely unchanged since 1989. As you can imagine, this is extremely problematic.

I would like to just share a single example to highlight the situation. The funding category called “Alternate positioning” has a funding cap of $3,200. This figure has remained unchanged since 1989. Back then, this would allow the purchase of a standing frame and a walker. It was considered adequate funding in the day. Today, $3,200 will only pay for about two-thirds of the cost of a walker and leaves nothing for the standing frame. This leaves families needing to fund the other $7,000 or so out-of-pocket, apply for charity funding, or their children go without this vital medical equipment.

Most charity funding is only available to families under a certain income threshold. Families like mine, who do qualify, are forced to rely heavily on these charities. They are funding an incredible number of basic medical necessities and have been filling the gaps for MCFD for years now. Middle-income families are also challenged, as they strive to fill those gaps themselves.

The current pandemic-induced situation is that some of the charities are overwhelmed with requests, and Variety, one of the biggest funders in this category, has recently had to close its grant application process because of the current increase in demand. This is leaving many kids without vital medical equipment and therapies.

There’s no backup plan, as this is the unofficial role the charities have been playing for years. Now the situation is in crisis. But failures of the program have left many of us in poverty or struggling with financial instability. We’re left on our own to acquire accessible housing and buy accessible vehicles. It’s an extremely costly life. All of these financial burdens are a direct result of our children’s extraordinary needs and could be alleviated with meaningful and targeted investments.

MCFD is nearing the implementation stage of the new children and youth with special needs service framework. We ask this committee to recognize that B.C.’s investment in this framework is absolutely vital for its success and, ultimately, the success of our families.

Our families also experience huge barriers to employment that are directly related to our children’s care needs. We’ve been forced to give up careers, as our days are filled with therapies, specialized appointments, attending to our kids’ personal care needs, ordering supplies and coordinating with medical and school teams, to just name a few of the things that fill our days.

[2:20 p.m.]

We lack funding and opportunities to hire specialized care. So we find ourselves with a full-time job caring for our kids.

The pandemic, of course, has just magnified this situation immensely. We add teacher to the list of job titles. We are isolated from supports. Yesterday Karla from Inclusion B.C. referenced the immense challenges our families face as full-time caregivers.

We urge you to consider the incredible work our families do. It is care that is recognized in Quebec and other jurisdictions, as families are given a financial supplement that recognizes their role. It is care that costs the taxpayer enormously when any of our kids end up in government care. Supporting our ability to take care of our children at home will benefit everyone and keep our families together.

We ask you to invest in our ability to thrive with a financial supplement or basic income aimed directly at families with children with complex disabilities. This would bolster our resilience and be a strong move towards creating a more equitable and inclusive province. It would help us to weather the current situation and the uncertainty ahead. Having a child with disabilities in B.C. should not be a ticket to poverty.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Brenda.

Next up we have Lisa Cable, who is from B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society.

Please go ahead, Lisa.

B.C. FAMILY HEARING RESOURCE SOCIETY

L. Cable: Thank you for this opportunity to present. I did present last year to a number of the same committee members. I’m happy to be able to do the same again this year. As Bob mentioned, my name is Lisa Cable, and I’m from B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society.

To tell you a little bit about what we do, every year approximately 100 children are born deaf and hard of hearing in the province of B.C. The majority of these children are born to hearing parents. This means that many of those parents are not educated about the specific needs of their children as it relates to their hearing loss and deafness. Our job is to support, educate and build a community around those families during the crucial years of early learning.

There are currently three early intervention agencies in B.C., including our own, serving these deaf and hard-of-hearing children from birth to five years. All of these agencies have been operating in the province for over 30 years, working with families in myriad ways: one-on-one intervention in their homes and our centres, group programs, workshops, education, sign language classes and providing events and opportunities for this special community to come together.

MCFD is the primary funder for early intervention services for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The contract for this MCFD funding is coming up for renewal through an RFP process in the spring of 2021. The original contract granted to our agency in 2015 was for three years and has since been renewed annually multiple times.

Since the granting of that contract in 2015, the amount has not increased, while the number of children being served has increased by over 40 percent. As a result, we and the two other agencies we subcontract to have all been operating in a deficit position for the last year. Last month the provincial government, through MCFD, provided a one-time $750,000 payment to offset the deficits and prevent the reduction of services and, in one case, the closure of an agency, due to lack of funds.

Through our early intervention program, parents and their deaf and hard-of-hearing children are able to learn the skills that will serve them throughout their lives well into adulthood. As some of my colleagues have said today, working with children when they are young allows them to develop skills, attributes and abilities at an early age that will ensure their success through all the stages of their lives.

The systems we have in place in British Columbia of early detection and early intervention for these children have had excellent success, and we are recognized not only nationally but internationally as leaders in this field. However, without the financial resources to support these programs, we’re falling behind.

This budget process can understandably become mired in facts and figures. However, behind these numbers are real children and families. I myself am hard of hearing, and I have two children. My nine-year-old daughter is deaf. Through my personal lived experience as a parent, I can attest to the fact that these early intervention programs are life-changing.

[2:25 p.m.]

At B.C. Family Hearing Resource Society, we want to be able to offer our families not only the bare minimum of what they need but all of the supports and services that they should have to ensure their children grow up to be thriving, contributing members of our diverse society. It’s imperative that the funding provided through MCFD increase to reflect the growing number of children and families accessing early intervention and that future funding has provisions for growth.

I have a minute and a half, so I’m going to go off-book for a second and say we’re at a crucial time right now in that, as I said, the $750,000 that came last month was able to pull us all out of deficit, but all three agencies have drastically reduced their services to the bare minimum for this coming year. We’re at risk of an entire cohort of children not having the same opportunities that those that came before them had. And then when we send those children into the school system, they’re not equipped, because of their additional needs with their hearing loss, to function and communicate the way that they need to be.

We all know that if we are able to work with these children and these families in the early years, those successes will pay off tenfold, hundredfold, throughout the rest of their lives. So I encourage you…. MCFD is well aware of what the funding needs to be. We’ve provided them with years of data. They have the exact numbers. They know what the funding needs to be, so we encourage your budget committee to work with MCFD to ensure that these contracts for this very specific population of deaf and hard-of-hearing children are funded properly.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Lisa. So are you providing us with those numbers, at any point?

L. Cable: I can provide you with the documents we’ve given to MCFD so that you have it as well.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Yeah, that would be helpful, because it’s always difficult for the committee to look at budget recommendations without knowing the numbers.

L. Cable: Absolutely.

B. D’Eith (Chair): And just a reminder that the deadline is the 26th at five o’clock. It’s coming up quickly.

Members, questions?

D. Barnett: Jason and all of you, thank you for what you do. I know how difficult it is for many families. Jason, child development centres are such an asset. What kind of an uplift are you asking for in dollars and cents for 2021?

J. Gordon: Thank you for the question, Donna. I recognize that our membership doesn’t incorporate all CDCs across the province. There are some child development centres that are not members of BCACDI. So I’m hesitant, from an equity side, to put in an actual figure. My focus was more on how if we work on the three-month wait-time benchmark, then we can make investments, monitor the wait time until we’ve reached that magic number, so to speak, on that particular community’s resources required to ensure that families can access service in a timely fashion.

M. Dean: Thank you so much. Thank you for all of the work that you all do in our communities. I had two questions.

One was around wait lists. Coming from the sector myself, I absolutely understand how it’s really important to set standards. But if there’s a standardization around wait lists, doesn’t that also require that the business model changes and that there’s an increase in capacity? We can’t just change standards and set people up to fail, if the system already doesn’t have enough capacity there.

Then my second question was about the suicide rates among autistic youth and children. I was just wondering whether you have a breakdown of genders and gender identity in terms of the suicide rates in comparison, at that level, with the rest of the population as well.

J. Gordon: In regard to your first question around wait lists, yes, we have the ability to pull the trigger in terms of building capacity quite quickly. Our biggest restraint really is budget dollars. We are community-based programming, so we work in community centres across the province. We know the costs associated with running those programs, and we know the costs associated with staffing up very rapidly.

[2:30 p.m.]

We have a very large pool of front-line staff, somewhere to the tune of…. We can activate over 600 people, including volunteers, and we can ramp up very quickly to improve on those wait-lists. What we run into time and time again is that it’s simply dollars and cents. We don’t have enough dollars to (a) book the space in the community centres and (b) pay for those staff to put on those programs. I think we can pull the trigger on that quite rapidly.

Your second question around the suicide rates. Yes. So autism is four times more prevalent in males. What’s interesting about autism as well is that it tends to…. There are a lot of gender identity issues. I don’t have a lot of stats around those, but it’s certainly very prevalent in any young adult, more so in the autistic community. So I can certainly, in the final presentation, answer that better with some harder stats. I don’t have those at the ready.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Britt.

I had a question for Brenda. I appreciate everything you’re saying in terms of how difficult it is. I have a number of friends who have had to raise autistic children. Of course, there are different places on the spectrum that we have to consider as well.

I’m just wondering. You didn’t talk anything about respite. I know the amount of time that parents have to put in and how exhausting it is. Do you feel that you’re getting enough help, or the parents that you work with, in terms of getting that respite? Or is there a need for more funding there? Could you maybe speak to that a bit?

B. Lenahan: Sure. There’s definitely always a need for more respite. There are a lot of families that, when they get accepted to the At Home program…. Some people have to choose between respite and medical benefits, and that was something that was pointed out by the representative in the Alone and Afraid report — that that should no longer be. You should get both benefits.

Even once you’re accepted to the At Home program, you’re wait-listed for respite. They’ve been working on those wait-lists, but there are still too many families that have no respite at all and no respite funding. Then there are families…. Yeah, finding respite can be a challenge too. The funding amounts are very small. The basic amount is $250 a month. That only gets you about 25 hours a month. That’s only…. That’s not much. Definitely need more respite.

R. Leonard: Thank you, everyone, for your presentations. You bring up a sector of vulnerable children that is a real big focus for our government. I’m just curious about, particularly Brenda…. And hello, Comox Valley.

In terms of not seeing any increases for as long as it has been, can you reflect a little bit on the kinds of costs that have increased over that period of time, just to give a sense of the magnitude of what is missing?

B. Lenahan: Well, the cost of medical equipment is huge. Like I tried to demonstrate, the At Home program used to provide adequate funding. It has not even attempted or been reviewed since 1989, which is incredible. So there are huge, huge gaps in medical equipment funding.

Same with the respite amounts. I believe that back in the day, the respite funding was probably considered adequate. But we’ve only had one small increase. We had it last year. It only gave us approximately one more hour of respite per month per family. That’s what an extra $25 gets you. Yeah. So there are challenges there.

The other challenge is with funding for therapy. So once a child reaches school age, we’re able to access funding to hire private therapists. But those therapy amounts…. Well, we receive $80 per hour for therapists. I would have to do some research to find out when that was actually how much a therapist costs, but in this day, it will be $100, $120, $140 at a minimum. So families need to top up that amount.

[2:35 p.m.]

If you can’t afford to top up that amount of therapy, then your child goes without, even though the province is funding. They’re just funding partial therapy, and it’s just not adequate. It is also inequitable with the way autism funding plays out, because they don’t have those funding caps on their therapy amounts per hour. So it’s completely inequitable with even other groups. It’s a challenge. Yeah.

R. Leonard: I sit on another select standing committee, the one on children and youth. We did do a special project on neurodiverse children. We did hear from the children-with-special-needs sector particularly regarding the inequities in the access. We’re hearing from a number of different organizations today, and you can see that there are a number of challenges of achieving that kind of equity. I really appreciate this whole panel coming together.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Donna, did you have a second question?

D. Barnett: No. It has been answered.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Any other questions from members at all?

Just one thing, Lisa, again back to you on the hearing issues. You had said that the centres are close to shutting down and only doing the basic amount. Is that because of the cost pressures of providing service? Or what is the cause of…? Because you have been receiving funding. Is it because it’s not enough? Is that what you’re saying? There’s a gap. Is that what it is?

L. Cable: Yeah. For six years, our funding has remained the same, but for our agencies, our numbers have gone up 43 percent. And the other agencies, which are smaller than us, have gone up by almost 50 percent. Costs have increased as well. We serve the entire province, so we have travel costs associated. Things like that have gone up. It’s the fact that the funding remains stagnant, while the numbers of families being served continues to go up.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.

Any other questions from members?

All right. Well, seeing none, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all the panellists for everything they do for our children — and parents, of course, as well. We really appreciate…. It’s difficult, but you do such amazing work. Also, it was brought up about how the pandemic has shone a light on how difficult it is, so we wanted to send our appreciation for all the extra efforts that you’ve made during the pandemic.

Thanks, everybody. We will recess now until 2:45 p.m.

The committee recessed from 2:37 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are hearing from social services and groups involved with social services panels this afternoon.

First up we have Erin Pritchard from Disability Alliance B.C.

Erin, please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 2 – Social Services

DISABILITY ALLIANCE B.C.

E. Pritchard: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Erin Pritchard, and I’m the executive director of programs and policy at Disability Alliance B.C.

I’m calling in today from my home on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish people.

As a provincial cross-disability organization, the focus of our comments will be ensuring that communities across B.C. are safe and inclusive for low-income people and people with disabilities during the next stages of COVID-19 recovery and beyond.

First, I’d like to speak to the issue of economic security and, more specifically, financial assistance for the most vulnerable people in our communities. To state the obvious, COVID-19 is a financial crisis as well as a health crisis, and this has been particularly difficult for people who were already struggling to meet basic needs prior to the pandemic. The B.C. government has already shown leadership in introducing an additional $300 per month on income assistance and disability assistance cheques for three months during the pandemic. We urge the government to make this $300 increase permanent for both income and disability assistance and to index rates to inflation.

Despite increases in recent years, we know that income and disability assistance is below the poverty line and is inadequate to meet even basic needs. By way of comparison, a single person on PWD receives $1,183 per month, and that’s not including the $300 supplement, while someone on provincial disability assistance in Alberta would receive $1,685 per month.

Ironically, while the $300 supplement is meant within the context of a pandemic, some income assistance and disability assistance recipients in B.C. have finally been able to meet their basic needs. It has meant that some people aren’t forced to make impossible decisions between essentials like food, medication, rent and utilities. This should not be reserved for extraordinary times. This should be the rule.

Second, we urge the government to invest in a comprehensive program for assistive devices and medical equipment for people with disabilities and assistive devices technology that helps promote independence and safety. For example, it can include equipment and devices that aid in areas such as mobility, vision, hearing, communication, breathing, eating and self-care. Other provinces and territories in Canada have programs ensuring broad access to these devices, and this is not the case here in B.C. In B.C., coverage for assistive device is piecemeal and confusing.

Most financial assistance available for adults for these devices is through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction for people who qualify for PWD and other categories of income support. Those who don’t qualify for provincial income support can apply for certain assistive devices only if they can establish that the equipment is needed to meet direct and imminent life-threatening need and if they have extremely low income.

People with disabilities that do not qualify for those restrictive programs are left to purchase expensive medical equipment on their own or to seek out help from non-profits and charities. This frequently includes people who rely on federal disability assistance, CPPD, as their main source of income.

In Accessibility 2024, the provincial government set a vision to be the most progressive jurisdiction in Canada for people with disabilities, yet in this area, we are lagging far behind. Most provinces have broad programs for access to assistive devices that are not tied to income but focus instead on ability. For example, Ontario’s assistive devices program is not income-tested. Rather, it’s available to any resident with a valid health care card who has a long-term physical disability. Alberta’s Aids to Daily Living program provides a broad range of assistive devices to anyone with a long-term disability, chronic illness or terminal illness with an Alberta health care card. It’s a cost-share program, but low-income people do not pay the cost-sharing portion.

We say we have the opportunity to do even better here in B.C. In our view, a comprehensive program for assistive devices must avoid top-down delivery and the medical model of disability and should instead focus on ability and offer as much personal choice as possible. Development of such a program would require active engagement and participation of a broad range of people with disabilities, representing every functional ability, and people whose disabilities intersect with other forms of oppression.

[2:50 p.m.]

An immediate first step would be to extend eligibility for medical equipment and supplies available to people on PWD to people who solely receive CPP disability.

Under the current system, if people receive CPPD income that is higher than what they would receive on PWD, even if it’s only a few dollars more per month, they can’t get the medical equipment or assistive devices they would be eligible for through PWD. These are some of the lowest-income and most severely disabled people in B.C. They lose out on benefits that they would get on PWD, only because they’ve worked in the past and paid into CPP.

In closing, we strongly urge the government to make these critical investments to make the province more equitable and inclusive for people with disabilities.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Erin.

Next up we have David Sherritt from B.C. People First.

Please go ahead, David.

B.C. PEOPLE FIRST

D. Sherritt: Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here today.

I am a board member and vice-president with B.C. People First. We are a provincial non-profit society that works to make sure that people with intellectual disabilities are respected and included in our communities. We are a group of self-advocates and have hundreds of members across the province. We speak on behalf of our members, who regularly let us know what troubles they are facing every day.

I’m here to speak about PWD rates and how this directly relates to the lack of access to our community and our right to be included. The PWD rates are currently $1,233, but $1,233 does not cover the basic expenses of life each month. We have seen, with CERB pandemic funding, that the rate for our basic living income has been set at $2,000. This is just barely enough to get by. People with disabilities are expected to live on a lot less.

When we see things like this, it shows how little consideration is given to people with disabilities to ensure that we have a good life. I say this because $1,233 is not a living income. A lot of people with disabilities are then forced to live with their parents or in an institution or end up homeless because there are no other options. There is no one solution that will work to help solve these problems, but we do know that PWD rates need to be increased. It will help.

The earnings exemption is a great program for those who can work. But remember, not everyone can work, and trying to get a job can be expensive. People don’t just get jobs, especially people with disabilities. We are judged harshly and often are not given chances for employment. Searching for jobs takes time. Needing nice clothing for job searching and interviews costs money we don’t have. Volunteering and networking costs can add up when you need to eat meals out and go to events to meet people.

This is just one of the reasons PWD rates need to be higher. There are lots of job options, like increasing the rental subsidy to what rent actually costs. If you truly don’t want more homeless people in our communities, then you need to support people with enough to get by and provide opportunities to be part of the community. We deserve more than to just barely survive.

[2:55 p.m.]

A single room rate, on average, is $600, and this is not independent living. The rental subsidy is only $375, and $600 should be the bare minimum for the rental subsidy. If you want people to have access to the right to live independently and reach their full potential, then the rental subsidy should realistically be $1,500.

We appreciate the earnings exemptions for people who can work. A lot of people with disabilities want to work, but as I mentioned before, it is hard to get a job when you are barely surviving and can’t afford the costs of getting a job.

More often than not, food is often forgotten. We hear countless stories from our members about how they can’t afford healthy food or any food. When people have to sacrifice healthy food to pay rent and bills, it leads to more health concerns in the future. Investing in healthy lifestyles for people with disabilities could actually save more money in the long run. Healthy food costs more, and we deserve to eat healthy and take care of ourselves properly.

There have been multiple times when I had to choose between paying bills and buying groceries — times when I had just enough groceries for the week or to pay the electric bill. It is a common saying that you don’t live on PWD; you exist on PWD.

B. D’Eith (Chair): David, just to mention that the time is up. I’m wondering if you could finish up your thoughts. Thank you.

D. Sherritt: Okay. Please increase PWD rates to reflect inflation on a basic living income. We ask you to please consider how doing so is a preventative measure and the right thing to do. Thank you so much for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, David.

Next up we have William Thornton from B.C. Guide Dog Services.

Please go ahead, William.

B.C. GUIDE DOG SERVICES

W. Thornton: Good afternoon, everybody. I am the CEO of B.C. Guide Dogs. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. It’s my first experience at something like this.

On behalf of B.C. Guide Dogs, our board staff and volunteers, I’d just like to take an opportunity to extend our thanks to all the elective representatives, the government officials, first responders and front-line health care professionals for working so diligently to protect British Columbians during this challenging time. Thank you, each and every one of you.

B.C. Guide Dogs is located in Delta. We’ve been providing support to British Columbians with disabilities since 1996. We were founded initially to provide guide dogs for individuals who are visually impaired. However, over the years, we’ve expanded on our mandate to meet the growing needs of children with profound autism spectrum disorder and veterans, RCMP and first responders suffering from operational stress injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

We’re a registered Canadian charity and a B.C. society. For 24 years, we have been professionally breeding, raising and training guide and service dogs to internationally accredited standards. Individuals and families are matched with a guide or a service dog and receive training. Thereafter, they are receiving support in their home communities for the working life of the individual dog, which is typically about eight years. Most importantly, our dogs are costing our organization upwards of $35,000 to breed, raise, train and support through their working lives, but they are provided 100 percent at no cost to the clients.

There is an overwhelming need for our services. We’re frankly swamped at the moment, and the demand only keeps growing. We receive requests on a daily basis via telephone, email and every other means, asking for either a guide dog or a service dog. But unfortunately, our wait-list has grown so long that, in some components of our work, people are waiting four years now for a dog, which is not acceptable. This is a critical problem for us, and we’re now looking at addressing the issue. That’s what brings me to the committee today.

I want to tell you about an exciting project we have going, which is a shovel-ready proposal to build a breeding and training centre of excellence in Delta. I’m here to request a one-time contribution of $3 million from the government of British Columbia to partner with us and build this new facility to meet the ever-growing demand from persons with disabilities living in British Columbia.

[3:00 p.m.]

Our breeding and training centre is shovel-ready in every sense of the word. We own the parcel of land we’re going to build on. We are mortgage-free. We have secured all of the necessary permits from the city of Delta to proceed with construction.

This world-class building will allow us to triple the number of individuals, children, veterans, RCMP and first responders who we currently serve. This will drastically reduce our wait-list and allow us to catch up with the ever-increasing demand.

We are like dogs running in a circle. We’re always chasing our tail, in as much as every seven or eight years we have to replace the dogs that we first trained. So we have an inverted pyramid, if you like. The facility will allow us, over the life of the building, to train more than 1,600 guide dogs and service dogs. This offers an immeasurable benefit to British Columbians whose lives are touched by visual impairment, autism and operational stress PTSD.

A modest contribution of $3 million from the provincial government is equivalent to the government, on an annual basis, giving us $245 per guide dog and service dog over the 30-year lifespan of the building. B.C. Guide Dogs has never, prior to this meeting, asked for government funding in any shape or form. This request would give the government an opportunity to partner with us and accelerate the services provided to British Columbians. We have, ourselves, raised $2.1 million towards this project to date from the private sector, and I think this demonstrates the degree to which the local community is behind us on our important shovel-ready project. Fundraising for the building continues on an ongoing basis.

In addition, we will independently raise — over this period of the next five years — in excess of $10 million just to run our programs, as we have done in the past for our clients. We would not be asking for any government funding for that, nor have we in the past. We have a very, very loyal and dedicated donor base and a base of volunteers. We’re seeking the same modest $3 million investment from the federal government and have received official support from Minister Qualtrough, the Minister Responsible for Disability Inclusion.

All that’s left now is an agreement between the provincial and federal governments to fund this critically needed project under the existing infrastructure agreement. Our shovel-ready breeding and training centre is a critical opportunity for government to signal leadership and inclusion, access and mobility for persons with disabilities and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This facility would be the first of its kind in British Columbia and, in fact, the first of its kind in western Canada. I believe our request fully complements the priorities of the government of British Columbia and those of the government of Canada. In B.C., through the building of critical infrastructure and services that all communities need to thrive, and nationally, through the Accessible Canada Act, stewarded by Minister Qualtrough.

By removing barriers to participation in the workforce, social and family life and in society more broadly, our guide and service dogs have potential to truly transform the lives of British Columbians. I remain hopeful that one day I’ll no longer have to put anybody, whether it’s a child or family or an individual or a first responder, veteran or any type, on a wait-list for any kind and that they will get direct access to our dogs. We hope that this committee can help us with the infrastructure. In turn, we promise to do our part with the social infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, William.

All right, questions from members?

While I wait for the members to respond. William, I just had a question. In regard to a request from the province — presumably this is a capital request — I’m just wondering: have you actually made a capital request to the province at all, or have you talked to the minister about that? Where are you with working with the province on that?

W. Thornton: We have spoken to some ministers, and we’ve been advised by people to take the path that we’re on today, coming to see you. So that’s what we’ve done.

B. D’Eith (Chair): That’s fair enough. I just want to be clear, William. This is the first time you’ve come to the committee. It is an all-party committee, and the recommendations we make…. You know, this isn’t the government. This is an all-party committee.

I just wanted to make sure that…. This is obviously helpful in terms of moving forward, especially if there are recommendations, but I would encourage you to continue to do all the other advocacy work that you need to do. I just want you to be trying to manage expectations in terms of what this committee will be able to provide at the end, okay? Does that make sense, William?

[3:05 p.m.]

W. Thornton: We do have a proposal in with the federal government as well, and we have been seeking support from our local politicians on that.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Excellent. So you are involved with guide dogs but also service dogs. Also, you mentioned that some of the work you’re doing with PTSD. I’m really interested in that. Is it dogs that help keep people calm? What does the dog provide?

W. Thornton: The PTSD program is now actually the largest part of our program. The dogs themselves…. We have what we call a 52-week healthy living program. The 52 weeks is the time that we make contact, or the veteran first makes contact with us, and we take them through right to graduating with a dog a year later.

What happens is we have a number of steps that we take for the interviewing process. A number of the veterans will set up appointments and want to come to see us, and they might not actually appear at the appointment because they’re coming out from being very withdrawn — perhaps just living in their homes, never leaving the home, never leaving their basements or what have you. They’re matched with the dogs. Through having the dog with them, it actually helps get them out into the community, gives them a reason to get out. They’ve got to go and do things. They’ve got responsibilities with the dogs.

The dogs are very in tune and taught to be in tune with the veteran. So if the veteran is having a negative experience and needs to sit down or what have you, the dog will actually pressure the veteran. It may sit on their lap. I mean, it’s a big…. It’s a Labrador. It’ll put its front feet on the person’s lap.

If a veteran is sitting in a chair or sitting somewhere and they’re completely going away from the moment, the dog will actually bark or will actually, again, go on their lap or will nudge them and bring them back to real time and bring them back to where they need to be.

That’s very simply what they’re doing, but there’s actually more involved, to be truthful.

B. D’Eith (Chair): I appreciate that.

R. Leonard: Thank you, everyone, for your presentations. I appreciate you stepping up and advocating for your sector. It’s always interesting to hear a number of different perspectives.

The question I have is for David. You spoke about rents being $600. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the regional disparity between rents — the Lower Mainland has a very different economic reality when it comes to what’s affordable housing compared to some other places in British Columbia — and if you would see a system of supports that would help create a better balance.

D. Sherritt: Well, that’s true, and I realize that different parts of the province have even higher rates. But that’s about the relationship between the two. That’s for a single person, but if you’re double, of course, it raises to about $1,000 per room. It may even be higher for people up in the Interior, like Dawson Creek, where we have several members as well.

It’s all across the board, really. Every person with a disability is ever feeling the pinch of rent increases. So I don’t know.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, David.

All right. Any other questions from members at all?

Okay. Well, seeing none, thank you very much to the presenters. We really appreciate all your passion in regard to this and also, of course, during the pandemic, everything that you’ve done personally and also your organizations in terms of helping people through this very difficult time. So thank you very much.

With that, if I could have a recess until 3:20. Thanks.

The committee recessed from 3:09 p.m. to 3:20 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing our panels on social services.

First up is Brenda Gillette from B.C. CEO Network.

Please, go ahead, Brenda.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 3 – Social Services

B.C. CEO NETWORK

B. Gillette: Good afternoon. First, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share information with you about the important work being done by the community social services sector in British Columbia. Additional details are included in the submission that I forwarded to you yesterday.

My name is Brenda Gillette, and I’m the CEO for the B.C. CEO Network. I’d like to preface my comments by just taking a moment to thank this government for providing leadership with the development of the social service sector roundtable and the Reimagining Community Inclusion table. We acknowledge the strong commitment of the Hon. Shane Simpson in developing this community table and finding ways to work collaboratively with our sector.

The B.C. CEO Network is a provincial network of CEOs from over 125 community social service agencies. Our members include both union and non-union organizations, private agencies and non-profit societies, and we represent a total of $1.2 billion in contracted funding and over 15,000 FTEs. Our broad objectives are to facilitate a collective voice, promote effective business practices and promote leadership development and mutual support.

Social services in British Columbia are delivered primarily by community-based agencies under service agreements with several provincial ministries and authorities. A majority of people in British Columbia have or will, at one time or another in their lives, come into contact with community social service providers. The services delivered through contracts with agencies are support, development and care programs for a wide variety of vulnerable citizens. There are over 36,000 employees in the sector, and almost 80 percent of that workforce is women. This work is often demanding, requiring careful attention and support for people who are among the most vulnerable citizens in our province.

The employees of our members work primarily in community with minimal support. Recruitment and retention is one of the most significant challenges faced by us. This has been acknowledged by the social services roundtable as a priority, with a focus on finding solutions. Without long-term and sustainable recruitment practices and incentives, the stability of the sector is at risk.

Arising from this, we have three financial priorities. The first is compensation for management and excluded staff to address the compression and inversion issues faced by sector employers. The sector faces serious challenges due to the significant increases in front-line compensation while increases for exempt and excluded staff have been frozen or highly limited. Agencies are unable to attract or retain the skilled and dedicated management staff required to meet the diverse and unique requirements at leadership levels in these organizations. To ensure a strong and sustainable community social services sector that can continue to meet the needs of British Columbians, it is critical that this funding issue be addressed.

Our second funding priority is to ensure that the finances are available to provide community social service agencies with opportunities for innovation and flexibility. Services provided in this sector are often unique and not easily defined. There is an expectation that agencies can continue to meet increasingly complicated service expectations without the infrastructure to do so. It is becoming increasingly difficult for agencies to respond to these expectations in unique and diverse ways without the funding to rebuild the foundation that encourages and supports creativity, innovation and increased services.

Our third funding priority is equal pay, equal work. While we applaud the government’s decision to address the recruitment and retention crisis in the community social service sector, the decision to only address compensation for unionized employees is having widespread and damaging implications and rapidly leading to further destabilization of services. Non-union agencies are increasingly unable to recruit or retain skilled employees, and agencies where there are both union and non-union employees have been thrown into chaos as the unionized employees received significantly greater increases than those who are not part of the union.

[3:25 p.m.]

The rationale of a public policy that provides unionized employees a significantly different wage increase from their counterparts providing the same services in non-union settings damages the entire sector. We continue to urge you to provide equivalent increases to all employees in the community social service sector so that vital services for the most vulnerable British Columbians can be delivered successfully and sustainably.

To conclude, by addressing the retention challenges of key leadership, investing in the crumbling infrastructure and implementing equity through equal pay for equal work, we can ensure the sustainability of the sector and its ongoing ability to address the needs of people and communities across British Columbia.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Next up we have Karyn Santiago from Communitas Supportive Care.

Please go ahead.

COMMUNITAS SUPPORTIVE CARE

K. Santiago: Hi. I’m Karyn Santiago, and I’m the CEO for Communitas Supportive Care. Today I speak as one of many social service providers and as a member of the B.C. CEO Network. I’m also a member of the association that you will hear from in just a moment.

Communitas is a charitable faith-based organization providing care in communities across British Columbia. We provide services ranging from 24-7 residential care to skills-based day services, vocational training, mental health supports and respite care. At Communitas, we empower and support people of all abilities from all walks of life, regardless of intellectual ability, faith, social standing, race or ethnicity.

We began in the 1970s with a group of parents who were asking the question: who will take care of our children? This question has guided our development for nearly 45 years, beginning with our first group homes and expanding service to help people with life skills and other skills, such as social, recreation and vocational. In the 1990s, Communitas began serving people who were experiencing mental illness and acquired brain injuries.

Today Communitas employs over 480 staff, providing person-centred care for individuals, for families and for our communities. It’s also important to note that of our 480 staff, nearly a third of those staff work one or two extra jobs just to make ends meet at home. Our staff members face inequity within the sector, between positions that are unionized and those that are non-union. A staff member working in a non-union program has their wages funded at 7 to 10 percent lower than a staff member who is working in the same position, using the same skills, in a unionized setting.

Our staff members also face inequity between sectors because they receive anywhere from $3 to $5 less per hour for performing the same work, with the same education and skills as those required in a school setting or in long-term care. These are the very same social care workers who, during the pandemic, have come to work every day, just like those on the front lines of the hospitals, care homes and health services. They have kept people healthy and safe, even at a cost to their own well-being. And they have often been unrecognized.

Staff members stayed at their posts serving people in their communities by making sure that mental health supports did not stop, even in acute care. They turned peer support and wellness services into virtual models. They re-deployed without a fuss to safeguard others in group homes. They discovered ways to buy groceries and cook meals and create online fitness programs and delivered parties in a box to people in isolation. And in each one of these services that they delivered, they did it with love.

Yet, as Brenda has just pointed out, our sector has never felt more fragile. Core administrative funding sits at an all-time low, ranging from 3.5 to 9 or 10 percent at most. We repeatedly make do on small budgets. We cobble together bits of grants and donation funding. We adapt complex IT systems on tin can and string funding models. We plan strategically. We meet with community stakeholders. We pay janitors, write newsletters, maintain OHS committees, advocate for those who don’t have a voice, and meet the needs of the next person that walks through our doors.

[3:30 p.m.]

We fund our own managerial training in an effort to inspire and retain the rising stars amongst our young people. We report six ways to Sunday, using a different template for every funder, tracking every penny that we spend and every hour that we serve. We do all of this on shoestring budgets because our deeper commitment is that we leave no one behind.

Today I’m asking you to consider the future social implications to communities if we do not make a course adjustment in B.C. There are several things that you can do for our sector. You can commit to developing and funding an overarching framework of social care that ensures that organizations have the opportunity to grow services and develop innovative strategies. You can address the ongoing inversion and compression wage inequities that exist in our sector. By doing so, you’ll ensure that we retain the best and brightest of our young people. You can create provincewide wage equity for the sector so that equal work is rewarded with equal pay.

This government has shown the world that we have what it takes to manage a pandemic beautifully, efficiently, successfully. I encourage us now to show the world that we have what it takes to create a social care system that we can all be proud of.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Karyn.

Next up we have Rick FitzZaland from the Federation of Community Social Services of British Columbia.

Please go ahead, Rick.

FEDERATION OF COMMUNITY
SOCIAL SERVICES OF B.C.

R. FitzZaland: I’d like to begin today by commending the leadership provided by this government with the cooperation of all parties during this crisis. At a time when it would be easy to ignore the most vulnerable in our communities, the government has focused on meeting their needs. When it would be tempting to make decisions for political gain, this government has been guided by the office of the provincial health officer and made good population health decisions. Thank you.

I also want to commend the government for having the vision and resolve to create the community Social Service Sector Roundtable chaired by the hon. Minister Shane Simpson. Having a truly collaborative cross-sector initiative active and engaged through this pandemic was invaluable. I want to thank and acknowledge our government colleagues and sector partners for creating the round table with us and for continuing to show up over the past few very difficult months.

When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, we’re going to look back at this moment, and we’re going to remember several important things. One of those things is the remarkable job that social service workers did in these unbelievable circumstances.

When other businesses closed or transitioned to working from home, social service staff across the province kept shelters for women open and continued running their residential programs for youth in care and people with disabilities. They found new ways to support struggling families and opened up spaces to care for the children of other essential workers in spite of the risk. Our sector leaders found ways to keep their organizations operating and made tough decisions in a time of incredible uncertainty in order to provide guidance and security to their staff and clients.

There should be no doubt in your mind that B.C.’s community social services are absolutely essential. A sector that has been historically ignored and underfunded accomplished remarkable things over the past few months in impossible circumstances. Recognizing these contributions is important; learning from them is absolutely vital, because the other thing that we’re going to remember when this pandemic is over is how vulnerable and frail our social service sector is.

A number of the issues that the federation has been talking about for years — procurement practices, pay inequity, health and safety — have been put in sharp focus. Our province needs to do things differently. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the professional, competent and committed social sector workers across B.C. deserve to be compensated fairly and at the level of equally qualified workers in other sectors. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that procurement practices that favour low-wage multinationals and penalize community-based organizations need to be addressed.

There are a number of things that need to be done to strengthen and support B.C.’s social service sector, and reconciliation is part of each and every one. The simple truth is that you can’t be in favour of reconciliation and ignore a procurement system that is biased against Indigenous organizations. You can’t be in favour of reconciliation and allow inequitable wage structures that make it impossible to hire Indigenous staff for community-based programs.

[3:35 p.m.]

Addressing these systemic barriers is a big part of what reconciliation looks like. Our Indigenous friends, colleagues and community members deserve action, not just words.

Many of the other things that need to be done are already in the works. The items and issues in front of the Social Service Sector Roundtable are some of the things that most urgently need to be addressed. We urge this government to fully support and fund the round table and its important work around procurement, pay equity, health and safety, and human resources.

We are already seeing the results of certain initiatives related to health and safety, which prove that there are clear benefits to leveraging our insight, experience and understanding. I urge you to ensure that this important piece of work is fully supported and funded so that we can continue to make sure this government’s good intentions actually have their intended impact.

In many ways, our province’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a shining example of how to handle a crisis. The B.C. social service sector has been in crisis for decades. There remains a lot of work to do, but we are fully committed to working with our government colleagues in order to achieve lasting, positive change. We all understand that healthy, supported communities make good economic sense, but healthy, supported communities are not possible without a strong and sustainable community social services sector.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Rick.

Questions from members?

M. Dean: I just want to say thank you so much to you all for all of your work and the work of all of your members and all the front-line workers and management as well. It’s just such a critical service to so many people in our province — really important work. I know you’re really busy as well, so taking time out to present to us is really, really appreciated.

Rick, I was really moved and inspired by your written submission as well. I found it really uplifting and optimistic and hopeful. The fact that you talk about trust in those relationships, to me, is really significant and important, especially coming from the sector as well.

I don’t know who of you wants to answer my question, but what we’ve seen in this sector and what we’re seeing with the pandemic is its really significant impact. Some agencies and some organizations might not survive just because they’re all in different places, and different kinds of packages might not be able to fill voids. Some might have been running deficits for years or whatever.

The landscape might change. We might see a transformation triggered by the pandemic. What would you see would be an opportunity here for a transformation or a revisioning of this sector and the sustainability of agencies in that sector?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Karyn or Rick, did you want to answer that?

R. FitzZaland: Well, first of all, I don’t think we’ve seen the full impact of the pandemic yet. What we know is that we are already seeing increased demand on services. We’re seeing, particularly in the area of mental health, a crisis, I think, among our workers in health and safety, again related to the mental health, the stress that they’ve been going through. They’re dealing with those issues while they’re also getting increased referrals and demand for their services in these areas. The demand continues to increase. Our capacity is no greater than it was before the pandemic, and our fragility is much greater.

I think we need to look at this sector as a whole. We need to sit back and say: “What are the services that the government wants to provide the people of British Columbia? What are the social services that the people of British Columbia need in order to be able to show up for work healthy and strong and contribute to the economy in order to support each other in the community? What is it that people need, and what does the government need to augment that to support them?”

[3:40 p.m.]

Then we say: “Okay. Well, if that’s the case, if that’s what’s needed, then what does the sector need to look like in order to provide that?” What it doesn’t need to look like is fractured. It doesn’t need to look like it’s splintered. We get procurement going that splinters the sector, that creates uneven opportunities from one area to the other, that doesn’t recognize….

Mitzi, you know this very well. A person may present themselves to an agency with a mental health and addiction issue, but you can believe that there are other issues going on in that family and in that person’s life. You can believe that there are employment issues, that there are some people that may be experiencing family violence.

What they present is more complex than what you see up front. Trying to deal with that person in a fragmented way — just dealing with the mental health and addiction issue, just dealing with the family violence issue or just dealing with the employment issue — doesn’t work.

Now the agency…. Karyn knows this; Karyn can tell you all about this. Her agency does this work. Treating people as a whole and putting together all the little pieces from all the different ministries as a whole package of support for that person in that family is what she has to do to make it work. It’d be really nice if the government system helped that —right? — and supported pulling the pieces together so that you’re dealing with the individual and the family as a whole within their real context — not within what the context is in another community but what their context is right there.

That flexibility and integration of the sector is what’s needed. A lot of it is pulled together informally by agencies working together and by associations — like the CEO Network, the federation and even others — working together through the round table. There’s a lot of that informal stuff that happens, but we really need structural change so that we can do it more effectively and more efficiently.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Rick.

I just have a question for the group. Obviously, the pay equity issue is one that has been brought up. One of the concerns, of course, is: how does the government ensure, with the non-unionized labour, that any increases actually make it to the people on the ground? With the collective agreements, there’s a mechanism there. Perhaps you could explain to me how any increase would get to those people who need it the most.

R. FitzZaland: Karyn and Brenda, if you’ll let me have a first stab at this, then I know you’ll have something to say as well.

First of all, that is something that I have heard repeatedly, and it’s just simply not true. Non-union agencies have their money sent to non-union workers. That there’s not the same level of accountability and the same level of reporting as there is for union workers is simply not true. They are still provided the services under a contract to the government ministries, and there are still the same accountability requirements under those contracts, regardless of whether they’re union or non-union. It just isn’t true. It’s not there.

I hear that frequently as a reason: “We’re careful about giving the money to the non-union workers because we don’t know if it’s really going to be spent.” It also implies that this money…. I don’t know where it’s going, but somehow it’s being used inappropriately for these agencies. Let me tell you: the agencies are compensating these workers through all types of strategies that they have to put together: fundraising and other ways of finding savings that they can pay the workers more in order to keep the workers on the job, because they’re not making enough.

There’s no…. It simply isn’t true. I welcome an audit by the government. I welcome any investigation whatsoever. Work with us, and we’ll work with you to show you that this is just not the case. The money goes to where it’s intended to go — plus money that we don’t get. It goes there to pay those workers.

K. Santiago: I’d be happy to add to that and just say that we sign a declaration with our funders, ensuring that the funding that they give us for increased wages goes to our employees. Another example is: all of our contracts with Community Living B.C. are audited. In fact, we were audited about one year ago. The auditors came in and took a look at all of our wages and benefits. Every year we report our wages and benefits on our non-union contracts, and they take a look at them.

There are definitely assurances there. I don’t think there’s any problem with the trail. We are also audited financially by our auditors, and we report to CRA on all of our services and funding that we have every year.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Karyn. Any other questions from members at all?

Well, seeing none, I wanted to thank you very much for your presentations. Of course, on behalf of the whole committee, thank you so much to you and your members for what you have done during the pandemic. It’s been truly heroic from every angle. We really appreciate everything that’s been done and that will be done over the coming months.

With that, if we could have a short recess until 3:50. Thanks so much, everyone.

The committee recessed from 3:45 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing with panels on social services.

First up we have Karin Kirkpatrick from Family Services of Greater Vancouver.

Karin, please go ahead.

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 4 – Social Services

FAMILY SERVICES OF GREATER VANCOUVER

K. Kirkpatrick: I’d like to start by acknowledging that I’m on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, represented by the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam First Nations.

Mr. Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members, I thank you for giving our organization the opportunity to speak with you today. I’m Karin Kirkpatrick. I’m the CEO of Family Services of Greater Vancouver. I’m also a board member of Family Services Canada and a director of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. I’m here today with my colleagues from Pacific Community Resources Society and Archway Community Services.

While this committee is focused on the 2021 budget in February, my comments also address systemic funding issues which I believe should be considered both now and into the future. B.C.’s 25,000 non-profits serve hundreds of thousands of British Columbians each year, employing 86,000 people and contributing $6.4 billion to the province’s GDP. The early interventions of the social services sector in mental health, addictions and domestic violence are proven to reduce the burden on the public health sector and results in lower provincial health care costs.

There are two requests that I’m making, for your consideration. Number 1 is wage inequity concerns. The provincial government can’t rely on people doing this work because they’re good people. COVID has illustrated just how important and complex the jobs in our industry are. In fact, a number of programs were deemed essential during this crisis. Our sector cannot develop and retain the talent that’s required to provide this complex, compassionate care without wages that recognize those contributions.

Not only is there a wage differential between health care employees and social service employees, with health care getting more; two years ago this provincial government made a deliberate decision to fund unionized employers in the sector at a higher rate than non-unionized employers performing the exact same jobs in the exact same programs on behalf of government. We question the rationale behind this. This has also created an additional wage differential between employees in the very same sector. My staff are victim support workers, creating safety plans for victims of intimate partner violence; counsellors helping children and families overcome the trauma of sexual abuse; youth workers running 24-7 homes supporting young people experiencing addiction and homelessness.

I’d also like to remind this committee that we have not yet seen the funds for fair wages committed to in the 2020 budget.

No. 2 is adequate contract funding. Just as we can’t depend on staff to accept inadequate pay out of the goodness of their hearts, the provincial government can’t expect organizations like ours to make up for shortfalls in underfunded contracts. Being held to an administrative allowance of 10 percent to run government contracts does not adequately support the cost of service delivery. It results in our needing to fundraise for what should be taxpayer-funded services. Operating at bare bones, we calculate the true administrative costs of these programs at approximately 13.5 percent. In the province of Ontario, provincial government funding is provided, up to 15 percent, to organizations.

For more than a decade, my organization has had to fund­raise, for example, for victim services programs deli­vered on behalf of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. That has added up to close to $1 million that our agency and its donors have spent to subsidize a program for the province of British Columbia.

My requests, specifically. One, funding the full cost of services. We ask that when you are contracting with an agency to deliver a service on your behalf, you should be paying the full cost of service provisions, including the agency’s actual operating costs. This also includes funding the costs associated with the current inequity between union and non-union employers.

The second is moving to global budgeting. We ask that you implement a transparent and accountable global approach when you approve a total budget and allow service providers to determine how best to manage the funds within their service mandate. Our agencies are the subject-matter experts. Government should focus on accountability measures such as quantitative and qualitative outcomes, not on the day-to-day management of programs.

[3:55 p.m.]

Service providers should be encouraged to be efficient and to maintain high-quality service provision rather than having draconian oversight, where we have to justify the cost of stationery or IT to deliver services.

I thank you very much for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from my colleagues.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Karin.

Next up we have Calum Scott from Pacific Community Resources Society.

Calum, please go ahead.

PACIFIC COMMUNITY RESOURCES SOCIETY

C. Scott: Good afternoon. I, too, would like to just acknowledge that I’m presenting to you today from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and I am grateful for their stewardship of these lands.

Mr. Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members, I’m grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today about the upcoming provincial budget. My name is Calum Scott, and I am the director of operations at Pacific Community Resources Society — or PCRS, as we are more commonly known. PCRS has a long history of serving communities in British Columbia. We have services throughout Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and the South Okanagan, with focuses on education, employment, housing, substance use, mental health and supports for youth and families.

I’m here today with my colleagues from Family Services of Greater Vancouver and Archway Community Services, and I am really grateful to be able to unite our voices today. I would really like to focus my time today on a few things — the evaluation of contract deliverables, the length and renewal of contracts, and the contract procurement process.

The community social services sector and agencies like PCRS, Family Services and Archway build our services with a client-centred approach — the desire for our services to be ones that are relevant and that address the needs and the gaps of our communities and what our communities are telling us. This often requires us to actively listen to what our community and our clients are sharing with us and then allows us to have the ability to respond and react to what we’ve heard.

This approach can often come into conflict with our current contract agreements, because often the approach of our government contracts really is around having this agreed-upon set of deliverables, a very defined number of staff who are required to provide those deliverables, and then very detailed expense activities — a real focus on the ways that this program or service will work, as opposed to what this service is providing to the community.

I really believe that the government needs to shift their lens and become more outcome-focused and less financially operations– and output-focused so that our sector can be much better equipped to respond to the gaps and still produce strong program outputs, as we’ve agreed to in our contracts. Additionally, I would ask that the length of contracts be increased. Many of the services that we provide to our clients are not short term. We are often working with people with very complex circumstances and needs. At PCRS, we have a continuum of services from housing to supports, and we regularly see youth for multiple years.

A really quick example I can give you is of a young Indigenous woman who came to us as a 12-year-old struggling with homelessness and violence in her home. We’ve worked with her from the age of 12 to the age of 24, as she has gone through multiple service streams, from housing to education to support services, with her mental health and addictions. Now she’s a 28-year-old who is still in contact with our staff and is still receiving support, despite the fact that that’s outside of our funding mandate.

Finally, I’d like to quickly touch on the government’s procurement process. I understand that there’s legislative requirements for contracts to be retendered over time, but I’m disappointed by how often this process undervalues an incumbent’s previous experience with that contract. The government needs to put more weight into previous success — the strength of community and Indigenous relationships that currently exist — and really think about the potential impact on a community if a contract were to change providers.

As a well-written proposal can undercut budgets, it should not be enough to oust the criteria it required. We’ve seen, time and again, this process really damage relationships between social services agencies and their partners, and the outcomes for the community are damaged because of that.

[4:00 p.m.]

I really do believe that we need to think about these contracts. It’s more than just dollars but about the overall community and how long-standing relationships and partnerships contribute to the fabric of the community.

Thank you for your time.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much.

Next up we have Rod Santiago from Archway Community Services Society.

Please go ahead, Rod.

ARCHWAY COMMUNITY SERVICES SOCIETY

R. Santiago: Mr. Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the upcoming provincial budget process.

I am Rod Santiago, executive director of Archway Community Services. I’m presenting to you today from the unceded territory of the Matsqui and the Sema:th Nations of the Stó:lō peoples with my partners.

I would like to thank the B.C. Finance Minister for saying to a conference of community and social service EDs in February: “You are my first stop on my budget tour.” It’s because of our commitment to community. We are grateful to work alongside a government so committed to community.

So, too, we commend our provincial government for B.C.’s exemplary approach to addressing the global pandemic. Premier Horgan, Health Minister Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Henry have led with wisdom, foresight, calmness and expertise where many world leaders have not.

The success of B.C.’s approach to COVID wasn’t primarily driven by economics, as has been the failed attempt in other jurisdictions, but by providing room for experts — in this case, Dr. Bonnie Henry, in population and public health — to ensure that B.C. is, as the New York Times described it, “leading the way out of lockdown.” Resultingly, when it comes to reopening provincial economies, B.C. is identified as one of the top three Canadian provinces that will lead the pandemic recovery by the end of the year. Our provincial government had, and continues to have, the leadership acuity and courage to invite the experts in the field to be the ones to lead our province to the flat side of this curve.

So, too, we ask our provincial government to display a similar discernment and boldness by inviting community social services, the experts in the field, to be the ones to truly lead our province in addressing the social needs in community. We have the skills to lead, are nimble and responsive and are effective and efficient. At precisely the right time, when business and government offices were closing their doors in late March, and despite the huge uncertainty of threat to self and our families, many community agencies like ourselves chose to keep our doors open, because we are driven by our mission and our love for our clients.

Within a week of the World Health Organization de­clar­ing a pandemic, organizations such as ours had created a new mobile seniors outreach initiative to get groceries and prescriptions to isolated seniors. Shortly thereafter, we had turned our food bank into a drive-through service to ensure proper social distancing.

In no time, we were taking our most vulnerable youth on virtual roller-coaster rides at the PNE, complete with cotton candy and mini-doughnuts, providing culturally relevant food as well as valuable information to newly arrived temporary foreign workers from Mexico so that your loved ones can eventually have food on their tables, and doing storytimes for families on Facebook in English and Punjabi, with up to 400 views each time.

COVID-19 did not slow down our sector. It did force us to innovate in order to reach those most affected by the lockdown. Now the question is: how do we best transition from virtual back to face to face? And we’re asking, as we plan ahead: how do we prepare for the next wave?

At any given time, but especially during a time of crisis such as a pandemic, agencies need quick access to provincial innovation funding. The mechanisms established should allow access to funding within five working days, be undesignated funds in order to permit capacity-building and create mutually designed, tangible outcomes and accountability mechanisms.

With regards to temporary pandemic pay, whereas the overarching message is appreciated that front-line workers in the social services sector have been seen and are being temporarily compensated for their COVID-related efforts, the actual delivery mechanism that’s being utilized is flawed. Child care workers, the epitome of an underpaid, undervalued female workforce, is not being recognized through pandemic pay. Food bank teams, who have dealt with one of the worst pandemic issues, food insecurity, and who deal with thousands of clients, will also not be compensated.

[4:05 p.m.]

In fact, 56 percent of my agency of 400 staff, who have equally risked their lives delivering front-line care, will not be eligible for pandemic pay. A fair pandemic pay system, giving proper autonomy to the social services sector, would give each agency a lump sum based on our number of staff and leave the agency to do the distribution. We are the employers. The front-line workers are our staff.

Thank you for listening to our combined presentation and considering our recommendations. The three of us are open to accept questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Rod and the other panellists.

I just want to make sure everyone knows that our Deputy Chair is actually Doug Clovechok.

Anyway, let’s open the floor for questions.

M. Dean: Thank you to you and to all of your staff for all the service that you deliver to British Columbians. Thank you for all of the support you’ve provided for your staff and for being here today advocating on behalf of your staff and the sector as well.

We’ve heard from other parts of the province in this sector. And I think we all hear in our constituency offices as well about the concerns for agencies. I’m just wondering if you see that there’s going to be a different landscape when we come out of this because some agencies will survive, and some won’t.

Do you see this as an opportunity, or is this a time when we can actually transform and make some improvements to how we organize our service delivery and our model of being able to provide services that British Columbians need?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Rod, go ahead.

R. Santiago: This is an opportunity. I think that now is the opportunity to be able to take a look at this. Agencies are responding right now, and we’re responding on bare bones. If we can do it on bare bones, imagine what we can do if we had more to be able to do it. We know that this is not the end of the pandemic. There is more to come.

If we had the capacity, as agencies, to not just be responding now but to be moving forward to what is ahead for us and to have the capacity with virtual, with technology to, as a sector, build up the capacity for our sector to be taking care of our communities and all of those vulnerable in our community moving forward, imagine how much stronger our communities could be as a result of that. That’s what we’re asking for — the capacity to plan ahead and be able to do that.

I’ll just open it up to Calum and Karin to add to that.

K. Kirkpatrick: I think that there is going to be a difference in the way that we deliver services. It does come back to resources and technology. But we did find, in some of our programs, that we were able to access and serve people more quickly and in a broader geographic area with the ability to reach out to them virtually.

I do think there’ll be some changes. There will be more of an awareness, I think, of crises like this and our ability to be prepared and react to them.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Calum, did you want to jump in?

C. Scott: I would echo that. Two things I would add. I think we have, in my experience, seen clients who we have struggled to engage with…. All of a sudden, when being forced to do it virtually, they’re blossoming and coming out in a totally different way. So I think that will potentially allow us to create a new hybrid approach when this is over.

I think the other thing that this has done is that this has forced us out of our comfort zone. It has really forced us to look at some of our programs and services in a different lens and really understand what are the vital core parts of that service that we have held on to — maybe in an incorrect way — and realize that this could be done in a different way. And there may be more efficient and better ways to do this.

That’s been really exciting too, because I think sometimes programs just keep going on the way that they do, and you need that forced refreshing. I think that has forced us, with some of our programs and ways that we engage, to do that a little bit.

[4:10 p.m.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We’ve been hearing this for the last three weeks from nearly every sector — that the pandemic has certainly shone a light on things that work and don’t work and deficiencies and things that work really well. As tough as it has been, it’s also providing some opportunities to improve services. So I appreciate your comments there, all three of you. Thank you very much.

Any more comments or questions from members?

Seeing none, I do also want to echo the members’ thanks to all of you and your organizations during the pandemic, everything that you’ve done personally and your associations and your community services. It has truly been all hands on deck. I do appreciate the kind words in regards to Dr. Bonnie Henry and others. I think the reason it worked is because everyone listened, not just people but agencies and organizations. So thank you for everything you’ve done.

With that, I’d like to take a recess until 4:25. Thanks, everybody.

The committee recessed from 4:11 p.m. to 4:24 p.m.

[B. D’Eith in the chair.]

B. D’Eith (Chair): We are continuing with presentations on social services.

First up we have Omar Dominguez from Vantage Point.

Go ahead, Omar.

[4:25 p.m.]

Budget Consultation Presentations
Panel 5 – Social Services

VANTAGE POINT

O. Dominguez: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m deeply honoured to be speaking with you today. I am here to represent the sector that consists of over 29,000 community-based societies.

B.C.’s not-for-profit sector is vast in size, scope and impact. We provide more than 86,000 jobs and generate over $6.7 billion towards our GDP. Our work has never been more urgently needed. B.C.’s not-for-profits are providing a crucial level of support to the government and our struggling communities.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the not-for-profit sector needs your urgent attention. Our research clearly confirms an increased demand for community services at the same time that organizations have seen a massive loss of income. The most worrisome estimates suggest that one in five non-profits is not going to survive this crisis. Closures of this scale will have irreparable impacts on B.C.’s economy, which will harm the most vulnerable people in our communities.

We’re here to seek investment and a constructive partnership with the government of British Columbia. The view that investing in the private sector is the only way to generate economic recovery is shortsighted. We need a government that collaborates with our sector and recognizes us as the experts we are at caring for our communities. Investing in our sector will strengthen public well-being and stabilize our economy.

One thing that both our sector and government have in common, at this moment, is a high level of public trust. So we ask that you also put your trust in our expertise. Specifically, we ask the province to commit to a $500 million fund to stabilize the non-profit sector.

Through this investment, this government would deepen its commitment to improve the lives of all British Columbians. We will fulfil your obligations to develop a gender-based budget through a stabilization fund for the sector. Seventy-four percent of workers in this sector are women. Organizations are predominantly led by women, and the sector as a whole provides vital support to women and others that have experienced historic patterns of discrimination and oppression.

A stabilization fund will help to heal social and economic inequity. Our sector includes organizations that combat racism, serve Indigenous people and advocate for human rights. It will secure the continuation of essential services to the most vulnerable people in our society.

Based on what COVID-19 has demonstrated, the need to connect on line is now greater than ever. However, access to affordable technology and Internet services in B.C. lags behind other Canadian jurisdictions. These challenges are particularly acute for not-for-profit organizations, which, due to funding restrictions, have been forced to operate with grossly outdated systems. We urge you to deepen your previous investments in this area and remove development barriers to ensure that there’s equitable connectivity access for all.

[4:30 p.m.]

In closing, we ask that you work with us to change the narrative of our province. Never before has the world seen the convergence of such a profound crisis. I urge you to help us make this a transformative moment in our history. This is a moment when you have an opportunity to recognize the expertise of not-for-profit leaders and to empower us to do what we do best.

We’re blessed with incredible leadership and passion for the public good. We’re your Bonnie Henrys. Let’s work together to strengthen our province.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Omar.

Next up we have Kevin McCort from Vancouver Foundation.

Kevin, please go ahead.

VANCOUVER FOUNDATION

K. McCort: Good afternoon, hon. members of the committee. Thank you for undertaking these crucial consultations to inform the next provincial budget. My time today is short, so I’ll try not to repeat what others on the panel may say.

First, I’d like to explain, for those of you who may not know, that Vancouver Foundation is the largest non-governmental funder of the charitable sector in B.C. Despite our name, we grant to charities in every corner of the province. Last year our charitable activities and programming totalled $68.4 million, and we supported everything from grassroots neighbourhood small grants to sophisticated research to address the opioid crisis. We funded over 1,100 charities across the province, addressing pressing social, cultural, environmental and economic concerns of communities across B.C., meeting urgent needs and addressing the root causes of systemic challenges.

As a funder of all kinds of community programming, when the pandemic hit, we scrambled to get information about what agencies and organizations were experiencing on the ground. We partnered with Vantage Point on the survey mentioned by Omar. We learned about the challenges that charities are facing, and we found it quite shocking.

It’s important, and I want to be clear, that the danger that I’m highlighting is less about the danger to individual organizations and the fact that they may close and more about the people and the communities that rely on the services these agencies provide. We have an ecosystem of specialized charities in B.C. that support communities in ways that government and the private sector do not. As a broad-based funder, we see this system in action every day.

Many charities deliver unique services that people need to live, work and participate in their communities. If one part of the system fails, the set of comprehensive services an individual, family or community receives starts to experience gaps, and challenges that individuals and families are trying to overcome are amplified. If the organizations they depend on disappear, what happens to our friends and neighbours who need support?

As people fall through the cracks, they will end up somewhere. Most of the destinations where people end up are not designed or resourced today, if they ever were, to address the myriad of social and community services now provided by charities and non-profits. So governments at all levels would then need to quickly develop and support new supports to replace what was lost, or communities will suffer.

People will become further isolated. Some will enter the social assistance system. Some will fall into the criminal justice system. Others will find themselves in more tragic situations. The recent spike in overdose deaths correlates tragically to the reduced access and services that many people have experienced since the start of the pandemic. We can’t afford to let our social safety net fray any further.

It’s natural and appropriate that the next budget focuses on our economic recovery. I want to state plainly and reiterate what Omar had said: that our economy will not recover if the charitable sector falters. The mandate of our sector is to leave no one behind, and the pandemic has exposed that when people are left behind, we all suffer the consequences. We cannot afford, from a financial, moral or rights perspective, to see a quarter of our charities and non-profits disappear.

Against this backdrop, the Vancouver Foundation is asking hon. members to advocate for three key elements in the 2021 budget. I’d like to reiterate our call that there is a targeted stabilization fund to ensure long-term stability of the sector, but I’d like to also add that this fund should be developed and deployed in full partnership with the people and organizations from the sector. We know the sector well and can be counted upon to deliver clear and unbiased recommendations that serve the public interest.

Secondly, I’d like to have your support to open a path to new revenue tools to allow charities to earn and access other sources of income. To make progress in this realm, the province of B.C. can help B.C.’s charities through coordinated engagement with the Canada Revenue Agency and endorse calls to modernize the federal legislative framework governing this sector and align it with advances made in our province.

[4:35 p.m.]

While the constitution places responsibility for oversight of charities with the provinces, the reality is that the federal Ministry of National Revenue, through the Income Tax Act, exerts far more control over the sector than the province does. If B.C. wants to support its charitable sector, to see it grow, please support our work at the federal level.

Finally, I’d like to make a call to modernize the relationship between the sector and the provincial government. A recent article in The Philanthropist magazine summed up the current status I think very aptly. It said: “Most federal and provincial government departments now perceive the sector’s primary role as a service provider and a source of data about community needs rather than a core participant in civil discourse. Sector organizations largely operate at a level of policy implementation rather than policy design.” We would like to be your partners in improving the public policy of British Columbia.

Thank you again for the work you’re doing today. I’d be happy to take questions at the end.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Kevin.

Next up we have Derek Gent from YMCAs of British Columbia.

Please, go ahead, Derek.

YMCAS OF B.C.

D. Gent: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the invitation to come and speak to you today.

My name is Derek Gent. I’m the CEO at the YMCA-YWCA of Vancouver Island, speaking today on behalf of five YMCAs in different regions of the province, including greater Vancouver, Okanagan, Kamloops and the north.

A special shout-out to Mitzi. We miss you at our Y — a regular user and participant.

I’m here at our Langford facility today on the unceded traditional territories of the T’Sou-ke and Scia’new First Nations and the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking peoples, including the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

Ys have been around since 1875 in this province. We have a long, proud history of responding to community needs through a whole range of programs. The Y is much, much more than a place where you sweat and swim.

I’ll start with a quick Y story. Many, many folks have different Y stories. I have my own, but the one I’m going to share here is one of the best I’ve heard.

Kim is a staff member at the Okanagan Y in Kelowna. I’ll paraphrase here, but she was originally from Ontario, and she grew up in a home with an abusive and alcoholic father and a resilient mother who mustered the strength to take her and her siblings away and relocate as a single-parent family living in poverty. After they moved, they joined the local Y, primarily because they were able to access financial assistance to do so, and that’s what people do. They accessed pretty much every service that you can think of during those early years. They found a place where people took care of them.

Kim subsequently went on to work for the Y, and when she moved west, she got a job out here, and her kids have grown up in the Y the same way that she did. They go to camp in the summer. They participate in all the range of activities. She’s now proudly providing support to families who are in the same situation that she was in.

Our Ys in B.C. are independent members of a federation as long-standing and respected charities around the world. We provide access to health and fitness. We operate child cares, outdoor programs, housing shelter space, employment supports, newcomer services, mental health, physical rehabilitation and illness prevention programs, not to mention advocacy and outreach.

We’ve been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In my Y, we lost 85 percent of our revenues when we had to shut down in March. Many essential Y programs have continued in online formats, we’re continuing to deliver housing supports and other essential services, and we’ve got some child cares open, but most of our social enterprise activity was simply halted.

You know, I’ve heard stories of how we’ve survived pandemics and wars in earlier years, but I’m telling you that our mettle is being tested here.

A couple of recommendations for you today. They represent areas of what we see as urgent need and where our capacity through the YMCAs across the province exists to support existing government objectives. It’s very, very strong, and the key message here is that I think there’s an opportunity to get a tremendous return on your investment.

The first recommendation is related to child care. Let me just start with kudos to the current provincial government for your ongoing and accelerated support of child care at this time. From our take, the temporary emergency funding is leading-edge public policy. Making additional dollars available to licensed child care providers as an essential service has been vital. It allows Ys to safely operate while the virus is still present, and it basically helped ensure our sustainability.

We know from Dr. Bonnie Henry that nothing will go back to normal. What we’ve seen is a very gradual return of families, only about 20 percent to 50 percent occupancy thus far, but this access to child care will actually lead our economic recovery. At the same time, it balances the scale for women in particular.

We strongly urge the government to continue the emergency funding. August 31 is simply too early a date to stop the funding, given the gradual returns that we expect and we’re seeing. We’re proposing a sliding scale that reflects our ability to support families as they’re ready to return.

[4:40 p.m.]

The second recommendation is around financial assistance. We have a long-standing practice not to turn away anyone who wants to join the Y and access our programs. As a charity, we directly deliver over $5.6 million a year in financial assistance so that people can participate in the Y based on their ability to pay. A third of that support goes to children and youth.

As we reopen, we’re going to be serving people dealing with loneliness, anxiety, depression and feeling overwhelmed, and they so direly want to come back to the Y. We recognize that Ys are fundamentally centres of community and of belonging. So we are anticipating the need for financial aid to more than double over the next period of time. We think that we can help the province reach more people in need in our communities by requesting that the government provide another $5.6 million –– basically a match –– for the YMCAs, to be used to subsidize fees for families that wouldn’t otherwise access it.

As Omar and Kevin have said, our non-profit sector is incredibly vulnerable right now, and, by extension, our communities’ vulnerability is impaired. What I am suggesting is that the Y is an antidote. It’s a vaccine against vulnerability and, as I say, a tremendous investment.

Thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to questions.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Derek.

Next up we have Martha Rans from the Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society.

Hello, Martha. Please go ahead.

PACIFIC LEGAL EDUCATION
AND OUTREACH SOCIETY

M. Rans: Thanks, Bob. Thank you, hon. Members. Before I launch in, I just want to say that without the YMCA, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I’m one of the people who was lifted up out of poverty as a teenage runaway by the YMCAs in Ontario. So I can’t say anything more than that I have 100 percent support there.

In any event, for those of you who don’t know me, the Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society makes available legal clinics for low-income artists and legal information and education to non-profits. It’s a matter of survival –– 314,000 job losses, according to Carole James this morning. Women and workers of colour are particularly hard hit. That could be a description of the non-profit sector. Precarity is a fact of our life. More than half of our clients are women, LGBTQ, black, Indigenous and people of colour and the organizations that serve them. The marginalized and the left-behind find us because they haven’t got a friend who is a lawyer, or they find the system difficult to navigate.

They are also the non-profits that do not qualify for the wage subsidy, whose landlords are unwilling to apply for CECRA. They are the artists left out in the cold when a gallery on Commercial Drive closes, telling them they should be happy they got their work back, or the 50 artists evicted by their landlord from their artist studios. They are the 600 non-profits who registered for a webinar last week on holding a virtual AGM and, when asked, overwhelmingly said they would access a legal clinic for non-profits if it was available.

We, too, are on the front lines of COVID, yet like many in the non-profit sector, we appear to be absent from the government’s consideration in its programs for pandemic recovery. As Kevin said, imagine what the province would be like without the non-profit sector. A month ago, the chair of our board told me that he spent the better part of that week securing the refinancing of a major Canadian industrial concern. As he did so, thousands of jobs were likely preserved. That’s his job. My job is to try to secure the same access to justice for artists and the non-profit sector. By access to justice, I mean access to the tools to ensure that the sector’s thousands of workers keep working, that the artist-run centre is not evicted, and that artists get paid.

We need to expand our view of what access to justice means and who has access. Just as we preserve our economic institutions through the pandemic recovery, so too must we preserve our social and cultural institutions and the ecosystem that supports every member of the population. To those who say that survival of the arts does not include access to justice, I say: look around.

[4:45 p.m.]

Read now, more than ever, the National Network of Legal Clinics for the Arts , where we tell the stories from coast to coast to coast of unmet legal needs, of access to justice denied. The non-profit sector’s survival, whether it’s the arts, housing, seniors’ care, child care, recreation, should include access to justice.

All is not lost. Since I presented last year, almost a year to the day, we’ve been funded by the Vancouver Foundation to pilot a legal clinic for non-profits in 2021 and, in the near term, provide enhanced legal services to rural communities across the province. Provincial funding to match those dollars would ensure our ability to provide jobs for law students, many unemployed; advocates; and a staff lawyer. We have developed a digital tool that would to allow us to triage effectively, an approach to the provision of legal services that will deliver on the promise of access to justice.

This province could be the standard bearer for innovation and support of legal services, not just to non-profits but to many sectors of the economy. We need to be seen as critical to the well-being of British Columbians. We’re the Foundries of access to justice. We’re the Amplify non-profits program. Make no mistake: we’re the Dr. Henrys of child care, of housing and of access to justice.

I’m not afraid of the second wave of the pandemic. I’m afraid of the austerity that will follow and what the world will look like without us, the non-profit sector.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you very much, Martha. Very nice to see you again, as always. Same for Derek, Kevin and Omar.

Thank you for everything that you’ve done during this incredibly difficult time for the entire province. Thanks for that.

Questions from members?

Mitzi, please go ahead.

M. Dean: Thank you to you all for all the work that you do generally, but especially now, in these times. Thanks to your staff, as well, for all of their service — really appreciated.

I’m interested, though, because I think this is going to set us up for some kind of change. I’m interested in…. As we move forward, we talk about building a better B.C. We talk about a new normal and not just coming out of this and then just replicating what we had before. That applies to the community social service sector as well.

Do you have ideas about how we restart from the pandemic and how we build a better community social services sector? We’re likely to lose some agencies, but we don’t want to lose those services, as you all rightly say. So how do we make sure that we use this opportunity to build a stronger sector?

B. D’Eith (Chair): Martha, go ahead.

M. Rans: Well, when you ask that question, the answer to that is that we start by supporting a publicly funded legal clinic system in this province and making access to justice a priority. We’ve developed a legal digital tool that can provide triage capabilities that could literally change how we deliver legal services — with a period at the end of that sentence.

To date, we have received not a dime of provincial funding and not a dime of Law Foundation funding to support this work. Why? Partly because it requires a systems change, a paradigm shift. We’re ahead of the curve. We’re ready, willing and able to do that, and I suspect that a number of my colleagues at other upstarts and in both the legal clinic and the non-profit sector are able to do that.

So I would suggest that one way we do that is by reaching outside and looking to those of us who are out there doing things right now on the ground that haven’t been done before.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Martha.

Derek, go ahead.

D. Gent: I’m going to share one quick story that I think is a great example of how we’re learning from this process. For a number of years, all of the Ys in B.C. — the YMCAs — were delivering a program called Y Mind. It’s a mental health program for young people. It’s been an in-person program. We create small groups with cohorts and run them through this amazing program, build community and have results that are tangible.

When COVID hit, that was the one program that we were able to fairly quickly pivot to online delivery. Now it’s being accessed by young people in rural-remote communities that would have never participated in the program before.

[4:50 p.m.]

Registrations are higher than they’ve ever been. So it’s got us thinking about where those areas are where we can pivot into more online, more remote delivery and build really successful initiatives without a lot of time and energy, because it had to be done.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thanks, Derek.

Omar or Kevin, did you want to comment on that?

K. McCort: Sure. As this is a budget consultation, one of the pieces of research we had commissioned by Simon Fraser University a couple of years ago was quite illustrative. It was into the foster care system, as an example. It showed to us that an increase of $50 million a year in spending on the services that support young people coming out of foster care would save $200 million a year in other parts of government spending through less demand on the health care system, less demand on the justice system, less demand on corrections, for example, and fewer people homeless.

There are ways of looking at whole-of-government budgeting where you are seeing increases in spending in some departments leading to savings in others. We would encourage…. We have many examples of research that has demonstrated that that process works, and we would certainly be happy to share that research and support processes that are directing funding to places that could lead to savings for other parts of government.

O. Dominguez: What I would add to that is that I would encourage you to think of stimulus spending in a different way. It is not just about shovel-ready projects. It’s not just the hospitals and the roads. We would also encourage the federal government to think of a national well-being strategy. If it’s stimulus spending in light of a well-being strategy, acknowledging…. For example, in the survey that we did, 95 percent of respondents expressed high levels of stress.

These are the things that we’re all facing. The things that are going to help us deal with that stress are arts and connection and community. If you think of how that stimulus spending can keep the yoga studios and the artists and all of those people that help manage stress and well-being, that would be my encouragement. Like Kevin also mentioned, give the sector tools to stand on our own feet so that we don’t have to come and ask for funding all the time. Give us the opportunity to raise revenues. That also requires work with the federal government to change the rules for not-for-profits.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Thank you, Omar. I did notice…. Was it yesterday that the Premier was talking about going into consultations on the $1.5 billion of recovery and these kinds of ideas? I’d encourage all of you to participate in that. That could be a very interesting way of looking at some of those funds.

Martha, a question for you in terms of your actual ask. Are you putting in a written submission?

M. Rans: No, we’re going to put it…. Well, it’ll be a bit broader in scope. Yes, we’re asking for matching money to develop the….

B. D’Eith (Chair): I’m just wondering what the specific ask was. That’s all.

M. Rans: Yeah, the specific ask will be to match the commitment that we’ve had from the Vancouver Foundation so that we have a real chance to develop a model for the provision of legal services, primarily using a virtual legal clinic model, with trained volunteer mentors and advocates across the province, to deliver on the promise of access to justice to the sector.

B. D’Eith (Chair): Fantastic. All right. Any more questions from members?

Seeing none, I just wanted to again thank all of you for everything you’ve done during the pandemic and what you’ve done before the pandemic as well. Obviously, your groups and associations have worked so hard for the people of British Columbia. I really appreciate everything that you do.

If I could ask members, after we adjourn, to just stay for one minute afterwards. I have a couple things I want to talk about.

If I could have a motion to adjourn, please.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:54 p.m.