BCPRC’s Response to 2023 BC Budget

by Rowan Burdge, BCPRC Provincial Director

The BCPRC welcomes the ambition and breadth of the spending in Budget 2023 and encourages the BC government to continue to ramp up public spending into critical areas like poverty reduction measures, food and climate resiliency, childcare, public healthcare, safe supply, and equity-based approaches to a better BC that truly meet the needs of our times.

 Now is the time to invest in people, families, communities, and infrastructure—even if a deficit is incurred; a balanced budget should not come at the expense of the public good or essential human rights. Public spending is fundamental when those who call BC home are struggling to make ends meet, and we applaud the increased investments to the public good in Budget 2023. 

BC Budget 2023 contains urgently needed relief measures but does not make the significant systemic investments that would meaningfully address poverty for the most hard-hit individuals and families. BC is experiencing severe affordability and housing crises, recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and several catastrophic extreme weather events, in addition to dealing with an ongoing poisoned drug supply crisis that is killing an average of 6 people per day in BC. Though we applaud the major, widespread investments and critical funding, the BC Budget 2023 is not enough to address poverty reduction or eradication in BC.

Affordability and Poverty Reduction

The PRC applauds the permanent BC Family benefit increase, which will greatly help many. $500 is a significant amount for low-income people, and noteworthy for lone parents' households who experience deeper levels of poverty. Families with children will see a 10% increase in the monthly BC Family Benefits. Additionally, for single-parent households, an annual top-up of $500 will help people on the lower income spectrum. However, we need these benefits to be indexed for inflation, otherwise, they erode over time. This benefit will help address child poverty in BC. The 2022 child poverty report card cites that 1 in every 8 children in BC lives in poverty, so we know these investments are essential. The needed increases to foster family benefits is also good to see, and we hope that money will prioritize Indigenous foster care providers for Indigenous children.

The shelter rate went up for the first time since 2007, a welcome relief, although for people on assistance, this money will go to their landlord or housing provider, not directly into the hands of families and individuals.

We continue to advocate for the BC government to raise the rates.

The assistance rates remain well below the poverty line, forcing tens of thousands of individuals and families to survive on amounts significantly below the bare minimum needed to survive. These rates need to increase to the poverty line at a minimum and account for inflation. 

The increases in support to people on assistance such as the crisis supplement, respite, diet and nutritional supplements, school startup, and medical transportation are welcome. As the cost of living goes up, we need social support to be reflective of these realities, especially for those most vulnerable. We welcome the new earning exemption increase for assistant recipients, though much higher amounts are needed to increase earning potential for those below the poverty line. The current earning exemptions create a poverty trap; people on assistance have anything above these low amounts clawed back from their cheques, keeping them at very low incomes and capping their earning potential at poverty amounts. It limits the ability of anyone to exit poverty and discourages pathways to higher incomes.

 We are pleased that the eligibility overlaps with existing benefits (i.e. renter's tax credit open to folks on disability, etc.) to offer baseline necessities, and happy to see the NDP and new premier coming through on some urgent measures to make life easier for people in BC. However, these are not the systemic, robust, and ongoing supports needed to address the realities of the affordability crisis. 

Housing

We applaud the significant investments in making housing more affordable across BC. The investments into student housing, critical housing infrastructure, and renter's rebates are all significant and will have an impact.

We need massive investment into a provincial housing plan that works to build affordable homes at the rate needed to address the current housing crisis. 

The capital investments into more affordable housing are welcome, though we are disappointed at the mere 109 million dollars to be divided up across "other BC housing funded supportive housing", including transition housing societies deeply in need of repair or replacement to address both the high demand for these facilities and their ongoing condition quality. The lack of investment in this area does little to address the endemic undervaluing of women’s services and responses to gender-based violence.

The renter's tax credit is good to see, though not high enough to offset the rent increases that most households experience, and is minimal compared to existing supports for homeowners.

Some groups not necessarily filing taxes, such as sex workers, some precariously housed people, and people with precarious immigration status, will be excluded from this benefit. Finally, we welcome funding to support residents of encampments and hope these measures will be peer-led and supported by people living in encampments to self-determine the needs that will be most impactful to address. 

Healthcare

Universal, free contraception is a major win for reproductive justice, and we applaud this investment into reproductive rights. We call on the BC government to increase access with free, universal support in other areas, such as mental health care, extended benefits for low-income people, free dental, and fairer pharmacare coverage to make medicine and other basic healthcare costs truly accessible for people in BC.

It’s good to see the provincial government taking the initiative to bolster public healthcare with a workforce plan, a new payment model for family physicians, and some mental health, addiction, and treatment centers.

The investments into transitioning physician payments models, capital funding for new long-term care facilities, creating over 1,700 new healthcare positions, and others are positive news. However, we need investments in prioritizing a primary healthcare strategy that includes team and community-based approaches. Wait times remain very long, and for many residents of BC, access to a primary care provider is challenging to obtain.

There is not significant enough investment in community health centers. In terms of mental health and addiction support, we remain disappointed that user fees for treatment and mental health beds remain intact.

We applaud investments into needed mental health measures, though we need to see psychologists covered by MSP to reduce access barriers and to incorporate registered clinical counsellors to de-privatize mental health supports and integrate them into the public infrastructure.

We hope to see current gains directed to public investments, not further measures privatizing our public systems.

Regarding the drug poisoning crisis, this budget prioritizes treatment and recovery and does not do enough to support harm reduction, overdose prevention sites, or increase safe supply to the level required to save lives. The current response is inadequate to the massive and urgent needs, and most of the funding is directed toward control-based measures around criminalization and policing rather than safe supply infrastructure that would save lives now.

We celebrate the limited funding for peer-led programming in encampments and regarding safe supply. Still, this area of healthcare needs to prioritize peer-led initiatives and recommendations informed by people who use drugs, and those advocating for access to safe supply as a life-saving measure in addition to a spectrum that includes harm reduction, treatment, detox, and other programs. The BC Coroner has also identified regulated, safe supply as the most important short-term measure to prevent drug-related deaths.

Education

In K-12 education, we celebrate the expansion and investment into expanding school food programs. The funding of $214 million over three years will be given to the districts on a per capita based on student enrollment –and this program will be targeted specifically to food-insecure families and low-income families. This is a huge help for families facing food insecurity and will help address student hunger and child poverty.

We continue to advocate for expansions to a universal, free healthy school food program in K-12 education to reduce hunger, barriers, and stigma and to increase access to healthy food for all students whose families are experiencing food insecurity.

 We celebrate the continued investment promised in budget 2023 into affordable childcare.

However, more investments, such as an early childhood education wage grid, and funding to accelerate additional spots are needed, so no families are left behind.

 In post-secondary education, student loan amounts and affordable student housing increases are a welcome relief for many, though again, they do not offer long-term solutions to supporting students. Student loans need to be repaid, and loan increases mean families may face more student debt. However, it is good to see some relief for student loan repayment for low-income folks prioritized.

Community Safety, and Access to justice and legal services

The PRC celebrates the investment in 10 new Indigenous Justice Centers and new anti-racism legislation funding, as well as investments in public libraries, which do so much work to resources and support people in our communities, and folks who rely on public space.

 We were shocked to see the lack of expanded access to vital services such as legal aid or family law access.

The impact of this low funding is the perpetuation of domestic and gender-based violence through the court system. Legal proceedings in these cases are lengthy, and complex and put women and children at risk of increased violence. Gender-based violence is a widespread, severe issue that impacts many families and individuals in BC. The notable gap in measures to tangibly support survivors and families fleeing violence in this budget is extremely discouraging. 

We are disappointed to see such a major focus on increasing RCMP and criminalization-associated funding rather than investing in prevention measures, such as harm reduction, safe supply, overdose prevention sites, food justice, increased direct assistance amounts or other poverty reduction measures that would serve as prevention for community safety concerns. Criminalizing people experiencing poverty or homelessness rather than reducing deep poverty or providing people with affordable, adequate housing is not an appropriate solution. 

Climate Justice

The PRC welcomes the increase to the climate action tax credit, which will truly impact many people experiencing poverty in BC, though only those who can file taxes. Many people continue to be marginalized from our public systems and are not being properly supported. We are also disappointed not to see public transportation investments for youth or low-income folks or northern and rural areas. 

We celebrate the investment into Climate BC 2030 and some prevention funding for helping communities prepare for future climate events, which we hope will be targeted to equity-deserving groups, including people who rely on public space.

Given the scale of the climate impacts BC has been seeing, this investment in prevention funding and the Clean BC plan are nowhere near enough to tackle the climate crisis as we are already experiencing it in BC. 

Conclusions

Overall, this budget makes certain critical investments, and the upswing in total public spending is notable and welcome. We applaud the expenditure on public infrastructure and major capital investments towards housing, healthcare, and other areas that contribute to health, safety, and well-being. Budget 2023 isn’t enough to meaningfully address poverty in BC. It does move in the right direction towards much-needed relief to some of our social systems and those made most vulnerable in areas that have been underfunded for decades. 

Many of the measures in BC Budget 2023 are one-time credits that do not make meaningful systemic changes.

There are still many barriers for folks who rely on public space or don’t file taxes or have an address, and many of those made most vulnerable will continue to be made so. Further, the gaps in terms of support and investments in public transportation, sex work, persons with disabilities, robust senior supports, anti-gender-based violence measures, seniors housing or homecare services, pay transparency legislation measures, or more specific targeting measure towards addressing deep poverty and addressing the urgent needs the climate change have made so urgent. Generally, aside from the school food expansion, food justice and resiliency are also areas that aren’t seeing adequate investments given the need.

We welcome the ambition and breadth of the spending in Budget 2023 and encourage the BC government to continue to ramp up public spending into critical areas like poverty reduction measures, food and climate resiliency, childcare, public healthcare, safe supply, and equity-based approaches to a better BC that truly meet the needs of our times.