2022 Select Standing Committee Presentation

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Every year, The Federation makes a submission and presents to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. It is an opportunity for individuals and organizations to share their thoughts, ideas, and priorities regarding provincial services and funding decisions.

This year, our submission and presentation prioritized three main recommendations:

  1. Continue to demonstrate a commitment to reconciliation and decolonization of social services by working to address funding inequities that exist for Indigenous, off-reserve service providers.
  2. Continue to demonstrate a commitment to reconciliation and decolonization by making new investments in services and supports for children in care.
  3. Continue to invest in the sustainability of the social services sector by addressing the rising cost of business pressures that organizations are facing and build this into base contract dollars.

You can read an excerpt from our submission below. A PDF of the entire text can be viewed here.

“The chart above shows the rate of inflation in BC since 2000 (2002 = 100) according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The orange lines represent the change in contract funding for one Federation member’s youth residential program in the Fraser region from 2015 to 2022. Food is the only budget item where contract funding has even remotely kept up with program costs.

We believe a modest and fully supportable investment should be an immediate 5% baseline increase for all contracts. And future contracts should be indexed either to the rate of inflation or a comparable metric. Other models for indexing contracts and payments to keep up with the cost of living exist throughout the province. (For example, the UBC Staff Pension Plan payments increase at a rate of 50% of the change in the Consumer Price Index each year; BC’s Municipal Pension Plan increases based on the annual change in the CPI to a maximum of 2.1% for 2020-2022.) Such an investment is not only deserved but necessary and long overdue.”