Region needs to lobby Province for funding for social programs: mayor
By Timothy Schafer Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The time is now to put Nelson and the southeastern part of B.C. back on the map for Provincial funding for societal issues, says the city’s mayor.
Janice Morrison said the Provincial government is trying its best to provide funding for social programs in B.C., but rural British Columbia has fallen off the map, and particularly Southeastern British Columbia.
“There is a big corner of the province that they need to be thinking about,” she said during Tuesday night’s City council meeting.
The City has been trying to fill in many of the gaps in programs and funding that the Province should be covering, Morrison explained. Although the City is helping search for a safe inhalation site for Nelson it is not the job of municipal government, she said.
“It’s not our job. It still has to be approved by Interior Health,” she said. “We do not create them.”
It wasn’t the role of the City to provide those higher levels of programs, City manager Kevin Cormack concurred.
“I think we are losing sight that this is not a core city function, this is a core provincial responsibility,” he said.
The City had asked questions council had raised to both Mental Health and Addictions representatives and the Interior Health Authority, Cormack explained.
“They are not fulfilling their mandates,” he said, adding that when asked of what strategies there were for services for the region, the upper levels of government had no plan formulated.
“And they are the experts. We are not the experts in mental health and addiction. We have zero staff that are experts in that area,” Cormack said. “They have declared this a health emergency and yet they have no clear strategy of … how they will achieve that.”
No plan
When the Interior Health team was here talking to council last month, they were very unsure of how to move forward with providing and funding social programs in the region, said Coun. Jesse Woodward.
“They seemed to not have a lot to offer other than we need to be a more compassionate community,” he said. “But we haven’t been given much. There has been a download of responsibility because of the situation, but we haven’t been downloaded a (sum) of cash to start these programs or hire people.
“Letting (the street population) do their thing and the City absorb the impacts has been happening and it is turning people who were compassionate and advocates to being against what is going on.
“But we really do need to advocate the ministries, we do need support. We need help, we need funding if you are going to download this on us, otherwise we are going to have a plethora of other problems that we don’t have the cash to deal with. We are not supposed to be taking care of this vast provincial problem that was downloaded on us.”
Morrison said the government has given money to the issue, but wasn’t sure what the right figure would be to solve the problem.
Cormack said it would be good for City council to specifically ask for Mental Health and Addictions to develop a regional strategy for the West Kootenay.
