NEWSBITES

B.C. budget short on seniors’ care details

In February, the BC NDP tabled its 2023 provincial budget that allocates new monies for cancer care and mental health and addiction services, and $6.4 billion in additional health funding to address workload, health and safety, and the recruitment and retention crisis.

“This budget supports the expansion of health workforce training, an additional 9.25 million hours in additional staffing under our main provincial collective agreement, and significant wage increases for health care workers,” says HEU’s secretarybusiness manager Meena Brisard.

Provincial health authorities will see a $3.1 billion boost to their budgets by 25/26 for volume and service growth, and funding health care contracts.

Although the budget continues the pandemic practice of levelling up wages for low-waged workers in long-term care and assisted living, there’s few details on how government will implement its plans to make for-profit operators more accountable, build more public and non-profit care homes, or permanently standard- of New Westminster, Quesnel and Victoria, and – until recently – the City of Vancouver. based on a “five-year rolling average,” a method that would base wages on the current year and past fouryear period, instead of responding to real-time inflation rates.

“The living wage reflects how expensive it is right now to live, and people are struggling,” said Anastasia French, provincial manager of the campaign.

In March, the newly elected Vancouver council voted to discontinue their certified Living Wage Employer status. They proposed, instead, to calculate wage increases

“If you want to have workers in Vancouver... you need to make sure that you’re paying them enough money to be able to live in the city.”

ELAINE LITTMANN

ize

wages,

benefits and working conditions across the seniors’ care sector.

B.C. minimum wage up

On June 1, the hourly minimum wage in British Columbia became the second highest in Canada, close behind the Yukon.

Climbing $1.10 per hour, the new minimum wage of $16.75 puts B.C. only two cents an hour less than the Yukon’s minimum wage of $16.77. Alberta, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have all frozen their minimum wage rates this year.

New report calls for home care review

B.C. Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie recently issued We Must Do Better: Home Support Services for B.C. Seniors.

Released in February, the report examines five-year trends in home support funding, hours of care, client acuity, affordability, and family caregiver distress.

The research finds that home care client complexity and frailty are rising, while care hours are not increasing to meet this need.

And that more of the care is being shifted to family caregivers