Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 11: Automatically enroll all young people transitioning out of care in an income support program that meets their basic living costs and ensures they have safe, secure and affordable housing.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 12: Review and enhance supports to grandparents raising grandchildren and other kinship care providers, including Child in the Home of a Relative care providers. Allow grandparents on CPP Disability who are raising their grandchildren to continue to receive the CPP children’s benefit after they turn 65 and remove administrative barriers to receiving the Canada Child Benefit for kinship care providers.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 13: Intensify efforts to help immigrants and refugees adjust to life in Canada by enhancing employment assistance, removing long-standing barriers to foreign-trained professionals accessing jobs in their field, making more language training with child care available, and improving employment standards and human rights protections and enforcement.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 14: Immediately cancel all outstanding refugee transportation loan debt and cease seeking repayment of transportation costs for all new refugees coming to Canada.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 15: Continue to prioritize new early learning and child care investments in 2023 budget and beyond to establish universal access to a system of high-quality, inclusive child care for BC children and families that has no parent fee for low-income families. Create enough licensed child care spaces for all who choose them. Ensure early childhood educators are paid compensation that reflects their education and the importance of the work they do by implementing a province-wide, publicly funded competitive wage grid for positions within the child care sector. Ensure there are adequate resources and support for the implementation of the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 16: Increase program funding and support for families raising children with disabilities and complex medical needs to ensure they have timely, universal access everywhere in BC to a core suite of early intervention therapies; timely assessments; family respite; inclusive child care; health, medical and in-home supports.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 17: Increase investment in public health initiatives aimed to support maternal and parental health and healthy infant development, as well as non-barriered, free, community-based programs and services for all families with young children to ensure these supports are available throughout the province and designed to reach families experiencing poverty and other threats to their ability to thrive.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 18: Scale up funding to build thousands of new social and affordable rental housing units and maintain existing affordable housing stock to reduce the number of families in core housing need and to eliminate homelessness. Tie rent control to the unit to remove the incentive for evictions of current tenants to raise the rent for new tenants.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 19: Contribute funding to establish a universal, cost-shared, healthy school food program for all K–12 students that is respectful of local contexts, connected to community and curriculum, health-promoting and sustainable.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 20: Ensure K–12 public education funding is sufficient to mitigate inequities between high- and low-income neighbourhoods, school districts and families and to ensure appropriate inclusion of students with diverse learning needs. This includes enhancing funding to school districts for special education assistants, arts programming, libraries, student support services, and deferred maintenance, among other areas that still require urgent attention in future provincial budgets. Schools need additional funds to implement public health response measures arising from the COVID–19 pandemic.