CFNR Network
May 13, 2021 | 10:57 AM
The B.C. Government has announced support for health, mental health and social services through new projects that will be funded by the Northern Healthy Communities Fund.
The first round of funding from the Northern Healthy Communities Fund will deliver more than $2 million for 16 projects. The projects will focus on increasing access to mental health care and addictions counselling, expanding a variety of services provided by local and First nations governments, and upgrades to child care and supportive housing facilities.
The fund is a partnership between the Province and the Northern Development Initiative Trust. The trust administers the program on behalf of the province.
Your faulty data analysis says that each person in the North Coast Regional District is receiving 65 times as much infrastructure funding per capita than people of the Okanagan Similkameen Regional District. Anyone living here knows that’s not our reality. Almost all the funding in Northwest B.C. that you’re celebrating went to a small number of industrial construction and commercial transportation mega-projects. These projects don’t directly improve the life of your average rural resident. They do generate tax revenue for all British Columbians that disproportionately goes to urban areas. These projects should be excluded from your analysis. When you consider the remaining funding, rural British Columbians get much less than people in urban areas for the infrastructure that impacts our daily lives.