The province has announced $18.6 million in bonus funding for B.C.’s 80 ground search and rescue teams. While we have no problem giving this a polite golf clap, we’ll postpone the standing ovation.
The province does provide some base funding for operations and occasional grants but it still falls to the rescue volunteers to do their own fundraising off the sides of their desks. That is, when they’re not pulling lost and injured people out of snowbanks.
Curiously, the bonus funding didn’t make the cut for the 2019 budget when it was released last month. Perhaps some credit goes to the B.C. Liberals for using a sharp stick to poke NDP into restoring the money.
We are pleased to see, as part of the announcement, some serious steps being taken toward a new funding model for B.C. search and rescue. Because when it comes to funding rescues, the province – regardless of which party is in power – cannot plead poverty.
According to the Tourism Industry Association of B.C., visitors generated $18.4 billion in revenue in 2017, which meant $1.2 billion in tax revenue for the province, an increase of 40.3 per cent since 2007. The province actively markets “Super, Natural British Columbia” to draw in visitors. But when, inevitably, someone gets in over their head, or more realistically, off trail, they leave the heavy lifting – literally – to volunteers.
We hope when this funding expires in 2021 we aren’t publishing our umpteenth editorial calling for sustainable funding. As any of the hundreds of people North Shore Rescue has carried out of the mountains in recent years could tell you, this is a matter of life and death.
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