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TRANSCRIPT
“IMPROVING COMMUNITY ACCESSIBILITY”
TUESDAY, SEPT. 23, 2014
PARTICIPANTS:
Hon. Todd Stone – Minister of Transportation, Deputy House Leader and Member, Priorities and Planning Committee and Cabinet Committee on Strong Economy
Manuel Achadinha – President and CEO of BC Transit
Hon. Michelle Stilwell – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health for Healthy Living and Seniors, MLA for Parksville Qualicum
Jeff Vasey – ADM for Housing and Construction Standards, Ministry of Natural Gas Development and Ministry responsible for Housing
Jay Schlosar, ADM, Local Government Division, Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development
Larry Evans, Councillor, Fort St. John
Nichola Wade, Councillor, Saanich
Rick Hansen, CEO, Rick Hansen Foundation
Hon. Don McRae, Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation
Hon. Stephanie Cadieux, Minister of Children and Family Development
Hon. Linda Larson – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation for Accessibility
Hon. Linda Reid – Speaker of the Legislature
Her Worship Mary Sjostrom- Mayor of Quesnel, Member of the Minister’s Council
Min. McRae: …There is some opportunity for dialogue and change in our society – more so than ever before. And… you probably know these numbers but just in case you don’t – there are 330,000 people in British Columbia of working age with a disability. There are as well, depending on who you ask – and the stats sometimes can differ – but somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 British Columbians who self-identify – every community in British Columbia (BC) obviously – of having a disability. And these numbers will only grow as we age.
Now that being said, one of the most enlightening things I’ve had an opportunity to do in five years of provincial government is in – last year we began Accessibility 2024 consultation. We went around the province – in person, online, by mail – and had conversations with communities large and small about how BC can become the most progressive jurisdiction in Canada for persons with disabilities. We’ve come a long way, we’ve done a lot, we’re leading in a lot of different areas, we can still do more.
Now Accessibility 2024 is organized into 12 building blocks based on themes that emerged during the consultation. These are built on areas that include inclusive government, accessible housing, accessible built environment, transportation and employment – these are all issues that are important to every community large and small in the province of BC. Now, that being said, we need to continue to work with multi levels of government – the federal government has a role to play, the provincial government definitely has a role to play, and you as municipal leaders can also be huge leaders and stakeholders in your communities.
As well – and this is coming from Rick Hanson (he may say the same thing in his speech) – individuals with disabilities themselves and their support groups need to step up, but also so do businesses. Everybody in BC can do a little bit more.
Now, if you didn’t know this, September 2014 is Disability Employment Month in the province of BC. We’re challenging employers to both brag a little bit if they consider themselves good employers for persons with disabilities. We also want them to be leaders and role models for other organizations, other businesses in their community.
Hiring persons with disabilities has a huge upside for everybody. Obviously we want to be an inclusive and fair society. But as well, we want to make sure that employers are getting a great asset – and persons with disabilities are just that. The skills set they can bring, the energy, the vibrancy, and the ability to enhance an employer’s organization is unbelievable, and so if you know someone in your community who is doing leadership in the area of persons with disability and employment, please ask them to step up and tell their story.
If you know someone who could do a bit more, don’t hesitate – just think about how they can expand their horizons as well. So that being said, I’m really pleased as I look down this forum here and see the range of skills and experiences and expertise that we have at this table, because not one ministry will ever solve the accessibility component in our society. It needs to be a multi- faceted branch – and so when I see everybody here from areas like Housing and Transportation, Health – these are how we make things happen. As well, we need you folks in local government to help us do a little bit more as well. And if we’re not doing enough to assist you, we want the feedback.
Whether you’re a small community in the north, or a large community down south, or anywhere in between, BC – it has to be a combined endeavor to make sure that BC does become the most progressive jurisdiction for persons with disabilities. And if I can beat 2024, I wouldn’t be upset at all.
So, Mayor Sjostrom thank you. Parliamentary Secretary Linda Larson, I guess at this stage I throw it over to you…
PSLinda Larson (PSLL): …Thank you very much Minister. Our discussion will focus on opportunities and challenges of improving community accessibility and our panel will let you know in each of their areas of expertise what they are doing. So I’m going to start off by asking Minister Stone to tell us what is happening under the Minister of Transportation when it comes to supporting accessible transportation in BC.
Min. Stone: You bet – thank you very much Linda, and I notice that Linda Reid, the Speaker of the Legislature just walked in as well, and Linda should be complimented for some very important improvements that have dramatically improved accessibility in the legislature so Linda I want to acknowledge your contributions as well.
So thank you very much and it is really a pleasure to be here. As everyone in this room knows transportation is absolutely critical to – both from an economic perspective but also a social perspective – in every corner of the province – it’s…..whether you’re talking roads, or buses or ferries, and other modes of transportation - we need it, we need good transportation networks throughout the entire province.
We are very much committed in the Ministry of Transportation and through us also – with our partners: BC Transit, and BC Ferries and other organizations – to ensure that we plan and design transportation infrastructure that all British Columbians can access without impediment and – working towards our vision, our government’s vision of being the most progressive place for people with disabilities in Canada.
So I’d like to just highlight a couple of pieces if I may – just add a little bit of detail to this from the perspective of transportation. First, with respect to transit – and Manuel will go into a lot more detail with respect to BC Transit – hope not to steal too much of your thunder here, Manny, but BC Transit is actually a very good positive story.
Transit generally, actually, in British Columbia. Our province spends more per capita on transit than any other jurisdiction in Canada. We actually have more - as a result of that – we have more transit coverage than anywhere else, than any other Canadian jurisdiction. Fully ninety per cent of all BC residents have access to some form of public transit – so that’s job number one.
Translink’s operations – as with BC Transit’s – are 100 per cent accessible so in the case of Translink: SkyTrain, Seabus, West Coast Express and so forth – their bus fleet includes kneeling buses, next stop announcements on conventional buses and so forth. Similarly, with respect to BC Transit’s bus fleet, it’s fully accessible for people with – who use mobility aids, including kneeling buses with ramps, modified seating for better access and safer transportation.
I know that BC Transit is currently implementing a policy that will see all drivers call out bus stops for passengers who are visually-impaired. Manny can perhaps touch a little bit more on that. BC Transit also has a HandyDart custom transit. There’s a pilot project that actually involves two communities – Vernon and the Comox Valley, and Manny can fill you in on a bit more detail about that because it’s very very important – it’s helping connect passengers with disabilities to the transit services that best meets their needs in communities across the province.
With respect to BC Ferries – certainly new ferries and terminals as they are upgraded are constructed to guidelines that maximize accessibility standards, including lavatories, ramps, automatic door openers, Braille signs and so forth. BC Ferries is also currently exploring the technical feasibility to pilot induction loop technology in one of the lounges during the Spirit class midlife upgrade – so there’s a lot of work underway within BC Transit today and in the months and years ahead, as the corporation continues to embark upon a very significant upgrade and replacement of vessels and terminals.
There’s three new vessels that are on order now that BC Ferries has ensured that accessibility is a core requirement of those vessels. The two Spirit class vessels will be going through an upgrade and retrofit in the coming years and accessibility again is a critical component there. There have been lots of terminal upgrades in the last five years – there’s even more coming, and we try very very hard to ensure that accessibility is front and center in those upgrades that we make.
Let’s not forget roads – often people don’t necessarily think of roads from an accessibility perspective, but getting it right on our roads and trails is equally important from a mobility perspective. And it’s certainly central to all of the planning that we do in the ministry. Some good recent examples include – on Vancouver Island the McTavish interchange project on the Pat Bay Highway includes a separate pedestrian-cyclist overpass which has had a dramatic impact for those who…for persons with mobility challenges who can now move from one side of the highway to the other in a safe manner.
There’s a…work underway to widen the sidewalks and install safety fences along the West and East side of the Ironworkers’ Memorial Bridge – again this is about providing more space for people, persons with mobility challenges and ensuring that they’re able to cross as do other pedestrians and certainly vehicles.
We have a minor capital program in the Ministry of Transportation which actually funds quite a number of smaller road and highway projects across the province, and again we ensure that accessibility, mobility is a critical piece of criteria that drives those projects. An example of those types of projects would be upgrades on roads to bus stops to improve access for buses and so forth.
With respect to pathways we have an excellent program that’s always oversubscribed called “Bike BC” and I’m hoping that this piece, again, primarily from a mobility perspective - I’m hoping to provide a larger profile for it in our ten-year transportation plan moving forward. This is a program where we cost-share with local governments to provide multi-use paths and cycling pedestrian overpasses. There are projects in every corner of the province that you can point to now where access has been dramatically improved, so we want to continue with that legacy.
So that’s just a quick, a quick overview. I will say, perhaps my final comment at this point – I mentioned the ten-year transportation plan a moment ago. It’s probably one of the most exciting opportunities in front of us from a transportation perspective is to develop a new vision, a new blueprint for our transportation investments in the coming decade.
The last time this was done was in 2003 – it was called “Opening Up BC” - and virtually everything in the plan has been implemented so the Premier announced in the throne speech last February that it was my job to pull together a new ten-year transportation plan. We will absolutely ensure that accessibility is a critical component of our ten-year transportation plan – insofar as every mode of transportation goes that we’ll profile in that plan. There will be an opportunity over the next couple months – I believe in the next couple of weeks we’ll be announcing an engagement opportunity for British Columbians everywhere - except Vancouver Island because we’re just finishing up on Vancouver Island, although you’ll still be able to throw in Vancouver Island if you weren’t able to participate in the ten-year transportation plan input sessions.
There certainly will be other opportunities and we’ll welcome your input, but we’ll be rolling out an engagement process for – pretty much take us through the next couple for months – and I certainly encourage everyone to – everyone here, and please let all your colleagues know to let us know what’s really important from an accessibility perspective so that we can ensure that that’s properly profiled and included in the priorities that we detail in our ten-year transportation plan which we will be….our goal is to roll it out his side of Christmas so there’s a fair bit of work to do as we get there, but I would encourage and welcome all your feedback. Thank you.
PSLL: Thanks, Todd. Mary as a leader in Quesnel has also spent a lot of time on accessibility, and I’d like her to let you know what she’s done in the city of Quesnel.
Mayor Sjostrom: Thank you sir. Well, just ever so briefly. It’s always…you always think it’s a great time to be able brag about your community and about the region and – with us, we have about 85 per cent connectivity for our trail network and so we only have one little section, so we’ll be keeping an eye on what might be coming out and we’re really pleased with that as well as the Caribou Regional District and people would think that possibly Regional District wouldn’t think about trails but we have quite a few trails and we’re continuing to do that as I sit on the Caribou Regional District and the electoral directors are really active in that so I congratulate them on that and I think I’d just like to encourage communities to – in your budgets, we always are doing money-crunching and there’s never enough money, but I really encourage you to have a line-item in there for accessibility and whether that is curb cuts or possibly fixing up a sidewalk or smallthings that to us might seem small but those folks that have challenges with accessibility – they’re huge.
And it really does make a difference. And you know, we’ve been doing that and it’s really made a difference and you don’t have to sort of fight for those dollars. There’s never enough dollars, as I say, but sometimes small things really make a difference, and with us, we have a partnership as well through our transportation with BC Transit with the Caribou Regional District but I think that I was just absolutely thrilled when we were a community that was – we had a pilot project, as many of you probably did when we were testing a low-level bus.
I know I’m not really supposed to refer to it as “the vicinity” but that’s what we called it – and it is a low level bus that we ended up having now two in our community and I hope that in years to come we’ll have even more. It’s really made a difference to our community and I think that Manuel will speak more to that and how it leads into us being accessible in our communities.
We’re also having some conversation and we’re not at the end of the road there, but we’re trying to get an accessible taxi as well in Quesnel, because there is certainly challenges when the bus isn’t running and folks really would like to go out to an event and they have the accessibility issue.
I think other than that – we have a very large senior population in our community and so accessibility for those folks are really important too, so…the transportation has really made a difference, so… I think that’s about all I have to add, thank you.
PSLL: Thanks, Mary. So I’ll turn it over to Mr. Achadinha to bring us up to what’s happening with BC Transit in the way of improving accessibility.
M. Achadinha: Thank you. Accessibility has always been a cornerstone of our organization. We were the first organization in North America to introduce low-floored kneeling bus and today 100% of our conventional – those are the big buses – are all low-floor accessible buses.
Mary mentioned one of the new projects we’re working on right now is a – what we call a midibus. One of the challenges we have had in some of our smaller communities is to find a smaller bus that’s accessible, low floor. In the last 24 months through BC Transit we’ve been piloting with a number of communities across the province a midibus that – basically it looks like a big bus, but it’s only 27 and a half feet long. It looks and feels like a bus but it’s low-floor and it kneels.
The results have been overwhelming, as Mary said. Probably the biggest challenge we have is – we only bought 15 of these buses and we have a lot of communities that would like to get access to them, including Quesnel who wants more than two.
There’s another or a couple of big initiatives we’ve been working on and the Minister touched on it – one is custom transit, HandyDart. It is an incredible service, but the biggest challenge we have is we need to ensure that we preserve that service for those individuals who have no other option. One of the things that we’ve been piloting and the Minister mentioned it – in the communities of Comox and Vernon: we have high demand for HandyDart services. We are now working with….ahhh…. When you register to become a Handy Dart customer, we interview you. You come in, and really what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to match people to the appropriate transit service – to meet their needs and their abilities. And the reason we’re doing that is we’re trying to make sure that….HandyDart in some ways can be very restrictive – and what I mean by that, there’s not that much serviceavailable all the time, where on a conventional, there’s a number of fixed routes that goes all over the city. And what we’ve noticed is if we can get you on to conventional transit - what are we doing – we’re really doing two things: we’re giving you options, we’re giving you independence. And that’s what a lot of the accessibility is about.