ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 62 Gary Holman CRD Director for SSI

Episode Date: May 24, 2025

Ask Salt Spring Answered host Damian Inwood talks to Gary Holman, CRD director and Local Community Commission member, about health care for seniors and regional transportation.

You're listening to episode 62 of Ask Salt Spring Answer to which we talk to Gary Holman, the CRD director and member of the local community commission about things like healthcare and also transportation. Okay I'm here with Gary Holman who is the CRD director and also a member of the local community commission. Welcome Gary. Hey. And we've just been in Ask Salt Spring and um number of topics under discussion. The first major one I think was around extended and long-term care and the crisis and the person who brought that up basically I think the essential question was can the CRD and the LCC do more to help

solve the crisis with I guess funding for more facilities, capital projects, etc. to to to house on and to treat elderly and and infirm people on Salt Spring. Like ourselves, for example. Like us, yes. No thanks, Damien. And just to mention that LCC Commissioner Brian Webster also was part of the discussions. So, yeah, there was a question about extended care, which morphed into a broader discussion about primary health care and access to doctors on Salt Spring. So starting with the extended care, the bad news there is that and the Capital Regional Hospital District does contribute and can contribute to health facilities like that. There was an entry in the capital, 10-year capital plan for the hospital district

for an investment in extended care on Salt Spring that was in the capital plan last year and at the request or advice of Island Health, which basically establishes the priority, we contribute to Island Health projects and they put forward a list. They're saying here's our priorities. In 2024, one of the priorities was an investment in extended care on Salisbury. In 2025, that was taken out of the capital plan. When I questioned island health staff, it was because they had higher priorities for

much larger projects on the rest of Vancouver Island. So that is a discussion I've taken up with our local MLA Rob Boderil and we'll be taking up with him and the minister to question the wisdom of that decision. That 10-year capital plan for the hospital district is about 1.3 billion. To take out a $50 million project from Salt Spring is essentially a rounding error in that capital plan, but so important to our community. So that's where the discussion needs to go with our MLA and the health minister to try

and get that entry back into the capital plan. Then there's the broader issue of access to primary care on Salt Spring. We're in dire need here. There are thousands of people that don't have access to primary care. They use our emergency room basically as a walk-in clinic and we're blessed to have that. In fact, we just opened up the new emergency room at Lady Minto and the hospital district did make a $3.7 million contribution to that. Most of the funding actually was raised by the Hospital Foundation, bless them, and their donors. So that's the good news. But the bad news is there are still thousands of people on Salt Spring that

don't have a family doctor and that's the difficulty not just Salt Spring but many communities in British Columbia face. And there was a discussion during the ask meeting about are there ways in which CRD can help with that as our other local governments. I think there are. I think I was being urged in the meeting to explore other ways to help and of course I'm open to that but at least one of the ways we can help is through affordable housing and so for example the Kings Lane project which is our next best bet for affordable multifamily housing on Salt

Spring right next to the hospital property. There also on that property is the health clinic and those two projects have a connection. But the 50 unit Kings Lane project and it's the Gulf Island Seniors Residence Association that operate Meadowbrook. They own that property and they are in discussions with BC Housing and CRD Housing. So both of those BC Housing and CRD Housing could be potential investors in that 50 unit affordable housing and some of those units could be made available to health professionals. So that's one way in which we can help because one of the first questions that health professionals ask if they're considering coming to Salt Spring is where do I live? So I think we can help in that respect. There's also the existing health clinic.

There's now a non-profit group that's pursuing the expansion of the health clinic or creation of a new one on Salt Spring, which also can be helpful in attracting doctors because they're part of... they're not just operating as individual entrepreneurs. They're part of a health clinic where there's other professionals working with them. So there's that integrated holistic approach, but also, you know, in terms of work sharing, they can take a day off and the clinic is still open. They can work share that kind of thing. So both of those possibilities exist on that property and there are active discussions underway about how to make them happen. Okay, now just to get back to the 50

million that was withdrawn, I think you said 50 units were contemplated with regards to that money, right? Yes. That was going to be, was it part of Greenwoods? I think you said. Well, this is a question. I think it is because Green was happens to be 50 units. It's it's an aging facility It's I think built back in the 1960s and 20 years ago. It was an issue and a concern I was seerty director at the time and was meeting with Island Health at the time about Refurbishing that facility so that that was 20 years ago. So it is frustrating that 20 years later

there's been, I think there's been some operating improvements there and kind of getting in a stronger position in terms of operating funding and all of that. But the facility itself needs upgrading. Also on that same site are the 30 unit extended bearer, extended care facility at Lady Minto. Which one of the, that was one of the participants in the ask session was pointing out that they're substandard. You've got four people sharing a room. They're not private rooms. Absolutely substandard. And so one of the first steps would be to get Island

Health, Greenwoods, CRD together to talk about possible collaboration. Instead of having two separate facilities, maybe build a new one. But you know that's the kind of discussion that needs to happen. But the very first thing that needs to happen is to work with our MLA and the health minister to get that 50 million back in the capital plan for the hospital district. Now there was talk about recruitment and retention

and you referred to the PCN. What is that exactly? It's yeah I'm the health field has a number of acronyms so it's primary care network and so the good news is that the the province has committed funding to hire hire 11 full-time equivalent health professional positions for Salt Spring. So the funding has been committed. There is an implementation committee that's been established and I sit on that committee along with another local community member to make that work. Already there's a discussion

with a nurse practitioner about coming to Salt Spring, but there's 10 other positions as well. Doctors, nurses, social worker, Aboriginal health workers as well. So that's the good news. The funding has been provided. Now our challenge though is two things. Where do they work out of? And the second challenge is where do they live? So we talked about where do they live and CRD can help at least in some respects there. In terms of where they can work, the initial conversations are around sharing space in existing doctors offices as a short term, but longer term there's also a group that's been formed as I think I mentioned before around establishing or expanding a health clinic on Salt Spring.

So that could be where the majority if not all of those new health professionals could be housed in an expanded health facility that may well be at Kings Lane and there are active discussions underway to explore that possibility. Okay, good. Now we moved on to the question of regional transportation and I was asking you the question about where we're at on that because the the CRD board wanted to form a regional transportation body right and Salt Spring wasn't really very happy about that because we didn't feel

we'd get enough out of it and in fact pay more than our share probably for what was happening elsewhere. Could you update me on where we're at with that? we'd get enough out of it and in fact pay more than our share probably for what was happening elsewhere. Could you update me on where we're at with that? Yes, so there was the... it's a new service so in order to establish a new service in regional districts voters have to approve and there's various ways... well two basic ways in which voters can approve. One is a referendum, which is actually quite costly to undertake. I think a region-wide referendum is hundreds of thousands. In fact, I think a half a million dollars. The other

approach is a so-called alternative approval process. And so basically it's kind of like a negative billing, you if you don't want the service you have to sign a petition and submit that to the CRD. The Local Government Act stipulates that if you get 10% of registered voters signing that petition the initiative fails. So if you wanted to proceed, you'd have to go to referendum or drop it. So the regional district chose the AAP method. That's been underway. It ended May 16th.

It looks like that nowhere near the number of petitions were submitted to defeat the initiative. At the regional level, 10% of registered voters is about 33,000 voters. So 33,000 people would have to sign that petition, which means every registered voter on Salisbury could sign the petition, you'd still only have about a quarter that you needed to defeat it. So that's pretty daunting. It, it, it very much looks like, uh, uh, the, the initiative will succeed. That service will be established. Salisbury will be part of it, even though we were rejecting to that.

The board rejected our pleas to be excluded. So our next challenge will be to try and ensure as best we can that Salt Spring gets a fair share of the benefits from that service. There is a bit of a glimmer of hope there. For example, regional parks has the regional trail function now, which actually would be essentially taken over by this new transportation. So instead of parks overseeing the regional trail, it's now viewed as a transportation facility or a piece of infrastructure, but it's the same function. So for the first time,

Salt Spring has been included in the capital plan for the regional trail. So there's actually dollars being allocated for the design and eventually the construction of the regional trail on Salt Spring, otherwise known here as the Salish Sea Trail. So there's a bit of a glimmer of hope there that finally the regional district is recognizing the need for improved cycling, in particular cycling infrastructure on Salt Spring. But we're really gonna have to do our best to lobby for adequate funding from this new regional service. Now you mentioned 300,000 for the Vesuvius to Ganges portion of that trail. Is that how much it's going to cost or have we got that money? It's been allocated, it's budgeted, so yes, it's available. There actually has been already

underway, it's a feasibility study to look at some kind of preliminary designs. The priority for CRD, at least initially, for the regional trail on Salt Spring is Vesuvius 2 Central, and there has been 300,000 set aside in the capital plan for that service for the detail design to get to shovel ready. You could actually give those designs to a contractor and they could build it. 300,000 this year, 300,000 next year and then a little further down the road 28, 29, actually several million available for construction. So that's the good news. But the first step is you have to do the detailed design figuring out, okay, what side of the road? Is it going to be separated from the road? Is it going to be wider?

Shoulder lanes? That's the kind of work you do in the detailed design phase. But the good news is that the funding has been set aside to develop that design. And once you have the detailed designs, then you can go out and look for grants, for infrastructure grants. You're typically not successful in getting those grants if you don't have something that's shovel ready. You don't get infrastructure grants just because you've got a good idea or a concept or whatever. You need to be shovel ready and that's what those those $300,000 capital plan entries, that's why they're so

important because it gets you to that stage where you're going to start to apply for the construction grant funding. Right. Now this new transportation plan doesn't include transit at this point anyway but the LCC has proposed to improve the level of service between Fulford and Ganges right and as I understood it from the conversation BC Transit said that they had the dollars and it was going to be 2026 but now it's 2027 is that right? Yeah and actually another reason why I didn't support including Salt Spring in the transportation, new transportation service is that while aspirationally transit was included in that that. Functionally, it's not included, so it still would be BC

Transit, Greater Victoria Transit Authority. So we already have our separate transit system that was established. We're not part of the regional system for various reasons. I set up the service in 2007, 2008. But yes, the transportation and transit is now a service that's been delegated to the LCC on which I sit and the LCC has proposed to BC Transit that we expand. Well, Transit did a strategic review working with the previous Transportation Commission, which was dissolved when we created the local Community Commission. So now the LCC has delegated authority and they have proposed to BC Transit coming out of that strategic review. One of the key recommendations was to

improve transit frequency on the Fulford Ganges route, which is the that's the core of the system. It accounts for about 50% of the ridership. So my understanding is that the improvement in Solspring service was submitted by BC Transit for provincial funding. That's where the dollars were coming to BC Transit from the province. We didn't quite make the grade. There were other systems where they felt were higher priorities, but we're still very hopeful for 2027. That our, we have to contribute though our local share. It's partly funded by BC Transit slash the province and partly funded by local taxpayers through the transit service in order to meet our share of those costs. We're gonna have to raise the requisition substantially. I

think the majority of salt springers will support that. A key question for the LCC will be should we go to voters for again another either AP or referendum to get voter approval. It is possible to increase the requisition with the support of the director and the board so we wouldn't necessarily have to go directly to voters. That will be an LCC recommendation that I'm looking forward to. Okay, and you said it would be a fairly hefty levy increase, I guess, which means increasing the taxes, of course, right?

Yes. But we don't have an exact number on how much that might be. I think you said something like maybe $30 a household. Is that just a thought? That's the current levy is around thirty to thirty five dollars per household per year something in that order. The regional levy for the regional service that we're not part of and part of the reason why we didn't join it is about four times that level.

But of course they have a much higher level of service. But again, harking back to the regional transportation service, if we had joined the regional transit service, we would have attracted that four times the levy with a quarter of the service. So instead we established a standalone service. So I know that Brian said he, you know, the dream would be to have like an hourly service

so people could actually rely on it to get to and from work and so on. Yes. And get out of their cars. Do you think that's realistic? Yes. Yeah. I think so right now our transit schedule is basically set up to sync as best we can with the ferry schedules. Right. And in Fulford that's every two hours. So the proposal would increase the frequency of service I think two hourly but here's the other good news related to that is that BC Ferries is proposing to deploy two island-class hybrid vessels on the Vesuviusrofton route in 2027. When they do that, they will deploy the quinsome to the Fulford route, so you've got both the quinsome and the skeena running,

and a two-ferry system, during the peak period. So what that does, by increasing the frequency of ferry service, you set up the situation in which you can sync your transit service to that. They'll mesh so that that's the the good news there. BC Ferries doesn't always have good news for us, but it is certainly good those two ferry systems that they are proposing to be implemented in a couple of years. Not only will increase the ferry service, but they set up the and systems that they're proposing to be implemented in a couple of years, not only will increase the ferry service, but they set up the and facilitate the

possibility of increasing the frequency of transit service. That would also help our argument to BC Transit, presumably to give us some more funding. It could actually, that's a good point. Yeah, we can make that point is that it will also compliment the increase in ferry service. All right. Okay, well, it was an interesting discussion this morning. Thanks for coming in, Gary. Thank you, Damien.

As always. Yeah, I look forward to the official opening of the radio station. Congratulations for all the work you've done over the years. And it was only about 10 years, I think. So. Just about 10 years now think so just about 10 years now yeah it seemed pretty easy. A blink of an eye. Thank you. Thanks Gary. You've been

listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on CHIR FM, the voice of the Gulf Islands.