WHEREAS in 1921 the Province of British Columbia initiated collection of a tax of 4.4 of gross property and vehicle insurance premiums Insurance Premium Tax equal to approximately 450M per year to offset the cost of administering the Fire Marshalls Act, later the Fire Services Act; AND WHEREAS the March 2014 Auditor Generals Report concluded that British Columbia was not adequately prepared for a catastrophic seismic event and it is anticipated that seismic upgrading will be one of the included recommendations contained in the report of Henry Renteria, Chair of the BC Earthquake Preparedness Consultation that has been received by the province: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM request that the provincial government: - establish an Emergency Response Seismic Mitigation Fund; - allocate 190,000,000 annually from the Insurance Premium Tax to the fund; and - make available up to 1,000,000 of the fund annually to each local government in British Columbia for the purpose of seismic upgrading of local government emergency response buildings including emergency reception centres.
Emergency Management BC Mechanisms already exist to support this resolution in that disaster mitigation is a category under both the Gas Tax Agreement Program and the New Building Canada Fund Small Communities Fund NBCF-SCF. The Gas Tax category covers infrastructure that reduces or eliminates the long term impacts and risks associated with natural disasters. The objective of the NBCF-SCF category is to invest in disaster mitigation infrastructure that is preventative in nature and contributes to economic growth, a clean environment and stronger communities. Since 2001, the Province has either committed or already invested over 17 billion in seismic upgrades. This includes over 4 billion in new bridge and large highway infrastructure projects, 2.2 billion in seismic upgrades for 213 high-risk schools and another 9.1 billion for capital upgrades to B.C.s hospitals to ensure theyre built to the latest seismic requirements.