Whereas British Columbia highways handle large volumes of traffic, with vehicle crashes occurring in all parts of BC in all seasons; And whereas many small community volunteer fire departments and societies provide vital highway rescue services for crashes occurring on Provincial highways; And whereas while some costs are reimbursed to the communities providing this service, costs for the service exceed the reimbursed costs, meaning local taxpayers, most of which reside in small communities, are subsidizing up to 50 for a Provincial highway system service, including a portion of on-call payments for highway rescue responders, training costs, fuel, vehicle provision, maintenance and replacement; And whereas the Province of BC funds 100 of other emergency services attending to vehicle crashes on Provincial Highways including BC Ambulance Service and BC Coroners Service: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of BC to seriously commit to the development and implementation of a comprehensive funding model for Highway Rescue Services such that small community taxpayers are not subsidizing a provincial service.
Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness We are fortunate in British Columbia to have dedicated and skilled emergency responders who support public safety by responding to incidents on our highways. This work is important and Ministry staff are undertaking work on this issue, with three immediate areas of focus: 1. Establishing a committee comprised of road rescue service providers with internal and external partners to work with government for road rescue response. This committee is intended to be a forum to guide the work of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness EMCR and provide a voice to road rescue service providers across BC. 2. Policy development and support with immediate attention to address the rate coverage previously provided under the Inter-Agency Agreement, refresh for the Road and Medical Rescue policy suite, and policy development to better address non-road rescue out of jurisdiction fire rescue. 3. Advice and support to EMCR operations staff and road rescue service providers throughout British Columbia. Future work includes developing relationships with other provincial ministries that have relationships with local government fire services for out of jurisdiction work, such as BC Emergency Health Services for First Responder response and BC Wildfire Service for wildfire response.