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The Swift Rise and Fall of Community Resources Boards in Vancouver1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
Abstract
This paper tries to untangle the events and arguments leading up to (a) the statutory introduction of Community Resources Boards (CRBs) in Vancouver in 1974 and (b) their effective cancellation very shortly afterwards. The idea of introducing CRBs (that is, multi-purpose, community-based and community-elected social care agencies) was partly inspired by a local reading of the Seebohm report. The programme embarked upon by the New Democratic party's Minister of Human Resources, however, was not merely far more sweeping than anything Seebohm had envisaged; it was launched on a scale and at a speed sufficient to put off many fellow reformers, let alone opposition members of the British Columbia legislative assembly. Once the opposition (Social Credit) party had managed to regain provincial office, in December 1975, the days of the CRBs (the last few of which were just then being elected) were strictly numbered. This was a pity since, despite their very brief period of operation, CRBs had by this time begun to attract an unexpectedly wide range of popular support.
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References
2 For instance, federal government agencies, provincial government agencies, regional agencies, metropolitan Vancouver agencies and municipal agencies, to say nothing of publicly funded voluntary organizations and ad loc elected school boards. Vancouver city proper (population 426,256 in 1971) is only one of the seventeen municipalities which make up the Greater Vancouver Regional District (population 1,028,350 in 1971). For an introductory account of local government in Canada, see Rowat, D. C., Your Local Government, Macmillan of. Canada, Toronto, 1975.Google Scholar
3 For the sake of simplicity, I have refrained in this essay from any mention of CRB development outside Vancouver, or of the ‘Community Resource and Health centres’ pioneered in four regions of British Columbia. For an account of these developments, see, for instance, Hepworth, H. P., Personal Social Services in Canada: A Review, Vol. 7, Canadian Council on Social Development, Ottawa, 1975, ch. 3.Google Scholar
4 See Carter, Novia, Trends in Voluntary Support for Nongovernment Agencies, Canadian Council on Social Development, Ottawa, 1974, p. 253.Google Scholar
5 Oral communication.
6 Oral communication.
7 Community Chests and Councils changed its name to United Community Services in 1966, and then again to the United Way of Greater Vancouver in 1974.
8 Carter, op. cit. p. 253.
9 Local Initiatives Program: ‘Launched by the federal government in 1971–2 to create jobs for unemployed Canadians and to improve the quality of life…Eligibility, Limitations and Restrictions: Grants awarded to established local organizations and citizens' groups or groups formed expressly for the purpose of carrying out projects’ – Arlett, A. (ed.), Canadian Directory to Foundations, Information Canada, Ottawa, 1973, p. 92.Google Scholar
10 Oral communication.
11 Vancouver Council Minutes, 10 June 1968, quoted in Carter, op. cit. p. 253.
12 Oral communication.
13 A comprehensive public assistance measure, providing for 50 per cent federal grant aid towards provincial costs of assistance to persons in need and of certain welfare services. See, for instance, Canada Year Book 1973, Information Canada, Ottawa, 1973, p. 259.Google Scholar
14 Hepworth, op. cit. p. 1.
15 See, for instance, Canada Year Book, op. cit. p. 259.
16 See, for instance, Hepworth, op. cit. pp. 6–9.
17 Oral communication.
18 Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (Seebohm Report), Cmnd 3703, HMSO, 1968.Google Scholar
19 See, for instance, British Columbia Association of Social Workers, Position Taper on Restructuring Social Services, April 1973Google Scholar, preface et seq.; also Vancouver Social Planning Department, Towards a Family and Youth Service System, May 1973, pp. 5–6 et seq.Google Scholar
20 Commission on Emotional and Learning Disorders in Children, One Million Children (CELDIC Report), Ottawa, 1970.Google Scholar
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23 Oral communication. The Social Credit party then, as now, seems to have possessed a strong ‘anti-welfare’ image.
24 Oral communication.
25 Interview with Levi, Norman (former Minister of Human Resources) on 11 August 1976.Google Scholar
26 Levi, Norman, Minister of Human Resources, ‘Speech to the Annual Meeting of the Vancouver Children's Aid Society’, Bayshore Inn, Vancouver, 15 05 1973, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar
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29 Oral communication.
30 Social Planning and Review Council of British Columbia, Report on The Community Consultation Project 1973–4, 07 1974, p. 1.Google Scholar
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32 Ibid. p. 22.
33 Vancouver Social Planning Department, op. cit.
34 Ibid. p. 17.
35 Ibid. p. 16; and oral communication.
36 Oral communication.
37 Oral communication.
38 Oral communication. Also see p. 424, below, for observations of members of the legislative assembly on the same theme. (Municipal elections in Vancouver are currently conducted on an ‘at large’ basis.)
39 Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services, op. cit.; and Quebec (province) Commission of Inquiry on Health and Social Welfare (Castonguay Nepveu Commission), appointed 1966, Reports, 1970–1.
40 Interview with Norman Levi. Also see note 87, below.
41 Op. cit.
42 Levi, op. cit. p. 5.
43 Ibid.
44 Interview with Norman Levi.
45 Oral communication; and Hepworth, op. cit. p. 46.
46 Oral communication; and Hepworth, op. cit. p. 46.
47 Interview with Norman Levi (my italics).
48 Interview with Norman Levi.
49 British Columbia Minister of Human Resources, press release, 18 October 1973.Google Scholar
50 See pp. 419–20, above.
51 Oral communication.
52 Interview with Rigaux, Joyce, Area Manager, Vancouver South Community Resources Area, on 10 August 1976.Google Scholar
53 Interview with Joyce Rigaux.
54 Oral communication.
55 Interview with Norman Levi.
56 British Columbia Hansard, fourth session, thirtieth parliament, 6 June 1974, p. 3,789.Google Scholar
57 Ibid. pp. 3,785, 3,787, 3,789 et seq.
58 Ibid. p. 3,788.
59 Interview with Norman Levi.
60 British Columbia Hansard, p. 3, 804.Google Scholar
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62 Ibid. p. 3,800.
63 Ibid. p. 3,792.
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65 Ibid. pp. 3,789 and 3,798 et seq.
66 Interview with Norman Levi.
67 British Columbia Hansard, p. 3, 790 et seq.Google Scholar
68 Ibid. p. 3,797 et seq.
69 Ibid. p. 3,799.
70 Ibid. p. 3,801.
71 Ibid. p. 3,787.
72 Ibid. p. 3,792.
73 Ibid. p. 3,793.
74 Community Resources Boards Act, 1974, ch. 18.Google Scholar
75 Ibid. Section 40(a).
76 Ibid. Sections 19(d) and (e).
77 Community Resources Board Regulations, approved and ordered by the Lieutenant Governor, 9 October 1975Google Scholar, Executive Council Chambers, Victoria, British Columbia.
78 The letter accompanying this information kit from Norman Levi, as Minister of Human Resources, was dated 8 October 1975. An earlier kit of this sort had been distributed on 29 August 1974.
79 December 1975 saw the Social Credit party returned with a majority of seats in the British Columbia legislative assembly.
80 Oral communication.
81 Oral communication.
82 Interview with Norman Levi.
83 British Columbia Minister of Human Resources, press release, 23 February 1976Google Scholar. (Compare with press release, 18 October 1973, op. cit. and p. 422, above, for the original composition of the Vancouver Resources Board.)
84 Hanson, Philip, ‘Life without Resources Boards’, Vancouver Sun, 21 07 1976.Google Scholar
85 Press release, 23 February 1976.
86 Ibid.
87 In the view of many local commentators, no elected board which did not possess its own independent taxing powers could in truth be regarded as an additional level of govern ment – a view which says more about multiple ad loc government traditions in British Columbia, perhaps, than about the significance of the CRBs per se.
88 Oral communication.
89 Oral communication.
90 Oral communication.
91 Oral communication.
92 Oral communication.
93 Oral communication. See pp. 419–20, above.
94 Oral communication.
95 See pp. 418–20, above.
96 Hanson, op. cit.
97 Oral communication.
98 Interview with Doug, Vancouver Social Planning Department.
99 Interview with Norman Levi.