Province Invests $49.3 Million for New Downtown Art School

The B.C. Government is investing $49.3 million in a new campus for the School for the Contemporary Arts for Simon Fraser University that will anchor the Woodward’s redevelopment project and help revitalize Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

• The 11,845-square-metre School for the Contemporary Arts will fill five storeys on the southwest corner of West Hastings and Abbott Streets.
• It will include public space, performance venues, teaching studios, a 400-seat theatre and a multimedia lounge and lab for new media.
• The new campus is being built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver standards.

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New Regulation Improves Child Care Opportunities

A new provincial child care licensing regulation will increase spaces and the number of working early childhood educators.

Three key changes address recommendations from family child care providers and early child care education professionals:

• Family child care operators will now have the flexibility to take in a maximum of seven children, newborn to five years, without having to reserve spaces for infants and school-age children. This will leave more spaces for toddlers and pre-school age children.
• A new category of child care licensing – Multi-Age Child Care – will allow eight children in a home with one ECE-certified individual, an increase from seven children under the Family Child Care category.
• New ECE graduates will be given one-year certificates to work as fully qualified staff immediately upon graduation. Child care operators will have additional qualified staff to draw from when hiring, and new graduates can get their required 500 hours of work experience needed for full licensing.

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Traffic Fine Funds Continue to Support Safe Communities

Municipalities in British Columbia continue to enhance their policing and build on community-based public safety programs, thanks to the Province’s traffic fine revenue share funding.

• This year, the Province returned $58.8 million in traffic fine revenues.
• The funding has allowed municipalities to continue hiring more police and explore a wide range of projects, including outreach services for youth, Aboriginal policing initiatives and methamphetamine awareness programs.
• As a result of increased funding to municipalities, more than 560 new police officers have been sworn in since 2003.

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