The park board wants to be a living wage employer. Can it?

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Good morning!

…or is it? The candidates seeking the premiership will be yelling on the radio this morning, and if you’re anything like me, that sounds like a terrible way to start the day. A 9 am debate?? No. No, thank you. Just no. I’m a firm believer that if it’s too early to get drunk, then it’s too early for a debate. 

If I’m real, I’m a firm believer that debates are a bad way to inform your voting intentions. Debates are a performance — entertainment more than information — and a good performance in a debate doesn’t tell us who has the best policy to lead the province. We shouldn’t measure our voting intentions in terms of who can deliver the quippiest line with the best timing and the most gravitas. In fact, maybe we should steer clear of people who can, without flinching, avert answering questions directly and instead offer platitudes.

Just a thought.

Today, we’ve got a report to the Vancouver Park Board on recertifying as a living wage employer — and the barriers that may stand in the way.

—Dustin Godfrey, freelancer

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WEATHER

Wednesday: 15 🌡️ 8 | 🌤

Thursday: 15 🌡️ 9 | ☁️

Friday: 15 🌡️ 9 | 🌧️

PARK BOARD

The park board wants to be a living wage employer. Can it?

What happened: After the City of Vancouver ended its living wage employer certification with Living Wage for Families BC, the Vancouver Park Board asked staff in the spring to look into recertifying just the parks and recreation department. Staff have compiled a report that looks into the question, and it brings up some potential barriers to a recertification bid.

Background: The City of Vancouver was certified as a living wage employer from 2017 to 2022, with the city declining to submit an application for certification in 2023 when there was a more than 17% jump in the living wage standard. The city instead considered averaging out the most recent five years of living wages as a standard, before settling this year on a three-year rolling average, according to a statement by Living Wage for Families earlier this year.

• The park board passed a motion in April this year asking staff to report back on steps for recertification for the park board alone, including potential budgetary impacts.

The report: One of the bigger challenges, according to the report, is a legal question over whether the park board has the legal authority to direct employment policy, as it has no direct employees. Staff who are directed by the park board are employed by the city, and community centre staff are employed by community centre associations, according to the staff report, which will be heard in next week’s regular board meeting.

• “The current advice from the legal department is that the park board does not have any employees and that recertifying to be a living wage employer is therefore outside of its jurisdiction,” the report says.

With the city looking to shutter the park board altogether, the legal department said it can’t provide any further legal advice to the park board on the issue, with staff saying the board would need to seek outside legal advice on how it could provide guidance on employment practices for parks and recreation staff to meet living wage employer criteria.

What is the living wage? The current living wage, as determined by Living Wage for Families BC, is the hourly wage needed to cover food, clothing, rental housing, childcare, transportation and a small amount of savings in a household consisting of two parents (both working full-time) and two children, the most common family unit in BC.

• The living wage is “a barebones calculation,” according to the organization, as it doesn’t cover “anything beyond minimal recreation, entertainment and holiday costs,” nor the cost of caring for a disabled, seriously ill or elderly family member.

The living wage was most recently calculated in November 2023 in BC, with Metro Vancouver’s living wage set at $25.68, assuming monthly costs of nearly $1,200 for food, $176 for clothing, nearly $2,900 for housing, $553 for transportation and $703 for child care.

Living wage changes: The living wage calculated for Metro Vancouver jumped 17.35% in November 2022 to $24.08, and another 6.64% the following year to the current rate. The 2022 jump was attributed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives to changes in how rental costs were calculated to account for differences between the rents on market and those of long-standing tenancies.

• There were 180 direct employees in the city that didn’t meet the new living wage rate, according to a report for the January 2023 in-camera meeting in which the city ended its living wage commitments. The city also noted nine contracted services that did not meet the new living wage at the time.

That report calculated that it would cost $98,000 to lift those 180 direct city workers to the living wage, with those employees working an average of 400 hours a year, and largely working under the park board. It estimated another $1.5 million to bring the nine contracts into compliance with the living wage. While it’s unclear how many of those contracts were related to park board services, staff said a quarter of contracted services were under the park board in 2017.

What’s wrong with the new standard? Using a three-year rolling average is “slightly better” than the five-year rolling average, according to the Living Wage for Families statement published in response to the city’s vote. But “using any kind of average ignores the reason why the living wage exists,” the organization added.

• “The living wage reflects how much you need to earn right now to pay for basic essentials. Workers across the city are struggling to pay for the current cost of essentials, not the cost of rent or food averaged out from three or five years ago,” the statement reads.

The move to a rolling average means “hundreds of city workers and contractors — doing vital work like clearing, stocking shelves in the library, and keeping us safe as security guards — are still not guaranteed an income that means they can pay for rent, food and other essentials,” the statement reads.

• Where the living wage is calculated at $25.68, the three-year rolling average is $23.42, an annual difference of $4,113 for a worker doing 35 hours a week, and the five-year rolling average is $21.84, for a difference of $6,988 annually, according to the statement.

Next steps: If the park board is serious about getting living wage employer certification, staff said the board will need to confirm its legal ability to direct the wages of city employees and the city’s contracted services for parks and recreation facilities. It would also need to identify the budget required to bring employees and contracts whose wages don’t meet the living wage standard into compliance.

• The park board would then need to develop an implementation plan, and then submit the implementation plan to Living Wage for Families BC to review and, potentially, approve.

Nickels and dimes: Paying a living wage to park board staff would cost the city, but it’s not clear it would consume a particularly large portion of the budget. To meet the large increase in 2023, city staff estimated at the time that it would cost $1.8 million, between direct employees and contracts serving the city, park board and library. For context, the 2023 operating budget was $1,971 million, of which $1.8 million would account for 0.09%.

• A rounding error that low would be beyond impressive. But while a couple million dollars is less than pocket change to the city, the living wage, at $2.26 an hour higher than the three-year rolling average standard the city uses, would mean a 9.6% increase in wages for those employees.

Analysis: In a year in which the city was giving a nearly $32-million boost to the VPD — which since has become the highest-paid police force in Canada, according to Global — short-changing the lowest-paid workers was never a particularly good look for the city.

• Living Wage for Families BC notes 97% of employers reported a benefit from joining the program, according to the January 2023 city report, because it improves morale and productivity, while reducing turnover and the costs associated with recruitment and training.

If the city hopes to attract workers to live and work here, a wage that is divorced from the actual cost of living isn’t a good start. And it poses an important question for the city and the broader community: do we want to be the city that is nickel-and-diming (or, perhaps more accurately, toonie-and-quartering) the low-wage workers who keep the city running?

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VANCOUVER NUMBERS

👶 1: BC saw its lowest rate of birth on record last year with a lifetime average of this many live births per woman, part of a national trend of declining birth rates, compared to 1.26 nationally, similar to South Korea, Italy and Japan. [Vancouver Sun]

❄️ $121: You could be fined this much for driving on BC highways with the wrong rubber, as the season of winter tires kicked off officially yesterday. [Vancouver Sun]

🫥 1/4: While most of the BC NDP cabinet will be on the ballot this election, this many will not be, including now-former Vancouver MLA George Heyman. Also missing from the ballot are Harry Bains, Katrine Conroy, Mitzi Dean and Rob Fleming. [Canadian Press]

🗳️ 11: There are this many Indigenous candidates across BC’s 93 ridings, including two Conservatives, seven NDP and two Greens, only one more than the 2020 election. [Vancouver Sun]

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Just Pizza reflects Vancouver’s unique culinary landscape

What if a viral restaurant was actually good?

I’ve been fooled many times before. The bright colours, moving food, the video influencer proudly exclaiming this is the best restaurant in the city and that you HAVE TO TRY IT.

Inevitably it’s either fine or downright forgettable. Rarely is it the best. So whenever I see one of these videos, my first impression is skepticism. 

My hackles were already up as the viral videos started pouring in about a new pizza spot in East Vancouver called Just Pizza, located at 1629 Kingsway. 

Oh boy, was I wrong…

To read this review and instantly subscribe to our newsletter, click this link.

HOME OF THE WEEK

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House of The Week is a home selected by the Lookout team and is not a paid advertisement. All ads are labeled as such. If you’re a realtor who wishes to feature your home in our newsletter, please contact our sales team.

THE AGENDA

⛽️ Metro Vancouver’s emissions are likely higher than reported, as truckers are believed to be tampering with their engine emission controls, according to a report by the regional district. This is particularly true of trucks built in 2003-16, as the emission control systems caused issues. [Vancouver Sun]

👀 The oppo research done against the BC Conservatives by the BC United is seeing the light of day after all, with a leak of 200 pages of documents now in the hands of the BC NDP. The documents include candidates endorsing conspiracy theories, including that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that the subsequent US Capitol riot was a false flag operation. [Canadian Press]

🏗️ New regulations on crane safety took effect yesterday, with employers now required to submit a written “notice of project” to WorkSafeBC at least two weeks before crane activity starts. The regulations come after a number of incidents, including one that ended in the death of a young mother from Mexico who had recently become a permanent resident. [Global]

☢️ The BC Conservatives say they would amend the Clean Energy Act to allow nuclear power in the province, and that it would review small modular reactors with an aim to build BC’s first nuclear plant within a decade. [Global]

💸 The BC NDP is pledging to increase BC’s income tax exemption by $10,000, something the party says will reduce taxes by $1,000 for households and $500 for individuals. The announcement comes shortly after the BC Conservatives’ pledge to exempt up to $3,000 a month in housing costs from income taxes. [Canadian Press]

🧑‍🚒 A fire at Oak and West 49th destroyed one home and damaged two others on Monday, with smoke visible from as far out as the North Shore. The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined, but no one was hurt, according to firefighters. [CTV]

ARTS

Theatre

The Strange Fellows brewery is transforming into a haunted house for the spooky season into the Dead Fellows Brewhouse, on Oct. 18-20 and 25-27. Does this count as theatre? Yes. Of course it does. [Scout]

Stir has a great new guide out on all the arts events taking place this fall, including some great theatre productions.

Music

It can be hard to keep track of all the new music that comes out, including the music that’s coming out of your own town. Here’s some of the music that was released by Vancouver musicians in September. [Straight]

Jaimy xx will be hitting Vancouver’s PNE Forum on Jan. 20 as part of his world tour supporting his latest album, In Waves. [Straight]

Want to see a Broadway show but don’t want to visit New York? Jersey Boys is on right now until October 27 at the Arts Club Theatre Company and tickets are downright affordable.

Movies 

Just a few days left in the Vancouver International Film Festival. You can check out anything from Grand Theft Hamlet, a reenactment of that famous play on that famous video game, to Rumours, a political satire about a G7 meeting, to Rafiki, a film about two Kenyan girls in love and resisting a conservative culture.

Art

Vancouver’s punk scene has deep roots — and you can get a look at some of its history, with this feature on the work of Bev Davies, whose photography captured out-of-town acts like The Clash or Black Flag, as well as local acts like D.O.A. [Montecristo]

Polygon Theatre is celebrating National Seniors Day on Oct. 10 from 10-12 with an exploration of photos that up until recently were locked up in their vault. [Stir]

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Don’t miss the ultimate guide to Vancouver’s heart and learn more about the people and places that make this city special.

Catch every episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow @downtownvan for more.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• A Vancouver couple felt a lot of love in a short time. [Global]

• What are B.C. politicians really promising on critical issues for younger generations, like housing, child care, and climate? Check out Generation Squeeze's Voters Guide. [Sponsored]

• UBC’s Indigenous teacher program is celebrating its first half-century. [Global]

• I don’t know what this goat is alleged to have done, but I maintain its innocence. [Vancouver Sun]

• Why are there so many rats in Vancouver? [Vancouver Sun]

VANCOUVER GUESSER

Today’s Vancouver Guesser is a popular park in East Vancouver. Can you name the park? Reply with your name and answer to be included in the newsletter.