Fifteen Budget Nuggets

Nearly everyone in B.C. now knows about the increase to the homeowner grant, the lack of any major tax cuts and the spending increases that were part of Finance Minister Carole Taylor's first full budget this week. But hidden in the hundred pages of budget documents are dozens of tidbits of information about our province - and the government's plans for it. Here's a small sampling …

1. An 80-year-old today is twice as likely to have a knee replacement, coronary bypass or cataract surgery as was the case 15 years ago. He or she is eight times as likely to have an angioplasty - a procedure to declog the coronary arteries of heart attack-causing plaque.

2. For the first time, the Liberal government is, in places, providing details of how well it did at meeting the targets it had set itself in previous years. The Ministry of Advanced Education, for example, met its targets in 2004-05 for medical school spaces and came within a whisker of meeting its target for spaces in nursing and related programs. But it did less well in programs in computer sciences, electrical and computer engineering, falling more than 700 spaces short of its target.

3. Mental illnesses now form the most significant group of health problems for B.C.'s children and youth. About 15 percent of individuals under the age of 19 are affected to some degree by a mental illness.

4. Thirty-five percent of all senior executives in the B.C. Public Service and 32 percent of all middle managers will be eligible to retire by 2010.

5. Students who enter B.C.'s school system as English-as-a-Second-Language students actually have a higher rate of graduation than other students. In 2004-05 (the last year for which data are available), 83 percent of ESL students graduated, compared with an over-all rate of 79 percent. French immersion students did the best of all, with a graduation rate of 90 percent.

6. Almost half of all B.C. adults don't have math skills considered necessary to function well in every day life. In the latest survey of literacy and numeracy, 48.7 percent of adults didn't meet the standards for numeracy testing. Reading (literacy) was a bit better, with 40 percent not reaching the standard.

7. The average sea level rose by between 4 and 12 centimeters along most of the B.C. coast between 1909 and 1999. Between 1895 and 1995, the average annual temperature increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius.

8. A new government program aims to let everyone who writes a letter to a cabinet minister at least receive a response letting them know their correspondence has been received. In 2004-05, only 22 percent of letter-writers received a response within two weeks. The government's goal is to increase that to 80 percent within the next year.

9. By the end of the 2006-07 fiscal year, a total of 216 people will be working in the government's Public Affairs Bureau - engaged in organizing advertising, dealing with the media and otherwise trying to get government's message out to the public. That's up from 202 people working there at present.

10. More than 85 percent of B.C.'s population now lives in urban centres. That's an increase of five percentage points from 1991 to 2001.

11. The government would like to reduce the number of ill people who die in hospital. At the moment, 54.4 percent of natural deaths occur in hospitals; the government would like to see more of those deaths occur in hospices or as planned home deaths in which persons are allowed to die at home and helped to be comfortable and safe while doing so.

12. Another health target set by the government looks at how long it takes patients who visit an emergency ward to actually get admitted to hospital when necessary. At the moment, about two-thirds of them are admitted within 10 hours of a doctor deciding to admit them (which is not necessarily immediately after they arrive at an ER; several hours may elapse in the meantime). The government would like to increase that in the upcoming year so that 80 percent are admitted within 10 hours. For 2007-08, the goal will be to have 80 percent admitted within eight hours.

13. Illegal gaming is increasing in B.C., to the point where the government is going to implement a new Illegal Gambling Enforcement Strategy. It will include a policy framework for Internet gaming as well as a public education campaign to let people know what sorts of gambling are legal and which are not.

14. Sales of B.C.-published books have an estimated value of $150 million annually. The TV and film production industry is even bigger business. Last year, the average value of each production here was $4.1 million, with a total of $801 million spent in B.C.

15. The average speed of commercial trucks using B.C. highways is 71 kilometers per hour. This is measured by satellite tracking technology that records the travel time of 1,500 long-haul trucks whenever they travel on one of 36 specified highway segments in the province. The government doesn't expect this speed to change much over the next few years. It notes that road improvements should increase the speed, but growing traffic volumes will slow the trucks down.

Victoria-based Barbara McLintock is a contributing editor to The Tyee.