Dealing with the death of a loved one is a stressful and upsetting time in anyone’s life, but advocates in B.C. say more funding is needed for a government program to assist families through end-of-life care.
The Provincial Burial Program is administered through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and it helps pay for funeral costs if the family or estate of the deceased person cannot afford them.
“They’d sit down with the funeral director. They choose the services that they want, whether that was cremation or burial and then they would go through a few other kinds of choices to determine what what they’d like,” Bradd Tuck, the executive director of the BC Funeral Association told Global News.
“There is a small allotment for funding for a funeral service. There’s an allotment for interment, so burial of an urn or a casket. And then the family would sign off on it and the funeral home would submit their invoicing to the Ministry of Social Development directly, and they would pay the bill for that program.”
However, Tuck said while the next-of-kind can make some choices through the program, the fees set by the province have not changed since 2008.
He said there is $1,285 allocated for basic services, which includes bringing the deceased person to the funeral home, registering the death, filling out paperwork and then the cremation or burial is paid at cost.
“Then there’s $815 put aside for any kind of funeral service,” Tuck added. “So depending what the family would want, they’d be able to determine their needs using that $815. And then there’s a preset casket, which is really kind of the minimal casket that can be used for burial and a small allotment, $200 for an urn. And then there’s a few other things like transportation that are paid as well.”
However, Tuck said those rates are based on what the fees were in 2008 and are not reflective of today’s costs.
“B.C. has the lowest rates across the board in Canada,” he said.
However, Tuck said those fees do not include any allotment for a headstone to be purchased, so if someone is buried in a cemetery there would be a paper or electronic record of where that person is placed.
“If someone were to go to the cemetery office and look that up, they would be able to find that individual,” he said.
“But essentially, it sits as an unmarked grave.”
Sheila Malcolmson, the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction of B.C., told Global News her office has met with the BC Funeral Association and said they are grateful the organization has stepped up to fill some of the gaps.
“They’ve got a good case along with all the other ways that we want to invest in people and make up for lost ground for a long time in B.C. where we fell behind as a province around taking care of people in need,” she said.
“What we pay for through my ministry is the funeral providers’ service fees, casket, or urn, we pay the cemetery or crematorium fees, the burial and interment plot costs. That’s the basics of a dignified burial that we’re able to help people that way.”
Malcolmson said the ministry will be looking at updating the fee allocation next spring.
“Any family who’s in need right now, we want them to know that there is support for them,” she added. “They can reach out to my ministry or through our My Self Serve system online.
“We want to be there for you to cover those basic costs at a time of real need. And then we’ll look forward to ways that we can continue to improve the system and respond to what families need at such a difficult time.”
Tuck said they want to see the fees allocated to the Provincial Burial Program to $3,500, instead of $2,100.
“Really what we would like to see is for the government to see this as a priority, to realize that what’s happening right now in the province isn’t really equitable to those who who can’t afford to pay for funeral services themselves and to see an increase in those fees happen and then to tie further increases to inflation so we don’t have to keep going back to this conversation five years from now, 10 years from now.
“I think what we really need to do is, is that realization that death is something that each and every one of us is going to be touched by and it needs to be part of the conversation now.”
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