FILE PHOTO - Coun. Dale Bass.

(KAREN EDWARDS / iNFOnews.ca)

A Kamloops city councillor wants the province to change its rules around extreme cold shelters.

The one part-time shelter in the city only opens when temperatures reach -10 Celsius, while the threshold in the Lower Mainland is only 0 C, a policy that's both "cruel" and "discriminatory," Coun. Dale Bass said.

She's bringing a notice of motion to council next week, suggesting the city lobby the province to open shelters at warmer temperatures.

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"The people who chose that number wouldn't want to be outside barely clothed and unwell at minus ten," she said.

The 30-bed shelter at the Alliance Church in Kamloops is the one facility that opens when the temperature reaches the -10 C threshold.

According to BC Housing, the temperatures are set by municipalities and approved by the Crown agency. The City's emergency preparedness manager Will Beatty, however, said cities generally follow the province's lead.

"The legislation comes from the province," he said. “I’ve seen some municipalities have their own plan but a lot of the time municipalities follow the lead of the governing health authorities."

In both Penticton and Merritt for example open the respective extreme cold shelters in their communities when the mercury drops to  -7 C.

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Ask Wellness CEO Bob Hughes said the lower threshold in Merritt came down to whether the two non-profits involved had the staff to keep the shelter open, and they successfully convinced BC Housing they would.

None of those temperatures meet BC Centre for Disease Control recommendations, which suggest extreme cold shelters open at 0 C and even up to 10 C in windy conditions.

Coun. Bass has questioned the rules around the temperature threshold before, but she hasn't yet pushed to change the policy. When asked what triggered the push now, she said it's because of her pet.

"It's going to sound silly, but it's true. My dog's feet hurt," she said. "She went outside to play, and she was looking at her paws then us, so I brought her in. I thought we care more about animals than we do people."

She regrets not pushing the issue forward earlier and plans to introduce a motion at the Jan. 23 council meeting, which means there won't be a vote on it until Feb. 6.

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