CITIZEN 300
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Council takes message to UBCM
Charelle EVELYN Citizen staff cevelyn@pgcitizen.ca
Elected officials and senior staff from local governments across B.C. are descending on Vancouver this week to make community issues heard at the provincial and federal level.
The Union of B.C. Municipalities annual general meeting runs Wednesday through Friday at the Vancouver Convention Centre, featuring a large contingent from Prince George and region.
Coun. Murry Krause is up for reelection to the UBCM board of directors, sitting as next in line to be the group’s first vice president.
Two more successful UBM elections and Krause will be the head of the provincial body in 2016, which would be a huge boon for the region, said Mayor Lyn Hall.
Regional District of Fraser-Fort George board of directors chair Art Kaehn is also up for re-election to the UBCM board.
He has sat as the group’s electoral area representative for the past few years.
Hall said the annual event is important because the UBCM, an umbrella group with nearly 2,000 delegates scheduled to attend, represents the voice they have with the provincial government. It also allows a forum for local governments to speak to each other.
“UBCM just gives you an opportunity to voice your issues to almost every municipality in the province,” said Hall.
Though the official conference business doesn’t begin until Wednesday,
Hall is already in Vancouver where he is attended his first B.C. Mayors’ Caucus meeting on Monday.
The group, which was co-founded by
It’s a big table of folks so it’s important that we get our message out there, too, and they know what kind of issues we’re facing.
— Mayor Lyn Hall
Hall’s predecessor Shari Green, will be a chance for Hall to not only hear from Lower Mainland and Okanagan mayors but also join the chorus of mayors from this region in expressing their concerns.
“It’s a big table of folks so it’s important that we get our message out there, too, and they know what kind of issues we’re facing,” he said.
Local government officials will also bring their issues directly to provincial politicians during one-on-one meetings with cabinet ministers.
The Prince George group is meeting with International Trade Minister Teresa Wat, Education Minister Mike Bernier, Advanced Education Minister Andrew Wilkinson and Social Development and Social Innovation Minster Michelle Stilwell.
North Central Local Government Association reps are meeting with Small Business and Red Tape Reduction Minister Coralee Oakes.
“Red tape exists at all three levels of government, but in the north in particular, our communities are challenged when it comes to economic diversity and attracting businesses,” said NCLGA chair Brian Frenkel, in a press release.
“Instead of simply waiting for the
province to do all the work and deliver a ready-made, how-to guide for municipalities, we’re saying, ‘Let’s work together to get this done.’”
The regional district board of directors isn’t sitting down with any ministers themselves, said Kaehn. Instead, the group is taking on a supportive role for its member municipalities.
“Every year, you don’t always have something you’re going to charge in on the white horse and charge down to UBCM, and this is one of those years where we’re going to support our neighbours because we have a stake in the issues that they’ve raised,” said Kaehn.
It’s a different environment when meeting with ministers at UBCM, as opposed to hosting them in your own community, said Hall.
“You get about 10 or 15 minutes so you really have to be concise and to the point and get your message out and you have to choose the more important topics to discuss there,” he said.
On a larger scale, municipalities will also attempt to sway their counterparts to back potential policy decisions.
More than 150 resolutions are up for debate this week, ranging the spectrum from making changes to highway speed limits to calling for the federal government to reinstate the mandatory long-form census.
The NCLGA has sponsored 20 resolutions while the city of Prince George submitted an emergency resolution last week pushing for more action from the federal government regarding Syrian refugees.
Hall said he has his eye on a variety of resolutions about infrastructure, pipelines, legal requirements for public notice and recycling.
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District calls for Site C land review
Mike CARTER Alaska Highway News
The Peace River Regional District has already called out the province of British Columbia once for not allowing the Agricultural Lands Commission to review the removal of 5,340 hectares of land from the Agriculture Land Reserve for use as the Site C dam reservoir.
Now, it will be asking local governments across the province to do the same.
PRRD representatives will ask delegates at this week’s Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting to pressure the provincial government to rescind the exclusion of the land until “adequate public input and respect is shown for the legal requirements,” necessary for the removal of lands from the ALR.
The lands to be flooded represent the largest land exclusion in the 43-year history of the ALR.
In a June 2015 letter to Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, PRRD chair Lori Ackerman pointed out that “the province was clearly directing the Agricultural Land Commission that there was no need for them to be involved, even as the process had barely begun. The province was ensuring that they would remove any legal road blocks instead of allowing the Joint Review Panel to conduct the hearing in an unbiased manner.”
The decision to exclude the land from the ALR was approved by Premier Christy Clark’s cabinet on April 8 by order in council. This type of legislation allows the provincial cabinet to make certain executive actions without legislative approval.
Rural area director Karen Goodings said the decision was “done quietly and with no discussion.”
Goodings said the region isn’t even clear on how much land will be impacted.
The regional district also asked government to hit the brakes on Site C in July, voting to ask the province to suspend the permits that are currently allowing work on the dam to proceed until all legal challenges against the dam have concluded.
“You don’t dig the basement until you know you can complete the house,” Goodings said.
“We’ve said all along that we feel due process has not been followed through this whole process,” she added. “Instead of going through the process that is set out by government... they make exceptions to the rule and in this case that is what they’ve done.”
The PRRD’s resolution is backed by the North Central Local Government Association.
A committee struck to review resolutions put forward at the UBCM convention gave no recommendation to either endorse or not endorse the PRRD’s resolution, leaving room for debate on the convention floor.
The committee did note that members had considered - but did not endorse - a resolution that sought to simplify the procedure and expedite local government applications for removal of lands from the ALR in 2013.
In the past, members have also expressed support for retaining the ALR despite its “lack of resources.”
According to BC Hydro, the Site C reservoir will run 83 kilometres and more than double the width of the river in some places. Some 81 percent of the area flooded would be Crown land, while 12 per cent belongs to BC Hydro. Seven per cent is privately owned.
The ALR was created by the province’s first NDP government in 1973 as a means of protecting farmland against development.
The City of Victoria wants the UBCM members to back its resolution that the Site C dam undergo a review from the British Columbia Utilities Commission.
The District of Hudson’s Hope and the Peace River Regional District have also requested a “proper review of the project” from the province before current construction and development is allowed to proceed.
The resolution argues the dam has “raised issues including the potential impact on BC Hydro ratepayers and provincial taxpayers, as well as the potential impacts on agricultural, environmental, aboriginal and municipal interests.”
UBCM’s resolutions committee has recommended the motion be endorsed, noting that members have consistently favoured resolutions supporting a “full and robust role for the BC Utilities Commission in the oversight of all power projects undertaken in B.C.”
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