Hello!
The Vancouver Convention Centre has been crawling with elected municipal and provincial officials for the Union of BC Municipalities conference, or UBCM23, as it’s known. A massive brainstorming and networking event, mayors and councillors debate and vote on resolutions put forward by various communities, most of which are action requests of the provincial government. Which sounds way less interesting than it actually is. Mainly, it’s about swapping perspectives among municipal leaders and bringing their community’s concerns to the attention of provincial officials.
Which is why, when UBCM opened with a “discussion” on decriminalization and public drug use, it seemed a little odd it was only hosted by BC Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. As popular and capable as Henry is, she is not an elected official, nor is she a cabinet minister. In fact, no cabinet officials were in attendance. Not the Minister of Health, the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, the Public Safety Minister or the Premier. Just one unelected public servant, who, granted, plays a major part in setting public health policy. But given UBCM is the annual gathering of elected officials across the province, it seems like some of the ministers should have shown up to take questions from the crowd closest to ground zero of the number one public health crisis ravaging our province.
It should be noted that many cabinet ministers were on hand this week for private meetings with municipal leaders. More on this below.
Following the session with Henry, a few mayors and municipal staff from different municipalities shared their experiences about how their communities were dealing with the decrim and fallout from rampant public drug consumption. All of which was interesting and informative, but could not be described as a dialogue between two levels of government.
Here’s a snippet: Gladys Atrill, mayor of Smithers told the crowd that building a better community “also includes supporting the people that are supporting the community.” People running businesses want to help those struggling with addictions, she said, but they are bearing the brunt of the pubic disorder from public drug use. Some have even gotten physically assaulted. “So there's this crack in community that takes away some of the compassion and the willingness to hear, and the willingness to work out problems.” Smaller communities are just as devastated by the effects of the drug addiction crisis and they need to be treated equally when the province is meting out resources, she said.
But no ministers were in the room to respond or even hear Atrill’s account of how her community is affected by provincial policies.
Maybe the BC government sees the whole public drug use situation as a done deal after having finally delivered province-wide restrictions on drug use. As of Sept. 18, public drug use is no longer allowed within 15 metres of a play structure in a playground, a skate park, splash park or a wading pool. Which, according to an informal survey of municipal delegates misses wide of the mark in terms of where drugs are actually being consumed and disregards citizens’ safety concerns about the effects of public consumption.
“It's easiest to talk about children and families and to make that leap and the playground argument, but … children are walking down sidewalks, children are everywhere in our society. We should not be limiting their spaces and where they are welcome based on open drug use within our communities,” said Kamloops councillor Katie Neustaeter.
Neustaeter calls it a “disconnect,” where policies are put in place to help people with addictions without accompanying expectations “defining where that's appropriate to happen.” Last week, Kamloops, like many BC councils, took matters into their own hands and passed third reading on a bylaw that basically restricts public drug use in public places, including sidewalks. It is probably the most restrictive public drug use bylaw in the province. Which makes it closest to Portugal, a nation that doesn’t allow public drug use, period.
“We now need to be able to have trauma informed enforcement that can relocate people to appropriate areas to use those drugs safely for themselves and for the benefit of the community,” Neustaeter says.
In other news around the UBCM water cooler…
Besides the townhalls and plenary sessions, the really big lotto-type opportunity for municipal leaders is to put their community concerns in front of cabinet ministers in hard-won face-to-face meetings.
Every year, councils submit requests and hope they get at least some of the meetings they’ve asked for. They don’t expect monumental change because “the meetings are only 15 minutes long,” one mayor noted. But ideally, something they say in a meeting will resonate with the minister, plant a seed, help move a project along to the next stage, or create some sort of progression on an issue their community cares deeply about.
This year, the City of Salmon Arm won the jackpot, scoring 10 meetings with ministers. But their regional district had to get decimated by wildfires to earn them. A lot of the city’s meetings relate to wildfire support and recovery. Almost 180 homes and 50 other structures burned down in the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District, including 40 per cent of the homes in Skwlax First Nation. And it sounds like the season is not finished with North Shuswap yet.
Salmon Arm Mayor Alan Harrison says flames were visible from the road when city officials departed the community to attend UBCM this week. One councillor says the fire that decimated Skwlax and surrounding areas was among the fastest moving in the province. At one point, the flames moved 20-some kilometres in a few short hours. Barriere Mayor Ward Stamer is calling for a provincial review of the 2023 fire season to see what worked, what didn’t and how to prepare for next year.
The Village of Valemount has lost a lot of weight lately (population-wise). With the local section of the TransMountain pipeline now complete, many of the workers who had been living in the company’s work camp and in private dwellings across the area have returned to whence they came. Local businesses must feel the loss. At its peak, camp workers more than doubled the village’s population to a high of about 2,200 people in 2021. The good news for tourists and anyone thinking about making Valemount home – with only 300 pipeline workers still living in the community, there’s now a few rental vacancies.
Valemount Mayor Owen Torgerson also reports success on a project it sponsored with Spruce City Wildlife Association out of Prince George. The group released 25,000 baby salmon in the hope one per cent will return. The hardy salmon who make the effort to swim 1,400-kilometre from the Georgia Strait up the Fraser River to Valemount deserve their own cheering section along the way. We’ll never hear their perspective on how they did it, but the closest human on earth to knows how it feels is NDP MLA Fin Donnelly, who swam the Fraser River tip to tail. Twice
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The big asks from the Regional District of Sechelt this year are all about increased water access and better BC Ferry service. Councillors Brenda Rowe, Alton Toth and their colleagues had just emerged from a meeting with Forests Minister Bruce Ralston when they stopped to discuss their priorities. One being to speed up archeological approvals in “red zones,” which are mainly pre-1846 First Nation heritage sites protected under the provincial Heritage Conservation Act.
The district wants to expand drawdown from existing wells and gain additional access to other sources in the acquifer but needs archeological approval to do so. The community is in Stage 4 water status for the fourth time in five years. Unfortunately though, archeological approvals can sometimes take a looooong time. Previously, when the community was in a similar situation, it took three years to break ground after the minister of the day promised to “prioritize” the request, says Toth.
Sechelt councillor Darren Inkster had a few things to say about BC Ferries. First, the good news. The vessels are safe, staff are well-trained and the food is decent. Bad news is the ferries are often not on time, the reservation system is “broken,”cars and even walk-on passengers often get left behind, sometimes waiting multiple sailings, and sometimes they are stuck above the gate without running water, shade and services. Just a few port-a-potties. “The BC Ferries are in an accelerated decline of on-time performance,” Inkster quips.
If you want a deeper dive into the coastal community scene, check out Rowe and Toth’s podcast Locally Speaking, which they promise is a nerdy dive into all things Sechelt.
There’s way more that happened, including a ground-breaking collaboration in the North Thompson Valley and a few stories that will show up on Northern Beat which over the next couple weeks.
For now, we’ll leave you with that.
Thanks for reading!
Fran
Questions, suggestions, feedback contact Fran@northernbeat.ca
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