For more than a century, British Columbia’s mayors, councillors and senior administrators have met annually with provincial officials and cabinet ministers—and those meetings are once again underway in downtown Vancouver. There are more than 1,700 delegates from the Union of B.C. Municipalities and other stakeholders meeting at Canada Place, with municipal leaders attending seminars and discussing mutual problems and opportunities. “It’s so important to be able to have these face-to-face discussions,” said UBCM president Cori Ramsay, who’s also a city councillor in Prince George. “We also have over 700 meetings this week with provincial cabinet ministers.” Richard Stewart, longtime mayor of Coquitlam, is attending his last convention before retiring from municipal politics, and emphasized how important it is to have local representatives from all corners of the province in one place. “I think it’s vital that local government officials can get together and compare notes and work on policy together, work on recommendations, and evaluate provincial programs and provincial legislation,” he said. “There’s very little appreciation of how that sharing of knowledge and sharing of solutions and sharing of failures—yeah, sometimes the, ‘Oh, we did this, didn’t work!’—that can save a community an awful lot of money.” For mid-sized cities like Kelowna, they’re advocating for the kind of resources some metro Vancouver residents may take for granted, including sufficient numbers of crown prosecutors, detox facilities, and involuntary care facilities. “We are here advocating very strongly with regards to those areas around what’s best for communities, and it’s not only the City of Kelowna,” said Mayor Tom Dyas. “There’s not one situation, there’s not one person who is going to fix this, so collectively we need to work together.” For more rural communities, resource development and the preservation of the associated jobs is the top priority, with mill closures top of mind for many. “Where the province of B.C. really needs to focus its efforts is to make sure that the survivors—the ones that are still there and they haven’t moved to the United States—make them succeed,” said Brian Frenkel, Vanderhoof councillor. A plenary session titled “Understanding DRIPA: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications for B.C. Communities” is expected to draw a full house with many leaders anxious about how the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act could affect property owners in their communities. On Wednesday, sitting mayors and councillors will begin debating and voting on resolutions. They are topics submitted by members on a wide range of topics and convey their priorities to the province and policymakers. There are two special resolutions this year: one around governance of UBCM, and the other calling for the end of non-disclosure agreements the province is increasingly imposing on municipalities. “For example, our staff are sometimes are asked to sign NDAs before they even know what a conversation is going to be about,” said Ramsay, who supports the move for confidential cabinet documents, but not general matters. “It’s stifling the public conversation, it’s limiting our use to have conversations with the public and with our members.”
