Four of seven West Kelowna Council members attended the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference in Toronto from May 25 - 28.
Councillors attended a variety of workshops and study tours, such as Waste to Renewable Natural Gas - Powering your Community, How to Build Great Public Spaces and Facilities, Finding Home: Canada’s Next Generation of Housing, and Everything Everywhere All At Once: Multi-solving Climate Solutions. They also participated in the regional caucus meeting to discuss issues and opportunities locally and throughout British Columbia.
Tradeshow presentations also offered opportunities to learn more and share best practices for sustainable infrastructure management that will bring new ideas and opportunities for West Kelowna to consider.
Three emergency resolutions were also passed that reflect municipal concerns on a national scale. FCM is calling on the federal government to establish an urgent intergovernmental platform on mental health, take urgent action to address the crisis of homelessness, and develop a modernized fiscal framework for Canadian municipalities. In particular, West Kelowna Councillors strongly voiced their support at FCM for a process that results in new municipal revenue sharing tools from the Federal and Provincial Governments to provide for current services, as well as coping with the new emerging issues related to homeless, mental health and climate change.
“It has been evident for many years that municipalities are struggling to meet the financial demands to manage their existing services before working toward solving the housing crisis, homelessness, mental health and the opioid and addiction crisis that municipalities are being asked to support,” says Coun. Rick de Jong.
“With increasing demands from the federal and provincial governments, long-term, stable, and sustainable revenue tools must be put in place that reduce the reliance on such things as property tax collection and grants. Being a city only 15 years old, West Kelowna, in particular, has inadequate supports to address what’s being passed down from all levels of government,” says de Jong.
“This goes beyond social issues and also includes how our city adapts to climate change, reducing GHG emissions, increasing economic development while supporting escalating policing and fire rescue costs,” says de Jong. “We need united national voices with strong advocacy and action led by FCM for a new fiscal framework for local governments. We will continue our advocacy on this topic provincially at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) convention this fall.”
Escalating costs related to infrastructure development, operations, maintaining and replacing capital assets and others are a significant burden to manage with an outdated fiscal framework. FCM will continue its advocacy and action with the federal government and additional information can be found here: https://fcm.ca/en/events-training/conferences/annual-conference-and-trade-show.