Four of seven members of West Kelowna Council attended this year’s Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference held June 6 – 9 in Calgary.
This year’s FCM focused heavily on the need for a new Municipal Growth Framework where FCM, on behalf of municipalities, is calling on the federal government to modernize and link municipal funding with the national population and economic growth. Equipping municipalities with diverse, adequate, and predictable revenue will provide new opportunities for municipalities and support the quality of life that Canadians expect, particularly for those in our rapidly growing West Kelowna community.
FCM continues to be the united voice for municipal governments to help obtain the funding required to address the most pressing national challenges, including housing and homelessness, climate change, infrastructure renewal and public safety. Key recommendations to the federal government included increasing direct transfers by $2.6 billion to municipalities, linking federal transfers to economic growth by indexing them to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and broadening eligible expenses under federal transfers to include operating and capital costs, such as infrastructure.
“We appreciate FCM being the national voice for our local government, and we support their continued advocacy initiatives including a new Municipal Growth Framework to modernize municipal funding,” says Mayor Gord Milsom. “The number of participants at this conference was the highest-ever for FCM, which demonstrates the desire of so many municipal elected officials and senior staff to come together to discuss and seek solutions to universal concerns primarily focused on managing growth. This includes the key priorities to meet housing needs, address infrastructure deficits and provide sustainable funding.”
“These issues are top of mind for local government leaders across our country and are certainly a priority to address for our rapidly growing community,” says Milsom. “West Kelowna is not facing these issues alone. We had many networking opportunities to discover and discuss how other municipalities are tackling these issues in their communities.”
“The conference provided us with the opportunity to have meaningful dialogue with other local government leaders, and to hear from federal government ministers and political leaders, all of whom realize that collaboration among all levels of government is necessary to find solutions to these important issues,” says Milsom.
West Kelowna Council delegates reaffirmed that the focused dialogue with fellow local government politicians from across the country on priority topics was outstanding. From discussing wildfire recovery efforts with Councillors from Nova Scotia to discussing the development of parks amenities with Alberta politicians, many lessons learned will help West Kelowna get ahead and stay ahead of municipal challenges.
Councillors attended several study tours and plenary sessions including Exploring the Confluence: A Sites of Significance Study Tour, which underscored the potential change needed for British Columbia (BC) municipalities’ percentage of parks dedication and allocation for park amenities from developers. The City of Calgary greenspace and community garden tour included conversations with staff and fellow delegates from across the country who indicated that most provinces across the country require a 10 per cent parks dedication, unlike BC at five per cent. Further, in Alberta, cities also ask developers to establish all the amenities in parks, such as playgrounds and washrooms, on top of the 10 per cent dedication. All good information for the West Kelowna delegation to discuss with Council as a whole in the coming months and leading up to provincial advocacy at the UBCM conference in September.
Other conference, plenary and study tours attended by Councillors included Leveraging the Green Municipal Fund, where the focus is on resilient, net-zero communities; Future-ready Municipalities; How to Foster Innovation in the Municipal Sector; and Artificial Intelligence, to explore options for data driven insights to enhance the delivery of municipal public services, risk mitigation, data driven decision making and climate modelling. Further, the Fires and Floods plenary session focused on planning for extreme weather events that underscored the importance of preparing ahead of time. These events are going to be more and more common and communities such as West Kelowna will need to continually invest in planning and processes well in advance. It is also important that all levels of government from local, provincial, and federal are at the planning table during the event and throughout the recovery period. All four members of Council also attended the BC Regional Caucus meeting where national issues key to BC were discussed.
Resolutions that were also included this year included Strengthening Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recruitment and retention, biodiversity protection and restoration funding for municipalities, federal supports for food banks, enhancing shelter supports for women and survivors of intimate partner violence and addressing the harassment of elected municipal officials. The closing plenary session truly highlighted the need to address the growing issue of harassment of elected municipal officials, an issue that has increased with many qualified individuals stepping back or refusing to enter politics today.
“As we strengthen our municipal government advocacy together with FCM, we increase positive change and opportunities to benefit our communities,” says Milsom. “Our delegation was highly complimentary of this year’s focus, sessions, and recommended actions. It was a productive few days of listening, learning and best practice sharing and we are looking forward to bringing the discussions back to our West Kelowna Council. We are also very thankful to Mayor Gondek and the City of Calgary for being an excellent host City for this year’s conference.”
FCM will continue its advocacy and action with the federal government and more information about this year’s conference can be found here: Annual Conference and Trade Show 2024 | Federation of Canadian Municipalities (fcm.ca)