 | Friday, November 27, 2020
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Out goes Robinson, in comes Osborne | | |  | | | Meet the new government, same as the old government.
The appointment of former Tofino mayor Josie Osborne as B.C.’s new minister of municipal affairs, replacing Selina Robinson (who got a big promotion to finance minister) is interesting because any new cabinet minister is news.Ninety-nine times out of 100, provincial opinion matters more than city council when there’s a dispute between the two levels of government. The person leading the ministry — and the background they bring to it — can help determine which local issues and requests get lots of attention and which ones don’t.
So what can we infer from Osborne’s appointment?
Well, a cordial relationship between cities and the province is still important — just as Robinson was a well-liked Coquitlam councillor before becoming minister, Osborne was a well-liked mayor, often contributing to regional and municipal conversations in an outsized way for a community of 2,000 people.
The fact Osborne comes from a relatively rural part of the province (compared to Robinson, who was from Metro Vancouver) might indicate more of a focus on the parts of B.C. beyond Hope for this government (consider the COVID-19 bailout disproportionately helping smaller communities), or it could simply be a function of Osborne’s long municipal tenure being the safest option for the premier.
As for the Housing Ministry being taken out of the Municipal Affairs Ministry and being given to Attorney General David Eby? Perhaps an acknowledgement that the portfolio was a bit too large for a first-term MLA from the Island, perhaps an acknowledgement it was still important to have someone in Metro Vancouver to oversee that file.
No matter who the minister is though, it’s still John Horgan’s government.
Which likely means it’s a government that lets municipalities do what they want but gets annoyed when cities blame the province for its misfortunes (see: Vancouver and Victoria). And it’s a government that wants to build lots of housing and infrastructure, both of which tend to keep city halls happy.
We’ll see how Osborne’s approach differs in the months ahead, and it will be interesting to see the mandate letter she’s given by Horgan, which tends to set out a ministry’s priorities for the coming years.
But at this point, anything else is speculation. | | |  | | | 1. Vancouver | Council unanimously voted to ask the federal government to give the city a health exemption, so that simple possession of drugs would be decriminalized. Now, we wait to see if Ottawa will move or not. On the same day, it also moved the empty homes tax to three per cent, fulfilling a key Mayor Kennedy Stewart promise.
Read more | | | | |  | | | 3. Chilliwack | The province doesn’t want Barry Neufeld as a school board trustee. Trouble is, its only option to get rid of him might be to fire the entire elected school board, unless it can find a loophole somewhere. It’s yet another conflict where the lack of recall, political parties and four-year terms can cause a dysfunctional local governance structure to quickly get mired in paralysis.
Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Budgets | It’s that special time of year where municipalities big and small start releasing their proposed budgets and the property tax increases that come with them — but this year has the additional wrinkles of lost revenues from COVID-19 — and emergency funds from the province — creating different calculations for different cities.
Read more at Castanet | | | |  | | | 5. North Vancouver | Why did staff in the District of North Van think it was important to get council to vote on banning overnight Christmas lights? Why did they think three complaints over five years was the bar required to create a new law? We’ll likely never know — but council wisely decided against imposing Grinch-like restrictions in 2020.
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forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for us today! Check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions, you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
