 | Friday, September 17, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Debates about the role of cities haven't changed. But the stakes have. | | |  | | | One usually doesn’t associate local politics with death.
Potholes and parks, buildings and bylaws: those are the traditional areas cities focus on, with health care and crime debates generally seen as the responsibility of higher levels of government.
But as mayors and councillors across British Columbia convened for their annual convention this week, the spectre of mortality loomed large in a lot of the discussions.
All of them were held virtually, of course, due to the ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 1,800 people in this province. There were resolutions about the opioid crisis, where a poisoned drug supply has claimed the lives of more than 100 British Columbians every month since the start of the pandemic.
And in the middle of the convention, there was a workshop, led by Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, on lessons surrounding the 2021 B.C. heat wave.
It was a heat wave that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of people dying, and it came right after an entire town burned down, at the start of a wildfire season that saw tens of thousands of properties in communities large and small face evacuation orders or alerts. “This was not something like we had ever experienced before,” said Henry at one point, a line people in this province have heard a lot, about a lot of different issues recently.
In the ensuing discussion about how municipalities could prepare for extreme weather events in the face of climate change going forward, a traditional split emerged somewhat between the two local politicians on stage.
Ashcroft Mayor Barbara Roden talked about some of the communication improvements that could be made, both in getting people to make changes to fireproof or cool their properties but also in alerting folks to evacuate a place before it’s too late. New Westminster Coun. Patrick Johnstone also stressed communications issues, along with proactively keeping cooling centres open more often.
But he argued municipalities need to be bolder in advocating for wholesale adjustments, even in the face of so many crises.
“It feels paralyzing. It can be paralyzing, but we have to take action,” he said, arguing that the deaths in the heat dome were a result of decisions avoided 20 years ago.
To stick to “core issues” or to lobby higher levels of government; to focus on incremental changes or push for systemic ones: these are at the core of most debates around local government.
But some days, it seems the stakes are higher than they used to be. | | |  | | | 1. UBCM | After that dose of existential grimness, welcome back to the newsletter! After a slightly longer summer break, we hope to return to providing a weekly snapshot of the issues and stories that matter in city halls in Metro Vancouver and beyond. And we begin with the unofficial start of the fall session of municipal government: the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention that we talked about earlier. And while it’s once again virtual, it always provides a good temperature check on the relationship between the province and various cities.
Read more | | | | |  | | | 2. UBCM resolutions | But it’s also a place where endless resolutions are debated on all sorts of policies, and while it’s important to remember virtually all of them are about lobbying the province and are therefore non-binding, it serves as a useful proxy on what mayors and councillors think about all sorts of issues, whether it be penalties for criminal offenders, emergency communication or rural ambulance services.
Read more in Business in Vancouver | | | |  | | | 3. Surrey | Because of UBCM, most councils aren’t in session this week, but the City of Surrey met, and there was controversy over a motion allowing them to ban “individuals who have repeatedly disrupted and verbally harassed Council” from attending council or asking questions verbally in a virtual setting. How it will be interpreted by the city, and whether it will pass legal muster if challenged, is very much an open question. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Vancouver | Underpinning the continued (and allegedly violent) debate in Surrey is the looming municipal elections coming up in 13 months, and that will become a greater part of the discussion in many cities soon. To wit: after months of rumours, Vision Vancouver announced it would attempt a comeback next year after being all but eliminated in the 2018 election. The more salient question of whether they will run a candidate for mayor, TBD.
Read more | | | |  | | | 5. Trail | Of all local government conflicts this summer, none seemed as strange (or expensive) to us as the City of Trail losing more than $300,000 over a dispute between its chief administrative officer and a local councillor. Long story short: the councillor breached code of conduct rules, a third party couldn’t resolve the issue, so David Perehudoff stepped down with severance, and council voted to keep the details hidden from public. Consider our eyebrows arched.
Read more in the Trail Times | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | 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. | | | |
