It was part business, part homecoming.
Minister of Community, Sport, Cultural Development and Minister Responsible for Translink Peter Fassbender, was in the North Island last week meeting with local governments. He was also invited to attend a joint Rotary/Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Port McNeill Aug. 30.
Fassbender told the members that he has been here many times before. “I started my first job here as a choker working for Rayonier,” said Fassbender. “I learned what I didn’t want to do for a career,” he laughed.
Fassbender also has strong family ties here. His sister Heidi married Gibby Wickstrom, who was born in Sointula.
After Gibby passed away, Heidi moved down island to Courtenay. Fassbender’s niece is Port McNeill Chamber of Commerce President Gaby Wickstrom who married Gibby and Heidi’s son Gene.
The official component of his visit included “meeting with all the local governments and regional districts to talk about the issues they’re facing,” said Fassbender.
“I’m very much a hands-on type of Minister. It’s easy to sit at a desk and read reports and statistics,” he said. However, by meeting with people face to face, he is able to find out what “the heartbeat and pulse of a community is.”
Fassbender said resource-based communities, like those on the North Island, are facing significant challenges because of economic downturns and changes in the fishing, mining and forestry industries.
“I know the challenges that communities face,” he said, referring to Port Alice in particular, that has lost its major employer and who’s future is hanging in the balance waiting for a definitive answer about Neucel Specialty Cellulose’s plans.
Fassbender said the biggest commonality he has seen in his discussions are questions about “how we transition from where we were, to where we are, to where we want to be.”
Transition is something that requires out-of-the-box thinking and developing new value-added industries. “We as a government want to be involved with helping with that transition. I wish I could say the answers are really simple, but they’re not.”
Communities need to work together and develop partnerships in order to improve their economies.
“We can’t do it all. We do it collectively in partnerships with communities. It all comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers that we serve.”
As for deficit spending, Fassbender says the government does borrow for big projects, if necessary, however “what we don’t want to do is mortgage our future by running deficits every year.”
Despite downturns in resource industries, BC has “the strongest economy in the country. Despite its challenges, one of the bright spots is the growing tourism industry. “It is one of the important aspects of the future of our province.”
Another promising area is the information technology sector which can be done “from virtually anywhere,” he said, adding that in order to launch this type of business the infrastructure has to be there.
“We do have some of those challenges,” said Fassbender, adding that the government is investing “so that we can connect every community” to the information highway.
The federal government, he said, has invested money to connect First Nations communities to the internet, however Fassbender believes this work should include other communities that may be located along the way, not bypass them.
If the infrastructure is in place, it not only benefits business, but health care providers, and young people in the school system.
Fassbender said education is at a transformational point, and that “the world has far surpassed where we are today. That is why we are all working so hard, so that we are able to cope with change,” he said. “You should be changing day in and day out, because the world is changing so fast. The more flexible you can be to respond to that, the better,” he said.
Another area the government is hoping to address is affordable housing in the province. In order to “move this along” the government has earmarked $350 million.
The new 15 per cent tax from foreign real estate transactions in Vancouver will also be put into a fund that will be invested into affordable housing throughout the province, but this is only part of the solution.
“The best poverty-reduction program any community can have is to have jobs for people.” Fassbender said health care and accessibility to services for seniors are also important. “They deserve to live out the rest of their lives with the confidence that their communities care about them.”
