For two veteran Armstrong councillors, there was little substance to this year’s annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Victoria.
Shirley Fowler and Ryan Nitchie felt the week-long meeting in the provincial capital featured a lot of talk with no significant outcomes.
“It reminded me of the one in about 2000, when the Glen Clark/Ujjal Dosanjh government was on its way out,” said Nitchie. “Every minister’s speech I heard in Victoria this year was basically empty. We weren’t getting any real answers, no real announcements.”
“There was no guts to a lot of the talks, just that – a lot of talk,” added Fowler. “There were a lot of people talking but there wasn’t a lot of meat to what they were saying.”
Armstrong Mayor Chris Pieper called it a busy UBCM but did agree that some of the topics were light.
“It’s hard to hit a lot of hot topics for a week of meetings every year,” said Pieper who, along with Nitchie and Fowler, was joined in Victoria by councillors Kelly Rowe and Ron (Sully) O’Sullivan.
One of the hot topics debated was a resolution to lobby the federal government to decriminalize marijuana.
Or, at least, Fowler thought there’d be more debate on it.
“It was 11:50, time for lunch and I just thought there would be a lot more to debate about because it was such a strong topic,” said Fowler. “We went for lunch, came back and the vote (which passed in favour) had been done.
“Everybody had such strong opinions and examples, at the end of the meeting I expected everybody to get up and duke it out.”
O’Sullivan voted in favour of the resolution, but believes the feds should legalize marijuana, not decriminalize it.
“Some examples they gave, if an 18-year-old kid gets caught smoking a joint, he can’t go across the border. That’s stupid as far as I’m concerned,” said O’Sullivan. “It was a really good presentation with most of the speakers talking about the pros and cons of decriminalizing marijuana.”
Fowler was impressed by a presentation from Vernon Mayor Rob Sawatzky and Annette Sharkey of the Social Planning Council on responsible gambling.
Nitchie was captivated by a presentation from a UBC professor that focussed on recruiting and retaining young families to a community.
“His ideas were targeted towards young families and opportunities for governments to help our generation,” said Nitchie, married, with two young daughters.
Rowe said one of the talks she enjoyed the most was from a panel of ministers for natural resources, and the outlook they painted for the province going forward.
“They were talking about nowhere near being able to fill the jobs that are going to be created,” said Rowe, talking about the freezing of natural gas and moving it.
