Nanaimo’s harbour was up for discussion at a public forum held Saturday at Vancouver Island Conference Centre.
Hosted by Snuneymuxw First Nation and the Nanaimo Marina Association, the symposium sought to provide dialogue on the harbour’s future. Both SFN and the marina association have expressed displeasure at the Nanaimo Port Authority’s management and in a July press release, Snuneymuxw stated the port authority model was fundamentally broken and one that wasn’t based on partnership and recognition of its rights.
There is a desire to work with the federal government on a new governance model, the press release said.
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Stewart Johnston, founding Greater Victoria Harbour Authority chairman and guest speaker, said stakeholders in his area had to work together to establish the GVHA. Patience is needed, he said.
Johnston said the creation of Victoria’s authority, which was incorporated in 2002, is an ongoing process. In 1996, after a new transport minister, David Anderson, took the portfolio and announced there wouldn’t be divestiture (selling off of investments) of the harbour to government, but to stakeholders, the City of Victoria subsequently set up a meeting and established a group of advisors, Johnston said. It would lead to the establishment of the current authority.
“It’s going to take a long time to get that trust and if you’re [patient], you’re going to see changes in the political landscape and have to be flexible … with those changes,” said Johnston. “In the end, you can truly achieve what you set out to do, if maybe a little different than what you originally envisioned, but as you go, you build something that is really quite powerful and effective locally controlled and feeds back to improvements in the community itself.”
Amongst the issues dealt with, the environment as the sea bed was polluted and there were liability issues.
“We went from a situation where even the stakeholders were distrustful of each other to a situation in which one meeting the environmental representative was absent and there was something missing that needed some acknowledgement to environmental concerns and the big industrial property filled in that gap and brought it up – that kind of cooperation. So that takes a while to develop.”
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