Wilf Adam was elected as chief for a second three year term at Lake Babine Nation last month and he is now gearing up for another busy term.
He said to Lakes District News that he is very pleased to have been reelected to represent Lake Babine Nation.
According to Chief Adam, now that the band’s finances are back in good order, chief and council will be concentrating on finding employment for their out of work members.
He said 66 Lake Babine Nation members worked at the Babine Forest Products mill prior to the Jan. 20, 2012 tragedy and while some have found alternative employment, many are still looking for another job.
“Our priority is getting a new mill rebuilt in Burns Lake, so chief and council will be doing everything we can to support that,” he said.
“Some Babine Forest Products employees did go back to work at the mill to work on log processing, but that has wrapped up now and they are back out of work again, so we are doing our best to find them employment.”
There will be a continued focus from chief and council on Lake Babine Nation’s youth and Chief Adam said that the Woyenne based youth centre has resulted in some decreased crime rates being reported.
“A youth centre was one of the things that was lacking for Lake Babine Nation and we plan to constantly work on improving things for the youth.”
“We will be taking the knowledge we have gained from the Woyenne youth centre, to Tachet and Fort Babine and will be looking at establishing youth centres in those communities,” he said.
Chief and council will also continue to build on their relationship with the Village of Burns Lake.
“I had a chance to talk with Mayor Luke Strimbold recently and we also plan to sit down with the village this month. We will be planning more joint council meetings. We find them valuable because we gain a better understanding of each other and have found out that we have some of the same issues that we have to deal with. It’s great to interact and work together,” Chief Adam said.
“It is an interesting council for Lake Babine Nation this term. Different from the last council … just one councillor survived the election, so it will be interesting to see how we all work together.”
He said they have held a couple of council meetings since the election, that went very well.
According to Chief Adam, Lake Babine Nation’s election code will also be reviewed and chief and council have plans to update it.
“This will be a process of over a year, but the current election code that we have is 20 years old and needs updating. We will be looking to include things like mail in ballots.”
He said they also plan to investigate a new government structure to better represent all the members of Lake Babine Nation.
“We currently have a chief and council for three communities, Woyenne, Tachet and Fort Babine, representing a nation of 2500 people.”
Over 1000 more members live off reserve in areas like Smithers right down to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver, so chief and council feel that they need a structure that is more in tune with where people live, rather than just representing the three communities.
“This is something that Lake Babine Nation has been looking at for a long time and now that we have the finances in order we can fully concentrate on this,” he added.
