Coun. Kerry Jang
Of particular interest was Saskatoon’s new problem with housing affordability and their need, like ours, to find ways of building new rental housing. I learned their approach is similar to ours by finding ways to provide incentives to developers to build rental housing, not just market condos. Secondly, the FCM plays a huge role getting the feds to the table and allowing municipalities help to set the parameters around new infrastructure money for roads to water treatment plants. The feds set the parameters on the previous program, [including] what projects got funded, timelines, [and] who did the work. That left critical projects unfunded, [from] sewers to seniors’ centres. The importance of a unified national voice – through FCM policy resolutions which we debated and passed – is key. Thirdly, the conference allowed us to meet with federal ministers and leaders where we could talk directly about a range of topics, such as the closure of the Kits Coast Guard station.
Coun. Heather Deal
I am an active member of two of the [FCM] standing committees: Social-Economic Development and Community Safety and Crime Prevention. Both of these committees had well-attended policy sessions where we discussed priorities for the committee, including many issues of concern to Vancouver: immigration, urban aboriginals, emergency preparedness, an aging society, housing affordability, crime prevention. The input that we received will help to inform ongoing policy priorities which are important not only to Vancouver, but across the country. In the resolutions section I was active on an emergency resolution to pull the Fisheries Act changes out of the omnibus budget bill which is being debated as I type. The local concerns about these changes – supported by a motion at Metro Vancouver – were shared across the country and supported by a near-unanimous vote on the resolution floor.
Coun. Raymond Louie
The FCM’s number 1 priority is to replace the Building Canada Fund that expires in 2014. And so we’ve been having meetings with [federal Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel] to find a long-term infrastructure plan solution to stabilize and regularize funding investments across Canada. For Vancouver and the region, we’ve got two large infrastructure projects on the horizon –the Lions Gate Treatment Plant and the Iona Island Treatment Plant – totalling about $1.5 billion. The minister [Lebel] announced at FCM that he would be holding a series of roundtable discussions across our country to inform his decision on how to roll out or how to construct that new long-term infrastructure plan. So this is a positive step that he’s dealing directly with municipalities – recognizing that municipalities are a construct of provinces [and] there’s no direct constitutional relationship between municipal government and the federal government under the constitution.
