By Cheryl Jahn

FCM wraps up for another year

May 29, 2023 | 3:24 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – An urgent call to action to address homelessness was one of the three resolutions passed overwhelmingly. And the BC Supreme Court ruling around Mocassin Flats and the restrictions on the City dismantling that camp until “sufficient” housing is found was a big part of that discussion.

“Communities and cities of all sizes across Canada are seeing a rise in residents who don’t have homes,” says Garth Frizzell. “That’s a huge, huge problem. So this is a meeting where municipal leaders from all across the country get a chance to talk to the federal government and to highlight how big an issue this is.”

But homelessness wasn’t the only social issue brought to the table. A resolution calling for the establishment of an intergovernmental platform on Mental Health was passed. It’s a push to have the federal government acknowledge mental health as a national emergency and to commit to a tripartite committee to have mental health as an intergral part of Canada’s health care system.

“We we know mental health and addictions are a huge crisis and the federal government should be declaring it. So this is an opportunity for communities and cities again to say to the federal government, ‘This is what’s really happening with the order of government that’s closest to the people. We see this every day and we need help. We need a solution.’ Now, the promising piece that’s happened in the last five years with things like the Reaching Home initiative was direct funding from the federal government to municipalities to local governments for the first time.”

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Those resolutions were unanimously supported by all communities because, as Frizzell says, these two issues are not exclusive to the big cities.

“That’s the big the big thing you see when you go to those conferences is there’s higher populations in the metropolitan cities, but there’s way more smaller communities all across Canada. So we get a platform for rural communities and mid-sized cities like Prince George to sit on the same platform with.”

And the final resolution looks at the fiscal framework municipalities and the creation of a municipal growth fund that links financial capacity to population growth and to focus on new sources od revenue for local governments, such as the gas tax.