Request to meet with Province rejected

“I wasn’t quite sure what that would turn into, to be quite blunt about it. For me, it’s easy to invite, but what does it look like, putting on that kind of session? So there was a comment made about a town hall meeting. There was a comment that they could come to Council Chambers. First of all, I think it would be difficult to get all three ministries together in one location and I think there’s a tremendous amount of preparation that goes into it.”

He says, as part of the Urban Mayors’ Caucus, the City does have the ear of government on those issues.

“The BC Urban Mayors’ Caucus, 13 of us around the province from the larger communities, we’ve done a tremendous amount of work at every level when it comes to the social issues that we’re all dealing with,” explains Mayor Hall.

As was pointed out during the debate, the government committed $633 million to combat homelessness in the budget, and Prince George has some of the highest numbers per capita for not just homelessness, but also drug toxicity deaths, and the City deserves to know what the Province is doing about it.

“We can continually say ‘This is what’s in our jurisdiction,’ policing, Bylaws, infrastructure. Stuff like that and we go above and beyond as a City. We purchased that land for the First Avenue housing project. Housing’s not our responsibility but we see the importance and the City of Prince George is investing. But we can’t build, manage or run hosing developments.”

Councillor Sampson, along with Councillors Garth Frizzell, Susan Scott and Cori Ramsay voted in favour of the motion, while the remainder of Council opposed, to defeat the motion.

by Cheryl Jahn

Request to meet with Province rejected

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