Nanaimo City Council meets with other municipalities at this year’s UBCM to discuss housing, health, and street disorder

One motion that was brought up over the convention called on the provincial government to recognize housing as a human right. Photo courtesy of Hilary Eastmure

Housing, health, and street disorder were top of mind at this year’s Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention, held this year in Victoria.

CHLY spoke with members of the Nanaimo City Council who attended to hear what their takeaways were from the week.

Mayor of Nanaimo, Leonard Krog, said one of his takeaways came from discussion around street disorder, mental health, addictions, and, as he would put it, the brain injury crisis.

“There's no question that the street disorder issue is a dominant issue in many, many, many municipalities,” Krog said. “Hardly anyone is untouched. Even some of the much smaller communities. A community like Terrace, is probably suffering worse than us. Courtney is probably worse off, too.” 

He said the week was filled with members of municipalities and various cabinet ministers meeting to talk about what can be done to improve the situation.

Mayor Krog said while Nanaimo is meeting or exceeding its housing targets in the private sector, they are low in the area of subsidized supportive housing.

“Those targets can only be met if the province provides the money through BC Housing and builds those kinds of housing units,” he said.

On Wednesday, Mayor Krog was joined by other mayors and council members from across the province on the steps of the legislature to call on the Province to deal with the rapid street disorder affecting many communities.

“I am hoping that that will continue to keep the pressure on the provincial government to move forward with the necessary resources, supports and programs to try and solve the misery that is in the streets of every community of any size in British Columbia,” he said.

Krog said there is a key agreement that all the municipalities will have to work harder collectively with the provincial and federal governments. But there is still a lot to celebrate as communities like Nanaimo have seen an increase in tourism, helping to boost local economies.

“So there are some bright spots on the horizon economically, and we need to celebrate those as we face it, I suspect what will be a challenging winter,” he said.

One motion that was brought up over the convention called on the provincial government to recognize housing as a human right and focus on housing and homelessness strategies. The City of Nanaimo was one of the co-sponsors of the resolution after council voted unanimously back in June of this year to support it.

Councillor Hilary Eastmure brought the resolution to council. She said she felt that bringing it to the UBCM was important.

“Housing affordability and homelessness are something that is impacting pretty much every single community across BC,” Eastmure said. “It's part of the reason why it's really important to come to a convention like this, to really understand that it is not just Nanaimo, and that there are solutions to this when we make systemic changes at the provincial and federal level. So advocating for that resolution on housing as a human right is really important so that we can get the province to say it out loud and then make the changes that we need.”

Resolution NR17, calling on the province to recognize housing as a human right, passed unanimously.

During the convention, Eatmure also seconded a motion to amend the agenda to get an emergency resolution added regarding action on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

“So what we were looking for was for the province to tell the federal government that we need a two-way arms embargo so that Canada stops shipping parts that are being used to carry out what the UN has declared is a genocide happening in Gaza. We also called for Israeli products to be removed from B.C. shelves,” she said. “There is a precedent for this already; the same thing that the province did with Russian wine. Then we also called for Provincial support for Gazan resettlement here in B.C.”

While a majority of the delegates voted in favour of amending the agenda to get the resolution to the floor for debate, they did not reach the three-fifths, or 60 per cent, threshold needed for it to pass.

“So the standing vote really showed that we are in the majority. The majority of people are not okay with a genocide being carried out, and they recognize that all elected representatives need to use their voice to call for action at every level of government,” Eastmure said. “So it was really heartening to see that.”

Another hot-button item at the UBCM convention was healthcare. Councillor Janice Perrino said as chairperson for the hospital district board, a lot of her week was spent in meetings with ministers discussing the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. They are hoping the government will soon do their part on the planned catheterization lab.

“We're ready to do our share,” Perrino said. “Where we want them to move forward [is with] the business and concept plan, which is–it's not putting the shovel in the ground, but it's the first stage that has to happen, because that stage will tell us what the hospital really needs.”

She said from the discussions, she is hopeful for some good news on the long-awaited cath lab, knowing how important it would be for not just Nanaimo, but the rest of central and north Vancouver Island.

“We're pushing [the province] to say yes to this next stage, because we're technically a tertiary hospital, and really all we have is one service of tertiary level, which is the nephrology–which is the kidney dialysis, and all of that work. It's not enough; we need to be serving the entire central and north communities,” she said.

Perrino said it doesn't matter if a community has only 3,000 people or 300,000; a lot of the problems are the same, just at different levels.

Regular city council meetings are set to return on Monday, October 6th at 7 p.m.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.