Thoughts on BC Politics and More

This past Saturday – Saanich North and the Islands MLA Adam Olsen wrote in this blog about getting on with a fiscal framework for BC’s Local Governments -- which has been discussed for many years with Provincial Governments of different political stripes (Socreds, NDP, BC Liberals) however I want to look at this from an Electoral Area point of view… There are 155 Electoral Areas in BC today (these Electoral Areas were created in 1965 along with the corresponding Regional District – 27 in BC today) each with 1 representative from each of these Electoral Areas.  And in of these Electoral Areas, there are quite a few unincorporated communities whose local government is the nearby Regional District.  Electoral Areas can have total population ranging from 400 in the Hixon area (Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, Electoral Area ‘E’) to as much as 8,000 in the South Shuswap (Columbia Shuswap Regional District, Electoral Area ‘C’).  Each unincorporated community is u...

We used to help build each other’s barns. When a family was in need of help the community would come together for a good ol’ fashioned barn raising. The church basement once was the main home of community social services. The doors would be open wide to host soup kitchens or a shelter when our neighbours were in need of warmth in their bellies and their spirits. To be clear, these first few sentences are less a critique of those doing important work in faith / service-based organizations. Rather, it’s a social lamentation that as an elected official I'm looking to resolve. Governments are sucking the life out of community and replacing it with an ever-growing network of loosely connected policy, agencies, ministries and processes. Government has weened citizens from a culture of community self-reliance. Instead we are driven by a philosophy that “government knows best” and only they can provide these services to the public. The probl...