Month: October 2025

Council – October 20, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Monday’s meeting was relatively brief compared to many this term, but it involved some pretty meaty discussions on issues small and large. You can always watch the video here and enjoy the full experience to hear the many points I can’t possible condense here in my regular reporting out. The Agenda started with one item carried over from the previous meeting that ran too long for us to get to it:

Relocation of Loading Zone on Sixth Street
This has been an interesting discussion over the last few weeks. The bus stop on Sixth Street at Sixth Ave is the busiest bus stop in the City that isn’t at a Skytrain Station with more than 1,200 transit users boarding and alighting there every day. The 106 route is also one of the busiest routes in the region, and shares this stop with the 105, while connections are made here to the 101 and 155. The 106 has specifically been a target for Speed and Reliability measures for some time. The preferred approach is to move the bus stop as close as possible to the Sixth and Sixth corner while still maintaining safe movements around what is also one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the City. There is also a desire to build a modern, accessible, and sheltered bus stop that is “future proofed” for pending bus service improvements at this busiest stop in the City.

Unfortunately, these changes were not transmitted by the City or TransLink to the residents of an adjacent building, and they aren’t happy about that, mostly because a loading zone was near the entrance of their building was proposed to be moved to where the previous taxi queue was.

There was a pretty robust discussion around this, but I cannot help but mention there was quite a bit of misinformation circulated early that added to the resident’s anxiety and concerns, and despite staff and some of Council’s attempts to correct that information, we are deep into Betteridge’s Law by now. One example was access to HandiDart – and the need to clarify that the new longer bus stop will accommodate regular bus movements and HandiDart services, actually improving proximity to the building for HandiDart users (and providing a sheltered place for HandiDart users to wait for their ride). Indeed with the loading zone moved, HandiDart will be able to access the entirety of the curb from Princess Street to Sixth. Similarly, concerns that the changes will hamper ambulance of fire access were clearly refuted by the Fire Chief last meeting.

The biggest concern expressed by residents was that the loading zone at the Princess Street end of their street frontage present since the building was opened (and expanded in 2021 when some pay parking was stripped then modified further when a temporary bust stop was installed) would be lost, relocated to the south end of the blockface to replace the taxi queue area. Through discussion with staff, it was determined that returning this loading zone to the pre-2021 condition was viable, and would not seriously impact bus operations. There is some detail here to work out, as HandiDart access is still a primary concern, and we want to assure that still works with any modification, but it looks like Council has found a compromise between the needs of transit users and the needs of the building residents. If there is disappointment here, it is that we probably could have found this solution if we had taken a bit more time to talk to folks prior to starting the redesign work, but we got here now, and I’m glad Council took the time to listen an understand the problem, and staff were able to find a workaround. Sometimes it works, folks.

We then approved the following items On Consent:

Bylaw Amendments to Reflect Community Services Fees and Charges Bylaw No. 8529, 2025
Council adopted (unanimously) Bylaw 8529 in late September, a Bylaw that collects various user fees together under a new Bylaw to align with our new departmental structure. This means edits to three other Bylaws to finish the move: these are those three Bylaws.

Downtown BIA Renewal 2026 – 2029
Business Improvement Areas are non-profit organizations regulated by the Community Charter. The members (defined as businesses property owners within a geographic area) agree to a taxation level, usually based on the frontage or area of their property, the City collects those taxes and returns them to the BIA to do “business improvement” activities defined in the Charter. This agreement between the city and the BIA must be renewed every four years. Last month, the members of the Downtown BIA unanimously approved a four-year renewal term, and a pretty significant increase in their levy, the City need to pass a Bylaw to make this a reality.

The following two items were Removed from Consent for discussion:

Response to Council Motion – Limiting Business Licences for Vape Stores
There has been community concern raised about vape technology, both as a public health concern for youth and about the prevalence of new shops opening up in New West. Tasha Henderson has been working with colleagues across the province to advocate for the Province to take better control of the industry, recognizing that municipal borders don’t mean much to a supply chain like this, but there is something we can do locally to stem the tide a little. There are “age restricted” vape shops in New West – a category that doesn’t include gas station convenience stores or other retail places where vape products may be available, but they are not displayed, much like cigarettes are managed.

Regulating retail for an undesirable but legal products needs to be approached carefully. Sometimes it points to a moral panic (see video game arcade restrictions that were a hassle to overturn a few years ago), and sometimes it opens the gates to Council having to draw lines in gray areas with imperfect knowledge (are vape stores worse than cigar stores?) and without fully understanding the outcome being sought. This is a good example, if vape shops are age restricted, is this about keeping those products out of the hands of youth? Or do we just not like the aesthetic of vape shops? Politics is about the grey.

The City hosted a Retail Strategy roundtable this summer with many businesses and commercial property owners there, and they overwhelmingly supported some restriction of Vape shops because of a perceived impact on street vitality. We also received correspondence from the medial health officer supporting further restriction. So staff are recommending we update our zoning bylaw to limit expansion of new age-restricted vape shops, recognizing that the existing one are “grandfathered” in – we don’t have strong legal grounds to shut them down. And Council agreed.

Rezoning and Special Development Permit Applications: 801 Columbia Street
The vacant lot at Eighth and Columbia is one of those challenging spots in the City. It was an area of, to be generous, underperforming retail prior to being demolished by the City to support the staging of adjacent construction (including belonging to the city to support staging for Anvil Centre construction). The City (in hindsight, probably not wisely) sold the property off, and in 2016, considered a Development Permit to build a three-story commercial building on the site.

Alas, the developer of that plan never competed their planning, and the property was sold off again, and still sits as an empty lot in the middle of the downtown. The current owner now wants to build a rental high-rise on the spot with two stories of retail at grade and (this is a first for New Westminster, and no surprise considering the adjacent SkyTrain and new Provincial Transit Oriented Development regulations) no residential parking.

This is a preliminary application, but Council did not sound particularly excited about it. There were a number of concerns raised, mostly around buildability (there is nowhere except busy streets to stage construction of a building this scale), and a general lack of amenity value for such a large development.

The purpose of this preliminary review is not to say yes or no (as this is not a complete application or proposal and there are numerous details to work out), but for Council to let staff and the developer know if there are significant concerns that need to be addressed prior to consideration of rezoning, and to set some expectations for community amenities or other conditions that should be included if a rezoning application comes to Council. In the end, that list seemed longer than Council was comfortable drafting in a council meeting, so the decision was to defer this item until next Council meeting so Council can show up with a more considered list.

And that was the end of the very short agenda. Happy Diwali everyone! Go Jays Go!

Zombie Bad Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It’s been a while since I saw this kind of comparison, but it is circulating on local social media again, seeming to point back at some politicking by a certain group who obviously know the truth, but have little interest in honest discussion, preferring to ask leading questions instead of seeking seeking answers when they have just as much access to all of the data as I do. Here is the graphic:

There are two problems with this comparison, which was generated by the City of Port Coquitlam for their own political reasons.

One is that the numbers include electrical utility charges collected by New Westminster because we own our utility, and does not include household or business electrical utility costs for any other municipality (because they buy their power from BC Hydro). I call this zombie data because every time this bad comparison rears its head I knock it back with the facts, but it gets back up and starts grunting again.  Like back in 2018 when the Fraser Institute did the same lazy comparison, somehow claiming we had the second highest taxes while the very same report showed New Westminster having the 12th highest taxes of 17 municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Then the story resurfaced three years later with another FI news release where they compared revenue and spending between cities. The fun part this time was digging into the data that the FI used and (after removing electrical revenues and spending) seeing that New West’s spending (the services we deliver to community) are higher than the regional average, but our revenue (the money residents and businesses pay for those services) was lower than the regional average. You would think the folks at FI would appreciate New West delivering more for lower costs. The FI also had a chart showing New Westminster spending increases for the decade were among the lowest the region. So thats good news?

Follow those links to see the data, with links to the sources! As we all learned in math class: it is important to show your work!

The second problem with the graphic above is that the chart is the “tax on a representative house”, not tax on the average or median household. That is the average single family detached house, which in New Westminster is estimated (in 2025) to be about $1.6M. But in New Westminster, we have one of the highest proportions of renter households (45%) in the region, and the vast majority of  New Westminster households are in multi-family. This means the average residence is closer to a $700,000 condo that would pay half this amount of tax and much less in utilities. Taxes on a “representative house” does not reflect the typical tax or utility bill here.

The numbers on this chart come from some massaging of Provincial government stats reported out as “Schedule 704” which you can read yourself here. If you don’t want to click through an download the spereadsheet, I have extracted the part of the table that is only Metro Vancouver municipalities (as our tax regime is different here than the rest of the province, due to TransLink and the fact we don’t pay Hospital tax as they do elsewhere). I also used the 2004 table, not the more recent 2025 one, because the graphic above uses this 2024 data:

I highlighted in green the numbers that PoCo used in that chart above, and added a column summing these up to show how PoCo came to their conclusion. Naturally, they chose the comparison most generous for their purposes, not including all the taxes and fees people pay, after all, PoCo is not the lowest taxed city even in this flawed comparison.

In my mind (and you may disagree) the more fair comparison is the taxes per capita, because ultimately people pay taxes not houses, and people receive the services that the City pays for with its taxes. I explained this a bit more here (again, older numbers, but comparison still fits), with an update with 2024 numbers displayed in a different way here.

In short, and I know there is a lot here (remember Brandolini’s Law), most apples-to-apples comparisons show New West is about average of the region for property taxes people pay both per capita and per household, and over the last few years, our annual increases have been slightly below the regional trend. Spread the news.

Council – Oct 6, 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Another exciting evening at New West Council, We got through all of the agenda, if not the few extra items added during the meeting. We also have a new trend of some Councillors wanting to write a bunch of policy on the fly in the meeting, which means that I don’t necessarily have the exact text of every resolution passed or defeated until minutes are approved a couple of weeks from now, so this report comes with the caveat that everything is based on notes I take during the meeting and my not-flawless memory. A good reminder that these reports are my immediate impression, and not the official record: that is what the video and meeting minutes are for.

We started with one piece of Unfinished Business:

Sustainable Housing for Seniors Experiencing Homelessness
Submitted by Councillor Henderson

WHEREAS the number of seniors who are homeless has increased five times over the last 10 years, with the most recent Point-In-Time Homelessness Count suggesting that the percentage of people experiencing homelessness who are seniors could be up to 30%; and
WHEREAS the SHINE program has proven to be an effective and essential solution for seniors experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness by assisting over 6,300 seniors in 2024 in various communities across BC, including New Westminster, to find supports and permanent housing; and
WHEREAS sustainable, long-term funding is necessary for the SHINE program to continue operating in the 12 current municipalities and is necessary to expand the program to additional communities; and
WHEREAS members of City Council who attend the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention often meet with members of the Provincial Cabinet;
BE IT RESOLVED that the Mayor, on behalf of Council, send a letter of support for sustainable funding for the SHINE program to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that where appropriate, Mayor and Council share their support for the SHINE program in meetings with Provincial Ministers at the UBCM Convention in September 2025

The second clause here was removed because UBCM just passed (we had some delays getting this in front of Council for scheduling reason and the moment passed), but the advocacy is important, and something the community has been raising to Council on a few occasions. We know that every dollar spent keeping people out of homelessness saves the government orders of magnitude more money in addressing the impacts of homelessness, and seniors in our community deserve better than to be priced out of their homes with no supports or place to land. This program saves lives, and should be supported.

We then moved the following items On Consent

Fenton Streetscape Project – Sole Sourcing of Eagle Valley Excavating
Fenton Street is one of the lower (elevation wise) residential streets in Queensborough, and has seen periodic flooding during protracted rainfall events or atmospheric rivers. Staff did some work to evaluate the cost and complications of significant upgrades of Fenton to bring it up to an elevation where flooding would no longer be a concern for the road – but the implications for adjacent properties (homes that in some cases would now be lower than the road) were problematic. In the meantime, staff are moving ahead with a significant ditch maintenance program, including lowering the invert of several culverts to improve off-street water storage and improve the general drainage regime. This should help!

Licence of Occupation of a Portion of Brunette Avenue with BC Transportation and Financing Authority for Construction and Use of a Pedestrian Bridge Connection to Sapperton Station
As Wesgroup continue to work on the last building in the Brewery District and are working on delivering the new public plaza with accessible access to the existing SkyTrain overpass, a part of the access will extend over City-owned right of way along Brunette Ave, which requires a licence agreement with TransLink, because it is actually TransLink infrastructure, built by Wesgroup over City land. This is that agreement.

Temporary Licence Agreement with MRSL (New Westminster) Nominee Ltd. for Construction of Dike Shoreline Rehabilitation at 350 Gifford Street
The City is doing on-going dike maintenance and upgrades as part of our regular business in Queensborough, something the province used to do until 2003 when Gordon Campbell decided to get out of the business of flood control on the Fraser River and downloaded the responsibility to cities. One of the areas needing some repair right now is located on private property, requiring us to get a licence to do this work on their property. The work is funded through a UBCM Grant received a couple of years ago, so this report isn’t about cost, just about us needing to get an access licence.

We then covered the following items Removed from Consent for discussion:

2025 Council Remuneration Policy Review
This is a follow-up report on a July 2024 resolution of Council (passed unanimously, I note) that the remuneration of Council be reviewed by an external consultant and recommendation made to Council to revise it based on comparator cities across the region. In short, we try to set our remuneration as equal to the average of the eight most similar cities in the region, and we found that we are slightly (2.3%) below the regional average for Mayor and Council wages, and a few other adjustments are recommended to bring us closer to regional norms.

Transportation allowance numbers were a big difference, with the Mayor’s TA way below the regional average, and Councillors’ at a third of the regional average, but Council all agreed that the New Westminster transportation regime is different than most of our comparators, and agreed that this Allowance should be a limited to a one-zone transit pass. That is about where the agreement ended.

There was an attempt to refer this report beck to staff with a bunch of recommendations, but the idea of referring back after staff provided the report we asked them to produce last year seemed a redundant next step. In the end Council decided to keep the CPI increases and transition fund as is (and as recommended by the report), not increase Acting Mayor stipend, and limit the Transportation support to a transit pass (which is much less compensation than the report recommended).

Active Transportation Network Plan Year 2: London Street and Eighth/Ninth/Tenth Street Routes
I wrote a previous post about this, but in summary we had a spirited pubic engagement on the London Street bikeway improvements, staff have come back with a revised plan that best as they could, reduces impacts on street parking, helps address community concerns about through-traffic, and makes some prioritized safety improvements for active transportation users. Though we received less feedback on the Eighth/Ninth/Tenth Street routes, staff nonetheless made some adjustments based on feedback received.

Metro Vancouver Liquid Waste Management Plan – Follow-Up from March 17, 2025 Open Workshop
Metro Vancouver has a Liquid Waste Management Plan – a master plan outlining how they plan to collect, treat, and dispose of one billion litres of wastewater every day. This plan is required by provincial regulation, and Metro has offered local governments an opportunity to provide feedback on the draft plan. We offered no feedback, it’s a good plan. However, Council decided to once again express concern about cost overruns on the North Shore wastewater plant.

Provincial Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Program
Council had previously asked staff to look into joining the BC government “Pilot Program” on e-scooter regulation. Staff have talked to participant cities and done a bit of analysis, and concluded the program does not demonstrably increase safety, all communities report enforcement is difficult (nigh impossible), no education supports are provided, and significant staff time may be required to manage the pilot and public interactions related to them. So the Pilot seems to offer several costs and challenges and very little benefit. So staff recommend against joining.

Still this is an item of increasing interest in the community, so Council supported Councillor Henderson’s motion to advocate to the Province to stop kicking this issue down the road and bring in province-wide regulations that focus on safety, that we advocate to UBCM, and that we work internally on and education and enforcement campaign to address community safety concerns bereft of provincial movement on this.

Response to Council Motion on Community Grants Program
Back in August, Council agreed (unanimously, I again note) to ask Staff to add 50% to the community grant budget envelope, this is the follow up with staff analysis and timing, based on the recent opening of the community grants application window. Supporting everything from Hyack Festival to Pride to the Royal City Musical Theatre, May Day, Hospice, and many other community groups, New Westminster is on a per capita basis one of the most generous communities in empowering community organizations. This is one reason we still have such a connected and engaged community, and we know that the money invested in these programs is returned to community many times over, as it is empowered by volunteer energy and matching grant and sponsor money. This is a good investment in community.

It also aligns with our Strategic Plan, aligns with the recent recommendation of the Community Advisory Assembly on building community connections, and reflects what the arts community and community festival groups have been asking of the City in delegations and other reports over the last few months. This also reflect recommendations made in the recent review of the grants program that staff have been undertaking as of late.

We had one Motion from Council to consider:

Community Policing Office in Queensborough
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

WHEREAS Queensborough community members have expressed interest in having a community policing office in the Queensborough neighbourhood;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City of New Westminster provide feedback heard from Queensborough Residents Association to the New Westminster Police Board and requests that the New
Westminster Police Board consider and work with the city to plan a satellite station and/or explore how to address community safety needs in Queensborough.
THAT staff report back regarding the circumstances which led to the closure of the satellite policing office in Queensborough;

The Queensborough community has been raising concerns about the level of policing service in Queensborough, and are curious about the decision years ago for the NWPD to stop staffing the satellite office in the Queensborough Community Centre. This is 100% Police Board jurisdiction, but the motion asks us top advocate to the police board and is not worded in a way that directs them to act, which would be outside of our jurisdiction. The response, I suspect, will be framed by the discussion we had earlier in the day about resource levels at the Police Department and the provisional Police Board budget coming to Council, which will see a request for increased staffing supports.

With that, we reached 10:30 when a 2/3 vote of Council is required to continue the meeting, and that vote failed. Members had put two late items on the agenda earlier in the evening, but the vote to not continue the meeting means those die on the floor. Council member may bring them back as a noticed of motion in future meetings. But this raises again the issue that we are not spending out time at Council wisely, and are not getting through agenda again, which will cause me to reflect on my chairing and what I can do to get us though our business in a better way.

London Street

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

If you follow Council (and if you don’t, what are you doing reading this!?) you have probably seen the saga of the London Street bikeway project. Before I report on all of Monday’s Council meeting (who has time to write?) I want to report out on where Council landed on this project and, as always, explain where my thinking so even people who don’t agree with my vote on the project understand what is behind it.

The City approved the Active Transportation Network Plan in 2022 after a couple of years of work. It is a multi-year project that is one of the pillars of the City’s (now 10 year old?) Master Transportation Plan, and also supports the City’s Official Community Plan and Climate Action strategies. At the core of it is the idea that active transportation users (cyclists, scooters, people with motorized mobility aides, etc) require a network, not just spot improvements or reactive treatments. We would never build a road that connects to no other roads, but for too long that has been the practice with safe AT infrastructure. In cities from Vancouver to Montreal to Paris to Hoboken, building the network is key to making the shift to a safe and functional transportation system that works for everyone.

It is worth mentioning that I ran on this. During my campaign for mayor three years ago, I talked about the ATNP whenever I could, and told the community that committing to a 5-year build out and getting the first couple of years built was a goal for my first term. This is a commitment I made to the community, based on previous work when I was on Council.

The Network Plan lays out optimal routes, connecting existing routes like London Street and Agnes to new infrastructure to complete the network, and making improvements on some of those existing routes to move them closer to (if not immediately) “All Ages and Abilities”, meaning most users, 8 to 80 years old, would feel comfortable and safe using the route. This will happen over about five years, leveraging senior government active transportation funding to pay for much of it.

London Street has been a local bikeway for more than a decade (since Wayne Wright days), and is a key low-gradient Uptown connection between Crosstown routes and destinations to the East and Burnaby. It was included in year two route planning, and staff developed two design ideas to improve comfort and safety on the route. When those plans were presented to the public, we got some strong feedback from residents on London and Dublin streets, who were clear they didn’t really like either of the two plans developed. So staff took a step back and did some extended consultation to get more feedback and worked on iterating the plan to address the major concerns.

It’s worth noting that at the same time, two other routes in the City were consulted on, and though the feedback was not as intense as London Street, staff still made some minor changes to the plan to address the feedback they heard on those routes as well. This is how public consultation results in iteration of designs, and this is a good thing.

Monday at Council, it was decided to adopt a modified plan for London Street. This is neither Plan A (where two-way travel is maintained, but with the loss of 39% of the street parking) nor Plan B (where most parking was preserved, but introduced a series of alternate one-way sections for vehicles). In the extended consultation it was clear that for London Street folks, the scale of lost street parking was concern #1, and though more preferred the one-way system to manage through-traffic “rat runners” and speeds, it also raised concerns about access and confusion, and there wasn’t a clear preference for this model either.

Staff took this feedback and considerably reduced the changes on the street while emphasizing a few intersection treatments to reduce though-traffic while prioritizing access for local residents. This was an issue repeatedly raised by the neighbourhood, and one of the aspects that made London Street feel less safe for active transportation and other users. The key parts of this plan is to modify the intersection at 20th and London to stop rush hour access and “rat running”, and improved safety at 12th Street and London, which has been a long-standing bone of contention for cyclists especially. The preservation of sight lines at intersections and installation of refuge areas (“pullover pockets”) on each block where vehicles can more easily and predictably pass mean a reduction of about 9% of parking spaces (45 spaces over the 545 free street parking spaces along that 2km stretch of road), a significant change from the 39% originally proposed, but with significant safety and convenience benefits for all road users.

Staff and Council are committed to building a safer All Ages and Abilities network so more people can safely and comfortably get around the City, but are also committed to listening to feedback from the community and iterating plans and designs wherever possible to best accommodate community concerns while keeping safety of all road users as the top priority. I appreciate the many people who took part in this consultation, and though no-one got exactly what they wanted, often the best result of community consultation is finding a path that more people can support when competing priorities unenviably arise.

Curbside space is the most contentions space in any urban city, the place where competing priorities are most clear. If we cannot afford to lose a single free street parking space, then we will never be able to build safer transportation infrastructure, this is a simple geometry problem. Finding balance and compromise based on clear priorities is the best we can do, it is the art of governance. I think we found that balance on London Street best we could.

UBCM 2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

If you follow my social media, you might note I was at UBCM last week. The Union of BC Municipalities is the annual conference/convention for local government leaders from across the province, and as you can see here, here, and here, I like to report out on events I attend on behalf of the City, and give some updates about the City’s advocacy to the Province.

By its nature, UBCM is political, but I am going to avoid some of the more pointed politics of the event here, and hold those for my Newsletter (subscribe here – its free), and try as best I can to stick to the facts and summarize a week as concisely as possible. Still, you might want to warm up your tea, because this is a longish one.

It is worth, at the start, talking about the tone of the meeting. I was at UBCM events in the waning days of the BC Liberal government where local governments were feeling very ignored by the province, and anger was stewing. I was also there when a new BC NDP government came in and Selena Robinson (one of us!) was the Minister responsible for local government and it was a love-in. There is no doubt the shine is off the apple a bit for the BC NDP, and it would be fair to expect a chilly tone at UBCM, but that was not the feeling in the rooms in Victoria even if there were protesters and an ongoing BCGEU strike at the front door off the meeting. Workshops and roundtables with Ministers from the government were generally friendly and David Eby got a decent reception (with a standing ovation) of his speech.

A big part of UBCM are the Learning Sessions, the opportunity for learning through panel discussions, workshops, townhalls, and information sessions. Here are the ones I attended:

Climate Hazards and Housing: we learned about the impacts of climate disruption, with emphasis on the retreat and recover response in Merritt to their atmospheric river flood (with lots of support from the province while the federal government have been shamefully absent), and the ongoing challenges an uncertainties still impacting largely rural Fraser Valley communities as a result of the same flood event. The big take-away from this was the presentation from the Insurance Bureau of Canada explaining how climate-related insurance losses in 2024 exceeded $9 Billion: three times the average over the last decade, and ten times the average form a decade before. You may or not believe that Climate Disruption is a thing, but the Insurance Bureau has the receipts, and your insurance rates tripling in the next few years is a possible outcome of our keeping our national head in the sand about this. But I guess one more pipeline will help pay for this?

Disordered Downtown: Rethinking Care for Those in Need: This was a session that got a lot of media attention, but was also an example of how media narrative shapes community impressions, because the lengthy discussion about needing massive health care investments because people are being harmed every day did not make the headlines, a Mayors comment about “compassion fatigue” and “law and order” did.

FIFA World Cup 2026 (FWC26) – Community Opportunities: The province is working with local governments to provide opportunities to activate our communities through next year’s World Cup games in Vancouver. This is the most watched sporting event in the worl, bigger than the Olympics by far, and clearly the larger community loves the event, but it is also a FIFA property that comes with a bunch of challenges, such as top-down control over marketing (we cannot, in New Westminster use the words World Cup or FIFA in any way promoting our events, we also can’t use outside sponsors for our events unless approved by FIFA) to strict control over the actual media (We cannot hold large public watch parties without TSN/CTV approval – and that approval comes at a cost). There is a lot to work out here before next summer.

Cowichan Tribes Aboriginal Title Court Decision: Implications for Local Governments
This was the most interesting panel discussion of the event for me. The implications of the Cowichan decision are not yet fully known (and there will be several appeals), but it is clear that this is a very important ruling, but not the panic time that the conservative pundits are claiming. The case was very specific to the lands it covered (clearly illegally sold out from under the Cowichan by Colonel Moody, acquired by the City of Richmond under tax sale) that is not broadly applicable to privately owned fee simple lands, but the negotiations ahead for the Province will represent a new phase of reconciliation in BC.

Modest Growth & Big Challenges: The Road Ahead for BC’s Economy
This panel conversation started with an update on the Provincial economy from the Minister of Finance and some economist guy to unpack the information for a more general audience. Our deficit is notably high and our debt is creeping up, but compared to GDP we have fairly low debt compared to every other province and the cost of borrowing is not yet a big concern – but it might be if we keep on this trend. The conversation was wide-reaching about our strengths (relatively buffered against US trad weirdness) and challenges (the sudden stop in immigration growth means we are technically in a per-capita recession). The big takeaway was that the economist on the panel (and the CCPA economist who as not invited to this) both disagreed with the Business Council guy on the panel – we are not in a spending crisis, we are in a revenue crisis. Nonetheless, the “we have no money” theme was repeated all weekend.

Cabinet Town Hall: Strong Communities: This Town Hall was just that, local government folks asking questions of three key ministers: Housing and Municipal affairs, Health, and Transportation. It was a broad conversation, including Tasha Henderson pushing Minister Boyle and bout school funding in New West – and how schools need to be art of the housing policy now. It is also interesting to hear similarities and difference across the province about the biggest issues ot put in front of Ministers while you have them cornered, and a healthy reminder that we in the Coast have good access to Ministers, but for much of the province this is their one time a year to get face time with important provincial decision makers.

On that topic, we had Council-to-Minister meetings with Minister Kang (on funding challenges for local festival and community organizations, and FIFA World Cup opportunities), Ministers Kahlon and Bailey (on support for local small business, including giving local governments more tools to address some local challenges), Minister Boyle (updating her on our Housing targets, on our financing growth model and infrastructure costs, our OCP update approach, and our need for more investment in affordable housing), and Minister Parmar (on some reconciliation and land use issues in the community). I also had a good meeting with BC Hydro folks in my role on the Electrical Commission to talk about partnership opportunities for infrastructure and climate action.

The message almost across the board – to the point where it was the theme of the week – was “we don’t have money right now”. Working with the City’s Intergovernmental Relations team, we knew that was coming, so pivoted much of our our advocy to include the many non-monetary supports that we would like to work towards, such as regulatory and legislative changes to meet common goals, which I think landed really well in several of these meetings.

Finally, there was a lengthy Resolutions Session where the assembled membership of the UBCM decide on common advocacy goals. There were ~275 resolutions on the agenda, and managed to get through (by my count) 168 of them. New Westminster Council was well represented in the discussions of the resolution, with Councillors Campbell, Henderson, McEvoy and Nakagawa all actively involved in the debates. New Westminster had two resolutions up for debate, both passed, though in slightly different ways.

NR60 Regulating Vape Shops
Whereas Health Canada has stated that they share the concerns of parents, educators, youth and public stakeholders regarding the increase of youth vaping in Canada;
And whereas the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch oversees provincial liquor and cannabis regulations, including licensing and monitoring of private cannabis retailers:
Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask that the Province of BC include retail stores used primarily for sale of electronic nicotine or e-cigarettes under the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch and thereby include restrictions that regulate where and how many of these retail stores are able to receive business licences in a community.

The author of the resolution, Tasha Henderson, spoke to the resolution from the floor, and got a solid majority (though not unanimous!) vote of the members.

RR36 Lobbyist Registration Vancouver
Whereas the Government of BC has recognized the potential impact of lobby activities for its public office holders and introduced the Lobbyist Transparency Act to provide the Government of BC legal tools to oversee, monitor and enforce lobbyist activities in pursuit of open, accessible, and accountable government;
And whereas unregulated lobbying activities at the municipal and regional district level can lead to undue influence from special interest individuals, groups, or organizations and BC municipal governments and regional districts are not afforded the same statutory authority to moderate local lobbyist activities:
Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask that the Government of BC introduce legislative reform that either: (i) enables municipalities and regional districts to use the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists for BC, or (ii) enables municipal councils and regional district boards to establish, monitor, and enforce lobbyist activities within their jurisdictions parallel to mechanisms available under the Lobbyist Transparency Act.

This resolution along with a similar one from Vancouver was deemed redundant because a nearly identical resolution from the City of Saanich was passed though the Endorsed Block (without any debate), so in the end result, the advocacy is approved by the membership, and we were happy to cede the space to our colleagues in Saanich as long as we got this over the finish line.

As for the rest of the meeting (other than the many networking opportunities), we had speeches from the leaders of all four parties represented in the House, David Eby concentrating on the economy and generally well received (excepting a couple of vocal protesters on Gaza), Rustad turning heads by suggesting he would dissolve a Regional Government because it was getting bad press (bizarrely suggesting it is just a utility company), a new Emily Lowan bringing a message of hope from youth, and Dallas Brodie pining about the good old days when she was a child and there was no crime (and residential schools were still in operation). So yeah, that.

Finally, New Westminster won a Climate & Energy Action Award for building the first zero carbo certified aquatic and recreation centre in BC. Which was a nice way to put a cap on the meeting.