Cache Creek and Ashcroft elected officials brought two successful resolutions to the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities conference in Vancouver last week, both highlighting the difference between living in a small town and living in a city.
Elected officials from British Columbia’s municipalities and regional districts are invited to attend this annual week-long conference to share information, discuss their concerns and to decide on which issues should be forwarded to the provincial level.
Ashcroft councillor Helen Kormendy presented Ashcroft’s resolution to the hundreds of delegates who agreed when she called the financial requirements under the new Local Elections Campaign Financing Act incredibly onerous for candidates running for office in a small town.
Ashcroft called on the province to amend the act “to recognize that requirements to run a campaign in a community of 2,000 voters is considerably different than those required for a large centre,” and that the changes to the act be in place before next year’s local government elections.
Cache Creek called on the provincial government to provide paramedics to rural areas who had advanced training and were able to administer advanced care to patients who could be in the ambulance for one hour and possibly two while being transported to the nearest hospital.
The Village also met with health and paramedic representatives during the conference to ask for their support.
Councillor Lisa Dafoe presented the resolution on the floor of the conference, calling on the province to “require the B.C. Ambulance Service to staff rural ambulance stations with much needed advanced care or critical care paramedics whose skills and training are necessary for life support where tertiary care is often hours away rather than minutes away as it is in urban centres.”
A Chetwynd delegate spoke against the motion, commenting that it was hard enough for his town to get an ambulance attendant of any sort, asking so why make it harder.
Cache Creek councillor David Dubois countered by noting that while the village was grateful to have paramedics, its pool staff and lifeguards had more advanced training than the rural emergency responders, and that hopefully the resolution would encourage the more highly-trained paramedics to live in the rural communities they serve.
There was no further discussion and the resolution was passed by UBCM delegates.