Prince George Mayor Simon Yu was in Calgary last week, representing the City of Prince George at the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference.
“We learned a lot from each other, from different Mayors, Councillors, from coast to coast to coast,” Yu said.
“The basic takeaway is this, the formula, how we operate the provincial, federal, municipal governments, that model, perhaps is out of date a little bit.”
Yu said a look needs to be taken at the funding formula, as well as how small, median, and large size municipal governments are able to operate to solve some of the problems that haven’t really been faced before.
“The coordination between the cities, between the other levels of government is essential, so the fundamental takeaway is we need a national solution in dealing with homelessness, housing shortage, mental issues, drug addiction, all of these issues, we cannot resolve at a municipal level ourselves, we need to involve all three levels of government to solve the problem.”
Yu said there needs to be coordinated data to help municipalities deal with a number of issues.
“How we deal with repeat offenders, for example, we need to have better data, we need to advocate to have perhaps more crown prosecutors to deal with certain files to reduce the type of crime on the street, and some people they may not belong in the jail, they belong in the mental hospital, so we need to make sure, we need to find a way to triage these individuals earlier to resolve the problem,” Yu said.
“The issue is the data is not accurate, in terms of we don’t have national data we share with each province, but people move from place to place, to start off to solve the problem, we need a better data service, in terms of from StatsCan and take a look at the CSI numbers, to see what is taking place and how do we address it effectively.”
Yu added he feels BC needs more support when it comes to housing.
“From our province’s point of view, this one thing, it seems Ontario, Quebec, they do have a little bit more support in terms of incoming people, we as a country, we’ve received a lot of newcomers lately, and BC, it seems like we’ve gotten a lot less support, and we need that,” he said.
“We have, what, 10,000 people moving here every 30-some days, so we need the support because of this kind of movement of people coming to our area, putting a lot of pressure on housing needs, so we need to recognize that and advocate the different levels of government to coordinate some of the housing activities to resolve the issues.”
Later this year, Prince George City Council will have representation at the Union of BC Municipalities conference in Vancouver.
Yu says this will be an important session for the City of Prince George, as it gives them an opportunity to meet with party leaders ahead of the provincial election.
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