Council Nomination Deadline: Friday noon

Have you thought about running for Town Council? Have you got your nomination papers signed and ready for tomorrow?

Since the resignation of Jim Hancock due to a transfer to Lethbridge, Town Council has been functioning with one person too few so we are anxiously waiting for tomorrow's nomination deadline.

Nominations are being received at Town Office between 10:00 AM and noon. Don't forget your $25 in cash--when I was filing my nomination last fall, one candidate's agent had to run to the bank when he learned that a cheque wouldn't do.

I hope there will be an election--it's much more satisfying to take office that way--but whoever is elected or acclaimed, the rest of us are looking forward to having a full Council and working with that new person.

Plan to Attend: Community Health Council Annual General Meeting

On Thursday, May 22, Alberta's Minister of Health & Wellness announced that he had delivered stunning news to the board members of the nine regional health authorities, AADAC, the Alberta Cancer Board and the Alberta Mental Health Board: "You're fired." More details are found in four Ministerial Orders.

I'm the Town Council member of the Peace River Community Health Council, a body that is still, as far as we know, permitted under legislation. But what the changes mean for the CHC is not known.

This link for CHCs on the former Peace Country Health website explains the role the Councils had. Will the government keep the CHCs, dismiss them, or make changes? We don't know, but have decided to go ahead with our AGM so we're prepared for whatever happens in the fall when legislation will be changed.

Please plan to attend the AGM and to let our government know that even in this time of uncertainty, Peace River residents are committed to maintaining a local voice for health services delivery.

Annual General Meeting: June 4, 7:00 PM at the Peace River Community Health Centre.

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Sisters in Spirit Walk: June 3

I will be representing Town Council at the Sisters in Spirit Walk on June 3. The walk and vigil are to remember Aboriginal women who are missing or have been murdered. Everyone is not only welcome, but encouraged to attend. This is a great Canadian social tragedy that should be of concern to everyone--men, women, old, young, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

We will meet at Riverdrive Mall at 6:30 to begin the walk at 7:00. After a walk through the downtown area, we'll convene at Riverfront Park, where at 7:30 there will be a vigil, a reading of the names of missing or murdered women from Northern Alberta, the sharing of memories by family members, and a keynote address by Muriel Stanley Venne, from the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women.

Providing Homes for Aboriginal Children: Recruitment of Aboriginal Caregivers Gathering & Feast

The Aboriginal Inter-agency Committee is presenting this event in an effort to find short-term and long-term Aboriginal caregivers for Aboriginal children who are temporarily unable to live with their parents.

Guest Speaker for the event, to be held on Tuesday, May 27 at 5:30 at the Sagitawa Friendship Centre (basement entrance), is Loretta English Parenteau. Ms. Parenteau has experience growing up away from her parents and is also able to share her positive experiences as an Aboriginal Caregiver.

As Town Council's representative on the Aboriginal Inter-agency Committee, I plan to attend after the Library Committee meeting, so maybe I'll see you there.

For further information, contact Dennis Whitford at 624-6367 or dennis.whitford@gov.ab.ca

No More Peace Health Region

While Council was immersed in a two-day planning retreat, Ron Liepert, Alberta's Health Minister, made the stunning announcement that he was disbanding and dismissing the boards of all nine health regions, AADAC, Alberta Mental Health Board, and the Alberta Cancer Board in order to implement a new health system governance model.


While this news is small potatoes compared with the misery being caused by natural disasters in Burma and China, it has the potential to greatly affect the delivery of healthcare in our communities. Whether this impact is positive or negative remains to be seen.

It's always easier, perhaps human nature, to see the downsides of major changes, and having lost my job during the last round of regional shuffles, it is REALLY easy for me to see the downsides!

So I tried to think of some pros to the changes and had initial thoughts about potential efficiencies, higher and more consistent standards, or more effective staff support with provincial oversight for issues such as patient safety, infection control, perinatal care, mental health or continuing care.

This central governance with what is being called a "Superboard" will certainly make it easier for the government not to have all those boards pressuring for more money and services. But will it also make it a lot easier to close facilities because there will be fewer local officials on the hot seat for such decisions? Will it make it easier to introduce privatized services? Will it be easier or harder to pay attention to prevention?

Could this really mean the end of have and have-not regions, one of the reasons given for the change? Will equitable care and service really be available to all Albertans? Will this model actually result in more frontline workers, more efficient delivery of service, shorter wait times, and less administration or will there simply be administration that is centralized a great distance from our communities? These are the wait-and-see aspects of the changes.

On the con side, I fear that we will lose administrative-level positions in the health sector. This is what I see as a trend towards the de-skilling of rural and northern areas of Alberta. When high-level jobs are lost to communities like Peace River, whole families move. Without higher-level jobs available, organizations may find it harder to recruit because there are fewer employment opportunities for spouses.

The other worry I have is around loss of local input and a say in what happens to the delivery of healthcare in our community. Without board members who live in or near, how will the Superboard know how its decisions are affecting us? Will those members actually care? Will the Community Health Councils become crucial links to ensuring there is a local voice about healthcare delivery or will they also be disbanded?

And as a Town Councillor, I'm wondering whether municipal government will now need to take a more active approach to monitoring and advocating for healthcare in our communities? We've been able to fairly comfortably leave that with the health region board. With resources already stretched at the municipal level, is this something we can take on with any level of confidence? With all the other things we already need to advocate for with the provincial and federal governments, can we realistically add this to our plates?

Lots of questions and not many answers at this point, but it's something I'll be paying close attention to as a person employed (somewhat peripherally) in the health sector, and as the Town Council member of the Community Health Council.

Celebrate Environment Week: Mark your calendar for Peace River's Event on June 5

Environment Week 2008 events in Peace River are being held on Thursday, June 5, at 11:30am - 3:00pm at Riverfront Park, which is located in downtown Peace River, adjacent to the eastside boat launch, across from the back of Athabasca Hall.

Free BBQ from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm.

The Green Stop website describes the day as including a variety of environmental displays encouraging the public to protect our environment along with handouts, prizes, and information on the new ECO Centre project, AWQA Water testing and wetlands.

Green Stop
(scroll down to Peace River)

COUNCILLOR’S REPORT: APRIL 28, 2008

I attended the Municipal Sustainability Planning workshop presented by the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) as a pre-conference session for the Alberta’s Environment Conference, April 21-22, in Edmonton.

AUMA is actively promoting the idea of municipal sustainability planning MSP which it describes as “an opportunity for municipalities to look long-term at the communities they want and take proactive steps to move there. It is an opportunity to engage citizens in a dialogue about what they value about their communities and what they want them to look like in the future.” Sustainability is “meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

The workshop itself consisted of a keynote presentation by the Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada which has been working with AUMA and Alberta municipalities on sustainability planning. The Natural Step website describes itself as:

The Natural Step Canada is a non-profit organization providing results orientated advisory and training services to help community and business leaders integrate social, environmental and economic decision making into their operations with a holistic, proven and scientifically-rigorous framework.

The Natural Step offers eLearning courses in sustainability and the AUMA has an agreement for a discounted price of $85 for the course (it is normally $120).

The AUMA’s toolkit on municipal sustainability has used features of The Natural Step’s process and added to it, so that the framework consists of five pillars or dimensions for municipalities to engage around: Economy; Governance; Environment; Society; and Culture.

We heard presentations from each of the five pilot communities that were funded by AUMA to under MSP: Town of Olds, Village of Thorhild, Village of Chauvin, Town of Claresholm, and Town of Pincher Creek, as well as the work done by Okotoks and Canmore towards sustainability. The PowerPoint presentations can be accessed at:

There will be a new Request for Proposals from AUMA for communities to be assisted to do an MSP and I think that we could make a very good case for Peace River, tying in nicely to the strategic planning that Council is undertaking soon and the community consultation we are already planning for.

We received a copy of a new booklet for Albertans produced by the Alberta Real Estate Foundation and The Natural Step called Sustainability At Home: A toolkit. Decision-making help for your everyday choices. It will soon be available in hard copy but in the meantime is available online from the AUMA.

Following the workshop there was an optional networking dinner at which Todd Babiak, an author and Edmonton Journal columnist, spoke on the importance of arts and culture to municipalities to the quality of life and contributors to the economy. Babiak mentioned the recently-developed Edmonton Cultural Plan, The Art of Living: A Plan for Securing the Future of Arts and Heritage in the City of Edmonton and commented on how brilliant it is. I’d like to suggest that it would be worth reviewing with some members of Peace River’s art and culture community.

At Alberta’s Environment Conference, held in partnership with the AUMA, I attended the following sessions and would be pleased to share thoughts about any of them. Once the PowerPoint presentations for all sessions are available online, I’ll let Council know where these can be obtained.

• Economics: A science of decision-making (presented by Anish Neupane, a resource economist with Alberta Environment. Some of his major responsibilities include providing economic and socioeconomic advice related to policy formulation and development).

• The Impact of Energy Efficiency on the Environment (presented by John Rilett, the Director of Energy Efficiency and Conservation at Climate Change Central, a unique public-private partnership that promotes the development of innovative responses to global climate change and its impacts.)
• Where Ideas Flow: A panel on the newly created Alberta Water Research Institute
• Regulatory Considerations in a Brownfield Redevelopment Strategy (presented by Kevan van Velzen, Manager, Environmental Assessment and Liabilities, City of Calgary).
• Life Cycle Assessment of Oil Sands: A quantitative multi-sectoral approach to environmental stewardship (this was a panel on LCA, which extends traditional analyses of environmental impacts by incorporating the gamut of goods and services involved in production, use, and disposal of a product to construct a holistic reflection of total impacts from “cradle to grave.”
• Challenges, Solutions & Opportunities for Large Scale Wind Power Integration into Alberta (presented by John H Kehler, Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) and David Huggill, Western Canada Policy Manager, Canadian Wind Energy Association.

The Environment Minister, Rob Renner, was a keynote speaker and there was a lunchtime announcement of a new certificate program in consensus building that the Alberta Government and the Alberta Arbitration and Mediation Society have established in prominent Alberta environmentalist Martha Kostuch’s name. There is also a bursary being made available for the program, funded by the Alberta Government. Ms. Kostuch died the day after the announcement and presentation of flowers to her grand-daughter.

There was a large trade fair of products and services related to the environment. I have passed along some information to staff.

Link to a New Blog: Dean Ward in the Crowsnest Pass

Dean Ward, a second-term councillor for the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass, started blogging in January and recently contacted me about including a link to his blog (and he will do the same for mine). It's great seeing other councillors taking up the blogging habit so I'm happy to link with Dean's and to begin learning more about life and government in the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass.

The Municipality of Crowsnest Pass (http://www.town.crowsnestpass.ab.ca/) lies in the southwesterly corner of Alberta. This is a regional municipality made up of towns and the surrounding rural areas, with Blairmore the main economic and commercial centre. Wikipedia provides more detail about the area and its government structure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowsnest_Pass,_Alberta).

This is a beautiful part of the province, rich with history. I remember visiting the Frank Slide area as a kid and was thrilled to return as an adult to tour the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, just one of the attractions the area has to offer.

Beauty carries its own problems, as the Town of Peace River knows all too well. Our service costs are higher than more compact communities that don't have a river or deep valley to contend with. I can imagine that the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass has those challenges and more, providing services to people in towns as well as those living in the rural areas of the municipality. I'm intrigued with the idea of regional governance and will be in touch with Dean to find out more about how that is working for them.

Take a peek yourself at Dean's blog (link in the right panel) and see how one councillor views political and community life in the Crowsnest Pass. Another Crowsnest Pass councillor, Gary Taje, has a blog that also is worth a visit. You'll also note the link to Bill Given's blog. Bill is a Grande Prairie alderman whose blog provided inspiration for my own and continues to do so.