Councillor Milligan, CAO MacQuarrie and myself are in beautiful Whistler at the Federal of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference. Yesterday's theme was Capacity Building and "green" and "sustainability" were the main topics of discussion and presentations.
In a session called "Community Energy Systems: Greening Your Bottom Line," we heard about a new Canadian organization called QUEST (Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow) and inspiring presentations about the exciting work that Guelph, Ontario, Calgary, and our neighbour over the BC border, Dawson Creek, are doing on community-based approaches to integrating land-use, energy, transportation, and waste and water systems. This is resulting in reduced greenhouse gas emissions and saves the municipality money.
Another session I attended was on brownfields, which are, according to a new document from the FCM's Green Municipal Fund (Brownfields) is "an abandoned, vacant, derelict or under-utilized commercial, industrial or institutional property where past actions have resulted in actual or perceived contamination or threat to public health and safety and where there is active potential for redevelopment."
There are a number of contaminated sites in Peace River that if remediated could provide valuable land for development on the East side of the river. The message in the session was encouraging as well as cautionary. During the Q&A, I learned about the Town of Cochrane's brownfield initiative and I've since made contact with some of the councillors to hear more about that project.
I also attended a demonstration of Microsoft's new Surface technology. Very intriguing.
Today's theme is Policy and Advocacy. More on that later.
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