Peace River's Candidates for the 2010 Election

Former Mayor Lorne Mann is challenging incumbent Iris Callioux. These two candidates faced each other in 2007, with Ms. Callioux defeating incumbent Mann.

There are nine nominees for the six spots on Council. These are, in alphabetical order:

• Leslie Ayre-Jaschke (incumbent)
• North Darling
• Cole George
• Kristjanna Grimmelt
• Robert Lafontaine
• Wanda Laurin (incumbent)
• Geoff Milligan (incumbent)
• Colin Needham
• Tom Tarpey

This is a strong group of candidates, which speaks well for citizen engagement in Peace River. In the best of my worlds, the election on Oct. 18 will see the return of Mayor Callioux, the three incumbent councillors, and three newcomers. When I was elected in 2007, it was reassuring to have the experience of three people who had been on Council for many years as we newbies climbed the steep learning curve of our first year.

We were welcomed and our perspectives heard as relationships and trust were built within Council, with administration, and with our neighbouring municipalities. Mayor, councillors and administration have formed an effective team with a long list of accomplishments in three short years. (More on these accomplishments in future posts.)

Of course, we didn't always agree and there were heated discussions at times. But we were always respectful and maintained the spirit of finding effective ways to address the challenge of balancing the many competing demands on Town resources. I hope this spirit will remain, regardless of the election results.

Community Safety Forum: April 8, 2009

Peace River and region residents should plan to attend the Community Safety Forum on Wednesday (April 8), 6:30 PM at the Belle Petroleum Centre. The forum is co-hosted by the Town of Peace River, Northern Sunrise County and Peace Regional RCMP.

This Peace River Record-Gazette article outlines the program for the event. It's an ambitious agenda (maybe over-ambitious for 3 hours) that we hope will help to kick-start greater community and regional collaboration on the issue of reducing crime.

The keynote speaker is Bill Pitt, a criminologist affiliated with the University of Alberta and MacEwan College who will speak to crime trends in this area and the Alberta context. There will also be an opportunity for those in attendance to discuss ideas for reducing crime in our area.

I tend to look at the big picture and want to know what is at the root of problems, which is where I think we need to put effort. So I'll be listening to hear whether Professor Pitt talks about this at all or whether he is more focused on the enforcement level (important, but only a small part of the issue).

Creating or maintaining safe communities is everyone's concern--crime affects each of us directly or indirectly. The more informed and willing to work together for solutions that we are, the more likely it is we can make a difference. Please plan to attend and bring another person or two with you.

Big Peace Country Events Coming Up

February 12-15 will keep residents in the Peace River-St. Isidore-Grimshaw area (and beyond) busy and with lots of choices for entertainment.

Our part of the province will be hosting two huge events, both of which rely on legions of volunteers, donors, financial and in-kind contributions, and lots of collaborative effort--hallmarks of the Peace Country.

The oldest of the two is the 27th annual St. Isidore Carnaval, one of the largest francophone parties in Alberta. There is snow sculpting, hay rides, poutine and pattes de lynx, maple snow taffy, log sawing, and snow volleyball to mention just a few of the activities and food offerings. And of course, lots of francophone music and dance, including local and "imported"talent.

This year I'm finally going to attend and my bilingual and unilingual friends assure me that language is no barrier to having a great time!

Alberta Pond Hockey at Lac Cardinal is in its 3rd year and just gets bigger and better, with 80 teams (including one made up of Edmonton Oilers) registered this year. Check out the 2008 photo gallery to get an idea of what pond hockey looks like.

This year there will be around 400 players playing over 300 games of hockey on 19 natural ice rinks that are now being built by what the Pond Hockey website calls an "army of volunteers."

I'll be taking in the Gala on Saturday night as well as the Sunday pancake breakfast at the Lac Cardinal Regional Pioneer Village Museum (click on the museum link for a 360 view), great entertainment and of course, some hockey games.

See you there!

Virtual Conference: A Big Success

Do you ever get tired of travelling long distances to attend meetings or conferences or to see specialists or clients? I know I do!

On Halloween, over 200 people at more than 20 videoconferencing sites around Alberta attended an all-day conference without having to go far from home. Wow, we learned so much about the potential for broadband and videoconferencing in rural areas as well as about the continuing challenges.

The day was called Using Rural Connections to Support Alberta's Rural Development Strategy, hosted by Communities without Boundaries (CwoB), an organization dedicated to supporting and developing "local coalitions of community champions and technology providers to promote broadband usage."

Here in Peace River, we had 14 people gathered at the Community Futures Peace Country office, the largest gathering north of Edmonton, I'm proud to say.

The day was ably hosted by the Town of Three Hills Mayor Kevin Edwards, who has been a leader in the Virtual Learning & Business Centre (VLBC) CLICSite (Collaboration, Learning, Innovation Community) project. This is a great example of collaboration and broadband usage in a rural area.

We heard speakers on a wide variety of topics, and while I expected to be interested in the sessions on libraries, telehealth and education, I hadn't expected to be engaged in something like the presentation by Dr. Sandra Honour on the Alberta Livestock & Meat Strategy, but I was! (This link is to a video from FarmTV; Dr. Honour's PowerPoint presentation along with the others is available on the CwoB website. Podcasts will also be available in the coming weeks.)

The day was made up of short panel presentations hosted by knowledgeable people who outlined the opportunities and challenges or described their own use of broadband. One of the hosts was in Hawaii, which just served to further highlight the versatility of videoconferencing. We heard excellent presentations in the following five areas:

• Education (host: Cathy King)
• Health Care (host: Brenda Poole)
• Rural Economic Activity (host: Darcy Ferguson)
• Rural Quality of Life (Host: Jann Beeston)
• First mile/Last Mile (Host: Craig Montgomerie)

I suspect others felt as I did that we'd like to hear more from a number of these speakers at future sessions.

Have a look at the PowerPoint presentations and keep an eye out for the podcasts. Consider ways that broadband and greater use of videoconferencing could make a difference to your work, leisure, health, or quality of life and stay tuned for future learning opportunities through CwoB.

del.icio.us Tags: rural,quality of life,videoconferencing,Alberta

Blog Action Day: Poverty in Peace River?

October 15 is Blog Action Day and the topic for 2008 is poverty. Some people might wonder whether poverty actually exists in Peace River. There are, of course, a few street people who are the more visible face of poverty, but people working with families see another side and understand that yes, we do have poverty and we have far too many children growing up in poverty.

What IS poverty anyway? Vibrant Calgary has defined it as “the condition of a human being who does not have sufficient economic and other resources to live with the dignity, choices and power which support full participation in society.”

And why is full participation in society important? We all need to feel that we belong, and unfortunately, when a person is poor, that sense of belonging may be harder to achieve. Most seriously, for disaffected youth, joining a gang may seem like a good way to gain a sense of belonging.

The recent spate of violence in Peace River is largely gang-related, according to the RCMP. Our community needs to find ways to address the problem by looking beyond criminal activity to the root causes, and one of those is poverty.

When I attended the Tamarack Collaborating Communities Institute in Kitchener in September, I was hugely impressed with what a number of communities are doing to reduce poverty. For example, as I've written in a previous article, in Hamilton, where in 2005 20% of the population lived in poverty, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction was convened and has mobilized the whole city to work on poverty reduction.

Could Peace River do something similar on a much smaller scale? I once belonged to the Poverty Action Committee in Peace River, but we needed a much larger body of people, including businesses, if we were going to make much difference. That group runs the Peace River Soup Kitchen, which is important, but clearly only one piece of the whole.

When the Town does its community visioning activities (stay tuned for details), I hope that residents will participate fully and will bring their best thinking and creativity to the complex issues, like poverty, that are facing us.

How do we ensure that everyone feels a part of the community? How do we help people move beyond poverty into good jobs? How we do ensure that people have safe and affordable housing in which to live and raise their families? How do we accommodate all ages and stages of life? Lots of questions--let's see if we can work together to find solutions.

Join Me at Virtual Conference on October 31st

On October 31, Peace River's Community Futures office is one of 20 sites around the province that is hosting an innovative virtual conference entitled Using Rural Connections to Support Alberta’s Rural Development Strategy.

The event is being organized by Communities without Boundaries, an organization devoted to supporting and developing local coalitions of community champions and technology providers to promote broadband usage.

At each site, participants will gather to watch and listen to the conference speakers and also have an opportunity to connect with each other.

Speakers will explain how they are using broadband Internet and the Alberta SuperNet to tackle everyday issues in the areas of education, health, economic development and rural quality of life. The closing session will explore the challenges and opportunities of developing First/Last Mile Connectivity.

Register for the event at the link above. You need to first register for the site and then register for the event venue.

The day starts at 8:30 and finishes at 3:30, with lunch and refreshments provided (that's why you need to register).

Hope to see you there!

AUMA Convention

Peace River Mayor, Council and CAO were in Edmonton last week, attending the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) annual convention.

Premier Stelmach addressed the convention as did the new president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), Jean Perrault. We heard from Municipal Affairs Minister Ray Danyluk and he also presented Municipal Excellence Awards (congratulations to all those recipients and runners-up).

Council was able to meet with provincial officials on issues specific to the Town and during open sessions with Alberta Ministers to bring up issues such as ambulance transition. This transition is particularly worrisome for municipalities like Peace River that have integrated fire and ambulance, but other communities want to ensure a smooth transition without degradation of service so there was a great deal of discussion about this during the week.

Other highlights:

MUNICIPAL LEGISLATION  FOR MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS (pre-convention session)

While this may not sound like a riveting way to spend a day (and there were moments, especially when people asked irrelevant questions ...), this all-day session provided important information for anyone working or interested in the local level of government. (And I was pleased to see how much I actually remembered from social studies and political science classes.)

Can We Be Dissolved? I asked the presenter whether the province could dissolve municipalities the way it recently dealt with health region boards. The answer was "absolutely." Responsibility for the municipal level of government was given to the provinces by the Constitution Act of 1867 (formerly known as the British North America Act) and we are therefore "creatures of the province." (Other responsibilities given to the provinces were natural resources and education and there was lively discussion about the boundaries of those responsibilities.)

We also had discussions about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) legislation and how these impact on local government.

MUNICIPALITIES: THE CLOSEST TO THE PEOPLE AND THE MOST TRANSPARENT LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT

It might surprise some Peace River residents who feel that their local government is not transparent (or as transparent as they would like), but compared with how the provincial and federal governments operate, we heard repeatedly that we are indeed the most accessible and the most transparent because under the provisions of the Municipal Government Act (MGA), we are required to conduct the majority of our business in public. There is always room for improvement, of course, and the Town is working on new ways to keep residents informed about programs as well as the work of Council.

MUNICIPALITIES IN ALBERTA ARE STRUGGLING: THE IMPORTANCE OF WORKING TOGETHER

Municipal Affairs has in the past year or so dealt with over 60 Alberta municipalities that are struggling to be sustainable, and the issues aren't always just financial. Some are having great difficulty recruiting and retaining staff or even forming a council. The times call for some creativity and flexibility.

In the session on governance and collaboration with Dr. Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation and Dr. Matthew McKinney from the University of Montana's Public Policy Research Institute, we were reminded that Minister Danyluk has made it clear to municipalities that if we don't get regional issues sorted out on our own, he'll do it for us.

Dr. McKinney described what he has learned about working across boundaries, and how "homegrown" solutions (rather than those imposed on a region) are generally the most successful.

When Dr. Gibbins was asked about how our municipalities can work with others who seem content with the status quo, he reflected on those 60 communities that are struggling even in these good times and how we need to be prepared to move ahead even in tough times. He asked us whether we want to be the architect of change or just let it happen to us? What an important question that is! Change happens and if we want it to work for us, we need to take an active role, no matter how difficult it may be.

It was an excellent 4 days of learning and networking. The slides from all the presentations will be available in a few weeks on the AUMA website, so check them out if you're interested in learning more.

Tamarack & Six Thinking Hats

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth! After just two blog entries about the fabulous Tamarack Communities Collaborating Institute, it seemed like every moment was taken up and there was little time for writing. Sleep became more important.

It was a great week in Kitchener and I'm so grateful that I was able to attend. There were so many connections made with people who are working for change in their communities.

Learning about the work that Hamilton's Roundtable on Poverty Reduction is doing was a particularly inspiring, but there were so many community movers and shakers from a wide variety of organizations, including United Way and community foundations, a credit union, immigrant organizations, Vibrant Communities (including Vibrant Edmonton and Vibrant Calgary), and many more.

Of the 80 participants, I think I was the only elected official, but the new executive director of Vibrant Edmonton is a former City of Edmonton Councillor, so we had lots to talk about.

A number of Albertans met at the end of the Institute to figure out how we can keep the momentum going in our province for creating change through community collaboration. More on that as we have a chance to process all we learned and to get back in touch with each other.

Following the week in Kitchener, I travelled to Ottawa for a 2-day workshop on Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats tool. De Bono coined the concept of "lateral thinking" and has written dozens of books on thinking and decision-making. The workshop was an excellent opportunity to build on things I learned at Tamarack;

del.icio.us Tags: collaboration,change,workshops,poverty

and the idea of parallel thinking using the six hats, along with the creativity activities, will be of much use in many areas of my professional, public, and personal life.

Next week, Mayor and Council are in Edmonton attending the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) convention. If I get a chance, I'll post updates.

Communities Collaborating Institute Day 1

I'm in Kitchener, Ontario, attending the Tamarack Communities Collaborating institute. Last night I had dinner with a group from Alberta--Calgary United Way and City of Calgary--and one woman from Grand Forks, BC. Interestingly, one of the people at the table was not only familiar with Peace River, but was born and raised there.

We had a long day of getting to know each other (there are nearly 80 of us from across Canada and a contingent from New Zealand), hearing about what we'll be doing over the week, forming our learning "pods," and listening to some excellent presentations, including one by Sherri Torjman of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.

Sherri spoke about her new book, Shared Space: The Communities Agenda and discussed the framework from which she looks at the very complex work that needs to be done in communities to improve the lives of people. I read the book prior to coming to Kitchener, but it was wonderful having a chance to hear the author, an inspiring speaker as well as writer, talk about those ideas and to draw on her vast knowledge of the exciting collaborative activities that are happening around the country and the world.

After dinner with my learning pod at a Vietnamese restaurant, we met with other participants for coffee and dessert at a social enterprise called the Queen Street Commons, a cafe and kitchen that is an extension of the Working Centre's Urban Agriculture Program (which "aims to reconnect city folks with the local food system").

When we returned to the hotel, there was a huge tour bus sitting outside with a police car, lights ablaze, and inside, lots of activity and quite a buzz. It appears that the Prime Minister and his campaign team are sharing our hotel tonight.