City of Estevan councillors took part in the recent Canadian Federation of Municipalities (FCM) convention in Ottawa, where they joined local government officials from across the country to discuss shared challenges, policy priorities and solutions.
“On behalf of the City of Estevan, Councillor Tom Mauss, Councillor Shelly Veroba, and I went to Ottawa and spent five days working with other elected officials across Canada with the focus of how we are stronger together,” said Councillor Kirsten Walliser. “How local government is the third level of government and deserves to be recognized as such and how, by working together, we can gain the position within the provincial and federal decisions that we should have on behalf of our communities.”
“There wasn't a minute there that something didn't tie directly to Estevan,” she said. “A lot of discussion was around the ability for communities to raise the revenue they require and that we are still using a funding model that was developed over 100 years ago and it doesn't reflect the current realities of our cities and it directly results in those shared concerns about mental health, people who are unhoused, infrastructure deficits and how we're going to combat that at a national level and what that would mean specifically for our community.”
Walliser also highlighted the release of a new FCM report.
“FCM also announced their most recent report entitled The Future of Rural Canada, which really looks at the impacts and the value that rural communities provide across the country and how, because of things like lack of access for roads, that many Canadians still don't have reliable Internet, we are actually hampering the growth of everyone in Canada until we address those uniquely rural issues.”
On the trade show floor, councillors had the opportunity to meet with vendors and explore emerging solutions.
“We were particularly excited to see a Built in Canada home solution that used recycled plastic to increase the ability to withstand Canadian winters and how that could be incorporated in remote cabins but also rural climates like Estevan, where we do need to build for the future and know that our homes are going to withstand those minus-50 days,” said Walliser.
“We also spent a lot of time connecting with officials within Saskatchewan, so stronger connections with Humboldt and Lloydminster and Yorkton and recognizing that the challenges facing Estevan are reflected in those communities and that often solutions that work there are going to work here too.”
Walliser said new access to municipal-level data could also be a game-changer for local decision-making.
“I was really excited to see national data now available to municipalities on the block-by-block level, so we can sit in Chambers and discuss data-driven decision making knowing immediately what the economic impact of that neighborhood is, how it impacts the climate of that neighborhood, but also what the health outcomes of an investment in that neighborhood would mean on things like chronic illness in our community.”
Estevan councillors also took pride in actively participating throughout the convention.
“We really took a leadership stance this year, making sure that in each workshop we were representing Estevan's unique concerns while also sharing that resiliency that Estevan has been come to know. Sharing the resilience that Estevan is known for, being able to take a challenge head on, being willing to invest time and risk and really celebrating the innovative nature that already exists and showcasing that to other communities to say your rural location has that ability too.”
“By showing up, by sitting in these tables, we could elect representatives who reflected our concerns to that national table to bring that rural Saskatchewan voice into meetings across all the provinces.”
Walliser said they also had the opportunity to hear from the country’s leader.
“We were able to listen to the new prime minister discuss those matters of national urgency, being able to eliminate trade barriers, looking at ways to address challenges of rural Canada, looking at the needs of the Indigenous members of our communities and how when we support those Canadians it directly, directly benefits all of Canada.”