Sacha Peter

The last set of minutes for the Cultus Lake Park Governance Committee can be found here. The person doing the minutes for the committee is Noreen Leonard of the City of Chilliwack. She has done a wonderful job of writing the minutes – it gives people that didn’t attend the meeting a very good impression as to what went on.

Please observe that these minutes will never be approved by the committee because the committee has been dissolved. So in essence, these are draft minutes, but I believe they are an accurate accounting of the day’s transgressions.

Attached here is a May 27, 2010 letter address to Brian Nokleby (CLPB Chair) with the salient paragraph from Minister Bill Bennett as follows:

Although this project did not result in a boundary extension for the City of Chilliwack (City), I believe the project helped to build a relationship between the City, the Soowahlie First Nation and Cultus Lake Park community. It has also provided valuable information to residents about the cost of services, and will help decision makers in the future, in particular in looking at opportunities to work with the Fraser Valley Regional District.

One incremental step forward is proposing a bill to the provincial government that will eventually amend the Cultus Lake Park Act. At a minimum, such a bill must address the following:

1. Cannot trigger a land claim with respect to Soowahlie First Nation;
2. Clarify whether the word “Park” conforms to the everyday definition of park (for the lack of a better definition an area where the public goes for recreational purposes), or whether “Park” exclusively refers to a specific section of land, as per the current act;
3. Clarify the extend of liability concerning the City of Chilliwack over the park land;
4. Clarify the ownership of the Sunnyside Campground property tract;
5. Redefine how the board is elected (presumably amended to only be elected by Cultus leaseholders?)
6. Define any tie-ins to the Local Government Act (LGA), or whether the board is to continue to exercise powers beyond that of the Community Charter and/or LGA;
7. Modify duration of lengths of maximum leases and commercial proposals;
8. Explicitly define what activities can and cannot go on in park boundaries;
9. Define the financial restrictions, if any, and also the extent to which the board can borrow funds or pledge its assets as collateral to such;
10. Clarify the extent as to which the park can levy penalties for bylaw non-compliance;
11. Reporting/accountability requirements.

The last time the Cultus Lake Park Act was amended was in the year 2000.

I will be writing more about this in the future.

I had an interview with 89.5 Hawk radio regarding the disbandment of the Cultus Lake Governance Committee. In retrospect, after hanging up the telephone, I probably wasn’t as lucid with the answers as I could have been (my brain obviously wasn’t connecting correctly with my mouth at the moment), so I will try to elaborate in this post.

Why did the committee exist?

To explore the consequences of a boundary extension of Chilliwack joined with Cultus Lake Park.

Why is governance a problem?

Cultus Lake Park exists due to the provincial government creating the park via the Cultus Lake Park Act, which is the only entity in BC that is managed in this way; all other cities, towns and villages are created per the Local Government Act and Community Charter. The City of Vancouver is another exception, governed by the Vancouver Charter.

This creates a few issues: one is that the park manages the land, and the residents “own” the land by virtue of being able to lease it. This is compared to Chilliwack or any other jurisdiction where you would be able to own it freehold. The land tenure is one topic that the governance committee could not discuss.

Another issue deals with representation – the people of Chilliwack elect 5 commissioners to the Cultus Lake Park board while the residents of Cultus Lake election 2 commissioners.

Why did they disband?

Two reasons – an unresolved land claim by the Soowahlie First Nation over the Cultus Lake Park area; and the province of BC not willing to commit to a financial pledge with regards to costs that would be incurred by Chilliwack. It was deemed that a referendum at this time would not work.

Why did you vote against disbanding the committee?

It should not the committee’s job to determine whether status quo or amalgamation should be processed; instead, it should be up to the people to decide this in a vote, knowing the risks that would be taken if they voted to join Chilliwack.

But you support status quo, isn’t this inconsistent?

In a way; certainly supporting the dissolution of the committee will achieve status quo. However, it also will leave the process in a very unresolved state, which will lead to continued uncertainty in the governance process.

I do not think this uncertainty is to the benefit to anybody, including Soohwalie, Cultus Lake residents, and the City of Chilliwack.

So if the governance committee did not disband, what would you propose?

There is no possibility of amalgamation or any sort of governance change without the support of the provincial government. Without their buy-in, further progress is impossible. Thus, the committee’s efforts should be in finding ways to encourage the provincial government to deal with this matter in such a way that will lead to a resolution and an increase in certainty.

On April 28, 2010 the Cultus Lake Governance Committee convened for the last time.

I learned that Larry Commodore, the researcher for Soowahlie, reads this site and I am flattered.

A motion was made to recommend to the Minister that there be no referendum, and that the governance committee be dissolved.

In the ongoing discussion, I made a speech speaking against the motion.

My discussion is attached here in an MS-Word document. I appreciate the Chair (Mayor Sharon Gaetz) for allowing me to read out most of this verbose document, as I believe it sufficiently encapsulates my thoughts. The actual text of the document if you don’t have MS-Word is here.

The motion was carried, with Cultus Lake Community Association representative Dave Clyne, FVRD Electoral Area E Director Dave Lamson, and myself opposed. Voting for is Commissioners Brian Nokleby, Owen Skonberg, Councillors Chuck Stam, and Pat Clark. Soowahlie Chief Otis Jasper was out on business and could not make it to the meeting.

Because the Committee terms of reference states that a decision must be unanimous by the Committee in order to be forwarded to the Minister, the motion will not be sent to the Minister. I suspect that the Minister will be informally informed anyway of the decision so there is no loss on that front. However, the committee will be dissolved which is disappointing. Perhaps a new one later will need to be reconstituted with a different terms of reference, but the feeling I have is that the wheel will be re-invented until the Soowahlie claim with the province is resolved.

The feeling after is bittersweet – the Committee has done good work laying a foundation in the impact analysis, but ultimately concerns regarding Soowahlie aboriginal title and financial concerns from the City of Chilliwack exclude any further exploration of the matter.

While I am happy that the status quo has been achieved, I am not happy that there is no closure on this governance matter. So in the meantime, as always, the best job we can do as commissioners is to make sure the park is run efficiently as possible.

The province has formally responded to the City of Chilliwack’s laundry list of criteria to be addressed before an amalgamation can proceed.

You can read the document here.

Paul Henderson summarizes the letter succinctly (in a way that I could never) in the first sentence of his news article “No cash for Cultus“:

No, no, no, no, and no.

The rest of the article is also a good read in case if you want to get into the gory details of the barb trading between the BC Government and the City of Chilliwack.

I am finding this “barb trading” to be non-constructive since the issues that are being brought up in correspondence are distant proxies for what the real concerns of the relevant stakeholders are. The Province of BC is petrified to act on this issue because they do not want to trigger a land claim process with the Soowahlie/Sto:Lo. I suspect the government would love to legislate the Cultus Lake Park Act away, but they know this is a guaranteed land claim trigger without the consent of Soowahlie/Sto:Lo (which will require land and/or money). The BC Government will never admit this, so they say “It is up to the City of Chilliwack to decide what it wants”, knowing the City will ask for money.

The City of Chilliwack is slowly starting to realize that swallowing Cultus Lake is going to be akin to the German reunification of West and East Germany (strictly referring to costs with this analogy!) and instead the City is asking the province for funding, a request which is 99.9% guaranteed to be turned down.

The only option the province gave was amalgamation or nothing, and the result we have here was entirely predictable. The governance committee did provide some value, however, in providing some good analysis on cost breakdowns of various municipal services.

Before the election, I have long since supported the status quo option because this discussion is consuming resources that could have been spent otherwise in helping to improve the park. I would have loved to see the approximate $100,000 spent on the committee be put toward real improvements, such as the long-proposed roundabout, or the main beach improvement. Cultus Lake has also managed to survive from its original formation in 1932 as a seasonal camping spot to the full-blown residential community it is today. True, there are considerable growing pains and operational issues the board faces, but these issues are independent of the governance issue, and we are addressing our challenges, albeit slower than I would prefer.

During the proceedings of the Cultus Lake Governance Committee, the Soowahlie First Nation was able to receive government funding to do their own study with respect to the Cultus Lake area. Here is a copy of their report, which I found fascinating as it contains some history of the area.

Most people in the province think that there is only one elected park board amongst all of the municipalities – the Vancouver Park Board. Even they indicate on their site that:

By 1890, the Park Board had become an elected body and remains the only Canadian board of its kind.

While the definition of “of its kind” is debatable, it is true that the Vancouver Park Board is the only elected park board that operates within a municipality; the Vancouver Park Board has its powers delineated via the Vancouver Charter. The Vancouver Park Board, however, is answerable to Vancouver City Council.

There is a legal brief which internal legal council in Vancouver published on the matter, available here.

The Cultus Lake Park Board is structurally different in that its powers are delineated via the Cultus Lake Park Act, and that the Board is answerable directly to the public. This is a very important difference with respect to governance.

The January 8, 2009 meeting of the governance committee has been canceled, due to the volume of work that has to be performed by the consultants and the lack of time to do it (Christmas season is a very slow period in terms of productivity for almost everybody I know).

The next meeting will be on February 12, 2009.

As Cultus Lake Park has existed for 76 years and counting, it is better that the materials released to the public are comprehensive and accurate, rather than inaccurate and quick.

Atlin is a small unincorporated community in the northwestern corner of British Columbia. It is much closer to Whitehorse, Yukon than it is to Prince Rupert.

This recent BC Government press release caught my attention.

VICTORIA – Following the wishes of Atlin residents, the government of British Columbia has officially approved a new form of community governance for the northern community, announced Blair Lekstrom, Minister of Community Development, and Dennis MacKAY, MLA for Bulkley Valley-Stikine.

“This order-in-council is the final step in approving a governance solution that meets needs of the community of Atlin, without municipal incorporation,” said Lekstrom. “Atlin is in a unique area of the province and we are pleased to approve this unique solution that will improve community-based decision making.”

Atlin is a community of about 500 in northwestern B.C., located approximately two-and-a-half hours from Whitehorse. It is unique as it is neither a municipality, nor is it located within an incorporated regional district.

In the past, the Atlin Improvement District (AID) provided basic services such as fire protection, landfill and street lighting while the Atlin Advisory Planning Commission (AAPC) provided advice to provincial agencies and the Ministry of Community Development on local land issues. The order-in-council combines the responsibilities of the two organizations into one enhanced improvement district.

“This change represents a first in the Province of British Columbia,” said MacKAY. “It will give the residents more local control. They will be better able to consider both servicing and local land use when making decisions on what is best for their community.”

The newly combined organization, called the Atlin Community Improvement District, will enhance community decision-making, and reduce ministerial approvals. It will also reduce volunteer workload, with seven trustees, compared to 13 people serving the former two organizations.

Implementation of the new governance structure will take place over the next six to nine months. The election of two new trustees is scheduled to take place by March 1, 2009. They will join the five trustees of the existing improvement district to form the new board of the Atlin Community Improvement District.

Documents:
December 12, 2008 – ATLIN RESIDENTS GET IMPROVED LOCAL GOVERNANCE