West Kelowna councillors attend FCM

A large contingent of West Kelowna councillors was needed at a national gathering of municipalities to make sure the city’s voice was heard.

That was the explanation given by Mayor Gord Milsom in a news release explaining that five of seven city councillors had attended the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention, June 2-5 in Regina.

“West Kelowna councillors need their voice heard by the federal government, combined with the leadership and advocacy of FCM, to address long overdue federal funding for attainable housing, escalating policing costs and other important strategic priorities to West Kelowna,” the release said.

“We really must be united with municipalities across Canada, and together with FCM, to more rapidly invoke federal action and funding to address the growing needs in our West Kelowna community,” said Mayor Gord Milsom. “We may be a small municipality, but we must be louder and we must be heard by the federal government in collaboration with FCM.

“In West Kelowna, we cannot sit back and not have our voice heard by the federal government about affordable housing when the housing market clearly demonstrates that the term ‘affordable housing’ is neither accurate nor realistic. And offloading back-pay by the federal government to our 14-year young municipality for the RCMP to unionize is simply unreasonable,” said Milsom.

Council members attended workshops, meetings and study tours that focused on Indigenous reconciliation, climate change, housing and economic recovery, as well as other topics.

Kelowna sent three council members to the convention.