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Conferences – A year in review

My expense for a conference in Ottawa was called into question this week and rather than let that sit there unanswered, I thought it best to provide more info about all the conferences I attended this year and what I learned so that you might judge for yourself the value it brings to my role on council.

UBCM Housing Summit

In February of this year, UBCM reached out to me inviting me to participate in a panel discussion on rural and northern housing challenges and opportunities at the upcoming Housing Summit. I need to preface my answer to their request by saying that I am a housing nerd. I love reading and learning more about our housing market. I did a TEDx talk on the living wage and poverty reduction and have calculated the living wage for Prince George since 2015. In addition to this, I work for a local credit union reading many reports on housing. All of this is in addition to the reading I do for council so I would consider myself well informed on the subject. Needless to say, I was still shocked and excited when UBCM asked me to speak. I said yes.

I was able to speak about Prince George’s experience and provide advice to other local governments and answer questions many newly elected officials had. I also got to ask Ministry of Housing and Ministry of Health why Prince George had 10 complex care beds announced in the previous year that were still not operational despite being fully built. The answer I was given – and I’m paraphrasing here – was basically that it was the other ministries responsibility. I didn’t like this response and so I brought it up at our next meeting with the Premier and within three weeks of mentioning it, the issue was resolved and the housing was brought online.

NCLGA

At this year’s AGM I was the Past President of the North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA). This is an incredibly important conference in my opinion because it comprises of our northern local government peers – it’s 39 local governments who experience similar issues and lobby/advocate together on those issues.

Example: Remember when the Feds wanted to remove our air tower at the airport? Well, City of Prince George and other municipalities got together and sent NCLGA letters and we wrote a response to NavCanada who ended up reversing their decision.

This year, NCLGA AGM & Convention was held in Dawson Creek with the theme of ‘Northern Communities Leading Together’. It was an opportunity to connect with new and returning elected officials and hear a full agenda with sessions on:

  • Community Risk Assessments and Community Risk Reduction Plans
  • Northern Leadership Through Collaboration: A home-grown climate action network
  • UBCM: Canada Community Building Fund Renewal
  • MIABC
  • NDIT
  • NCLGA Strategic planning session
  • EMBC Elected Official Orientation- What to do in the event of a local emergency
  • Mental Health Crisis Continuum
  • Strategies to meet the new Accessibility Requirement legislation

I also had past president duties and ran the election for the new 2023-2024 board, my last act after four years with this organization.

GGCLC 2022

To explain how I ended up at this conference in 2023, I first have to share how I ended up at it in 2022. Sometime in 2018, a resident told me about this conference hosted by the Governor General and given my council experience they thought I should apply. I read through the info on the website, thought it was a cool opportunity as it focused on government, union, and business sectors and worked to expose conference attendees to different perspectives to broaden their leadership abilities. Organizations needed to pledge to support for an applicant by covering airfare and the conference would cover the remaining expenses. I verified with then city manager Kathleen Soltis if this was an allowable expense under the council remuneration bylaw which it was – so I applied. I found out I was shortlisted sometime in the summer and had to go through an alumni interview process. On Christmas Eve 2019, I found out that I was accepted to the GGCLC conference for the summer of 2020. I should say that about 2,500-5,000 people apply to the conference every intake and only 250 people are accepted – I did not know this at the time I applied.

Then covid-19 happened. And the conference was delayed. And they ran online zoom meetings for our cohort bringing in incredible professional speakers monthly for us to learn from – like we’re talking the Chief Economist of Scotiabank. Eventually, I actually got to go on the conference and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

The conference started with three days of plenary in Huntsville Ontario. We heard from amazing speakers like Anil Amora, Chief Statistician of Canada, John Stackhouse Sr. Vice President, Royal Bank of Canada, Siobhan Vipond, Executive VP, Canadian Labour Congress, Naheed Nenshi, former Mayor of Calgary, Dr. Jane Philpott, former MP and Federal Health Minister, Glen Pearson, ED, Canadian Aid for South Sudan, Dr. James Niigaan Sinclair, Head, Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba, Wes Hall, Chairman and Founder, BlackNorth Initiative, Mark Tewksbury, VP of the Board, Canadian Olympic Committee. And that was just the beginning.

We were then split into study tour groups and sent across Canada (one tour to every province except 2 to Quebec and 3 to Ontario) to learn about leadership over 9 days so that we might make a presentation to Her Excellency Mary Simon.

We stayed in the GTA for 3 days meeting the Mayor of Mississauga, touring the Amazon sortment facility, hearing from the Cocoa Cola plant leadership, visiting Blue Door, meeting with the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, visiting Steam Whistle, the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund, Oak Ridges Moraine, Toronto Film Festival, a panel discussion with the Ontario Nurses Association, hearing from Peter Slowly (yes, that one), meeting and touring around with the Toronto Police Marine Division. We also got to see cool research that is happening at the hospital in Toronto and hear from a Masters student on Alzheimer’s research they are undertaking with speech recognition software. Somewhere in here we also toured CANMET.

We then toured the tank museum in Oshwa, spoke with wineries from the Prince Edward region, visited Queen’s University Faculty of Medicine. We met with the Kingston Economic Development team and they toured us around showing us how they were tackling homelessness, we met with Lionhearts a group that had revitalized the food distribution system for struggling families, and also toured Collin Bay Penitentiary. We went inside and toured CSIS (the security protocols were intense). We met with the Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Finally, we made our way to Ottawa meeting the Clerk of the Privy Council, met with the National Gallery ED, the River Keepers.

And then we had the closing plenary where each of the groups presented their findings to her Excellency on what we learned about leadership. This was a life changing leadership experience and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have attended.

That brings us to 2023.

GGCLC 2023

I received notification that the alumni network was organizing a one-off conference and it was open to any conference alumni. I verified with the City Manager on whether or not my council expense could be utilized for this conference and received confirmation.

The conference started with a visit to the parliamentary lawn for the National Indigenous Day Celebrations. We kicked off the conference with a land acknowledgement from Elder Claudette Commanda, Chancellor, University of Ottawa. We then headed into plenary with a panel from Jesse Dame, Registered Nurse and Indigenous Gender and Sexual Health Lead, Vancouver Coastal Health. Next, we had a panel on Indigenous Leadership and Reconciliation in Action with the following speakers followed by some study group work:

  • Kory Wilson, Executive Director, BCIT (Moderator)
  • Peter Johnston, Grand Chief, Council of Yukon First Nations
  • Victoria LaBillois, Vice-Chair, National Indigenous Economic Development Board
  • Jessy Dame, Registered Nurse and Indigenous Gender and Sexual Health Lead, Vancouver Coastal Health
  • Aluki Kotierk, President, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated

The next day we started the session with a panel on Collaborative leadership in Canada hearing from:

  • Cathryn Andersen, Vice-President, Office of Indigenous Affairs, Memorial University
  • Isabelle Foisy, President, Cambre de commerce et d’industrie de la Rive-Sud and President, Point Cardinal (for this I needed my translation device)
  • Mohammed Hashim, Executive Director, Canadian Race Relations Foundation
  • Jacqueline O’Neill, Canada’s Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security, Global Affairs Canada
  • Lana Payne, President, UNIFOR

We then headed into group discussions with the ability to choose from 12 different topics – I chose Decline of Public Trust in Institutions: Is Democracy in Danger which was facilitated by Mehrdad Hariri. We ended the day with a powerful tour of Beechwood Cemetery called the Reconciling History Program.

The final day of the conference we started the day with a panel called Leading in a Constantly Evolving World and heard from the following speakers:

  • Yves Pelletier, Associate Vice President, Francophonie Univeristy of Ottawa
  • Nadine Duguay-Lemay, President, Cohesia
  • Brendan McCracken, President and CEO, Ovintiv
  • Natan Obed, President, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (honestly one of the most incredible speakers I’ve ever heard)
  • Sussanne Skidmore, President, BC Federation of Labour

We spent the afternoon in study tours visiting Senate of Canada with Senator Woo who was giving us a tour of the 100 Years after the Chinese Exclusion Act Exhibition. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the bell rang while we were in the middle of the tour and he had to RUN into senate chambers for the vote of Bill C-18. We were invited to the gallery to watch history in the making. I knew immediately that this vote would drastically impact northern communities including Prince George.

Our second tour was with the Ottawa River Keepers and it was great to connect with them again a year later to learn about watershed projects they were working on and learnings from the previous year.

We finished with a tour at the Global Centre for Pluralism and this was very influential for me. For a while now I have felt like polarization is degrading democracy and pulling us a part and not really known what the answer was – now I know it is pluralism. I applaud the work they are doing here because it really is spectacular and I use these learnings in particular when I approach debate and in how I choose to lead.

So some might say this was not relevant to my council work, I beg to differ.

UBCM

At the beginning of September, UBCM reached out and asked me if I would be interested in speaking at Convention on a housing panel. They were interested in the top housing issues we were experiencing, our infrastructure needs for anticipated population growth, and examples of what is working well in our community. I eagerly agreed to participate.

At convention, I attended a morning session on Decriminalization and Public Use. The session had Bonnie Henry on the panel and was naturally packed with probably 200 people in a small conference room. My panel session was in the afternoon and I assumed it would be in a similar sized room – and I was wrong – it was in a ballroom with probably between 500+ seats, most of which were filled for the session. I shared about our experience and received really great feedback from a number of individuals.

The rest of the conference was business as usual with community workshops, resolutions, panels, and more. We had a series of Minister Meetings that our council attended advocating on issues for our community. I ran for Director at Large and was elected.

Learnings, networking, advocating, and more!

All in all, I would say 2023 was a successful year of conferences, learning, networking, advocating for Prince George. I’ve made many connections that I know I can call on to ask questions, advice, feedback or experiences. The learnings and experiences I take away from these conferences will help inform my decision making moving forward.

I know this was a long blog, so thanks for those who made it to the end. Should you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please reach out. And if there’s something you think I should know that will better inform my work, please get in touch!