Our compilation of some of the stories of note from the day, reviewing the political developments from the Provincial scene for Thursday-Friday March 28-29, 2024
Our compilation of some of the stories of note from the day, reviewing the political developments from the Federal scene for Thursday-Friday, March 28-29, 2024
Paul Adams from the Rural Health Network made a video presentation to Council on Monday on the work of the group in BC
The timing couldn't have been better for the Rural Health Network and their recruiting drive in Prince Rupert, with Executive Director Paul Adams seeking the participation of the City of Prince Rupert in their province wide advocacy group.
With the backdrop of a week's worth of ER Closures as part of Monday's Council session, Mr. Adams appeared via video presentation to share some background the organization's work.
Through the presentation, Mr. Adams outlined for the Council membership some of the benefits that the organization has to offer communities across the province.
The organization has been raising concerns about the state of the health care crisis in the rural areas of the province since that time and outlined the benefits that Prince Rupert could find by joining in with the other communities that make up the Network.
His short overview for Council provided a look at their engagement work and explored many of the health care issues that are shared across BC, though as he observed to an attentive council, each community is very different in its situations.
Towards questions on the night, Councillor Forster asked how communities could contact them towards more on their work in rural communities.
She also asked if Jennifer Rice, who is Parliamentary Secretary for Rural health was involved with engagement with the organization, as well as to their engagement with health care professionals.
Mr. Adams observed that they are engaged with both Ms. Rice and the other political leaders in the province, as well as to explain towards their communication work with front line health care professionals.
"I work very closely with Parliamentary Secretary Rice, I work with the Minister directly, I work with anybody who has an interest in rural initiatives and health care.
So we don't work, you know we're non partisan, we work across the political aisle.
So any time that we're meeting and we're presenting a solution or a position forward we do that apolitically"
For Councillor Nick Adey, the focus for his questions was to note of their website and how it provides a good volume of material for the community. He then asked towards their pitch to have Prince Rupert join the Rural Health Network, noting how MLA Rice has advocated for it.
Mr. Adey then asked what would change in how to address the concerns for Prince Rupert should they decide to join.
Mr. Adams noted of the still developing footprint of the Northern membership.
The Rural Health Network currently has participation from 30 Municipalities, 2 Regional Districts, 61 Organizations and 21 Individual members.
Towards that footprint, he outlined how each provides background that goes towards their research and advocacy to Health officials and government.
"We do have a fairly scarce membership in the North but that has got more to do with my ability to reach enough communities and we are currently you know under financed from the standpoint of being able to do more.
But with what we have we try to do a lot.
Everybody is, every member is welcome to get involved, we have a group called our Implementation Committee and we really do bring the brightest minds in the province together.
And there we look at the challenge that we're facing and then we collectively create solutions around those challenges and then we support then with the research and evidence that I was talking about"
Mr. Adams also noted of the current ER Closures in Prince Rupert and outlined how that is a frequent problem for many areas.
"You know, it's a problem that you've recently encountered; but we've encountered across the province for way too long.
We're looking right now at putting in the suggestions on contingency planning about how we can prevent these closures in the future and again that's a cooperative effort to bring people and communities that have been affected ...
There's just been so many emergency closures and they've all been in rural and remote communities, none of them are impacting on urban centres and we see that inequity needs to be addressed too"
Councillor Niesh asked about local recruitment in the north, the response noted how with a focus on urban recruitment for education in medicine, many of those graduates return to the large communities.
To that Adams noted that the Network has long been advocating for a more decentralized approach towards both education and medical practice and services in the rural areas.
"Part of the challenge that we face across rural BC is the lack of recruitment in rural communities and we're only picking urban students to fill these new seats, to create new positions for the future, then those students are likely to return to urban environment.
So we really need to do a better job of recruitment of students from rural and remote communities across the province.
We've been a champion of the Physician's assistants and bringing more Physicians assistants into play. That's now been regulated so Physicians Assistants are basically monitored by a Physician but work independently of a physician so it's a really good way to extend a Physician into a multiple role."
Councillor Cunningham noted of the biggest problem coming through of education and outlined how other areas of the country ensure that the needs of rural communities are addressed.
He also noted of some of the inequalities found in the health care system particularly withe the dynamic of the on staff nursing model compared to the travel nurse program, which is impacting on rural communities.
"The agency nurse piece is a huge problem, the inequity there for local nurses who are working for the health authority versus the one's coming in and travelling its almost night and day
Not necessarily in pay equity, but in lifestyle equity, you know in the amount of on call that you have to do and the Overtime hours being put in.
Those are all extremes that the local resident nurse faces, where as the one flying in or coming in for a short term visit doesn't
So we've got to fix these problems and they are creating huge imbalances and a lot of cost to the system and it's been ongoing now for decades unfortunately, so we've got a long trouble to rectify"
To bring the presentation to a close, Mr. Adams made one final pitch for Prince Rupert to join the Network observing of the entry cost of 50 dollars, which he noted was a small cost to add Prince Rupert's voice to the network.
Toward the initiative, Council made no decision on Monday towards the fifty dollar investment that would be required to become part of the Rural Health Network.
You can review the full presentation to Council from the City's Video Archive starting at the 42 minute mark.
The City of Prince Rupert planning department is looking to update the City's Housing Report, along with making some amendments to the Official Community Plan.
And towards those reviews, the Planning Department has issued a Request for Proposals through the provincial BC Bid program.
The Call for proposals was posted to the BC Bid website on Tuesday, providing for a synopsis of the City's focus for the work.
The purpose of this Request for Proposals is to solicit the best overall proposal for the provision of an updated Housing Needs Report and to review and propose amendments to the OCP for the City of Prince Rupert that builds upon the understanding developed in the updated Housing Needs Assessment, with respect to housing needs, while addressing current regulatory standards introduced in 2023 and local Council policy adopted since 2021.
The overview of the RFP provides a glimpse towards what the city would like to see as a final product.
The Project Overview digs a little deeper into the areas to be tackled as part of the initiative.
Monday night was Prince Rupert City Council's opportunity for an update on the AltaGas/VOPAK plans for a new shipment terminal on Ridley Island, with representatives from the partnership on hand to provide a presentation towards the project.
The overview was one similar that which Port Edward Council recently received and was one part history lesson tracking the arrival of AltaGas in the community and then turning to focus on the large scale development that could move forward should the joint venture partners decide on a positive Financial Investment Decision.
From the History tutorial, Council heard from Jennifer Ozmar who spoke of the success of the Liquid Propane Export terminal, the volume of exports to Asian customers. When it came to terminal operations, the presentation highlighted how since the AltaGas terminal opened in 2019 the workforce had grown to 42 employee, 88 percent of them local residents.
Other elements explored the community partnerships and engagement that AltaGas has had with the communities of the region.
Among those highlighted was the Indigenous training program which hired 100 percent of the graduates once the facility had been commissioned.
The presentation also featured a look at the AltaGas Rail Safety training program.
Moving towards their future plans, Mr. Campbell took Council through the development plan that has taken place, as well as to what to expect should there be a positive FID announcement.
The AltaGas rep observed that he has been involved in the joint venture project for three years now, with anticipation of the FID decision to come in the second quarter of this year.
He highlighted that all the permitting was in place and provided a tutorial on how the terminal facility and the wharf would evolve over the next few years, noting that if all moves on schedule the facility would be in service in 2026-27.
Other key themes was the extensive engagement with local First Nations and plans towards further training for the positions at the terminal.
At this point development of the footprint for the facility is underway with work on drainage and land clearing the immediate focus.
Towards questions from Council Safety and the impact of a large workforce arriving in the community made for much of the Council focus.
Councillor Randhawa's contribution to the conversation was to seek out a timeline for development and to ask towards the construction process, what kind of workforce would be assembled.
The timeline element was noted as still something in motion towards determining, with a target of late 2026, early 2027 for in service operations. As for the construction it would be a phased approach, with some of the large elements to be constructed offsite from the community and brought to the site.
For assembly over time it would feature a load level execution with lower levels of workers on site, with AltaGas looking to work with the local community. At peak it's anticipated that 250 people could be working the site, with 50 to 60 percent of them local.
"What we're looking at is a phased approach, with the initial infrastructure. So we've got a significant spend up front to get this infrastructure in place for all of the faculty to build out over time ...
We don't want to put too many people into a work force into a small footprint and you're working one on top of the other.
So we're trying to load level our execution and meet a reasonable timeline with lower people on site, I always find that you get better productivity with lower numbers of workers -- Sean Campbell from AltaGas/VOPAK
Councillor Barry Cunningham explored themes of Emergency services, asking about the nature of their in house emergency response.
He then observed of both the Prince Rupert and Port Edward Fire Departments and how they don't have the specialized training and the burden it would put on the local taxpayers and stretch their resources even more.
"We have a full time Fire Department, Port Edward has a volunteer one, they are both excellent But they don't have hazmat training, they don't have the specialized training that goes with the facility you're building.
You know like you're a border line refinery here, so that kind of training and the extra personnel is going to put a bit of a burden on our taxpayers toward a quality and level of our fire fighting department, which is already stretched because of the industrialization around here ...
So are you going to be in any way upping the ante as far as contributing to our fire department and the extra firefighters we're going to have to hire and the extra specialized training "
Mr. Cunningham also spoke to the volume of workers that would be working on the project and asked if they planned for a work camp for their workers and where it was going to be, noting of the housing situation in Prince Rupert.
Towards the workforce question, the AltaGas reps noted of the existing camp at Watson Island which they would use, as well as plans to expand that camp footprint. They also observed of the medical services that they plant provide for those camp residents to reduce any impact on local hospital services in Prince Rupert.
"There is a current camp sitting at Port Ed right now, it's a Watson Island camp it's operated by some of our Indigenous parters. It's 150 person camp, we have been working heavily with that camp provider and we plan to house most of our out of town workers at that location.
We also have provisions to build that 150 person camp into an additional 125 over and above that. So we've been mindful of exactly those pressure points that you have in the community and we don't want to add to those strains" -- Sean Campbell from AltaGas/VOPAK
You can review the full presentation from the City's Video archive, the AltaGas presentation was the first item on the Committee of the Whole agenda for the night.
Our compilation of some of the stories of note from the day, reviewing the political developments from the Provincial scene for Tuesday-Wednesday March 25-27, 2024
Our compilation of some of the stories of note from the day, reviewing the political developments from the Federal scene for Tuesday-Wednesday, March 26-27, 2024
