Bowen Island Municipal Councillor Maureen Nicholson and Economic Development Committee Chair Gordon Ganong met with MLA Jordan Sturdy last Friday in order to discuss local economic development and other issues related to Bowen Island.
“It was a very valuable meeting, I think,” says councillor Nicholson. “We really got the ball rolling on a conversation that needs to continue happening, and will continue happening.”
Nicholson says that Sturdy plans to meet both with the Bowen Island Municipal Transportation Advisory Committee (BIMTAC) and Peter King by the end of March.
“He was asking what we needed in order to keep the Express Bus to downtown running,” says Nicholson. “He’s clearly been paying attention to our transportation and ferry issues.”
Another topic of conversation Ganong and Nicholson brought up to Sturdy is the fact that Bowen Island is unable to apply for various forms of provincial funding that other, comparable communities can apply for, because it is attached to Metro Vancouver and not considered to be rural.
“There is a serious inequity here,” says Ganong. “There are trust funds that other regions have been able to access for nearly a decade now, that we don’t even have a chance at.”
Councillor Nicholson says that MLA Sturdy will work on resolving this issue when he meets with Bowen’s council, either in March or April. She says another issue that is likely to come up at this meeting is Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and specifically, the proposed Woodfibre LNG export facility.
“We brought this up, and Sturdy expressed his disappointment at the public response to this project,” says councillor Nicholson. “He said people are being short-sited, and encouraged Bowen to look beyond its borders. I told him we are looking beyond our borders, and Gordon [Ganong] brought up the issue of tourism and how that part of our economy will be affected on Bowen. Sturdy said it is unwise to focus too much on one particular area of the economy.”
Councillor Nicholson says the conversation lasted about 10 minutes, before they moved on to other topics.
“We also wanted to thank him,” she says about the meeting. “He has helped Bowen on many issues, including getting better signage on the highway exits near Horseshoe Bay, the province’s work with Destination BC and their shift to recognizing small and rural communities, the work on the mitigation strategy while the Queen of Capilano is out of service, and also – we have been very fortunate to have been given an economic development liason with the Ministry of Job Skills and Training.”
