By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
Rosalyn Bird, the MLA-elect for Prince George-Valemount, made a trip into McBride on Wednesday, November 6th to meet with Village Council. The group discussed McBride’s key needs heading into Bird’s first term as MLA, including road closures, expansion of healthcare options, and use of the agricultural land reserve.
Mayor Gene Runtz called the meeting to order at 2:32 p.m.
Forest Service Road closures
The closures of the Castle Creek, Dore River and McKale River Forest Service Roads has had significant negative impacts on the village’s recreation, tourism and forestry sectors, according to the meeting agenda. Council asked Bird to advocate for the Province to restore the bridges on these roads, which were decommissioned by the Ministry of Forests due to age and damage.
Runtz suggested that the McBride Community Forest Corporation take over the roads.
“I don’t think that’s feasible, Mr. Mayor,” said Councillor Joe Kolida, who is a Village appointee on the Community Forest board. “I’m not going to spend our money just on bridges without any income.”
Bird suggested asking for responsibility of the road to be transferred to the Ministry of Tourism, as it connects to sites used for recreation, such as the Ozalenka Valley Cabin.
“One of the main industries here in the Robson Valley is tourism, so why don’t you just transfer the road from [the Ministry of] Forests to Tourism?” Bird said. “I have no idea if that’s ever been done before, where a ministry switched roads, but it’s worth asking whether that would be possible.”
Hospital improvements
The McBride and District Hospital no longer delivers babies, provides appendectomies or other minor surgical procedures. It offers an emergency room, outpatient services, three acute care beds and eight long-term care beds, among other services, but surgery is not available, according to the Northern Health website.
Bird said recruitment difficulties may be contributing to the hospital’s troubles, and suggested providing more staff housing as one solution.
“Something I heard about when I was coming through here during the campaign was seniors’ housing,” Bird said. “What if you put a multi-use building, where one storey of the house is housing for nurses or doctors that are coming through, or ambulance people? The rest of it is for seniors.”
Runtz and councillors agreed that more accommodations would help.
“In Prince George, with that hospital, this community is paying significantly for that,” Runtz said, referencing the fact that upgrades to the hospital were recently financed by the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George. “But we can’t even get proper accommodations for our emergency services. This is another case of a small place being ignored.”
Agricultural Land Reserve
Most of the land surrounding McBride is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, which restricts development as the land is prioritized for agricultural use. Runtz said the reserve has made it difficult to build more housing in McBride, and foreign owners have purchased reserve land and left it vacant.
“You’ve got a lot of people that would like to come to this community that are locked out by the [reserve],” Runtz said. “When you drive around and look at everything around town, and you look at how much of that is even being used for agriculture, it’s a small percent… We’ve got the land tied up and nothing really being done with it and people can’t move out here.”
Bird agreed that the reserve could pose a problem for both farmers and would-be homeowners in McBride.
“Farming in our province is currently so expensive that unless you inherit a farm and all the equipment, it’s out of your reach,” she said.
