1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
2. What part of Quesnel’s Official Community Plan do you care about most and want to see action on?
3. What solutions or ways forward do you see to address concerns around crime, affordable housing, transportation infrastructure and homelessness in our community?
4. What do you think needs to be done to attract and retain professionals such as health care providers in our community?
5. What are a few fun facts about yourself?
My family and I are proud to call Quesnel home for the past 26 years. I am currently president of the Rotary Club of Quesnel and have just finished serving a term as president of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. I currently work as the executive director of the West Quesnel Business Association.
The OCP is designed to provide clarity and certainty on future form and character of the community. Each defined area of Quesnel has at least one goal designed to support housing. Whether it’s encouraging market, non-market and multi-generational housing options that target youth, seniors, singles, couples and families, to providing a mix of housing options that include carriage homes and single detached homes that create medium and high-density residential areas to permitting secondary suites where appropriate and, encouraging multi-unit residential infill.
Crime and homelessness are often put into the same sentence but do not have the same solutions. Our RCMP and bylaw officers need to have better tools at their disposal. These come from other levels of government and a continued advocacy for change is needed at the provincial level, especially to find a solution to prolific offenders.
How BC Housing sets up homeless supports has to change. Their methodology is not working for communities, and they will continue to find community resistance to supporting the homeless unless they look at systemic change within their organization on how they roll out their housing programs.
While the lack of health care professionals is a growing crisis, it is not one that can be solved overnight. Creating more spaces for training now will ease the burden in the future. Right now, we need to continue with our award-winning healthcare recruitment program and support the primary care model that was developed to retain those specialists we have.
Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email: rebecca.dyok@quesnelobserver.com
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