Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Editorial Notes: June issue of the Communities in Transition Information Resource

Welcome to the June posting of the CIT Information Resource! Our next posting will be in September. In the interim, many of you will be enjoying the lakes, rivers, and beaches of summer. As well as providing wonderful recreational opportunities, our BC waters are also the source of our ability to create and enjoy healthy communities.


Our "cover picture" comes to us courtesy of CIT's “Healthy Water, Healthy Communities – Lake Windemere Project" in the Invermere area. It's a view of the Lake Windemere wetlands. Wetlands provide a critical connection for wildlife between the terrestrial and aquatic habitats; they also provide very efficient and increasingly important water purification and carbon sequestration roles (see Climate Change 2: Re-Valuing Natural Systems from CIT December 2008). In our September post we'll be reviewing the Lake Windemere project. May your summer boating and water-recreational activities be enjoyable, and exercised with a mind to your impact on surrounding natural and human communities!

Since our
last major posting in May there have been
a lot of land-use related events and conversations taking place in BC. In early June we posted an interview with Tim Pringle on the Northern Sustainability Summit held in Smithers. The Summit was part of a series of events following up on last fall's Reversing the Tide conference in Prince George. We hope you have a look at this if you're interested in how the Real Estate Foundation is working on community transition issues in BC's north and northwest.

The end of May also marked the gathering of over 800 land use practitioners at the 2009
BC Land Summit in Whistler. This event, engaging individuals from across a broad spectrum of land use perspectives and professions, is an example of how the Foundation supports opportunities to deepen the conversation about land use and sustainability in BC. In an attempt to capture some of the energy of the event, CIT Information Resource interviewed a number of people while they were at the BC Land Summit. Some interviews will be posted in subsequent months, but in this issue we feature pre-conference comments from Sheila Harrington of the Land Trust Alliance of BC, who's organization released new research on conservation and climate change. We have some "first thoughts" from Brenda Southam of the Real Estate Institute of BC. The Real Estate Foundations' Director of Special Programs, Tim Pringle, talks about Robert F. Kennedy's perspective on social and economic change. In our final interview from the Summit in this issue, Mark Holland draws on Summit presenters like Kennedy, Sherry Kafka Wagner, and BC's Angus McAllister and David Zirnheldt to point us towards territory beyond "sustainability." We've been told by the organizers that more materials will be posted to the BC Land Summit website in the near future.

George Penfold came to BC about a dozen years ago after years of outstanding work in land use policy and research in Ontario. A couple of years ago he was named the Regional Innovation Chair for Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College. George has contributed to the CIT Information Resource
in the past, and we're very happy to be publishing his current think-piece on the longer term impact of recent amenity migration related development on communities in the Kootenays. Our coverage of the rural economic development issues continues with a second conversation with Vernon-based Victor Cumming, a discussion that looks at some of the follow-up activities to the October '08 Reversing the Tide conference. Climate change is an ongoing concern for anyone working with the land, and Real Estate Foundation staffer Jen McCaffrey continues our coverage of the Climate Action Charter topic with her report on a recent legally-oriented workshop for local government. Finally, with a nod to the rapidly growing impact of virtual communities and online conversations we conclude this issue of the CIT Information Resource with a column on social media that attempts to connect the dots between virtual "community" and the kind that has conversations and takes action in real-time, real-space.

Land use. Climate change. The potential of social media. Rural economic development. These are all topics that are shaping change in BC's rural communities. We believe that the CIT Information Resource has a role to play in engaging land use practitioners in these conversations and in supporting informed dialogue about often difficult issues. We hope you like what you read – or at least find it stimulating to your practice in community. Share this material. Give us feedback. Use the social media tools available – email, comments on blogs, or the telephone – to tell us how we're doing.

We also encourage you to use this material in your own newsletters, blogs, facebook pages, groups, or profiles, and your twitter postings. We want to make our materials as widely available as possible. If you see an opportunity for republication, electronically or in print, for education or non-commercial uses, please feel free to do so. We hope that you, as readers and as practitioners in community transition, will take what you like here, reference it, and share it for educational and non-commercial purpose. We only ask that you let us know how you are using it, even if it’s just to circulate an article in the office or amongst friends. We also look forward to suggestions for opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and reprints of your articles related to CIT themes.

We look forward to hearing from you!

hans peter meyer
Editor, Communities in Transition Information Resource
editor@communitytransition.org




Thursday, June 18, 2009

Who Owns the Future of the Kootenays?

by George Penfold

The Kootenay region has been undergoing a significant transformation over the last decade. The primary focus for economic development has been on resort and residential development, focussed on the outdoor activities available in beautiful mountain, lake and river resources we have here. Places like Revelstoke, Golden,Fernie, Kimberley, Radium, Invermere, and Rossland are well down this path, and new development is proposed for the Nelson area. The province supports this type of development with its own BC Resort Strategy and Action Plan.

One of the consequences in the Kootenay region has been a significant increase in construction activity. Between 2001 and 2008, for example, construction related employment increased from 3,600 in 2001 to 9,200 in 2007, with a drop to 8,000 in 2008. Over the past decade, resort and recreation related residential development and construction have become a major new economic driver in this region.

But what has this resort and recreation focus for residential development – what folks in the research community call
amenity migration – meant at the community level?

Studies from around the world are consistent in identifying some common issues related to amenity migration such as:
  • increasing property values and housing price;
  • displacement of both local people and parts of the local economy;
  • social and economic change resulting from the pattern of non-resident ownership.

As part of my work as the Regional Chair in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College I was recently involved in a study of housing affordability for the Columbia Basin and Boundary regions. research findings at posted online here, at Selkirk College. the housing data we gathered we found that non-resident ownership – that is, property titles held by people whose mailing address was outside region – increased from 21.8% to 29.9% of all titles from 2001 to 2008. On residential property titles only, non resident ownership in 2008 ranged from 13% for single family dwelling properties to 14% on acreage properties to 66% in strata titles, especially in the ski resort and Windermere Lake areas.

In some of the higher amenity rich areas, non-resident ownership was much higher – 60% in the Radium Windermere area, over 40% in the Boundary, Slocan/Arrow Lakes and Kaslo regions, and over 33% in the Valemount and Elk Valley areas. Although these areas saw development over this period, they saw little population growth. In some cases, despite development and construction activity, communities experienced decline in permanent residents.

Non-resident ownership of undeveloped land is even higher. In the
Columbia Basin Trust and Boundary regions in 2008 there were 12,544 titles assessed as vacant residential and 7,186 titles assessed as vacant acreage lots 2 acres or larger. Non resident ownership of these titles was approximately 50% across the region and 60% in the 6 higher amenity areas noted above.

What does all that mean for communities and planning? There are far more questions than answers. For example, what does it mean to have 50% to 60% of the residential development potential owned by people who don’t live in the region? I suspect it means opportunities for development of housing on those lands that focuses on the needs of the regional housing market and communities is very limited. I also assume that most of those owners have not taken the time to get involved in local planning processes, and may have very different ideas about the future of their properties than the community, so there will be lots of future challenges managing development applications.

Beyond the short term benefits of the construction phase, if the growth trend in non-resident ownership continues, what will the future of these areas look like? How does non-resident ownership result in an economic base, jobs, and in a functioning volunteer sector that provides some basic services such as fire protection? And 15 years down the road, with an aging population, who will be interested in owning these properties, especially the fractional ownership strata titles for example?

The recent economic downturn has added another set of questions to the value of amenity migration based development. The fragility of this economic development strategy has become quickly and dramatically very apparent: residential building permits virtually disappeared in the resort areas in the first 3 months of this year. What will construction related employment figures look for 2009? How will the permanent resident population deal with inflated property taxes now that the boom of recent years appears to have busted, at least in the short term?

The biggest question for me, however, has to do with the vision for the future of these communities. Has that future of this part of BC already been “sold” to those folks in Alberta, the lower mainland, and other parts of BC who own such a big piece of this region, but who do not play a part in the year-round lived experience of these communities?

– 30 –


About the author:

GEORGE PENFOLD is Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Rural Economic Development at
Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC and Adjunct Professor at theSchool of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. InReal Estate Foundation contributed $100,000 to the RIC endowment fund at Selkirk College as part of its support for sustainable community planning and informed development in the greater Kootenay region.


©Real Estate Foundation of BC/ 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.
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Moving Forward with Rural Revitalization in BC: Part 2 of the CIT Conversation with Victor Cumming

by hans peter meyer

Victor Cumming is a regional economist with 30 years experience in community and regional economic development (CED) activity. Based in Vernon, BC, Victor works for Westcoast CED consulting [insert pic here] He was the Master of Ceremonies at the October 2008 Reversing the Tide conference in Prince George, and was also involved in aspects of organizing the conference. Communities in Transition interviewed Victor for the March issue of the CIT Information Resource. We will continue to update this conversation on rural revitalization in future issues. More information from Reversing the Tide is available at the Communities in Transition home page.


hpm: The last time we spoke was in early March, just before a meeting of several of the organizations involved in last October's Reversing the Tide conference.

Victor: Yes, there was a meeting in March, and some decisions were made about how to go forward with this initiative around rural development in BC. There were also some other events – the Northern Sustainability Forum in Smithers, forums in Chu Chua and in Kamloops – that are connected directly related to the Reversing the Tide conference follow-up. [editor's note: CIT interviewed Tim Pringle about the Northern Sustainability Forum here.]


hpm: What kind of legacy is that conference leaving at a community and regional level in BC?

Victor: The key thing I'm seeing is that the agencies working on these issues are connecting. In the past they'd been working more or less in isolation. Reversing the Tide has helped to give them a sense that, while specific communities and issues may be different, there are common, across-the-board issues. They're starting to say, "We have to find a way to link our activities in a more systematic fashion."

In the past, they've worked on a 1-to-1 basis, a provincial or federal agency working with a community or region. Sometimes the senior government agencies have worked together. But in BC there hasn't been a linking of all the people who are working on the the issues. This has limited the impact of the work that's been done. It's also limited peoples' views of what the next steps are. So, instead of a linked process in the province in general, there's been a series of individual community, 1-to-1 processes with little or no cumulative impact or broad knowledge gain on how to rural development in systematic way.

One of the biggest consequences of this approach has been an understatement of the seriousness of the rural development issue in BC.


hpm: Is this changing?

Victor: We've had some significant movement amongst some of the key organizations working on these issues. They're saying, "Wow, you're right. We need to work on this together. And we need to focus our activities jointly. We need to forward strategies that are far more common than they are different."

So we've now got some conversations taking place between these organizations. They're beginning to try to identify a clear method, putting forward a single strategy – or a single strategy with a number of different activities. These might be slightly different by region, but overall the strategies would be identical, planned and implemented regionally.

Pulling these organizations together is much easier to say than it is to do. There isn't a history of these groups working together in this fashion. It was one of the luxuries of the meeting in early March. We had many of the key organizations in one room, recognizing that, "We sound the same, we face many of the same issues." Getting that group to then take the next step, to say, "Yes, we're an entity with common issues and purposes, and we want to bring a single message to senior levels of government" – this is a breakthrough we're hoping will have an impact. We're hoping to see some results in place by early fall of this year.

hpm: Where do the events in Smithers and Chu Chua, for example, fit into this?

Victor: They're also allowing for greater regional participation. They ensure that a greater number of organizations are sharing this information, hearing the same themes, seeing an emerging common vision, and exploring the same strategies.


hpm: This all sounds very positive.

Victor: From an organizational point of view we haven't experienced stumbling blocks. And that is positive. People are beginning to see the common issues, that across the province there is a need to move forward together on a common strategy. Organizationally, this is a success. A critical part will whether this combination of energy can have an impact on senior levels of government. I think that this will be a question that can only be answered as we move into the fall.


hpm: Since we last spoke there's been a provincial election. Does this change things?

Victor: It's given us a bit of a window. An election, even it's the same party in power after the event, usually there's a shift with what they want to accomplish. Even with the same party in power there are new MLAs. The election and forming of a new government gives the government an opportunity to make some changes, to look at what they're doing and not doing. There's a window for insertion of the concepts we're talking about. I see 2-3 new MLAs in caucus who understand these concepts. We'll be focused on presenting what we're doing as an opportunity for the new Provincial government as it moves forward.

We're also presenting what we're doing as an alternative to those responsible for rural development – Western Economic Diversification, for example. They're currently trying to implement the national "stimulus" package. We're saying that what we're talking about could be a critical component of this package, one of the things they could do, to make BC's rural communities more sustainable.


hpm: What has their response been?

Victor: They don't see an exact match with what they think the stimulus program’s role is. Our job is to help them understand why it should be a component of what they're trying to do. How it fits their mandate. Those discussions are going on between rural development organizations in BC and senior agency staff. We're hoping that this opening will be created within the next 6 months.


hpm: What about leadership and context. In our previous conversation we talked about the context of rural development in BC, and how some previous potential initiatives in the mid 1990s – Forest Renewal BC was an example – withered or were shut down before they could deliver. The need to look at rural resource dependent communities has emerged again. Why now? Is it because of the pine beetle crisis?

Victor: Let's go back 12 months, because the past 12 months have been highly unusual in terms of provincial and international economic activity. At that time, in the spring of 2008, we had both the federal and provincial governments citing success in terms of provincial and federal economic growth. That success, however, was not across the board. When looked at from the point of view of rural BC – outside of Vancouver and Victoria, and the regional centres like Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo – if you exclude these centres, you discovered that population had been in decline or stagnant. The lucky ones had been growing very, very slowly. Much slower than the provincial average. You also discovered that employment growth had been lagging significantly. This in direct contradiction to the very significant flows coming from these rural areas – tax and royalty flows, to both provincial and federal governments.

To have people argue that we're being successful, at the same that we're experiencing population decline or stagnation, with significant aging in rural areas, faster than in urban areas – well, it's much more difficult to argue success. Agencies that are based in these rural areas had been watching this daily, weekly, monthly. For them, the situation was worsening, not improving. At the same time they were seeing substantial senior government investment in urban areas. And that same level of investment had lagged, and continues to lag, in the rural areas. It seems odd that we have these rural areas, having a huge net cash outflow of their region up to 12 months ago, having real difficulty accessing funding for rural development they were requesting. A real imbalance. This has become clearer and clearer to many in recent years.

And yes, in mountain pine beetle infested areas you'd expect this economic decline to be accelerated as annual allowable cut tends to dwindle as we move towards 2011-2012. But, boy, you go to areas that don't have mountain pine beetle, and they've been experiencing the same kind of economic decline. The North Island and mid coast, for example. No pine beetle there. Central Kootenays: very small pine beetle impact. Yet all experiencing that very same lag in growth and imbalance in economic benefit from resource royalties and tax flows. Whereas, at the provincial level, you saw the coffers growing dramatically. The GDP growing dramatically. It's because of significant contributions from parts of the province that are experiencing stagnation or population decline. I think the current initiative has less to do with crises like the mountain pine beetle than it does with a recognition by a lot of people that, "Hey, this isn't working for us who live out here. And we'd like to have this imbalance shifted; it's not working to our benefit."


hpm: What's happened in the past 12 months to change this?

Victor: International economic events have exacerbated the situation. Primarily because commodity prices have been affected dramatically. Rural areas are heavily dependent on commodity pricing of natural resources: wood, coal, other minerals, agricultural crops. What's happened has worsened the trend that was already there. It's been there for 8-10 years at least. Some of these trends go back 20 years.

Interestingly, the impact of mountain pine beetle infestation would have added employment and economic activity in affected communities over the past 5 years leading up to 2008, because commodity prices were high and harvesting activities were high. But what we see is that all that activity only helped those affected communities hold the line, to stay even.


hpm: So where is leadership coming for rural development in BC?

Victor: That's the main struggle: How to amass the leadership for the rural development agenda. And it's a struggle because most rural leaders are already exhausted, dealing with local issues. So, we don't have the capacity in the rural areas, people with surplus time and expertise and money, to throw their effort into this issue. You ask them to get involved, and the request is just one more thing layered on top of everything else that rural leaders are dealing with. They find it overwhelming.

Leadership is a consistent problem when trying to organize around this kind of an issue during crisis times. People just don't have surplus time or energy. Identifying and activating leadership is one of the critical things to do right now. Not an easy thing to do.


hpm: And yet there is some momentum here. Who is driving that?

Victor: To say that there are individuals driving this would be quite wrong. What we're seeing is quite a broad base of individuals and organizations saying, "We've got to move this along." There isn't one person driving the bus; there are a whole bunch of people on the bus, sharing the wheel. At some point we hope that some people will emerge, to take be the face of this, to take the wheel. Stay tuned!


hpm: Are there significant events we should be watching for?

Victor: These will emerge over the next 6 months. One of the important things that needs to happen right now is for this conversation to get into the media. It's very important right now.


– 30 –


©Real Estate Foundation of BC/ 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Staff Report: Current Law & Urgent Action ~ A workshop on Local Government & Climate Change

by Jen McCaffrey


On March 6, 2009 the Centre for Global Environmental and Natural Resource Law at UBC's Faculty of Law hosted a one-day workshop at Robson Square. The workshop was focused on actions available to local governments in BC to address the impacts of climate change.


With a mandate to support sustainable real estate and land use in BC, the Real Estate Foundation has not traditionally been involved in targeted greenhouse gas reduction projects.Nevertheless, the Foundation recognizes the connection between climate change and land use decision-making and in this regard has supported many initiatives throughout its 21 year history to help land use practitioners achieve more sustainable land use decision-making. Our participation in the March workshop is part of the Foundation's ongoing interest in better understanding how we can support CIT partner communities to meet sustainable land use goals.


One of the common concerns for many speakers was the human inclination to address issues in isolation - in this case concerning climate change - in effect creating a climate change silo. The issue is real, and must be addressed; but we should be mindful of the need to maintain a broad view of all the pillars of sustainable development and tackle the challenges in a holistic manner in our communities.


The day opened with Dr. John Robinson looking at climate change on a global scale and how this translates to the BC setting. He expressed strong support for the provincial government’s climate change policies to date, particularly regarding the carbon tax. He wanted to dispel what he called the "erroneous information" being produced by the media about BC’s climate change policies, saying we have the best and most innovative suite of policies in the world right now to address climate change. Nevertheless, Robinson argues the current policy suite still won’t enable BC to achieve the 2050 targets set by the provincial government. He calls for “transformative change,” arguing that we should use public policy to achieve a new economy that meaningfully incorporates sustainability principles. In his view, the world will never achieve the necessary changes required to reduce our GHGs if we continue to focus on individual behaviour change. In addition to promoting a new kind of economy, the kind of transformative change needed also requires cultural change at the institutional level.


Alan Osborn and Lois-Leah Goodwin of the provincial Ministry of Community Development presented on current department initiatives including

Community Energy and Emissions Inventory reports (CEEI) are now available to assist local governments with establishing greenhouse gas targets, policies and actions in official community plans or regional growth strategies. a measure community GHG emissions. The 2007 CEEI Reports offer high level estimated community energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from on-road transportation, buildings, solid waste and land-use change and are publicy available to anyone interested in tracking local government GHG emissions.There are some concerns about whether the methodology can be applied consistently and fairly in every community. Recognizing this concern , the CEEI's will follow an iterative process each year.

Guide to Green Choice: a guide to help local governments with decision-making on settlement patterns, transportation planning, and sustainable economic development


Sean Pander of City of Vancouver and Russ Fuoco of the District of Saanich talked about what has been accomplished to date in their communities to address climate change. The formula for success is familiar: a combination of political will at the top and staff interest internally to drive the necessary changes – the institutional change referred to by Dr. Robinson. Nevertheless, local governments continue to struggle with lack of staff and financial resources. Questions from the audience also indicate there is continued desire for a step-by-step how-to guide: how to get started, how to build support, how to implement the kinds of changes achieved in Vancouver and Saanich. Participants said case studies are good, but detailed first steps are also valuable in understanding what to do first and how to make change happen.


Alex Boston of HB Lanarc Consulting was very positive about the broad scope of options available to local governments to mitigate and adapt to climate change. He reiterated some of Dr. Robinson’s message, saying that communities need to think beyond climate change, to engage all components of sustainability. He noted that most projects that have been successful in reducing GHGs or adapting to the impact of climate change were not motivated by concern about climate change. Rather, these projects, such as Smart Growth on the Ground, were motivated by some broad set of interests, often around the desire for better quality of life. With this in mind, he urged communities to think local and act local to find the right solutions for their community. Communities also need to look on the ground- not up in the clouds- for climate change solutions, primarily in our choices about settlement patterns.


Deborah Curran of Deborah Curran & Company and UVIC Faculty of Law was also very positive about the broad scope of bylaws and regulations already available to local government to reduce GHGs. From a long list of tools, she highlighted biodiversity conservation and sustainable water management as important adaption tools, the latter encouraging an important shift to watershed-wide zoning measures. Curran also noted the barriers to change that typically arise, and spent some time discussing how to tackle institutional and individual resistance to change. Her preferred methods: fostering collaboration and establishing meaningful and long term engagement with stakeholders.


Cheeying Ho of the Whistler Sustainability Centre provided an overview of the City of Whistler’s Whistler 2020 award winning strategy plan. She also talked about the purpose of the newly established Whistler Sustainability Centre. This non-profit consultancy is working with interested communities that would like to draw on Whistler’s expertise in sustainable resort development and sustainable tourism.

Jason Emmert manages the Community Assistance Program at Smart Growth BC (SGBC). He put forward the importance of connecting infrastructure financing to land use planning and sustainability goals. He noted that traditional infrastructure financing is an exclusively economic evaluation without consideration for environmental factors such as GHGs reduction targets and the cost of carbon emissions. SGBC will soon be releasing a report with recommendations on this subject.


Donald Lidstone of Ratcliff & Co, and the Law Institute of UBC wrapped up the conference with a detailed look at options available to local governments under Bill 10 and 27 and within their Official Community Plans. This was a very dense presentation and I won't be able to do it justice here in a summary. Nevertheless, the message was good - there are lots of existing legal tools available to local government and its' worth reviewing Lidstone's presentation for full details.



– 30 –


JEN McCAFFREY is a Grants Officer with the Real Estate Foundation of BC.



©Real Estate Foundation of BC/ 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

BC Land Summit: In Conversation with Sheila Harrington

by hans peter meyer

This is the first of several interviews with participants at the BC Land Summit 2009. Several are posted in this June issue of the Communities in Transition Information Resource. Additional interviews will be posted in subsequent months.

Sheila Harrington is the Executive Director of the Land Trust Alliance of BC (LTA) one of the sponsors of this year's BC Land Summit. This is the second BC Land Summit. I talked to Sheila on May 19, 2009 just as she was leaving the LTA offices on her way to the Summit at Whistler.

hpm: Tell me a little about how the LTA got involved in this year's Land Summit.

Sheila: Our involvement started about 2 years ago. It's important that the professions know more about land trusts and the LTA, that they're more a part of the scene than they have been. I went to talk to both the BC Society of Landscape Architects (BCSLA) and the Planning Institute of BC (PIBC) about this, and to let them know that we, at LTA, are a professional association ourselves, with annual conferences that they could be part of. They said, "Well, we're planning the Land Summit for two years from now. Perhaps you'd be interested in joining us?" I took that back to the LTA Board. Board members decided it would be a great opportunity to communicate our message, which is how important land conservation is in land planning and anything connected to land.


hpm: What was it like to work with these other organizations in the planning of the Summit?

Sheila: At our initial meeting I was pleasantly surprised to hear the kinds of issues being raised, and who was raising them. Across the "land use industry" people are expressing a need to address things like conservation, green building and development, growth. There definitely is an interest in addressing the deeper issues.

It's been exciting, working on the Summit. It involves all professional organizations involved in land use activities in BC – appraisers, landscape architects, planners, real estate agents, land trust members, etc. It's a golden opportunity to learn more about each others' fields and to have a broader impact on working on the land.


hpm: What kind of response have your members given you to the conference, given the economic situation?

Sheila: Not as many of our members are coming as I'd hoped. I'm sure that this has to do with finances. A lot of foundations have reduced their funding. Some have completely cut back their funding. Some have gone from 2 intakes to 1. Land trusts have seen their funding significantly reduced this year. Consequently, we don't have the kind of attendance this year that we usually do at our annual conferences, which usually involves ourselves.


hpm: What are people missing by not attending?

Sheila: It's a very different conference than what our members are used to. It's a much broader program. Because it involves several other organizations it's an opportunity to learn about where other land use people are coming from. For example, they get to learn about what First Nations are doing, to communicate to others about what land trusts are doing. That's our number one focus here: to communicate our message to other professions. There are a number of sessions on the program that are specifically about conservation options.

We're also going to release some research that we've been working on for a year on how to bring conserved land into the carbon offset market. This is being released in Richard Hebda's presentation on Friday.


hpm: This must be very exciting for the LTA.

Sheila: It is. We've been working on this research and the report for over a year, and the Land Summit is the official public release.


hpm: Is there anything else that you're particularly excited about seeing at the Land Summit?

Sheila: My focus will be on my responsibility to moderate specific sessions. I was on the program planning committee, so I'll be moderating sessions that I was involved in planning. I'm doing one on First Nations in the Lillooet / Squamish region. In addition, there's a session on Biodiversity BC. This will be the public release of the Biodiversity BC Atlas. This is a very significant event. They've been working on this atlas for 5 years.

Outside of my particular sessions, I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Robert Kennedy, one of the keynote speakers.

And, because we've got over 800 people, I'm very interested in meeting people from across BC who are involved in land use issues. That's a lot of people and quite a cross section of land use perspectives.

– 30 –

End note:
The 2009 BC Land Summit was a gathering of over 800 land use practitioners from across the province. The Summit took place over May 20-22 in Whistler, and was hosted by
• The British Columbia Association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada
The Real Estate Foundation of BC was a major funder of the event in 2004 and again in 2009.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

BC Land Summit: In Conversation with Brenda Southam

by hans peter meyer

Brenda Southam is the Executive Officer of the Real Estate Institute of BC. REIBC is one of six partners that have organized the 2009 BC Land Summit. This is the second BC Land Summit that REIBC has been involved in, the first having taken place in 2004. CIT talked to Brenda on May 22, 2009 in Whistler on the final day of the 2009 BC Land Summit.


hpm: What are the highlights of the 2009 BC Land Summit so far for you?

Brenda: At this point it has to be the keynote presentation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last night. He was fabulous.

It’s also wonderful to see how many people came out for this year’s BC Land Summit. We have over 840 people registered. We’re very happy to have so many at a time like this. And everything is running smoothly, from a conference organizational point of view. We’re very happy.


hpm: What stood out in Robert Kennedy’s talk? Especially it as it relates to the concerns of REIBC members.

Brenda: He talked about putting a new energy grid in place. Right now the existing grid isn’t able to efficiently move energy from sources to end-users. This will take a lot of land. Land use professionals are going to have be thinking about this as they go about their work in the future.


hpm: What are people saying to you on the floor about this year’s BC Land Summit?

Brenda: The feedback has all been very positive. Everyone’s really happy. I’m hearing that people like the speakers, the number of different sessions that are going on, the number of people who are hear from across the province, they’re happy with how things are organized. The delegates are very pleased with the whole conference itself.

hpm: The conference is ending today: What are you looking forward to as it comes to a close?

Brenda: I’m very interested in Tim Pringle’s presentation of the REIBC research on housing issues in BC’s northern communities. The research deals with a range of issues: land uses, housing, who’s going to be living in these communities, what kind of housing stock is currently in place, what needs to be built – this is important information from our perspective. And the research that Tim will be presenting on is an example of the original research that REIBC commissions. The BC Land Summit is a great opportunity to showcase the research and REIBC’s interest in supporting the land use professions. [Editor's note: Tim Pringle talked about this research in a February interview with CIT.]


hpm: How are people in the real estate industry talking about the BC Land Summit today?

Brenda: They’re finding it very beneficial. There are a lot of different perspectives being presented. So industry people are hearing things they might not ordinarily be exposed to. We’re very happy about this. REIBC has opened up its membership to include planners, for example, so it’s good to hear that this mix is working.


hpm: Why is it important to have this kind of event?

Brenda: We’ve got a wide range of land use professionals participating. It’s one of the only ways that they can all get together, get to know who they are, we can share the same information. This is becoming more and more important as there is so much information, so many new ideas out there. Having a place to share common information is important for the work they do as professionals, but also for the environment, and the larger world outside their professions.

This has been a great event, one that a lot of people are very happy with. We’ve got a great showcase, put together by the BC Society of Landscape Architects, that’s been of interest to a wide range of people. I’d like to thank the Sea-to-Sky people we hired as our event planners. It’s been a very good event.


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End note:
The 2009 BC Land Summit was a gathering of over 800 land use practitioners from across the province. The Summit took place over May 20-22 in Whistler, and was hosted by
• The British Columbia Association of the Appraisal Institute of Canada
The Real Estate Foundation of BC was a major funder of the event in 2004 and again in 2009.

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