 Good afternoon, everyone. Could you please find a seat? I love that I can still do that. Right on. I hope everyone had a great lunch, whether you joined your area associations or however. Welcome back. It gives me great pleasure to introduce our next speaker, the minister of municipal affairs, Nathan Collin. Minister Collin proudly served as member of parliament for the writing of skin of Bulkley valley for 15 years. From 2004 to 2019. He was elected MLA for staking in the 2020 provincial election. He has worked throughout his career to promote sustainable development and to encourage the participation of young people in politics and public policy. Please join me in welcoming minister Collin. Thank you. Thank you very much, President Collin, for your incredible service and hospitality for all of us that are gathered here today. I would like to make special recognition of the Squamish and Lillowet people who have welcomed us to their territories. And for those of you who weren't here this morning, the introduction that we received, the drumming in, the singing of cheap kelp kow of the Lillowet nation and Wilson was incredibly moving and profound and got us all started off in the right way. I would like to acknowledge my assistant deputy minister, Tara Faganelo and her incredible staff who many of you know, they engage with your communities. Mayor Jack Crompton not only for his fabulous welcome but an exceptional and outstanding bow ties. It's almost as if Whistler knows what they're doing and hosting and welcoming people. And to all the staff, at the convention center, the hotels, the municipal staff, the folks that make what we do possible, thank you for what you do. I'm Nathan Cullen. I'm your minister of municipal affairs. I'm your newest minister of municipal affairs. Some of you might have noticed there's been changes and some of you might be a little worried wondering what it is that you've done wrong because you started with the incredible indelible Selena Robinson. The fierce fighter and former municipal counselor. Then you went to Josie Osborn, this bundle of compassionate, courageous energy. And then you got me. And you're wondering, was it something that you'd said or done? But there's a silver lining in all this because now we've got friends in the right places. Minister responsible for land-use planning and marine and ocean environments. The minister responsible for the money. All the kinds of friends you want and need. So we're, I think we're in a good way. I was asked to give an introduction of myself and I don't want to state the obvious. I'm very tall and good-looking. I have fabulous hair, of course. But it goes without mentioning. I suppose I am the father of two outstanding young men. I live in Smithers with my wife Diana. I am a smithereen. Proud as can be. Don't call us smithereens unless you want to fight. We're very proud of the place we live. I love the beautiful and the small communities that make up this province. I love the richness and energy and diversity of our larger centers and the mid-sized communities. The Goldilocks that are just the right size allow for that beautiful mixture of both. I did do a stint in federal politics. I served my time in the Fed pen. It was an incredibly rewarding and engaging experience and I got to spend a lot of time presenting the Northwest, more than 48 communities, small towns, and did my fair share of time at RD tables and municipal halls, listening to the incredibly difficult and rewarding experience of what it is to serve. It was actually a former colleague of yours, Bill Goodacre, who served on Smithers Council, who served as an MLA, who first enticed me into the idea of running federally at the time. I had my papers to enter the race for town council in Smithers. He said, no, no, no, we need somebody to run federally. Bill was an incredibly gracious person. He has since passed and I miss him each and every day. Another former colleague of yours in a way, Jack Layton, who, as you know, was a president of the FCM before he was leader of the federal NDP. We had a privileged, I had a privileged moment of taking a cab through Toronto where Jack served on council. And as we went through the city, he was pointing out place after place, project after project, women's shelters and bike lanes and green spaces, and all of these things that he had tackled, and he said, you love municipal politics. Each and every day, you're working on problems. You're solving things for people in real time. So I started federal. I made my way up to provincial and now I have the great fortitude to spend a lot of time with people in the municipal field. I was mentioning to your president a little earlier, I was a little nervous yesterday. I thought I had broken some bylaws here in Whistler. Because I jumped up on stage to help hand out an award. And as I jumped, I felt that amazing sensation that's men who sometimes wear suit pants will know, of a tearing of my pants in a super inappropriate place. And I did everything I could, and I hope I was successful, and I thought for sure I violated some bylaw here in Whistler. I checked with Mayor Jack, and in fact, not only did I not violate any Whistler bylaws, they may make a statue for me out front, because apparently there's a bit of a tradition in this town of public nudity. It's according to the mayor. It's according to the mayor. I was having a bit of a rough day yesterday. I was hanging out with some of you and did something, and I pinched a nerve in my back. And so I am in front of you today well fortified with an inordinate amount of back medication right now. And I checked with our attorney general, Murray Rankin, and apparently I am exempt from any promises that I make to you this afternoon, while under the influence. It's so good to be back together. It's so good to be with each other again. These have been incredibly trying times for our communities, for the leaders of our communities these last few years. I want to acknowledge those of you who are running again. Could you please stand up? Thank you for your continued service. Good luck in just a few short weeks. I'd like to also acknowledge those that are having their last UBCM and are not choosing to seek re-election. Could you please stand up? Your dedication, your service to your communities, some over some decades is to be thanked and appreciated. Particularly Mayor Chris Pieper, 31 years in local government. In his service as mayor and councillor. It'll also be the last UBCM for our premier, John Horgan. And he'll be speaking to you a little later in the week. And I'll only preempt and say this, that I have watched him as a leader of our province, give as much time and energy and dedication to some of our most remote and rural communities, some of the communities that never make the news, while dedicating himself to the communities of the larger size. And I, as a northerner, as a rural resident, incredibly appreciate that leadership, and he will be sorely missed. The good thing is, there's a bit of a Benjamin Button effect. Have you ever noticed this in politics? When colleagues leave, they suddenly get younger, better looking, more laissez-faire. The weight of the world is off their shoulders. I'm not saying the premier looks at all old. He looks fantastic. I want that to be underlined in my speech, if you could. I want to talk to you about a few important things, the new normal that we often talk about, this new reality that we live in, how we must come together to find that opportunity in the crises that we face, and that we must come together to solve the most vexing problems, the most challenging problems, and achieve the best opportunities that we can. The list of expectations on you continues to grow. Municipal agendas, local government agendas, would be unrecognizable from 20, 10, 5 years ago. The list of things that councils must occupy themselves and choose to engage with, housing, healthcare, homelessness, opioid crisis, climate change, complex care, mental health supports, repeat offenders, public safety, and the list goes on and on. Yet our love of people, our love of place, continues to motivate and drive the efforts that we put in every day as elected folks. I don't know if you know this, but there's been some polling over the years when they rank all the professions and ask Canadians to say, which ones do you hold in the highest esteem? Do you know who ranks first? No, not politicians. You know? Firefighters, God, those people, and their calendars, and their saving lives, and their awesome receptions, do you know where we rank? Do you know where we rank? Do you know where we rank, folks? We're just, for second and last, we're just above drug dealers. We have to change this. We have to work to this. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. We talk ourselves down. We don't even want to say the words. I'm a politician. Because, you know, the ranking system has not got us in a great place. But what is it? What is it that we do? We seek to speak on behalf and work on behalf of others. We seek to represent hopefully the very best of our communities. The public scrutiny has gotten pretty intense. It's gotten also a little sensitive at times. I was having a nice little jog through the beautiful city of Richmond a few months ago. I noticed some cute little bunnies on the side of the pathway, and I took a photo. Because who doesn't love cute little bunnies? And I posted it up on social media. Obvious clickbait. And the wrath and the rage of this invasive species that was destroying our beautiful city of Richmond took me back and made me realize that even bunnies, even bunnies can trigger this somewhat hypersensitive world we live in. Public service is at its best a vocation. It's not a job. It's not a hobby. It's a calling, a vocation, a calling to something. And we have the good fortune to do it. And we don't do it for the fame and the fortune, most of us. Anyone getting rich sitting on local council? No? And the scrutiny and the expectations continue to rise. UBCM asked us to act. On a rare but important issue, in the difficult situation when an elected official has been charged with a criminal offence. And the cloud and the difficulty that creates for any council if the person remains. We listened to you and we acted and we changed the law in this province. That anyone charged in such a situation will take a leave of absence at the time of being charged. And if found convicted of an indictable offence will be removed immediately from serving in local government. This is difficult stuff. This is important things because of the work that you are charged with doing. We also, under the good work of my colleagues, the wonderful and outstanding Josie Osborn, we brought in a new oath of office to include some important principles, collaboration, accountability, respect, integrity, and leadership. Spells Carol. We all need to be a little bit more like Carol. Thank you, Josie, for that work. And UBCM worked with us to make it the law of the land that every council elected after these next elections must publicly consider and bring in and contemplate a code of conduct for them. And there's good reasons behind, beyond the obvious, right? That if common sense, for common sense, we wouldn't need laws. We wouldn't need codes of conduct. We all wish to be treated well. And we also know that for underrepresented groups in our world who are underrepresented in elected office in the halls of power and in business, they are subjected to even more attacks of a more violent nature sometimes. And we all saw that recently in the news with our federal finance minister. That we know that for women, indigenous people, people of color, 2S LGBTQI+, that we must do more to make sure that our council chambers, that our boards are welcoming places, so that our representation can look as close and as best to the communities that we seek to represent. Thank you for the leadership in this. I look forward to seeing, and I would take particular note of the work of Squamish and Mayor Elliott, who recently passed the most progressive and advanced code of conduct in British Columbia, and I would believe British Columbia's history. I saw your theme, value of one power of many. I like that theme. The value of one, of one person, of one town, regardless of origin, orientation, of size, and location, and the power of many, that to stand alone as one is not enough in this world anymore and not a luxury we can afford. Crisis can do a lot of things. Two primary things that can rip us apart or bring us together. Last couple of years has been incredibly challenging for us. It has exposed cracks in our world that were always there. Maybe some of them we didn't notice. The crisis around mental health and addictions and homelessness, some of us noticed. But now we can't help but notice more. We've realized that we, as a province, needed to do more and put $7 billion into housing, half a billion dollars for mental health and addictions, $300 million to connect 280 rural and remote communities to the internet, $150 million for the northern communities planning and infrastructure grants, half a billion dollars went directly to local government in the pandemic to make sure you could keep your lights on, your staff employed, and the services to your communities running because we knew how essential that was $3 billion to the Clean BC program and $2 billion to build back better in the events of the natural disaster crisis that we are seeing, the floods and the fires. These are all historic levels of spending because the crises and the challenges we face are also of historic nature. We've seen a wave of global inflation land upon our shores here in British Columbia. The price of just about everything has gone up. I was very proud our government brought in changes and help for people facing high cost of living charges. The single largest tax cut for working people in our province's history when we cut the MSP premiums, getting rid of tolls on bridges, affordable childcare, the dumpster fire of ICBC suddenly cutting checks and sending money back to ratepayers. These all help save the average family of four in our province more than $7,000 a year each and every year. And just last week we announced more measures to help save families $1,500 a year further. This is a lot. And more to do. I want to talk about a difficult issue, one that's not easily talked about in public spaces but one that is upon us. And that's the issue of a public disorder, repeat offenders in our communities. Large and small, north, south, interior, island, rural, urban, we're all seeing the impacts of this on the people that we represent in their lives. Everyone, everyone in this province has the right to feel safe in their homes and in their communities. And the reality is, in many cases, very few, relatively few individuals are responsible for a majority of the crime in our communities. This is a complex issue. The origins of this challenge are complex in nature. And if anyone stands on this stage or anywhere else and says we can solve this complex issue with simple slogans and cheap solutions, they're lying to you. As one mayor said to me recently, just yesterday, it's not those people. Those are our people. This is our responsibility. This is our effort and problem to solve. The issue goes beyond policing and courts. It goes to issues of homelessness and mental health and addictions. We're investing $164 million into complex care to help more than 500 vulnerable people across this province. And we're working with policing and mental health experts who are about to deliver a report to us as a province about solutions, ideas, creative and otherwise. And that is coming incredibly soon. The new normal that we sometimes talk about in government means we have to also do things different. We strive to make and continue to make British Columbia and our communities the best places in the world to live. And in large part, we've been really successful. And the reason I know that is last year we received more people coming to our province than we had in 60 years prior. And we'll probably do the same again this year. And we know the single greatest challenge in inviting all of these people into our province to fill those jobs and to help us build our communities is where to put them. This housing crisis that we face in all of our communities north, southeastern, west has been an incredible challenge that we must face together. It's been a little over six months since Putin invaded Ukraine. This most diabolical act in an unprovoked aggression upon a people. Millions and millions of Ukrainians displaced out of their homes. And many of them wanting to come here. And I watched as municipalities across this province put up their hand and said, how can we help? We watched as British Columbians opened their hearts and their homes to welcome in those fleeing war and violence. And in our country's history we have never regretted taking people in who were fleeing atrocities and war and violence. Never. And we certainly won't this time. We contributed $15 million to settlement agencies and the B.C. Ukrainian community to help settle those Ukrainians coming to our beautiful province in the most generous way. And I want to particularly point out the issue of the incident in Fort St. John and Mayor Ackerman and her incredible work with B.C. housing to settle families in her northern community. It fills us with pride and joy and we know we need to do more because Putin's aggression seems to know no ends and we must simply do everything that we can as a province, as local government to make sure that we are helping Ukrainians fleeing war. Thank you. We had a weird incident this summer as Minister of Immigration for our province. I attended a federal gathering of colleagues and we wrangled the provinces and territories to come across with a united voice when talking to Ottawa about immigration and particularly about our nominee program. B.C. is responsible for a relatively small but powerful aspect of immigration into our province called the PNP. And we do a really good job of it because we match employers with immigrants coming in with the skills that we need and we've been able to use that program to focus on attracting more healthcare workers and we stood with every province and territory across the political spectrum and in Canada right now it's quite a spectrum but with one common voice seeking more influence, more authority and more discretion in the immigration system because we know we do it well. This program is incredibly successful and we hear from you on a constant basis the need to have more skilled workers in our long-term care facilities, in our hospitals, in our schools and throughout our communities. I wanted to spend a moment more on the housing crisis. $7 billion towards creating 114,000 homes 35,000 of which are constructed or underway is helping address the supply issue that you all know far too well. You are permitting and developing more housing than you ever have before and it's still not enough. We have to do more and do more together. I want to point to a particular example that I had the privilege to see. Mayor Jerry Teeson took me through Vanderhoof and pointed to the Park View Place. You should look this up. It's the first building in BC to combine independent seniors' housing with a licensed dementia care facility with 24-hour service for our elders in our community. It's a beautiful facility and the pride with which Jerry talks about this place and what it means for the seniors and elders living in community of Vanderhoof is outstanding. I want to give particular congratulations to Vanderhoof for what you were able to do as a shining example to all the rest of us and what's possible. I know we need to build more supply. I remember when we brought in the speculation vacancy tax some time ago. There's a little bit of concern. Some people, like, remember our legislature which is always the highest form of public debate and dialogue. I said it was a stunt. It would never work. I want to tell that to the 20,000 people in Vancouver alone who are now living in apartments that were previously vacant year after year. It makes a difference and that's why we're expanding the program to other communities across BC. We, Minister Robinson brought in a housing needs assessment. You can't manage what we can't measure. An understanding of what's going on in our communities, community by community. There's no cookie cutter solution to this. We need to know what are the gaps in every community and constantly have that message for ourselves as political leaders and also to our communities and developers who look to come in. That was an exceptional tool and continues to be one that we want to use. We've helped streamline the development process, making public hearings more efficient through changes to the community charter. And I know for our dear friends in Vancouver who live under their own special charter, I know you have a love of long torturous public hearings. You've broken records, folks. Come on and join the party. We can make those meetings a little bit more efficient, maybe, a little bit more effective. And I've spoken to some of our friends in Vancouver and they grimace and agree at the same time that there's more that we can do. We can put more tools in the toolbox by delegating some of the smaller decisions to our staff, by not bringing every single decision up to the council level. And in decisions like we saw recently in Victoria, under Mayor Helps's leadership, the first council in BC to put in a fast lane for affordable housing projects right across the city. That's excellent leadership. We need more of it. I've heard from you quite a bit that in this development we need to do it smart. We need to make our communities more livable. We need to make our communities more environmentally sound, more compact, more accessible. We need better planning. We need better data. That's why today I am proud to announce a new program in concert ship with the UBCM called the Complete Communities Program. Ten million dollars for your communities to gather the data, to do the planning to make our communities more livable, accessible, and more environmental. We look forward to launching the program in the New York not in New York. We're not going to announce it in New York. We're going to announce it in the new year with UBCM and I thank your president and your executive for their leadership in developing this program. I'm terrifying my staff. They wrote this amazing speech. It's poetic. It's soaring. And if I read it word for word, some folks sitting over there would be very happy. There's a line in here that says, the days of debating climate change are over. I think that's broadly true. I think there are some that keep wanting to return over and over to that debate as wildfires rage, as droughts affect our neighbors to the south. Some of those folks also want to debate whether smoking is any good and whether dancer size is going to sweep the nation. But we must focus on where we are and the realities that are in front of us. We've seen our neighbors and our communities impacted. We provided $54 million over to help new housing projects in places like Merritt and Princeton. Together with our federal partners, more than $100 million for our friends in Lytton, who experienced a devastation that seemed unimaginable only a short time ago when we didn't know terms like heat dome, atmospheric river. Yet these are upon us. And with all we're doing, we know we need to do more. We must build back better. We must be proactive. I've been blown away by the efforts that you as local leaders have made in these times of crisis. Standing shoulder to shoulder with your communities. You stack sandbags. You visit neighbors. We move cattle. Nothing in the job description. Regional board chair or mayor, yet what was needed to be done. And in particular, I want to point out the efforts of Mayor Henry Braun and his council in Abbotsford. He and they worked tirelessly, not just during the crisis but afterwards to advocate for the kind of support that they need. And came for the second time this close to losing the primary drinking water supply. Twice. Today, I am so proud to announce in concert with the city of Abbotsford, $62 million to build their drinking water resiliency project to ensure that Abbotsford, Mission and the Matsquist First Nation have safe and reliable drinking water, whatever may come. Thank you, Mayor Braun. I received more than a few emails and letters and phone calls from you in concern when the care program was pulled back, the climate action program. There was worry. So we took your worries and we made a new program. More flexible with more than twice the money. And launched it with Minister Heyman's leadership. The Clean BC local government climate action program, $76 million. We must have a department that just makes up the names of these programs. That does exist, Mike. I think that's your shop. Yeah, it's fantastic. I, uh, speaking of money. Speaking of money. I'm also the minister of libraries. Not in our country, but fun fact anyways. The only aspect of the Patriot Act that was ever changed was the part of it that said that librarians had to give up your borrowing records to the U.S. federal government. Listen, don't piss off librarians. They are sometimes quiet, sometimes humble, but packed into a corner. They're fierce. And we heard your lobby. We've heard your lobby. That's why last year we put in $8 million towards libraries across this province. Extra on top of what we normally do. And as one librarian said to me, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. And there are some people in our communities that are really trying the second option. We, uh, as we were talking in a forum earlier, you know, we just had a pandemic. We're going through it. A lot of science. And a lot of people come up to me, probably come up to you and said, I did some research and say it with me. A Google search is not research. It is, it is a Google search. We, um, need an informed and engaged and intelligent population that knows how to discern between fact and fiction, between information and disinformation and misinformation, because this is critical for the very vibrancy and health of our democracy. Libraries ain't just places you go borrow books anymore. You know this. We know this. They've become so much more. They're heating centers, cooling centers, social justice centers, counteracting the plague of the Google search. We'll find out. Truths function. Fact from noise. I, uh, know that we need to change a lot of what we do in this world. We need to reconcile a lot of the things that we in the past have done wrong in a no, no single issue other than our relationships between newcomers and the first peoples of this province must we do more and do better. Just, uh, this year, we signed with the Taltan Nation in the north, the first ever consent based decision making agreement under the leadership of our Premier, Minister Rankin, and others. Not only is this the first ever in BC, this is the first ever in Canada, first ever in North America, and first ever in the world. We've, I don't know if you saw it, the President and I were talking about this earlier. Names, names matter. And the aspects of colonization was of course not just the destruction of people and culture and language, was the destruction of names, of places. A few years ago, the Haida elders on Haida Gwai in Skidaget approached their local council of Charlotte City and said, we would like you to consider reclaiming the name of this place, Dajun Geetz. This was and is not an easy conversation to have. Names matter. We grow attached. And just a few weeks ago, MLA Jennifer Rice, myself, Premier, Minister Rankin, joined the communities of Skidaget and Dajun Geetz to feast in their new name. To reclaim back what was and to acknowledge in a small but important way how names matter and there are things that we can do about them. The leadership of the President of the Haida Nation, Gagwis and Mayor Chris Olsen and his council and the courage that they took to take this conversation on should be celebrated and acknowledged throughout the province. This too was the first time, this was the first time that we're aware of, anywhere that a name was reclaimed back. Against the advice of my team, I'm going to need you to have your arms free for a second. Mayor Attrell and Smithers is ready. This is an easy exercise. I'd like you to fold your arms, please. Excellent. Now, look at your folded arms. Not your neighbors. It'll only confuse you. And see which arm is up and which arm is down. Which arm is on top, which arm is below. Let that go. Everyone got it? Great. Let that go. I'd like you to fold your arms again, please, but in the opposite way. Take a minute chair. I don't want to... We don't have insurance for this part of the program. Wonderful. Let that go. That's great. Please fold it that way again, the opposite way. Some of you will never get this exercise. It's okay. Thank you. You can drop those. One last time, the opposite way, the weird way. Please fold your arms, please. Thank you. I won't make you do it again. Let me ask you a question. The very first time I asked you to fold your arms, what did you think? The very first time? Brain activity? If we were measuring across the room any spikes? No? How did it feel? Easy? Done a million times. Why are we doing this? When I asked you to fold your arms the opposite way, what went on in your mind? Awkward, hard? A little bit of thought process? How did it feel? Awkward. Awkward. By the third time, any differences? Little? Some no, some less. Some it got worse. Why is he doing this to us? There was a study done on some poor psych students at the University of California some years ago. Three hours, they were paid $20 to fold and unfold their arms. These poor undergrads. What did we learn? What you can get an undergrad to do for $20? Sure. What else did we learn? What did we learn after those three hours? They learned that the vast majority, nearly 80% of those in the room, couldn't remember the way that they traditionally folded their arms. No recollection of it. Both felt the same. What is this silly little exercise teaches us about change? It's possible. What else can be uncomfortable at first? Practice and it takes time. We are often asked to consider change in our relationships to the environment, to planning, to indigenous peoples, relationships to governments. We're often asking the people we represent to think about changes to their neighborhoods, to the way they look towards the future. Change is possible. Change can be hard and a little uncomfortable. But with practice and determination, in a changing world and a new normal, the things that we can do together, which is the very basic definition of government, are the things that we do together that we cannot do alone. Require the compassion, the courage and the dedication through the change to the other side. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, President Rodendorff.