Town of Westlock deputy mayor Murtaza Jamaly returned from a national conference on the east coast last week that included a face-to-face with federal infrastructure minister Amarjeet Sohi.
“I know that that’s where we’re seeing a lot of challenges and that’s where I wanted to bring back some information. It’s been infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure,” said Jamaly.
The deputy mayor was one of three local politicians to travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 31 to June 3 to take part in the largest annual gathering of municipal politicians in the country.
Jamaly was joined by mayor Ralph Leriger and Coun. Curtis Snell at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) Annual Conference and Trade Show, for four full days of workshops, industry-led seminars and networking opportunities with peers from across the country.
The estimated cost to the town to send the three officials to the conference is estimated at $7,200 for registration fees, airfare, accommodations and incidentals. Expenses have yet to be filed.
FCM is a national organization that lobbies the federal government in the interests of municipalities across the country.
Jamaly said he spent a significant amount of time meeting with Sohi.
“We just had discussions about some of our challenges,” he said. “Minister Sohi is fantastic. He’s really, really good about the fact that infrastructure priorities need to be set by the municipality, not by federal government.”
The biggest issue raised by Jamaly was the system by which federal dollars are funneled through the provincial government before reaching their intended municipality.
“To quote minister Sohi directly, ‘Whether you’re NDP, Conservative or Liberal, we all drive down the same road,’” said Jamaly.
The province is a little bit different where we’ve seen some of the administering of funds to be a lot more political in nature ... He’s given us some points on how to tackle those challenges.”
He said they also spoke about some of the rural streams of funding for infrastructure and some of the green initiatives undertaken by the federal government in its mandate.
“It really gave us the idea that a lot of our projects in Westlock need to be tailored to ‘What is its environmental impact? What is its green impact?’ That’s what’s getting the dollars and cents through right now so when we’re looking at a stormwater reservoir or water reservoir, or whatever it may be, we’re evaluating how we make this a green application to make sure the dollars and cents are there,” said Jamaly.
While discussion about infrastructure was Jamaly’s focus for the weekend he also attended sessions on communication, green planning and broadband Internet.
“Whatever the issues may be, they pack your day with sessions.”
Another topic Jamaly spent a significant amount of time on is looking at innovative approaches for attracting new businesses.
“I think one of the cool things we could do as a community and a road that we’ll have to investigate is that we’re the perfect-sized community for organizations and companies that are looking to trial their modern piece of technology, whatever it might be,” he said.
The networking aspect of the conference also should not be overlooked, he continued.
“Westlock can boast about the fact that our relationships with other municipalities, the City of Edmonton, the City of Calgary, the fact that we can pick up the phone and call a city councillor and have that relationship, I would say that is something hard to find in other communities. We’ve done an excellent job of working with our peers.”
Jamaly said he recognizes the event is not cheap, but feels it is well worth the investment.
“We want to know that if we’re sending three members of our council to this event and it’s not a cheap event for us to attend, that it’s worth it,” he said, adding that he is very conscious of finances when travelling.
He walks instead of taking cabs when possible and even renting an Airbnb, instead of a hotel. He said it’s hard to quantify the value of such a conference , but shared the story of a Calgary city councillor who came back from FCM one year with an innovative lighting solution that saved the city $500,000.
“Do I think that the value of FCM as whole outweighs the cost? Greatly so. I think that all it takes is one grant or one product to save your community half a million dollars and you’ve paid for the next 20 years of FCM.”
