Public feedback !! Important meeting on Budget. CVRD citizens fight back. The Province wants input on land use!
February 7th 5 pm North Cowichan Council Chambers
North Cowichan: Council is seeking public input ( found through a small ad in The Citizen) on the 2024-2028 Budget. On Jan 17th North Cowichan passed their first three readings of their 4-year financial plan. On February 7th at 5pm (4:30 sign in to speak) council will hear feedback from the public. We have written extensively on the budget since it started to be debated - see past Substacks with headings such as “budget”. We also wrote some summaries in The Westward Independent under ‘Council Watch’. [https://wwind.ca/council-watch-jan2024/] [https://wwind.ca/council-watch-december-2023/]
If you did not show up to the budget meetings, here is your last chance - more money dumped into the Quamichan Lake, Climate Action and Energy Plan, and the Forest reserve because we stopped logging and waiting on a ‘carbon credit’ scheme. More money towards clean up and police for the rising crime in N.C. created by the Province, many more staff hired etc. If you don’t show up at these meetings, all their decisions fly under the radar. You may not be listened to, as they have shown, but voicing your concerns, and disagreements with spending, and being there to bear witness, is extremely important as we race to their 15-minute schemes, and over-governing models that will only become a tighter noose around your liberties as the next four years comes to pass.
Vancouver Sun: “VICTORIA — The New Democrats have quietly launched public consultation on their plan to begin co-management of government-owned land with B.C.’s 204 First Nations.
“The province wants to know your thoughts on sharing public land-use decision making,” says the call for submissions on the government website. “The government hopes to be able to negotiate agreements with Indigenous governments and begin sharing decision-making on public land use in the late spring of 2024.”
The overseer Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship posted the call for submissions at Engage B.C. (engage.gov.bc.ca) earlier this month.
The ministry did not publicize the invitation with a news release, suggesting the government is not all that keen to attract attention to the exercise.
The New Democrats are drafting amendments to the Land Act for introduction this spring. The Act governs access to and use of the 95 per cent of the province that is provincially owned, for purposes as varied as agriculture, communications towers and waterpower…..” See full article here: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-bc-ndp-quietly-consult-sweeping-changes-managing-public-lands
The citizens that filed a criminal complaint against the CVRD need your signatures":
https://www.change.org/p/taxpayers-rights
Sincerely,
Team COAP